Stare from the House of Irene

A STARE FROM THE HOUSE OF IRENE

To Irene, she would always be a phenomenal woman, the embodiment of the Maya Angelou poem. As the 27 year-old architecture student held a death grip on her brand new x-acto knife and ferociously shaved her pencil to a sharp point, her mind drifted back to a woman she had met almost five years ago. Had it really been that long? Jade’s hair was probably highlighted in silver by now. They had met at a conference, a STEM Conference in Pennsylvania. The trait that stood out most vividly to Irene was her mass of curly hair arranged in a soft afro. Then, it was her heels. Jade was at least 5’ 11”, tall for a woman, but she was unafraid to take up space.

Irene was mesmerized, as she was none of these things; so when a friend urged her to talk to Jade, Irene felt nervous and scattered. Unsure of what to say, she let Clementine take the lead until Jade, a bit uncomfortable with the dynamic, prompted her to speak. Assuming the role of a sort-of mentor, Jade had sacrificed two of her Saturdays to meet with Irene and Clementine at a local coffee shop. On their first meeting, obviously endangering the second, Irene had offended Jade, as she did most people, non-verbally. She was not completely non-verbal, although some familiar strangers thought she was mute. She was probably an undiagnosed autistic, but she was willing to talk to people that she knew well. Irene was uncomfortable, however, around people of Jade’s stature, and it showed.

The story about Jade is relevant because it was happening again, but this time it was worse. This time, she had offended a professor; a tall, slim, and unusually intelligent woman. The professor was young and somewhat touchy, so when Irene stared at her unblinkingly, she physically recoiled at the disturbing and unexpected stare, or was it a glare?

It was the professor’s first day of work and she felt both anxiety and excitement as she anticipated taking this new step. The class had begun. As she turned her head to scan the room, she momentarily caught Irene’s eye. The professor felt slightly uneasy upon meeting Irene, but quickly shook off the discomfort. Something about this girl’s overwhelming intensity and her odd balance of insecurity and overconfidence left the professor unsettled. That was a month ago. She had been trying to treat Irene like any other student, but today, Irene did not act like any other student. Then something startling happened, Irene was staring at her…intently… unblinkingly. A shudder went through the professor’s body as she visibly cringed and pulled back. Irene, unaware that there was anything unusual about her stare, just continued to watch the professor speak, but noticing the reaction, she felt a vague sense of foreboding. These things never ended well. Still, she did not know the professor, not really, and had woefully underestimated her.

Irene’s nerves had been fraught with anxiety whenever the professor had come to her table for desk crits. For some reason, she felt an odd combination of affinity and mistrust for this woman, and some unease, yet she wanted to be liked and accepted by her. Lacking social insight, Irene did not realize that the desire for acceptance and respect was mutual. Had she understood this, perhaps she would have escaped what was soon to come.

It was 6pm when the professor rushed through the doorway of the sprawling, modern apartment that she shared with a tall and stylish foreign guy she often referred to as her partner. After fumbling for her key, Daphne turned the lock and hurried past the elegant plant stand that she had insisted on placing across from the entrance, next to the hallway window. The couple was able to afford the apartment because Javier, seven years Daphne’s senior, was making north of 300k and was willing to spring for any apartment Daphne wanted within a $6500 budget. After walking into her comfortable, but minimalist living room, Daphne spilled her bags on a nearby chair and sank into her soft and dark leather couch. As she rattled off angrily about what had happened, Javier sat across from her holding both her hands. He had learned in couple’s therapy that this was a great way to make his partner feel seen and cared for. Daphne could not understand why her emotions were so triggered. She had maintained her composure throughout the workday, but now she was having a meltdown. “What the actual fuck?” shouted Daphne. “I was so nice to her!”

The event brought her back to an incident that had occurred in third grade. It happened so many years ago, but the impression it left on her would probably never leave. It was a mild joke, “just a joke,” she had said, but it had suddenly made Daphne feel like an outsider in the one community that she had felt a full member of. It was jarring, as if an aluminum partition had been pulled from the ceiling and unceremoniously slammed to the ground, permanently. “Maybe Daphne should get half a reparation,” joked Dolores, a clear allusion to Daphne's mixed heritage and mocha colored skin. Daphne gave a half-hearted laugh but inside she felt upset, her emotions mirroring those she would feel in the classroom seventeen years later.

Daphne’s thoughts returned to the present. She had achieved most of her dreams and had gotten everything she could want and expect by the age of twenty-five. Why was she so bothered by a rude stare from a 27 year-old loser who should have graduated from college years ago? Daphne had never had her IQ tested, but it was clear from her consistent success in school, work, and almost everything she had ever tried to do, that she was very bright and likely had an IQ north of 120.

Daphne felt her mind and body relax, and as Javier walked toward the kitchen to make them tea; she began to spin a web, to form a strategy to make Irene feel as much an outsider as her. Given the status and power differential, this would be fairly easy.

As Irene walked into the classroom some days later and placed her laptop bag on a nearby chair, she noticed that the professor who had just wrapped up the previous class was giving her a mildly horrified stare. Was she being paranoid? She had never met this woman. Nor did she know the professor in the hallway whose quiet hostility was almost palpable. As Irene considered the situation, her thoughts immediately went back to Daphne, or Professor M. as her students called her, the professor’s last name being so unwieldy that most people simply avoided it. Irene had never been socially strong, but any fool could deduce what had happened.

She had never considered the humanity of professors; Daphne had always approached them the way she would a computer, an information machine, and she was beginning to see her error. Wiser classmates befriended their professors and tried to convert them to mentors, but not Daphne.

As her Structures class winded to a close, Irene pondered these things. She was slow to understand the social things of life, but the increasingly chilly temperature was forcing her to learn quickly. Given her very limited social circle, one would expect Irene to immediately call her only friend and pour out her heart, but she didn’t. In fact, she rarely poured out her soul to anyone but God. She wasn’t religious, but was still vaguely ethical, unwilling to find herself after death in the basement of Hell. She thought its penthouse would at least be bearable. The only book of the Bible that Irene found to be at all relevant to her life was Psalms. Like the psalmist, she took the liberty of pouring out her feelings and thoughts to God, even if she would never get the same validation and confirmation as King David.

After a month of operating in such a frosty climate, a student of fainter heart would have cried or transferred, but not Irene. She had long since lost sensitivity to this type of abuse, something Daphne had not accounted for. Professor M., never having been bullied herself, did not know that someone could develop immunity even to ostracization, society being so vital a human need. Noticing that Irene was not emotionally affected, the professor decided to up the ante. She had been stewing in anger for the past four weeks and wanted justice. Daphne had concocted a story in her mind of why Irene had behaved that way and was beginning to truly hate her. She wanted revenge that would cause Irene noticeable pain, something she wouldn’t be able to shrug off, despite her experience in bullying. After 30 minutes of brainstorming, The Professor decided on a spiritual approach. Daphne had never been to church as a child. Her family was not religious, and although she believed herself to be as ethical as the next person, she would sometimes descend into cruelty when angry. Because of this secular upbringing, Professor M. did not have a healthy fear of the occult. Having always been vaguely intrigued by the mystery and power of witchcraft, and to some degree, the sisterhood associated with it; The Professor perused her local bookstore until she found exactly what she was looking for. It was a velvety blue hardcover, nearly as thick as the bible, with its title in golden letters, Spells: A Beginner’s Guide. It was a book of instruction for novices of the dark arts. As she gracefully lifted the book from the table and turned one page after another with her pointer, Daphne smiled. This was precisely what she was searching for. It was a book for beginners, and it was written with clarity. She would take it home and clear a shelf to make space for a new genre. Daphne had always been a reader. It was a way of calming her mind and learning new things. It was also a hobby that had become niche and made her feel like a member of an exclusive club. She pulled out a pair of stylish glasses that she wore so infrequently that most of her friends did not know that she wore them at all. In public, she usually opted for contact lenses. Javier, unlike Daphne, had forgotten all about the meltdown, as it had happened a full month ago. He was surprised, but naively accepting of the new genre that was quickly aggregating on Daphne’s bookshelf . “Witchcraft?” said Javier, with an air of surprise, “I didn’t know you were into that.” Daphne was so engrossed in her reading that she did not even look up from her book. She flippantly commented that she wanted to teach Irene a lesson, not just about architecture, but about life, a lesson she would never forget. Javier felt slightly unsettled by the malice, but brushed his concern away. This was a common feminine trait, this unwillingness to let go of grudges over what seemed be the smallest infraction.

As she read, Daphne’s eyes grew wide. She had found the perfect spell.

The following Monday, as the Professor scanned the hallway for her unsuspecting victim, she located the petite and spacey student walking toward the elevator, anxiously trying to avoid eye contact with her. As Irene passed, the Professor locked eyes with her and uttered a faint incantation. Irene, unaware of what had just happened, suddenly stopped and crumpled to the ground. Exhilarated by a rush of power, Professor M. continued walking down the hallway even more confidently and pursed her lips into a slightly crooked smile.