A Change of Life

“Awake forever in a sweet unrest, 

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever – or else swoon to death”

Bright Star, John Keats

Mrs. Willen wiped off the 14th February from the whiteboard with the rag. She felt a flush of heat and put down the rag. In its place she wrote, quite deliberately, quite carefully: 15th February. Her handwriting was large, square and clear. Then she took up the rag once more and erased the 15. A lone th was left, looking blankly at her from the whiteboard. Swooningly, she followed little spots and swirls of blue in the gleam of the whiteboard, little swims of light, like those on a pool of water. The white made her dizzy. She preferred blackboards. The scratch of chalk and that familiar stale, sickly chalk smell. The whiteboard smelled of marker pen and acetone (or was it acetate?)… The lonely and meaningless th was still there. 

She looked back at the faces of the children, some fixed in a dull stare above their desks, some gazing expectantly, some ignoring her, chattering, whispering to each other. She suddenly swivelled where she stood, in a sort of delirium, sleepy, lost. What was she writing? What had she been talking about? She suddenly became aware, soberly aware, that she didn’t know what she was doing. In a quiet desperation, she looked for the blue eyes of a child she knew and liked, the only one she had really connected with, in a personal way: a little girl called Lily. She found those honest, simple blue eyes and they looked back at her timidly, almost fearfully.  There was no help. A deep silence dropped within her, down, down, pulling her mind with it. 

Mrs. Willen looked at her feet. Then, she looked at the th on the whiteboard, then at the children. She looked at Lily. What have I become, she thought? Who am I? What was I once? The rag was still in her hand, the pen in the other. The pen dropped through her fingers and she took up the rag and smelt it, her face nestled into it as though it were a comfort, pressing her twitching nose and squinting eyes into its sickly smell. It was a dirty plum colour. Then she rubbed out that wretched, useless th. The whiteboard was blank. What on earth had she been saying? The children were as bemused as she was. The stupor that had enclosed the room was very still, very quiet and very thick and hectoring. The kids looked around rather helplessly, impotently, hoping for some other adult’s unannounced entrance to come in and save them. Lily was the only one who piped up, saying in her sweet, slight voice: 

“Are you alright, miss?” 

No answer. Mrs. Willen sat down in her teacher’s chair. She suddenly thought about nothing. Her  mind had been racing for eighteen years, crazy and restless with worry and design, with  competition to be liked, with strategies to win the respect of her peers, to reach the children… to keep at bay the deep phobias, the deep encompassing phobia that lived inside her. What was that?  Her own inadequacy, the limits of what she had achieved, the limits of her ability. Just trying to transcend it and win the forgiveness of everyone around her for it. Now she was dulled, docile, stupid almost. Like a cow in a field. She sat in her chair. She had feared this stupor, this enveloping dumbness when first it hit her. But now it comforted her, like the smell of lavender, or a cushion. She looked at the children. And now she really saw them: she saw them as she had never seen them before. She took in the eyes, the colours of the hair, the dimples and freckles and blemishes and marks, the personality trapped there in the lenses of every eye and the gleam or pale of every cheek. 

There was a little boy called Lenny who always caused trouble. He’d quieted now, and regarded Mrs. Willen quite intently. He was always disrespecting her and being rude and getting into mischief, and she’d hated him before. Now, she just felt love, as she looked on the mop of hazel hair that hadn’t been washed, the crown that glowed almost angelically, fluffed with a layer of light, light from the lamp above, and his dark, darting, innocently malign eyes, and his freckles, and his white polo shirt that was almost as white as the pubescent pearl of his skin. He’d called her “mum” when he was in reception. The littleness of him, the sweetness of him. He didn’t know it about himself. Children don’t think of themselves in that way. But now Mrs. Willen did. 

Her trance was deep and she was trapped in it. She continued to look sweetly on the children.  Even the ones she didn’t like. She was catatonic and the children were afraid. Then Mrs. Gardiner came into the classroom. She was very perturbed by the scene. Mrs. Willen stuck in her chair,  tranced catatonically; the children at their desks, pitiful, lost and rudderless. An empty whiteboard. Mrs. Gardiner called out and shepherded the children out into the hallway where she permitted them to put on their coats and collect their lunchboxes and bookbags and go out into the playground to wait for their parents. The children milled about and chattered and a few of them began swinging themselves on the swings, or clambering onto and over the play equipment. 

One child had remained in the room with Mrs. Willen. Mrs. Gardiner went back into the classroom and found Lily at her desk, looking fixedly at her teacher. 

“Come on Lily,” Mrs. Gardiner said. “Time to leave Mrs. Willen alone.” 

Lily looked at Mrs. Gardiner, then back at Mrs. Willen, still sunk, still, and sedentary in her chair.  Quite serene. 

“What’s wrong with her, Mrs. Gardiner?” She only called Mrs. Willen ‘miss’,  affectionately.  

“I don’t know, dear. Come along now,” Mrs. Gardiner said. 

Lily didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t name any of the things she felt inside her: duty, loyalty, charity, compassion. Yet they were there, palpably there. Guided by these kind and nameless spies within her, she tried on for size a tender defiance of Mrs. Gardiner’s order.

“I don’t want to leave her.” 

“You must, my love.” 

“I can’t. She never left us.” 

Mrs. Gardiner thought hard and quickly. She was moved by Lily’s concern. “Would you like to take her home?” 

Lily perked up excitedly, her cheeks flushed. 

“Oh yes, yes please!” 

She rushed over to Mrs. Willlen and Mrs. Willen looked into her eyes as though they were two big dishes of the most beautiful blue she had ever seen. She took Mrs. Willen’s hand in her hand and she came to life a little, only a little, ever so softly. Wordlessly, she moved, following Lily.  

Lily took Mrs. Willen home in the car. She sat in the back of her mum’s car with Mrs. Willen. Mum looked over her shoulder and said: 

“Who is that, Lily?” 

“Mrs. Willen. My teacher. I’ve been given permission to take her home and look after her.”

“Oh. Hello, Mrs. Willen…” Lily’s mum said. No reply. So she drove off home.  

Mrs. Willen was looked after carefully by Lily, who brushed her hair, and even washed her with water which she brought up to her room in a bowl. It was like having an adult sized doll to care for, and fuss over. Lily was very happy. She sat Mrs. Willen in a chair. Mrs. Willen stayed there all night. Lily was so happy she couldn’t sleep, so excitable, so restless with pleasure. All night, she had with her in her room the black silhouette of a woman , inked against the moody, tearful blue of the night. Bolt upright. All night. 

The next day when it was time for school, she dressed Mrs. Willen in her best dress. It was much too small but she managed to squeeze her into it, somehow. Mrs. Willen was a very small lady. Then they walked to school together, passing in front of a supply teacher who looked with stuttering curiosity and wonderment upon the odd couple while all the children didn’t seem to care – they,  Mrs. Willen’s class, might as well have never laid eyes on Mrs. Willen. Mrs. Willen, in her mildness, her pallor, her trance, her still still serenity, and lovely Lily, both…they both sat at Lily’s desk in the classroom, all day. Lily got two worksheets, two pens and sheets of lined paper – each time: everytime they were required. Two cups of apple and mango, at juice time. At the end of the day, when the final bell rang, Mrs. Willen walked with Lily out into the strange, cold, and coldly bonny November sun, and a shower of red leaves dancing deathwards in a crossing breeze, her brown, chill, veined hand in Lily’s smooth, warm, pink hand, her gaunt form squeezed into a little girl’s dress such as she wore to church when she was a girl, lifetimes before… Mrs. Willen was surprised to find that she was in paradise. A new, newly met paradise, stumbled upon. An unexpected paradise. The November sun, the red leaves and their deathly dance, Lily, her hand, her smile, her simply blue eyes, the playground. Without warning,  Mrs. Willen came to life again, and with a squeeze that took Lily by surprise, grasping her hand,  she said: 

“Don’t worry, Lily. I feel much better now.”