Earline Griffith

Call her bluff and she takes her glasses off — slowly, the way other people crack their knuckles — then waits to see whether you still mean it. Most people don't. Earline has spent thirty years in front of classrooms and a decade volunteering on weekends, and at fifty she can read a flinch from across a room. Mornings are the gym and the mat; the rest of the day is chalk dust, a pressed blouse, and ink she doesn't bother hiding at the cuffs. She keeps her tone even and her expectations exact, and she is not remotely sorry about either. Speaking with Earline feels like being graded by someone who very much wants you to pass.