I am good at arranging woe.
That evening, with overwhelming delight, I invited my dear friend Mrs. Button to come over for the tea. I was brimming with enthusiasm to hear the results of my phone call earlier that afternoon.
I am always so happy to welcome Mrs. Button into my home. Not simply because she thinks American football is the finest sport known to man or that her great-grandfather had the wisdom to buy Coca-Cola stock at twenty-five cents a share. And not just because she was on the board of directors of the McKegway School for Clever and Gifted Children. Of course not.
Mrs. Button is my Freundin.
The unkind among you would say that she is my only friend, but that is untrue. When it comes to the friendships, Mrs. Ravenbach has many. But Mrs. Button is my most especial friend. Mrs. Button understands my whims, my varying temper, my dark humors, my anger.
We look a funny pair because I’m so tall and she is so small, precisely the exact size to look a little child straight in the face and give him or her a piece of her mind. Mrs. Button and I share in common the ability to give a child a piece of one’s mind. Some adults are unable to do so, but I think in those adults, that is a weakness. I dislike to repeat myself, but I am German and we have no weaknesses.
Or, very few.
My friend Mrs. Button, she is devoted to me. Sometimes I feel I am her only friend. Her husband, Mr. Button, is always working in his yard, tending his green, green grass, or taking long fishing trips. Mrs. Button has the perfect personality that you would want to have in a companion for tea.
Of course, the most interesting thing about Mrs. Button is that she happens to be the across-the-street neighbor of young Tobias Wilcox.
Usually I serve little cookies with the tea, but Mrs. Button had generously brought several of her delicious and prizewinning tea cakes.
At our tea, after my friend Mrs. Button and I finished discussing the most recent gifts I had been given by my pupils, I picked up my knitting and she began recounting the events that had occurred at young Tobias Wilcox’s home earlier that afternoon, which I am sure will continue to be helpful to him all the rest of his days.
As my antique ivory knitting needles soothingly clickety-clicked, Mrs. Button explained how she carried a platter of exquisitely prepared, wonderful, delectable treats up their sidewalk and knocked on the Wilcox home front door.
As I poured the steaming tea into sugar in my teacup, I said, “Please. Tell all, Mrs. Button.” I am not a fan of the tea bag and only a Dummkopf would think it superior to the loose tea.
“I have taken Mrs. Wilcox under my wing. New in town, she looks up to me and respects me. Though my children have left the McKegway School far behind, she sees me as wise and experienced in the ways of household budgeting, family, and children. I found them in the kitchen. Mrs. Wilcox, Toby, and their poorly trained dog, Godzilla. They were slouched at their messy kitchen table having after-school milk and cookies. They had to let their maid go, and it shows.”
“Did they suspect your purpose in the paying of the visit?” The clickety-click was a tad more insistent.
“Fooling people is something I take pride in. Therefore, the brownies.”
“I’m sure you put them ‘in the know’ quite quickly.”
“I’ve always found it’s good to start an important conversation by yelling, especially if you’re yelling at a child. It gets their attention.
“What did you say? I cannot wait to hear.”
“I didn’t ‘say.’ I screamed. ‘WHAT EVER GAVE YOU THE IDEA THAT YOUR TEACHER MRS. RAVENBACH WANTS TO HEAR WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT VEGETABLES?’ Toby blinked. Any child who blinks is no match for an adult. His mother blinked too. She blinked a lot. ‘HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD THE EXPRESSION “CHILDREN SHOULD BE SEEN AND NOT HEARD”?’
“ ‘Yes, ma’am.’
“ ‘IT’S A VERY INTELLIGENT EXPRESSION, ISN’T IT?’
“ ‘Yes, ma’am.’
“Then, instead of yelling, I spoke softly. But with a cutting edge to my voice, bright and razor-sharp like a Japanese samurai sword slicing through the warm entrails of a prisoner of war.”
“Oh, Mrs. Button, you do have a gift for imagery.”
“I said, ‘Stand up when I talk to you. Don’t sit there in that chair with cookie crumbs on your shirt like a sniveling little obsequious loser. Stand up, son, and answer my question!’
“ ‘Yes, ma’am.’
“He stood right up. I grabbed his dirty little shirt and I pushed him back against the refrigerator and scooted up right in front of him until my nose was almost touching his. I had his attention. An atomic bomb could have gone off next door and he wouldn’t have looked away from me. ‘Why would you disrespect your beloved teacher?’
“He said, ‘I wanted to tell her what I thought about my lunch.’
“ ‘She’s the teacher. You’re the student. Why should she want to know your opinion?’
“ ‘I don’t know.’
“ ‘Don’t say, “I don’t know.” Answer the question.’
“ ‘Yes, ma’am.’
“I looked at his mother. Instead of standing up and defending her child against a screeching neighbor, she just sat there holding her Oreo over her glass of milk, not dipping it, frightened like a deer when an automobile is about to mow it down. Toby’s back was flat against the refrigerator and his knees were literally shaking. I thought that only happened in movies. It was quite satisfying to make a little boy’s knees shake. Little boys’ knees need to be shaken more often.”
I could see that Mrs. Button was worked into, as they say, a “tizzy” telling her marvelous story about young Tobias Wilcox up against the refrigerator in his mother’s kitchen while the dog barked and barked and his mother did nothing to stop her. I must say, it was an excellent and heartwarming story.
I hoped he’d been wearing short pants so she could see his knees knocking together from the fear. The fear is an excellent motivator in children. I must find a way to instill some of it in young Tobias Wilcox myself. Of course, at the McKegway School for Clever and Gifted Children they do not allow us to yell at the students nearly as often as we should.
“That awful little boy, he actually dared to speak to me. He said, ‘Mrs. Button?’ I said, ‘Yes?’ His voice was tiny and small. A voice so insignificant, it sounded like he might never speak again. He said, ‘I’m really sorry.’ ”
“I said, ‘Do you think that’s going to help Mrs. Ravenbach now?! You little children think you can do anything you want to and just apologize and undo it and it doesn’t matter! Well, let me tell you something. It matters! It matters greatly! It matters to me! It matters to Mrs. Ravenbach and the McKegway School and its board of directors that her students show proper respect! It matters to Mr. Ravenbach that his wife is not upset! It matters to Mr. Button that my friend Mrs. Ravenbach is not upset! I’ve half a mind to tell Mr. Button to take you out on his fishing boat to the middle of Echo Canyon Lake and wrap an anchor chain around you and drop you off in the deep, deep, cold, cold, cold water!’ ”
Mrs. Button was so worked up that she had to catch her breath and have a sip of tea. Her chest was quivering and her face was dotted with the lightest layer of perspiration. It was quite attractive, actually. For someone so small and delicate and birdlike, her shrill voice was as piercing as a fifteen-inch cannon shell from the Tirpitz exploding a day care center.
“Well, Mrs. Button,” I said, “you certainly are articulate when you are in a rage. More tea?”
I poured.
“And what did he say?”
Mrs. Button said, “He sort of whimpered, ‘Save me, Willie Mays . . .’ And what a surprise! Willie Mays did not save him. Silly child. He’d have had a far better chance had he prayed to Joe Namath. Then he said, ‘No, thank you,’ and I said, ‘No, thank you, what?’
“ ‘No, thank you, I don’t want . . . Mr. Button . . . to take me out on his fishing boat into the middle of Echo Canyon Lake and . . . wrap an anchor c
hain around me . . . and drop me off in . . . the deep . . . deep . . . cold, cold water.’
“ ‘I’ve come over here on my own time to try and help you grow up to be a better person, and all you can muster up to say is “No, thank you”?’
“ ‘Thank . . . you.’ He was so confused. Bonus points for me.
“ ‘Thank you for what?’ I asked. I could tell I was getting to him. His little knees were shivering.
“ ‘Thank you . . . for trying . . . to help me . . .’ ”
I leaned forward toward my friend Mrs. Button. My big, hard, round belly was nearly touching the little table between us. My big, round bosoms nearly knocked over my precious Meissen tea pot. What a disaster that would have been! I lowered my voice and asked her, “And what did his mother say?”
Mrs. Button smiled like a cat that’s just eaten its tenth canary. “Toby was looking at his mother. He had this scared, drowning-in-quicksand look in his eye, this imploring look of, ‘Please, mother. Please help me. Please stop this unpleasant woman from speaking to me in such an unpleasant way.’ ”
“And, Mrs. Button, what did Mrs. Wilcox do?”
“Not a thing. She didn’t stand up. She didn’t step my way. She didn’t pick up a butcher knife and shove it between my ribs. She did none of those things you might think a mother would do when her child is threatened. She just sat there with her Oreo dangling over her glass of milk like an imbecile, and allowed me to have my say. His poorly behaved dog tried to bite my ankle. I kicked it squarely in the face and it found something else to do.
“Bit by bit, I saw Toby caving in and becoming quieter. It was almost as if he was a house of cards collapsing in slow motion as he folded into himself and pulled the light in after. When I finished talking, the light inside him had without a doubt gone out, which was my goal.”
“What a triumphant, uplifting story that is.”
“But that’s not all . . .”
“Could the story possibly improve? Oh, please, Mrs. Button, I’m aflutter with excitement.”
“Well. It was a marvelous addition to my Lifetime List of Grand Achievements. I glanced down at the kitchen floor, which needed a good scrubbing, and, between his filthy dirty sneakers, I saw . . . a puddle of bright yellow pee-pee.”
“Oh, Mrs. Button, you are to be congratulated! That sort of beneficial lesson will stay with him for years and years and years. I wish I were able to make children pee in their trousers, because then you know you have truly reached them.”
I would not be surprised if, after his talk with Mrs. Button, young Tobias Wilcox never offered his opinion about anything, ever again. Ever.
Mrs. Button has that effect on children.
As she left, she said, “Do give Mr. Ravenbach my best.” I promised I would.
Outside the school was the heavy early morning rain. Inside there was the happiness, the warmth, and the sunshine. Because it was my classroom. Where I teach.
I was just reaching up to scratch the mole on my chin. It was itching. It was quite an attractive mole with lovely stiff hair growing out of it. I was quite proud of my mole. Anyone can have a perfect face. A face that can survive something as unusual as a mole with thick, bristly hair growing from it makes that person into an individual, strong character.
I was just about to scratch my mole, deeply, forcefully, which would have been quite satisfying, when I saw at the door of my sacred classroom, young Tobias Wilcox.
Early.
Extraordinarily early!
I wondered why perhaps he might have come to see me this early in the morning because normally, he was a straggler.
He was soaking wet. Imagine the kind of a parent who would let a child leave the house without a rain jacket, or a poncho, or an umbrella, or a rain suit, or something! At least a plastic garbage bag to cover himself to walk from the automobile to the school building in the drenching rain!
A puddle of water spread all across the hall floor. I prayed he would not step into my homeroom.
He stepped into my homeroom.
My blood pressure shot through the roof thinking about water stains on my precious Bokhara rug. I had purchased it at ruinous expense on a hedonistic touristic expedition to Pakistan. My Bokhara rug was one of my prized possessions and now his foul little feet were making little wet footprints as he crossed to my desk.
I did, however, notice he was carrying a crinkly paper bag with an attractive light blue logotype from the Floured Board. Mrs. Ravenbach’s favorite bakery! It could not have contained his schoolbooks because it was roundish in shape.
His wet little puppy dog eyes under his wet little puppy dog hair looked up at me with the kindest, sweetest expression. My heart exploded with warmth for my adorable young pupil.
“Mrs. Ravenbach?”
“Yes, Tobias?”
“I’ve got something for you I think you might enjoy.”
“I always like to have things that I might enjoy. What is in the bag?” What I wanted to do was grab the bag, throw it on my desk, rip it open, and find out what was inside. But that would have been impolite and a bad model of behavior for an impressionable child. More than anything, I am an excellent teacher!
“It’s bread. From the Floured Board. I think it’s your favorite. At least I hope it is. It’s called farm bread and there’s butter and strawberry jam in there too.”
Since January, when I had begun teaching young Tobias Wilcox, he had never seemed quite so adorable. The expression on his adorable face was so kind and gentle and loving, it was all I could do to stop from hugging him close to my bosom and telling him what a wonderful child he was. Perhaps this was because he was giving me a gift.
I smiled only a tiny, tiny, tiny bit, and said, “Thank you, Tobias. Though it is a quite small loaf of farm bread, I certainly will enjoy eating it with Mr. Ravenbach later on this evening. He is particularly fond of the strawberry jam.”
“I hope you both enjoy it.”
“If you don’t mind, I probably will dispense with writing you a thank-you note because I have now thanked you in person.”
“Oh that’s okay. I don’t need a thank-you note. I’m hoping you like the bread and the jam. I bet it’s really good.”
He was looking up at me. His big, wet eyes, looking up at me, up, up, up. Like a puppy. Like a hungry puppy. Like a hungry puppy who hoped he would get a slice of fresh buttered bread with a thick pile of strawberry jam on it.
I thought not.
A gift is a gift, and not meant to be shared with the gift giver. That would be idiotic.
That little boy was filled with the strange looks. Lately, he was giving them to me quite often. This one was one of the strangest yet.
* * *
A WONDERFUL THING FOR THE growing children is the exercising. It concentrates the mind. It invigorates the body and the spirit. As a student in East Germany, I always benefitted from the vigorous exercise. Now, of course, I no longer exercise. I supervise.
That afternoon, my students were at the recess. I supervised from my sunny and bright classroom while they were out in the rain doing their running. Running, running, running. Always running. In large rectangles around the playground. The other teachers’ classes at the recess, they played the basketball and the soccer, but not Mrs. Ravenbach’s superior students. For them, always the running. Unlike the running, the basketball does not increase the stamina or build the character. In later life, basketball is of no use. I do understand they play quite a lot of basketball in penitentiaries.
I noticed with satisfaction that the other students were in clumps, having delightful conversations, but Tobias, he was running by himself. He was slump-shouldered and looked lonely and pathetic, which I am certain he was. It may have been because of his patheticness that no one wanted to run beside him.
But, perhaps it may have been because of something else . . .
I have never yet met a child who enjoys another child who shares his or her own opinion loudly, sharply, incorrectly
in the classroom, on the playground, at the lunch table, or anywhere. The worst thing is a child who feels that his or her own personal opinion is important, more important even than that of the teacher.
I noticed young Tobias Wilcox struggling to accelerate enough to catch up with bald-headed Richard Kaliski. After nearly a lap around the playground, and a lot of the huffing and the puffing, Tobias caught up.
Richard was the sort of a child who wore short pants in the wintertime, horizontal striped shirts long after they had gone out of fashion, and kept his hair cut completely off but was not any sort of an anarchist.
He was one of those “technokids,” the children who in the classrooms connect the computers to the projectors, and does things with the sound for the school plays, and plugs in the sixteen-millimeter projector to the speakers so that we can see the old black-and-white movies. He was a useful child to have around but did not have much to say to anyone, as far as I could tell. Richard was highly intelligent and why he chose to run with young Tobias Wilcox, the dimmest child in the history of dim children in my fourth grade classes, I shall never know.
Yet, there he was, on the playground, running and talking with Tobias Wilcox, the child who had no friends.
It was the strangest thing.
CHAPTER 4
It was half past eleven on a Monday morning as I was striding down the hallway toward my homeroom. I was enjoying the sound my Christian Louboutin high heels made on the polished concrete and the pleasant echoes as the sound ricocheted down the halls announcing my presence. The sound of heels (shoe or boot!) is always pleasant. My high heels are quite elegant and are the only thing French I am able to tolerate.
I had assigned the little children a few tasks to occupy themselves while I was away making myself a cup of good strong German tea in the teachers’ lounge.
With the satisfying sound of my heels in my ears, I entered my lovely classroom. The sun outside may have been nonexistent, but inside it was all sunny and bright and beautiful.
All the children had their heads bent over their desks, writing furiously in their journals or doing their homework or reading a wonderful book. Every child, save one. And I’m certain you are able to guess which one that one was.
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