Page 29 of Madam, May I

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“I can’t do this!”

Desdemona flung her pencil across the room and covered her face with her hands.

When the room remained silent, she split her fingers and looked at Loren calmly standing before the whiteboard on an easel that he’d brought to help tutor her. He looked unbothered as he stared at her through his spectacles with his hair in cornrows going back, emphasizing his high cheekbones and slender face.

She felt silly.

“I’m sorry,” she said, raking her fingernails through her mass of blond-streaked curls. “But I feel more stupid than I did before.”

He nodded as he put the cap back on the dry-erase marker, leaving behind the algebra on the board to come and stand beside where she sat on the sofa. “I won’t lie to you; we have a lot of work to do if you want to be ready by January,” he said. “You were weak in all subject areas—especially reading at a seventh-grade level. We could slow it down and you take the test later.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head as she refused him.

He fell silent.

It had been two weeks since she’d taken the assessment test. Two weeks and four tutoring sessions. “This is humbling as hell, Loren,” she said.

He nodded in understanding. “What’s your plan?” he asked suddenly, crossing his arms over his chest in the orange Polo shirt he wore with fatigue cargo shorts.

She looked past him to the sun just beginning to set in her views. “I want to go to college,” she said, filling the silence.

“Cool.”

She looked to him. “Because I’m older?” she asked.

“Nah, because you are already living well and you still want what some people take for granted,” Loren said. “What do you do?”

Sell sex.

“I own a clothing boutique,” she said, giving him her half-truth.

“Dope.”

“But I want my education,” she added, her voice determined.

He removed his glasses and locked his eyes with hers. “And that’s the dopest thing ever, Ms. Smith.”

Desdemona. My name is Desdemona.

“How’s your girl?” she asked, rising from the sofa to walk over to the kitchen. She pulled two bottles of Pellegrino bottled water out, closing the fridge door with her hip.

“I took your advice,” he said.

“And?” she asked as she handed him the drink.

“Things are better.”

“Good for you, kid,” she said, reclaiming her seat, pulling on her glasses with her free hand, and dragging the mathematics workbook back onto her lap.

“Close your book,” he said, before taking a deep guzzle of the sparkling water and setting it on the low-slung modern glass-topped coffee table of hand-forged iron, with bronze finished end caps.

“Why?” she asked, even as she did as he said.

“You’re too wound up. You’re thinking too much,” Loren said, coming to stand before her and extend both of his large hands. “Come on. On your feet. Time to unwind.”

Desdemona eyed his hands and then cut her eyes up to his face. “Are you serious?” she balked.