Teaching with certainty

"Stand up straight. Be like the letter ‘I'." said Miss Westwood to a child slouching in the corridor.

Miss Westwood walked with certainty in the shape of a letter ‘I' into a room. She forced a couple of dozen frightened and bemused people to sing a song that she had made up about capital ‘I'.

They thought of her as God, someone permanently certain and presumably born that way, while they were permanently uncertain, often helpless to the point of nausea. She walked past the open cloakroom, where the children scrambled to put on or take off clothes. They were deliberately left exposed, vulnerable and undignified to help adults walking past them feel private, dignified and strong. At the end of her working day, Miss Westwood walked with certainty towards her car, instantly found the keys and started her journey home with skill.

The closer to home, the more little cracks in her certainty appeared. When just outside the front door, Miss Westwood fumbled in her bag for the keys before quietly trying to sneak into the house.

"Marilyn? Is that you?"

Marilyn heard that sound - the sound of her mother - but pretended to not have. Hopefully her mother would stop there. Marilyn felt very uncertain and tried to slope upstairs. By the time she was gently opening her bedroom door, her body was in the shape of a letter ‘r'. Maybe she could get in without her mother seeing that she was home.

Stomp stomp stomp. "Marilyn - why didn't you answer me? I see that you're home."

Marilyn began to feel sick and helpless.

Marilyn went into the bathroom and bolted the door. She hated the idea of her mother walking in on her bedroom, so this was a haven. During this breathing space she might not have to think about her mother.

Did her mother do it deliberately? Marilyn tried to lose herself in Sudoku. Hopefully, her mother wouldn't interrupt her and she would have a quiet few minutes in the bathroom, to collect herself and feel certain again.

Bang bang bang. "You aren't going to be too long, are you? I'm going to have a bath at six o'clock."

All certainty and hope left Marilyns body. She tightened up to a point of discomfort and felt nauseous. Nothing was going to budge inside her for ages. Her mother had been doing this to Marilyn for thirty-eight years. Was it deliberate? Marilyn could never be sure and could not ask. She noticed that only her mother could be certain in their house. Marilyn longed to be walking the school corridors with certainty as Miss Westwood again. That they were the same corridors that she had slouched through as a frightened uncertain little girl, she had long forgotten.

The Sudoku fell bitterly to the floor.

She sat there, head glumly in her hands, legs tucked back, knickers at her ankles, another hour of constipation, her body in the shape of a letter ‘s'.