A first-year teacher met her second husband in the supply room on the first day of school. He handed her the Post-it notes from the top shelf. She liked his Southern accent and his forearms. The way he had folded his shirtsleeves caught her attention, cotton like magnolia petals collapsed on the lawn of a sprawling estate. She sensed he would be important to her.

At the end of her first day in the classroom, the woman felt defeated. She cried at her desk, wondering what she had gotten herself into when he appeared in the doorframe a 6’4” Virgin Mary apparition sporting a goatee.

The faculty offices were in a back building; they were tiny dorm-like rooms, honeycombed with built-in desks and modest closets. Long ago, this space had been the living quarters of nuns from St. Victor’s Catholic Church next door, but the numbers at Mass dwindled on Holloway Boulevard in West Hollywood. The private school annexed its space for faculty offices. She channeled the despair of the archdiocese and ghosts of evicted nuns as she lamented the cruel comments of fifteen-year-old boys who considered sophomore world literature with an inexperienced teacher their chance for power.

“Let me help you set up a seating chart,” he offered, hoping to console her. “Most of these boys are my basketball players, so I can help you separate them.” It seemed this new job was more about power than education. He sketched a plan and then rushed off to run practice on the black top, which sat like the Red Sea between the main building of classrooms and the makeshift faculty building. His whistle was his staff as he commanded Amos, Anthony, and Amani to run suicides and do marathon wall sits. He knew she was watching. It was a peculiar Mosaic of chivalry, performance, and mating dance.

“Don’t you ever disrespect a teacher, especially a new teacher—and a female at that!” he shouted with the same intensity he used when shouting plays like Lebron! or Triangle! She raised the window a few inches, wiped the flaking white paint from the sill with one hand, a tear with the other, and enjoyed the show like a princess in a tower. She questioned what strange narrative she’d entered, who’d authored such a tale, and why she succumbed to the comfort of helplessness so easily.

She remembered she was married to another man, one who had forbidden her to take this teaching job. The pay was too low, and education was not prestigious.

Returning to her office, the yellow square of post-it notes attracted her eye, and she suddenly remembered she was the author of her own story. She hated her husband, his stupid new convertible, and his lies. She thought of lighting the yellow squares on fire. Instead, she wrote a pop quiz for her sophomores. When disgust at her earlier default helplessness set in, delayed but undeniable, a renewed sense of agency arose.

Peeling the post-it notes from the stack, she covered the windowpanes two square inches at a time. The room became golden, her skin coastal warm, and the ratty carpet now seven-hundred feet of shoreline. Her Vera Bradley tote overflowed with champagne and independence. This tiny room became the famed Holiday House, and she was socialite Rebekah Harkness reincarnated, donning black chiffon. She sparkled, untouchable.

When his basketball practice ended, her second husband knocked on the office door, hoping to reconnect before heading home down Santa Monica Boulevard. She considered answering the door and inviting him into her world. Something stopped her. Perhaps the ghosts of nuns past, lamenting and wise; perhaps common sense. He left the building. Many years later her daughter would have his blue eyes.

Her first day of teaching had ended; the maintenance crew climbed the cavernous stairway complaining about the weather. She picked up a pen and wrote the word No on every other post-it note, a black X on the others. Caught between men she should have said—and should eventually say—no to, she marked the spot where freedom could be unearthed. Finding a type of purgatory in the corner room of a former convent, she wrestled what was, is, and will be. In the parking lot, her little green Saturn glistened from the rain and reality. LaCienega Boulevard became a conveyor belt delivering her to and from that little school for eight years.

She taught her students to dream while her closet filled with sensible skirts and comfortable shoes. Two years into her second marriage with a diaper bag in tow, she left that school for another. She was a magnolia petal falling where the seasons commanded. As she packed, she found a pile of yellow squares like old confetti or dead skin. Post-it notes eventually lose their grip and float to the floor behind desks, a catacomb of forgotten resolve. 

– Candice Kelsey