Krista Foss’s “The Longitude of Okay”

Krista Foss’s “The Longitude of Okay”, which appears in the 2010 Journey Prize, made me afraid of the moments when we are reduced to who we are and who we are not, when we are made all too clear to ourselves. The story is about Katrin, a college teacher who must try to protect her class against a disgruntled student with a gun. Whether she succeeds or not is uncertain, and this question reverberates through the story.

The alarm sounds, and Katrin asks her students “That fire?” (82), indicating that she is not familiar with the various tones and signals the alarm can produce. Cody, the “smart ass” (82), casually informs Katrin that she should have “read the memo” (82). We learn, though, that she only “glanced at it” before throwing it out, her “small rebellion against scare-mongering and bureaucracy” (83). Not only does Katrin not really know the correct procedure for dealing with an armed intruder, she also finds it difficult to remain in her role of teacher or leader. Once she begins to take action, taping a test to the small window in the door, so that gunman cannot see inside the classroom, she “feels the concavity of her will” (83) and reflects “this is not who you are, Katrin. You don’t save the day” (83). Her voice, when she directs the students to “get down, get back” (83) is a “pant” (83). Also, as the scene unfolds, she cannot help but think about her own potential losses: she hears her daughter’s laughter and feels her husband’s “lips vibrating on the back of her neck” (85). Later, she “regrets …that she is middle-aged, that she is not strong, that she has let disappointment chip away at the better part of herself” (86). Katrin becomes a sort of hero only when, as shots ricochet, she awkwardly pulls off her tights so that she can wrap them around a wounded girl’s arm, to stop blood from “gushing” (88). The fact that the door fails to lock, forcing Katrin to push desks and chairs up against it, hints, perhaps, that the bureaucracy itself is remiss.

Ultimately, the students must help Katrin keep the gunman out. Esam, “her quietest student” (85) removes his belt and “loops it around the door knob” (85), tightening it so that the intruder cannot open the door that won’t lock. Ole Bill, an injured steel worker with his “bum leg” (85), becomes the strong man, helping Katrin push desks out of the way. Warbly, “a tall awkward boy” (85) helps Katrin stack desks against the door and she thinks, “Him, of all people?” (85). It’s as if no one present can remain who they are or who they imagine themselves to be.

After the shooting, Katrin grows depressed. Having failed to protect her students, she now sees other failures, how she has neglected her daughter, for instance. Encounters with her students, though, begin to lighten her. Coming across Esam in the convenience store where he works and perceiving that he is the same as he always was, that he hasn’t been changed by the incident, she asks him, “This isn’t the worst thing to happen to you is it?” (93). For the first time, she is able to see Esam not only as a well-behaved student, but also as human being who knows worlds of violence she does not know. Later, Katrin visits Giovanna, the girl who is shot, and Giovanna challenges Katrin. She is furious that the newspapers call Katrin a hero for pulling her tights off, and don’t mention that she did not “read the fucking memo”(94), implying that if Katrin had read the memo, and had acted quickly and effectively, disaster and Giovanna’s own terrible pain might have been avoided. After this moment, Katrin feels released: “Giovanna’s version of events feels familiar, akin to her own.” For the first time in weeks, she eats and “her stomach throbs with its new fullness” (95).

Finally, Katrin runs into Cody at the grocery store. He is the muscly “smartass” (p.82) who during the shooting “toppled into the shoulder of the girl next to him in a dead faint” (p.89). He, like Katrin, was not who he was supposed to be. He was not strong, nor was he the capable hero his physique and demeanour suggested he would be. He tells her that he is ashamed that he was not brave.

The threat of death reduces teacher and students to their most basic selves, making it impossible for them to maintain their usual roles. Esam can no longer remain the quiet, passive student; Bill can no longer remain disabled; Warbly can no longer remain awkward. The teacher fumbles and shows fear, and Cody cannot become the superman he thinks he should be.

In the final moment, Katrin remembers Cody fainting, and is somehow grateful for the awful vulnerability she witnessed. He stands in direct contrast to the armed student, who wants to express his vulnerabilities through murder.

Foss’s writing is robust and inventive. Every sentence contains an original, resonant image. When the gunman breaks the window Foss writes “The glass shatters and tremolos like a harpsichord” (87). Also, Foss finds the exact, telling detail, so that every character who comes on the scene is somehow fully known to the reader. Katrin’s daughter is described this way: “ the girl’s shoulders curve over a fleshy continuum of breasts, the belly pushes against an outgrown T-shirt and busts out at the waist of her sweatpants” ( 89). Finally, Foss sees well past her characters’ surfaces. Here is Cody during his encounter with Katrin in the grocery store, a moment after she “brushes his shoulder” (96): “she feels him deflate, right there between the Magic Baking Powder, coconut milk, and instant frosting tins. Weeks of something sour and uncomfortable escape through the invisible puncture made by her touch” (96). She finds the very heart of him.

Foss, Krista. “The Longitude of Okay.” The Best of Canada’s New Writers The Journey Prize. Ed. Pasha Malla, Joan Thomas and Alissa York. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2010. 82-87.