A Rice Paper Tigress Named Gloria – Rewrite
This is a high school where I am a substitute teacher for young pianists, flutists, and organists who birth notes with fingers on fire. During their practice sessions, I just melt in my soma zone while they strum my heart with the music of the Gods.
The young ladies chatter like Chickadees with gentlemen in a lyceum where Bach can’t compete with green grass and blue skies. So we follow the sun onto the campus green where lasses are peonies whose windblown fragrance is a kiss for lads while I sit in a Buddha pose with the heart of a child.
One student seeks my counsel under the blue sky. Her name is Gloria. She takes a seat in front of me and assumes my full lotus pose. My gaze is somewhere beyond this time and she waves her hands in my face saying, “Yoo-hoo—is there anyone there?” My eyes come unglazed. She brandishes her wrists with her scars from her dark moods. She opens, “I’m unipolar. I go into deep depressions. I’ve tried to off myself many times.”
“Look at the trees how when their boughs are broken by storms the remaining foliage grows more vigorously. Be like the tree.”
“That is so Zen. If I’d had someone like you in my life back then maybe I would have understood how precious life is. People like you who can tune out the world can teach me. I know you can.”
“They come from the lost Sutras of the Pentecostal Buddhist Society that I was a member of back when I felt a sense of belonging.”
“Even you aren’t that crazy, Mr. John.”
“You want to see my card? Of course, I was kidding.”
When the bell tower chimes we gather back in the classroom. Deep in the cloisters of terracotta belles effloresce with beaus among rows of wooden desks where coeds have sat for a century while breathing sighs of summer love. Their poetry is the blue sky under which gardens blossom in sonnets of sunshine heaped in bales of gold.
Gloria pops my bubble of solitude. “It’s raining. I would ask you to hold my umbrella for me to the car since I’ll have my hands full with my cello. But while I know your heart is pure it might look fishy. The students here aren’t klepto but would you mind me hanging in here with you until the rain lets up? I know this is the last period of the day and the bell has rung. But you’d be doing me a big favor.”
“That would look just as fishy as me holding your umbrella for you.”
She says, “You are right. I’ll just leave it under your desk and trust in the Lord.”
One day Gloria comes to me like a grasshopper who needs to chew the leaf. She asks, “Mr. John, what high school did you graduate from?”
I reply, “St. Pauls.”
With wide eyes, she says, “That is a blue-ribbon school. What was it like?”
“Desolate as the Arctic.”
“I knew a boy like you were. We were on a sophomore field trip. Our peer group leader, Jim, spoke to him, ‘Dan, you like girls.’
Jim said, ‘And girls like you. Don’t you Gloria?’
I replied, ‘Yea sure.’ God if I had it to do over again I would have spoken in earnest. Kisses are underrated. A simple kiss might have given him hope that he was lovable and that he had something to live for when he had all but given up behind the walls of a madhouse.”
I reply, “Even a woman with your big heart couldn’t kiss him and make it all better.”
“A taste of my lip sugar might have been enough to lure him out of his cave.”
“Sounds like a Messiah complex.”
“Me a savior? My parents may have to decide for me whether I stay mired in the swamps of academia or do theology up north. But as much as I love Jesus, the fashion code at divinity college is straight out of the Vatican patriarchy. Though Friedan’s ‘The Feminine Mystique’ is offered as part of the canon there to spice the Aquinas. This has the makings of a fine feast for a Brazilian girl seeking liberation.”
“I admire much about the Catholic Church.”
“You see you are speaking of Catholicism like it is old fashioned but in some limited ways relevant. Please don’t put down my faith.”
“Your faith is part of who you are and that is precious to me.”
“You are so sweet, Mr. John. But there is another reason for staying here. There is a shy but oh so lovable boy here who caught my eye.”
I ask, “Would he happen to be older than you?”
She replies, “You are so funny, Mr. John.”
“Gloria, you are like the daughter I never had.”
She giggles. “Mr. John, no teacher has ever said such a sweet thing to me. But I’ve got to get to my next class. Catch you tomorrow.”
One day Gloria tracks me down to a music theory class whose instructor I am filling in for as he is sick. My info bite about having studied Latin in college makes me out to be an expert in her eyes. But then everything about me seems to inspire her awe. Yet, contacting the office to seek my whereabouts and doing the footwork across campus clues me into her more than academic admiration of me. Her Latin grammar question meets my answer, “It has been a long time since I took Latin. Sorry, I don’t know.” She recedes into the building while I feel the eddies of her presence like vibes from the idolization zone.
The movie day arrives. Gloria asks me, “Why don’t you join me to watch the movie? You look so lonely and forlorn behind that desk. I don’t have any popcorn but would be glad to share the coke from my thermos with you. The cola is fresh because the ice hasn’t had time to melt.”
“Naw, I wouldn’t fit in those desks anyway.”
“Would it help if I shared my trail mix?”
“My sweet tooth is on vacation.”
“Just a friendly offer, but I understand your reticence with you being my teacher.”
Though Gloria is a hungry tigress she is made of rice paper so thin that her demand for me to hear her roar is worse than the bite she will need upon release into the wild. I hope she can fold herself into aerogami and glide out of reach from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
The urgency to corral the wild horses of our mutual endearment comes like a flash of lightning in the night that illuminates the darkness. The classroom is an empty church of silence. It is just me and Gloria alone with each other. I watch her pack her book sack. Her gaze beams sunshine into my soul. She smiles and speaks coquettishly. “Mr. John, would you take me to Taco Bell?”
“The burrito express ain’t in the curriculum.”
She clutches her book sack to her chest and her words turn to dry ice, “Jeez, I was only kidding.”
I reply, “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Don’t feel bad. We cool. Those greasy tacos don’t agree with me anyway.”
“Do you require your food to agree with your opinions? Can tacos express a political belief?”
“Get out of here you crazy goof.”
“Just some overdue humor.”
The Hadrian’s Wall that separates students from the teacher gets a much-needed repair. Our boundaries are rebuilt but still porous. At the end of the semester, she says, “I’m going to Notre Dame next year to be fully indoctrinated until I graduate into a lapsed Catholic.”
I reply, “Won’t you pine for that boy who stole your heart?”
“That is the beauty of it. I don’t have to choose. He is following me to Hoosier country.”
“You get whipped cream on your coffee.”
“Mr. John, what kind of coffee do you take me to be having?”
“Hot cocoa.”
“For joy, he is my Cuba Gooding for life. You must have seen us together. It is no secret that I like my men mocha, like my coffee.”
“If I were the ghostwriter of your personal ad it would read, ‘I swallowed a pill called love, and felt euphoria but the feeling only lasted a week. Seeking a gradual release love capsule to last a lifetime.”
“I’ll miss you like I would my father if he disappeared.”
“I’ll miss you being the only student who sought my wisdom on anything other than if it is ok to skip class for a shopping spree because it is Black Friday.”
“Mr. John, you gave me a life-lesson that even my philosophy teacher never did. I learned that guys like you are wiser than the starched shirt crowd.”
I reply, “Well, don’t knock the stockbroker and banker guys. They may not be the mad hatters you dream of but you can get used to the cocktail parties even learn to like them.”
“You’re so funny, Mr. John. But you’ll never believe where I am headed after graduation. I am going to Madrid to turn myself into the authorities. I got in trouble for breaking a ridiculous law from long ago. You can get in trouble for nothing over there. But fortunately, my sentence was commuted from jail time to doing community service by washing clothes.”
I ask, “But will you have some fun time once you’ve completed the service?”
She replies, “I’d really rather not be going there but they would extradite me if I didn’t go.”
“My God, what did you do?”
“I was in Barcelona at the beach and walked back to my condo in a bikini. Little did I know that Spain has a law against walking around the streets in a swimsuit. They were going to give me a fine but I left Spain before the matter was resolved which made my sentence worse. You know me Mr. John, the little rebel.”
“Why are you going back?”
“I learned from you that even rules which I consider ridiculous like a teacher not taking his student out for Mexican often have a reason. And washing a few loads of clothes to earn my privilege of vacationing in Spain is a small price to pay.” She straightens my tie like a costume designer for our theater of life. “When I get back to the states, I am headed to divinity college with a banjo on my knee. Do you know what that means Mr. John?”
“Well unless I drop out of substitute teaching and head north to the great state of Indiana we may never cross paths again.”
“That is right. And the tears this brings me are the bluest of the blue. Please tell me the odds are in our favor of meeting in a restaurant here in Baton Rouge during one of my family trips home.”
“The odds are a million to one. But what are the chances of kindred spirits like us meeting in the first place? That goes to show you never trust the odds.”
“Oh you crazy coot, would it be appropriate for us to hug?”
“Consensual hugs are legal in all fifty states.”
“Quit the silly act and embrace me.”
I hold her for a second that feels like the moment after creation. Her gaze tracks upward like a hurricane about to make landfall. “Say something Mr. John. Talk to me!”
“Let’s pretend we are pirates who found our pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and are retiring to life by the hearth in our separate homes.”
“Do I look like Bluebeard to you?”
“You’ll thank me for turning down your Taco Bell request when you are older.”
“I already am grateful. You didn’t break me but handled me well with neither a thimbleful of shame nor a dewdrop of blame. You used kid gloves with me because after all, I am a an eighteen-year-old kid at heart and a lass with tender emotions.”
“When your professor gives you sensible lessons remember my gibberish and count yourself lucky to be in college.”
“I’ll remember you when I read Dr. Seuss.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Gloria replies, “As well you should. I never realized how much a daily blue plate special of your green eggs and ham style gobbledygook would be just the breakfast I needed. Is that a tear in your eye Mr. John?”
“Just allergies. I’m allergic to mushiness.”
“It must be all the pollen in the air. My eyes are getting watery too.”
Gloria meets a young man at the threshold where sunlight meets fluorescence. She walks with him through the door haloed by sunbeams.
