SJ ran water over her plate and stuck it in the dishwasher.
“Don’t you think?” Deirdre said again. “A coincidence?”
SJ looked blankly at her. “I guess so . . . I didn’t really think about it.”
“Well,” Deirdre said, rinsing her own plate, “I just can’t believe you’d want to. He doesn’t scare you?”
SJ laughed. “You saw him all of what, a couple of hours, for minutes at a time? You couldn’t possibly have any reason to be scared of him.”
“He looked scary.”
“Looked scary?”
Deirdre closed the dishwasher. “Oh God, here we go. The lecture about the poor. Let me tell you, sweet pea. I know what it means to be poor. You don’t.” Deirdre tapped SJ on the chest. “So don’t go telling me what it means to be poor.” She walked out, leaving SJ standing in front of the sink.
How was it, SJ wondered, that Deirdre was the one who ruined dinner and SJ was the one left in the kitchen, feeling like the bad guy? It was Deirdre who made ridiculous assumptions about people because of the way they looked or the job they had, but here was SJ, alone in the doghouse, for what? For defending the underdog? Deirdre would tell you that in the classroom, it was her job to always defend the underdog and make sure all students felt included. She was particularly sensitive to that issue, Deirdre would say, because of her own feelings as an outsider. “Oh, I know what it feels like to be on the outs,” Deirdre had said more than once. “All gay people do.” She never talked about what it felt like to teach such affluent students, though, to be around people with so much money when she herself grew up without much. Not even with SJ would Deirdre really discuss what it was like to grow up without money.
“I think that guy is bad news,” Deirdre called now from the bedroom, “and I don’t think you should be alone with him. It’s just a feeling I have,” she said, coming around the corner to the kitchen’s entranceway.
SJ wanted to remain angry with Deirdre but she couldn’t. “I’ll be careful,” is all she said. “And you,” she pointed her finger, “you need to be careful with Anna Worthington.”
Deirdre did not reply.
The Girls: Part ii
The girls were losing any feelings of courage and wonder they had retained through their teenage years. They were aware of how scared they felt, in spite of their forced bravery. They didn’t like thinking of the world as a closed and frightening place.
In some cases, their mothers were to blame—mothers who on their own might have been strong and confident, but who in their marriages felt silly or insignificant and so had lost their own sense of awe and wonder and passed on to their daughters a belief in practical matters.
Even before Leo Rivera disappeared, even before their little brothers started wetting their beds and turning on nightlights, before the sight of a small bicycle lying abandoned at the park’s entrance might cause the girls to stop breathing and their hearts to pound, they had already started to see the world in terms of hairstyles, outfits, and pedicures. Controllable things.
Now, of course, fear was palpable in the whole town and the world did not seem to hold much wonder at all. The girls minded that they couldn’t reassure their brothers. They were too needy for that.
Chapter Six
Deirdre backed the Brandywine van out of its parking spot alongside the building and pulled in front of the entranceway. She could fit fifteen in the van; the rest would ride in cars driven by Evelyn Moore and Ellie’s mom, one of the new mothers, Beth Ann or Sue Ann, Deirdre had already forgotten. She would have to look at the field trip forms again to be certain. Deirdre had been surprised when Ellie, whom she didn’t really know yet but thought of as quietly belligerent—resistant was the word she used with Martin Loring at the child study meeting about new students—volunteered her mother one morning as a driver and chaperone.
“She don’t work,” Ellie had said. “She’ll do it.”
“Doesn’t, Ellie. She doesn’t work.”
Deirdre had called and sure enough, a quiet, breathy voice said on the other end of the line that she would be delighted to help out. Deirdre told her they would be leaving at eight thirty sharp and would be back to school by four o’clock.
“After pickup, then?”
“We do it all the time,” Deirdre had explained on the phone. “We just make sure the parents know they have to get their kids that day.”
“That’s just fine,” Ellie’s mom had said, her voice lilting and Southern. “I will be there. I am happy to help.” Thank yew, she had said, her words stretched out, full of diphthongs and air. Thank yew.
Deirdre jerked on the emergency brake and climbed out of the van. The last few cars pulled up and dropped off the younger students who tumbled out, scrambled toward the front door, swinging lunch boxes and handfuls of paper. Anna Worthington rushed in among them, through the gate, out of breath, brown hair flying. Cheerleader hair, Deirdre called it.
“Oh good! I was afraid I was too late!” Anna dropped her backpack with a plunk at Deirdre’s feet. “Here,” she said, between breaths, handing Deirdre the torn-off section of the field trip permission form with her mother’s signature scrawled on the bottom line. “I. Can. Go.”
Deirdre looked up from the paper.
“I talked her into it,” Anna said. “She knew she was being a jerk.” Anna scowled and wiped her bangs off her forehead.
“Well, I’m glad you can go,” Deirdre said. “You better sign in at the office, though. You’re late.” She folded the permission slip in half, stuck it in her pocket, and turned to walk into the school. “Don’t forget your backpack.”
“Can I ride in the van with you?” Anna asked, hurrying to catch up to Deirdre. “In the front seat? Be a copilot?” Her voice carried that hopeful tone that Deirdre both longed for and dreaded. You’re coming to the field hockey game, right, Ms. Murphy? You could get used to feeling loved and wanted. But it was a hard thing to admit.
Deirdre stopped just short of the entranceway. She looked at Anna’s face, those blue, adoring eyes. “I think you’ll have to ride with Ellie’s mom,” she said.
Anna pouted. “But . . .”
“Let’s just be glad you’re going at all, right?” Deirdre held up her hand. “We figured out the rides before we knew you were coming.” And when she saw the hurt on Anna’s face she added, “You can probably switch with someone for the ride back, okay? Go sign in at the office. I’m heading upstairs to tell the others we’re ready. Meet you out here.” She patted Anna on the shoulder.
Deirdre was relieved that Frances Worthington had given in and signed the permission slip. And she was grateful that Anna cared enough to fight with her mother. Deirdre ran up the last few steps so she could relieve Forest before it was time for him to teach his first class.
With the morning paper opened in front of him, Forest leaned against the doorway in the middle of the two classrooms. Deirdre’s homeroom students sat clumped on top of desks with their backpacks on the floor surrounding them. “Thanks,” Deirdre said. A couple of the girls smiled when she walked in. Lydia waved.
“You all set then?” Forest asked. “Wish I was going on a field trip.” He folded his paper in half.
Deirdre grinned. “Yeah, well, have fun without us. It should be quieter anyway.”
“Great. I get to listen to my kids, Why don’t we ever get to go on trips? They’ll whine and moan all through our discussion of Lord of the Flies. I can’t wait.” Forest rolled his eyes.
“And you tell them that next year, when they’re in my French class, they will go on field trips. Or better yet, you take them somewhere. To a play or something.”
The bell rang and the morning hubbub began. Voices rose, chairs and desks scraped across the floor, lockers slammed.
“Have fun!”
“See ya!”
“Later!”
From the doorway, Forest saluted with his newspaper and turned to go into his own room. “Have a good one,” he said.
/> “All right, folks, if you’re coming with me, let’s get going. We’re meeting in the front hallway. Be sure you have your jacket, and don’t forget your notebook and something to write with. Lydia, would you get the first aid kit from the office? Okay, we’re all set. Let’s go!”
* * *
They rode to the East End Gallery, Deirdre and the Brandywine van in the lead, Evelyn Moore behind her, and Ellie’s mom bringing up the rear. Beth Ann, Beth Ann, Deirdre repeated to herself, checking in the rearview mirror to be sure the two cars were still there. They drove through the West End first, past the town green and the Congregational church. Past the public high school, the library’s main branch, past the town hall and the flagpole rotary, the flag still at half-mast. They drove down near the old railroad tracks and past a row of triple-deckers.
They stopped at a red light, the abandoned textile mill on the left, the river on the right.
“Where the heck are we?” one girl, Samantha maybe, asked from the back.
“Yeah,” another piped up. It sounded like Morgan. “Isn’t that where they found that boy? The Rivera kid?”
Murmurs from the back and then another girl: “Is this safe?”
The light turned green; Deirdre accelerated. She wondered if similar conversations were happening in the two cars and how the mothers were handling them. She realized then that although she had given the address to Beth Ann, she hadn’t been explicit about the gallery’s location. A quick peek in the rearview mirror told her that Beth Ann was still with them. “Hey, listen up . . . shhhh . . . I mean it . . . listen . . . Remember we had this conversation in class? About the fact that what happened to Leo Rivera could have happened in any neighborhood?”
Silence. Deirdre looked over at Hilary sitting in the seat next to hers.
“It is a little freaky,” Hilary said, wrinkling her forehead and twisting her blond curls around her finger. “It’s, like, scary.” She hugged herself with her bare arms.
“Okay everyone, just relax.” Deirdre pulled into the gallery’s parking lot. “Anyway, we’re going to a gallery, remember? We’re not walking the streets.”
Deirdre shut off the van and hopped out. She opened the side door and her students emerged in that rough-and-tumble kid way, like a collection of body parts—first arms, then legs, long and gangly. From Evelyn’s car, Lydia and a small group of girls laughed and pushed and pulled at each other’s bouncing ponytails, and then the last car, Anna and the oddballs—the girls who weren’t in any particular group—opened the doors and climbed out without speaking. Anna scuffed and scowled her way over to be with Lydia, but it was as if simply riding in that car with those particular kids had tainted Anna already and you could see Lydia hesitating a bit, wondering about her very best friend in the world, before finally linking arms with Anna and including her in the group.
“Well, we’re here!” Evelyn Moore sang out, locking the doors of her BMW with the remote. Beep beep. “You didn’t lose us, thank God.” She put on her leather purse like a backpack and walked toward Deirdre, her clogs clopping on the blacktop.
“Beth Ann, everything okay?” Deirdre shielded the sun from her eyes and waved Ellie’s mother over.
“Gosh, you learn a lot chaperoning,” Evelyn said. “They couldn’t stop talking about what’s-his-name, that singer, you know who I mean, and who’s seeing who—I had no idea.” Evelyn gestured with her hands and Deirdre was struck by the redness of her nails. “Oh, hey, did I see Anna over there?” Evelyn pointed to the group of girls surrounding her daughter.
“Frances gave in at the last minute.” Deirdre felt the need to explain.
“Oh good.” The girls, holding notebooks and pencils, scuffed the blacktop and toed bits of loose gravel. “Frances is too hard on that girl sometimes,” Evelyn mused.
Beth Ann walked quietly up to Deirdre and Evelyn. She was dressed in knit pants and a coordinated sweater set, a pale blue that reminded Deirdre of cream. It struck Deirdre that this was the kind of woman who made her feel wrong—made her feel messy and underdressed, lacking in some important way, the way Frances Worthington did, only Beth Ann was of a different style. Beth Ann’s blond hair was pulled back from her face with white mother-of-pearl barrettes. Deirdre noticed, too, that Beth Ann’s lipstick, a glossy pale pink, matched her fingernails perfectly. Beth Ann smiled at Deirdre and Evelyn, her eyes gray and distant. “I don’t believe I have seen this part of town before,” she said.
Deirdre laughed. “Wait until you see this gallery, though. We’re just going in here.” She pointed to the large brick warehouse on the left and the sign over the middle door, East End Gallery of African Art.
“It is a strange place for a gallery,” Beth Ann said. “How ever did you find it?”
Deirdre stood up a little straighter and shifted her weight. “My . . .” and she hesitated before saying it, pictured Frances Worthington herself and her disapproving frown. “My partner is a librarian in this part of town and we’ve passed this place a couple times. I finally dragged SJ in with me to check it out.” Deirdre laughed a little, felt the blush pulse warmly on her cheeks.
Beth Ann said nothing, simply stared at Deirdre with those gray eyes.
* * *
In the gallery, Mario, the owner, led them quickly through the vast collection but focused, as Deirdre had suggested, on the Dogon artifacts. Deirdre was especially taken with the doors—large, imposing wooden structures, intricately carved, each one telling a different story.
“The Dogon people are cliff dwellers, in the northwestern part of Mali,” Mario explained. Deirdre stood in the back of the group and looked around to see who was paying attention and whose mind was wandering elsewhere. Lydia smiled up at the gallery owner. Hilary seemed mildly interested but you could never tell. Morgan’s blond head stuck up above everyone else’s. She nodded at whatever the gallery owner was saying, jotted down things in her notebook. Behind her, the wall was covered with initiation masks from Côte d’Ivoire, from the Dan ethnic group, wooden masks in all sizes with the customary raffia framing the face, some of it thin and brown, most of it black, thick, beardlike.
“But they don’t live in cliffs now, do they?” Hilary asked. She twisted her curls around her pencil.
Mario seemed to expect that particular question. “Oh, they sure do. Today, the Dogon people of Mali are still cliff dwellers.” He looked from student to student, waiting for their reaction.
“But, like, in the cliffs? Like, they live in dirt?” Hilary again. Giggles from a few other girls.
“Are you a moron or what?” Morgan said. “No, they build their mansions up in the cliffs, big houses with swimming pools!” She widened her eyes at Hilary. The other girls laughed. The exaggerated, bugged-out eyes on the masks seemed to mock Hilary too.
“Shut up, Morgan!” Lydia said.
“Hey!” Deirdre intervened, and Evelyn grabbed her daughter’s arm at the same time.
“Okay, okay,” Mario hushed the group with his hands. He laughed a little. Deirdre shot her fiercest teacher look at Morgan. “This is a hard concept,” he continued. “When we think of cliff dwellers we think of who? The Anasazi, right? Mesa Verde?” He looked at each student. Deirdre was grateful for a tour guide who could speak to kids and for the most part hold their interest. “We don’t think of people today, in this day and age, living in cliffs.” He turned to Hilary. “They actually don’t carve their dwellings into the cliffs anymore . . .”
Hilary twisted around and stuck her tongue out at Morgan.
“But they build huts high up in the cliffs and these doors,” he pointed to two massive wooden doors leaning against the wall next to him, “are what they hang on the front of their huts.”
“What’s with all the carvings?” another girl asked.
“Each door tells the story of that particular family,” Mario responded.
Anna sidled up next to Deirdre, leaned her arm on Deirdre’s shoulder, and whispered, “I’m so bored.”
Deird
re stepped aside. “Try listening,” she said, and walked to the other side of the group. Bored. She could never understand that particular complaint. With all there is to do in this world . . . she heard her mother’s voice in her head and smiled. Most of her students knew better than to admit boredom to Deirdre. She glanced back over to where Anna was standing, arms crossed, a scowl on her face. Deirdre would speak to her during the next break, try to get her to see how all of this was worthwhile and interesting, though it annoyed her that Anna couldn’t see it on her own.
“Here,” Mario went on, pointing to a set of carvings in the top part of the door, “these figures represent the ancestors, the spirits of this family who are, I might add, very real and very present to the people living in this hut. See the eyes . . .” and he indicated the bulging lids, the exaggerated facial expressions.
“I wonder,” Deirdre said when Mario had finished talking, “what you all would carve in your family’s door?” She looked at her students. “What might represent your families?”
One by one, they offered some ideas—a shamrock, Star of David, a cross, the usual symbols—and then from somewhere on the fringe of the group, a quiet voice rose up.
“I would carve a weeping willow,” Ellie said. Her eyes were closed and she held her hands out delicately at her sides. “One giant weeping willow. It would be enough,” her voice grew quieter now, “to cover us all . . .” She fluttered her arms, graceful, like a ballet dancer. “To protect us,” she added, opening her eyes, blinking a couple of times, “from the sadness.” Nobody said a word, and Deirdre, stunned, looked around for Beth Ann, who stood a couple of feet behind her daughter, hands folded in front of her, those shallow gray eyes, it seemed, shiny and wet.
* * *
“Wow,” Evelyn said to Beth Ann. “You’ve got yourself a poet there. Or an actor.”
They were taking a snack break. The kids sat in circles on the gallery floor—Ellie with a couple of newfound admirers near the Dogon doors, the others in groups scattered throughout the gallery. Deirdre, Evelyn, and Beth Ann were perched on stools with Mario at a large wooden board stretched across two workhorses. Deirdre noticed Morgan off by herself, sketching the masks.
The Year of Needy Girls Page 5