Flushed with the exertion of climbing three flights of stairs in the pre-summer heat, I peek into the office she shares with several colleagues. I'm nearly thirty minutes late, a good twenty minutes later than the oh-so-casual ten-minute-late arrival I'd originally intended. The week before I was a good five minutes early, hiding myself behind pretend homework to avert the glances of her colleagues apologizing to me for her lateness. Today I've already sent her an apology text message to her cell phone, but as I slip into the room the apologies are still bursting forth.
"I'm sorry, the bus was late and it was raining so it was slippery and I couldn't find my umbrella and anyway I spent the entire time on the bus studying..."
She just smiles and points me to the empty chair of the desk next to her. She offers me something to drink, which I refuse politely. She insists politely, and I refuse again. It's our custom, sometimes waived by her finally setting a cup of tea in front of me and my drinking it half out of desire and half from politeness. In the past nine months I have become more and more comfortable with her each week, but I still cling to our little tea ritual. Imitating a proper girl.
Today as she uncaps her red pen and bends her head over my notebook, I find myself holding my breath. "Did you do this on the bus ride here?" she teases.
Mustering my best attempt at indignation, I shake my head. "Of course not!" 'In the coffee shop the hour before I boarded the bus,' I silently add in my head. No need to give more information than is required.
"I'm impressed," she says warmly even as the ink flows in dark bloodstains on my paper. I can't help wrinkling my nose at all of her corrections. No matter how hard I try to write my compositions accurately, I always mess up a conjugation or idiom or how to use an article. "Don't be discouraged," she says, without even looking up from the paper. "It always takes time to be able to write in a foreign language. You're doing really quite well." I decide that this isn't an invitation for complaints about the difficulty of study abroad, and I merely make a non-commital shake of the head. She turns the page, and I hear a quick intake of breath. Her voice is puzzled as she asks quietly, "I think you lost a page from your notebook."
"I-um...not exactly..." I blush. I'm glad that we're talking in English so that the other teachers in her office can't understand us, but I lower my voice anyway. "I meant to finish the essay but I was a little sick yesterday and the day before that I got a phone call from a friend back home..."
She nods her head thoughtfully. I squirm. She's not one for interrogation, but sometimes the earnest silence is just as effective.
"I'm sorry," I finish lamely.
The silence dangles between us like a screen gradually descending, and her unsaid thoughts flicker toward me. Her busy schedule teaching full-time, preparing for her wedding, and helping to take care of her ailing father. Her dedication to her work and spontaneous offer to meet with me during her precious one free night of the week. Her reassurances, at my expressions of doubt and guilt at taking her time, that she loved tutoring and her reward would be to see my progress. She takes off her glasses, rubs at the small hollow between her eyes where the pads left red indentations, and sighs. For a moment I wonder if I'm about to receive my first lecture ever (she's not one to scold, and at only four years older than me she's been low-key about her position of authority). I want to apologize, but at this point words seem rather meaningless.
After a moment, she begins in quite a different tone. "I think it's been a long week for both of us. Why don't we stop here."
"I'm sorry--" It comes out involuntarily, but she shakes her head.
"It's all right. We'll try again next week." She pats me on the arm, and for a moment I want to lean into her touch. 'Don't leave,' I think, and push away the unbidden thought. I imagine myself bringing in a glorious composition and seeing her pride and satisfaction. I think back to my time frittered away on trashy television and hideously expensive transatlantic phone calls, and I wish desperately I could go back a few days in time and prepare the most magnificent essay possible. Instead, she smiles again in what I know is my cue to leave.
"I'm sorry!" I cry again silently. For wasting your time. For these last few weeks when my heart has been elsewhere and I can't make myself write. I'm sorry you thought so much of me last fall, that time when we first met. It's nice to be believed in, but it's also a little burdensome. There's always the fear that your warts will eventually show through. She gives me a final nod as I put my notebook and pencil back into my backpack.
She calls my name just before I'm out the door, and I dart back inside. "Mira," she says with unexpected sternness, "you're giving up on yourself. You can do better." I duck into the hallway quickly, the back of my nose prickling with sudden swallowed-back tears.
***
Six days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-five minutes later, I stand uncertainly outside of her office door. One of the other teachers sees me and tries to usher me inside, but I smile awkwardly and pretend to search for something in my pocket. He is still waiting with the door courteously open for me. I shrug embarrassedly and acquiesce."Your student arrived," he announces, adding a rapid-fire stream that sounds vaguely like, "Come in, make yourself comfortable, sit down, you must be tired, what a long journey you make every week." She smiles at me. I'd forgotten how brightly she smiles, how her eyes lift and sparkle as if opening a present. "Just a minute," she says, and I notice the teen-age boy standing next to her chair. I can't catch the speech on her part, but his half-sullen, half-remorseful downward gaze makes it clear he is receiving a reprimand of some kind. He stretches the palms of his hands out in front of him, and without warning the "rod of love," as it is referred to by the teachers, flashes in the air and downward against his palms. He makes no sound, but I gasp. I honestly thought that the threat of the stick was merely that, a threat similar to my mother's warning that the bogeyman would get me if I threw a tantrum one more time. As he shakes out his hands, gathers his books and leaves the office, I sidle past him with a sidelong look at his hands. I see a few painful-looking red lines, but he catches my gaze and I look away in embarrassment.
"Mira!" she calls out to me cheerfully, as if I haven't just witnessed her transformation from Big Sister into, well, Someone Scary. "Do come and sit down. Would you like green or chamomile tea?" She pulls out the rolling chair next to her.
"Um, no thanks...I...um..." The long, shiny polished stick lying next to her desk is decidedly interfering with my concentration. It must be our day to skip the ritual offering and refusing. She ignores my stammering and pours me a cup of hot water and steeps it with a small scoop of tea leaves. Not the boiling-steaming water that turns tea bitter, but the cool-hot water just right for drinking in small sips. Unthinkingly, I take a gulp and immediately suck on my scalded tongue.
"How was your week?" she asks me. "Did you have any trouble with your translation? I didn't get any e-mail from you, so I assumed you were managing all right."
"Did you really...I mean...I didn't think you...you *really*..." my voice trails off. She looks puzzled at my non sequitur until she follows my gaze to the "rod of love." It's a nasty-looking instrument, longer than my arm and thicker around than my thumb. Well, almost.
"Oh, that." She laughs warmly. "Don't worry. For one thing, you're not one of my high-schoolers. And my star student already has my love without my using the 'rod of love.'" Ordinarily I would groan at her weak pun, but today the words "star student" hit a tender spot in my chest. Wordlessly (there will never be the right words), I unfold the papers clutched in my hand and thrust them toward her.
"What are these?" I stare hard at the pale blue forget-me-nots on my tea cup as if they will magically provide an answer. Or prevent me from having to answer. She rustles the papers, glances through them, and touches my arm. "Mira, what's wrong?" she asks in alarm. "Are you ill? Do you have a family emergency?" I shake my head mutely. "Are you in some trouble? What can I do to help?"
I only shake my head again. How would I know she would be so shamefully *nice* about this? "I'm okay," I manage to say. "There's no big problem."
"Then why are you leaving?" "I just--I can't do it." "You can't do what? Your compositions are brilliant! Or would be if you gave yourself more time to work on them..." Suddenly her voice changes. "Mira, look me in the eye and tell me that this isn't some crazy ploy to get out of telling me that you haven't done your homework for today."
Oh crap I thought she didn't do interrogations. I thought she was Encouragement and Cheerleading and Meticulous Dedication, not some psychic mindreader suddenly seeming far more than four years older. "Could you just sign it?" I mumble. Even though her tutoring is volunteer, it's still an official registered class. It was, naturally, she who waded through the mounds of paperwork and red tape to give me transcript credit for her after-hours labor of love.
"I could sign it," she says in a strange voice. I involuntarily look up to see such vulnerability and hurt on her face that I again have to look down. Blinking the tears away. "I could sign it and let you walk away from the nine months you've invested in this school--all because you couldn't take one day to complete your work. I hope you're not planning to attend another language institute in the near future, because a drop-fail will hardly help your chances for admission. Is that what you want?"
I hadn't thought about jeopardizing future school plans, but I have to admit that she is right. Suddenly this all seems a lot more serious than I thought. I thought I could just pick up and leave on a whim. After all, I've already done the college thing. This is just extra. But if I want to become a translator...at least some official credentials are needed.
"No," I admit in a small voice.
"What do you want, Mira? Have you thought *anything* except just to run away?"
"Why are you scolding me?" I ask plaintively. I know it's a mistake even before the words are out, and her voice stiffens.
"What do you want me to say? 'Yes, go ahead.' Walk away. Give up on yourself.' Do you really want me to say that?"
The tears are becoming dangerously close now. This lecture might be a once-in-nine-months occurrence, but she's certainly packing enough punch to make up for lost time. "I'm sorry," I murmur.
Her warm, sweet-smelling arm rests on my back and gently presses me to lean against her. "Don't be sorry," she says in her familiar gentle voice. "Be persistent. You owe it to yourself to give it another try."
I can only nod as the tears slip noiselessly through my closed eyelids. "I'm sorry," I say after a moment. "I don't really want to leave."
"I know." She lets me rest against her for a moment. I pull away, sniffling and wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. "And I think we need to make some changes in our modus operandi." Her gaze wanders briefly to the "rod of love" lying horizontally across her desk. Her eyes search my face questioningly. I gulp. Me? Like a high-schooler? Finally, I give the smallest possible nod.
***
That night her warning rings uncomfortably in my ears.
"I think we should end today with your first taste of discipline."
"Oh please no...I promise I'll be motivated and focused without it...please just one more chance."
"If we don't get the first time over with now, you'll obsess about it for the rest of the week."
"Oh no, I promise. I swear that, now I know you mean business, the threat will be effective enough by itself. You'll never have to use it even once."
A sigh. "I don't want you afraid. That's not what it's for."
"I'm not afraid! I swear. If I don't have all of my work done by next week I'll take twice the usual punishment without a peep of complaint."
Another sigh. "All right, Mira. I don't think it's wise, but perhaps you'll have to learn that the hard way."
Initially I am proud of my newfound rhetorical prowess, but as the week wears on I find my razor-sharp concentration fraying like 1970s shag carpet. 'Would it hurt?' I find myself wondering--rather stupidly, I might add. But considering that corporal punishment is illegal in the schools at home and that my parents gave me little more than the odd wooden-spoon swat here and there, perhaps it's only natural that this "rod of love" looms ever and ever larger in my mind. I pick up a pencil to start writing, only to twirl it absentmindedly in my hands and compare its thickness and smoothness with The Stick. That's what it has become in my mind, a capital-letter affair. She's stopped being my beloved tutor and has turned into this awful threatening figure. For the moment this fear is very effective in forcing me to work, but much more of this awful fear in the pit of my stomach and I just might develop ulcers. I have, in the most platonic way, a crush on her. I think having to be punished by her would humiliate me beyond recovery. To go from being her "star student" to just another unruly student who needed physical punishment to mind. For all of ten seconds I wildly consider consider leaving the school sans official approval, but the papers are at the bottom of her wastebasket. Placed there by me, of which the symbolism is rather obvious. After my blubbering and snivelling, I threw away the discharge papers without prompting.
I sigh and return to my translation. We've finally moved beyond the Dick-and-Jane of "My name is Jane. This is my brother, Dick" into slightly more exciting fairy tales. "My name is Kongee [Cinderella]. This is my stepsister." So far I've gotten poor little Kongee weeding in the field while her mean stepmother gives Kongee's stepsister a new dress. Then the stepmother orders Kongee to fill the water jar, but because of a frog the river overflows. No, wait a minute. Is "jangee" river or well? And what the heck is this frog doing in the story? I wonder idly if Kongee was struck by her stepmother, or if her nasty older stepsister was ever disciplined for not doing her lessons properly. I picture shrinking-violet Kongee holding out trembling hands as her intimidating stepmother intones, "You must feel the 'rod of love' for your own good." Then, *crack* *crack* *crack*, Kongee is wringing her poor hands and weeping pathetically until the local handsome magistrate comes to rescue her.
I wonder suddenly--guiltily--if She was ever disciplined during her school days. Compared with my stammering and blushing, she's so comfortable with assaulting a students with a stick that she can even joke about it. "Well, Mira, you wanted to fully experience the culture here, so what better opportunity is there than learning how we deal with our students? Did you know that in the old days we used the phrase 'picking up the rod' to mean becoming a teacher? How deprived your education has been!" Balefully suggesting that I might prefer to remain deprived was only met with affectionate laughter and a squeeze of my shoulders. As if I were a petted and precocious child. I both resent and enjoy the vulnerability of being a foreigner. I like the freshness and softness it gives me, like being a child again. I wrote an essay last fall on my study abroad exerience being a "second childhood" and expressed my thankfulness at the new lessons I was learning. I had no idea, naturally, that entering a second childhood would make me subject to the rules of childhood once again.
--- The next week, I again enter rather late. Not because I'd blithely forgotten the time, but because there was no courteous teacher to usher me into the office. As a result, I'd stood outside of the office door for a good fifteen minutes while studiously ignoring the curious looks of students passing by. But at long last I reflect that tardiness is probably not the best way to start the lesson off on the right foot, and I make my way over to her desk. I set a small grammar textbook onto her desk and smiled expectantly. I'd had so many questions during our last translation that she'd mentioned a recently published grammar book for foreigners. I spend so much time at the local bookstore that the manager has jokingly threatened to charge me rent, so I was happy to pick up the book for her.
She opens it and smiles at me delightedly. "Oh good! You were so fast! How much was it?" I tell her the amount, and she opens her purse to hand me the next largest bill. When I search my pockets for change, she pats my hand. "It's all right. It's 'shimboolum gahp,' money for doing an errand. We give it to children," she teases.
Ony four years older than I and yet still able to rub it in! I make a face and briefly wonder what it would be like graduate from all this student stuff and be a professional, a colleague. Finally an adult. I have a hard time imagining it.
We immediately plunge into our work, previously delayed for two weeks in a row. She chuckles at one of my spelling errors.
"It's omgee, not omgway," she corrects me. "Omgee is thumb. Omgway is someone that babies are afraid of. Sometimes a mother will say to her baby, 'omgway will get you!' and the baby will cry and cry."
Sort of like my mother's bogeyman, I think, and marvel at the similarity in cultures.
"Does omgway also 'get' teachers who are too scary to their students?" I can't help asking.
She taps her red felt-tip pen playfully in my direction. "No, but I'm sure they would be interested in a student who calls her teacher 'princess disease.'"
I burst into laughter. I can't help it. Her last name is almost the same as the word for "disease," and here "princess disease" means a girl or woman who is always concerned with looking beautiful. Ever since I learned that, I've addressed every e-mail and note to her as "To princess-disease teacher."
She tries to scowl. "For shame! Don't you know you aren't even supposed to step on your teacher's shadow?"
"Aww!" This is another proverb, one that means a teacher should receive so much respect that even their shadow should be honored. It's her standard weapon whenever I've succeeded in teasing her.
"There's no shadow when we're inside," I complain.
"I can make one," she answers cheerily. She pushes her chair back directly underneath the ceiling light until a very faint shadow forms next to the bottom of her chair.
I can't resist. I stomp happily.
Even as she laughs, she wraps her right hand--with such strong fingers!--around mine. "Son day!" she says to me.
I look at her in shock. It's the traditional order for a student to hold out her hands for punishment. Against my will, my hands uncurl themselves and start to tremble. "P-p-please...I was just joking..."
She smiles at me, so warmly that I can't help trusting her. She lifts her pen and strikes it ever so softly against my outstretched palms. A sudden unexpected gladness fills my heart. If this is a joking matter, I have nothing to fear. Yet again my eyes prick with sudden tears, this time at her amazing and compassionate intuition. She *knew* I was afraid. That's why she wanted to do this last week.
"It's still me," she says softly. "This doesn't change how I feel about you. Or our work together."
"Th-thank you," I stammer incoherently. In answer, the pen flicks against my palms a second time.
"Don't be afraid," she tells me. "You have no reason to fear. I'm on your side."
For the briefest moment, I wonder if being struck by her--but it seems too harsh a word--is too small a price to pay for receiving her limitless love. I'm almost ready to ask her to give it to me. Almost.
***
The familiar Wednesday-morning stomach-sinking realization it's been another week and I have nothing to show for it. The hurried scrambling through my book to read and jot down notes, underline, highlight, anything to make it look like I'd pored over every word. The panicked scribbling of a translation in the hope it would take up some class time. Every Wednesday night I swear I'm going to spend the next week slaving away, and every Wednesday morning I berate myself for not doing so.
I throw in some hard words for impress value and dash to the bus late. But by some miracle, I actually arrive to class on time. Maybe the traffic was light today--I honestly can't say since my nose was pressed against my book the entire trip. I'm early, she's late, and I silently thank her for giving me a few more precious minutes of preparation.
After she comes in--"Oh, you're early today!"--and we begin to study, the inner nervousness builds. I'm not sure exactly which side of the slacking-off/squeaking-by line I've crossed today. Is it enough? Or was she really serious? About...treating me like her high-school students? The hickory is nowhere in sight today, but I can't help giving a small shudder of both anticipation and dread.
"You have to come to my hometown," she says suddenly. I look at her blankly. Is this an invitation?
"I'm getting married," she says. I gape at her. In the time we've studied together, I've heard her say over and over again that she's not ready to be involved with someone and that she wants to focus on her graduate work.
"At the end of the month, so we can't have class for the next three weeks."
Still silently watching her, I feel something sink inside. I'd never in my wildest dreams...I'd decided to be really diligent and make the most of our class time together...just when I let myself get attached to someone...
"Are you serious? Is this a joke?"
"I wish," she grumbles. "It's crazy. But since my father is so sick, he wants me to get married quickly. My parents and my boyfriend's parents decided the date, and for the first time my father looks so happy."
She's the oldest child and the first to get married.
"I can't erase the smile from my father's face."
I have to blink rapidly. I know I'm being a baby, I know that of course she has a life of her own, I know this is a volunteer thing and she didn't sign on for life, but I thought...was counting on...I can't believe this is happening. I wonder, somewhat panickily, if after the wedding she will be too busy adjusting to her new life for her teaching. And not just my selfish reasons, but she's said herself that she's not entirely certain she wants to be married to her boyfriend. I wish she could have the fun and anticipation and exasperation of preparing for her wedding. Not this insane hurry-up reminiscent of a 1950s shotgun wedding.
We talk at great length about the pros and cons, her reasons and doubts and fears. I understand her wanting to please her father--and she wants to marry soon in case he doesn't make it--but it's still too soon.
"But if you don't love him...why don't you wait? Just a few months. Giving away your entire life to another man is too important to decide just yet. You should be able to enjoy your wedding."
She laughs ruefully. "I know. But there's nothing I can do." Forces a smile. "Now come on, you look so sad. Sadder than me, and I'm the bride-to-be."
"I am. I thought your wedding would be something special, something to anticipate."
And I thought we would study together for a good long while... In the smallest part of me, the secret unspoken selfish part, I feel incredibly letdown. Just as I was preparing myself...just as I was wanting to trust her and maybe take our relationship to a new level... Of course I promise to attend her wedding, but it's with a heavy heart that I say good-bye. For who knows how long. Her wedding, her honeymoon, getting-adjusted-to-marriage...if I could picture her happily married it would be one thing, but this... I am left to wonder if I expected too much, if I allowed myself to hope in vain, if I was foolish enough to think someone could fulfill my needs. She is just a volunteer tutor, for heaven's sake. But sometimes our heart listens not to reason...
***
Three weeks later, after the "till death do us part" (death of the couple or death of the ill father who initiated this wedding?) and endless pictures and waving goodbye as she leaves for her honeymoon, I imagine her opening the letter I had secretly tucked in her purse. I'd written many and torn them up, including one for her new husband. "Be good to her. If you make her cry, I will kill you." Needless to say, that did *not* get delivered. But the one for her, the one that finally "made the cut," was just a short note saying I wished her the best and hoped that we would still keep in touch.
I turn back to my studies, intending to make good use of this time, but the formerly exciting fairy tales only make me remember how much I enjoyed our study together. I give myself a mental shake and put the books away. Enough mooning about that. She'll come back, or she won't--either way, I'll deal with it. I managed before I met her, and I'll manage again.
In the past few weeks I've had a lot of spare time, a previously unknown luxury. Normally I would relish the time to "veg out" in front of the television or computer, but these days time weighs heavily on my hands. Out of curiosity and rather self-consciously, I type the word--the word I can't make myself think--into my computer search engine.
The sheer number of results, combined with the graphic photos that come up, leave me speechless. Is my lurking, mostly unacknowledged, curiosity/longing/wistfulness a sign of some underlying psychological problem? Is this "thing," this desire, only manifested as some sick kind of pornographic deviant sexuality? I enter a chat room, two, three, and my initial elation at discussing this desire with others rapidly dissolves into confusion. I don't want to {} collar my name and Sir and Lord in order to receive what I want. It's too intense for me. At first I turn to the Dommes thinking that a feminine touch might be softer, but instead I receive tongue-lashings for wanting "it" without the seemingly requisite accompanying sex.
I am left to wonder if this feeling of mine is really wanting the unattainable. I want to feel...I want to experience...I want to maybe actually be hurt by someone I love. That sounds so mental. I don't mean romantic love or sexual love, but the "agape" pure love that knows neither gender nor race. Love itself. After being touched and leered at by fellow male students in junior high, I've learned to distrust physical contact. Never mind romance.
And yet the human body needs touch, needs intimacy...and a part of me longs for intimacy in this way. Not lust. Love. I want to feel someone's hand on my bottom, the striking sharp blows of flesh against flesh, straining against something bigger than me. Implacable and restraining and loving, holding me while making me cry. Someone who will let me fight against and draw away and protest, let me fight until the bad feelings are all washed away by pain and tears and the lovely warm throbbing afterward. Kisses and cuddles and stroking me as I cry with abandon. I am left to wonder if I want too much. And when she comes back, if she comes back, whether this unspeakable desire will ruin our relationship.
***
I could say that she abruptly pushes her chair back and stands up. Or that she paces in tight circles in front of me. Or that her mouth is drawn tight and her voice has become brittle. But what it all amounts to is this.
She's angry.
I didn't think she became angry. Even her tongue-lashing four weeks ago after my aborted attempt to withdraw from the language institute was measured, deliberate. Setting limits. Telling it to me straight. But this time it is anger. Pure and simple.
Of course, it didn't start out that way. At first it was the cheery exchange of hellos, looking through pictures, discussing the changes in her life now that she's become a staid matron, and happily unwrapping the exquisite tiny decorative plate from her honeymoon in the Philippines. And on my part, the sheer delight of being reunited with her--mitigated only by my scathing self-disparagement. What a little idiot I was, thinking marriage would end our relationship. She's married, but she's a teacher as well. Except for the thin gold ring on her left hand, we were sipping tea in our forget-me-not china cups and enjoying each other's companionship again.
Until the phone call. She'd invited me to come in to "catch up" after our month-long hiatus, and in the midst of our chatter she asked about my other classes. It was so unexpected that I felt the blood drain from my face. I'd truly thought this would be a tea-cookies-and-photo affair. Otherwise I would have prepared some story...
"Yes? This is Mira's advisor...mm-hm...yes, the honeymoon was wonderful, thank you."
My ability hasn't developed enough to catch the blur of the following words, but I gathered that she's checking on my academic record. Last week was final exams.
"Are you sure you've got the right student's record? Student number 7605489? Yes, that's right...mm-hm."
By the time she hung up the phone, I had already assumed the hands-clasped-together, head-slightly-tilted-downward-and-to-the-side, and shoulders-hunched position reserved especially for these occasions. And there's only one word to describe her reaction.
"What on EARTH were you thinking skipping class for three weeks? Not even showing up for your finals? And then *sitting* right here chatting for thirty minutes without ONCE bothering to mention that, 'by the way, I failed all of my classe while you were gone'?"
'I'm sorry,' I think feebly, but I've frozen into unresponsiveness. I could never, ever have imagined that she would raise her voice.
"What the HELL happened to you last month?" she storms.
Only the clock ticking and her continuous footsteps answer. What am I to say? That last month she awakened in me some stirring I'd never known before? That, just as I was beginning to acknowledge this unspeakable desire, she suddenly had to leave? That I was left to wage a battle of my ever-increasing desires against all the proprieties I had learned growing up? That what I felt for her scared me? Not romance, but something deeper. A kind of connection. The hours scouring the internet hoping to make sense of my conflicting secret feelings, and the despair that maybe I had become some kind of sexual deviant? And in the midst of all this, conjugating verbs and making vocabulary flashcards became immaterial? I am motionless, speechless.
Suddenly she slaps her hand down on her desk. "I take it from your silence that you have nothing to say for yourself?" The question is pointed, accusing.
'No,' I plead silently. Numbly. I have too much to say. Not here. Not now.
She closes her eyes and takes a long, long deep breath. She sits down and carefully controls her voice. "Mira, look at me. Please tell me that you were hospitalized for three weeks straight and you were physically unable to go to class. Tell me that the registrar mixed up your records and this hooky-playing, irresponsible, future-trashing student is anyone but you. Tell me that you didn't just casually throw away your entire school year's work. Tell me anything, because right now you're putting yourself in a very bad position."
My chest feels like it will explode, but I can't respond. I can't breathe. Her voice becomes gentler, but still with this new tone of steel.
"Mira, do you want to leave this school?"
I numbly shake my head.
"You want to study here, don't you?"
A small nod.
"Are you angry with me because I left for a month? Do you want to be assigned a new tutor?"
At last her words break through my numbness, and I sharply look at her in horror. Oh God, not that! I shake my head vigorously.
"I want to study with you!" I manage to croak out. 'And I like you so much it scares me,' I add silently.
"You do? So where does failing all of your classes fit into this scheme, hm?"
'Walk away...leave this school...put the horror of the past month behind me...anything...' except I know I can't leave. Too much of me has already been invested here.
"Stand up, Mira." Silently, hesitantly, I set my purse onto her desk and rise to a standing position. I smooth my ankle-length peach jumper nervously, straightening the simple white cotton T-shirt underneath. I allow her to bend my body, positioning my hands on her desk. She takes out the sleek polished stick of hickory, and even as I close my eyes I can't help bitterly noting the irony. This is what I wanted, right? And yet not like this. Oh God, not like this. I thought it would be sharp stinging pain but lots of love, comforting and holding and security. Not the heart-piercing knowledge I have disappointed her, disillusioned her. I didn't think she would be angry. I didn't know I would be fighting back the tears even before she raised the rod. I didn't know I would be awash in abject humiliation. Because, when it comes right down to it, I'd rather go back and undo the last month than to see her angry like this.
She gives me a short lecture, most of which never reaches my brain. Something about how I'd agreed to this last month, that so help her I was not going to throw away my talent and abilities, and even if I'd missed her that was no excuse to give up on my classes.
The pain is sharp, rapidly building, but it doesn't touch the icicle ache in my heart. I lose count as I bite my lip, cursing the pain and myself for causing this situation. I cannot look at her after she finally stops.
She says my name softly, over and over. "It's over. We'll start again next week," she says.
But inside, I disregard her words. I am no longer her star student. I am the disappointment. The quitter. The throbbing, pulsating fiery heat in my bottom can't even come close to matching the anguish in my heart. Concerned, she cups her hand on my cheek.
"It's over," she repeats. "We can see about re-enrolling you for next term as a make-up session."
I fixedly gaze at the stacks of papers on her desk, shivering. Her arm reaches around my shoulders, bringing me in close. I can't help myself, and a strangled mewl muffles itself in her shoulder. She strokes my hair and hugs me tightly.
"It's all right, honey," she says reassuringly. "It'll be all right."
My leaden arms remain at their sides. But the warmth of her words begin to melt the icicle pain in my heart.
