Flash fiction by Joyce Bingham

Eight Times Table

Milly is eight, x1=8, she grips my hand as she skips along, delighted I am taking her to school, a rare occasion for us both. One for her to celebrate and for me to pretend everything is normal. As they touch the ground, I hope my shoes produce roots snaking down into the cracks between the eight, x2=16 paving stones. I’m certain I will crack through into the earth below, to slow down the inevitable, but we walk unhindered, each step of my reluctant elephant-weight legs taking me nearer to school.

Mrs Wilson has requested to see me. It’ll be a rush to get to work, for me to start the day disgruntled after an audience with the Headmistress.

The bubble in my stomach grows; I swallow it down, push it from my thoughts. I made sure my bladder was empty before we set out and forsook my usual large cup of coffee, eight, x 3=24 fluid ounces for a slurp of water.

I was eight, and Mrs Wilson, eight, x4 =32 then, when she made the bubble burst and the hot spurt ran down my goose-pimpled leg, the yellow stripe of shame on my knee-length white sock.

My mortification flickers, replaying unbidden in stress. It pounds its way into my elephant steps, when I should be enjoying taking Milly to school as she dances on gazelle legs and embracing her chatter about unicorns and Barbies.

Every day, the itch of disgrace squirms in my head. Dishonour waits for me at work and segues into reports; it hides under folders and pops up in coffee breaks.

Eight then, x5= forty now.

I leave Milly with her friends in the playground to await the bell and climb the eight, x6=48, steps up the visitor’s entrance to the head’s office. The weight of my elephant feet thunders down on the sandstone steps, hollowed by time and weeping. My heavy legs don’t stop me, no matter how much I will them to. I want there to be more steps, everlasting steps like the Stairmaster.

Mrs Wilson appears at the door. She welcomes me by name and I listen to her eight, x8=56 words, but they don’t sink in. The walls of my bladder ripple and nerves sing as I clench my pelvic floor.

She looks as old as she did then. She must be eight x8= sixty-four now. How can she be shorter than me when she was once a Siberian tiger towering over my humiliation?

Don’t ask me to recite it, don’t ask me, don’t ask me.

Yes, she says, a joy to teach, absorbing every number.

My voice shakes as I repeat her words, learning them by rote, eight, x9=72.

She looks at me with her feral cat-eyes, her carnivore breath releasing in puffs through her fangs.

Mrs Wilson knows I struggled; she knows it; she knows it.

Eight, x10=80. I consume her words, keeping them inside—pushing them up against my wall of hurt.

We have a special advanced class we want her to join. Milly, she will not have my fate.

Breathe in slowly for eight, x11=88 times table. She shakes my hand and I absorb the chalk dust deep inside her, powder-dry, stained with the smell of school dinners. The cabbage rotting below the surface, with an aftertaste of sweet custard.

Bells ring, the shriek of children crescendos, then the white noise of times tables chants in my ears. Plimsole rubber corridors surrounded by boxes of sound, humming and promising futures.

I am dismissed; I am dismissed; I am dismissed.

Outside her office, a line of unruly chairs waits, a faint touch of urine and vomit in the air. I pause to still my quivering hands and to keep my bladder under control.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Eight, x12=96, minutes to get to work. I use my gazelle legs to get away.