Cat At The Wall

by Deborah Ellis

  “Who’s she calling?” Simcha asked.

  “Whoever it is,” Aaron said, “I think we’re in trouble.”

  Sixteen

  —

  “She has straight A’s in every other class.”

  My mother was an assistant district attorney. She used her courtroom voice in real life whenever she was trying to get her own way. She was using it now with Ms. Zero in the parent-teacher conference.

  The teacher had her own special twist on parent-teacher conferences. She thought they should include the students, which meant that I was sitting there in the classroom, my mother on one side and my father on the other. I hadn’t managed to figure out a good enough lie to get myself out of it.

  “She has two C’s this term,” my mother continued. “Both are in classes that you teach.”

  Ms. Zero just nodded.

  “You don’t have an answer?” my mother asked her.

  “You didn’t ask a question.”

  I have to admit, I liked that. Most people didn’t stand up to my mother.

  “Why is Clare getting C’s in history and English literature? They are not hard subjects.”

  “She has A’s in math and science,” my father said. He spoke in his calm voice, the one he used when he was soothing clients who wanted to cut all their relatives out of their wills. “She’s near the top of her class in those. We don’t understand about these C’s.”

  Ms. Zero looked down at the paper in the file on her desk.

  “Clare has failed to turn in five assignments,” she said.

  “I turned them in,” I said, even though I knew it would do no good.

  “You turned them in late.”

  “No one is saying you can’t take marks off for assignments being late,” Mom said, “but Clare says you refused to even look at them.”

  Again, Ms. Zero just nodded.

  “She also said she has trouble hearing the assignments sometimes, and when she asks for clarification, you won’t give it to her.”

  More nods.

  And a very awkward silence.

  “You know from her other teachers that she can do the work,” Dad said. “We don’t want her average dropping. Do you think you could be a little more flexible?”

  “No,” Ms. Zero said. “There is no need to be flexible. Clare is capable of doing the assignments and handing them in on time. I run a structured, predictable classroom. Clare, when are homework assignments always given out?”

  “The last five minutes of class,” I replied, looking down at my nail polish as if I was bored to death by the whole thing.

  “And where are they posted after that?”

  “On the chalkboard behind your desk.”

  I deliberately avoided looking at the side chalkboard, where my name was written with “X 12” beside it. No one else had anywhere near that many detentions. The next closest was Brandon, and he only had five. My parents didn’t know about any of them.

  I kept waiting for Ms. Zero to bring them up. She never did.

  “I’m getting the feeling that you don’t appreciate our daughter,” Mom said.

  “Whether or not I appreciate your daughter is immaterial to her grade,” Ms. Zero said, “but you’re right. She has a good mind and all the tools she needs to turn herself into a fine student. But she just doesn’t care.”

  “It’s your job to make her care,” my mother said.

  “I want my students to develop an appreciation for their abilities,” the teacher said. “I want them to take pleasure in the power of their minds. When the world throws difficulties their way, they will need to have the confidence to deal with them. A large part of that is taking responsibility for their lives and choices. Right now, Clare chooses not to do that.”

  “That’s harsh,” said my father. “Clare is, after all, only thirteen and a half.”

  “Which means that in four and a half years, she will legally be an adult,” Ms. Zero said. “She has a long way to go in a very short space of time. She could do a lot of that growing this year if she put her mind to it.”

  At that, my mother stood up. My father and I, after a second, stood up with her.

  “My daughter’s character is not your concern,” she said. “Your job is to teach her history and English literature. I’d appreciate it if you would focus on that.”

  “Thank you for coming in,” Ms. Zero said, not rising and not holding out her hand for a round of handshakes. “There are other schools in this city that offer the eighth grade if you think Clare would be better served elsewhere.”

  I kept waiting for her to bring up the Statement of Agreement with the fake parent signatures on it, but she didn’t.

  She closed my file and folded her hands on top of her desk.

  We were dismissed.

  The next morning, my parents gave me the option of changing schools.

  “We talked it over,” my father said, “and if you want to switch, that would be fine with us. We want you to be comfortable at school.”

  I didn’t want to start at a new place as a new girl without my crew with me. And I knew that I could not switch homeroom teachers. I had already tried that. I was stuck.

  “I’ll stay where I am,” I said.

  “Then you are playing in her courtroom,” Mom said. “It’s her rules. So smarten up. I don’t have time for this.”

  She snapped her briefcase closed and headed off to court.

  “Your teacher is a smart woman,” my dad said. “She’ll soon realize what a star you are.”

  Ms. Zero was right about one thing.

  I didn’t care. Not about history and not about English literature. And not about impressing her.

  But my parents started to take notice of me. Those C’s were like the spotlights shining down from the watchtowers along the Big Wall. They shone right down on me. My parents started asking about my assignments and putting limits on my social life. News of all the detentions leaked out to other teachers, who started to look at me in a new way.

  Even my crew was starting to make plans that didn’t include me.

  “We knew you had all those poems to copy out,” Josie said. “That’s why we didn’t ask you to go to the movies with us. We were helping you.”

  I hated Josie. She was such a phony.

  And I hated Ms. Zero. That this one teacher, who didn’t even know me, could destroy my whole life like this was totally unfair.

  After the parent-teacher conference, I decided it was going to be all-out war. I didn’t even pretend to be nice anymore.

  Seventeen

  —

  “We have a problem,” Aaron said.

  “You think?” asked Simcha.

  “The old lady with the knitting. She’s put down her wool and is looking over here. Now she is getting up out of her chair and heading for the door.”

  I got up on the windowsill to watch. The old lady had something wrong with her legs. She staggered rather than walked, holding on to the house walls and anything else she could lean on while she took step after painful-looking step.

  “What is all this singing?” she asked, but her wrinkly old face was smiling. Ms. Fahima went over to her and the two women talked quietly, the teacher glancing in the direction of our little house. The smile left the old woman’s face, but she put it on again when she talked to the children.

  “You are such pretty singers that I am going to sit right down here and listen to you. Would that be all right?”

  The little kids thought that would be just great. Ms. Fahima sent a couple of them into the old woman’s house to fetch a chair for her, which they did with great excitement. They brought out her knitting, too. It was funny how excited they got about these silly, ordinary things — seeing a cat, carrying a chair for an old lady. I didn’t get it.

  As they were getting t
he old lady settled, a Palestinian television truck pulled up. A reporter and her camera operator got out and headed toward Ms. Fahima. Everyone shook hands.

  “Terrific,” said Aaron. He took out his voice recorder. “Media has shown up. There will be no aggression from us. We remain quiet in the house.”

  The reporter briefly interviewed Ms. Fahima. Then the camera was pointed at the house.

  I had the ridiculous thought that maybe my family would see me on TV and know that I was all right.

  The old lady sat and knitted and the children went back to their singing and their lessons. Ms. Fahima regularly called out to Omar, and each time she did, he squirmed and tried to get away from the soldier who was holding him.

  “Omar,” the teacher called out, “I know you know your multiplication tables, so I want you to recite them along with us. Loud as you can, now.”

  The children started at one times one and worked their way through to ten times ten. Omar recited with them, loudly. They were pretty good for little kids. I don’t think I could have done that when I was their age.

  A couple of old men passing by asked the teacher what was going on. They were told, they looked at the house, and they, too, decided to stay. They sat on the curb along the side of the road and applauded when the children got their answers right.

  A small group of Bedouin shepherds came through with their flock of sheep. The children laughed and jumped up and petted the animals. The shepherds stayed and the sheep stayed with the shepherds. The reporter interviewed everyone and captured it all on camera.

  The little road outside the little house was getting quite crowded.

  It got even more crowded when the stone-throwing boys came running by.

  “Get out of our way!” the boys yelled, kicking out at the sheep and pushing the little kids aside. “Move! Let us through!”

  One of the shepherds took one of them by the arm and said something to him. The boy looked squarely at our little house. He grabbed his friends and huddled with them for a moment. Then they all looked at the house. A couple of them even approached the window and squished their faces up against it for a second.

  I was sitting in the window, but these boys, unlike the little ones, were not interested in a cat. They looked beyond me to the telescope and to the soldiers.

  They made faces and a rude gesture.

  The boys all backed away, bent down, then stood up again. In the next instant, stones hit the house like hail in a storm.

  They yelled as they threw the stones. They didn’t stop. They all threw and threw and threw.

  Some of the little children started to cry. They gathered around their teacher and tried to hide behind her long dress like little chicks around the feathers of their mama chicken. A few of the little kids picked up stones, too, and tried to throw them like the big boys. Their stones landed on sheep more often than on the house.

  The noise attracted more people.

  Ms. Fahima reined in the little ones who were trying to throw stones. She comforted the ones who were crying. She was like a shepherd guiding them to a safer spot at the far side of the vacant lot.

  She left her young students in the charge of a couple of the older people who were there. Then she marched up to one of the teenaged stone-throwers.

  “Abdullah Abbas Soudi, what do you think you are doing?”

  The teenager looked surprised to hear his name spoken like that. He looked around at his friends as if he was nervous that they might have overheard. Then he spotted the TV camera and got all puffy chested.

  “I’m striking back. What do you think I’m doing?”

  “Watch your tone with me, young man,” Ms. Fahima said. “And drop that stone!”

  “Get out of the way,” the teenager said. “Go back to your classroom.”

  “I’m in my classroom,” the teacher said. “And I am here with my students, all of whom are far too young to see this sort of thing going on.”

  “Tell that to the Israelis!” Abdullah shouted. “There are Israeli soldiers in that house, and you are standing here lecturing me. No more lectures! No more time for talking!”

  He tried to shake her away but she would not leave. The other boys started to make fun of him, but she shut them up with one look.

  “Have you forgotten everything you learned in my classroom?” she asked. “You have all been my students.”

  “That was a long time ago, Ms. Fahima,” Abdullah said. “Those soldiers in there, they killed my father! They killed Ibrahim’s brother. They put our uncles in prison.”

  “These soldiers? Are you sure it was these soldiers?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Of course it matters.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter to them! We are all the same to them!” Abdullah broke away from Ms. Fahima and slouched against the lightpost. Then he took a cellphone out of his jeans pocket and spoke quietly into it.

  Ms. Fahima gathered the rest of the boys to her and talked with them quietly.

  After the boys dropped their stones, Ms. Fahima went back to her students. She led them in a recitation of the Desiderata poem. I guess that’s where Omar learned it. The kids recited slowly, in the sing-song rhythm little kids use when they recite. They knew the whole thing. Like I said, these were smart kids. They even had hand gestures for the poem. Like, when it goes, Be on good terms with all persons, they made like they were shaking hands with someone.

  When they got to the part about being a child of the universe, I could tell that was their favorite part because they shouted it out. Instead of saying You have a right to be here, they said WE have a right to be here and they pumped their little fists in the air.

  It was quite a show.

  With everything that was going on, no one was remembering to feed the cat.

  I left the window and went searching. There might be food I hadn’t sniffed out yet. I sniffed around the kitchen cupboards and the bookshelves and ended up in the City of Dreams.

  I snuffled along through the junk city, searching for something I could eat, but just turned up a few more toffees and hard candies.

  That’s when I knocked over a cardboard school and uncovered a photograph.

  It was of Omar standing in front of two adults, a man and a woman. The three of them were dressed in what my grandmother would call their Sunday best. They were posed stiffly, smiling for the camera like the family portraits back in the photographer’s window in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

  I picked up the photo with my teeth and took it over to Omar, rocking in a corner by himself. He stopped rocking and looked at the photo.

  “Mama,” he said. “Papa.”

  I sat on my haunches and put a paw on his leg. I wanted to comfort him.

  Because I knew something that no one else knew.

  Omar’s parents were not coming back.

  Eighteen

  —

  I knew because I saw the whole thing happen.

  It happened at the hole in the wall they call the checkpoint. There’s more than one of these spots. Some are big and are often choked up with cars, trucks, vans and buses. Others are small and get choked up with people. They remind me of the border between the United States and Canada, which I crossed with my parents on one of our boring family vacations.

  I was there because there are often young soldiers at the checkpoints. Some of them are homesick and they like cats, especially one as friendly as me. I go to the checkpoints and purr and let the soldiers pet me and I chase a rolled-up bit of paper around the floor of the room where they search people, and that makes them laugh. And sometimes they feed me.

  This thing with Omar’s parents happened at that small crossing place just before I got chased by the cats and came to stay in the little house on the hill. I was quite happy, perched on a post, looking down at the world, hoping for a nice dinner if
the soldiers took a break. The two soldiers were both young. And they both liked me.

  The crossing was open, but not many people were coming through. It was pretty late at night.

  I was nice and relaxed and hoping for supper when a taxi pulled up to one side of the checkpoint, close to the soldiers. A man got out. I could see there was a woman in the back seat, but I couldn’t see her well. The man was the same man in the photograph with Omar.

  I sniffed and could not smell food on him, so I wasn’t too interested. Still, I couldn’t help overhearing.

  “My wife, she is going to have a baby. We need to get through to the hospital.”

  “Move your cab back,” the soldier said to the cab driver. He gestured with his arms. The taxi started to reverse.

  “My wife is in the back!”

  The taxi moved back to the place the taxis usually stopped. The man kept looking around wildly, as if he already knew he was trapped.

  “Papers, please.”

  “Papers, yes, yes, papers. They are here.” The man started to fumble through his jacket but the young soldier stopped him.

  “Why are you wearing that big jacket? Do you have any bags with you? Where are you going?”

  “Please let us through,” the man said. “My wife is having a baby.”

  They were talking in two different languages. I understood everything but the soldier and the guy at the checkpoint did not understand. They also were not listening to each other.

  A female soldier motioned to the woman to get out of the car. The woman tried, but then she just moaned, a zombie-type moan that I heard on one of those Having My Baby shows on television when I was alive.

  “Please get out of the car!” the soldier said again.

  Slowly, painfully, the woman swung her legs out of the front seat and, clinging to the door, stood up. She wore the black cloak and head cover some of the women wear on this side of the wall.

  “Be careful,” the man soldier told the woman soldier. “They send their women over with bombs strapped to them. I lost my cousin to one of them.”