Free The Cloaca by Andrew Hood Page A

smiling.
    â€œFrances?” Frances glanced over her own shoulder, half expecting to see herself, dawdling, bent at the water fountain.
    â€œYour daughter.”
    Frances looked again down the empty hall.
    With a peach pit chin Frances admitted that she was Frances. And in a choked hush she did her best to explain about doodling vs. drawing, and Zeno, and a little bit about karate and the summer she had decided to be a carpenter but walked out the first night after seeing some guy get the drawstrings of his shorts caught in a machine and his crotch nearly mangled.
    â€œAll I want for my life right now,” she explained, whispering and harried, “is to make things look like what they’re supposed to be. That’s all.”
    Marilyn—that was the teacher’s name—smiled wider. Her teeth were perfect. The kind you just wanted to lick. “It’s fine by me if you join the class,” she said, putting her hand on Frances’s shoulder, exposing a bristly armpit, “But it’s not entirely up to me, doc.” And then she winked.
    The class was all ponytails, baseball hats, and track pants. A dozen nine- and ten-year-olds were seated around four large teacher’s desks pushed together. The clamour of them stopped when the door opened. They eyed Frances as she took a seat in their midst, most of them breathing out of their mouths and not blinking enough.
    Frances waved demurely. She felt awkward and overdressed, and maybe higher than she’d first thought. She had braced herself to be the youngest in a class filled with bored, chatty middle-aged women, the kind of women she imagined took beginner art classes. Those idle women who always came into Bad Service in groups of ten, who raved for hours over glasses of wine, and then wanted to pay individually on debit. “It says option for tip on here,” they’d squint at the machine, never bringing their glasses for some reason, “Is there an option to not?” Maybe because of her size, these woman had always treated Frances like a child, so for their imagined sake she had tried to put on the airs of maturity. A dour plum skirt, a limp brown sweater, saddle shoes, and a pair of glasses without a prescription.
    â€œSo there’s been a mix-up,” Marilyn started, and went on to explain the gist of Frances’s predicament. The kids looked at her like she was something on TV.
    And then Frances was put to a vote. The class buried their heads in their arms while Frances and Marilyn watched. The room smelled like old rulers and pencil shavings. At a distance again, in the unflattering greeny light of the fluorescents, Frances got a clear enough look at her new teacher’s boobs to give a description to a police sketch artist.
    While the children were nestled in the crooks of their arms like sleeping pigeons, it occurred to Frances that now was a ripe time to secret around the room and steal all of their little knapsacks. What did they have in those bags? Dolls? Stickers? Cellphones and computers? What did kids do with themselves these days?
    Her wandering, criminal eyes caught Marilyn’s. The woman winked again at Frances, as if she was on board with the whole knapsack stealing idea. They’d split the haul.
    Like high-fiving and skateboards, winking seemed to be making a comeback, Frances was starting to notice. What exactly was she supposed to understand? All a wink was confirming was that the other person knew what was going on. But if you don’t know what they know, or what they think you know, then a wink means nothing.
    At the vote, all the hands had gone up in favour of Frances—except one. One hand couldn’t stay down enough.
    After class Frances scanned the parking lot for that kid, that redhead with a melon as big as a pumpkin that for the rest of the night had stared hatefully at her like he was trying to blow her up with his mind. After outlining the course—a two month