by J’ette

“You have such turgid nipples,” Mr. Curtis said to her when he cornered her in the art supply closet. “Do you know what turgid means, Ms. Palevsky?”

She didn’t.

Mr. Curtis stared at the front of her dress. “Well, Mssss Palevsky?” he asked drawing out the “Ms.” so it resembled the low hissing of a snake.

Ms. Palevsky didn’t want to look down and see what Mr. Curtis might be referring to on her chest. All she knew was that she wanted out of there. She’d just come in for an extra carton of Crayolas for her second graders. For a moment, among the bright reams of construction paper, she couldn’t remember where the door was, and she was afraid to look around for it. Or to look at anything, except to study the white top-stitching on Mr. Curtis’s powder-blue leisure suit. It took her a full minute to glance up to his face, into his eyes, shaded grey and magnified behind a thick prescription of aviator glasses. She studied his hair, sprayed to immobility, in a dyed, dark-blond, bouffant comb-over. He took her frozen stare as an invitation. With a lizard smile, he exhaled his warm Tic-Tac breath on her face. “Why don’t you come to Boston with me for the weekend?” he asked, pressing her up against the shelves stocked with primary colors of tempera paint.

“I don’t want to be late for Mrs. Johnson’s class,” she said finally, squeezing by him.

“I could give you a pass,” he grinned. “A late pass.”

She grabbed an armload of Crayola boxes and ran out the door and out of the school.

For the first time since she’d started teaching a month ago she was glad she didn’t have to stay at the same school all week. As the itinerant art teacher, she visited three schools in the district, driving around to all the elementary buildings with art supplies loaded into the trunk of her rusted ’67 Barracuda. She would have to come back here next week though.

Ms. Palevsky sat in her car, both hands up on the steering wheel, foot on the gas, ready to drive off to the next building, to Mrs. Johnson’s class. But the car wasn’t moving. The ignition key was still in her purse beside her. She stared out at the school yard, at the weeds that had dried into hollow sticks on the edges of the cracked macadam. A swing set clanked its chained seats in the wind. The rest of the playground was packed-hard mud and dust.

Only yesterday, she’d overheard a conversation in the break room about how pretty young teachers, just out of college like her, received the same invitation from Mr. Curtis at the start of the every school year. Mr. Curtis was 47 and married. But no new teacher dared tell on the principal. She hadn’t made any teacher friends to commiserate with yet. She wouldn’t tell them how much she hated it here anyway. How much she hated teaching. The kids. The school. The noise. And the other teachers. The schedule of back-to-back classes. Every thirty-five minutes, thirty-five new students. She’d only earned a teaching degree because she couldn’t imagine making a living at art. She didn’t see how she was going to make a living at teaching either. And now Mr. Curtis.

The recess bell rang so loud it sounded like an alarm clock going off between her ears. She looked at her watch. Mrs. Johnson would be wondering where she was.

Children erupted from the double doors, shouting, racing to claim their spot in the yard for the next fifteen minutes. Boys engulfed the high bars of the jungle gym, shoved each other into teams for dodge ball. A group of girls, she vaguely recognized them as third graders, squealed, “Horses, horses!” They formed themselves into a herd, tossing their heads, pawing and stomping the ground, then running as fast as they could, their hair flapping out behind them like manes. One of the bigger boys turned from his game and threw a dodge ball into the group as hard as he could. “Run,” Ms. Palevsky whispered to the girls, “run.”