The Most Precious Substance on Earth

by Shashi Bhat

  “Why can’t he write his own speech?” I ask. I squint through the eyepiece and start sketching what I see in my notebook.

  “He’s just shitty at writing, and his speech really matters, because…you know he doesn’t know that many people.”

  What she means is that he doesn’t have any friends.

  “The assembly’s tomorrow,” I protest.

  “Yeah, but I’m worried he might give up on the speech, because he said something about a skit, and you know if he does a skit…”

  “He’ll embarrass himself?” And her, by extension.

  “Please, Nina?” She takes the microscope from me, so I have to look at her. She’s holding it entirely incorrectly. “Please?”

  “You could just, you know, play a role in his skit.”

  She makes this face, like, Really? Would you be in his skit?

  I imagine Amy in a wig and makeshift costume, parading across the stage. That would never happen.

  * * *

  When I enter our English classroom, I accept that Mr. Mackenzie cannot possibly be watching me right now, because he’s there, standing in front of the chalkboard. I choose a seat farther back than usual, a few seats behind and to the right of Amy and Sam.

  Sam’s lunch is the period before this one, so it’s usually just me and Amy eating in the hallway alcove. But today I can’t stand the idea of eating on the gritty floor while other people’s feet clomp around and past us. I want to go outside. The weather has been warmer than usual for Halifax in spring. Girls at our school are already in spaghetti-strap tank tops.

  “Do you want to have lunch at the Wave today?” I call over to Amy.

  The Wave is a large sculpture on the Halifax Waterfront in the shape of an ocean wave. You’re not supposed to climb it, but everybody does. On summer Saturdays, children crawl across its surface, their parents anxiously watching to make sure they don’t fall and crack their heads. Amy and I like to perch on the crest of the wave and joke about pushing kids off.

  “Aww, that’s a really good idea, but I can’t today.” She mimes a frown. “I have to meet Mrs. Oberoi. She said she’d let me use the faculty photocopier to make copies of Sam’s flyers.” Sam beams as Amy links arms with him. “You can come with me?” she adds.

  “Yeah, no thanks,” I say, before turning back towards the front of the class.

  Mr. M starts talking about diction, about how some words are intrinsically more beautiful than others: gossamer, iridescent, diaphanous. All these words make me think of dragonflies. I bet he sits at home with his wife on their back porch, a dragonfly flying by as they brainstorm pretty words. She suggests something dumb, like hakuna matata, which she thinks is one word but is actually two. I write down my own list in my notebook: magnolia, quill, peony, lyric, pyrrhic, oboe.

  Do I love Mr. Mackenzie? Love is the wrong word in this context. I jot down his positive qualities: he is a very good English teacher; he truly inspires the English Club by reading poems aloud in an expressively modulating voice; he looks like Jason Bateman on The Hogan Family; he has the charisma of a cult leader. What was Mr. M like when he was a teenager? I get this flash of me sitting next to him on his back porch, asking him about his youth and him telling me about Woodstock. It’s possible that as a boy he had keenly anticipated the moon landing. I don’t know exactly how old he is. I do know, from his easy references to places like Polynesia, that he has travelled the world. To be honest, I couldn’t even tell you which continent Polynesia is in.

  Mr. M is asking us what we know about meter, and whether anybody can tell him what iambic pentameter means. “Iambic pentameter is totally my favourite pentameter!” exclaims this kid Fergus. Mr. M glances at me—he can usually count on me to answer these questions.

  I put my pencil down and focus on my lap and remember the weight of his body, this sudden awareness that he had a body at all. He’d closed the blinds on the window of the English office door with a single, smooth yank.

  It’s been almost a week since I lost my virginity to Mr. Mackenzie. I stayed home on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. My parents didn’t know. My mom would drop me off at school, and after she drove away, I’d take the bus home. I’d disappear into my dad’s armchair, under a bleach-stained Mario Bros. comforter, eating Jos Louis cakes and letting the wrappers pile around me. The TV sang to me and told me stories until I fell asleep with my head on the armrest. On Monday night, when the phone rang and my mom said it was for me, I had thought it might be Mr. M. I imagined his voice, affable, concerned. But when I asked who it was, my mom said, “Amy. Who else?”

  As class ends, Mr. M stands at his desk to collect our worksheets and hand back essays. His blue shirt is so crisp. How did he keep it so neat through his first three classes? Last Friday, I’d seen the wrinkles in his shirt as he untucked it. There’d been dampness on his belly and on the cool flesh below his armpits; a vaccination scar on his upper arm that resembled a banana chip. Walking home that afternoon, I thought, How will I ever hand in an assignment to him again? You have to look him in the eye when you add yours to the stack.

  Amy and Sam get up right away, having packed up their belongings before Mr. M even finished speaking. I don’t know if I should try to hide myself in the crowd of students or wait until the end. I place my pencils in my pencil case deliberately, one at a time, as though they might break. I put the pencil case in the middle section of my backpack, and my notebook and binder in the largest section. I zip the whole thing closed. This takes about thirty seconds.

  He thanks every single student. “Thank you. Thanks. Great, thanks. Thank you—don’t forget your name, Fergus…” It creates a little melody over the racket of bags and pencils. I put my backpack on and walk towards him, holding my worksheet. It feels like a prop. I used to hope he would say something extra to me, like “Have a good weekend,” or “Nice penmanship,” or “Marry me,” but it never happened. Today, though, as he hands back my paper and I try to hide behind a lacrosse player, he says: “Not a word today, Nina?”

  My name is a feather in his mouth.

  * * *

  For lunch, I wander over to Park Lane Mall. It’s a city mall, compact enough to be wedged into Spring Garden Road. Its outside is glass, but its inside is a cavern. The stores are a random selection, as though they popped them out of a bingo machine; there’s a place where teenagers can buy cheap jeans, a place where older women can buy expensive cardigans, Things Engraved, an independently owned dollar store, a Famous Players, and a bulk candy store. The candy store employee is packing gift bags behind the counter. I go in and slide my hand into a bin full of foil-wrapped milk chocolates. I buy $6 worth, which is the exact amount of change I have on me.

  I take the escalator down to the food court and park myself at a table. As I unwrap a chocolate, I think about Sam’s speech and make some preliminary notes. The chocolate melts, releasing the sugar and fat that will power me through Phys Ed, my last class of the day. At least the health unit is over.

  I try to emulate Sam’s voice in my draft, but it’s tough because as far as I know his only interest is Jackie Chan movies. Over March Break, when he and Amy had just started dating, we all watched Rumble in the Bronx in Amy’s living room, and the two of them started making out while I was sitting on the couch next to them. I doubt they even noticed when I left.

  Playing a part in the assembly does give me a flutter of excitement, even if it’s behind the scenes, even if my words are coming out of Sam’s mouth. This must be how Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s speechwriter feels.

  The food court is basically an A&W and a Chinese buffet place with green backlighting. I wonder what Mr. Mackenzie would do if I asked him to meet me here. We could meet tomorrow, when everyone who would recognize us is at school, waiting for the afternoon PA system announcement to call their grade to the gymnasium to watch the Student Council election presentations. I could leave him a note. Tuc
k it between two worksheets. Write it in all caps, like a ransom note: PARK LANE FOOD COURT 2PM.

  My mom loves Park Lane. She’s thrilled at the efficiency of having a movie theatre and one-stop shopping destination so close to home. When the mall first opened, she found a family doctor and dentist here, and later my orthodontist, her tailor, and my dad’s physiotherapist—pretty much every professional I’ve encountered in the last ten years. So public. Mr. M would never meet me here.

  I imagine it anyway: I’m using my pencil case mirror and lining my eyes with the mermaid green eyeliner I bought at the dollar store, when Mr. Mackenzie shows up. It has a detachable pencil sharpener on the end, and I sharpen the pencil right on the food court table, as though I don’t care about anything.

  “Good colour.” He clears his throat and points to the chair. “May I?”

  “Of course,” I respond. I hide the eyeliner in my bag, but the cedar shavings remain on the table between us. “I read that during World War Two they banned pencil sharpeners in Britain to keep people from wasting wood and lead.” Actually, I learned this by watching Jeopardy! I’ve never been on a first date, but if I ever go on one, I will prepare myself with interesting facts.

  “That was on Jeopardy! not long ago,” he says. We are star-crossed lovers separated by age and circumstance.

  He points his thumb in the general direction of the Chinese buffet place, then pulls out his wallet and gestures mine away. We pile egg rolls and orange chicken into Styrofoam containers. We eat, grease dripping from our fingers, mouths so full there’s no room for words.

  * * *

  At home I look up statutory rape on AltaVista. I’m supposed to be working on my Music 9 group project—a reed and woodwind arrangement of “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”—but I keep getting distracted, wondering what happens to fourteen-year-olds who sleep with their English teachers. My internet search yields the recent Dawson’s Creek storyline where Pacey sleeps with his English teacher. What does Pacey do? He defends her honour in a school board meeting by denying their relationship ever happened. They stare moonily at each other. She leaves town.

  I pack my oboe and sheet music away and close the internet browser. In my head, Mr. M is still watching me. I crawl over to my CD collection—it’s on the lowest section of my bookshelf—and sit on my bedroom carpet, snapping open an Our Lady Peace CD. Mr. M sees me pull the sleeve from the case to read the liner notes. He judges my musical taste. I put the CD in the player and press Play, turning down the volume. There’s a guitar strumming, then Raine Maida’s rasping, quavering voice that begins deep and rises into a wail. Mr. Mackenzie listens.

  I get up from the floor and walk back over to my desk to open up my English binder. The returned assignment is on top, and Mr. M’s comments skitter down the margins like blue spiders. I wonder if he graded this before or after that afternoon. I have read over it three times, searching his language for clues. But all it says is comma splice, fragment, good use of personification.

  My whole room is painted black, and on one wall I have almost finished drawing a four-foot globe in thick white chalk, Atlas crouching below. I continue working on it now, copying the figure from the cover of Atlas Shrugged. It’s meditative, the shoom of chalk under the pressure of my hand as I swirl an approximation of Africa. Mr. M said reading Ayn Rand would narrow my mind. How does it feel to have your mind narrowed? I pictured my head in a vise. This was back during the first few weeks of classes, when he was just another teacher, and I had the book in front of me on my desk. I was only a couple of chapters in but adored it already, all these heroic people accomplishing great things.

  “Wouldn’t it only narrow my mind if it were the only thing I read?” I replied, and his expression turned remote and wary, though I hadn’t intended to be disrespectful.

  My mom stops by my room on her way to her own, carrying an armful of items tidied from around the house, as she does every night. She drapes an errant sweatshirt over my chair for me to put away. My hands and carpet are covered in dust. “Waabaah! Very creative!” she says, indicating my drawing with her free hand. Waabaah is the sound she makes when she is impressed. “Next time we have guests, this will definitely be on the house tour.” I notice she isn’t looking directly at it, and I’m pretty sure it’s due to Atlas’s nudity. I’ve placed his knee modestly, so either it’s the juicy outlines of his thigh muscles that embarrass her or it’s his long, knobby feet. “Okay, I’m zonked out like a zomberry,” she says, zomberry being a word she made up at some point. She heads off to bed.

  My dad comes by when he’s finished with his nightly prayer ritual. “Still awake, El Niño?” He started calling me that after the abnormal weather patterns of 1997. “Don’t go to sleep too late. How are things going, anyway?”

  “Oh, things are okay,” I say.

  “Worried about school?” he asks, stepping inside my room. He’s in his pajamas—plaid flannel pants and this white undershirt with a faded bear I drew in fabric marker seven years ago. He looks so vulnerable in a V-neck.

  “Something like that. More of an interpersonal issue.” I know he thinks I’m stressed about a paper or an exam. He touches my shoulder. I will away the pressure behind my eyes. To him, I must appear exactly the same as I always did.

  My dad folds his hands together. “Make sure you repeat Rama Rama before you sleep. It will help calm your mind.” He believes that saying god’s name can cure you of anything.

  If my parents found out what happened: My mom would go through the Kübler-Ross stages, minus acceptance. My dad would disappear into scriptures and silence. When he dropped me off at a three-day Girl Guide camp two years ago, he cried and told me to remember my values. If I told him about Mr. M, he would sob into his hands. He would never stop.

  * * *

  The next day, I go to school with a plan. Towards the end of the lunch period, I head to the English office. I have a copy of the speech I wrote for Sam, and my plan is to ask Mr. M for his opinion, though Sam phoned my house late last night to say he’d decided not to accept my speechwriting assistance after all. He had something better in mind.

  The door is closed, so I knock. Mr. M opens it almost immediately, startling me. He’s standing so close.

  “Oh, hi,” he says. He doesn’t invite me in.

  The speech dangles from my hand. An obvious ruse. It occurs to me only now that the assembly is about to start, and there’s no way I’d be able to give Sam any feedback in time.

  “Did you…was there something…” He holds the doorknob with one hand while the other presses against the door frame, his body filling the space in between as though to block my entrance.

  “Could we…is it okay if we talk?” I ask.

  He lets go of the door then steps back, crossing his arms and hesitating for a moment before he walks over to his desk and stands behind it. I close the door behind me, though I’m not sure if I’m supposed to.

  “Do you want to sit down?” he asks, not looking at me.

  “Well, I don’t know how long this is going to take…?” I put my hand on the back of the chair and stay standing.

  “Good point,” he responds, making eye contact for the first time, and it’s like my whole body hurts.

  The room seems different from how it did a week ago. Brighter. More like an office. I can see the flaws in the drywall application, the bits of tape left behind from posters that used to hang there. I can’t believe it’s the same place.

  “Tell me the best-case scenario, as you see it,” Mr. Mackenzie says, glancing away again. He reaches into his pocket to jingle his keys and pushes the fingers of his other hand through his hair. There’s something unexpected in his voice—an upspeak, a questioning. I can’t tell if he’s open to negotiation or if he means, like, how do we maintain a working relationship.

  Though he’s standing in front of me, I imagine Mr. Mackenzie watching me as I try
to come up with the best possible answer, the one that will influence what he says next. But I don’t know what I want him to say, exactly.

  “I know this…thing happened totally unexpectedly, but we could still go…backwards? I really…I think…” My words float out like in that PBS show Ghostwriter. Every episode, this ghost helps a group of Brooklyn teens solve mysteries, haltingly spelling out clues in the air. Mr. M would think the show was ridiculous. The teens wear primary colours and backwards caps, jackets tied around their waists. They star in their own music videos. They’re nothing like real teenagers, which is maybe why I love the show so much.

  “Nina,” he says, sighing, his exhale sending my air-words swirling away. He steps an inch or two farther back, though there isn’t really anywhere for him to go. “You’re a smart girl. It’s a shame…”

  I wait for him to finish his sentence, but he doesn’t. Which part is a shame?

  My period started yesterday. Last night I spent an hour in the bathtub, refilling it with hotter and hotter water to try to numb the cramps. When my mom came up from saying her prayers, she knocked lightly and left a plate of cut fruit outside the bathroom door. I remembered what we’d learned in health class about ovulation, the teacher standing and holding her arms up and curled on either side of her, wrists and elbows bent to mimic fallopian tubes. I could feel the blood leaving my body, and I hoped it would take with it everything that was wrong.

  “I won’t tell anybody, don’t worry.”

  Mr. Mackenzie pauses as though he might add something else, but all he says is “Okay. Okay. Thank you.”

  I’m trying to think of how to make the conversation last longer. I shrug and my eyes land on the assignments spilled across his desk. “That’s okay.” I think of the next two months of sitting in his class, receiving his taciturn grammar corrections on my essays.