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“I mean okay, sure, whatever…”
“Whatever? I am going to erase that word from your vocabulary, young lady,” Jane informs her. “It is the very height of rudeness and disrespect. You do not speak that way to me. When you address me, it will be clearly and coherently, and not as a snarky little afterthought. Understand?”
Storm feels her body absolutely flood with rebellion. She wants to say a thousand clear, coherent things, and she knows she can’t say any of them, and not being able to say them is creating a physical pressure inside her that makes her feel like she might explode.
“Yes, ma’am.”She says the words, but they have the intonation of a curse.
“Again, and find some respect in your tone.”
Storm sighs deeply. “Yes, ma’am,” she says, moderating her tone slightly.
“Again,” Jane demands.
“Oh, for fu…” Storm stops herself, biting her lower lip so hard it feels like it might bleed. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You need practice,” Jane says smoothly. “Fortunately, you’re going to get it. Crush the cigarette, please.”
Storm does as she is told, thoroughly perplexed. When that cigarette has been smashed into the linoleum, Jane drops another and repeats the instruction. Maybe this is her thing. Maybe she’s really into crushing things, like Christo is into wrapping them.
Finally, the remains of ten cigarettes adorn the office floor. There’s bits of paper and loose-leaf tobacco all over. It’s a huge, confusing shambles and she has no idea what the point of it all was — at least until Jane takes a dustpan and brush from a nearby cubby and hands it to Storm.
“Hands and knees, clean that mess up.”
“What!?” Storm exclaims. “I made the mess because you…”
Jane’s expression stops her.
Storm is not usually a slow learner, but she seems practically unable to pick up the simple lesson of saying yes ma’am and obeying her disciplinarian. This entire exercise has turned out to be a fiendish request, a sort of toned-down version of being forced to dig one’s own grave — not that Storm has ever needed any help or encouragement in digging herself large holes.
“I mean, yes, ma’am,” she mumbles as she sinks to the floor, humiliation now joining rebellion, holding hands and dancing around the pyre Jane has made of her bottom. Kneeling practically at Jane’s feet, she feels her stomach performing flip-flops of intense emotion she cannot process in this moment, because it is all too fresh and too immediate. She wants to complain that this isn’t fair, but there’s some small part of her that whispers that it probably is fair.
“It is shameful of you to waste four francs on cigarettes,” Jane lectures from above. “They are poison, and you are well aware of that, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Storm says. Her words are compliant, but her voice is full of the gritted evidence of her internal struggles.
Taking refuge in the task, she sweeps the dismembered cigarettes into the pan and tips the entirety into a nearby wastepaper basket.
“Am I done now?” She looks up at Jane from her knees, her expression as neutral as she can make it, but her eyes full of fire. She finds her gaze met by Jane’s cool, collected determination, and knows that she is not making any kind of an impression on this woman with her temper.
That realization hits her right in the gut, and immediately quells some of her rebellion. She is learning that Jane is not phased by her anger. She is not going to be dissuaded or deterred by intemperate displays. She is firm in her resolve. Storm feels a grudging but very real respect growing for this woman. Nobody has ever managed to successfully punish her before. She thinks back to her comment in the hall…there’s a first time for everything.Maybe there really is.
“Try that question again,” Jane says sternly.
“Am I done now, ma’am?” Storm tries again, and this time there is a hopeful intonation on the word ma’am.
“You are done for now, but you and I are going to have a long discussion this afternoon,” Jane promises her. “Tell your host family you will be home late.”
Storm gives a little half-shrug as she rises to her feet, confused by the unnecessary request. “They won’t notice.”
Jane’s brows rise and she emits a soft sigh that for once does not seem to be directed at Storm.
“You may get up and go back to class. I will see you this afternoon.”
Storm once more collects the books that had been discarded during her discipline. Her bottom is burning against the fabric of her clothing, and she is suffused with a whole series of feelings, many of which are in direct opposition to one another. They will follow her throughout the day, battling one another for supremacy and sense.
Jane opens the door.
Storm leaves, quietly this time.
