Pug Hill - Alison Pace [46]
“Welcome, class,” she says beaming, fanning her arms out to the side and holding them there outstretched. She is covered head to toe, shoulder to wrist, in a giant bright orange caftan. “Welcome back.” Two down, I think again, and consider that this possibly makes me not as smart as two people. Beth Anne refers to a clipboard on her desk and looks out at us.
“Lindsay,” Beth Anne asks, “will your friend Jessica be joining us tonight?”
“Uh, no,” Lindsay says, looking decidedly more hunched over in her chair than last time, and I think it’s too bad for her that her friend, whom she made the point of saying was such a true friend, seems to have left Lindsay, the victim of some bad accounting scandal, in the lurch.
“Uh, no,” Lindsay says again, a little bit sadly, “I don’t think she thought it was the best use of her time.” Just like true love, it seems the course of true friendship sometimes doesn’t run smooth either.
“Well,” answers Beth Anne, with one last look to the door, “let’s get started then, shall we?” She walks to the door, and seals us in, an airless grouping of anxiety, nerves, and deep-seated fear. I look around the room at this group I am part of, a group of people whose relationship to public speaking being described as merely “anxious” is an understatement at best. I can’t breathe.
I remember how last time Beth Anne had her name written across the blackboard, so many loops and swirls, and how comforting I found that to be at the time. I look to the blackboard again, the blackboard I’m sure, is a good place to look right now. Or is it? There, Beth Anne has written, from top to bottom, in big, capital letters, no loops, no swirls anywhere:
ONE NOSTRIL LION DIETY
Oh, I think, no, because I just don’t think there’s any way to look at a list so cryptic, and so surely boding of ill, as this one, and think anything else. I look quickly around at the remaining classmates. I want to see that everyone else looks just like how I feel: nervous and closed-in, like a rat trapped in a corner. Lawrence looks ecstatic; Amy looks pissed; and Martine, the hostile French woman, the very thin one with the need to make speeches about breast-feeding, looks haughty. Everyone else looks a little scared. There’s that.
But even still, even with the fear camaraderie, I dread the thought of the next step. It’s like an emotional minefield in here. Every step can bring disaster or at the very least despair. It is extremely discomforting to see words like that, words I don’t understand, just written across the blackboard so menacingly. I read the lines again: One Nostril. Lion. Deity. I decide for certain, there is something quite ominous about them.
“The most important thing is ...” Beth Anne pauses in a way that can only be described as meaningfully. I forget instantly about being a trapped rat and lean forward a bit in my seat. I, for one, am quite interested to hear what the most important thing is. Maybe I should get out my notebook.
“Relaxing,” Beth Anne says next, and I, for one, am a little bit let down. “Relaaaaxing,” she repeats, saying it slowly, stretching it all out, all the emphasis on the aaaaaaax. She points to the first line on the blackboard: ONE NOSTRIL.
We all watch silently as Beth Anne begins to demonstrate the somewhat—now that I think about it—less cryptic, possibly even self-explanatory, One Nostril Breathing. She holds her thumb over one nostril and breathes in deeply, then she uses her index finger to pinch both nostrils closed for a moment before she releases her thumb and exhales. After each exaggerated step she pauses to nod eagerly at us, eyebrows high, like a mime that wants so much to say, “Yes, class. Yes, yes.” From what