A Rice Paper Tigress Named Gloria
The Symphony of the Campus Green
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 usually just melt into my soma zone, letting them strum my heart with the music of the Gods. The young ladies chatter like chickadees with gentlemen in a lyceum where Bach simply can’t compete with green grass and blue skies.
When the weather permits, we follow the sun onto the campus green. The lasses are peonies whose windblown fragrance is a kiss for the lads, while I sit in a Buddha pose, observing it all with the heart of a child.
It is on one of these radiant afternoons that a student seeks my counsel under the vast, unbroken blue sky. Her name is Gloria. She is an eighteen-year-old senior, teetering on the precarious edge of graduation, her eyes set on the collegiate horizon.
She plops down in the grass directly in front of me, crossing her legs to mock my full lotus pose. I am miles away, my gaze fixed on a cloud shaped vaguely like a cello.
“Yoo-hoo!” Gloria waves both hands frantically in my face. “Earth to Mr. John! Is there anyone in there, or has the mothership finally beamed you up?”
I blink, my eyes slowly unglazing as I pull myself back from the stratosphere. “The mothership put me on hold,” I say smoothly. “Something about unexpected call volume in the Zen department. How can I help you, Gloria?”
She sighs, a theatrical sound that rustles the grass. She holds up her wrists, not hiding the faint, silver scars from her darker moods. “I’m unipolar, you know. I go into these deep, Mariana-Trench-level depressions. I’ve tried to off myself a few times in the past. It’s a whole tragic backstory.”
“I see,” I say, leaning forward. “Look at the great oaks around the edge of the campus. Notice how when their boughs are broken by violent storms, the remaining foliage grows back even more vigorously. Be like the tree, Gloria.”
She stares at me, blinking twice. “Okay, first of all, that is so Zen it almost hurts. Second of all, if I’d had someone like you in my life back during my worst days, maybe I would have understood how precious life actually is. People like you—people who can just casually tune out the roaring chaos of the world—can teach me. I know you can.”
“I can’t take all the credit,” I reply, deadpan. “Those tree metaphors come straight from the lost Sutras of the Pentecostal Buddhist Society. I was a high-ranking member back when I felt a desperate need for belonging.”
Gloria squints at me, trying to detect a crack in my composure. “You are making that up. Even you aren’t that crazy, Mr. John.”
“You want to see my membership card?” I tap my chest pocket. “It’s right next to my license to practice imaginary medicine. Of course I was kidding.”
She laughs, a bright, chiming sound that competes with the distant flutes.
The Rain and the Umbrella
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. Coeds have sat here for a century, breathing sighs of summer love. Their poetry is the blue sky under which gardens blossom in sonnets of sunshine heaped in bales of gold.
Suddenly, a rumble of thunder shakes the windowpanes. The sky turns the color of bruised iron, and the skies open up.
Gloria marches up to my desk, popping my bubble of solitude. “It’s pouring,” she announces, pointing a thumb at the window. “A veritable monsoon. Normally, I would ask a strapping gentleman such as yourself to hold my umbrella for me all the way to my car, since I’ll have my hands full carrying my cello. But…” She narrows her eyes astutely. “While I know your heart is pure, it might look a little fishy to the unwashed masses.”
“A teacher carrying a student’s umbrella in the rain?” I muse. “Yes, the rumor mill would have us eloping to Vegas by midnight.”
“Exactly,” she says, tapping her chin. “Now, the students here aren’t exactly kleptomaniacs, 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 final bell has rung. But you’d be doing me a massive favor.”
“Hanging out in an empty classroom after hours?” I raise an eyebrow. “Gloria, that would look just as fishy as me holding your umbrella for you. Perhaps fishier. We’re talking aquatic levels of suspicion.”
She groans, realizing the flaw in her logic. “Ugh, you are completely right. Curses to the modern educational boundaries! Fine. I’ll just leave the umbrella under your desk and trust in the Lord to keep me dry on my sprint to the parking lot.”
“May the wind be at your back, and may your cello double as a canoe,” I offer as she dashes out the door.
The Ghosts of High School Past
A few days later, Gloria comes to me like a curious grasshopper who desperately needs to chew the leaf of wisdom. She hovers by my desk.
“Mr. John, I have to know. What high school did you graduate from?”
“St. Paul’s,” I reply, grading a stack of very questionable music theory quizzes.
Her eyes go wide. “Whoa. That is a blue-ribbon school. The elite of the elite! What was it like? Was it like Dead Poets Society? Did you stand on desks?”
“It was desolate as the Antarctic,” I say without looking up. “With slightly less penguin companionship.”
She leans against the chalkboard. “I knew a boy who was like you must have been. Quiet. Sad. Isolated. We were on a sophomore field trip once, and our peer group leader, Jim, decided to do an intervention. He looked right at this boy, Dan, and said, ‘Dan, you like girls.’”
I stop my grading. “A profound observation by Jim.”
“Right? And then Jim said, ‘And girls like you. Don’t you, Gloria?’”
“And how did you respond to being put on the spot?”
Gloria looks down at her shoes, suddenly somber. “I just shrugged and said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ God, if I had it to do over again, I would have spoken in earnest. I would have looked him in the eye. Kisses are so underrated, Mr. John. A simple kiss might have given him hope that he was lovable, that he had something to live for when he had all but given up behind the walls of a madhouse.”
I set my pen down and look at her gently.
“Gloria, even a woman with your undeniably big heart couldn’t just kiss him and magically make it all better. Mental health isn’t a fairy tale cursed-frog situation.”
“I know,” she sighs, waving a hand. “But a taste of my lip sugar might have been enough to lure him out of his cave! It could have been the catalyst!”
“Sounds like a classic Messiah complex,” I tease lightly.
“Me? A savior?” She snorts. “Please. I can’t even figure out how I’m going to survive at Swarthmore next year. I mean, it’s eighteen degrees in Pennsylvania! I’m a Louisiana girl! My blood is basically sweet tea!”
“You’ll adapt,” I assure her. “You have the grit for the Ivy leagues and their equivalents.”
“You’re just saying that because you think I’m smart. But there is another reason I’m terrified of graduating. There is a shy, but oh-so-lovable boy here who caught my eye. And I’m leaving him behind.”
“Ah, young love,” I say. “Would this shy, lovable boy happen to be older than you? Say, sitting behind a teacher’s desk?”
She gasps, playfully swatting the air. “You are so funny, Mr. John. Always deflecting!”
“Gloria, you are like the highly dramatic daughter I never had.”
She giggles, her mood instantly brightening. “Mr. John, no teacher has ever said such a sweet thing to me. I’m taking that as a supreme compliment. But I’ve got to get to my next class before they mark me truant. Catch you tomorrow, Dad!”
Latin, Trail Mix, and The Burrito Express
One day, Gloria tracks me down in a music theory class. I am filling in for the regular instructor, who has fallen victim to the seasonal flu. Somehow, a tiny info-bite about me having studied Latin in college has leaked, making me out to be an unparalleled linguistic expert in her eyes.
But as the days go by, everything about me seems to inspire her awe. Her contacting the front office just to seek my whereabouts, and doing the footwork all the way across campus, clues me in to the fact that her admiration is bordering on the personal.
She bursts into the room during a free period. “Mr. John! Quick! Is the ablative absolute always separated by commas in a translation?”
“Gloria,” I say slowly. “It has been a very, very long time since I took Latin. I am sorry, but I don’t know.”
She looks utterly betrayed, as if I just told her the earth was flat. “But… but you’re Mr. John.” She slowly recedes into the hallway, while I feel the distinct, swirling eddies of her presence—the unmistakable vibes radiating from the idolization zone.
Later that week, it is movie day in the classroom. The lights are dimmed, and a documentary on Mozart is lulling half the class to sleep. Gloria creeps up to my desk in the dark.
“Why don’t you come join me in the back to watch the movie?” she whispers. “You look so lonely and forlorn behind that giant wooden barricade. I don’t have any popcorn, but I would be eternally glad to share the Coke from my thermos with you. The cola is fresh! The ice hasn’t even had time to melt!”
“Naw,” I whisper back. “I wouldn’t fit in those tiny student desks anyway. My knees would be permanently lodged in my chest.”
“Would it help if I shared my premium trail mix?” she barters, holding up a Ziploc bag full of nuts and chocolate. “It has the good M&Ms.”
“My sweet tooth is currently on an extended vacation.”
“Just a friendly offer,” she says softly, stepping back. “But I understand your reticence, with you being my teacher and all. Boundary city.”
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 her release into the wild of adulthood. I only hope she can fold herself into origami and glide gracefully 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 a few weeks later. The final bell has rung. The classroom is an empty church of silence. It is just me and Gloria.
I watch her slowly pack her book sack. She zips it up, slings it over her shoulder, and her gaze beams pure sunshine into my soul. She smiles, leaning against the doorframe, and speaks
coquettishly.
“Mr. John, would you take me to Taco Bell?”
I look at her, my face a mask of professorial stoicism. “The burrito express ain’t in the curriculum, Gloria.”
She clutches her book sack to her chest, her demeanor instantly dropping forty degrees. Her words turn to dry ice. “Jeez, I was only kidding. Don’t call the authorities.”
“It wasn’t your fault for asking,” I reply calmly.
She waves a hand dismissively, though her cheeks are flushed. “Don’t feel bad. We cool. Those greasy tacos don’t agree with me anyway. They’re a gastrointestinal nightmare.”
“Do you require your food to agree with your opinions?” I ask, leaning back in my chair. “Can tacos express a political belief? Does a chalupa have a stance on the economy?”
She bursts out laughing, the ice shattering. “Get out of here, you crazy goof.”
“Just some overdue humor,” I smile.
The Hadrian’s Wall that separates students from the teacher gets a much-needed repair that afternoon. Our boundaries are rebuilt, but they remain wonderfully porous.
The Swarthmore Countdown
At the end of the semester, graduation is looming like a glorious, terrifying thunderstorm.
Gloria sits across from my desk, looking uncharacteristically nervous. “So, I’m officially going to Swarthmore next year. I’m going to be fully academically indoctrinated until I graduate into a pretentious intellectual.”
“I have no doubt you’ll run the philosophy department by your sophomore year,” I reply. “But won’t you pine for that lovable boy who stole your heart?”
She smirks, leaning forward. “That is the absolute beauty of it. I don’t have to choose. He got into Swarthmore too. He is following me all the way to Pennsylvania.”
“Well, look at that,” I say. “You get whipped cream on your coffee.”
“Mr. John,” she says, narrowing her eyes mischievously. “What kind of coffee do you take me to be having?”
“Hot cocoa. Extra marshmallows.”
“For joy, he is my Cuba Gooding for life. You must have seen us walking together on the green. It is no secret around here that I like my men mocha, just like my coffee.”
I shake my head, chuckling.
“If I were the ghostwriter of your personal ad, Gloria, 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.’”
“That is scarily accurate,” she admits, resting her chin on her hands. “I’ll miss you, you know. I’ll miss you like I would my own father if he suddenly disappeared into thin air.”
“And I’ll miss you,” I say honestly. “You are the only student in this entire institution who ever sought my wisdom on anything other than whether it is okay to skip third period for a shopping spree because it is Black Friday.”
“Mr. John, you gave me life-lessons that even my actual philosophy teacher completely failed at. I learned from you that guys like you—the quiet, observing ones—are so much wiser than the starched-shirt, corporate crowd.”
“Well, don’t knock the stockbroker and banker guys too hard,” I advise. “They may not shine like crazy diamonds, but Vienna waits for you. Reality takes capital.”
“You’re so funny,” she says softly. “You didn’t break me. You handled me well, with neither a thimbleful of shame nor a single dewdrop of blame. You used kid gloves with me because, after all, I am just a kid, and a lass with very tender emotions.” She pauses, squinting at my face. “Wait. Is that a tear in your eye, Mr. John?”
I blink rapidly, grabbing a tissue from my desk. “Just allergies. The dust in this school is lethal. I’m strictly allergic to mushiness.”
“It must be all the pollen in the air,” she agrees, dabbing at her own eyes. “My eyes are getting watery too. So, Mr. John, change of subject: what are you doing for Thanksgiving next week?”
“Oh, the usual,” I say. “It will just be me, my computer, and perhaps a frozen turkey dinner meant for one.”
Gloria slams her hand on my desk. “Absolutely nonsense. You will come to my place. You will dine on a proper, chaotic American holiday meal. Everyone, including a professional loner like you, needs company on Thanksgiving.”
The Madrid Fugitive
Thanksgiving morning arrives. I dress casually, exactly as instructed by Gloria’s strict itinerary, and head for her house in Baton Rouge.
I arrive early. Perhaps too early, because Gloria is fast asleep. Her Mom, a wonderful woman who seems completely unfazed by a substitute teacher sitting in her living room at 9:00 AM, is making a late breakfast.
Finally, Gloria stumbles downstairs, her hair a wild bird’s nest. Her Mom immediately offers me a plate of bacon and eggs, which I politely decline. I want to save my appetite for the massive Thanksgiving meal, and I don’t want to take advantage of their hospitality by dining twice in one morning. I also feel a bit guilty that Gloria is put on the spot, forced to entertain me so soon after rolling out of bed.
Eventually, Gloria and her best girlfriend sit on the couch opposite me in the living room.
Gloria takes a sip of orange juice and drops a bomb. “So, fun fact. Tomorrow, we are headed to Madrid to turn ourselves in to the authorities.”
I freeze. “I’m sorry. The authorities?”
“Yep,” her friend nods gravely.
“We got in trouble for breaking a ridiculous law from long ago,” Gloria explains. “You can get in trouble for absolutely nothing over there! But, fortunately, our very severe sentence was commuted from actual jail time to doing community service. By washing clothes.”
I stare at her, trying to process this information. “Washing clothes? In Spain? But will you at least have some fun time once you’ve completed this… laundry service?”
“I’d really rather not be going there at all right now,” Gloria groans, rubbing her temples. “But they said they would literally extradite me if I didn’t go.”
“My God, Gloria! What on earth did you two do?”
“Okay, so we were in Barcelona over the summer,” Gloria says, leaning forward to confess her international crimes. “We were at the beach, having a great time, and we walked back to our condo in our bikinis. Little did we know that Spain apparently has a strict law against walking around the city streets in swimsuits. They were going to give us a hefty fine, but we left Spain before the matter was officially resolved, which made everything ten times worse. You know me, Mr. John. The little international rebel.”
“A bikini fugitive,” I say, astounded. “Why are you actually going back to face the music?”
She smiles softly. “Because I learned from you that even rules which I consider utterly ridiculous—like a teacher refusing to take his favorite student out for Mexican food—often have a very good reason behind them. And washing a few loads of Spanish laundry to earn my privilege of ever vacationing in Spain again is a small price to pay.” She points at the kitchen. “Now, Mom will be deeply insulted if you don’t eat her breakfast. I promise you, her cooking is way better than Taco Bell.”
The Swarthmore Goodbye
The day before she leaves for Pennsylvania, Gloria comes to say her final goodbye. The classroom is quiet, the Louisiana sun casting long, golden shadows across the floorboards.
“Boy, I am officially headed to Swarthmore with a banjo on my knee,” she says, her voice trembling slightly. “Do you know what that means, Mr. John?”
“Well,” I say, leaning against the chalkboard. “Unless I suddenly drop out of the substitute teaching game and head north to the great, snowy state of Pennsylvania, we may never cross paths again.”
“That is exactly right,” she says, wiping a stray tear from her cheek. “And the tears this brings me are the bluest of the blue. Please, just tell me the odds are in our favor of meeting randomly in a restaurant here in Baton Rouge during one of my family trips home.”
“Gloria, mathematically speaking, the odds are a million to one.”
Her face falls.
“But,” I add gently, “what are the chances of two kindred spirits like us meeting in the first place? In this random classroom, in this chaotic world? That just goes to show you: never trust the odds.”
She lets out a watery laugh. “Oh, you crazy coot. Would it be highly inappropriate for us to hug goodbye?”
“Consensual hugs are fully legal in all fifty states,” I assure her, opening my arms. “Even in Pennsylvania.”
“Quit the silly act and embrace me,” she demands.
I hold her for a second. It is a quiet, profound second that feels like the quiet moment just after creation. But when my arms drop to step back, she doesn’t let go. She holds on tight, and it feels like wheels turning, burning rubber with a classic 1956 Cadillac.
Finally, she pulls back, wiping her eyes. “Sorry. I needed some extra memory mileage from our hug.”
“There is nothing to apologize for,” I tell her, my own throat feeling remarkably tight. “We are just two passengers in the same car, both in need of a road trip to remember.”
She sniffles, looking up at me with those bright, intelligent eyes. “Do you think an encore embrace would be appropriate?”
“I have always stayed for the encore at concerts,” I reply.
We hug one last time—brief and warm.
“Would you please speak plainly to me, just once, before I go?” she asks as she pulls away.
“No,” I say, looking her dead in the eye. “But someday, you will thank me for refusing to take you to Taco Bell.”
Gloria doesn’t miss a beat. “I already do. You were the only adult here who drew a line in the dirt and refused to cross it. I got a mentor instead of a buddy. It was infuriating.”
“I aim to disappoint.”
“When my Swarthmore professors give me actual, sensible lessons, I’m going to miss your gibberish,” she says, her voice softening.
“Count yourself incredibly lucky to be in college,” I reply.
“I’ll remember you every time I read E.E. Cummings,” she promises.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should. A poet who gleefully fractured traditional syntax, completely ignored standard capitalization, and still managed to make perfect, rebellious sense out of spring and mud? He’s basically your pedagogical twin.”
“Cummings did appreciate a good revolt against the uppercase establishment,” I reply. “He believed that literature shouldn’t just be coldly analyzed—it should be felt. ‘Since feeling is first’—”
“‘…who pays any attention to the syntax of things,’” she finishes for me, her smile wry and knowing. “You might speak in riddles, but you always made sure we felt the solid earth we were standing on before you let us try to figure out the grammar.” She hauls her cello case up by the handle.
She steps out into the hallway, turning back toward the campus green. But then she stops. The heavy wooden door rests against her shoulder as she hesitates. Setting the cello down on the worn floorboards, she marches back to my desk, unfastening a silver chain from her neck. She presses a heavy pendant into my palm.
“Gloria, what is this?” The metal is warm and solid against my skin.
“St. Christopher,” she says softly. “From my grandmother in New Orleans. It survived mud, floodwater, and sweet olive pollen. He’s the patron saint of travelers.”
“Then you need to keep it.” I try to press it back into her hand. “You’re the one heading east into new territory.”
She shakes her head, her fingers closing tight over my fist, locking the medal inside. “I have a spare. I’m moving forward now, finding a bigger pot to grow in. But you, Mr. John… you’re the wooden stake in the garden. You drive yourself into the dirt, you let us wrap our tangled, complicated messes around you, and you hold us up until we can reach the sun. You get left in the dirt by design.”
I look down at our hands. The etched face of the saint feels warm, carrying the quiet gravity of a thousand goodbyes.
“It has to be exhausting, holding up gardens that don’t belong to you,” she whispers, a single tear slipping loose. “You kept me rooted when I was ready to blow away in the first strong breeze. Since we probably won’t see each other again, keep my grandmother’s medal. Let it remind you that you’re allowed to pull up your own stakes and travel, too.”
I swallow the hard knot in my throat, her grounded truth taking hold in my chest. I cannot entirely hide behind a quick joke, but I have to try.
“Thank you, Gloria. I’ll wear it. I’ve always wanted a medal for aggressive gardening.”
She lets out a short, wet laugh, a brilliant break in the weather. “Just wear it.” She picks up her cello, the weight of it suddenly looking lighter in her hands.
“Do me a favor, Gloria,” I say to the quiet hallway. “Keep your roots deep in the dirt, no matter how far out your branches reach.”
“I will.” She steps into the afternoon sun, pausing to look back one last time. “Thanks for the solid ground, Mr. John.”
And then she is gone. I stand alone in the corridor, my thumb rubbing the silver face of the saint, feeling profoundly, deeply grateful to have been a stubborn patch of her dirt.
