“Owen, can you read the word carved down here by the base of the sculpture?”
Owen stood and crouched down so he could see the word Wilson was pointing to.
“Echohawk,” Owen read. “Echohawk?” he repeated with a surprised inflection. Owen whipped his head toward me, his eyebrows raised doubtfully. I really, really didn't like Wilson very much at that moment.
“Yes. Echohawk. This piece is called 'The Arc,' and it was carved by Blue Echohawk. Blue has agreed to answer some questions about her work. I thought you all might find it interesting.”
I stood and moved next to Wilson but kept my eyes trained on the sculpture so that I didn't have to make eye contact with anyone in the room. The class had fallen into stunned silence. Wilson started by asking some basic questions about tools and different kinds of wood. I answered easily, without embellishment and found myself relaxing with each question.
“Why do you carve?”
“My . . . father . . . taught me. I grew up watching him work with wood. He made beautiful things. Carving makes me feel close to him.” I paused, gathering my thoughts. “My father said carving requires looking beyond what is obvious to what is possible.”
Wilson nodded as if he understood, but Chrissy piped up from the front row.
“What do you mean?” she questioned, her face screwed up as she turned her head this way and that, as if trying to figure out what she was looking at.
“Well . . . take this sculpture for example,” I explained. “It was just a huge hunk of mesquite. When I started, it wasn't beautiful at all. In fact, it was ugly and heavy and a pain in the ass to get in my truck.”
Everyone laughed, and I winced and muttered an apology for my language.
“So tell us about this particular sculpture.” Wilson ignored the laughter and continued, refocusing the class. “You called it 'The Arc' – which I found fascinating.”
“I find that if something is really on my mind . . . it tends to come out through my hands. For whatever reason, I couldn't get the story about Joan of Arc out of my head. She appealed to me,” I confessed, slanting a look at Wilson, hoping he didn't think I was trying to butter him up. “She inspired me. Maybe it was how young she was. Or how brave. Maybe it was because she was tough in a time when woman weren't especially valued for their strength. But she wasn't just tough . . . she was . . . good,” I finished timidly. I was afraid everyone would laugh again, knowing that “good” was not something that had ever been applied to me.
The class had grown quiet. The boys who usually slapped my rear and made lewd suggestions were staring at me with confused expressions. Danny Apo, a hot Polynesian kid I'd made out with a time or two, was leaning forward in his chair, his black brows lowered over equally black eyes. He kept looking from me to the sculpture and then back again. The quiet was unnerving, and I looked at Wilson, hoping he would fill it with another question.
“You said carving is seeing what's possible. How did you know where to even start?” He fingered the graceful sway of the wood, running a long finger over Joan's bowed head.
“There was a section of trunk that had a slight curve. Some of the wood had rotted, and when I cut it all away I could see an interesting angle that mimicked that curve. I continued to cut away, creating the arch. To me it looked like a woman's spine . . . like a woman praying.” My eyes shot to Wilson's, wondering if my words brought to mind the night he had discovered me in the darkened hallway. His eyes met mine briefly and then refocused on the sculpture.
“One thing I noticed, when I saw all your work together, was that each piece was very unique – as if the inspiration behind each one was different.”
I nodded. “They all tell a different story.”
“Ahhh. Hear that class?” Wilson grinned widely. “And I didn't even tell Blue to say it. Everyone has a story. Every thing has a story. Told you so.”
The class snickered and rolled their eyes, but they were intent on the discussion, and their attention remained with me. A strange feeling came over me as I looked out over the faces of people I had known for many years. People I had known but never known. People I had often ignored and who had ignored me. And I was struck by the thought that they were seeing me for the first time.
“It's all about perspective,” I said hesitantly, giving voice to my sudden revelation. “I don't know what all of you see when you look at this,” I nodded toward my carving. “I can't control what you see or how you interpret what you see any more than I can control what you think of me.”
“That's the beauty of art,” Wilson suggested quietly. “Everyone has their own interpretation.”
I nodded, looking out over the sea of faces. “For me, this sculpture tells the story of Joan of Arc. And in telling her story . . . I guess I tell my own, to some degree.”
“Thank you, Blue,” Wilson murmured, and I crept to my seat, relieved it was over, the heat of so much attention heavy on my skin.
The room was hushed for a heartbeat more, and then my classmates started to clap. The clapping was modest and didn't shake the room in thunderous applause, but for me, it was a moment I won't forget as long as I live.
It turned out that Pemberley was the name of Mr. Darcy's house in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. That was the inside joke. Tiffa had named Wilson's house Pemberley to poke him about his name. It made me like her even more. And my regard for her had nothing to do with the fact that she seemed to love my carvings, though that certainly didn't hurt.
I called the number on the card Wilson gave me and enjoyed ten minutes of effusive praise in very proper English. Tiffa was convinced she could sell everything she had bought up at the cafe and at significantly higher prices. She made me promise to keep carving and promised to have a contract sent over for me to sign. The Sheffield would take a healthy cut of everything sold in their gallery, which would include Tiffa's percentage, but I would get the rest. And if the pieces sold at the prices Tiffa was sure they would sell for, my portion would still be substantially more than I made from them now. And the exposure would be priceless. I had to keep pinching myself through the conversation, but when it was over, I was convinced that, in the struggle to become a different Blue, my fortunes were changing too.
That Friday night, instead of carving, I watched every version of Pride and Prejudice I could get my hands on. When Cheryl dragged herself home from work eight hours later, I was still sitting on the couch staring at the television as the credits rolled by. The English accent had made it very easy to substitute Wilson into every depiction of Mr. Darcy. He even had the mournful eyes of the actor who played opposite Keira Knightley. I found myself seeing him in every scene, angry with him, crying for him, half in love with him when it was all said and done.
“What are you watching?” Cheryl grumbled, watching Colin Firth stride across the menu screen over and over again, waiting for me to push play.
“Pride and Prejudice,” I clipped, resenting Cheryl's intrusion on my post-Darcy glow.
“For school?”
“No. Just because.”
“You feelin' okay?” Cheryl squinted at me. I guess I couldn't blame her. My preferences usually swung toward The Transporter and old Die Hard movies.
“I was in the mood for something different,” I said non-commitally.
“Yeah, I guess so.” Cheryl looked doubtfully at the screen. “I never cared for that hoity-toity stuff. Maybe it was because in those days I woulda been the one scrubbin' the pots in the kitchen. Hell, girl. You and I woulda been the girls the Duke chased around the kitchen!” Cheryl chuckled to herself. “Definitely not Duchess material, that's for sure.” Cheryl looked at me. “'Course we're Native, which means we wouldn't have been anywhere near England, would we? They might not have even let us scrub the pots.”
I pointed the remote at the screen and Mr. Darcy disappeared. I pulled my pillow over my face and waited until Cheryl went into her bedroom. She had ruined eight perfect hours of pretending in ten seconds. And even worse,
she had to remind me that “I wasn't Duchess material.”
I stomped to my room, mentally defending myself. It was perfectly acceptable to have a crush on a fictional character. Most women did! Cheryl, for all her insistence on giving me a reality check, had a thing for vampires, for hell sake!
But that wasn't the problem, and deep down I was too honest to deny it. It was perfectly fine to have a crush on the fictional Mr. Darcy, but it wasn't acceptable to have a thing for the real one. And I had a thing for my young history teacher. No doubt about it.
Chapter Twelve
The test was positive. I took several more over the next few days, until I could no longer convince myself that all the results were wrong. I was pregnant. At least eight weeks along, by my calculation. I had slept with Mason the night Wilson and I had been stranded at the school, and I'd avoided him since. He had called and texted, but other than a few angry messages on my voicemail, making insinuations about “Adam,” he had stayed away. He probably felt guilty about the picture, but I had really hoped he would move on because I had.
I had moved on, but life had sent me hurtling back. And I was devastated. I missed a week of school, called in sick to work, and slept constantly, unable to face the truth. The nausea that had forced me to face the possibility that I might be in trouble in the first place descended on me with a vengeance, making it easier to wallow and hide. Cheryl was mostly oblivious, but after a week of my not leaving the house, I knew I would have to “recover” or risk having to explain to Cheryl what was wrong with me. I wasn't ready for that conversation yet, so I pulled myself together and went back to school and resumed my normal shifts at the cafe. But the knowledge was like a painful sliver trying to work its way out, constantly there, just under the surface, impossible to escape, impossible to eradicate, and before long, impossible to ignore.
We had been talking about the Spanish inquisition for a week, and the correlation between the inquisition and witch hunts had been Wilson's monologue to start the day.
“We think of witchcraft as a mostly medieval phenomenon, but roughly 100,000 people were tried for witchcraft between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. Of those tried, approximately 60,000 were executed. Burned at the stake, more often than not. 75% of those executed were women. Why the disproportionate numbers? Well, woman are more susceptible to the influence of the devil, see.” Wilson's eyebrows quirked as the girls in the class immediately took issue with his statement.
“What?” he threw his hands up in mock protest. “It all started with Adam and Eve, didn't it? At least that was the logic of the church throughout the medieval period and forward. Many of the women who were accused were poor and elderly. Women also worked in the areas of midwivery and healing. They were the ones who cooked and cared for others, so the idea of them cooking up a potion or poison or casting a spell was an easier label to lay on a woman than a man. Men settled things with their fists, but women were less physical and more verbal, perhaps more prone to giving a tongue lashing that might be construed as a witch's curse. I find it interesting that in history all one had to do to discredit a woman was label her a witch. How do we discredit a strong woman today?”
The class stared back at Wilson, not understanding. And then it clicked.
“You label her a bitch,” I offered boldly.
The class gasped, as was customary when someone let a bad word fly. Wilson didn't flinch though. He just looked at me thoughtfully.
“Yes. It's often the very same thing. Let's compare. Throughout history, women have been defined by beauty. Their worth has been tied to their faces, has it not? So as a woman ages and her beauty fades, what happens to her worth?”
The class was following now.
“Her worth would diminish, but what about her freedom? In some ways, a woman who is no longer beautiful, no longer competing for the hand of the richest or most eligible man might have less to lose. A fifty-year-old crone in the 1500's might not be as afraid to speak her mind as a fifteen-year-old girl who feels the pressure to marry and marry well. In that way, the less attractive woman might be more free, more independent, than the beautiful girl.
“Nowadays, women are still judged according to their physical attributes, moreso than men. But times have changed, and women don't necessarily need men to provide for them. Women today have less to lose by speaking their minds, and calling someone a witch is fairly ineffective. So we use the same tactics that were used long ago, just different words. I find it interesting, though, that the label used to discredit a strong, independent woman has only changed my a mere letter.”
The class laughed, and Wilson smiled with us before he moved on.
“Which brings us to our end-of-year project. What label do you wear? Why do you wear it? Many of you are seniors and will be moving out into the larger world. You don't have to continue wearing the label you've worn. Will you choose to drag it along with you and don it in your new circles, or will you choose to shed it and make a new name for yourself?” Wilson looked at the attentive faces surrounding him.
“Sadly, in school, and often in life, we are defined by our worst moments. Think about Manny.” The room was silent with contemplation, and Wilson paused, as if the memory was difficult for him as well.
“But for most of us, who we are is made up of the little choices, the little acts, the little moments that comprise of our lives, day after day. And if you look at it that way, labels are pretty inaccurate. We would all have to wear a thousand labels with a thousand different descriptions to honestly depict ourselves.” Wilson strode to his desk. “Here. Take one and pass them back. Go on.” Wilson handed a stack of heavy white pages to the first person in each row. Each page had about twenty labels on it. I took a page and handed the rest to the kid behind me.
“If I told you to peel each label off and stick it to yourself and then walk around the room and let different people write something about you – just one word, like witch, for instance – on the label, what do you think they would write? Should we try that?”
I felt dread pool in my belly like hot wax. There was a general unease in the classroom, and people started to grumble and murmur under their breaths.
“Don't like that idea, eh? Lucky for you, I don't like it either. For starters, people would either be too nice or too brutal – and we'd get very little honesty. Secondly, although it DOES matter what others think of you . . . yes, I said it, it does matter.” Wilson paused to make sure we were listening. “We all like to throw out those cuddly cliches that it doesn't, but in a business sense, in a relationship sense, in a real-world sense, it DOES matter.” He emphasized “does” and eyed us all again.
“So although it matters, it doesn't matter as much as what we think of ourselves because, as we discussed earlier on in the year, our beliefs affect our lives in very real ways. They affect our story. So. I want YOU to label yourself. Twenty labels. Be as honest as you can. Each label should be one word – two max. Make it short. Labels are just that . . . short and unforgiving, aren't they?”
Wilson opened a huge box of black Sharpies and proceeded to hand one to every student in the class. Permanent marker. Nice. I watched as everyone got busy around me. Chrissy had eschewed the Sharpie for her gel pens and was busy writing words like “awesome” and “cute” on her labels. I felt like writing KICK ME on one of my labels and sticking it to her ass. Then I would write SCREW YOU on the rest of them and smack them one by one on Wilson's forehead. He was so aggravating! How could someone I liked so much make me so angry?
The image of Wilson with labels on his forehead made me smile for a second. But only for a second. This assignment was seriously messed up and seriously degrading. I looked down at the little white boxes in front of me, just waiting for me to tell it like it is. What would I put? Pregnant? Knocked-up? That would qualify. Two words, right? Or how about Skank? Maybe . . . LOSER? How about Screwed? Done? Finished? Game over? The word that popped into my head next had me shuddering. Mother. Oh, hell no.
“I can't do this!” I said loudly, emphatically.
Everyone looked at me, Sharpies paused, mouths open. And I hadn't really been talking about the assignment at all. But I found I couldn't do it either. I wouldn't do it.
“Blue?” Wilson questioned softly.
“I won't do this.”
“Why not?” His voice was still just as soft, just as gentle. I wished he would yell back.
“Because it's wrong . . . and it's . . . stupid!”
“Why?”
“Because it's incredibly personal! That's why!” I threw my hands in the air and shoved the labels onto the floor. “I could lie and write down a bunch of words that mean nothing, words I don't believe, but then what would be the point? So I'm not going to do it.”
Wilson leaned back against the chalk board and stared at me, his hands clasped loosely.
“So what you're telling me is you refuse to label yourself. Right?”
I stared back at him stonily.
“You refuse to label yourself?” he asked again. “Because it that's the case, then you've just passed this little test with flying colors.” A protest started up around me, kids feeling like they had been given the short end of the stick because they had done what they had been asked to do. Wilson just ignored them and continued on. “I want you to throw the labels away. Peel them off, rip them up, scribble them out, throw them in the rubbish bin.”
I felt the heat of confrontation leave my face and my heart resume a more normal pace. Wilson looked away from me, but I knew he was still talking to me, especially to me.
“We've written our histories throughout the year. But now I want you to think about your future. If you predict your future based on your past, what does your future look like? And if you don't like the direction you're headed, which label do you need to shed? Which one of those words that you've written to describe yourself should be abandoned? All of them? What label do you want for yourself? How would you label yourself if the labels weren't based on what you thought of yourself but what you wanted for yourself?” Wilson picked up a stack of folders. One by one, he began passing them out.