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She Will

Andy Tu

    This feeling, calling her from inside her ears—where did it come from? Run away, it told her. And never come back. Krystal tried to block it out as she drove her daughter, Lily, to school, where she was an English teacher. Or more accurately, where she babysat rich high schoolers.
    She and John, the history teacher, had had sex the night before. He’d slept over in her apartment, as he often did, but had left before she’d even woken up. Lily was nine, but understood that he might become her new daddy someday, the same way their apartment had become their new home after Krystal and Rick got sick of each other. Maybe that’s what the problem was, getting sick of things. People, places. Before Rick, she’d studied abroad, traveled for a year with nothing but a backpack, taught in different states. Then she got knocked up and they tried the marriage thing. And now she was driving to this joke of a school every morning before the sun poked above the horizon and grocery shopping on Thursday afternoons because that was when the sales were; how her face singed with embarrassment when she’d bumped into a student in a checkout aisle with clipped coupons in her hands. The more she thought about the remaining days, and weeks, and months of her future, the more she wanted to cry as she walked into the front office and signed in with a smile drawn across her lips like those stick figures that Lily drew in Mrs. Rodriguez’s class. Sweet innocence, how Krystal missed it.
    During third period that day, Krystal was texting a friend from high school when the door swung in.
She straightened up in her chair and shot a look of urgency to her students, who were supposedly working on their group presentations— swiping their phones, chatting in groups, and taking selfies together. Luckily, it was only John, who asked to speak with her in the hallway in a voice that reminded her of Rick after he found out she was pregnant. As she followed John out in front of the 8th graders, she thought about how, when you grew up, you had to censor your feelings and actions, like the sex they’d had on the floor the night before next to her perfectly capable bed, the grunting, the way he kept pausing to last longer; the way he announced: that was excellent—emphasizing the “ex”—as he rolled off her. This was adulthood: feeling the stickiness of your shame rub against your skin in front of those too innocent to notice.
    “I got it,” he said, referring to the promotion to principal. In a month the old woman at the top would finally, despite having developed the onset of Alzheimer’s years ago, relinquish her power after she’d recently been found asleep on a desk in an unused classroom, the door somehow locked from outside. John was not the most qualified, but he was the biggest, his voice the loudest, carrying itself across the staff meeting room and hallways. Krystal wondered what this would do to his ego. Would it make him think his penis was slightly larger? He did seem to overcompensate at meetings, where he’d stiffen his hands with authority when he spoke and repeat certain words for pronounced effect. That was the thing with large men, she supposed. Their penises looked so much smaller relative to their protruding guts and thighs, maybe it gave them a complex.
    As Krystal smiled and put her hand on John’s shoulder, she felt something in her stomach unsettle. It was either that she hadn’t cooked the eggs through that morning (never enough time), or that her subconscious disgust for John and every masculine, egotistical part of him was finally sprouting from the roots of her mind.
    Later that afternoon, Lily got into trouble for not letting another girl join in on a conversation during recess. When she saw the text from Mrs. Rodriguez, asking Krystal to speak to her daughter directly about this during lunchtime, Krystal rolled her eyes, cursing in whispers about the institution of the school and why the hell do they have to share everyone’s phone numbers?
    “Why didn’t you just let Mia talk with you girls?” Krystal asked with as much feigned disapproval as she could.
    Lily hid a slight smile, like she hadn’t done anything wrong. Krystal could not agree more, and considered taking her out to ice cream later when the bell released them from the barred, locked gates of their beloved school.
    Lily explained: “Me and Jocelyn were talking about the sleepover on Saturday, and Mia’s not invited, so I don’t know why she wanted to listen to us talk, because it’s private.”
    “Well,” said Krystal, feeling Mrs. Rodriquez’ nappy breath poke against the back of her throat like it was a red security laser, ready to set the alarm if triggered, “just because she’s not invited doesn’t mean she can’t hang out with you during recess.” How much longer would Krystal do what others expected? It was such a tiny thing, yet it felt like everything. Especially because her daughter was involved. What was she teaching her? How to follow rules and live fake?
    “But,” Lily pleaded. “We were making plans on what to do. And it doesn’t make sense for Mia to listen if she’s not going to be a part of it!”
    Mrs. Rodriquez and her rule that “everyone has to be included in the conversation”. It was so, so stupid. As stupid as Krystal felt telling Lily that she should have to let someone listen in on private plans. Was she required to report to the old lady that she and her protégé were staying up late on school nights mating with no desire for a child together? She turned around to Mrs. Rodriquez.
    “I’ll talk to her about this at home.”
    No. No. She wouldn’t. Disney cartoons would be the lesson for the afternoon. There was always a good message in those.
    In the evening, after she’d just put Lily to bed, John showed up at her door without calling. He just expected it now, her apartment. Her body. It was her fault for not having said anything the first time he did this.
    “You know I could have been out or something,” she said, confused as to why her arms were pulling the door open to let him in. “I’m not always home after school.”
    “I’d wait,” He said. There was condensation in his voice. The promotion was getting to his head already. He proceeded to her bedroom with his hands in his pocket, and she followed him.
    In her bed, she insisted she wanted to read her
book. But he kept pushing his body closer to her side, staring into her avoiding eyes hungrily.
    “I’m really tired,” she said.
    “So tired you’re reading?” He said it accusingly, like a principal at a student who’d been sent to the office.
    “Physically tired.”
    He crawled on top of her. She had never said no before. She had never said anything. An assumed yes. And once again she found her throat unwilling to utter those words. Stop. No. Not today. Get off.
    “You can just relax,” he said.
    She lay under his weight as he bobbed up and down. A vessel that followed expectations. At school, following an outdated curriculum. Following misbehavioral procedures she didn’t believe in. She scrunched her face at the thought that this would be the rest of her life. John took it for pleasure.
    A week later, John became the new principal. Despite everything, Krystal knew this had benefits: she no longer had to fear random observations or getting into trouble for letting her students screw around. She was now sleeping with the boss, and he seemed to see it like that too. Gradually, he stopped staying the nights; he’d still show up at the door for sex, like she was a prostitute, but now wanted space for his growing authority and ego.
    This time, she came to his door, unexpected.
    “It’s not working out.”
    “Explain,” he said. Authoritatively, like he’d caught her cheating on a test.
    “This whole thing. I’m leaving the school. We’re moving.”
    He shook his head, then stiffened when he saw the grip of determination in her eyes.
    “I don’t understand. This is so sudden.” His tone changed. He was an adult again, talking to another adult.
    She wanted to tell him that teaching at that school was making her a lousy role model, that settling in this cycle and putting on that collared, ironed button-down every morning was suffocating her. She wanted to tell him that he was stuck in that big chair of his, that he’d never leave. That she wanted to travel the world and teach her daughter to live naked, freely, to say what she wanted and do what she believed in. She wanted to tell him that he could never understand because all he cared about was what people thought of him. Instead, she said nothing, and left.

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