Rush Home Road by Lori Lansens

Author:Lori Lansens
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Modern, Contemporary, Adult
ISBN: 9780676974515
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2002-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Salt

MRS. PIGOT, THE FIRST-GRADE teacher, was standing over Sharla, flicking her red fingernails like she did when she wanted a fight. Sharla was silent, in the thrall of the fat yellow boogers riding hairs in Mrs. Pigot’s nostrils. The teacher opened her mouth and Sharla winced at the spoiled-turkey smell of her breath.

“I asked you a question, Sharla Cody,” the teacher said in her slow, slurry voice, as the other children watched and waited, fearing and hoping for the worst.

Sharla didn’t know how to explain why she hadn’t handed in her work page or why it was still in her lift-up desk or why she hadn’t brought it home at all since it was called homework.

Mrs. Pigot pointed around the room, saying, “Cindy turned in her page. And Terry turned in his. Prasora’s mother helped,” she said, pointing to the Portuguese girl in the back row, “and she hardly speaks English!”

Sharla looked at Prasora and wished she could get ear holes and hang swingy gold hoops from her lobes too.

“Sharla! Sharla Cody! I’m waiting for an answer!”

Sharla had no answer so she looked down at her shoes. This wasn’t the first time Mrs. Pigot had stood over her and hated her in this way. The first time was on her very first day at Princess Street Public School. Sharla’d been looking out the window, watching Mum Addy hobble toward her waiting taxi, noticing how she was slower now than at the beginning of summer. Sharla wished she could go back to the little trailer with her porcelain doll and her soap-smell Mum Addy, instead of sitting in the grade-one classroom with Mrs. Pigot and her mothball fall clothes. Mrs. Pigot was calling out attendance. “Sharla Cody? Is Sharla Cody present? Sharla Cody?”

Sharla didn’t hear, or wasn’t listening, and when her ears finally caught the pattern of her name, she’d swivelled in her chair and shouted without meaning to, “What?”

The other children laughed, thinking Sharla was a sassy brat. Mrs. Pigot strode down the aisle to Sharla’s desk, grabbed her by the fabric of her pretty white dress, and dragged her up to the front of the class. She stood there, clutching the eyelet collar in a way that made Sharla worry it’d rip. Her eyes were bulging and her face was red as she said, “Children, do you all know what the word ‘example’ means?”

The children sat in silence, for even the ones who knew thought better than to call attention to themselves just now.

Mrs. Pigot shook Sharla like she was a bad cat or a just-killed rabbit. “I’m going to make an example out of Sharla Cody, so you will know, class, what the consequences are for misbehaving.” With that, Mrs. Pigot dragged her big oak chair out from behind her desk so that all the children could see. She sat down on the chair and pulled Sharla over her lap. She lifted up the white dress to show Sharla’s new-for-school pink underwear and yanked down the underwear to show Sharla’s soft brown bum.

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