Authors: Torey Hayden
“No, but I will. Let’s just finish the cleaning up. We were really mucky in here today.”
“We can clean up,” she said. “Why don’t you tell Jeff and Miriam they can go now. Then you and me can clean up.” When I didn’t respond immediately, Sheila continued. “This is the only problem with this work. You and I never get to spend any time alone. I thought we would more, but there’s always them around. Sometimes I just want to be with you.”
I smiled. “Well, go tell them we’ll do the room on our own then.”
I was hoping that Sheila’s request to be alone with me was an indication that she wanted to talk. The conversation Jeff had reported earlier between her and Alejo still disconcerted me a little and I was anticipating that she might want to discuss it or at least discuss Alejo with me; but this didn’t seem to be the case. Once there were just the two of us, we continued to clean up the room.
Taking a set of fresh erasers from the cupboard, Sheila erased all the colored drawings from the chalkboard, while I tacked up the finger paintings on the bulletin board. When I next looked over, she had a box of the colored chalk in her hand and was drawing on the board. I didn’t say anything, but Sheila quickly became aware that I was watching her.
“The only other problem with this place is that I don’t get to play too,” she said and grinned sheepishly. “I keep wishing, like, I was one of them instead of one of you guys. God, it looks like so much fun, what these kids get to do. Like a dream school.”
I grinned back.
“Can I make a picture with these?” she asked hesitantly, holding up the box of chalks. “Like, maybe it could be decorative? For when they come in tomorrow? It’d look better than just a blank blackboard, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, sure. Go ahead.”
Sheila threw herself wholeheartedly into making an enormous picture that took up a whole section of the chalkboard in the classroom. This intensity of concentration surprised me; she worked as if it had been bursting to get out of her all along. As I finished my work and the time drew near to go for lunch, I was reluctant to pull her away, as she was so deeply involved in what she was doing.
“Shall I go for the hamburgers?” I asked.
“Would you?” she replied in surprise. “God, like, great.”
When I returned about twenty minutes later, Sheila was putting the finishing touches on the blackboard drawing. It was an intriguing picture: a desert of gold sand stretching the full length of the board with hardly anything above it. There was one lone saguaro-type cactus and a couple of branched, leafless bushes. Below the level of the sand, however, were an incredible number of little burrows filled with snakes, mice, scorpions, rabbits and beetles. And at the very far end was a female backpacker in hiking boots and shorts with a red scarf on her head.
“Hey, that’s good. I didn’t know you were such an artist,” I said.
“There’s lots you don’t know about me, Torey.”
“It’s really good. You have the woman’s expression very realistic. But I especially like all these things down under the sand. Look at the rabbit burrows. A regular warren, with all those individual rooms for the rabbits to go in. And I could never draw a scorpion just out of my imagination.”
Sheila grinned. “I like doing things that surprise you.”
I regarded the picture. “She looks lonely, though. This lone hiker with everything hiding from her.”
“Now, don’t go into your psychologist mode. It’s just a picture.”
“So,” I said, “
you
tell me about it then.”
“It’s just a picture. She’s walking in the desert. It’s the California desert. I’ve seen pictures of it, of bushes like those.”
California, where Sheila’s mother had fled, I was thinking, but I didn’t say that. “It still looks lonely from the hiker’s perspective.”
“Well, yeah, there’s a lot of loneliness in deserts. You kind of feel like there’s this big stretch of emptiness ahead of you,” she replied.
“And everything that’s alive is hiding from you?” I ventured.
“Well, yeah, that, or …” She turned and looked at me, a knowing smile crossing her lips. “Or everything is hiding just below the surface, waiting to be discovered. Touché? I caught you at it? I can interpret pictures too?”
I shrugged good-naturedly.
“You’re dying to get your hands on me, aren’t you? What you really want is for me to say that this person is me and this desert is my life, isn’t it?”
“Only if it’s true.”
“Oh, it’s true,” she said. “And you should know it.”
S
heila’s fourteenth birthday came in early July, just before the program broke up for three days over the Fourth of July. I told Jeff, saying that as it was the only birthday to occur over the course of the eight-week program, it would be nice to have a little party. All the time I was teaching I had always made a special effort to have class celebrations, in part because they provided a pleasant change from routine, but mostly because the handicaps, the emotional dysfunction in the families and/or the financial circumstances often prevented these children from experiencing parties elsewhere. Many were the boys and girls in my classes who had never been invited to a single birthday party or been the center of one for themselves. So I baked us a huge chocolate cake and decorated it with Sheila’s name, while Miriam
made up an assortment of small party foods. Jeff provided the paper hats and honkers.
Sheila made no pretense at sophistication when she saw the streamers and balloons, the colorful Pink Panther paper plates and hats, and the cake. Absolutely delighted, she picked up each and every item and inspected it.
“God, you did this for
me? Shit
,” she said, trying a hat on. “God, I’ve never had one of these. How does it look? Where’s a mirror? I’ve got to see.” She went over to the corner where the dressing-up clothes were and took up the small hand mirror. “I’ve always wondered what I’d look like with one of these hats on.”
The children were equally delighted, squealing with enthusiasm when they spied the bright decorations and the array of party foods. Having lived through dozens of classroom parties before, I knew what a recipe for disaster they generally were. Everyone got a little too excited, the noise level was unbearable and nothing of measurable worth got done. However, there was magic in this sort of chaos, to my mind, and I always enjoyed the ferment.
We started with party games and ended with a feast of goodies, the finale being the cake. All the children were amazed by the number of candles Sheila got and even more amazed that she had the ability to blow them all out. After cutting the cake and passing out a slice to everyone, Jeff said, “Well, now must be the time for presents.”
I had gotten her a gift certificate from a local department store, so that she could have the leisure
of picking what caught her fancy. Miriam, who was an accomplished craftsperson, had made an attractive woven belt. Then Jeff handed her a small package, prettily wrapped. It was obvious from its shape that it was a book. Taking the gift from him, Sheila paused to look at it. The wrapping, a shimmery gold, was quite unlike anything I’d seen before and I found it amazing to think that Jeff would take time with things like wrapping birthday presents.
Carefully, Sheila prized the sticking tape off. Inside was a paperback copy of Shakespeare’s
Antony and Cleopatra.
Sheila lifted it up and regarded the cover. At a loss for words, she just stared at it.
“Torey said you liked Caesar,” Jeff said. “This is set in the same time period.” He regarded Sheila’s face. “Have you read it?”
Curling her lip in undisguised disbelief, she shook her head. “This is Shakespeare.”
“Yes, well, don’t hold it against him. Forget who wrote it and just take it home and read it. There’s one of the best stories in the world between those two covers and you’re going to meet a soul mate.”
Sheila looked up, astonished. “Me? Who?”
“You read it and find out.”
En route down to Fenton Boulevard after lunch, Sheila was full of ebullience.
“Thanks for that, Torey. That was really nice of you and Miriam and Jeff to do all that for me today,” she said.
“We thought it’d be a bit of good fun. I’m glad you liked it,” I replied.
She smiled. “That’s what I always hated about having a summer birthday. All the other kids at school got some kind of fuss made, you know, like they sang ‘Happy Birthday’ or something, and I never got anything. And I always wanted it. Just once. You know, just once, so you could stand up and everybody’d think
you
were special.” She paused. “It’s funny how such a silly thing can matter so much when you’re little.”
I nodded.
“If you want the actual, honest-to-God truth, this is the first birthday party I’ve ever had.”
I nodded again. I had suspected as much.
“Once, when I was in this one foster home … I was eight, I think, and turning nine … they said they were going to let me have a party and she took me out to look at paper plates and junk, but …” Turning her head, she gazed out the window. “I didn’t get it. I did something or another, I don’t remember what now, and she told me I wasn’t going to have anything for my birthday because of it. But, you know, I don’t think she was going to do anything anyway, ’cause she never bought the paper plates. I think she was just winding me up.”
“That must have been disappointing,” I said.
“Yeah, but then what’s new?”
Silence.
Sheila looked down at the presents in her lap. Pulling out the gift certificate I’d given her, she examined it, then put it back in its envelope. Then
she felt the weave of Miriam’s belt. Finally, she began to page through the play Jeff had given her.
“Why on earth do you suppose he gave me this?” she murmured. “It’s a weird gift.”
I didn’t answer.
“Have you ever read it?”
“Yes, long ago. I did a report on it at school once.” I paused, then giggled. “To be truthful, I
didn’t
read it. I was about your age and my sole goal in life in those days was to figure out how to short-circuit the work and still get the grades. I was a world-class skimmer. I don’t think I actually read a whole book cover to cover until I was about twenty-two.”
“
Torey
!” she said, absolutely appalled.
I turned and grinned.
“God, and I thought you were so perfect,” Sheila said.
A pause.
“So, you don’t know what’s in it either?” she asked.
“Well, not other than it’s about
Antony and Cleopatra.
You know who Cleopatra is, don’t you?”
“Vaguely. A queen in Egypt a long time ago, but that’s about all,” Sheila replied. “I can’t imagine why Jeff thinks I’ll want to read this. Holy shit,
Shakespeare.
”
“I guess you’ll have to read it and find out.”
I was coming to the roadwork again, so I slowed the car down.
“I remember that other book,” Sheila said. “From your class.
The Little Prince.
Do you
remember reading that to me? It was my best book in the whole world for the longest time. I just couldn’t get enough of it.”
“Yes, I remember it very well,” I said.
“I can still quote all my favorite parts.” She smiled over at me. “You know who I liked best in the book?”
“The prince?” I ventured.
She shook her head.
“The fox?”
“No, the rose. I loved that rose. It was so conceited, so full of itself and yet … Remember how it had those thorns, four thorns, and thought itself so brave? Remember that one bit? The rose said to the little prince, ‘Let the tigers come with their claws!’” Sheila boomed out in a deep, fierce voice. “And the prince said, ‘There are no tigers on my planet, and besides, tigers don’t eat weeds.’ ‘I am not a weed!’” Again, the dramatic rendering. Sheila’s voice squeaked over the word “weed.” “She was so put out. And then she just kept going on, ‘Let the tigers come! I am not at all afraid of tigers!’” Sheila smiled. “I can just imagine that brave little rose.”
“I can see why you liked her,” I said. “You were a bit of a little rose yourself in those days.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Oh God, I wasn’t, Torey. God. That’s no compliment. A
flower
? No, it’s the tigers I identified with. Rrrowrr!” she said and struck playfully out at me with fingers arched as claws. “I was the tigers’ kid.”
O
ver the Fourth of July weekend, I asked Sheila if she would like to come with me for a brief visit to Marysville, where she had been in my class all those years previously. It was a two-hundred-mile journey and I thought it would fit well into the four days we had until the clinic summer school-program resumed.
Sheila accepted enthusiastically. She had been back on only one previous occasion five years before, when her foster family had taken her to visit her father at the penitentiary. It had been almost as long since I’d been there. I’d passed through on one or two occasions since but I hadn’t stopped. With the exception of Chad, all the people I had been closest to were now gone.
The plan was that I would pick her up early on Thursday morning and we would work our way
across the state to Marysville at a leisurely pace. Friday and Saturday we would spend looking around. Chad and his family had invited us to celebrate the Fourth of July with them on Saturday evening, and then on Sunday we’d return.
Sheila was waiting outside on the front steps of the duplex when I pulled up. It was very early, only just after six, and the sun was not high enough to dispel all the shadows. Even so, I squinted hard at the figure by the door. Sheila?
“I’ve done this
just
for you,” she said emphatically, as she flung her duffel bag into the backseat and got in beside me. She buckled the seat belt. “I hope you appreciate it.”
What could I say? The orange hair was gone, replaced by bright-yellow hair that stood up all over her head, as if it had a life of its own. Sort of Marilyn Monroe meets Bride of Frankenstein.
“You said I looked better blond,” she replied to my stunned silence. “I thought, well,
just
for you, since you’re taking me someplace nice.”
I set off in a high mood. I love to drive, and it was a super time for driving, on an early summer morning. Although we had been in the midst of a string of quite hot days, the air was still cool and the humidity was low, making the far horizon sharp.
“I wonder what we’re going to find,” Sheila said. “Can we go to the school?”
“It’ll be closed, but we could look at the playground.”
While I negotiated the last of the freeway interchanges necessary to get us out of the city, Sheila amused herself trying to tune in a rock station, but my radio wasn’t very good and she finally gave up.
“After you left my class, where all did you go?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Lots of places. I was in, like, three foster homes. Four? I can’t remember now. See, we were in Marysville and then we moved to Broadview and my dad got in trouble, like really soon after we moved. So, I went in this one foster home and then I got in another one and another. Then I got sent to a children’s home for a while.”
“How come?” I asked.
Another shrug. “Just the way the system works.”
“What made you move from Marysville in the first place?” I asked.
“Don’t know. Don’t remember.”
“Do you remember being in Sandra McGuire’s class the year after my class?” I asked. “When you were seven?”
“Sort of.” She paused pensively. “Actually, I have exactly one memory. I was sitting at a table and we were getting assigned lockers. We had to share and so I got assigned to share with the girl sitting across the table from me. I remember her, this girl. She was the smartest kid in the whole class, you know, the one that always got the best grades, and I was excited to think I was going to have a reason to talk to her now and she was going to have to talk to me; but then, I was also sort of
scared because I knew she didn’t like me very well.”
“
You
were the smartest kid in the whole class, Sheil.”
“No, I wasn’t. She got the best grades. I tried, but she got them.”
“You were the smartest kid, regardless of who got the grades.”
“Yeah, I read about what you said my IQ was in your book. I read it and thought, God, you faked that one. That’s not me,” she replied.
“It is.”
“It isn’t.”
“Has no one ever told you in all this time that you were gifted?”
Sheila shook her head.
Shocked, I looked over. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not gifted, Torey. I know I’m not.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, just ’cause. I mean, I’m me. I know. And I’m not smart. I’m stupid.”
“You’re not!”
She didn’t respond, but I could tell I had not convinced her.
“So, give me one example of why you think you’re stupid.”
“Well, like, in class, for instance, everybody else gets the information the first time the teacher gives it out, but I never do. I hear it and I think I understand it, but then I start getting questions. I think, what about this? Or, like, oftentimes, I’ll think, well, that’s true in this instance, but is it true in
another instance? And every time I’ll see there’s a time when it
isn’t
true, but then it
is
true some of the time. Then I realize there’s this big huge area of junk I don’t understand at all, but everybody else is sitting around me, writing like mad.
They
understand it and I don’t. And if I ask the questions, then pretty soon the teacher says, ‘We’ve got to move on now. You’re holding us up.’ And then I know for sure I’m some kind of mega-dumbhead, because I only understand a weensy bit of it.”
Her cheeks grew blotched, making me realize the intensity of her emotions over the subject. Pushing the shaggy mass of hair back from her face, she rested her hands against her reddened skin. “And the kids … Whenever I try to ask something, everybody groans. They say, ‘Oh, God, not her again.’ Or, ‘Shut her up, would you?’ This one kid who sat in front of me in math, he turned around to me and said, ‘Shit, can’t you just
do
it, for once?’ I wanted to die, I was so embarrassed. I never asked anything again in there.”
Pointed silence hung between us. Sharp, it was, like a small dagger. Sheila turned to me. “It’s because I’m the youngest in the class. I haven’t had as much school as they have and it isn’t fair.” Her voice was heavy with accusation. “How can they expect me to know as much?”
“You’re youngest in the class, Sheila, because you know
more
than they do, not less. The other kids aren’t asking questions, because their minds don’t throw up so many possibilities so quickly as yours. They don’t even realize questions are there.”
She chewed her lower lip a moment. Staring ahead at the far-stretching road, she sighed wearily. “If I’m so smart, how come I feel so stupid then? What kind of gift is it that turns the world upside down, so that less is more and more is less?”
We arrived in Marysville in the midafternoon after a leisurely journey across the state. The day had grown very hot, the sky going white with the heat, and coming into the shady streets of the town was a relief. I booked us into a motel on Main Street that, much to Sheila’s delight, had a swimming pool. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a swimming suit, so we made a jaunt out to find one at the shopping mall. The mall hadn’t been there when I had last been in town, and as with all such places, Sheila was keen to explore. Consequently, we wandered around for an hour or two, by which time we were ready for an evening meal; so we stopped for supper in the mall food court before returning to the motel. Feeling overcome with nostalgia as I drove through the familiar streets, I would have preferred going out then and there to visit some old haunts, but Sheila was desperate to go in the pool. Thus, we spent the evening swimming.
The next morning, it was raining steadily.
“Oh, geez, would you believe it?” Sheila said in dismay, as she pulled the curtain back from the motel window. “In July? It never rains in July.”
It certainly did that particular July day and by the looks of the clouds, it was not close to stopping. “Come on,” I said, “it won’t matter. Let’s go.”
Sheila wanted to go out to see the migrant camp. I thought I remembered the road, but it turned out I didn’t and we were soon lost. This left me feeling a bit irritable, which wasn’t a good start.
When we did finally locate it, we found the camp full to bursting with seasonal workers. Several types of crops were at a harvestable stage, which had caused the usual swell in camp numbers, but as it was raining and some crops could not be worked, many of the workers were milling around the various buildings.
The camp itself had changed considerably from what I remembered of it. Two large new housing units had been erected. They were great green-painted aluminum structures reminiscent of the calving sheds I was used to in Montana, and they dominated the camp. Many of the old tar-paper buildings that made up my clearest memories of the migrant camp were gone and the layout of the old roads in the camp had been disrupted by the new buildings.
What Sheila was thinking, as we drove through the rutted tracks around the housing units, I do not know. She had become increasingly silent as we approached the camp. Face turned away from me, she looked out the window.
There was a different atmosphere here to when I used to come out to see Anton. It didn’t strike me as a particularly safe place for two young white women to wander around alone and a lot of people were noticing us, even in the car. As a consequence, I didn’t suggest we get out of the car. It was with a
sense of relief that I drove through the gates and back up onto the main road. Sheila still didn’t speak.
Back in town, I took the car slowly down a few of the streets I knew best. I pointed out where my old apartment had been. The pizzeria where Chad and I had taken Sheila after the hearing had been replaced by a bar and lounge, but I showed her where it had been. We had an invitation to Chad’s house for a picnic supper and fireworks for the next day, and I mentioned that I hoped the weather would improve.
Down a quiet, tree-lined suburban street I located our old school. A low, one-story brick building with white trim, it fitted in attractively with the neighborhood of ranch-style homes. This wasn’t a wealthy suburb by any means, but it was solidly middle class, the type of area that so embodied the American Dream of the fifties and sixties. Most of my teaching career since had been spent in drafty, old, turn-of-the-century buildings in the less-affluent parts of large cities, and I had forgotten just what a small, attractive school this had been. The contrast with the migrant camp struck me forcefully.
Pulling the car over to the curb, I turned off the engine. “Recognize this place?”
Sheila nodded faintly.
“See that window there, three along on the left? That was our room,” I said.
Absorbed silence.
“Do you remember any of this?”
“I don’t know,” she murmured quietly.
I certainly remembered. All the little moments came crowding back, grappling one with the other to reach my consciousness first. There was the door where I lined the children up, observing the military precision my principal had loved so well. There were the seesaws the kids always fought over. There was the wide expanse of asphalt where Anton and I had struggled to teach them dodgeball and kick ball and …
“Are there still special-ed kids in that classroom?” Sheila asked.
“The room isn’t a classroom anymore. They’ve made a counseling center out of it,” I said. “I suppose we could get out and walk around, if you want …”
“No.”
I started the engine, then paused, hoping for what I’m not sure. Finally I pulled away from the curb and drove off.
After another half hour of cruising up and down the back streets, I began toying with the idea of visiting the shopping mall again. It was still raining heavily and my mood was going from wistful to something less comfortable, making me realize I’d had enough nostalgia for one day.
“You want to do something?” I asked. “I think I saw where there are movie theaters out at the shopping center. Shall we go see what’s on?”
Sheila shook her head. “Let’s go to that park,” she said, “the one where you took those pictures of the last day of school.”
“Why don’t we wait until it stops raining? Maybe tomorrow, before we go see Chad.”
“No, let’s go now.”
The park was just as beautiful as I remembered it, with its broad winding entrance road lined with locust trees and flower borders. I parked the car on the street and we walked slowly down amidst the flowers. The floral display being quite stupendous, I was entranced. I am very fond of gardening and was curious about the plants used, so I stopped along the way to examine them. Sheila, however, was totally lost to the here and now. She walked as if bewitched.
The lane ended at the duck pond. When we reached the point where it met the path circling the water, Sheila stopped stock-still. Her brow furrowing, she watched the ducks and geese noisily announce our arrival. One by one, they clambered out of the water and waddled over until we were surrounded, and all the time, Sheila never moved. She just stared down the path to the water, her expression inward, and I suspect she never saw the ducks at all.
The ghosts rose up before my eyes also. With an intensity I hadn’t experienced elsewhere, the past came back to me. The rain disappeared and the air was full of children’s voices. “Look at me, Torey! Look what I can do! How big the trees are here. Do you see the bunnies they got? Down here, come this way, so I can show you. Can I feed the ducks? Can I wade in the pond? Let’s roll down the hill. Torey? Torey, look at me!”