The Lofty Ms Piper

“Who?” the woman asked through the screen door.

Standing on the porch, looking at her wrinkled face, her bent-over frame, I was myself having trouble recognizing her as the lofty Ms Piper I once knew. If I’d passed her on the street, I wouldn’t have had the faintest clue it was her. Yet the barely concealed urge to strangle her was all too familiar. Only that she looked far worse than her years offered some solace; it didn’t make up for anything, but it was proof that she’d suffered.

“Jeanine Smith. You taught me in the tenth grade, remember?” I said, gripping the strap of my bag tighter, tempted to fling it far away.

“Yes, I suppose so…but I’ve taught so many students…” Her voice trailed off as she looked me up and down. With her feathery brows pinched, she asked, “Remind me what year this was?”

“Class of 2010?”

All at once, a beaming smile sprouted on her leathery, thin face, “You’d have to be in Kylie Simpson’s class then!” Abandoning the dullness of a moment ago, her watery grey eyes brightened, “Oh, what an exquisitely lovely girl, wasn’t she? Though, also charming and distinguished, of course,” she said with a triumphant look, as if daring me to contradict her.

Maybe I should strangle her, I thought, as a deep, almost murderous anger rose. So much so that I had to dip my head to hide the heat I could feel creeping up my neck—but raised scars always remained glaringly obvious, stubbornly defying the disguise of a cover-up.

“Yes,” I replied, almost bitingly. Then, reminding myself of the reason I was here, I added in a calmer tone, “We went to the same class.”

“Oh, how wonderful!” she chimed. But her hand remained still on the latch; she made no move to open the door. Cocking her head to the side, she asked, “Why did you say you wanted to see me?”

I didn’t want to see her. At all. I’d like to forget she even existed. I might as well have, if it wasn’t for my old diary that I found while cleaning my old room at my parents’ house. Finding that weathered notebook had felt like a burning blow, fueled by an onslaught of accompanying memories of what Ms Piper had done, only for it to burst and flatten at what lay beside it—a reminder of what I had done to her in turn. Even though I’d let it slip quietly from my mind over the years, I realized I was still carrying the guilt—made of things that lasted, it seemed, even when memories didn’t. Right then, my mind was resolved on what I needed to do, without regard for my will in the matter.

“I was in town and thought I’d look you up." Which was, of course, a lie.

Nodding with an uncertain look, she said, “I see,” then finally opened the latch and threw the door open. “Come on in.”

***

I followed her unsteady, trundling gait into a little room, where muslin curtains filtered the afternoon sun, but couldn’t quite dull the garish effect of the yellow paper plastered across the walls. The furniture, all very old, consisted of a sofa with a huge wooden back, an armchair on one side, and an oval table in front, on which lay an open book and a cup with steam still rising from it. The most striking feature of the room was the massive bookshelf along the right wall, crammed with rows upon rows of books.

I sat on the sofa, clumsily placing my handbag in my lap, while Ms Piper, without taking her eyes off me, sank into the armchair as if pressed down by a physical exhaustion that seemed to reach into her soul.

A moment of taut silence followed. Pondering where or how to start, what to say, I blurted out, “I heard you never got married?” as she reached for the cup on the table.

Caught off guard, she stalled momentarily, then, leaning back, her stance hardened, no longer the beaten old lady, she looked more like the Ms Piper I knew.

“Have you been asking about me, Ms…?”

For a second, I was back in that classroom, years ago, her stern gaze fixed on me with silent accusation, for some unthinkable offense I couldn’t even comprehend.

Sitting taller, I supplied “Smith.” Though I wanted to call her out on her bullshit— that one doesn’t forget the people they destroy—I said, “Just Jenny's fine. That's what everyone called me back in school.”

“Yes, I never married, Ms Smith,” she said, enunciating my last name, as she reached for the cup again and finally took hold of it. "And you? Do you have a husband—or, as they say these days, a partner?"

“Um…no.”

Then there was silence again, growing thicker, more strained with each passing second. But Ms Piper didn’t break it. She just drank from her cup, stoic eyes fixed on me over the rim. For a fleeting moment, I almost laughed at how worn she looked, and yet how utterly unchanged she was. No softness, no gentle warmth age was supposed to bring had found its way to her.

Not wanting to linger, I opened my mouth to tell her what I'd come to say, but it snapped shut again. I’d imagined it would be easy, as long as I chose the right words. But no matter how hard I tried, the words refused to rise—my throat locked them in. The weight of the bag in my lap and everything it carried suddenly pressed down on me. I couldn’t breathe. The walls seemed to close in, the tacky yellow wallpaper scraping against my skin. I don’t have to do this, I told myself. I glanced toward the passageway I’d walked through and wondered what she’d think if I simply got up and left.

I was taken out of my reverie when I heard, “So tell me, Ms Smith, are you writing nowadays?” The words landed on me like a hand on my shoulder, uncomfortably heavy, pushing me down, keeping me still.

“No, I haven’t written anything in years,” slipped out unthinkingly. Then, her words abruptly aligned into sense, “So you do know who I am?”

She ignored my question.

"I can’t say I’m surprised,” she said, setting her half-full cup back on the tabletop. With a disapproving look, she went on, “You don’t get to be proud of all your students. That’s the quiet misfortune of teaching, really—it’s that kind of a job."

Her words felt like a flash of force on skin. Stunned, I opened my mouth—but no sound came. She leaned back and continued, unfazed.

“I recall—only vaguely—how hopelessly pedestrian and limp your writing was. Good on you for keeping it to yourself.”

Why does she hate me so much? The question echoed through my head, like a reverberating symmetry. The first day of English class with her—the only subject I cherished—was etched in my mind as if it happened yesterday. I’d instinctively known that she disliked me on sight, a feeling that only grew with each passing day.

The memory of breaking my hand that year was still fresh, and how I’d taught myself to write with my left hand from fear of her. It wasn’t just in class either. Once, I was washing my hands at the sink in the washroom when she exited one of the stalls and took the spot beside me, and as she turned on the tap, she quipped, “Stop gawking at yourself in the mirror. You’re not that special.”

Her daily critique felt like a deliberate assault, intensifying until the day everything fell apart. I was sitting at the back of the class, scribbling in my diary—because inspiration didn't wait for a class to end—when it was wrenched from my hands. A muffled silence stoppered my ears, and panic rose as Ms Piper stood over me, silently reading my most intimate thoughts. Without a word, she walked to the front of the class with my diary in hand, and said—loud enough for every head to lift—

“It seems someone in this class believes she’s a writer and imagines herself in love.”

I froze, my breath turned to stone in my throat when she began reading one of the passages aloud. As she finished reading, she snapped the diary shut with a performative disdain. “That”, she announced, “was porn, dedicated to Jasper Cole.”

Jasper Cole—my worst-kept secret crush—was naturally dating Kylie Simpson, who didn’t need a reason to make someone’s life miserable, and now she had one gift wrapped and teacher-endorsed. The teasing, the jokes, the whispers that followed for the rest of the year weren’t even close to the worst part. It was what Ms Piper said to me that day when class ended that I haven’t recovered from yet—

“I hate to break it to you, Ms Smith,” she said, not looking sorry at all, “your writing is not only dull, but it exposes your utter lack of imagination”.

Sitting in her living room, in her turf, and despite vowing never to show her weakness again, I found myself asking on a half-sob, “Why do you hate me so much?”

It was in her class that I was introduced to the epics, allegories, and myths. To Woolf, Plath, and Atwood. She was the one who inspired me to write, and the one to take it away.

“It mattered what you thought,” I said, angrily swiping the traitorous tears sliding down my cheeks, “You mattered…so why?”

“What a foolish question,” Ms Piper scoffed. “Of course, I don’t hate you. My critique was for your betterment. Only you were too simple-minded, your brain filled with trashy daydreams of boys, to see it that way.”

“Is that what you think? That you humiliated me for my own good?”

“If you can’t think for yourself, someone else will.” She said, her chin tilting up, as if in defiance of her own words.

A nagging voice in my head whispered that of all people, she was the one I had the least right to hate. But the urge to cure myself of needing her approval overrode the need for fairness, for grace.

In the very next breath, I yanked open my bag, pulled out a fistful of envelopes, and flung them across the table. They scattered like leaves in a storm, hitting the cup on the table, making it spill.

“What're you doing?” Ms Piper shrieked, "Have you lost your mind?" she yelled, rising halfway from her chair.

But I wasn’t done. I reached in again, grabbed another stack, and slammed them down on the growing pile—paper striking the table with the crisp finality of a gavel.

I will come back to this moment a thousand times—the moment when she recognized her own handwriting. Hunching back into the chair, her hands trembling on its arms, she demanded in a hollow voice, “Where did you get these?”

As suddenly as it had risen, the rage collapsed in on itself, leaving only shame. “You wrote them… to me,” I said, barely above a whisper.

“Liar!” She yelled, not with the fury of a woman scorned, but that of a woman scared.

After what happened in that classroom, I was consumed with a fantasy of revenge. Until an idea, as wild as a weed, took root as deep as a tree. I didn’t overthink the first letter I wrote to her as a secret admirer. I wasn’t even sure what I’d hoped to achieve when I took a bus three towns over and posted it with a return address to a P.O. box. But when she wrote back a few days later, I still remember the feverish triumph—as if I was the goddess of victory—that the writing she’d called lacking and unimaginative had roped her in. And thus began the unseemly correspondence, the frequency of which only increased with time. Looking back now, perhaps it was my genuine admiration for her that leaked onto the paper, which made her believe all the lies.

But such is the nature of lies; they escalate, as they did in my last letter. To turn the knife deeper, I told her to meet me under the old railway bridge with no intention of showing up. The rush of netting a captive vanished when the next day I discovered she’d broken off her engagement, and in its place bloomed a queasy, crawling guilt. I stopped writing to her after that, but kept receiving letters from her for months that I never read.

“I was the one who wrote to you," I admitted, shame sliding like a flush beneath my skin.

“Stop lying, you vile, horrid, wench!” she screamed. “You…and your stories. You're always making things up.” But even as the words left her, her voice cracked. Her gaze fell upon the yellowed letters scattered across the table, now sullied by dark liquid; it became clear she knew, as she began weeping with sudden, wild abandon.

***

After my confession, neither of us spoke a word. I couldn’t tell if the silence came from not knowing what to say—or from knowing that words were too inadequate to hold the weight of what needed to be said. Either way, I couldn’t bear it any longer. I opened my mouth to say what I didn’t know, when Ms Piper broke the quiet.

“Why now?” she asked, her voice brittle as a stick, her red-rimmed eyes sharp in her etched face. Before I could speak, she cut in, “Why tell me at all?”

My heart quickened; of all the questions I was prepared for, this wasn’t one of them. “I…thought—”

“You thought what?”

“That I…you…” I fumbled for the right words, but each time, they met an impasse between my mind and tongue.

“Go on, Ms Smith,” she ordered.

“I…I don’t know!” I yelled, frustration rising like bile.

The sound of a bitter laugh escaped her, but there was no humor in her face, only derision. “Still the same, aren't you, Ms Smith? A blithering idiot, who doesn’t quite know why she does anything?”

Drawing back as if struck, my tongue finally let loose what it was holding at its end.

“Because I wanted to see you suffer, you bitch!” My hand flew to my mouth the moment the words left me. The tears came, then, sudden and heaving. I will never forget Ms Piper’s face in that moment, the way it furrowed at first, then cleared. Before I could realize I was already on my feet. Grabbing my bag with shaking hands, I started for the door, my chest aching with each step.

“Wait.”

My feet halted at the command. Without wanting to, I turned and I saw Ms Piper slowly rise, as if forcing her stiff legs to bear her weight. She then crossed the room to the bookshelf with measured steps, where she lingered, searching. Then, from between the pages of a book, she drew out a single sheet of paper. Clutching it in her palm, she walked to where I stood and held it out to me.

“You were my best student,” she said, with no softness or warmth present in her voice. “I only ever wanted to push you…I just didn’t know how to do it gently.”

The paper was one of my old essays, written for her class in my clumsy left-hand scrawl. I took it from her, blinking back fresh tears of anger, of shame, because neither benevolent intentions nor vengeance absolved an act of its cruelty.

When I stepped outside her house, rain had started falling, and with the rain, darkness seemed to come too, spinning down like ashes. The kind of light that truth is supposed to offer was nowhere in sight.