Miss Parker and the Tugboat

Rumour had it that she had been jilted at the altar, Miss Havisham-style, but, instead of occupying a big, old house and never taking her wedding dress off, she had decided to become a school teacher, a strict one at that, and scare the living daylights out of young girls with one stony stare or hard faced grimace from across the room.

She kept her greying hair short; it was of a cut best described as shower and go. It was never blow-dried or combed differently, nor did it even have a smidgen of gel rubbed through it. She was big, not fat, but hefty. She wasnt the sort to eat her way through boxes of chocolates or have a standing order for cream buns at Haefelis. Her longings, if they were there at all, were too well hidden to succumb to such temptations, for she was one who upheld sensible living above all else and everything in moderation.
She wore great ballooning trousers in navy blue and bottle green and white long-sleeved shirts and lace-up shoes and even a tie on the odd occasion. No jewellery, except a large brown watch and a Medic Alert bracelet. For some peculiar reason, she often wore a hat, a little white sailors hat that she cocked to one side of her head and which we all found quite hilarious.

Tugboat Thomas wed call her and fall about laughing.
Someone said she used to be quite pretty, beautiful even, with long blonde hair and a golden brown tan and everything else that heroines possess in teenage romance novels. Id imagine her standing at the altar, waiting excitedly for her love to arrive, her nervousness and then growing anxiety at why he was late. Had there been an accident? Was he all right? And then the news, the terrible life-changing news that he had gone. Eloped with someone else, or fled to France, or been put in prison for tax evasion. Something like that, and how her whole life changed, how she cut her hair and never ever wore make up and dressed like a man so that no one could ever get near her and hurt her again.
Or perhaps he had been killed and she swore shed never love anyone else. I pictured a heartbroken Miss Parker throwing a rose on her dead fiancs grave, or flinging herself onto the coffin, willing her heart to break so she could join him, so they could be together forever.

Later, when we got tired of this idea, we believed for some time that she was a lesbian. To us, this explained the unfeminine clothes and manly walk, the gruffness, too, and the despising of all things girly. When Janet Oatman almost drowned and Miss Parker performed CPR on her, we all looked at each other in acknowledgement, for our worst fears, we believed, were confirmed.
She was different to all the other teachers. There were, of course, those who werent the most attractive of women, like Mrs Rose, but even she used to wear lipstick on consultation day and have her hair blow-dried for speech night.

Miss Ndlovu arrived when we were in form four and caused quite a stir. She had the most beautiful clothes and never wore the same thing twice in one term. Everything matched from her outfit to her jewellery to the nail polish on her toes. Even her watch had different straps that could be fitted to blend in with what she was wearing and we would watch in fascination as to what the next day would bring. She is the only teacher I have ever known who could look beautiful and cool last lesson on a Friday in October, when most of us were wilting in the heat, slumped across our desks, feeling little trickles of sweat run from our armpits. We were sure she had a long-term boyfriend, a fianc even, although she was often sighted with various men and no one specific could ever be pinned down.

Miss Naude had a boyfriend. She only saw him once a week; we knew because every Thursday, she would dress up. Make up, earrings, hair combed sleekly to one side, high heels and perfume. She even changed her handbag on a Thursday. She was different as well, happy. She didnt slump in her chair as she did on other days or frown or sigh sadly at the end of every lesson as if she had just taught us some terrible truth about life.
There was Mrs Thomas, too, who had long dark hair down to her waist and who never wore it up, so she looked like a 1970s Cher. Her husband, she told us, wouldnt allow her to cut it and said that if she did, he would leave her. We saw her hair as a testament of her love for him.

We subscribed to an idea of womanhood and what we thought men wanted us to be. At the same time, we thought wed never be any of these women, even Miss Ndlovu. Life had other things planned for us and staying in a dusty one-horse town in Africa was not one of them.

In that last term of our school lives, in particular, as the gently expanding warmth of September stretched into the hazy scorch of October and finally into the rains of November, when our final exams hung over us like a jailer swinging his bunch of keys in the faces of desperate convicts, all we could think about was leaving. Our final concerts, plays, tennis matches and even the exams themselves took on the air of something coming to an end, something to be treasured, but not pined for; something we had outgrown.

It was only recently when I returned to Bulawayo shortly after my divorce from David, a single mother and busy with the demands of balancing work and home life, that I understood some of the decisions that Miss Parker had taken. I saw her not so long ago; it was just after I saw Mrs Thomas, now known by her maiden name of Royston and sporting a blonde bob and a fake dark brown tan that only served to highlight the lines on her slightly sagging face. Miss Parker, however, seemed not to have aged at all. She was wearing navy blue trousers and a long-sleeved white shirt and there upon her head was a little white sailors hat. Somewhere, somehow, she had learnt a lesson, and whether she was right or wrong about it, is not for me to decide. Although the path she chose to follow may not be for everywoman I couldnt help thinking, as she crossed the street, that she cut a figure of quiet dignity as her little tugboat pulled into harbour.