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September 7, 1968
I fear this is not what I thought I was getting into
Most of all I missed my father, his booming laugh, his quick wit, the hugs he gave that nearly squeezed the breath from my lungs.
I never thought my work was strong enough to share with anyone, but at my father’s insistence I sometimes let him read little snippets. I had a great talent, he said, and that talent should be nurtured somewhere capable professors could coax it out of me.
Somewhere, my father had decided, like Saint Perpetua’s.
Before I could protest further, a slender Black girl appeared in my doorway. She looked devastatingly chic in her cigarette pants and sailor shirt, and she wore her dark hair in a Brigitte Bardot bouffant.
And with that, she was gone, the sound of her and Elenore chattering disappearing down the hallway. And I was left with my own nerves and the wisps of hope about what the night might hold.
Twenty-five girls in long white dresses strode solemnly towards the crowd, their arms strung with crowns of greenery and their feet bare.
One of the girls raised her voice in Saint Perpetua’s school song, and all the other partygoers quickly joined in. It was strangely dour, more hymn than pep rally cheer, and I didn’t know the words, but it still gave me goosebumps.
Her eyes flicked over my body just once, so quickly it’s possible I was imagining it, but I flushed all the same. For one white-hot instant, that dark instinct to overcome and overpower, to kiss and bruise, flared to life in my stomach.
Then, after nightfall, my academic life really began.
Love turns some people into birds or beggars, but you make me into architecture, into a sanctuary of soft and holy spaces shaped to catch the sound of your voice. These eyes: rose windows bathing you in light. These arms: alcoves open in shadowed embrace. This heart: a confessional dark enough for your sins. This mouth: a bell driving away demons and calling you home.
For an awful, brittle moment, there was silence. I just kept staring at my journal, willing the moment to pass. Eventually, I lifted my gaze and found that De Lafontaine was looking at me intently, her arms crossed over her chest. There was a strange fire in her eyes. “Glorious,” she said finally, and I found that I could breathe again.
I turned to see Carmilla, lovely and dark, surveying me with a haughty air. “You’re very good,” she said without bothering with an introduction. “Where are you from?” “Mississippi,”
“Nowhere you would have heard of.” “Interesting,” she sniffed. “Where are you from?” I asked, because it seemed like the polite thing to do. “Austria,”
“Have you ever been in love?” I blinked a few times, dazed. To tell the truth, I hadn’t.
“No,” I answered honestly. “But I’d like to be, one day.”
“Jealousy gives you wrinkles, Carmilla,”
“I’m not jealous of a freshman. I’m just giving her some advice. If she doesn’t want to take it, that’s not my problem.”
Inexplicably, the hatred blooming between us sharpened my attraction even more.
Something shuttered behind Carmilla’s eyes and I saw that I had hit a nerve. Mean-spirited triumph coursed through me.
I couldn’t resist a glance over my shoulder as I went and I found Carmilla Karnstein watching me, her eyes burning.
Poetry was the only antidote to my temper.
A few moments later, the back door swung open, and De Lafontaine stepped out, as poised as ever.
That was why we often met here: the privacy, and the ease of access.
“Quite a little temper tantrum you threw in there,” she observed, taking me in with her keen eyes. I could never lie to her when she looked at me like that.
“Just admit you hate sharing the spotlight.” “I just don’t know why I have to share it with some new girl,”
“You’ve got no one to challenge you. You’re resting on your laurels. If Laura can keep pace with you, then I for one welcome a little competition.” “Competition.” I spat the word out like a curse. “You just think she’s clever, that’s all. Clever and charming.” “Don’t be jealous,”
I knew the terms of our arrangement: she led, and I followed.
IS SHE BONING THE TEACHER???????
“You haven’t invited me over for weeks,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. “I was worried you were sick or something.” De Lafontaine gave me a small smile that didn’t touch her eyes, like she was indulging a toddler. “It’s been the summer vacation, Carmilla. Why would I invite you over when our lessons aren’t in session?”
“If you’re worried about getting caught, maybe you should invite me over. In private.”
Worst of all, I worried that De Lafontaine was getting bored. “Carmilla.” De Lafontaine sighed, making my name sound like an admonishment.
Then, to my surprise, De Lafontaine reached out and smoothed her hand down my hair. “I take too much from you,” she murmured.
“You don’t take anything I’m not willing to give. I’m not afraid of you. I want to keep going.”
“You’re too good to me,” she said, lifting my hand up and ghosting her lips across the tender skin on the underside of my wrist.
“Some day…” De Lafontaine said, voice hoarse with want. This is how I liked her best, in her fleeting moments of vulnerability. “You’ll get tired of all this. You’ll realize what I really am, and you’ll go off to have your own adventures. You’ll forget all about me.” “I could never forget you,” I said firmly. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
De Lafontaine believed in learning by doing, and she kept her pupils in a constant feedback loop of reading and writing.
De Lafontaine had no patience for those who fell behind, and her syllabus clearly outlined an expulsion policy for anyone who failed to turn their work in on time.
I rewarded myself by flipping through a pamphlet of Victorian pornography.
“The good little church girl’s got a taste for dirty books, has she? Oh, that’s rich.” “Wait, how do you know I go to church?”
“No, I don’t think I will. These illustrations certainly are imaginative, aren’t they?” “Carmilla,”
“To women who crave the sweet juice of familiar fruit.”
THATS CRAZY
I was twenty years and nine days old when I met Professor De Lafontaine for the first time.
“Did you really mean what you wrote? In those letters?” she asked. “You read them?” I breathed, rapt by her simple presence. I had written her four, and she had never responded. “Of course I read them.
“Then come in, Carmilla,” she said, stepping aside to welcome me into her office. “Tell me, what have you been reading lately?”
Everything she asked of me afterwards, all the little agonies and offerings she required to keep me in her good graces, was given without hesitation or regret.
For the entirety of the spring semester of my junior year, I was her morning glory, her silver spoon, her prize mare.
And then the Sheridan girl arrived. In one fell swoop, my station as the favorite became precarious.
She had to. I didn’t know what would become of me if she didn’t.
Carmilla’s poems were all about Youth, or Eternity, or any of those other ineffable ideals that seemed only appropriate to render in capital letters.
Carmilla, while she never lowered herself to participating in gossip about our teacher, would sometimes smile in a way that suggested she knew more about De Lafontaine’s late-night activities than anyone else.
