Animals We Made

Werepup | Part 2

I wandered the busy halls of my school and listened to the chimes of typewriters, the whispers of pencils on notepads, rushing bodies of all sizes bumping me to and fro, girls cackling and boys hooting and me palming my ears and needing it all to stop.

Daddy had insisted I learn.

Now I would, every minute agonizing, tyrannical knowledge, an invasion of my ungrown mind. I sat at my desk while the clock ticked overhead. Chalk squeaked on the dusty board up front as I gritted my teeth. Even when the bell rang and the kids around me began jamming books into satchels, Mrs. Kelly ordered me to stay behind.

Alone with her, I tensed.

She eased the classroom door shut and paced before me.

Her nose twitched.

"You missed days!" she yelled. "Just days and days!"

Gulping, I nodded at the floor.

Mrs. Kelly huffed through her nostrils. "Look at me!"

I didn't.

Seeing her meant nothing.

"What'll you and I do about this?" she continued, gentler.

Then I shrugged.

Mrs. Kelly towered over me, and when her shadow reached my foot, I did look at her: a plump and gray-haired old woman of authority and integration and resentment and despair and libraries and sidewalks and history museums and lukewarm, black coffee, and how fragile must I have appeared in her eyes?

"You have to catch up with the lessons," she said.

Again I nodded.

Mrs. Kelly smoothed the collars of my jacket.

"Friday," she said.

I nodded, kept nodding.

Her gaze lingered on parts of me I used to believe I owned. Did she eat innocence, feast on the souls of the children she taught? Maybe adulthood was to her a great burden. I wish I'd kicked her in the crotch. Yet I didn't. She inspected my vulnerable frame—bony, slight, unprepared—and I let her eyes abuse me. What could I have done? There are only so many reactions to evil.

Daddy would have killed her if I'd told him.

"You'll make me happy on Friday?" she said.

I nodded and nodded until nodding became protest rather than agreement.

"Very happy?" She licked her lips. "Happier than I've ever been?"

My spine ached from nodding.

At length her pale, veiny hand engulfed my cheek. Would she hurt me now or Friday? Injuries of the spirit have perplexed me over the years. As wrongness festers in the guts, it swells but remains easy to ignore because most inner wounds don't bleed outward. They just keep pooling in a child's heart, drowning him from the inside.

"You may go," said Mrs. Kelly as her withered lips, thirsty for a barbaric and quiet violence, neared my face. "Unless—"

I hurried out of the classroom.

My brain was never meant for learning.

Today I ask people if they know evil. How do they respond? Most cock their heads or knit their brows. Who can answer such questions?

Boys and girls jetted past me in the hall.

I wanted to trip them and undo their shoelaces and cry forever.

The air outside was hollow.

Did its breaths and mine conspire?

Letting it numb my gloveless fingers, I waited, praying Ralph was safe with Joe. I cherished the dog. He represented justice, youth, all the hushed and timid wrath of God.