"What are you doing out of bed?" the face seemed surprised.
"You told me to get up and make my own soup..." she trailed off in confusion.
"Ok, well, that makes no sense at all," she said reaching up to feel her forehead "is it possible you're delirious?"
Thinking about the man in the window "yes, I'd say it's completely possible."
The face dragged her back to bed.
The bed resumed its gravitational force. She looked at the topography of the ceiling. Was that right? Or was it like the tile in the kitchen? She wasn't sure. Not sure, she mused, uncertainty principle, alternative facts, divergent consensus realities.
"When I was in the first grade", she said to no one, she was alone in the room, "I went to a very new school for a few months, but by the end of the first semester I was at a different much older school. The new school didn't have any plants or landscaping yet so whenever we were outside we would sit on our tin lunch boxes vaguely huddled together and long for the inside. The school was pretty progressive for public elementary, so once we were inside we moved rooms in a big open area rotating between whatever the subjects were. I don't really remember what they called them. I remember there were three teachers and three areas. One would make us do the go you chicken fat exercise, and then have us sit in a circle for lessons. I don't remember the lessons. I remember she had long blonde hair that she twisted around several fingers in some sort of perpetual nervous weaving tick that left me mesmerized, infected, bound to replicate it once I had left the school."
"The other teachers I have no recollection of them, but I do remember math class. Math class was in the right back quadrant of the room. It was new math, all number lines and greater than and less that. I particularly liked that part. The visual aids were alligators. I remember my mother coming to some open house event, asking about the alligators. Math is my favorite subject, I had said, I will tell you about the alligators."
"If an alligator is going to eat people, he would rather eat more people so the shape of his open mouth, see, is the shape of greater than, see, eat more people! My mother, with her math degree, was completely flummoxed."
"After all the excitement of the group learning room, and I'm sure there was lunch somewhere in there, there were separate rooms we went to for homeroom. In homeroom we put our heads down and were quiet, and the lights were out. At least that was what happened on the day I can remember."
"We had raggedy-ann and andy dolls as passes for the restroom. If the doll was there you could take it and go, but if it wasn't there you had to wait. This particular day, I had to go. The doll was gone. I waited, and waited, and waited until I couldn't wait any more. Then I went up to the teacher and explained that I had to go. She indicated that I had to wait. I indicated that I had been waiting and I had to go. But apparently not as desperately as I was supposed to-- I was later told. You have to wait. Ok. I went back to my seat. I waited. Then, I didn't wait. Some of the urine absorbed into my clothes and some of it ran down onto the dark dense short carpet and disappeared. Well that worked out fine I thought and nodded off in relief."
"Subsequently the teacher discovered that one of the girls had taken the doll back to her seat, or left it in the restroom, or something, but at any rate I was now cleared to go. Don't need to anymore, I answered without any emotion whatsoever."
"And did you not feel embarrassed?" the man in the suit asked.
"No. It never occurred to me to feel embarrassed."
"Really?!" he asked, the total disbelief showing on his face.
"The teacher must have thought I would be embarrassed too, she asked me if I wanted her to call my mother to bring me some clean clothes. Then I got a little scared. No please don't call her I said. I could not imagine the screaming that would come from being called to the school, bothered in her day that my step-mother would have unleashed upon me. Besides, my clothes were basically dry by then, what was the big deal. Perhaps I reeked, but I had no awareness of it."
"Did you not have a sense that big girls don't pee their pants?" he was taking notes in a small notebook.
"Well, sure, but I was doing what I was told. I was used to rules being rather arbitrary, non-sensical, and detrimental to me, so it didn't seem worthy of note, really. Then, I had a problem, and I delt with it in a covert non-problem-causing way, as far as I was concerned. It never occurred to me that the carpet might need special cleaning, or that there might be any additional consequences. The carpet under the desk looked fine, my clothes were not visibly wet. I'm pretty sure none of the other kids were aware. As far as I was concerned it was a non-issue."
"Fascinating."
"Glad you think so," she answered flatly "now who are you exactly?"
Just then the face popped in the door, "who are you talking to?"
"This guy," she said "right here, I don't know who he is."
"I think you really must be delirious. Hang tight, I'll be back to take your temperature."
