Miss Matthews - Rhea ( circa 2001 )

Miss Matthews was my junior school English teacher,

true evidence of the far reaches Victorian repression.

I remember her fondly though because I knew for all

her picking and nagging she secretly liked me.



She was definitely somewhere between forty and fifty,

gray-haired, yet unmarried and jumping at anyone who

called her 'Mrs.' by mistake. I didn't know anything

else about her but rumors said she was a bit of a real

life Miss Havisham. The furrow on her brow was deep

and fissure like and continued upwards to merge with

the parting in her hair. She had permanently pursed

lips and if she ever smiled it was frightening.

Bunches of girls stood at corners and giggled at the

strange bra-petticoat we could see under her blouse.

We figured she stitched them herself because we could

not find a bra so conservative in any market.



Her entrance was always grand, she swept in and came

to a stop in the front of the class. A severe glance

around always followed, leaving us wondering what we

had done wrong. Then her copy of Julius Caesar would

be opened and held majestically in the palm of one

hand, the other hand would support it at the wrist, a

deep breath, and thus began the monologue on the

virtue prayer and Caesar would be ignored until the

last fifteen minutes of the class.



I was deep into my romance novel stage then; and

horrors, she caught me with The Far Pavilions under my

desk, carefully placed on my knees so I could slip it

under my skirt when needed. Unfortunately not in time,

I was so smitten with Ashton that I didn't see the

ramrod straight gray figure glowering like a

thundercloud over my head. When I finally tore my eyes

away from the page there was the dreadful silence of

the class and Miss Matthews' nasal whine wanting to

know what trash I was studying instead of Shakespeare.

When she saw what I was reading she looked positively

stricken. "These books are NOT for children!"



As luck would have it I was saved by the bell.



I suppose she was referring to the one dirty scene in

the book that had been thumbed through so often by

lusty schoolgirls the book fell open at the exact page

when left on its spine. I also found her name in the

list of people who had borrowed it earlier. Clear as

day it said 'Miss Matthews'. I suppose she was ashamed

of it, for people like Miss Matthews it was a sin to

read anything other than the Bible.... and censored

copies of Shakespeare. The next time I had her class

she told me to "stop haunting the library with fat

books."



In a school where the prettiest and the cleverest and

the most talented got all the attention hers was more

than welcome. May be we both shared a common love for

Ashton even. Both our suppressed emotions reaching for

the intangible and unrequitable love of our hero from

an age long past, the only age that held passionate,

rebel love. I tried holding conversation with her but

it never went beyond Julius Caesar, or as she would

have it, the virtue of prayer. If an appropriate gap

in the conversation arose my mouth would dry up and

thoughts would turn to mush in my head. So I passed

through high school without ever bringing up the

subject. I changed and grew as people do, and I felt

myself slowly turning into Miss Matthews No. 2,

because I could never find Ashton, and I didn't want

anyone else.



I never thought I'd see her again, but I did. She was

sitting in a bus stop with a cane in one hand. I

slowed down next to her and she recognized me all

right. She was still distant, severe, but for once she

didn't start of on one of her monologues. She was

still unmarried and lived with her sister, and she

hadn't stopped teaching. Eventually I started getting

shifty, holding conversation with people like Miss

Matthews was always strained.  But I knew she was

itching to say something and I waited but it didn't

come, not until I got up to leave, and she looked a

trifle cheeky when she said it.

"Never been for a romp in the Himalayas?"

It was like some sort of coded sentence. "Never found

a good reason to, Miss Matthews," I replied.

"Well, better get on with it then. Time is precious."

"Yes. Good-bye, Miss Matthews."

"Good-bye."

-rhea (2001)