Tilt - Alan Cumyn [18]
Stan read the bizarre labels: Fallopian tube, Fimbriae, Follicle containing mature ovum. And then his eyes stalled on Clitoris: spongy, erectile, highly sensitive tissue bundled with nerve endings much like the male penis.
The male penis. What other penis was there? Obviously this complicated little female version. Where was it? It seemed to be a blue dotted thing hidden inside the labia minora and labia majora, whatever those were.
It couldn’t really be blue?
The other cross-section view didn’t help, either. Here the female pelvis looked like a cow’s skull split open. Stan couldn’t see any legs. Pubic symphysis. What was that? There were the labia minora again, but they looked completely different from this angle. Was north up?
“Mr. Dart,” Stillwater said from inches away, pinning Stan to the page like an insect in an exhibit.
Stan shut the book. Blood shot to his face.
In the gap between Stillwater’s angled elbow and his predictable blue shirt, Stan could see Janine Igwash staring at him again. She had all of those things: fallopian tubes and a pubic symphysis and labias minor and major. She had a clitoris, somewhere.
“What are you reading?” Mr. Stillwater asked him.
Stan tried desperately to find the chapter on the crossing of vision, whatever it was called. But every page he opened seemed to have vaginal implications.
“The eyes, sir,” Stan said. “I’m reading about the eyes.”
His face seemed to be giving off steam.
“The test on Monday is worth twenty percent of your term mark,” Mr. Stillwater said, loud enough for everyone’s benefit. “I’m not going to ask you anything about —” and he paused for effect — “female reproduction, or menstruation, or the male and female sexual response.”
Explosions of hilarity, which set perspiration streaming from Stan’s pits to his belly and down his legs. Even sitting, he seemed to be naked in the shower in front of them all.
He could not look at Janine.
No way he could tell her after this.
Mr. Stillwater was playing it like a stand-up comedian. But it couldn’t last forever.
He was done in maybe a minute at most.
The rest of the class took forever.
—
At the end of the day she was standing on the sidewalk in her clingy black top despite the cool wind. From the front door he could see her nipples straining against the fabric. She was standing all alone, not looking at anything in particular. As far as he could tell she was just silently . . . attracting him.
He felt himself pulled out to where she stood. The closer he got, the stronger her powers.
“Stillwater has some kind of thing for you,” she said.
He was ready with his own opening remarks, but they fled as his face turned into a furnace again. He stood far enough away that she couldn’t just reach in and tug his belt loop.
She was absolutely beautiful.
“I thought . . . I thought I should tell you something before we go tomorrow,” she said.
He cut her off. “I was going to say something about . . . my mother.” It was self-preservation. She was about to tell him about her preferences, because she was a decent person after all.
“Your mother?”
“Yeah, my mom is . . . uh . . . sick.”
“Really?”
It felt like someone had fired a staple into the back of his throat. He could lie to this girl but it wasn’t easy.
He coughed and tried to swirl some spit in his mouth to dislodge whatever was clawing back there.
“Because that’s what I was going to say to you,” she said. “My mom has cancer. She’s been through everything — chemo, radiation. She had the surgery. She just looks a little odd. When you meet her. But she’s fine. I mean, she’s not fine. But she’s just a person, too.”
Stan could barely swallow. The staple had closed down nearly everything.
“You know how survivors are. That’s all I’m saying. She comes on pretty strong sometimes. Are you all right?”
Stan bent over and coughed. He didn’t want to spit in front of her but he couldn’t see any way around it. He turned away from the wind and did what he had to do to clear his throat.
“Fine,” he croaked.
“What’s your mother dealing with?” Janine asked.