Читать книгу The Tiger’s Child and Somebody Else’s Kids 2-in-1 Collection - Torey Hayden, Torey Hayden - Страница 27

Over the Fourth of July weekend, I asked Sheila if she would like to come with me for a brief visit to Marysville, where she had been in my class all those years previously. It was a two-hundred-mile journey and I thought it would fit well into the four days we had until the clinic summer school-program resumed.

Sheila accepted enthusiastically. She had been back on only one previous occasion five years before, when her foster family had taken her to visit her father at the penitentiary. It had been almost as long since I’d been there. I’d passed through on one or two occasions since but I hadn’t stopped. With the exception of Chad, all the people I had been closest to were now gone.

The plan was that I would pick her up early on Thursday morning and we would work our way across the state to Marysville at a leisurely pace. Friday and Saturday we would spend looking around. Chad and his family had invited us to celebrate the Fourth of July with them on Saturday evening, and then on Sunday we’d return.

Sheila was waiting outside on the front steps of the duplex when I pulled up. It was very early, only just after six, and the sun was not high enough to dispel all the shadows. Even so, I squinted hard at the figure by the door. Sheila?

“I’ve done this just for you,” she said emphatically, as she flung her duffel bag into the backseat and got in beside me. She buckled the seat belt. “I hope you appreciate it.”

What could I say? The orange hair was gone, replaced by bright-yellow hair that stood up all over her head, as if it had a life of its own. Sort of Marilyn Monroe meets Bride of Frankenstein.

“You said I looked better blond,” she replied to my stunned silence. “I thought, well, just for you, since you’re taking me someplace nice.”

I set off in a high mood. I love to drive, and it was a super time for driving, on an early summer morning. Although we had been in the midst of a string of quite hot days, the air was still cool and the humidity was low, making the far horizon sharp.

“I wonder what we’re going to find,” Sheila said. “Can we go to the school?”

“It’ll be closed, but we could look at the playground.”

While I negotiated the last of the freeway interchanges necessary to get us out of the city, Sheila amused herself trying to tune in a rock station, but my radio wasn’t very good and she finally gave up.

“After you left my class, where all did you go?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Lots of places. I was in, like, three foster homes. Four? I can’t remember now. See, we were in Marysville and then we moved to Broadview and my dad got in trouble, like really soon after we moved. So, I went in this one foster home and then I got in another one and another. Then I got sent to a children’s home for a while.”

“How come?” I asked.

Another shrug. “Just the way the system works.”

“What made you move from Marysville in the first place?” I asked.

“Don’t know. Don’t remember.”

“Do you remember being in Sandra McGuire’s class the year after my class?” I asked. “When you were seven?”

“Sort of.” She paused pensively. “Actually, I have exactly one memory. I was sitting at a table and we were getting assigned lockers. We had to share and so I got assigned to share with the girl sitting across the table from me. I remember her, this girl. She was the smartest kid in the whole class, you know, the one that always got the best grades, and I was excited to think I was going to have a reason to talk to her now and she was going to have to talk to me; but then, I was also sort of scared because I knew she didn’t like me very well.”

“You were the smartest kid in the whole class, Sheil.”

“No, I wasn’t. She got the best grades. I tried, but she got them.”

“You were the smartest kid, regardless of who got the grades.”

“Yeah, I read about what you said my IQ was in your book. I read it and thought, God, you faked that one. That’s not me,” she replied.

“It is.”

“It isn’t.”

“Has no one ever told you in all this time that you were gifted?”

Sheila shook her head.

Shocked, I looked over. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not gifted, Torey. I know I’m not.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, just ’cause. I mean, I’m me. I know. And I’m not smart. I’m stupid.”

“You’re not!”

She didn’t respond, but I could tell I had not convinced her.

“So, give me one example of why you think you’re stupid.”

“Well, like, in class, for instance, everybody else gets the information the first time the teacher gives it out, but I never do. I hear it and I think I understand it, but then I start getting questions. I think, what about this? Or, like, oftentimes, I’ll think, well, that’s true in this instance, but is it true in another instance? And every time I’ll see there’s a time when it isn’t true, but then it is true some of the time. Then I realize there’s this big huge area of junk I don’t understand at all, but everybody else is sitting around me, writing like mad. They understand it and I don’t. And if I ask the questions, then pretty soon the teacher says, ‘We’ve got to move on now. You’re holding us up.’ And then I know for sure I’m some kind of mega-dumbhead, because I only understand a weensy bit of it.”

Her cheeks grew blotched, making me realize the intensity of her emotions over the subject. Pushing the shaggy mass of hair back from her face, she rested her hands against her reddened skin. “And the kids … Whenever I try to ask something, everybody groans. They say, ‘Oh, God, not her again.’ Or, ‘Shut her up, would you?’ This one kid who sat in front of me in math, he turned around to me and said, ‘Shit, can’t you just do it, for once?’ I wanted to die, I was so embarrassed. I never asked anything again in there.”

Pointed silence hung between us. Sharp, it was, like a small dagger. Sheila turned to me. “It’s because I’m the youngest in the class. I haven’t had as much school as they have and it isn’t fair.” Her voice was heavy with accusation. “How can they expect me to know as much?”

“You’re youngest in the class, Sheila, because you know more than they do, not less. The other kids aren’t asking questions, because their minds don’t throw up so many possibilities so quickly as yours. They don’t even realize questions are there.”

She chewed her lower lip a moment. Staring ahead at the far-stretching road, she sighed wearily. “If I’m so smart, how come I feel so stupid then? What kind of gift is it that turns the world upside down, so that less is more and more is less?”

We arrived in Marysville in the midafternoon after a leisurely journey across the state. The day had grown very hot, the sky going white with the heat, and coming into the shady streets of the town was a relief. I booked us into a motel on Main Street that, much to Sheila’s delight, had a swimming pool. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a swimming suit, so we made a jaunt out to find one at the shopping mall. The mall hadn’t been there when I had last been in town, and as with all such places, Sheila was keen to explore. Consequently, we wandered around for an hour or two, by which time we were ready for an evening meal; so we stopped for supper in the mall food court before returning to the motel. Feeling overcome with nostalgia as I drove through the familiar streets, I would have preferred going out then and there to visit some old haunts, but Sheila was desperate to go in the pool. Thus, we spent the evening swimming.

The next morning, it was raining steadily.

“Oh, geez, would you believe it?” Sheila said in dismay, as she pulled the curtain back from the motel window. “In July? It never rains in July.”

It certainly did that particular July day and by the looks of the clouds, it was not close to stopping. “Come on,” I said, “it won’t matter. Let’s go.”

Sheila wanted to go out to see the migrant camp. I thought I remembered the road, but it turned out I didn’t and we were soon lost. This left me feeling a bit irritable, which wasn’t a good start.

When we did finally locate it, we found the camp full to bursting with seasonal workers. Several types of crops were at a harvestable stage, which had caused the usual swell in camp numbers, but as it was raining and some crops could not be worked, many of the workers were milling around the various buildings.

The camp itself had changed considerably from what I remembered of it. Two large new housing units had been erected. They were great green-painted aluminum structures reminiscent of the calving sheds I was used to in Montana, and they dominated the camp. Many of the old tar-paper buildings that made up my clearest memories of the migrant camp were gone and the layout of the old roads in the camp had been disrupted by the new buildings.

What Sheila was thinking, as we drove through the rutted tracks around the housing units, I do not know. She had become increasingly silent as we approached the camp. Face turned away from me, she looked out the window.

There was a different atmosphere here to when I used to come out to see Anton. It didn’t strike me as a particularly safe place for two young white women to wander around alone and a lot of people were noticing us, even in the car. As a consequence, I didn’t suggest we get out of the car. It was with a sense of relief that I drove through the gates and back up onto the main road. Sheila still didn’t speak.

Back in town, I took the car slowly down a few of the streets I knew best. I pointed out where my old apartment had been. The pizzeria where Chad and I had taken Sheila after the hearing had been replaced by a bar and lounge, but I showed her where it had been. We had an invitation to Chad’s house for a picnic supper and fireworks for the next day, and I mentioned that I hoped the weather would improve.

Down a quiet, tree-lined suburban street I located our old school. A low, one-story brick building with white trim, it fitted in attractively with the neighborhood of ranch-style homes. This wasn’t a wealthy suburb by any means, but it was solidly middle class, the type of area that so embodied the American Dream of the fifties and sixties. Most of my teaching career since had been spent in drafty, old, turn-of-the-century buildings in the less-affluent parts of large cities, and I had forgotten just what a small, attractive school this had been. The contrast with the migrant camp struck me forcefully.

Pulling the car over to the curb, I turned off the engine. “Recognize this place?”

Sheila nodded faintly.

“See that window there, three along on the left? That was our room,” I said.

Absorbed silence.

“Do you remember any of this?”

“I don’t know,” she murmured quietly.

I certainly remembered. All the little moments came crowding back, grappling one with the other to reach my consciousness first. There was the door where I lined the children up, observing the military precision my principal had loved so well. There were the seesaws the kids always fought over. There was the wide expanse of asphalt where Anton and I had struggled to teach them dodgeball and kick ball and …

“Are there still special-ed kids in that classroom?” Sheila asked.

“The room isn’t a classroom anymore. They’ve made a counseling center out of it,” I said. “I suppose we could get out and walk around, if you want …”

“No.”

I started the engine, then paused, hoping for what I’m not sure. Finally I pulled away from the curb and drove off.

After another half hour of cruising up and down the back streets, I began toying with the idea of visiting the shopping mall again. It was still raining heavily and my mood was going from wistful to something less comfortable, making me realize I’d had enough nostalgia for one day.

“You want to do something?” I asked. “I think I saw where there are movie theaters out at the shopping center. Shall we go see what’s on?”

Sheila shook her head. “Let’s go to that park,” she said, “the one where you took those pictures of the last day of school.”

“Why don’t we wait until it stops raining? Maybe tomorrow, before we go see Chad.”

“No, let’s go now.”

The park was just as beautiful as I remembered it, with its broad winding entrance road lined with locust trees and flower borders. I parked the car on the street and we walked slowly down amidst the flowers. The floral display being quite stupendous, I was entranced. I am very fond of gardening and was curious about the plants used, so I stopped along the way to examine them. Sheila, however, was totally lost to the here and now. She walked as if bewitched.

The lane ended at the duck pond. When we reached the point where it met the path circling the water, Sheila stopped stock-still. Her brow furrowing, she watched the ducks and geese noisily announce our arrival. One by one, they clambered out of the water and waddled over until we were surrounded, and all the time, Sheila never moved. She just stared down the path to the water, her expression inward, and I suspect she never saw the ducks at all.

The ghosts rose up before my eyes also. With an intensity I hadn’t experienced elsewhere, the past came back to me. The rain disappeared and the air was full of children’s voices. “Look at me, Torey! Look what I can do! How big the trees are here. Do you see the bunnies they got? Down here, come this way, so I can show you. Can I feed the ducks? Can I wade in the pond? Let’s roll down the hill. Torey? Torey, look at me!”

And there on the path around the duck pond was Sheila, little Sheila in her bright-orange sunsuit, running, skipping, laughing. She threw out her arms and spun around, letting her head fall back, her long hair sail out in a sunlit halo. Around and around and around she turned, completely oblivious to the other walkers on the path, the other children, us. Eyes closed against the sun, lips parted in a half-smile, she satisfied some inner dream to dance.

Did she remember? I glanced sidelong at the gangly adolescent beside me. Intuition told me she was remembering something, and I longed to know her thoughts just then, but I dared not ask.

“I was happy here,” she whispered after a long silence. It was said so softly that I couldn’t detect the emotion it held. Finally she turned away from the duck pond. Crossing the grass to reach the lane again, we started back to the car.

We were soaking wet by then. It was warm summer rain. I wasn’t particularly uncomfortable, but everything was dripping. Sheila bent to pick up a long, brown locust pod that had fallen on the walk.

“When I think of Marysville, I always think of locust trees,” I said. “I remember how they used to scent the air when they were blooming. I remember driving into Marysville the first time. I’d come along the highway and as it dips down the hill into the valley, I can recall having my car window down, and I could smell Marysville before I got here. And when the blossoms start to fall, it’s like snow. I remember coming out in the mornings and my car would be covered.”

Sheila stopped, turned and looked back down the lane toward the duck pond, no longer visible. Pausing, she slit open the locust bean with her fingernail and took out the seeds, letting them drop to the wet pavement. “These are poisonous, did you know?” she asked and threw the empty pod out into the road. “They can actually kill you.”

Sheila grew increasingly moody. Keen to rescue the situation, I suggested we go for a couple of games of bowling, a sport I knew she enjoyed very much. No, she didn’t want to do that. An ice-cream cone at Baskin & Robbins? No. Was she sure? I’d pop for a banana split with extra nuts and whipped cream? No. A browse around the bookstore? No. All she wanted to do was just drive around more.

Having more or less exhausted the town, I tried the countryside, heading north along a network of small rural roads. We were soon into open countryside, comprised mainly of corn- and wheat fields. The area was hilly and Marysville had quickly disappeared from view to leave the fields stretching away from us in an undulating fashion for as far as the eye could see.

I made a few efforts at conversation, but they were useless. Sheila sat absolutely silent. Arms folded across her chest, she gazed out the passenger window so motionlessly that I could have been driving around with one of those inflatable dolls in the front seat beside me and no one would have discerned the difference.

The rain lessened, then finally stopped altogether, and very slowly the clouds began to break up. It was already early evening, so when the first patches of blue sky began to appear in the west, the sun came slanting across the hills.

“Stop!” Sheila cried. Not only was it the first word she had spoken in the better part of an hour and a half, which made it startling enough, but she said it with such suddenness that I fully expected to hit something with the car. I slammed on the brakes sufficiently hard to throw us both sharply forward. This made her smile briefly in my direction, before pointing to the east. “Look at that.”

For a short, shining moment, color was sovereign. The wet asphalt of the road gleamed black against the sudden gold of the sunlit wheat. Beyond the ruffling grain rose the dark remains of the storm clouds, pierced through by a rainbow. Only a very short part of the rainbow was visible; there was not even enough to form a clear arc, but that small section shimmered brilliantly above the restless wheat.

“Oh, God,” Sheila murmured softly, as she regarded the sight, “why do beautiful things make me feel so sad?”