My Dark Vanessa(13)

Then I see Ms. Thompson and Mr. Strane walking together toward the humanities building. They move slowly, taking their time, Mr. Strane with his hands clasped behind his back and Ms. Thompson smiling, touching her face. I try to remember if I’ve seen them together before, try to decide if Ms. Thompson is pretty. She has blue eyes and black hair, a combination my mother always calls striking, but she’s chubby and her butt sticks out like a shelf. It’s the sort of body I’m afraid I’ll grow up to have if I’m not careful.

I squint across the distance to gather more details. They’re close but not touching. At one point, Ms. Thompson tips her head back and laughs. Is Mr. Strane funny? He hasn’t ever made me laugh. Pressing my face against the window, I try to keep them in my sight, but they round a corner and disappear behind the orange leaves of an oak tree.



We take PSATs and I do ok but not as well as most other sophomores, who start receiving Ivy League brochures in their mailboxes. I buy another day planner to help with my organization, which gets noticed by my teachers and passed on to Mrs. Antonova, who gives me a tin of hazelnut candies for a job well done.

In English we read Walt Whitman and Mr. Strane talks about the idea that people contain multitudes and contradictions. I begin to pay attention to the ways he seems to contradict himself, how he went to Harvard but tells stories about growing up poor, the way he sprinkles eloquent speech with obscenities and pairs tailored blazers and ironed shirts with scuffed hiking boots. His teaching style is contradictory, too. Speaking up in class always feels risky, because if he likes what you say, he’ll clap and bound over to the chalkboard to elaborate on the brilliant comment you made, but if he doesn’t like it, he won’t even let you finish—he cuts you off with an “Ok, that’s enough” that slices to the bone. It makes me scared to talk even though sometimes after he asks the class an open-ended question, he’ll stare straight at me, like he wants to know specifically what I have to say.

In the margins of my class notes, I keep track of the details he lets slip about himself: he grew up in Butte, Montana, pronounced like cute; before going to Harvard at eighteen, he’d never seen the ocean; he lives in downtown Norumbega, across from the public library; he doesn’t like dogs, was mauled by one as a boy. One Tuesday after creative writing club, when Jesse is already out the door and halfway down the hall, Mr. Strane says he has something for me. He opens the bottom drawer of his desk and takes out a book.

“Is this for class?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “It’s for you.” He walks around the desk, puts the book in my hands: Ariel, by Sylvia Plath. “Have you read her?”

I shake my head, turn the book over. It’s worn, with a blue cloth cover. A scrap of paper sticks out between the pages as a makeshift bookmark.

“She’s a bit overdone,” Mr. Strane says. “But young women love her.”

I don’t know what he means by “overdone” but don’t want to ask. I flip through the book—flashes of poems—and stop at the bookmarked page; the title “Lady Lazarus” is capitalized in bold. “Why is this one marked?” I ask.

“Let me show you.”

Mr. Strane comes up beside me, turns the page. Standing so close to him feels like being swallowed; my head doesn’t reach his shoulder.

“Here.” He points to the lines:

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.



He says, “That reminded me of you.” Then he reaches behind me and tugs on my ponytail.

I stare at the book as though I’m studying the poem, but the stanzas blur to black smears on a yellow page. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in response. It feels like I should laugh. I wonder if this is flirting, but it can’t be. Flirting is supposed to be fun and this is too heavy for fun.

In a quiet voice, Mr. Strane asks, “Is it ok that it reminded me of you?”

I lick my lips, lift my shoulders. “Sure.”

“Because the last thing I want is to overstep.”

Overstep. I’m not sure what he means by that, either, but the way he gazes down at me stops me from asking any questions. He suddenly seems both embarrassed and hopeful, like if I told him this wasn’t ok, he might start to cry.

So I smile, shake my head. “You’re not.”

He exhales. “Good,” he says, moving away from me, back to his desk. “Give it a read and let me know what you think. Maybe you’ll be inspired to write a poem or two.”

I leave the classroom and go straight to Gould, where I get into bed and read Ariel all the way through. I like the poems, but I’m more interested in figuring out why they reminded him of me and when this reminding might’ve happened—the afternoon with the leaf, maybe? Maple-red hair. I wonder how long he had this book in his desk drawer, if he waited awhile to decide whether to give it to me. Maybe he had to work up the courage.

I take the scrap of paper he used to mark “Lady Lazarus” and write in neat cursive, I rise with my red hair, then pin it to the corkboard above my desk. Adults are the only ones who ever say anything nice about my hair, but this is more than him being nice. He thinks about me. He thinks about me so much, certain things remind him of me. That means something.

I wait a few days before I return Ariel, dawdling at the end of class until everyone else leaves and then sliding the book onto his desk.