8
The teacher was going to take her on a ride. Mistie didn't know this woman, but she'd seen her on the school playground sometime. The teacher wore bright lipstick and had pointy eyebrows and smelled good like the soaps and hand lotion Mama had tried to sell from that pretty catalog. The teacher had told Mistie what her name was but Mistie had forgotten it.
Now, the two of them were in the teacher's classroom. Mistie sat in a desk the teacher had pushed behind her own desk. The desk wasn’t like the second grade desks. This one was bigger and there were papers and books inside. "Sit there," the teacher had said. "Don't get up, okay? Can you sit still for just a few minutes? I need to get a few things before we go."
And so Mistie sat in the desk, looking alternately at the dots on the ceiling and the rows of little clay houses in the classroom window sills. Some of the clay houses were painted, some of them were plain. Some were cracked. Some looked like they hadn't been finished.
The teacher said, "We’re studying ancient man. Those are supposed to be early native homes from the southwest." The teacher was talking really fast and her voice went up and down like a cat when you squeezed its stomach. "Some of the boys and girls did a very nice job, don't you think?"
Mistie didn't. She looked at the ceiling again. Her stomach growled. She poked at it, making it growl some more.
The teacher had a big cloth tote bag with writing on it and a picture of an apple. The teacher crammed in books and a few things out of her desk drawer. "My senior annual," she said, holding up a blue and orange book. "I can't leave this behind. I graduated from the University of Virginia nearly twenty years ago, can you believe that? Yes, I'm just an old Wahoo. Wa-hoo-wa! Well."
Mistie put her hand between her legs and rubbed hard until it got hot.
"Mistie, don't do that," said the teacher. "Please. Okay? Mistie? Here, here's a Tootsie Pop I took from one of my students. It’s raspberry I think. Hard to tell raspberry from cherry in this light. Here."
Mistie took the sucker, unwrapped it, and stuck it in her mouth.
"Okay, all right," said the teacher. Her lips kept moving around like she was tasting something sour. "A little food and some drinks, then the bank, and we'll be off. It's going to be a nice trip, Mistie. Oh, it's going to be fantastic. You'll see. We're both going to have a wonderful, wonderful time." She paused, placed her hands on her hips, and glanced about. There was sweat over her eyebrows. It looked like the sweat on Mistie’s Daddy’s eyebrows at night. "Now, what else do I need, is this it? What time is it? I think we can go now. Most everyone is out of here by now. Mistie, button your coat, please. It's very cold outside."
Mistie stood and buttoned her coat. She took the sucker out, looked at it, then bit the red orb off and spit it into the air. "Mama had a baby and its head popped off," she said.
"Oh?" said the teacher. "Fine, then. Let's go." She reached for Mistie's hand but Mistie didn't want to hold her hand. But when the teacher said, "Come follow me. And be just like Elmer Fudd, okay? Ever see him on cartoons? Be vewry, vewry quiet," Mistie was.