[1] The narrator remembers his teacher's red ink as "cruel," though he preserves the marked essays in a box. [2] On rereading them, he finds not only corrections but questions in the margins: "What do you mean by we?" and "Who is missing here?" [3] The cruelty of the ink becomes entangled with the gift of being asked to think beyond himself. [4] He does not forgive the sting, but he keeps the questions.