Wavonna considered my finger for a second before she said, “A.”
“What about this one?”
“B.”
“This one.”
She sighed and said, “Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.” Silly Grandma.
Come Monday, I enrolled her for school.
The first day, after I dropped her off at school, I took a two-hour nap. The second day, I went for some much-needed beautification. Old women need sprucing up and my hair was starting to look bedraggled. The third day, I don’t remember what I did, but on the fourth day I went to bridge club. I had a martini and a lovely raucous time with the gals. They were expecting me to tell them all about Wavonna, and I pretended to be the proud grandma. Oh, she has the finest, baby-down blond hair. She already knows her ABCs. Nothing really about her.
I held Leslie in my arms after she was born. Same with Amy. They were my granddaughters, my babies. I flashed their pictures and bragged on every little accomplishment.
Wavonna, I’d never seen her until Brenda got custody of her. I know you’re supposed to love the hard ones more, but most of what I felt was pity. Her wispy hair and scrawny shoulders were so sad, and then those empty looks. Leaving bridge club, though, I felt like it was going to be okay. I would learn to love Wavonna the way I loved Leslie and Amy. She would learn to love me.
When I got to the school, Wavonna didn’t come out. I waited for a few minutes before I went into the front office, where I was met by the school principal and Mrs. Berry, Wavonna’s teacher. I’d handed Wavonna off to her on the first day in the school office. She was a friendly woman with a big smile, but that day she was a hysterical, sobbing mess.
Wavonna had run away from school.
I cried, but mostly I remember thinking, This is how it started with Valerie. Of course, skipping school didn’t start with Valerie until she was in high school, but all the same I had a sinking feeling I had failed.
At eight o’clock, I went home and waited to hear from the police. I held the phone on my lap as I soaked my feet. I’d walked I didn’t know how many blocks, knocking on doors all around the school. I needed to call Brenda, but I couldn’t bear the thought of saying, You were right. I can’t handle her.
My doorbell rang and I didn’t know what to feel. Hopeful. Terrified. With my feet wet, I went to the door. Wavonna stood on the porch alone, shivering. Once she was in the house, I locked the door, like that would keep her from escaping.
“You scared me so much! What if something had happened to you?” I knew yelling wasn’t the best way to communicate with her, but I couldn’t help myself. “Never, never do that again! Do you understand me?”
She nodded, but I knew that nod from Valerie. It meant, “I understand you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to do what you say.”
After I called the police to tell them Wavonna was home, I made her some soup and counted out a pile of crackers. While I cried in the bathroom, she ate a few spoonfuls and two saltines. I couldn’t go on like that, but I couldn’t let her go into foster care. Would anyone else eye the level of soup in her bowl as carefully as I did? Would a stranger count crackers to make sure my granddaughter was eating?
I cleared the table and brewed some decaf. When I was sure I was calm, I said, “Wavonna, will you please come into the kitchen and talk to Grandma?”
She didn’t sit down, but she stood waiting for me to talk.
“If you run away from school, they’re going to take you away from me and make you live with strangers. I don’t want that to happen. I want you to stay here with Grandma.”
She didn’t react to that, but I didn’t expect her to. I could have had a French poodle dancing the tango with a monkey on my head and she wouldn’t have reacted.
“Will you tell me what happened at school? Why did you run away? If you’ll tell me, I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
It was like with the alphabet. She had to prepare herself, but after a moment, she said, “The loud lady touches me.”
My stomach almost gave up the coffee I’d drunk. That sweet woman? I couldn’t imagine her doing something like that to a child. In my mind that’s what bad touching was.
“Touches you?”
She stretched her arms toward me, her hands curled into menacing claws, and then brought them back tightly to her chest.
“She hugs you?” I said.
A nod.
“And you don’t like that?”
She shook her head seriously. I was sick with relief, and with knowing how awful the world looked to Wavonna. Of course, she never hugged me, and whenever I touched her, she shrugged out from under my hand.
The next day, we went to school, and I did what I should have done the first day. I walked her directly to class, planning to explain everything to Mrs. Berry.
All that went out the window when I reached the classroom.
In the center of the room sat three children in wheelchairs. I don’t mean to be cruel, but they were drooling vegetables. In one corner, a child flopped around on blue rubber floor mats. The school could paint the walls as bright a shade of yellow as they wanted and hang up all the pretty mobiles in the world, but it was a horrible place. I couldn’t imagine Wavonna spending five minutes there, let alone the four days I’d left her there.
Mrs. Berry hurried over with a big smile and said, “Oh, Mrs. Morrison, what a relief! Wavonna, honey, you had us so worried.”
That was the day I earned Wavonna’s trust. Mrs. Berry swooped toward us, clearly planning to deliver an enormous, smothering hug. I spread my feet and put out my arm to block her.
“Mrs. Berry, we need to talk to someone about changing classes.” She made a wounded face as we backed away from her. I had nothing against the woman, but I was too old to beat around the bush.
When I sat down with the school counselor, I took the same approach. I looked her square in the eye and said, “My granddaughter is not retarded.”
“Mrs. Morrison, we don’t use words like that anymore. Our concern is that her speech problems are a sign of developmental delays.”
“I don’t mean it to offend, but she’s not stupid. Look, here. Wavonna.”
She didn’t look at me, but I knew she was listening.
“Give me paper and a pencil.”
The counselor slid a sheet of paper and a ballpoint pen across the desk. I scooted Wavonna’s chair closer and said, “Go ahead and show her. Otherwise you’ll have to stay in the class with the loud lady.”
As soon as I mentioned the special-education teacher, Wavonna picked up the pen and put it to the paper. First, she wrote out her name, neat as can be. Below that, she wrote her alphabet: Aa Bb Cc, and on like that. Under that she put her numbers. Then she did something I didn’t even know she knew. She turned the paper over and wrote: Cassiopeia. Next to it, she drew five dots and connected them. Then seven more dots that she labeled Cepheus. She filled the paper up that way. The only ones I recognized were the Big and Little Dippers.
The way the counselor’s jaw dropped down set me to giggling. I laughed right in that poor woman’s face. Laughed until I cried. Before Wavonna, I’d been feeling pretty good. My cancer was in remission, and I had myself a nice retirement planned, before Wavonna moved in. After everything I’d been through in the last month, I needed a good laugh.