Anastasia Vitsky Desire in Any Language [Blushin

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.The silence dangles between us like a screen gradually descending, and her unsaid thoughts flicker toward me.Her busy schedule teaching full-time and helping to take care of her ailing father.Her dedication to her work and spontaneous offer to meet with me during her precious one free night of the week.Her reassurances, at my expressions of doubt and guilt at taking her time, that she loved tutoring and her reward would be to see my progress.She takes off her glasses, rubs at the small hollow between her eyes where the pads left red indentations, and sighs.For a moment I wonder if I’m about to receive my first lecture ever.She’s not one to scold, and at only four years older she’s been low-key about her position of authority.I want to apologize, but at this point words seem rather meaningless.After a moment, she begins in quite a different tone.“I think it’s been a long week for both of us.Why don’t we stop here?”“I’m sorry…” It comes out involuntarily, but she shakes her head.“It’s all right.We’ll try again next week.” She pats me on the arm, and for a moment I want to lean into her touch.Don’t leave, I think, and push away the unbidden thought.I imagine myself bringing in a glorious composition and seeing her pride and satisfaction.I think back to my time frittered away on trashy television and hideously expensive trans-Pacific phone calls, and I wish desperately I could go back a few days in time to prepare the most magnificent essay possible.Instead, she smiles again in what I know is my cue to leave.I’m sorry! I cry again silently.For wasting your time.For these last few weeks when my heart has been elsewhere and I can’t make myself write.I’m sorry you thought so much of me last fall, that time when we first met.It’s nice to be believed in, but it’s also a little burdensome.There’s always the fear that one’s warts will eventually show through.She gives me a final nod as I put my notebook and pencil back into my backpack.“Mira,” she says with unexpected sternness just before I’m out the door, and I dart back inside.“You’re giving up on yourself.You can do better.” I duck into the hallway quickly, the back of my nose prickling with sudden swallowed-back tears.Six days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-five minutes later, I stand uncertainly outside of her office door.One of the other teachers sees me and tries to usher me inside, but I smile awkwardly and pretend to search for something in my pocket.He is still waiting with the door courteously open.I shrug embarrassedly and acquiesce.“Your student arrived,” he announces, adding a rapid-fire stream that sounds vaguely like, “Come in, make yourself comfortable, sit down, you must be tired, what a long journey you make every week.”She smiles at me.I forgot how brightly she smiles, how her eyes lift and sparkle as if opening a present.“Just a minute,” she says, and I notice the teen-age boy standing next to her chair.I can’t catch the speech on her part, but his half-sullen, half-remorseful downward gaze makes it clear he is receiving a reprimand of some kind.He stretches the palms of his hands out in front of him, and without warning the “rod of love,” as it is referred to by the teachers, flashes through the air and downward against his palms.He makes no sound, but I gasp.I honestly thought that the threat of the stick was merely that, a threat similar to my mother’s warning that the bogeyman would get me if I threw a tantrum one more time.As he shakes out his hands, gathers his books and leaves the office, I sidle past him with a furtive peep at his hands.I see a few painful-looking red lines, but he catches my gaze and I look away in embarrassment.“Mira!” she calls out to me cheerfully, as if I haven’t just witnessed her transformation from Nice Teacher into, well, Someone Scary.“Do come and sit down.Would you like green or chamomile tea?” She pulls out the rolling chair next to her.“Um, no thanks.I.um.” The long, shiny polished stick lying next to her desk is decidedly interfering with my concentration.It must be our day to skip the ritual offering and refusing.She ignores my stammering and pours me a cup of hot water and steeps it with a small scoop of tea leaves.Not the boiling-steaming water that turns tea bitter, but the cool-hot water just right for drinking in small sips.Unthinkingly, I take a gulp and immediately suck on my scalded tongue.“How was your week?” she asks me.“Did you have any trouble with your translation? I didn’t get any e-mail from you, so I assumed you were managing all right.”“Did you really.I mean.I didn’t think you.you really.” my voice trails off.She is puzzled at my non sequitur until she follows my gaze to the “rod of love.” It’s a nasty-looking instrument, longer than my arm and thicker around than my thumb.Well, almost.“Oh, that.” She laughs warmly.“Don’t worry.For one thing, you’re not one of my high-school students.And my star student already has my love without my using the ‘rod of love.’”Ordinarily I would groan at her weak pun, but today the words “star student” hit a tender spot in my chest.Wordlessly because there will never be the right words, I unfold the papers clutched in my hand and thrust them toward her.“What are these?”I stare hard at the pale blue forget-me-nots on my teacup as if they will magically provide an answer.Or prevent me from having to answer.She rustles the papers, glances through them, and touches my arm.“Mira, what’s wrong?” she asks in alarm.“Are you ill? Do you have a family emergency?” I shake my head mutely.“Are you in some trouble? What can I do to help?”I only shake my head again.How would I know she would be so shamefully nice about this? “I’m okay,” I manage to say.“There’s no big problem.”“Then why are you leaving?”“I just—I can’t do it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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