Growing into Less
“Sharper?” he asked, and she stood back and blinked a few times before answering, “Yes.”
The man’s sweater was blue. Its machine-woven fibres glinted in the light.
(I made that up. I don’t remember. But sweaters must have colours and stories must have details.)
windows. There were leaves. Individual leaves.
Until today, had the close-up thing: leaf, not been related to the puffy mass at the top of the tree?
Of course it had. But she had assumed that whatever was up there could not be seen. Now she saw that much less had to be taken on faith.
That much less could.
(There are no leaves in November, at least not in Toronto. At least not in 1971. And yet the scene has leaves, and green ones. In a later draft, it will either be June or the leaves will be yellow. Or maybe no one will notice.)
2
In Grade Eight, smart children sat with other smart children around pentagonal tables. That was the way groups worked. They did not face the teacher or their classmates, but each other. Who else was there in the class? They didn’t know. They were Group One. It was each other they had to impress.
Lynn, Hannah and Suzie, (not their real names) sat with Elliott and Ben (also not their real names). Lynn and Suzie were Developed. Not Hannah.
Elliott: astounding! His pallor and insubstantiality. He was the first to answer every question, talked the longest in his broken voice. He sported, Suzie announced, a small but persistent erection which she felt when he tackled her one day in the park, rolling downhill with her, his hands everywhere.
Ben was squat, with dark-framed glasses, red hair slick on his forehead, red boils swelling under his skin. Ben was packed tightly, strove for every breath. His hand shot up like a pressure valve when a question was asked. He is depicted that way in a yearbook: Reach for the Top!
Hannah stooped, trying to keep her skin from touching her scratchy sweater. Best to stay back. Her mother occasionally asks, with a frown, if Hannah has anything to tell her? No. Not yet. Thank goodness. The Curse is still at bay.
(Present tense has crept in. It’s an effort to keep this in the past, where it belongs.)
3
Math is in a different classroom, with a different teacher. A man. That's all.
(How is it possible to forget this so completely?)
Hannah sees now, the amount that she does not understand. The language that they speak, the understandings they all build, climbing a ladder together, higher and higher. Yet for her, even the bottom rung does not hold.
(How does she feel? It has been lost for too long to be of help. The classroom. Surely, some details can be imagined or imported from other memories.)
Lights, fluorescent lights with their slatted covers. The blackboard that had so recently been green yet was still called black. The teacher in his vest and tie. The exercise book covered in doodles and sweat.
No, not sweat. She knows the probing, bracing questions will never come her way, the sorting out of what is shapeless. She is not nervous, only invisible.
(Still writing about this? Yes, I’m afraid so. It is the source: the moment of seeing, the year of growing into less.)
