2/13/1999 Geoffrey Ashbrook
Dafery sat at a patch belt building fort torn linens lofty martyrations, hush potch, fengly metal studs in the seat always digging into her back. Though it wasn’t like every room was like this. I mean it wasn’t that bad there were probably two told by count of reality, but it hurt all the same. Jeslery Gasseron standing Mr. on top of the room from the front before the silence talking about talk between cigars and caughing, ‘did he ever look out the window,’ she wandered. She raised her hand. “Yes, Jenna?”
“Jenna’s my sister(?), Hello there Mr. Gasseron, my name is Dafery, again, anyway, I mean you ruined it, it doesn’t make any sense now, because I had to say all that stuff about my name… Forget it.” She folded her arms and looked out the window. She was going to point to something out the window. She was going to show the class how there was something else, or show him, it troubled her that she’d worry over a glabber carcass’s concerns for nature. She looked over at something the kid next to her was drawling on a piece of paper in the sun, it looked like an old person in a city park chopping dogs into pieces with a shovel, the owner, leashes in hand, fretting that near stick figure fret. “It’s a nice day out,” She said ‘calling out’. “That’s, good.” Mr. Goose-a-railson said in reply. He’d started talking and was eager not to get thrown off, as if that would matter, like what would he have to do? Trace his daily peregrinations, the places he’d stopped on the way to work, find his thoughts at Elsie’s house? It was just a theory anyway. Elsie was this new girl who worked at the school office and she’d seen Gasseron take kindly to her, though how kindly a teacher could be she didn’t know. Maybe he’d lighten up a little bit.
He began going over a map of ancient Anatolia, Turkey today, tracing the paths of Indo-European Raiding parties that swung down from the north to sew their seed with the agriculturalists. But from that point of gravitation to look ever outward, nare for an in-turn burn glance, she sat. She sat nearest the door which she did in every class in which you could pick a seat. She knew this, even though it took excessively long ‘drink’s to find what class she had. There was often a rationalization, cramped legs, can’t sit down all day, but a fool’s a fool. This was the only class they had together. She didn’t mean to stare, and meant less to get caught. Looking at the clock was traditional guise.
Thinking in her head Dafery raised one finger, and at the same time Mr. Gass drew a large circle on the board. ‘eggs’ she thought, trying to reconstruct from memory the list of todo for today which lay likely in the kitchen on the table by the radio still. She raised a second finger, and quickly he filled in the ring with spokes pointing in. ‘breadsticks.’ She raised a third finger and Mr. Astrophon filled in the center with small rings. ‘eggplant.’ But as she raised her fourth finger, already in mind the item for errand, a cough came quietly across the room. That something. Gasserson rubbed out the middle of the circle with the cuff of his shirt. Dafery pushed her arms out infront of her. It felt as though she were pushing against something. All the tendons in her arms felt raw and thirsty, notified to ‘ouch’ by abrasive underskin. “What ho?” Darsky asked without the sounds, picking up her head and her attention, and putting them from her to over and across, who coughed? But who else. “No, no.” Gasseron said, scratching his head and looking at the still unfinished drawling. And then a sigh came from that same place across the room. Down Dafery it sent a shudder. She brushed off her shoulder, to brush off the teeth that were surely sticking in. And then she shook her head when she thought again about ‘what was that motive?’ A few rationalizations drifted by behind her eyes. Hypogycemia? Lack of Sleep? Malnourishment? Lead Poisoning? Brain Cancer? Dafery looked across the room at the cougher, who herself was looking up at the clock. At this point Gasseron was drawling rabbit ears on the circle, and putting in crude eyes. “This was going to be a spoked wheel, but my drawling skills seem like they need some practice. This, well, without the ears and stuff, but you probably knew that, at least I hope you knew that, what am I talking about, of course you knew that, anyway this is something you would find if you were digging in parts of Anatolia. Like on page one fifty three where they found that stone engraving? Anyway, this was something that the people who came down and killed everyone brought with them.” Belated tryptamines.
The bell had rung, Dafery was taking her pulse, Gasseron was erasing the board, Mel and Trisnit were swapping highlighters, Dafery vaguly recalled seeing Gasseron floating about the circumfrance of the room. She stood up and started putting her stuff in her bag, when she noticed that Gofer, the cough girl, was still sitting there. It sent a pain through Dafery’s temples, to which she rubbed them and cupped her palms over her eyes, and then let her hands slide down her face. When she opened her eyes she saw the last corner of Gofer’s bag disappear around the doorway. “What were you trying to say earlier?”
“What?” She asked, not entierly realizing who had spoken or to whom.
“You were trying to say something earlier but I got your name screwed up, sorry about that by the way, and then something.”
Her eyes hurt. The back of her neck hurt. Her back hurt. “Do you have trouble sleeping Mr. Gasseron?” She asked, not looking at him.
“Well, yeah.” He said.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said. And she looked up at him and smiled to take the place of all in the short conversation she’d failed to put forth. In smiling she got a quick glance at his small always startled face, his short hair combed back and graying, his reddened nostrils which complimented the slight discoloration under his eyes.
“See you,” he replied, and smiled too. When he saw her face, when she’d bothered to look up and smile, he saw the self absorbed arrogance, the complexion drained by confusion, that brittle spirit which seems always to have another layer to sluff off like the face of an ancient building, with shutters, panes of glass, roof tiles, dentilation, bricks, blocks of marble, falling, only to expose behind some other facet from some other time, ahead or behind. That spunk twisted by neglect into a mirror image of resentment. Wasn’t it a bit early to find such dark circles under the eyes? Young windows still showing fiery halls, from where they came from. “You look troubled,” he said.
She paused. “I don’t like killing moths.” She said. “My house has always had moths. And if I don’t kill them they get in the food, they eat our clothes. But I don’t want to kill them. I’d rather go without food or clothes than kill another moth. But who’d listen to that? It would be taken as a rejection of responsibility. What’s wrong with you? They’d ask. I don’t know. Maybe I am crazy. But all kids are crazy. That’s the definition of ‘kid.’ And yet if you say something which doesn’t fit in, and your a kid, they still say ‘your crazy,’ as if they didn’t realize they’d be saying that no mater what.”
The kids were starting to come in and take there seats for the next class.
“I’ll see you tomorrow. I hope you can sleep better tonight.” She said, and she walked past and towards the door.
Out in the hall she wandered if what she’d said to Mr. Gasseron was rude, and then she remembered that sometimes between this class and the next she’d see Gofer at her locker. She turned the corner and there she was. She was kneeling by the open door, switching out books for binders and a paper bag. She tried not to think about her neck, nothing more than foolishness. All around there were the sounds of lockers being slammed shut, people getting up and leaving for class. Dafery felt like she should say something, but of course she just stood there. Then Gofer got up and walked right toward her, and said “Hey Daf,” as she passed. Dafery smiled and nodded but she didn’t say anything, she didn’t even know where her next class was now. Her body filled with a new awakened sensitivity, five seconds ago she’d felt numb and desperate and deflated, and now she felt alive, she couldn’t wait to get outside into the sun, and she resented how she had so little control over who she was even though now she had it, whatever ‘it’ was. However long ‘it’ would last.