Girl Meets Class

by Karin Gillespie

  “There’s always something leaking over at Doc’s,” Carl said. “It’s his wife’s sneaky way of getting him home.”

  “Clever. And how does your wife coax you home?”

  “Coax? That’s not her style. If she wanted me home, she’d burst in, upend a few tables, and drag me out by the nose hairs.”

  I nervously glanced around the restaurant. “You expecting her tonight?”

  He rattled the ice cubes in his glass. “Actually, we’re recently divorced.”

  Well, well, well. Suddenly the evening had gotten vastly more interesting.

  “Sorry to hear that,” I fibbed. “But you still wear your wedding ring.”

  “Checking out my fingers, huh?”

  I shrugged. “I’m observant.”

  “I always wear my wedding ring to school. In the past I’ve had problems with flirty female students. The ring cuts down on that sort of thing.”

  Not to mention flirty colleagues. Inching closer, I peppered Carl with questions about himself. He told me he was twenty-seven, had been teaching five years, and was currently going to school at night to get his M.S. in Psychology.

  “There’s one thing I’ve been dying to ask you all night,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  I pointed to his cheek. “Where did you get your scar?”

  He frowned. “You picked the one thing I don’t like to talk about.”

  “Too painful?” I imagined a variety of disturbing scenarios: a drunken and brutal father, an ambush in an alley, or a gangland war. Carl looked fairly street-tough.

  “Too embarrassing.”

  “Come on. I promise to keep it a secret.”

  He gritted his teeth. “Okay…It was a light saber accident.”

  “What?”

  “When I was a kid, I was playing Star Wars with my younger brother Mitt. His light saber broke into a sharp edge, and it cut my face open.”

  I coughed to cover up a laugh.

  “I told you it was embarrassing. It’s like telling people you have a washable skull-and-crossbones tattoo.”

  Carl confessed that he grew up in a middle-class neighborhood with an Irish Setter and a swimming pool. He said he never lied to students about his upbringing but he didn’t advertise it either. Didn’t want to emphasize the differences between him and his kids.

  “You certainly had me fooled.” I nearly knocked over his bourbon on the rocks with my elbow. “Oops. My back.”

  Carl rumpled his brow. “Your back? What’s wrong with it? You pull a muscle?”

  “You haven’t heard that expression? My students say it all the time.”

  He slapped his khaki-covered knee and laughed. “It’s ‘my bad,’ not ‘my back.’ I can see I’m going to have to give someone slang lessons, shawty.”

  We’d gotten so close I was practically sitting in his lap and during the rest of our conversation I was constantly touching him on the arm or leg. In my part of town, a white girl getting friendly with a black man would probably have caught a few eyeballs, but here, on the scruffier Southside, no one was giving us any attention. He brushed the bangs away from my forehead, and said, “How about coffee at my house?” When he touched me, my body’s pleasure receptors lit up like a pinball machine.

  If I accepted his invitation, I guessed we’d do more than drink coffee. Was that a good idea? It could make things awkward at school next week. Who cares, I thought. Ever since I’d gotten the job at Harriet Hall I’d been a goody two-shoes, and I was already sick of it. Time for some racy recreation. Thankfully Aunt Cornelia’s contract didn’t prohibit me from participating in activities of the carnal kind.

  I downed the rest of my G & T, and laid down a few bills for Debbie. “Let’s go.”

  He pushed the money back in my direction. “My treat.”

  “Thanks, but I can pay for myself.”

  “Come on. You’re a first-year teacher in the Corps program. I’ve got five years in. I can afford it much better than you.”

  We left The Steer, and I followed him to his apartment. I’d seen my share of guys’ places, and sometimes they were so unhygienic, you were afraid to sit lest you catch scabies or fleas. Not true with Carl’s home. His living room was well-kept and homey with a puffy oversized couch, crowded bookshelves, and a collection of glossy-leafed and thriving house plants.

  “Have a seat and I’ll get some coffee,” he said, heading to the kitchen.

  While he was gone, I glanced through a plastic bin that held dozens of DVDs, mostly action flicks but a couple of artsy films too. After a moment Carl returned with two chunky mugs on a tray, along with cocktail napkins, sugar, and cream. The guy was definitely well-trained.

  “Do you realize you have absolutely no horror films?” I said.

  “That’s because real life is already plenty scary. Did you want to watch a movie?”

  “Maybe not,” I said, stirring sugar into my coffee.

  “You have some other ideas?”

  I smiled shyly. I wasn’t normally so coy, especially after I’d had a drink or two, but something about Carl made me less bold than usual.

  He immediately scooched closer to me and brushed his lips lightly against my ear. I shifted positions and when I did a high squeaky voice said, “I wanna go potty.”

  I pulled away. “What was that?”

  Carl groaned. “Chatty Keisha.” He pushed aside a couch cushion and withdrew a dark-skinned, naked doll. Its long, black braid had been chopped in half.

  “And why, may I ask, do you have a naked doll in your couch?” At least it wasn’t life-sized.

  “She belongs to Katherine, my five-year-old.” He tossed the doll aside and inched closer to me. “Sorry for the interruption.”

  “You didn’t mention you had a daughter.”

  “Never came up.”

  He leaned toward me, his lips honing in on mine. I jumped up from the sofa. “Where’s your restroom?”

  “Down the hallway. First door on the left.” He patted the couch cushion. “I’ll keep your spot warm.”

  The bathroom contained more signs of Carl’s daughter. A tub caddy held a rubber ducky, a plastic sailboat, and an economy-sized bottle of Mr. Bubble. I splashed cool water on my face and said to the mirror, “You’ve never slept with a father before. At least not knowingly.”

  I made a face at the prospect. Sleeping with some boy I’d met in a club and sleeping with a father were two different things. Fathers were responsible people who conducted committed adult relationships, and truthfully all I wanted was a little fun between the covers. Maybe this wasn’t such a smart idea after all. I left the bathroom, and Carl motioned me to the couch.

  “Come give me some company.”

  “I think I better go home.”

  “But you barely touched your coffee.”

  “Don’t want to get all jittery on caffeine.”

  “It’s decaf.”

  “It’s late.”

  “What’s your hurry all of a sudden?”

  “I’m just tired.”

  As a consolation prize, I leaned down and briefly brushed my lips with his.

  Nothing. It was like kissing a plaster wall. The sparks I’d felt earlier were gone.

  “That’s no kind of kiss.”

  Carl stood and his mouth sought out mine. At first I tensed, but the longer we kissed, the more my resistance rushed out of my body. He tasted of bourbon, and his skin emitted a burnt aroma, like roasted pecans.

  A few minutes later I was kissing him as if I wanted to nibble him down to nothing. He was taller than me, and I climbed him like a tree trunk and wrapped my legs around his torso. Both of my shoes clunked to the carpet.

  We wrestled our way to his bedroom and dropped to his m
attress, clutching and scrabbling at each other’s clothing, frenzied for the touch of bare skin. Buttons popped, cloth ripped, and zipper teeth were pried apart. I gasped at the heated sensation of his nude body against mine. His panting slowed, and his hand grazed my nipple. I could tell he was trying to rein in his urgency in the name of foreplay, but I couldn’t wait.

  “Now,” I demanded.

  “You sure?”

  “Do I have to hire a skywriter?”

  He hovered over me, and the bed jounced and shuddered. My conscious self dissolved into a pinprick as release roared through my body.

  Nine

  Carl was like human Cheez-Its; I couldn’t get enough of the man. I ended up spending the entire weekend at his apartment, most of it in bed. Occasionally we left the bedroom for a half-hour to eat toast, sip coffee, or watch part of a movie but eventually we’d find our way back to the mother ship, i.e., his memory-foam mattress.

  Sometimes the sex was leisurely, other times playful, but the end result was always the same: an orgasm so cataclysmic it blew off the top of my head. I’m not exaggerating. Carl was more practiced with the crevices and contours of the female body than any man I’d ever been with. I should know. After my injury, I’d shamelessly torn through quite a few.

  The weekend was winding down and Carl had me on the edge of paradise—my fingertips mere millimeters from the fingertips of God—when his cell phone rang. It had rung several times before and he’d always ignored it; this ringtone was different from the others. It sounded like, “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.”

  He lifted his head. “I have to get it.”

  I seized his wrist. “No. Way.” If I had a pistol handy I’d have been tempted to train it on his temple.

  “Sorry.” His lips skimmed my earlobe. “I’ll make it up to you.”

  While I tried to beat back my ferocious sexual frustrations, Carl answered the phone and immediately his voice went from throaty lover to kindergarten teacher.

  “Hi, sweet cakes. How’s Daddy’s girl?”

  Pause.

  “What happened with kitty?”

  Pause.

  “That’s the way kitties roll. They don’t like their tails pulled.”

  In the presence of such domestic sweetness, my nudity felt positively pornographic. No longer aroused, I eased off the bed, intending to put on my clothes.

  Carl grabbed my elbow and pulled me back.

  “Daddy loves you too, sweet cakes. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” He tossed the cell phone onto the lamp table and straddled me. “Where were we?”

  His hair was cut too short to yank, so I tugged on his ears. “We need to talk.”

  Carl jumped off of me. “Scariest four-word combination in the English language. Especially when it comes from a naked woman.”

  “Seriously.”

  “I’m listening.”

  I pulled the much-trafficked bedsheet up to my chin. Would have liked to pull it over my head for our upcoming conversation.

  “Is this a one-night stand?”

  “Since you’ve been here two nights I guess the answer is no.” He ran his fingers through my curls, which were probably wilder than pampas grass.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Hell no,” I said, maybe a little too quickly. I was hooked on the man. Wanted him in my bed every night. Wanted to have my way with him at least ten more times before I left. If I could sleep with Carl on a regular basis I might make it through the school year.

  “I’d like to do this again too,” he said. “But, to be honest, I want to keep it light.”

  I nuzzled his neck. “I agree. Sex isn’t nearly as much fun in the dark.”

  He leaned back against a bank of pillows and rested his hands on his rock-hard stomach. “You know that’s not what I mean. I definitely like being with you, but…I’m not ready to get serious with anyone. I’m recently divorced. I’m in graduate school. Now is not a good time to become emotionally involved. I probably shouldn’t have seduced you in the first place—that’s not really my style— but there’s just something so sexy about you…I lost my head.”

  I agreed. The chemistry between us was crazy, and I supposed it was okay to keep our relationship on the physical level. It’s not as if I had a lot of experience with deep relationships anyway. When I played tennis I’d been too driven to get emotionally involved with anyone, and after my injury, I was too reckless to even consider it.

  “That’s cool,” I said, even though I felt a pinch of disappointment. I was really into the guy.

  “What did you say?” Carl said. A jet was passing overhead, and it shook the apartment’s thin walls. He lived less than a mile away from the airport.

  “Let’s have sex again,” I said over the roar of the plane engines. “Hold the emotions.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t want to create any false expectations. Don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  Honestly, after all the mental turmoil I’d been through in the last few months I didn’t think I was capable of ever being hurt again.

  “I’m sure.” I whipped off the sheet. “Now that we’ve got that cleared up, could we possibly finish what we started?”

  Ten

  Every person has a breaking point and mine came Monday after lunch. I entered my portable and as soon as I sat down at my desk, I smelled something foul. I examined the heels of my shoes, but they were clean. I kept sniffing the room, tracing the stench to the closet.

  I opened the door and nearly gagged. Inside was a sizable pile of poop along with a crudely scrawled note that said, “Toni Lee is a crappy techer.” I didn’t recognize the penmanship—my kids hadn’t done enough work for me to be familiar with their handwriting.

  For days, I’d been quietly putting up with rowdy students, roaches, mice, mud, and freezing air, but seeing that big, stinky pile of poop made me snap. I flew to the office.

  The assistant principal in charge of discipline wasn’t in. No surprise there. I was beginning to think he was a mythical creature like a unicorn or the Loch Ness Monster. Dr. Lipton wasn’t around either. Who was running this loony bin? I returned to the outer office.

  Ms. Ware was seated at her desk, spooning the last bit of blueberry yogurt out of a plastic container.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “As you can see I’m having lunch.” She looked me up and down. “Why are you wearing earmuffs and a scarf? Hasn’t anyone told you it’s ninety degrees out?”

  I whipped off my earmuffs; I’d forgotten I still had them on. My freezing room was the least of my problems.

  “Someone went number two in my closet.”

  Ms. Ware gave me a withering look and said, “And why is that my problem?”

  “Because you need to send a custodian to my portable immediately, and if someone isn’t there in fifteen minutes, I’m going to come back here and haunt this place until it’s cleaned up.”

  I didn’t wait for her reply. I stomped out of the office, and slammed the door behind me.

  I returned to my portable, and to my surprise, I only had to wait five minutes before a custodian appeared. Thank God Ms. Ware had taken me seriously. Maybe that’s how it worked around Harriet Hall. Maybe you had to threaten people to get anything accomplished.

  The rest of the day I was so traumatized I didn’t even try to teach. I just let the students do whatever they pleased; no one seemed to notice except Janey, who asked me if I was feeling okay.

  After the dismissal bell rang, Ms. Sprague stopped by my classroom. It was the first time my buddy teacher had dropped in on me since pre-planning days. Welcome to the jungle, I wanted to say.

  “Why is it so cold in here?” She was shivering in a form-fitting sleeveless shift.

 
“Is it?” I opened my thermos and took a big swig of hot chocolate.

  “Do you mind if I turn down the air?”

  I laughed. “Good luck with that. It’s busted.”

  “Have you contacted maintenance?”

  “At least a dozen times.”

  “Never mind that. I have something more important to discuss with you.” She loomed over my desk: I could smell her White Diamonds perfume, see the olive-toned face powder in her oversized pores. “Why didn’t you tell me you were having classroom control problems? The assistant principal says you turn in a stack of disciplinary forms every day.”

  “That’s correct.” I tugged on the drawer that kept my copies of the forms but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Why?”

  “Because my kids act like maniacs. Why else?”

  She frowned. “It’s not his job to control your students. Any teacher who turns in more than one form every few months is doing something wrong in the classroom.”

  I grunted, still pulling on the stubborn desk drawer. “Maybe I wouldn’t be turning in so many forms if the assistant principal would get around to punishing some of my students. Does he use a lottery system or what? He hasn’t called a single one of my kids into the office.”

  “That’s because you teach special education students. By law, they can’t be suspended except under very unusual circumstances. You’re wasting your time turning in those forms.”

  The drawer came unstuck and fell to the floor with a metallic bang. I took a long, deep breath.

  “So there’s nothing I can do? The kids can poop in my closet, set the place on fire, build a nuclear bomb out of pencil lead, and suffer no repercussions?”

  If I was the crying type, now would be the time to turn on the waterworks. I’d never been so frustrated in my life.

  “It’s your job to keep order in the classroom.”

  A roach skittered over my foot. I was so used to bugs by now I didn’t even flinch. “So you’re saying this is my fault?”