‘Mind Out of Time’

A Session Report

Mishka had spent most of Matric gradually becoming our school’s trusted analyst. Even a few teachers depended on her. In March she’d appropriated a little staircase- platform in the narrow, unfrequented alley between the Arts Building and the Chemistry Lab, first for privacy then to designate her office space, and by graduation all but a few of us had sooner or later visited her there in need of indifferent consultations. You always had to either interrupt her or take your place in line. You couldn’t book appointments because she didn’t pretend to be a dependable professional. It was we who had thrust upon her the role of prime listener, and part of her phenomenal popularity, surely, was the sense we all shared that she could abandon her post at any time, could just refuse to listen to anyone any longer and return to considering her own issues, whatever they could be.

So of course she was a mystery – like every earnest audience – but what we did know about her was that she acted as a black hole for long-withheld confessions and could summarize, from all she took in, everything you needed to know about yourself in a plain judgement of remarkably few words. There was nothing we could say or do in her company which she wouldn’t take notice of. Her final statements could arrive at any time in the duration of our monologues. Josie Stanford talked herself hoarse for five break-times before being diagnosed with “Jabberwockian Auto-deafness” and Catalina Wozniak had hardly sat down on the white plastic chair facing her before Mishka declared that she only needed a less conventional haircut and her social insecurities would sort themselves out of their own accord. The tension this created was supremely productive. I was her last patient, not because I thought I was just fine and dandy till the final day of school but because I guessed she would be saving some kind of profundity about her accidental occupation for the very last person to whom she could give feedback. Don’t ask me why I thought I was special enough to deserve the honour.

So a few hours before our Valedictory Ceremony, I checked down the famous alley to see if she was still at her post. Of course she was. Outside of class she always wore sunglasses, even though in her office, as now, she usually sat blanketed in shadow. Her red uniform was surprisingly disheveled, her hair done up in a makeshift ponytail that made her look even younger than usual. She was grazing on what looked like a jam sandwich.

I walked down towards her and, like so many before me, sat down in the white chair, coughed, looked around the slightly dingy setting, leaned in and began speaking. Only then did she acknowledge me.
“How are you, Mishka?” I asked.

She didn’t reply. Instead her lips curled in a slight smile of bemusement. Pleasantries were the resort of those who didn’t yet know the rules of the game. I continued undeterred.
“I haven’t come for you to diagnose me, I just wanted to see what would happen if you had the opportunity to talk about yourself for once. I couldn’t leave without learning more about you.”

She still didn’t respond. Instead she took out an apple from her lunch-bag and chomped into it. So again I continued.
“I guess I’ll just keep asking questions then until you hear one you’d like to answer.” She took another bite.
“Do you want to study psychology? Have you read any Freud or Jung? Or Lacan or Melanie Klein? Do you care about people, or just their stories? What bores you? What scares you? Do you just not like eating with groups of people? Do you and your family have dinner in separate rooms? Are your parents divorced? Do you watch movies, read books or listen to music? When you do, do you enjoy your experience, or analyze it, or both? Are your shades a homage to someone? Do you think about death a lot? Are these questions getting frustrating? How are you going to celebrate later? Do you know anything about me? Have I come up in anyone else’s monologues?
What do the teachers worry about? Do you want to help us, or just collect our secrets? Do you think that we’re all fictional characters? What do you dream about? Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? What kind of jam was on your sandwich? Why do you always sit on the stairs, never on the chair? Are you ever going to ta-”

She took off her sunglasses and looked into me.
We stayed quiet for a solid moment, connected by her calm scrutiny.
People passed by the end of the alley, casting shadows toward us. The breeze ran through the morning with a barely audible hush. I even thought I heard the city in the distance, a kind of subliminal, buzzing drone of digital talk and dying engines.
She sighed.
“You need to get a life, Stef.”
And with that, she picked up her lunch-bag and left the alley.
After a while I stood up and sat in her vacated spot on the stairs. The view was so beautiful I started to cry.