Liana Johnson: EXPOSURE • Cleaver Magazine

Fiction by Liana Johnson
EXPOSURE

“Haven’t you ever been spurned by a lover?” Ms. Smith said in her outside voice. Our sixth-grade English class was acting out The Crucible in the school library. Ms. Smith directed the question to Jake, who played John Proctor, and Ashley, who played Abigail Williams. The rest of us sat on the floor with our legs crossed, yawning, chewing our nails, or picking at the matted carpet. Ms. Smith imparted life lessons to her young pupils that weren’t found in any curriculum, and the lesson that day in 1998, it seemed, would have to do with spurning.

“We’re twelve,” said Ashley.

Ms. Smith sighed. “Someday, you’ll be spurned. For now, you need, at least, to know how to act viciously. Surely, you’ve wanted to strangle someone. A sibling, a friend?” Bunching up her long skirt, she leaned down to Ashley and Jake’s level with a mischievous smile. Ms. Smith was nearly the same age as our grandparents, and she had more verve than most of the other teachers at school. She was tall, with short white hair, and often warned us that she would soon be entirely blind in one eye. Her black, gray, and brown clothes draped her thin frame as if they didn’t want to cling too close. She’d roll up her sleeves multiple times a day as a threatening gesture to her students, other teachers, or parents, especially those who complained that sixth grade was too young for The Crucible. Ms. Smith believed our parents sheltered us and that we should be free to get hurt and get tough and now, apparently, spurned—and if they wouldn’t see to it, she would. Exposure, she called it, the opposite of being sheltered.

While Ms. Smith gave Ashley and Jake notes, Brian, a class clown who didn’t have many friends, tore a sheet of paper from his notebook and ripped it into bits, which he crumpled into balls and flicked at various classmates. He got me right on the forehead with one of them. Some kids fired the ammunition back at Brian, and the papers gathered in the crotch of his cargo shorts.

Ms. Smith raised her voice. “She’s putting on a show—don’t you see? Ham it up— ‘shadow!’”

Ashley muttered, “Oh, Heavenly Father—”

— “a show, Ashley, she must be convincing”—

“I don’t want to play Abigail Williams!”

I exchanged glances with Trish and Sarah, my best friends. We used to be friends with Ashley, but the previous year she began spending less time with us and more time with Julia and Maggie—bright, charming girls who returned from school breaks with new, envy-inspiring outfits—until the three of us understood that Ashley no longer belonged to our group. The rejection devastated us, but we would never let Ashley, or anybody else, know how we felt. We were quiet girls; we didn’t make a fuss. Instead, we scribbled our heartaches onto scraps of crinkled paper that we passed back and forth between classes.

Ms. Smith, rarely moved by the pleas of her students, relented to Ashley after some squabbling, but didn’t let her out of the play entirely. “Let’s try again,” Ms. Smith said to the class. “Ashley will play Mary this time. I need a new Abigail, and let’s also get a Herrick, a Danforth, a Francis, a Mercy, and a Hawthorne, so we can do the full scene.”

I rose to my knees. I never volunteered to participate, but this was my chance to be paired in a scene with Jake—an effortlessly cool boy and gifted basketball player who, of all the guys in my class, had the waviest hair. Usually too nervous to speak to him, I resorted to stealing glances throughout the day. Once, while we watched a Bill Nye the Science Guy video, the lights turned down, I could have sworn I caught him staring back at me through the dark. The play created the perfect opportunity to force us together. Hands shot into the air, mine above everyone else’s.

Ms. Smith called out, “Rick you’re Herrick, Sean you’re Danforth, Brad you’re Francis, Julia you’re Mercy, Connor you’re Hawthorne.” Then her gaze landed on me. She raised her eyebrows. “Kara,” she said, a small smile forming. “Say the ‘Oh Heavenly Father’ line. It’s on the same page we were just reading from. You were following along?”

I shouted like a cheerleader, “Oh, Heavenly Father, take away this shadow!”

“Less excitement, more despair—but good enough. You’re Abigail.”

I grinned at Trish and Sarah and leapt to the “stage,” a vacuum of space Ms. Smith had created by shoving the long library tables to the side. Our backdrop was a bookcase full of encyclopedias emitting an aroma of old, yellowing paper. Those shelves documented everything that mattered. There would be an entry for The Crucible, and one for Arthur Miller, the catalyst of that day’s English class. But no entry for its architect, Ms. Smith. If there was one, it would list commonly known facts about her: no children, moved from New York City to our small New England town ages ago, converted Buddhist.

One by one Ms. Smith grabbed each of us by the shoulders and arranged us on the stage. My plan had worked: I stood next to Jake. Then she joined the audience, kneeling on the floor beside the kids in a way other teachers never did. “Start when the girls get cold. Danforth’s line, ‘What is it, child?’”

Sean said, “What is it, child?”

Without glancing up from my script, I said, “I—I know not. A wind, a cold wind has come.”

“Abby,” Ashley muttered, sounding bored.

“More zest,” interjected Ms. Smith. “Your friend is accusing people of being witches because she’s jealous of this man’s wife. But you, Mary, are worried Abigail has gone too far, and you know the truth of her deception. Lives are at stake!”

This was news to most of the class. Some kids sat up a bit straighter. Ashley didn’t even blink, maybe because she’d already seen a marriage fall apart in real life. Everyone knew her parents got divorced over the summer. Though we’d already stopped being friends by the time I heard the news, I felt bad for her. I remembered sleeping over at her house and waking during the night to the sound of her parents’ voices downstairs. While their words were muffled, their tones were sharp: they were obviously fighting. Ms. Smith likely forgot about Ashley’s situation, or never picked up on it. She was twice divorced herself, and probably considered the ordeal to be another beneficial exposure for adults and kids alike.

“Abby!” said Ashley, only slightly more convincing.

When we got to the part where Mary tried to run away and John Proctor caught her, Jake grabbed Ashley’s wrist and then quickly released it. I felt a twinge of jealousy.

Ashley said, “Let me go, Mr. Proctor, I cannot, I cannot—”

I chimed in loudly, “Oh, Heavenly Father, take away this shadow!”

Ms. Smith noted, “Even more oomph. You’re a very evil woman, Kara. No need to stop. Next line, Jake.”

Jake was supposed to leap at me and grab my hair, but he only took a step toward me. I couldn’t help but notice that he was more willing to interact with Ashley in the scene than with me, even though I had the more important role. “How do you call Heaven. Whore, whore.”

“Stop—stop,” Ms. Smith interrupted, gathering her skirt and standing. She shook her copy of the script at Jake. “If you’re going to call a woman a whore, you’d better mean it. You can’t just mutter whore, whore, you’ve got to shout it from your belly. Got it?”

Jake nodded.

“Start from ‘Let me go,’ Ashley.”

Ashley said, “Let me go, Mr. Proctor, I cannot, I cannot—”

“Oh, Heavenly Father, take away this shadow!”

“How do you call Heaven! Whore! Whore!”

“John!” said Rick.

“Man! Man, what do you—” said Sean.

“It is a whore,” said Jake.

Ms. Smith cut the scene again. She hadn’t bothered sitting back down. “You’re not pointing out what you’re having for lunch. Do you all understand what is happening in this scene?” She looked at us actors, then at the rest of the class. The balls of paper were still piled in Brian’s lap. “John Proctor is trying to get Mary to admit that Abigail has falsely accused townspeople—including his wife, Elizabeth—of being witches,” she explained. “And why has Abigail accused townspeople of being witches?”

She put her hand on her hip. We all carefully avoided eye contact.

“In part, it’s because Abigail wants to get rid of Jake’s wife. Why does she want to get rid of Elizabeth Proctor?” This time Ms. Smith didn’t even pause. “Because she wants Jake to herself.”

Some kids probably hadn’t done the reading, and those of us who had couldn’t necessarily follow along. And it didn’t help that Ms. Smith switched between using the characters’ names and the student actors’ names. Still, as she explained the scene, I felt sympathetic toward evil Abigail Williams. I knew how jealousy felt. Earlier that week I’d seen Ashley and Jake shyly share a laugh by the cubbies, and though I didn’t hear what it was about, to my twelve-year-old self it looked like the start of something that would surely end in happily ever after.

Ms. Smith continued, “Jake wants Abigail’s deception to come out without revealing his secret. But he has to reveal it, which he does when he calls Kara a whore. Now do you all see?” Ms. Smith stopped and stared at us, imploring. “Jake is confessing that he slept with Kara, but that it was a terrible mistake.”

That got the class’s attention. “Jake and Kara did it,” Brian said, pointing and laughing at us. Jake glowered at Brian and inched farther away from me.

Connor, Jake’s best friend, said, snickering, “No wonder he wants to keep that quiet.”

The audience laughed. Jake bumped into one of the shoved-aside tables, knocking a lamp to the floor. Its bulb smashed.

“Ignore that,” said Ms. Smith regarding the broken bulb. She then corrected Brian. “John Proctor and Abigail Williams did it. That’s why he calls her a whore—a whore is a woman who sleeps around.”

“Like a slut?” Julia asked.

“Yes, exactly,” Ms. Smith said, nodding. “A slut. Good, Julia.”

The librarian, Mrs. Neil, quietly appeared and inquired if everything was all right. Ms. Smith didn’t like her lessons to be disrupted and swatted Mrs. Neil away like an annoying fly. With Ms. Smith distracted, Brian said, “Hey whore,” and flung one of the paper balls at me. It landed at my feet.

“She’s not a whore,” Connor said. “Who’s going to sleep with her?”

This got another laugh. I held my script up to my nose and pretended to carefully study my lines. I wondered if Ashley had foreseen this humiliation and that was why she didn’t want to play Abigail. Had she already known that word’s power—even if it was part of an act? In our friend group, she had always been the best at navigating the social politics of middle school—which was probably why she stopped hanging out with us. The first time she didn’t sit with us during lunch, she’d held her head high and avoided glancing our way as she carried her tray past our table, following Julia and Maggie to their spot. That snub had hurt more than Jake’s rejection—yet at least it had been a private, quiet betrayal, unlike this play. I prayed Ms. Smith, who for all her wisdom and life lessons seemed to have no idea what had transpired, would give up and end the scene.

Instead, she said, “From ‘Oh Heavenly Father.’”

I took a deep breath. I wished I could summon some of Abigail Williams’ evil. “Oh, Heavenly Father, take away this shadow!”

“How do you call Heaven! Whore!” Jake boomed. His voice sounded deeper than I’d ever heard it, like he had come out the other side of puberty that second. “Whore!”

“John!”

“Man! Man, what do you—”

“It is a whore!” Jake spat.

“You charge? —” asked Sean.

I said, diminished, “Mr. Danforth, he is lying.”

“Mark her!” Jake shouted. He had truly embodied the role. “Now she’ll suck a scream to stab me with, but—”

This time, Mrs. Neil marched to our corner of the library, hands on her hips. “Jeanine,” she said to Ms. Smith. “Perhaps you could quiet your class down?”

“You said we could use this space,” Ms. Smith sparred.

“To study. You can’t have sixth graders shouting about whores in the library. And you’ve broken one of my best lamps.”

“Class is almost over anyway,” Ms. Smith sighed, shooing Mrs. Neil off again. She turned to us. “Let’s stop there. For next class, read Act Four.”

I couldn’t look at Trish and Sarah as we packed up our scripts and notebooks. I eyed Ms. Smith, who rolled up her sleeves and shoved the script into her messenger bag. Then she strode to Mrs. Neil’s desk, presumably to smooth things over.

When she was out of earshot, Connor whispered, “Whore!” at me as he left the library with Jake. Jake laughed and punched Connor on the arm.

Trish whispered, “Are you okay? Those guys are jerks.”

From across the room, Ms. Smith saw me and paused. I wondered if she really was losing her sight in one eye or if that prophecy was merely another of her eccentricities. What was it people called her? Crackpot. Nut. Or they’d say, “she’s from the city,” as if that explained her. I couldn’t remember who’d said these things. Not a kid, probably. We all hated Ms. Smith, sure, except on the days when we liked her, when she told us truths no other adult would. I met her eye, feeling like her equal. I’d experienced the exposure she revered so much, and I’d been spurned.

Mrs. Neil returned with a carpet sweeper to pick up the shards of lightbulb. Ms. Smith finally broke our gaze and watched Mrs. Neil for a moment as if she might offer to help. Instead, she told the class, “Let’s move it—you’re going to be late to History.”

Liana Johnson is a fiction writer whose work has appeared in Tiny Molecules, MoonPark Review, and The South Shore Review. She holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has been a participant in the One Story Summer Writers’ Conference and a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is at work on a short story collection. Originally from a small town in Vermont, she now lives and writes in New York City. You can read more of her work at lianajohnson.com.