Mazed

My desk is next to a large locked cupboard that holds extra reading books and craft materials. Our teacher, Mrs. H— unnerves me. I have done something to annoy her, but I don’t know what. I am six years old, so adults are a mystery. Her mouth makes an ugly turn down when she speaks to me, so it’s clear have erred in some way - but I have not been informed of my mistake and I cannot put it right. Mrs. H— has favourites. Sadly, I am not in this happy band. I am not approved of, not petted and praised, not gathered into her wiry, red-woollen arms. A new girl takes the seat next to me. She’s casually spiteful, and throws my school-issued pack of coloured pencils behind the teacher’s cupboard and don’t know how to get them back. I do my best to explain my predicament to Mrs. H—, but my account does not make any sense to her and she dismisses me with a flick of her wrist.

Numbers and words scrape and scratch their way across the blackboard in dusty chalk, but I can make little sense of them. I beaver away in my exercise book: the cover is blue; the top half of page plain for drawing, bottom half lined for writing. The ends of my pencils are chewed to shreds and the corners are dog-eared and tatty. I try to smooth them down, but they keep curling back up. I do my best to write my "news", but I have little imagination and am impaired by the anxiety that takes up half of my thinking. I’ve added a new tactic to help appease the constant drip-drip of fear in my thoughts: chewing tiny holes in my pinafore skirt. I nibble whilst no-one is looking, the nip-snip of the threads between my teeth is somehow comforting. Mum thinks we have moths, and I have managed to persuade her that this is the correct analysis. I’m pleased with my small victory.

It’s Monday morning and I have little to write in my "news" book. I chew the end of my pencil and consider my options. Little flakes of yellow paint come off and get stuck to my tongue; I spit them out into my white cotton hanky, trying not to draw Mrs. H—’s scrutiny. I begin my story. It had been a average day at Hastings, home to my great aunt and uncle. We parked on the Marina, near to the Warrior Square gardens, and made our way down to the beach with all our paraphernalia. Decked out a hand-me-down swimsuit and towelling tabards, I played on the pebbly beach most of the day, doing my best to avoid the tar from a recent oil spill. Inevitably we got blobs of the sticky black goop on our flip-flops and towels, malevolent treacle that we had to clean off later with a special solution. We paddled and splashed around the stone breakwaters. Somehow, suddenly, both of my sisters managed to swim over the top of groyne and fell in the other side, where the water was much deeper. Although they could have swum back, they panicked, and my dad had to rescue them both. Watching from the water’s edge, I had been astounded by how quickly this was over and done. I stood with my mouth open, reflecting later to my sisters that I was "amazed." My mother mis-heard this, and, as she related the story to friends and family, she quoted me as saying, "I was mazed." I said nothing of the sort, but grinned along, since it got me attention for being cute — a novelty for me.

I try this new trick with Mrs. H—, hoping it will elicit the same affectionate smiles. Carefully, I draw the incident with stick figures and coloured pencils, and write a few sentences ending with, "I was mazed." I hope that this will mean that Mrs. H— will look on me more kindly, perhaps give me one of her coveted gold stars. But I am mistaken. My exercise book comes back, corrected, with a red biro "a" in front of the “mazed".