Principal Mathers stepped in front of me. Her lips puckered like they always seemed to be when I was around. She tapped the gold watch on her wrist. What a slave driver. Wonder where she got that watch? Dance! Dance! Uh oh, the fun police are here! Oh right, gotta stick to the schedule.
I turned off my phone. “Hi, Principal Mathers. We, uh, were just getting psyched up for the big show. Are you ready to be amazed?”
“Of course. You should go get ready.” She gave the kids a thin-lipped smile. When the kids wandered back to their kites, she gave me a stern look. “Ms. King, you are behind schedule. This all needs to be cleaned up before dismissal.”
“We’re only a few minutes behind,” I said. Yikes, someone should tell her the lip-pursuing wasn’t doing her wrinkles any favors. “Right, we’re starting now.”
I got the kids lined up and shouted, “Go!” They ran across the field and kites of all kinds took to the air. I stood next to the teacher panel of judges and cheered the kids on. There were so many great kites I would have given them all first place if I had been judging. A gust of wind sent the kites dipping and diving. Suddenly a dinosaur kite, bigger than the others by far, rammed into several other kites looking like it was eating them as they fell in mangled piles to the ground.
Ronnie! He weaved his way between the other kids leaving a trail of destroyed kites in his wake. Students started screaming and crying. I looked around for help, but the other teachers ducked their heads. Fine, guess I was the only one who would stand up to the little terror.
Principal Mathers watched with interest as I stomped across the field. No doubt waiting to see if I could handle this.
“Ronnie, stop!” I darted after him and managed to snag his kite string. He tugged back trying to get away, but I used it to reel him in. “We talked about this. Destroying the other kid’s kites is mean. Look what you’ve done.”
He looked over the scene of destruction with a satisfied smile as more adults arrived to try to calm the other kids. “The Indominus was hungry.”
Great Mother of the Earth! Never in my life had I wanted to spank a child until this moment. My fingers tightened around his kite string. Anger and frustration warred within me. Your mother will disown you if you harm a hair on one living thing. For someone of Romani heritage, banishment would be a death sentence for me. It didn’t matter that we were only a tribe of two, family was everything.
I inhaled deeply taking in the scent of the grass and trees. As if Mother Earth felt my need for peace, an icy blanket calmed the mass of energy growing inside me. I let go of the kite string and stepped back.
Had the grass always been taller in this one section of the field? I dismissed the idea.
“You’ll apologize to every kid right now. For the rest of the festival you will sit in the nurse’s tent and write ‘Being mean to others is bad’ one hundred times. Do you understand?”
“This was a dumb party, anyway.”
“Calling everything ‘dumb’ is being mean too,” I admonished. “Now go say sorry.”
The next couple of hours were spent handing out awards for the kite competition and packing everything up. My class and I were the only ones still around. Amanda proudly carried her first-place trophy as she helped pick up the remaining supplies from the craft booth. I handed another box to Ronnie, who had been released from his time out to help clean up. He stomped off toward the classroom with his load. I handed out more items to be carried back to class. Thankfully, we were going to have everything done with a little time to spare before dismissal.
I loaded my arms with the last of the boxes and headed back to class. A strange noise caught my attention as I passed the large bronze statue of a sailboat at the front of the building. I stopped to listen, trying to identify what I was hearing. Was that squeaking noise coming from the statue? I walked around the other side where the plaque detailed how the Lawson family dedicated this statue to the school and was a replica of the first ship Jack Lawson IV had designed. Something dangled from the front of the boat. I rounded the side of the statue and the boxes in my hands fell to ground. Supplies spilled onto the asphalt. A gasp spilled from my lips.
Amanda was hanging from the bow of the ship like a giant spider had wrapped her up in kite string and left her there for a late-night snack. Tears glistened in her wide blue eyes. Her shrieks muffled by a band of tape. I lurched forward, my hands frantically searching for a way to get her down. Several of my other students had wandered back outside and were staring wide-eyed.
I carefully pulled the tape off Amanda’s mouth, deciding I needed to know if she was hurt before getting her down.
“Amanda, sweetheart, are you ok?”
Her voice was choked off by sobs, but she nodded. Thank the Mother!
“Honey, don’t move. We’re going to get you down.” I scooped up a pair of scissors that had fallen from the box and stuck them in my pocket. I pointed to a couple of boys. “You two, climb up on top of the statue and see if you can unhook the string from up there. I’ll hold her, so she doesn’t fall.”
They found the string wrapped around a hook in the boat and worked together to get it untied. I gripped Amanda tightly. By then, the rest of my class had gathered around us. The string went slack, and I set Amanda on her feet. “Hold still, honey. I’m gonna cut you loose.”
I quickly cut the string away and Amanda threw herself into my arms. I hugged her close, thankful that she wasn’t hurt. A scuffle sounded and the next thing I knew the boys who helped untie the string were pushing Ronnie toward me. His face was coated with rainbow streaks. He gripped the first-place trophy that Amanda had won for her kite in one hand. In the other was the stash of Skittles I kept in my locked desk drawer.
“He was hiding in the boat.” One of the boys said, shoving Ronnie until he stumbled.
A surge of anger flashed through me until my world narrowed down to this one moment. To this one kid who terrorized so many others without consequence. But he had gone too far today. He had put another child’s life at risk to steal her prize.
“Ronnie you’re a bully. You hurt others for fun and attention just like your father. But you’re both cowards.” I scooped up a roll of pink duct tape. “Do you know what happens when the kids you bully finally realize that you don’t have any power over them?”
“Huh?” He stared at me like I had lost my mind. He might have been right.
“They get even,” I said as I handed the tape to Amanda. Then scooped up more rolls and gave them to the other kids.
I was admiring the kids’ work when a supercharged engine purred and a sleek gray car pulled up in front of the school moments later. Principal Mathers stepped out of the school doors with the first smile I had ever seen from her. It slipped from her lips as she saw us gathered around the statue. “Ms. King, what are these students doing out here? Where’s Ronnie, his father is here to pick him up?”
She rounded the statue and her face went white. Garbled sounds issued from her open mouth. The kids’ laughter from only moments ago turned to worried looks, and they stepped away from their principal like she was a ticking bomb.
Ronnie was duct-taped to the side of the statue. His eyes the only part of him still visible under all of that pink tape. On the piece of tape across his mouth Amanda had placed the crowning touch. A neon orange sticker with a frog on it that said: Improving by Leaps and Bounds.
Principal Mathers’s gaze darted uneasily to the idling car. “What is going on here, Ms. King?”
I turned to answer the principal.
“Justice.”
3
I trudged numbly up the walkway to the house where I lived with Dan. The beige siding and brown trim of the one-and-a-half-storied bungalow was as conservative as the man who owned it. I stepped up onto the small front porch with the rock-accent columns and shifted the box in my arms to one side to unlock the door.
The familiar smell of cherry pipe tobacco and shoeshine greeted me like a soothing balm. I set the box down
on the hall table and kicked off my shoes. If Dan were here, he would’ve been after me to put everything away in its proper place, like every other inch of this house. I tapped the corner of the picture of us that weekend I had forced him into a spontaneous trip to Colorado. The picture tilted to one side and I smiled, thinking of how he would pinch the bridge of his nose and his cheeks would get pink with irritation that one picture should dare not be straight.
There had been something about Daniel Walters that drew me from the first time I had seen him lecturing in his argyle sweater vest. I had been a college student assigned to be his teacher’s aide. For a month, I had babbled like a brainless teenager every time he spoke to me. One misplaced lesson plan and seeing that cool composure slip had changed my life. I had become addicted to ruffling the feathers of the prudish history teacher.
We were perfect together. I kept him from being such a stick-in-the-mud and he kept me grounded when the noise in my head threatened to drown out the real world.
Mr. Skittle brushed up again my leg, drawing my attention and I bent to pet him. His face, legs, and tail all sported the darker brown colors typical of a ragdoll cat, while the rest of him was a lighter mixture of white and tan. His purring eased a little more of the ache over what had happened today.
Principal Mathers had lost her cool composure and started yelling at me. Which finally brought Ronnie’s parents out of their car. His father had taken one look at his son and burst out laughing. Then suggested we leave him there, so he would learn to toughen up. His mother just stood there, wringing her hands. Anger had detonated in me like a grenade, shattering all of that peace I had worked toward. Ronnie’s father had gotten an earful, and I had gotten fired on the spot.
Anger had carried me through packing up my desk, but the enormity of what I had done had sunk in on the drive home. Since my second-grade teacher had taken me under her wing, all I had ever wanted was to be like her. She had helped me to shake off the title of “that dirty gypsy girl” and find my confidence. If it wasn’t for her my life would have turned out very different. When I became a teacher myself, I had kept my eye open for those kids that I could help in the same way she had helped me. I hadn’t realized until it was too late that one of them was already right under my nose.
Ronnie had been acting out since he started school and it had gotten worse over time. I had tried all kinds of approaches to correct his behavior, but nothing had worked. Instead of focusing on the behavior, I should have looked for the cause. Knowing his father was a bully, I should have dug deeper into what was happening at home. I should have realized how much Ronnie was like me at that age. The only difference was, I had turned inward to deal with my troubled home life instead of acting out.
I had failed Ronnie by letting my anger take over.
Regret and disappointment in myself settled like a heavy weight on my shoulders. I hugged my stomach, wishing there was someone to wrap me up in their arms and tell me it was going to be ok. Dan hadn’t called. Lia was off playing house with her new boyfriend at her parent’s house. At least, I thought she was. I hadn’t really heard much from her lately. Not since she had recovered from the accident.
Lia had been injured in a boiler accident at her parents’ house. Although, for some reason, I kept getting images of her flying through the air as wind whipped by and screams spilled from my mouth. It was strange. I know that isn’t what had happened. I wasn’t even there, but it seemed so real. I’d spent some time helping Lia as she recovered, and it had felt like old times again. Then she had moved into her parents’ house and—nothing. Not that it mattered. Even when she or Dan were around lately, neither of them was fully here. I felt more alone than I had since I was a child.
My stomach rumbled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten since lunch. Food was the last thing I wanted, but I knew myself well enough to know that an empty stomach would make me grumpy. I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a neatly labeled container of grilled chicken from Dan’s side of the fridge and a cupcake, mostly covered in cling wrap, from my side. I sat the chicken on the island and pulled the cling wrap off the cupcake, licking the icing from it before tossing the wrap in the trash. A plain white envelope with my name on it caught my eye where it stood propped against the faucet of the sink.
“Awww, Dan left me a note.”
My pink-icing streaked fingers left smudges on the envelope as I tore it open. A little bit of the gloom cleared away as I pulled out the first love note I had ever gotten from Dan. I hugged the paper to me for a moment, then started to read aloud:
Dia,
When we met, I was a sour old man still reeling from my wife divorcing me. Then you came into my life like a whirlwind of energy and color. You were so very young. Not just because of our age differences, but you still had dreams and ideas to make a difference in the world. I had long given up on my own. You showed me how to have fun again and I am grateful that I met you.
I should have told you this months ago, but I have never been good with the messier parts of life. When Melanie divorced me, I thought I would never find love again, but I was wrong. She and I ran into each other during that history lecture in Seattle. We started talking and realized how much we still loved each other.
There is no easy way to say this. I’m meeting her in Reno this weekend to get married again. She understood that you need a little time to move out of the house. We decided to take a long honeymoon and won’t be back for a couple of weeks.
I hope you find someone who can give you the family you want. I’m not that person. I’m sorry.
Dan
My hands trembled as I read and re-read the letter. My knees felt like Jell-O, and I slid down to kneel on the floor. How could he do this? Five years we had been together, and he leaves me a note to break up? To tell me he’s marrying his ex-wife again. That he’s kicking me out of the house. My pulse pounded so loudly it felt like the floor was moving in time with the beat. Tears streamed like warm rain down my cheeks. Mr. Skittles pawed at my legs, and I could almost feel him asking what was wrong. I gathered him up and buried my face in his fur.
That perfect future I had been so close to achieving lay like the smoking remains of a burned-down bridge. Coldness seeped into my skin and sank down inside me to lock away the pain. The clamor in my head was silenced and all around me the world bled to gray.
The song “Every Day Is a Winding Road” filled the room as my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. A bitter laugh escaped me. I wanted to ignore it, but my mother would keep calling.
“Hi, Mama.”
“Chaj, you have not called,” she gently chided, calling me “daughter” in the old Romani language, her accent still present, even after all these years in America. “I worry when you do not call for so many days. How is my baby?”
“It’s only been three days since we talked.” She made a disgruntled noise. “I know you worry, but I’m not a baby, Mama.”
“You are always me baby,” she said. “A mother is always a mother. Even when they do not act as one.”
A cold sweat broke out as I was sucked into a memory from my childhood. A grief-stricken cry woke me in the night. The small, dark bedroom was suffocating. My nightgown was damp with sweat. I must have been four or five. My little legs barely able to reach the floor as I carefully avoided all the squeaky spots of the old mattress and got out of bed. I tiptoed to the cracked door and peeked out. A candle flickered on the battered coffee table in the small living room, the only light we had because Mama had forgotten to pay the electric bill again. Mama tossed and turned on the ripped and stained couch we had pulled from the curb. Her long hair was greasy and tangled. Her black dress sweat-stained. Even from here I could smell the sour stench. She cried and wailed in her sleep, begging someone not to leave.
“Claudia, are you there?”
I shook off the memories.
“Y-Yes Mama, I’m here. Please don’t start apologizing again. You got help. You’re better now. That’s what counts.” I gripp
ed the phone until the case creaked. I couldn’t talk about this today.
“What is wrong, my flower?” Her voice filled with alarm. “Do not deny. I hear in your voice the pain.”
“I got fired and Dan left me to marry his ex,” spilled from me in a tear-choked cry.
“I am sorry, my flower. I know your teaching mean much to you. But you will find other job. That man, he is marime.” She declared Dan “unclean” in the Romani way of banishing people from the tribe. “He never good fit for you. You need passion and a man who love your spirit. Your heart hurts, I know. We will visit with the Great Mother together, yes?”
“You’re right. A visit to the woods would calm me,” I said as I wiped my tears away.
“You are close to the Great Mother. Even as a child you talked to her and the flowers before you talked to people.” One of those laughs I cherished so much because they had been missing for so long floated over the phone line, and I was suddenly really glad my mother was coming over. “Remember to always worship the Great Mother and she will help you when you need her. Now, I come get you.”
4
September
The bell over the door tinkled as another customer entered Whimsy Fine Arts. It had taken some time to find a job in our small town. Luckily, Ms. Myrtle had needed the help since she was now the proud owner of this art gallery. With Lia’s move back to Mercer Island, she hadn’t wanted the long commute here and had sold the gallery to Jack Lawson IV. He had given it to his wife, Ms. Myrtle, when they had married a couple of weeks ago.
Business seemed to be picking up now that all the fake rumors about Lia had died down. Of course, Ms. Myrtle being the leader of the town busybodies wouldn’t have put up with any rumors damaging her new business, anyway. She may have been in her fifties, but she could twist an ear like nobody’s business. Not to mention that she was now married to the most influential man in town. When she hired me as her assistant, she had only asked that, if I felt like taping anyone up, I give her a little warning so that she could charge for admission. It had been a little weird since she was now Ronnie’s father’s new stepmother, but when I asked if hiring me would cause her trouble, she said her husband had laughed his cute butt off when she told him her plans. That lady scared me, but we worked well together.
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