It’s not like Ivy had wrapped her arms around me and stuck her tongue down my throat. She didn’t try to make me grope her or flash her tits at me or grab my junk. Had she been as young as she acted, it would have been kind of cute.
Yet…
So many emotions: I wanted to scream; to curse at her. To fucking smack her upside her head, if not punch her in the nose and hope for blood. I wanted to yell and flail and cry in frustration and surprise. I wanted to run, to waddle over back to the door that led to my own classroom and claw at it and pound on it; or better yet, make for the front door and just dash out into the open in some wild hope that I could make it all the way to the street where a car would slam me into the pavement and put me out of my misery.
I wanted to spit at her; or hide behind Beouf and point accusingly. I wanted to insult her and call her a dumb ugly Helper Doll that was too dumb to know that every other Little with a pinch of sense despised her and for good rason. That she’d creeped me out long before this and that her very presence was anathema to me.
I wanted to say anything and everything that I could just then to hurt the dumb girl. Big words. Small words. Take your pick.
Fortunately, some small part of my past life still remained. “No!” I pointed.at Ivy. “Not cool, Ivy! Not cool! I do not consent! I DO NOT CONSENT!”
The stunned silence was met with giggles and cat calls. “Oooooooooo!”
“B-b-but,” Ivy stuttered. “You said I could give you a kiss.” She seemed genuinely stunned. Shocked, even.
The Littles at either table were laughing harder. I heard fists pounding down on the table.
“Ivy…” Zoge started to say.
We ignored them. “No,” I repeated myself. “You asked if you could give me something!”
Beouf was eying us. “Clark…”
“A kiss is something,” she insisted. Her bottom lip was starting to shake and shudder. “It’s a very special something.”
“That’s a lie by omission!” I shouted. “If you wanted to give me a kiss or a hug or anything where your body touches mine, you should have asked, first!”
“I DID!” she whined.
The Amazons were quietly approaching us. The other inmates were leering and jeering, happy to have the entertainment.
I put my hands on my hips, tilted my head, and tapped my foot. Even in a sailor suit and diaper, mannerisms I’d developed as a teacher came so naturally to me. “So if I asked if I could give you something and you said yes, it would be okay to give you a punch on the nose?”
More howls of laughter from my unwanted audience. Thankfully adrenaline, indignation and tunnel vision helped me blur them out in the moment.
Speaking of howling… “NOOOO!” Ivy yelled. “A kiss is a good thing!”
“NOT IF I DON’T KNOW IT’S COMING!”
Her entire posture was changing. Ivy Zoge was deflating like a used parade float right before my eyes. “Would you have let me kiss you if I had told you?” she whimpered.
“NO!”
Ivy burst into tears and threw herself on the floor, burying her face in her hands and kicking her legs. She was saying something, but it was either in Yamatoan or just too garbled from her sobbing and bawling that I couldn’t begin to figure it out.
Zoge bent over and picked her up. Patting her back and saying something in Yamatoan. She looked at Beouf and jerked her head towards the front door. Beouf quietly nodded and Zoge walked out the front door, shushing and cooing the woman-child in soft soothing tones. With Ivy out of the room, my peripheral vision cleared up, and I got a full view of the rest of the room.
Some, like Tommy and Jesse, were shooting sad looks towards the door and shaking their heads. Others, like Shauna, Sandra Lynn, and Mandy, were glaring at me like I’d just kicked a puppy. Billy, Annie, and even Chaz were making mock kissy faces at each other and laughing like they’d just seen high comedy.
Great. A big dumb baby woman forces herself on me, I explain it as best as I can (and rather civilly if I do say so myself) and I’m the asshole. I stood my ground a few feet away from the rectangular table. I was shaking with rage, and despite the fact that I wasn’t wearing any pants, I felt like my skin was on fire like I was running a high fever.
Beouf took a knee next to me and placed her hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You’re not in trouble.”
“Is Ivy?”
“Let me and her Mommy worry about that. I’m very proud of how you handled that, Clark.”
It took a lot for me to keep staring straight ahead instead of snapping at her. Proud? What did she have to be proud of? People can be proud of other people’s behavior and accomplishments if they helped develop it; a taught skill for instance. ‘I’m proud of you for bringing up your grades. That extra tutoring we’ve done has really paid off.’
Or if they’ve seen a person’s struggles and wanted to note the improvement. ‘You’ve got your drinking under control. I’m proud of you.’
Beouf had no claim to either. Being ‘proud’ of me was just something condescending to remind me who was in char-
“You handled those big feelings so much better than you did at the shower,” Beouf said. Oh…oh yeah. That. “I could tell from the look on your face that you really wanted to say something nasty to hurt Ivy, and you didn’t. Good job controlling yourself, kiddo.”
A whole host of new words and what to tell Beouf boiled up into my brain. I bit my tongue and stared off into the middle distance, instead. “I think he’s gonna cry…” I heard someone whisper.
“Do you want a hug?” Beouf asked me.
Silently, I shook my head. Even I wasn’t sure if I had actually shook it or if my tensed up muscles were still just vibrating. Either way. I didn’t want it.
My mentor stood up and looked around. “Class,” she said.” Before we transition to whole group, I just wanted to tell everyone that Clark did the right thing.” All eyes were on her. “What’s our touching rule in this classroom?”
Hands shot up. Shauna, with dark skin and her black hair done up in beads was called on. “Nobody can touch you without your permission,” she said with a kind of rote quality. Then she hastily added, “Except for if a grown-up needs to help you with something.”
“That’s right. And what should you do if someone is touching you in a way you don’t like, what should you do, even if it is a grown-up?”
“Tell a grown-up,” the class responded in unison.
Annie’s hand raised, but she didn’t wait to be called on. “Why isn’t Clark in trouble? He didn’t tell an adu-…I mean grown-up.”
Beouf smiled as if Annie’s trying to throw me under the bus was simple precociousness. “No, baby, Clark isn’t going to get in trouble. What he did was use his words to express his needs. It was very mature of him.”
I shouldn’t have felt pride in that, but I did. A trickle of hope in a dried up riverbed. Maybe I could get through this after all. I wouldn’t be able to talk sense into any Amazon, but maybe I could over the long term talk them into a slightly less intense form of crazy. I also felt the stares of the other prisoners on me. In their eyes I was turning into the suck-up; the teacher’s pet.
In that moment, my attitude could be described as ‘Fuck ‘em’. It’s not like I was making any friends my first day. Might as well take my comfort where I could.
“Okay everyone,” Beouf clapped her hands together. “Snack time’s over, go check your schedules.”
As one big crinkling mass, we went over to the wall where our toddler visual schedules were. I took the black pentagon off the paint stick and saw the matching symbol over by the whiteboard. The other infantilized adults were taking their symbols to a basket just beneath the spot where the marker’s rested and taking a seat in the semi-circle just like they had after breakfast. More circle time stuff it seemed.
“Do I have permission to kiss you,” Billy asked Annie.
“Yes you do.” Annie said. The two snuck each other a peck on the lips and snickered. Billy looked directly over at me and I just pretended. “May I give you a kiss?” Annie said down to Chaz.
“Totally,” Chaz pushed himself up to his knees and got a smack on the cheek for his troubles. “Thanks babe.”
A new behavior had been introduced, and already a certain segment of the population were toeing the line, seeing how much they could get away with. Practiced behavior and a bit of bratting to test the waters and push the envelope. I’d seen it plenty of times with my own students over the years. How childlike.
There was no mention of Ivy, however. No murmurs of waiting for the girl, or wondering where she and Zoge had gotten off to. No idle hoping she was okay. Not even scowling or mentioning how she’d completely freaked out.
Thinking back to my real classroom, if one of my students had been so much as checked out early for a dentist appointment, there’d be at least two children wondering where they were, when they’d be back, and if they were feeling alright. Same went for late arrivals, absences, or any other break in the scheduled routines. Kids, real kids, can be brats in the worst ways; but they can also be tremendous busibodies in the kindest and most empathetic of scenarios.
More proof that we weren’t kids; just damaged adults forced to play along.
At the kissing exchange, one of Beouf’s eyebrows cocked up behind her glasses, but then she busied herself telling Littles to spread out and was playing with an in classroom sound system connected to her computer. Had she lectured them on public displays of affection, she could have reprimanded them, but her focus was on consent ironically enough, bodily autonomy. Woman was obviously choosing her battles. In some bizarre way, she still had the mentality of a veteran educator.
I took my spot in the semi-circle with the others so that my back was to the bathroom and I could see the classroom door. I caught a flash of Zoge walking by, a bawling Ivy in her arms. I couldn’t hear outside, but the body language said that Ivy was still having a full on meltdown. I leveled my gaze so that I couldn’t see more.
“Stand up everyone,” Beouf instructed “Spread out and make a circle. Give each other some room.”
Easy enough. We did. Plenty of space. It’s like no one wanted to touch me. “Ivy cooties,” I heard someone whisper.
“We’re going to start our whole group session with some movement games. Ready?”
“Mrs. Beouf,” Jesse called out. “Clark doesn’t-”
“I have a feeling he’ll catch on, quick.” A knowing smile was thrown my way. Beouf power walked to her computer and clicked a button.
A voice came out of the speakers. “Walk.” A voice said. Immediately a meandering, hum drum tune started playing. It was just shy of elevator music, the kind of background music those old cartoons would walk to while speaking exposition, even though the background was the same house, tree, and rock over and over again, ad infinitum.
Cartoon?! Out of paranoia I looked to Mrs. Beouf, trying to make sure there were no ear plugs or anything that might filter out a subliminal message. Of course there weren’t any. Beouf was a lot of things, but she was no Raine Forrest. In some ways that made it worse. In trying (poorly) to end my adulthood with poison and typical Amazon ploys, Raine was at least acknowledging it.
Everyone started walking clockwise around the circle we’d made. A few even did so with a bit of flare, purposefully swinging their arms or tucking in their elbows. Even Chaz crawled and bobbed his head side to side, as if strolling along on his hands and knees was the most natural and normal thing in the world.
We no longer looked like toddlers toddling, but like toddlers play acting at being adults.
“Gallop.” The tune changed to something out of a spaghetti western, hoofbeats and twangy guitar included. Immediately everyone started stuttering their steps, galloping like a horse. A few whinnies went up as boys and girls started imitating horses for good measure.
I sighed. I did know this game. Like the back of my hand, in fact. It was one I had my three and four year olds do. A generic track of stock music correlated to a type of animated movement. Next there’d be a quiet, almost spooky xylophone number for tip toeing around, and a frantic fast paced run, and a lazy gliding skate and so on and so forth. Then the track would randomize and play without the verbal instructions and the kids would have match their movement to fit the tune without prompting.
Good clean fun…if you’re actually a child.
Typical.
I could do this game in my sleep. No concentration needed whatsoever. It was completely mindless to me. Was it degrading? Yes. Absolutely. But at least I didn’t have to sing any songs about what a baby I was or how Hi-Diddly-Dee a big boy’s life wasn’t for me, or whatever. If this was all I had to do, I could make it through my first day in Hell easily enough and get to see Cassie one last time.
