Seeing her allure was like discovering a beautiful nun shrouded in heavy habit. She kept her glasses on even though she didn’t need them for driving, and her honey brown hair was wound in a swirl, strands escaping as if she'd just gotten out of bed. Her figure had not changed much since her college years—still slim, but with a fullness that separated her from the girls. When she walked the hallways, she clutched books against her chest. The boys didn’t bring her up in locker room talks as they did the younger teachers.
In 1962 Franklin High had hired Elizabeth Shelton to teach English with a one-year contract and an option to extend. I learned later her husband was a Navy captain stationed in Norfolk some twenty miles away, and as a matter of Navy practice, he was relocated every two years. By age 32 she had taught English at American schools on military bases in Hawaii, Guam, and Japan.
On the first day of Mrs. Shelton’s class, I studied her face and heard little of what she had to say. She had no makeup, not even powder. Her lips were swollen red, the upper lip larger than the lower, and her wide eyebrows weren’t plucked; her black pupils contrasted with her pale blue eyes.
Though she didn’t sit like the other teachers or hide behind a podium, she moved little as she stood in front of the class. I watched her every gesture, only listening to her words when I studied her inflections. When she looked my way, I’d quickly look down to my desk thinking I’d be unnoticed. A month into the semester I knew Mrs. Shelton’s favorite dress and color.
With few friends I was probably labeled a loner, my reflective nature obvious to others—maybe because I was never without a book. I read before morning classes, during lunch, and sometimes in class. Even in grade school I had learned to fake attention to the teacher with a book balanced on my lap. I liked people but I was most comfortable with myself.
Comeuppance: Stories from the 1960s Description:
In this collection of eleven diverse stories from the Sixties, Michael C. Ahn presents vignettes of a period when bowties gave way to long hair. Some stories are poignant, others haunting or riveting, but all evoke a decade of shifting mood in the country. A handful of these stories have previously appeared in literary reviews.
Comeuppance presents tales with gutsy suppleness: a roommate uses bizarre means to learn about women; a brilliant physics professor does not yield to a desperate student; a photographer imagines a clever way to seduce a beautiful coed; a sophomore sells paper dresses to buy a car; a student has flashbacks of his lovers, a Vietnamese woman and his former teacher; a returning senior is caught between the hip and the conventional while trying to avoid the draft; and a Chinese Texan is invited to join a Jewish fraternity.
