The Language of Sparrows (30 page)

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Nick stepped through the school doors halfway through second period. The hallways were deserted.

He took it as a positive sign that Liza had called him. If he gave a warm enough apology, maybe she’d let him back into his classroom with a reprimand.

The glass doors to the office closed behind him, and Gloria, the secretary, told him to take a seat. He waited. The bell rang. Kids poured out and filtered back into classes. Only ten minutes later did Gloria tell him to go in.

He found Liza sitting at her desk, pushing a form into a file and letting a pair of reading glasses slide down her nose.

“Mr. Foster.”

Nick inclined his head and took a seat.

She laid her hands on the desk in front of her. “It gives me no pleasure suspending a teacher, particularly one with a long-standing reputation.” She stopped, inspecting him, probably to see if he bought her line. He didn’t. “Would you like to say anything for the record?”

For the record? What did that mean? “As you know by now, Ms. Grambling, I left my class to protect a student. If it had been anyone else, I would have followed ordinary procedures. But I was worried about how fragile Sierra Wright was. She was unable to face the police and school authorities at the time. I agreed to give her a few days to prepare herself, but I informed her mother immediately.”

Liza stared at him, unmoved.

He dug deep, trying to find an apology that would reach even her. “I’m sorry. I violated procedures. I left a mess on your hands. For that, I’m truly sorry.”

She tapped her fingernails on the desk. “I appreciate your candor. Unfortunately, you left more than a mess. You broke the law.”

He stared at Liza. He’d been accused of acting without thinking through the consequences a time or two, but he had never broken the law. “I didn’t intend for the assault to go unreported. I delayed the report until Monday for the girl’s mental health. That’s all.”

“Yes, and that delay was a serious lapse. If the Cantu boy had carried out his threat against Sierra Wright in the intervening seventy-two hours and the authorities hadn’t been notified, our school would have been liable, not to mention skewered in the media.”

He hated that what she said made sense. But there was no way for him to make Liza understand that something more important than the school’s name had been at risk—Sierra herself.

Liza’s face remained a stone mask, and Nick wondered why he was here. She didn’t want an apology. She showed no inclination of putting him back to work.

She pulled out another file, this one with his name on the label. “At the board meeting next week, I’ll be recommending termination of your contract for ethical misconduct.”

Nick saw white heat. Ethical misconduct? That term was reserved for teachers who hit a student. Or who slept with one.

If the district accepted her recommendation, not only would he never be able to work at this school, he wouldn’t be able to teach anywhere. A long, empty future stretched out before him. He wouldn’t be able to work with youth in any capacity.

“Would you like to make any other comment for the record, Mr. Foster?”

She was a superb actress. She didn’t let a hint of her victory show. He’d never once realized who he was up against. Up until this moment, he’d thought her clueless, maybe a little power hungry. It never occurred to him she was this full of venom. If she simply wanted him gone, she could have him transferred next year. There were only nine weeks of school left.

He looked at her until she finally had the grace to look away. “For the record, I’ll be in touch, Liza.”

As he strode out, he heard her heels tapping into the office behind him. That was a sound he could happily live the rest of his life without hearing again.

The next morning, Nick sat on the windowsill with his Bible.

It was 8:00 a.m. The tardy bell would be ringing. This was how Nick defined his days now: by what he wasn’t doing. He wasn’t teaching first period. He wasn’t leading his classes through the last novel of the year,
The Contender
. And he wasn’t helping his kids set goals for next year. Someone else was pushing his classes through practice tests for the state evaluation next week.

It was a poor way to live, measuring himself by what he wasn’t doing.

He pulled out Jason’s business card. His old army friend was now a partner in a law firm downtown. Jason told him if he’d really violated the code of conduct, Liza was probably within her rights. “But don’t give up hope, Nick,” he said over the phone. “Just because she’s technically within her rights doesn’t mean we can’t make a good fight.”

A good fight, but not a sure fight. The district cared more about the black and white of the code than about a kid who’d already faced one trauma too many.

What would he do with himself if he weren’t teaching? The thought of pushing papers in an office gave him hives. He’d prayed for Liza to be softened. He’d prayed for his job to be restored. But he’d learned long ago that wanting something so much it hurt didn’t earn an answered prayer. Sometimes all it earned was a sacrifice on God’s altar.

“Our Father who art in Heaven,” he began to pray.

Not as I will, but Thy will be done.
Nick shook his head, as if he could make the intruding words go away. There was nothing he wanted to pray less than the Gethsemane prayer. But if Christ had needed to take the harder path for some better purpose, who was he to ask for an easier route?

He moved from the windowsill to the carpeted floor. Nick closed his eyes, feeling an ache so deep he didn’t know where it ended. Sacrifice his job? He didn’t know if he could do it. Crouching on his knees, he tried to let go of the career that had been the focus of his life for a decade and a half.

“I don’t know how to be anything else, Lord, but you can have my job. You can have it. My hands are empty.”

He reached out his hands as if Christ needed to see how empty his hands were. But he came up with closed fists. He’d lost his job. And he’d lost April. Beautiful, artsy April who’d somehow charmed his old man into telling his story but didn’t seem able to tell her own.

He forced his hands open. “I don’t know how to let go,” he groaned. “I only ask this one thing, Father: if I’m losing my calling, let it stand for something.”

His fingers uncurled. He touched his forehead to the floor, and he would stay there, in the position of submission, until he knew he could leave his job in heaven’s power.

“Not my will. Yours,” he said in a grated whisper. “I will submit. By Your grace, I put it all in Your hands.” His words submitted, but his body said otherwise. The muscles in his arms clenched and shuddered in protest.

In his mind’s eye, he imagined putting his classes in God’s palms, hands capable of marking off the heavens and weighing the mountains. For good measure, he imagined putting his old man in God’s hands. And last, he put April there.

“I submit to Your will. By Your grace, I submit to You,” he prayed over and over again.

He collapsed onto the floor facedown and spread his arms like a cross. He didn’t move until every thought belonged to God and every muscle released its tension.

It had been a long time since Nick had prayed body and soul like this. It had been a long time since he’d had the time or felt the need to. Noon passed and the afternoon light had dimmed when, exhausted and spent, he lifted himself from the floor.

He sucked in a deep breath and let God’s calm work its way through him. As he made his way downstairs, his prayer still whispered the refrain in the back of his mind. I submit to Your will. By Your grace, I submit.

Chapter Forty

Sierra sat on the stairs with her notebook. The world still lay in wetness, though sunlight filled the courtyard and shimmered off the puddles. The willow’s branches hung low with the weight of rain. She closed her eyes, letting the smell of sweet wet wood drift up to her.

“Hey, Brown Eyes.”

She thought she might cry. She’d missed Carlos so much. She opened her eyes to see him on the sidewalk below. He wore galoshes and held an industrial broom.

“Hey,” she tried to say, but her voice came out wrong and broken.

“I’m glad you’re safe. I was worried about you out in the storm.”

“I’m fine. Thanks for thinking of me.”

“No problem.” He looked up to her, waiting for something from her, but she couldn’t think of what to say.

“Got to get back to work.”

She watched as he swept the courtyard dry. The sounds of the wiry bristles scraping against concrete, and swishing water filled the air. He pulled the giant broom in and pushed it out in circular motions, until he’d worked all the standing water into the grass. He was so strong, and not just physically. What would it be like to feel that nothing scared you, not even when living on the streets?

She was still on the stairs, pretending to write in her journal when Carlos carried the broom to the utility room. He made one last pass by the stairs. “I’ve got to be on my way. See you, Sierra.”

He looked at her a few seconds and turned to go. She clung to the banister for support. She watched him walk to the security gate. He was giving her another chance, and she was letting him leave all over again. She could be strong too. It’s what Mr. Foster had said.

As he tapped in the security code, she stood and made herself walk to the bottom of the stairs. Carlos turned and waited.

She searched for words that would make sense. In the end, she just said, “My dad killed himself, Carlos.”

He started to walk toward her, ever so slowly. “Yeah, your mom told me the other night.”

She knotted her hands. “I can’t be like him. I’ve got to be strong, you see?”

“Okay,” he said, both sadness and laughter in his eyes. “Don’t be like your dad.”

She gave a short laugh. “That’s what I was trying to do.”

“By breaking up with me? How is that going to keep you from being like him?”

“I didn’t want to lean on you the way he leaned on my mom.” She looked up the stairs toward their door. “I know she loved him. But I think maybe, just a little, my mom hated him for being weak. I didn’t want you to hate me, not even a little.”

He reached her. “So you decided to make me mad at you so I wouldn’t be mad at you.” He tapped her forehead. “You’re too smart for me, Einstein.”

He slid his arms around her uncertainly. She leaned into his shoulder, taking in his smell of sun and skin, staying in his arms a long time. It was warm and safe. But here they were again. He was sheltering her weakness.

He curled a lock of hair at the nape of her neck in his fingers and murmured, “I’m sorry about your dad.”

“Me, too.”

He pulled her in for another hug. They clung together until Carlos buried his face in her hair, laughing. “Your mom’s watching us.”

Sierra looked up. Mom stood in the window, watching, but she didn’t seem to mind them together. In fact, she smiled.

When Sierra left school Tuesday, Mr. Prodan was waiting for her at the curb. He asked if he could walk her to her apartment rather than taking her to his house. “Your mother is tired, and I would like for her to come home to a hot meal.”

It was a nice day, but the walk left him flushed. When they went inside, she asked him if she could get him something.

“A glass of water, if you do not mind.”

Sierra hurried into the kitchen and poured ice and water into a glass. He eyed the ice suspiciously as he picked his way to the sofa.

Sierra sat across from him in the armchair. He glanced at the tiles, now stacked against the wall. It was odd being with him here. He seemed out of place in this cramped, dark room. And so much had happened. Things were different between them, awkward.

She searched for something to say, breaking the silence at last with the question she hadn’t been able to put to rest. “Mr. Foster said he didn’t lose his job because of me,” she blurted. “He said it was complicated. But at school, they think it was because of me.”

His brow creased as he placed his glass on a coaster on the side table. “I do not know exactly why he lost his position. But I have no reason to think it was because of you. I suspect it is because he is good at what he does.”

“For being good? Why would they fire him for that?”

Mr. Prodan rested his hands on his knees. “People are threatened by greatness. Especially if one’s greatness does not look at all like the mediocrity they had planned.”

Being fired for being great? Sierra linked her fingers, trying to make sense of it.

“In Romania, the communists were threatened by great minds. In America, it is different, but not always. Not always.” He sighed. “My son is the best of teachers. I have seen letters among his papers from young men and women who were once his students. They credit him for much in their lives. It is not the normal way in America to write such letters?”

She shook her head. “I would never think of writing a letter like that.”

Sierra tipped her head. Jazzy was in Mr. Foster’s class. She loved it, and she wasn’t someone who even liked school. He had a lot of students like her—kids who hated school but who tried harder because of whatever went on in his class.

Mr. Prodan gave her a curious glance. “You have a look about you.”

“Mr. Foster’s students do really love him. I bet they’d do a lot for him.”

“They might.”

Sierra sat a little straighter. Her feet started to tap, but she stilled them. “He’s been teaching for a long time, right? I bet he has students who are grown now, maybe even some who have pretty important jobs, too.”

Mr. Prodan eased back into the sofa, a small smile playing on his face. “True. But they do not know that his job is at risk. Someone would need to let them know that he needs their help.”

Sierra sent him an answering smile. Someone could do that.