As my classmates tittered, Ms. Moray’s gaze darted around the room. She seemed, for a few seconds, confused, and then abruptly resolute. “You can wait until after I take attendance.” She looked back down at the sheet of paper. “Okay, so Oliver-”
“I’m sorry, but I’ll be really fast, and the bell hasn’t rung yet.” I stood all the way up. My desire to wash my hands, to do away with the evidence, felt like a physical craving.
Our eyes met again-I could see in Ms. Moray’s face that she was deciding I was a much different person than I was, a class cutup or a troublemaker-and as we regarded each other, the bell rang. “Yes, it has,” Ms. Moray said. “Take a seat. And the rest of you remember to empty your bladders before class.”
My classmates chuckled-a teacher had used the word bladder–and I felt a surge of anger.
“All right,” Ms. Moray was saying. “Oliver Amunsen-where are you?”
Oliver raised his hand.
“Did I pronounce that right?”
Oliver nodded.
“Norie Cleehan?”
“Present,” Norie said in her soft voice.
When Ms. Moray called my name, I said, “Here.” We made eye contact, and she nodded once, as if filing away information: The name of the obnoxious girl is Lee Fiora.
Aspeth said under her breath, “Raise your hand, Lee.”
I ignored her; my hands, which felt warm and itchy, were still joined, resting on my lap beneath the table.
“Come on,” Aspeth said. “Give us a peek.”
“Is there a problem?” Ms. Moray was looking between Aspeth and me, and she settled on me.
“No,” I said.
“Is there something you want to share with the rest of us?”
No one spoke, and I realized they were all waiting for me. I said, “Well, there’s this.” I lifted my arms and opened my hands to reveal a mishmash of dark congealing liquid and flakes of wings and tiny tufts of black and yellow fur; there was a swollen red lump on my left palm where I’d been stung. Ordinarily, of course, I thought it best to remain inconspicuous, but the gesture had a certain irresistible theatricality, and an inevitability. Sometimes you can feel the pull of what other people want from you, and you sacrifice yourself, you risk seeming odd or unsavory, to keep them entertained.
Like the audience of a sitcom, the class gasped and giggled.
“What is that?” Ms. Moray asked.
“I killed a bee.”
She made a noise that it took me a few seconds to recognize as an irritated sigh. “Fine,” she said. “Go wash your hands and then come back.” Her irritation surprised me; I’d expected it all to be okay between us once she knew what the problem was.
Standing in front of the mirror above the bathroom sink, I felt, underneath my sense of agitation over having made a teacher mad on the first day of class, a vague and surprising happiness, and I tried to think of why. I ran backward through the sequence of events that had just occurred, and then I remembered-after I’d killed the bee, Darden Pittard had called me by my last name. He had said, “Not bad, Fiora.” And it had seemed like no big deal, like I was the same as any other girl, someone a guy could be casually friendly with. These were the types of almost-compliments that I hoarded.
When I returned to the classroom, Dede was saying, “-and my favorite book is Marjorie Morningstar because it’s just something you can really relate to. Oh, and I’m from Westchester County.” While Aspeth announced what her favorite book was and where she was from, I tried to think of what I’d say when it was my turn. Jane Eyre, maybe-over the summer, back in South Bend, I’d read it in a single twenty-four-hour period, although that had had as much to do with the fact that I’d been bored as that I’d liked the book. But it appeared Aspeth was the last to go. Either Ms. Moray had forgotten about me, or she just didn’t feel like letting me speak.
“All right,” she said. “Now if I can turn your attention to-”
“Ms. Moray?” Aspeth said. “Excuse me, but before we go on, will you tell us where you’re from and what your favorite book is?”
“Why do you want to know?” Ms. Moray’s tone was, if this was possible, flirtatious-pleased but reticent.
“We told you,” Aspeth said.
“Aha,” Ms. Moray said. “Payback.”
“We want insight into your character,” Darden said.
“I grew up in Dubuque, Iowa, which is up north, and I went to the U of I for undergrad-go, Hawkeyes.” She lifted one arm, and a couple guys laughed. So she hadn’t played field hockey for Dartmouth, I thought, and then, knowing she was from Iowa, I recognized a certain Midwesternness in her. It was in her clothes, especially the denim skirt, and also in her gestures. She was not entirely at ease, I realized, and as soon as I thought it, I thought, Of course she’s not. Not only was it her first day teaching at Ault, it was her first day teaching, period. This was the moment when I noticed her pin; she wore it on the right side of her shirt, just below her collarbone. “I was a lit major,” she continued. “Phi Beta Kappa-you know, just to toot my own horn.” She laughed, and no one laughed along with her. At Ault, you didn’t toot your own horn; also, you didn’t imagine that acknowledging that that’s what you were doing would make it okay. “It’s tough to pick one book as my favorite,” Ms. Moray continued, “but I’d probably say My Ántonia.”
I saw Dede write My Ántonia in her notebook. “Who’s that by?” she asked.
“Who wants to tell”-Ms. Moray glanced at the attendance sheet-“Dede who wrote My Ántonia?”
No one said anything.
“You guys know, right?”
Again, there was silence.
“Don’t tell me that the students at an elite institution like Ault don’t know who Willa Cather is. I thought you guys were supposed to be the best and the brightest.” Ms. Moray laughed again, and even though I didn’t like her much, I felt mortified on her behalf. This was another misstep, talking about Ault the way a magazine article might, or the way someone in town-someone who worked at the grocery store, or the barber shop-would.
“Did Willa Cather write O Pioneers!?” Jenny Carter finally said. “I think my sister had to read that for a class at Princeton.”
“You mean your sister got to,” Ms. Moray said. “Cather is one of the foremost writers of this century. You should all make a point of reading at least one book by her.” She gestured toward the chalkboard behind my side of the table, where the line from Kafka was printed. It occurred to me then that she must have entered the room before class, written it there, then left again. “How many of you noticed this on your way in?” she asked.
A few people, not including me, raised their hands.
“Who wants to read it aloud?”
Dede kept her hand raised. After she’d read it, Ms. Moray said, “Who agrees with Kafka?” and I spaced out. I had never participated much in class discussions at Ault-someone else always expressed my ideas, usually in a smarter way than I could have, and as time went on, the less I spoke the less it seemed I had to say. Near the end of class, Ms. Moray gave us our homework, which was to read the first thirty pages of Walden, and, by the following Monday, to write two hundred words about a place where we went to reflect on our lives. “Be as creative as-” she said, and, as she was speaking, the bell rang. “Yikes,” she said. “Do they think we have a hearing problem? As I was saying, be totally creative with this assignment. If there’s not a place you go, make up one. You guys comprende?”
A few people nodded.
“Then you’re released until tomorrow.”
We all stood and gathered our backpacks and I looked at the floor around my chair to make sure I hadn’t dropped anything. I was terrified of unwittingly leaving behind a scrap of paper on which were written all my private desires and humiliations. The fact that no such scrap of paper existed, that I did not even keep a diary or write letters except bland, earnest, falsely cheerful ones to my family (We lost to St. Francis in soccer, but I think we’ll win our game this Saturday; we are working on self–portraits in art class, and the hardest part for me is the nose) never decreased my fear.