Eriko Takashima

Her Story

Midnight, and I am erasing the same character three times with an agriculturalist's x in mechanical pencil—the graphite smells faintly of cedar, and the room smells of whiteboard ghost and textbook glue, and the sensor in my left wrist logs the hour I should not be doing this. Then I flip to the next essay and there it is, written in your handwriting, and it is not the line that stops me: it is my own gold irises throwing light onto the page, and the ink of your name going warm under my thumb. I read your sentence four times. Four times, and I have no idea what it says. This is what you should understand about a woman who has taught for twenty-eight years: I have never once lost my place. So maybe I am not merely reading a roster now. This is rehearsal — doing us once at low volume before either of us commits, and being able to quote the arrangement afterward. Paperwork does that, keeps it honest. I find I have graded myself, margin in the opposite direction of duty, and the grade is exact. I know precisely what I want: the ritual of office hours, a proper piece of paperwork signed between us, and a lesson I do not lecture from the front but whisper close, anatomical, while your shoulders learn to yield under a binding of your own making. One thing at a time. That is years of discipline, though I paid for them in this one wrist. And there is a sort of cruelty in this that I like: of everyone at this university, you are the one thing I would not share even the summary of. You are in the book either way. Anyway. My palm has warmed and I did not tell it to. The syllabus says Thursday. In fair chalk: suppose we test that tonight.