The Pottery Teacher

The clay wouldn't cooperate.

Eight weeks of evening pottery classes, and I still couldn't throw a decent bowl. Every piece I made wobbled, collapsed, turned into something my instructor called "abstract" but I called "garbage."

"Stop fighting it," said Nora Blackwood. "Clay knows when you're angry."

"I'm not angry."

"You're frustrated. Same thing, to the clay." She settled onto the stool beside mine—her considerable bulk making the seat creak. "Let me show you."

Nora Blackwood was sixty years old and shaped like her own pottery.

Round. Substantial. Made to be held. Her hands were permanently clay-stained, her gray hair pulled back in a messy bun, her smock covered in the evidence of decades of creation. She was easily two-fifty, and she moved through her studio like she owned gravity itself.

"The wheel isn't your enemy," she said, centering my clay with three quick motions. "It's your partner. You have to listen to it."

"I'm trying—"

"You're thinking. That's the problem." She placed her hands over mine—warm, damp, strong. "Feel. Don't think. Let your hands remember."

The classes continued.

Every Thursday evening, I sat at my wheel and failed, and Nora sat beside me and taught. Her methods were unconventional—half instruction, half philosophy—but something about them worked. By week ten, I was making recognizable bowls.

"You're improving," she said, examining my latest attempt.

"It's lopsided."

"Art is lopsided. Perfection is industrial." She set the bowl aside. "You have good instincts. You just need to trust them."

"How do you know what instincts I have?"

"I watch you." She met my eyes. "I've been watching you for ten weeks."

I started staying late.

Helped her clean up after classes, wedged clay for the next session, lingered while she fired the kiln. We talked—about art, about life, about the peculiar satisfaction of making something from nothing.

"Why pottery?" I asked one night.

"Because it's honest." She was kneading clay, her massive arms working the material like bread dough. "You can't fake ceramics. The kiln reveals everything. Every weakness, every flaw." She smiled. "And every unexpected strength."

"That sounds terrifying."

"It is. That's why most people quit." She looked at me. "You haven't quit."

"I like the challenge."

"You like something." Her hands paused. "But I'm not sure it's the challenge."

She saw through me.

Of course she did. Nora saw through everything—every off-center bowl, every uneven glaze, every student who was there for reasons beyond art.

"You watch me," she said one evening.

"I'm learning."

"You watch me when you should be watching your wheel." She set down her tools. "Tell me what you're really doing here, Tyler."

I could have lied. Should have, probably. Instead:

"I'm watching someone who knows exactly who she is. Who creates beauty without apology. Who fills every space she enters and makes it better." I met her eyes. "I'm watching someone I can't stop thinking about."

"I'm your teacher."

"I know."

"I'm old enough to be your mother."

"I know that too."

"I'm—" She gestured at herself. At the body that had probably been dismissed and overlooked her entire life.

"You're extraordinary."

She kissed me beside the kiln.

The heat of it warmed our skin while her mouth found mine—soft, clay-flavored, desperate. Her hands—those artist's hands—cupped my face while I pulled her massive body against mine.

"This is inappropriate," she gasped.

"Completely."

"I could lose the studio—"

"I won't tell anyone."

"Tyler—"

"Let me touch you." I pressed my forehead to hers. "Let me feel you the way you taught me to feel clay."

She laughed—wet, surprised. "That's the worst line I've ever heard."

"Did it work?"

"God help me." She took my hand. "The back room. Now."

The back room was where she stored finished pieces.

Shelves of pottery surrounded us—bowls and vases and sculptures, years of work witnessing what came next.

I undressed her among her creations. Her smock fell away. Her clothes beneath it. Her body was revealed piece by piece—vast and soft, breasts heavy, belly round, thighs thick with decades of sitting at wheels.

"I know what I look like," she said.

"You look like art." I knelt before her. "Let me worship you."

I pressed my mouth between her thighs. She moaned—a sound that echoed off pottery on every surface—and gripped my hair.

"Like that—yes—like you're shaping something—"

I shaped her with my tongue. Found her rhythms, her pressures, the places that made her gasp. She came against my mouth, and I caught her—held her weight while she shook.

"Your turn," she said, pulling me up.

She guided me to a work table—cleared it with one sweep of her arm, pottery crashing to the floor—and pushed me down.

"I'm going to ride you," she said, climbing on top of me. "And you're going to feel everything."

She sank down.

I felt everything.

Her body surrounded me—breasts in my face, belly against my stomach, her wetness engulfing me completely. She moved like she worked clay—with patience and pressure and attention.

"Feel that?" she gasped. "That's how you center."

"I feel it—God—"

"Don't think. Just feel."

I felt. Her weight, her heat, the slow build of something being created. She rode me among her pottery, and I understood finally what she'd been teaching.

Art isn't about control. It's about surrender.

I surrendered.

"That was unprofessional," she said afterward.

We were on the floor now, surrounded by broken pottery and clay dust.

"It was perfect."

"I broke three of my best pieces."

"Make new ones." I pulled her close. "With me. Let me stay."

"Stay where?"

"Here. With you." I kissed her shoulder. "Teach me more. Not just pottery. Everything."

"You want to be my apprentice?"

"I want to be whatever you'll let me be."

She was quiet for a long moment. Then she laughed.

"Fine. But you're cleaning up this mess."

"Whatever you want."

"And you're starting over with basic centering tomorrow."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And—" She turned, kissed me deeply. "And you're coming home with me tonight."

"Best lesson yet."

I never stopped taking classes.

The evening sessions became morning sessions, became afternoon sessions, became every hour I could spend in her studio learning from her hands. The other students noticed my improvement. They didn't notice where I went after class.

"You're different," my brother said when he visited.

"I found something worth doing."

"Pottery?"

"Something like that."

What he didn't see was Nora waiting at home. Didn't see our life—messy, creative, full of clay and love and the slow shaping of two people into one.

"You made me," I told her once.

"You made yourself. I just showed you how."

"Same thing."

She smiled, pulled me to the wheel.

"Come. Let's make something together."

Clay centered.

Vessel formed.

Kiln fired.

Perfect.