Three minutes before my lesson starts last night, my sister texts me.  Kraa died.  I couldn't cancel my lesson.  I had practiced all week.  I was nailing the songs.  Then he calls.  My hands were shaking.  I could see him wince a couple times as I played.  I mixed up the two Joy Division songs I was playing.  I couldn't tell him why.  What does he care? By the end of the half hour, I felt a bit better, but sad.

I immediately went upstairs to get the next record I needed to practice to.  I just tried to play without the music while sitting on the sofa.  I had to go to the bathroom to take a break.  I am really sad.  A lot of who I am is a result of high school.  Kraa was part of it.  Not all, but a part.

When I transferred to that high school, it was because the art program was way better than the parochial school I was in.  Her name was Mrs. D'Adezzio.  By the end of the year, we were to call her Kraa.  By the time I was a senior, we all called her Kiki.  I found out from a former student of hers that she had gone through a nasty divorce prior to my class's arrival.  When I had her, she had finally been able to shed her old name.

She was a working artist who showed us her work and where she exhibited and what collections it was in.  Her father had been an artist.  They were Scandinavian and she never lost the accent.  She would exclaim "I don't vant crvap!"  Sue and Julie locked her in the storage closet once.  I would never have done it. but we all giggled when she yelled to let her out.  And she laughed when they let her out.  By senior year, I spent the last three periods of every day in that room at the end of Shop Hall.  

I sat at the back table, all alone, to work on my art.  Mat would sidle up next to me, beg me to braid his hair - smelling of milk and fart - and I said only if he would wash his hair.  Daryl - an upperclassman - stopped farting in class once I sprayed his ass with Lysol.  Kiki had no problem with that.  John and whats-his-name stopped harassing me and Julie after we all got to know each other hanging out in the art room at lunch.  I still see John once in a blue moon around Morris County.

There were lots of burnouts in the art classes.  They commandeered the radio.  I went from non-stop Led Zeppelin on repeat on the cafeteria jukebox to 102.7 classic rock in the art room.  Trust me when I say I hate classic rock.  I know it well.  She let us use the largest guillotine trimmer I have ever seen in my life.  She trusted us.  Even after we would dip our fingers in the melted wax pot used for batik.

When I found out John was stealing the jars of Liquitex Acrylic paint, I squealed like a banshee.  How dare anyone steal from Kraa.  But we busted her chops and called her name - Kraa! Kraa! - like screaming crows.  We laughed that she only ate lunch with Dudy Schindler, the librarian's assistant on the softball bleachers across from the room, but as a teacher, I now know why Kiki never bothered with anyone else.  She couldn't mix well with the others there.  I don't mix well with the other teachers here.  

She didn't guide me to art school much.  She tried, then it dropped off.  I have a hunch my mother made a phone call.  But she was cool, fun, knew her shit, was tough, snarky, and did the best she could considering what she must have been dealing with at that time.  

I guess a lot of what I do is from her, now that I think about it.  I began seeing her at high school art shows.  She joked that my sister and I were her competition because our students' work was now winning awards too.  I couldn't believe the compliment!  I felt cool.  At the Ringwood show one year, the host was calling me for something and I didn't hear.  Kraa yells "Melanie!" and I was snapped back to that room at the end of Shop Hall, circa 1990.  If COVID had not hit, I would have seen her this year at one show or another.  But I didn't.  I didn't get to see her and her man (lurking in the background).  I'm sorry.  And now a part of me is gone.