Toil and Trouble

by

Cindy Rosmus

          It was senior year, back in ‘74, with teens high on Boone’s Farm, one kid streaking outside the pizza place, and the whole class erupting in applause the Monday morning after.

For me, senior year was being obsessed with Mr. C., my English teacher. That tall, lean, strange-looking guy with the sideburns and unibrow. Always in bell-bottoms and tight sweaters, so you saw his cadaverous chest, and nipples.

God, I loved him.

“’Bubble, bubble. . .’” he quoted, stirring an imaginary giant pot. “’Toil and trouble.” The three witches from Macbeth.

“Maggie,” he called me. Not Margaret, like bitchy Mrs. Meyer, the chemistry teacher, used to. I hated science.

 I knew Claudius poured mercury into Hamlet’s father’s ear and killed him. But Hamlet was junior English, not science.

“Maggie,” Mr. C. said, “Why do you think Macbeth let his wife call the shots?”

Of all the kids, he asked me. Like I knew what love was about. Like, instead of a frizzy-haired creep, I was some skinny blonde who guys dug.

“I . . . I . . .” What could I say? I was just so thrilled that he’d asked me.

Behind me, someone snickered. “You asking her?” More snickers. The whole class thought it was hysterical that this hot teacher saw me as a woman.

We all knew about him and Mrs. Meyer. Looks they snuck at each other. How his eyes were usually glued to her butt. Like he was wondering if she wore panties.

But clearly, he knew.

Poems I wrote him, late at night. More, after that “toil and trouble” day. Scrawled in purple ink in a purple spiral notebook that I hid under my bed. Real dirty ones, though I knew even less about sex than chemistry.

But I got so hot writing them, they would make him hot, too.

Freshman year, we did Romeo and Juliet. Love, and turmoil, and death. Above all, death! “’Thus,’” Romeo said, “With a kiss I die!”

I saw Mr. C. as a grown-up Romeo, straddling my Juliet’s corpse. But I wasn’t dead! Like in West Side Story, it was all about revenge. Like the snickering bullies in his Macbeth class, who didn’t want us to be happy! Like Mrs. Meyer, who had failed me, for spite.

But my poems would make him want me.

As surreptitiously as Macbeth snuck into Duncan’s room, I snuck that purple notebook under a pile of term papers on his desk.

As I followed the other kids out of the classroom, I was soaked with sweat. Are you crazy? Witch #1 asked me.

I almost ran back.

What if he fails you? Witch #2 was right behind. Then: What if you can’t graduate? Witch #3 smirked away.

As the bell rang, it tolled for my sanity.

I ran back. But not fast enough.

From behind the door, I peered inside, my heart pounding.

Behind his desk Mr. C. stood, reading my poems. With Mrs. Meyer right there!

He turned to her, murmured something that I couldn’t hear.

That look: Was it embarrassment? How, he might be thinking, had I never realized this? He flipped a page. Oh, Maggie!

With Witches #1, 2, and 3 right there.

I thought he was going to cry. How he bit his lip, like he couldn’t take it anymore.

He showed Mrs. Meyer the last poem he’d read.

And they laughed.

I don’t remember leaving the building. Or if he had seen, or called, after me. I don’t remember much.

But later, I recalled how in sophomore year, Mrs. Meyer had poured mercury on the table . . .

And let the lucky kids play in it.

Cindy Rosmus originally hails from the Ironbound section of Newark, NJ, once voted the “unfriendliest city on the planet.” She talks like Anybodys from West Side Story and everybody from Saturday Night Fever. Her noir/horror/bizarro stories have been published in places like Shotgun Honey, Megazine, Dark Dossier, Danse Macabre, The Rye Whiskey Review, Under the Bleachers, Punk Noir, The Yard, and Rock and a Hard Place. She is the editor/art director of Yellow Mama and has published seven collections of short stories. Cindy is a Gemini, a Christian, and an animal rights advocate.