Just Talking

From a Selection of Creative Nonfiction Writing

Soft, golden light casts shadows against the front of the stone schoolhouse. Birds tweet cheerily from above.

Monsieur Lopez leans against the large wooden door, which is worn by decades of elementary school children’s rugged exploits. He has taught at the French country school for 20 years, but his age is only evident in his perfectly trimmed salt and pepper beard, which frames an angular face and draws attention to soft, caramel eyes.

He has already spoken with Julien and Olivier about the upcoming transition to middle school, but he seems to know that this discussion with Nathalie will be more difficult – that it might not be much of a conversation at all.

Nathalie, back propped against the doorframe, bites her nails and looks as awkward as she must feel in a bright orange top and yellow shorts. Her shortly cropped shock of Crayola-black hair and large, round glasses pressed too close to her face make her the spitting image of Harry Potter, pre-Hogwarts.

“Now then, what’s the problem?” Monsieur asks in a kind, almost reverent voice. “You want to keep your own company? Or is it just that you can’t manage to talk to others?”

Monsieur Lopez has a way of speaking with the children that makes everyone around him feel calmer. He never raises his voice, but his soft, lilting tone still carries power.

Nathalie breathes deeply, but can’t seem to answer, like the words have gotten stuck in her throat.

Instead, she looks up at the man, who has taught her for as long as she can remember. He has taught her in the same comforting way, in the same vibrant classroom filled with bright yellow desks and books piled every which of way. This one room is all Nathalie has known of school.

This is where Nathalie learned how to count and how to write her numbers. Where she fell in love with diction, impressing her classmates with her uncanny ability to put the accent marks in just the right place. Where she learned to make crêpes, pouring the batter and flipping the paper-thin pancake.

All that will change next year, when she enters the sixth grade at a new middle school, which must seem forever away.

But for now, she is safe, in a place she knows well – with just her teacher for company.

“Shall I tell you what I think?” Monsieur Lopez asks.

“Yes,” Nathalie says, brightly.

Monsieur always asks easy questions – questions she can answer with a simple “Yes” or “No.”

“I think you can do it, but don’t really feel like it for now,” he says, quietly. “Am I wrong?”

Nathalie’s eyes dart from the teacher to her soft, pale thighs.

“Do you mind talking about it?” he asks.

“No” – not with the teacher.

But it’s different at home. At home Nathalie can’t get her words out – especially with her parents.

Monsieur Lopez has noted this, too.

A few months ago, he met with her mother for a parent-teacher conference. They’d met to discuss a different struggle: math. But their conversation had quickly turned from equations with numbers to interactions with friends.

“She feels freer with people from the outside than with her parents,” her mother had said.

Monsieur Lopez had agreed.

The mother’s eyes sunk under drooping eyebrows, and her mouth sagged with defeat. She clasped her hands tightly, waiting for the teacher’s consultation.

“If she seems less close to you,” the monsieur had said, after a long pause. “I’d say it’s just a transition, a necessary one.”

He’d chosen his words carefully, as if weighing each on a balance to determine its weight.

“What surprised me was when she spoke to me out of the blue,” he’d continued.

“Out of the blue?” – a note of hope in her voice.

He’d nodded. “I thought I was hearing things, that it wasn’t her. Then we carried on talking for part of playtime like that. It was wonderful.”

Nathalie’s mother had nodded. “I can believe that if you hear her voice all of a sudden, it makes you wonder.”

But what could coax Nathalie out of her own little world? With the end of the year approaching, that question had brought Monsieur Lopez to the front steps of the schoolhouse to talk with Nathalie, away from the other kids.

“You talk a lot more with me and the others now,” he tells Nathalie. “But it’s still hard for you at times. I’ve noted that so your new teachers will know that it’s hard for you. I had to tell them. Don’t you think so?”

   Hot flem rises in Nathalie’s nose and throat.

  She agrees, but seemingly more because of who told the new teachers than because she actually thinks it was a good idea. Monsieur Lopez can do no wrong.

“I think you’ll be okay, Nathalie,” he says, cupping her shoulder. “With a bit of effort, everything will be fine. You’ll be with older children. You’ll make new friends.”

Nathalie sniffs. It’s taken her so long just to open up to her old friends.

“We have to say good-bye one day,” Monsieur Lopez says, softly. “Is that what’s bothering you?”

Hunched shoulders, splotchy face, mouth hidden behind a moist hand, Nathalie swallows deeply.

“Were we right to talk about it?” Monsieur Lopez asks, sounding concerned.

Nathalie looks down, rubbing the inside of her leg. “Yes,” she says, quietly.

“Do you feel better now?”

“Yes.”

But Monsieur Lopez detects that something else might be wrong.

“You can still come and talk to me, next year,” he says. And then, “Do you have school on Saturdays?”

Of course not. Nathalie’s breathing calms.

“No,” Nathalie says, shaking her head.

“Come and see me then,” he says, as if her visiting would be the easiest, most desirable solution in the world. As if he has nothing else better to do every Saturday for the rest of the coming year. “Would you like to come over then?”

Still looking down, Nathalie smiles slightly. “Yes.”

“I’ll expect you every Saturday. You’ll come, won’t you?” a tone of concern in his voice, that she might not.

“Yes.”

“You can tell me all about middle school, things I don’t know. I’m here, and I don’t know what they do there.” She’d be doing him a favor by visiting. He goes on. “You’ll tell me how you’re doing.”

This sounds agreeable, doable. Still rubbing the folds of skin between her legs, Nathalie seems a bit calmer.

Monsieur Lopez looks down at her, concern shadowing his face.

“That way, we’ll still see one another,” he says.