seething

I had never been looked at that way before.

The way the bottoms of her eyelids pulled up, making the gaps into tiny crescents, each set where eyes generally are in the head.

To me each little moon said, “You cunt.” Or the French equivalent. A truly sincere, “bitch,” would have sufficed, though I imagine the way she would have said it would leave the word lacking the weight I usually feel from it. She probably says it all the time. “Love ya, bitch!” No, she meant to slice me real deep.

Her name is Victoria. She looks at me the way only a girl who is 13, maybe 14, can. It is full of hate and anger and all of that shit that you really, really feel when you are 13 or 14. It means you practically can’t see straight and you hardly feel anything that wholly or purely ever again. She’s pissed. I remember being pissed, sure.

Often, in class, I try to figure out who I’d have been in that particular group of pre-teens. Generally, she has glasses and crooked teeth. She’s a good worker but she’s quiet, waiting for her successes to come back to her, keeping them lightly veiled but not too much. She draws carefully on her pencil case, careful to avoid regret, tries to keep things clean but not too clean. Victoria and the idea of interacting with Victoria would give her a stomach cramp.

The way Victoria keeps looking at me, now- over her right shoulder again and again- is basically seeming to be unsatisfying for her. She moves almost carefully, but not quite. She wants me to know that she’s so mad and she wants me to be afraid but she knows, too, that she must carry with her that I am ten years her senior. To her first look, I shoot back the tiny smile. It is knowing and confident and maybe a little petty. I am nearly ashamed for feeling for a millisecond some tit-for-tat politic, or maybe for taking advantage of my superiority and volleying over a condescending look.

Though worthless it might be, I try to give my respect and honesty to these kids. I figure they might not get a lot of it.

So, the next time our eyes meet my eyebrows are more relaxed and I mean for my smile to say, “Oh come on, it’s not that bad. Just wait to talk to your boytoy after class,” but I’m sure these two looks look the same. I’d say it’s my intention that makes a difference, but I spent a summer being told the road to hell is paved with good ones so I guess it makes no matter.

The girl in front of Victoria once told me her name is Baleine. She highlights her front teeth with this habit of tucking her top lip up and under itself, effectively putting out this overwhelming and accidental goofiness amidst these moments of complete despair. Like, now. Baleine keeps turning around and looks at me in solidarity with Victoria, though with less confidence. She's terrified that we should make actual eye contact. Solidarity, though. Right? Victoria probably says, “She’s such a cunt,” and Baleine, who I believe to have a good heart, probably responds, “Oh ya totally I know right?” But in French, yes, and quietly. In French, Baleine means Whale.

I bow down to the boy at the back, later toward whom Victoria grabs her breasts with vigor. He shakes his head often to arrange his hairs. I say, “I don’t think you’re supposed to pass notes in class,” with that same upward-eyebrow smile. I try to play the cool teacher, because I don’t tell the actual teacher about this. They would get in such shit. They monitor me the rest of the class because I stick around their desks at the back of the room.

Victoria is still looking at me, small glances. I imagine she’d projectile vomit over at me if she could, all the way to the back of the room. She’s only four desks ahead, but that is a long way to vomit when you consider resistance in a reversed digestive system. I believe she could do it, though, if she really wanted to. Her eyes would become smaller, near eclipses. She has bangs like The Little Mermaid; a lot of the girls here do. She lightly adjusts them and it ruins the mood of her fix on me. I wonder will she even remember next year that there was one tall woman who ruined her whole world for 75 minutes. She might. It could be one piece of nonsense that her head holds onto. She shares this story in teachers’ college and relates how a teacher must never retort with the tiny and rude smile. Maybe she and her boytoy reflect when they are old, how, “nothing could ever keep us apart- except, god, remember that awful cunt in English class?” Somehow I mostly doubt that. I do not get worried about these temporary enemies, here.