One Child (29 page)

Sheila's eyes widened. "Me?"

"Yes, you."

In glee she hugged his knees with such gusto that Chad wobbled unsteadily.

I knew what was inside the box - a long dress, red, white and blue with lace around the front placket. A beautiful and expensive dress that Chad had brought back with him from a recent trip to New York. I had told Chad about what had happened to the other dress and about Sheila's feeling that dresses made her too vulnerable. For that reason he had bought a long dress instead of a short one. The night he had come in to show me the dress, My eyes were all sparkly like a little boy's. I could just picture him in the New York stores, his tall football player's frame towering over miniature racks of little girls' dresses; his arms spread wide attempting to describe for the salesclerk the special little girl back in Iowa for whom he needed that very special dress. Chad had great confidence that he had found just what Sheila would dream for. That it would erase the horror of the last month and recapture at least a little of the magic we had found the night of the court hearing.

Sheila ripped open the paper and lifted the lid on the box. Momentarily she hesitated, gazing at the tissue paper still partly obscuring the contents. Very, very slowly she lifted the dress out of the box, her eyes huge and round. She looked at Chad who knelt on the floor next to her.

Then she let it drop back into the box and lowered her head. "I ain't wearing dresses no more," she whispered hoarsely.

Chad turned to me in bewilderment, his own disappointment clear in his face. I came over and knelt down with them. "Don't you think it might be okay this once?"

She shook her head.

I looked at Chad. "I think we need a minute alone, if you'll excuse us." I rose and took Sheila to the far side of the room behind the animal cages. I knew the confusion that must be filling Chad's head. I knew as well that Sheila must have been in torment. She loved pretty things so much and that was a stunning dress Chad had brought, far lovelier than the red-and-white one he had gotten her in March. Yet, what had happened to her was too fresh, the hurt too raw.

Her face contorted into a teary-eyed grimace by the time I had her behind the cages. She pressed her fingers to her temples in an effort to keep the tears back, but for the first time since she had come to my class she was unable to. Over her cheeks coursed rivulets and she dissolved into sobs.

The time had finally come. The time I had been waiting for through all these long months that I knew sooner or later had to occur. Now it was here.

For several minutes I sat with her behind the cages. She had surprised me so much by actually crying that for a moment I did nothing but look at her. Then I gathered her into my arms, hugging her tightly. She clutched onto my shirt so that I could feel the dull pain of her fingers digging into my skin. When it became apparent that she had lost all control and was not going to regain it, I picked her up and came out of hiding. I needed to go somewhere where the other kids coming in and all the preparations for the program would not interrupt us.

"What did I do?" Chad asked worriedly, his gentle face distorted with concern. "I didn't mean..."

I shook my head. "Don't worry about it. Put the dress over there. I'll get back to you after a bit, okay?" I turned to Anton. "Can you take care of things for a while?"

The only place I could think of where we would be entirely alone and undisturbed was the book closet. Attempting to manipulate a kiddie chair along with me while carrying Sheila, I unlocked the closet and went in, securing the door behind me. I put the chair against a stack of reading books and sat down, shifting Sheila to make her more comfortable.

She sobbed hard, but not in the hysterical manner in which she had started. But she cried and cried and cried. I simply held her and rocked the chair back and forth on its rear legs, feeling my arms and chest get damp from the tears and her hot breath and the smallness of the room. At first my mind was busy, wondering how Anton was managing alone with all the kids so high about the play, thinking about the program itself and how it would go, mulling over Sheila's situation. After a while my mind ran dry and I just sat and rocked, thinking of nothing in particular, except that my arms were getting tired.

Ultimately the tears stopped. Sheila had been reduced to a quivery, soggy lump. All her muscles had relaxed from exhaustion. The little room was humid and overly warm and both of us were awash with the saliva and tears and mucus that crying always brings. I smoothed her damp hair back from her face and wondered what had happened in her head to make Chad's gift the final snapping point.

"Do you feel a little better?" I asked gently.

She did not reply but lay against me. Her body convulsed with the hiccupy gasps and shudders that are the aftermath of hard crying. "I'm gonna throw up."

My teacher's reflexes came instantly into action and I let us out of the book closet and into the girls' restroom around the corner. When she came out of the toilet stall she looked battle-weary, her face red and swollen, her steps tottery. Faint lines of toothpaste were still visible on her chin. I picked her up.

"Sometimes that happens," I said as we returned to our haven in the closet. "Sometimes when you cry real hard, it makes you sick."

She nodded. "I know."

We had only the one chair between us but she willingly clung to my lap, leaning heavily against my soggy shirt. We sat for a while saying nothing.

"I can hear your heart beat," she said at last.

I touched her head gently. "Do you think we ought to go back to class? It must be the middle of math period by now."

"No."

Again silence drifted around us. A million things were running through my head, none of them finding words.

"Tor?"

"Yes?"

"Why did he buy me that dress?"

Across my mind trickled the thought that perhaps Sheila believed Chad had gotten her the dress for the same reason that her Uncle Jerry had told her he liked her red-and-white one. What a horrible thought that must have been for her; safe, kind, lovable Chad wanting her in a dress so he could have the same access to her that Uncle Jerry had had. It was no more than speculation on my part, but it made me certain not to reply that Chad had done it for "love."

"Because I told him your other one was ruined. He thought you might like something pretty to wear in the play." I ran my fingers through her silky hair. "I forgot to tell him you weren't wearing dresses anymore. That was my fault."

She did not respond.

"You know, don't you, that Chad would never do things to you like your Uncle Jerry did. He knows you shouldn't do those things to little girls. He didn't bring the dress to hurt you. He wouldn't ever hurt you."

"I know it. I didn't mean to cry."

"Oh, sweetie, that's okay. Chad knows that things have been hard for you. No one minds that you cry. Sometimes that's the only way to make things better. We all know that. Nobody cares if you cry."

"I wanted the dress," she said softly, pausing. "I wanted it. I just got scared, that's all. And I couldn't stop."

"That's okay. It really is. Chad knows what little girls are like. We all do."

"I don't know why I cried. I don't know what happened."

"Don't worry about it."

The pressure of being gone so long when I knew the children would be excited about the play was getting the better of me. "Sheil, I have to go back to the room. The kids are all there and Anton's by himself. I have two ideas for you. You can come back with me or maybe if you don't feel up to it you could go down to the nurse's office and rest awhile."

"Do I gotta go home 'cause I throwed up?"

"No. You're not sick or anything."

She slid off my lap. "Can I rest a little? I'm tired."

I explained to the secretary that Sheila needed to lie down but didn't need to be sent home and I would be back in half an hour at recess to check on her. The secretary gave us a blanket and I settled Sheila down on one of the cots.

"Torey?" she asked as I tucked the blanket around her. "Do you suppose I could still have the dress? I wouldn't really mind wearing it."

I nodded and smiled. "Yeah. Chad left it for you."

I came back to the office at recess time and Sheila was asleep. She slept the rest of the morning until I came down and woke her for lunch.

With good reason both L. Frank Baum and Judy Garland probably turned in their graves that May afternoon. Except for bearing the same title and characters as the famed story, the children's production had little in common with the book or the movie.

Sheila played Dorothy mostly by virtue of her ability to think fast and make up dialogue quickly. Both Tyler and Sarah had wanted the part, which resulted in some not-too-good-natured arguing for a while and a near-split of the Sarah-Peter production team. But Peter seemed to have authority in casting parts and he selected Sheila. Tyler was given the ignominious task of portray big all of the wicked witches. Sarah was transformed into the Scarecrow. William played the Cowardly Lion and Guillermo was the Wizard himself. Oddly, Peter selected Susannah to play the Good Witch Glenda, another fought-over part. The only reason for his choice I could think of was that Susie was so delicately pretty that she made a very realistic fairy even without a costume; but Peter had his own reasons that he would not disclose. Freddie was the sole Munchkin and Max a lone winged monkey. Peter, of course, was the Tin Man.

Only parents, teachers or folks with an uncanny love of unintentionally funny children would have properly appreciated The Wizard of Oz as produced by my class. Sheila had fully recovered from her troubles in the morning and had donned the dress Chad brought, refusing to wear the costume Whitney had made for her. Refreshed by a two-hour nap, she bounced all over as she spoke, knocking over scenery and props. Freddie on the other hand would not move. He simply sat in his place, a ridiculous Munchkin hat stuck on his head, and waved at his mother in the audience. His fat legs tripped Sheila on one occasion causing her to fall into his lap. At last Anton had to drag him off when his part was over. The Cowardly Lion was typecasting for William and perhaps because he knew the feeling of fear so well, he gave the truest performance of all, quivering and quaking about on the stage. Most surprising, Susannah Joy did quite well as Glenda. She drifted onto the stage and floated around as out of touch with reality as always, muttering to herself in a high-pitched little squeak. But in the setting of the play, it looked astonishingly natural.

The only major problem suffered during the course of the play was when Sheila got long-winded in her dialogue and often felt the need to narrate parts of the play in case the audience hadn't figured out for themselves what was happening. This left everyone else standing around dumbly while Sheila launched into lengthy monologues. Finally Peter walked out onto the stage during one of her soliloquies and told her to get off.

The remainder of the program was delightful. No one forgot their lines in the poems and the songs were sung with rousing, albeit off-key, gusto. Afterwards we had cookies and punch while the children showed their parents things they had done in school.

Sheila's father did come. Dressed in the tattered suit that buckled over his tremendous stomach and reeking, once again, of cheap after-shave, he had eased his mammoth bulk into one of the tiny chairs. All through the program I kept praying it would not break as it creaked ominously with his weight shifts. For the first time I saw him smile at his daughter when she came bounding over to him after the first performance. He had had the kindness to come sober and appeared to enjoy being with us. He never commented about Sheila's new dress until I finally came over and told him toward the end of the party that Chad had bought it for her. He regarded his daughter carefully and then turned to me, pulling out a worn wallet from his coat pocket.

"I ain't got much here," he said quietly. I was terror-stricken, thinking that he was going to offer to pay for the dress and knowing it was obviously an expensive item. But he had other ideas. "If I give you money, would you take Sheila to buy some everyday clothes? I know she needs something and, well, you need a woman for that kind of thing..." his voice trailed off and he averted his eyes. "If I keep hold of the money... well, I got a little problem, you know. I was wondering..." He had ten dollars in his hand.