Being friendly with students had its rewards and boundaries.
“Look all you want, don’t touch,” McCraggen in Phys. Ed would say. “And if you
touch, don’t roam.” Which was alright for him to say, teaching in the gym. He’d
kiss the Hispanic girls on both cheeks, the Spanish way; he’d hug them and
squeeze them, and heaven knows what else he did – and got away with.
Last year in the Regents test room this girl Theresa Santos – she was a senior
now, getting ready for college life – caught him, Mr. Brebnor, looking. She
had this short skirt on, you could see right up the canyon of her thighs. She
caught him sneaking a peek.
His eyes sort of swept past her body like the beam of a search light, and there,
like a breach in the fence of a POW camp – her open thighs. She looked up at
him, smiled and crossed her legs. The search light moved on. It circled and
passed her way again, and – holy camoli! – the breach was there again.
Now she was writing furiously, head bowed with a strange inspired concen-
tration, as if the answers to all the questions on the page had started
flooding her brain; she had no time for ladylike proprieties; she had to
put pen to paper fast.
The heads of the other students were bowed over their papers. Brebnor peeked.
His eyes popped alert in his skull and became a hairy-legged insect. It crawled
up the girl’s legs, over her knees, it started down those thighs. Not once did
Theresa Santos flinch; she chewed her gum a little harder, but not one muscle
of awareness twitched on her thighs.
At some point she must have felt a frisson of impropriety,
prompting her to cross her legs; he looked away with one fast beat of his hot
heart.
That was last year in January. Here, now, so far, nothing quite as world-
upturning happened. Just dark thoughts – as yet to slide into a zone of
depression, but all the same dark, angry dark thoughts. Like the tardiness of
the teacher who should have relieved him long minutes ago!
He heard her shoes clack clacking up the hallway. He started gathering his
things for an abrupt hand over and wordless exit. He didn’t look up to see who
it was; he knew who it was, from the footsteps in all haste, apologizing for
being late. He knew the old hag face, the fading, single picket fence of the
body, the short skirts she wore, too short, despite the firm, youngish legs. No
man would want to hold her in his arms, he thought; but the legs merited,
maybe, a quick second look.
(from “Ah Mikhail, O Fidel””, a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
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