Miami - Black Night, Black Dawn

"The miserable, smegmal, bag of dirt," he cursed below his breath, seeing the round moon face, the chopped blond hair of Ampoule. She was his hospital lab instructor for this segment of his physician assistant course. Ampoule's whole body image filled his mind, the beginning of the haunch above the shoulder blades, the thick, obese central body, the characteristic thin legs of Cushing's syndrome. She was an R.N. for twenty years before specializing as a nurse practitioner and becoming a medical instructor.

Ampoule was a pure product of late Sixties' Women's Lib. She didn't so much blame men for woman's unhappiness; she manifested misanthropy as a personality disorder. She dripped bile. You could hear it squish in her gray white, thick-soled uniform shoes at every step. David's thought carried him back to the morning's pre-round conference. As usual, Ampoule played mother to the female students. The day began to sour when she acidly told him his tunic undershirt was not hospital white. It was hospital green under a green tunic. Why did it matter?

She could wipe her ass with white undershirts. Meanwhile swamp bacteria were eating her shoes, was his silent message to her. Ampoule didn't want the few men in the class to kneel when she humiliated them. She wanted them face down, furrowing the dirt with their nose.

Reluctantly, David discussed the problem with the dean of the program, but she was another one. Beneath the smile of her professor's mask lurked a griffin, lioness in body, serpent’s tail, with a reptile's mind. He'd nicknamed her ‘Kreng.’ Her academic excellence policy consisted of ridding the program of Black woman candidates. Then she weeded out the males. It was a subtle game of discrimination. Nursing, teaching, are the bastion - women's professions. The mentality suggested Florence Nightingale was burned at the stake.

David had a perfect score on the last mid-term practicum, but only because he was able to uncover Ampoule's sly, hidden tricks, as if, a medical practical was an obstacle course, a maze to be taken by subterfuge, an ordeal to be conquered in an arcane rite of religious passage to a higher spiritual state. Maybe, it should be reserved only for women? Hang in for the last week of this module he soothed himself. He faded into sleep.

* * *

Bailley entered the alley side apartment of the old house. Sheila's voice came bird like from the kitchen.

"Is that my Bailley, Bailley?" she crooned, emulating a mother's tone to a baby.

"Yeah, its Bailley, Bailley," he retorted sarcastically. Sheila sprang out of the kitchen; long black hair tucked in a pompadour framed the oval of her beautiful face. Sheila's violet blue eyes flashed - she laughed at him. Bailley began to move the chaos of English test booklets from the couch. Sheila sprang on him with a guttural 'Enh,' clamped her lips against his.

"Bailley is being silly," she taunted, pushing him backward on a mound of books. She smiled wickedly at him. "Don't arrange! Those are end term compositions! I've scanned them. They are horrid!" Sheila mussed his hair.

"You will help me grade tonight? It's Vomitus time," her voice was a sweet little girl's voice.

Bailley loved her, the quirks, silliness, rages, the dramatic mental emasculations she practiced. She was capable of all night tantrums, non-stop diatribe. She could shift from sweetness, whip herself into frothing anger the next moment. She played anger as a device even though she knew it was useless to attempt to traumatize, torment, dumb him down, cook his brain, reduce it to glue. At thirty-three, she held an associate professorship at the college. Bailley never got along with English department types, and here he was with a certifiable cuckoo. She was a cute, little delicate baby lamb; with a three alarm fire I.Q. beyond intelligence test measurement. Sheila, infatuated, pursued him when they first met. He said maybe. They’d lived together for three years. She once said she loved him.

"Too much white wine," he told her the next morning. Since that day he accustomed himself to her moods. Sheila's method of expressing love was direct, it was one part psychological possession, secondly, an obsessive jealousy, expressed in an instant by simple gold plate psychotic rage.

"You will help me grade, won't you?" She smiled her, let's play big brother, big sister smile. At once, she was a cat flirting with a defenseless bug, the violet hued eyes flashed, the lids closed slightly to concentrate the glow. At the same time her purr said, Pet me, Feed me!’

"Anyway!" she bounced up from him. "Your drugy, alcoholic kids are too fuzzed to write papers. Can't think! Can't write! You are stealing money from the school board with your teaching schedule." She referred to Bailley being a psychiatric hospital tutor on full salary. He was on stage only for half a day. His junior, senior students, with a sprinkling of lower grades came for a morning and afternoon, one room class session.

"Better than an itinerant Ichabod, and not bad for a one room schoolhouse," he joked. He puffed a lock of brown hair away from twinkling eyes, in a kind, strong chinned face.

"School house? Fou-Fou!" she quipped. "You lock yourself in the psycho-ward at eight-thirty, let yourself back out at three in the afternoon. If you were the least bit serious about a career, you would be instructing at the college level."