One of her high school teachers harvested twine to secure his trousers. When he remembered to wear a belt, his pants’ polyester tan bottoms would slide over the front of his shoes, shuffling dirt. He once hiked them up with rubber bands. Red, yellow, green, and beige rubber pulled, knotted, and tied. She tried to focus on the clacking sound of the chalk on the board. Despite the twine, the perpetual sinking pants, and those rubber bands, this front-row seat was not hard to navigate through her myopic haze. His skinny behind leaning against the desk, the right index finger halting the sinking bridge of his wire-framed glasses, the soft-spoken earnestness.
Down the hall and around the corner was another story. The slapshot words, the flexed stance. The poison leaking under the brawny arms. The misogyny disguised as jokes hurtling past her ears, denting her heart. The guffaws and laughs sweeping in the other direction. She wasn’t taught to play defence. She’d been consigned to figure skates, to tripping on unwanted picks. Three days a week, it was vertigo on ice. Lessons were delivered with “Not such dumb blondes, after all” and “Can’t keep them in their places.” She stapled this teacher’s jokes to the pock-marked cork board with a blue-eyed glower. He dimpled at the other girls’ giggles as he stared her down, pushing her to laugh with a bob of his head. And she sat, zipped tight, eyes candid, chin up.
Bio: Sharon Roseman
