One mother covered her mouth, shocked to see the fresh wounds.
“But she started it!” one of the Groube boys said, and the others chimed in, “She did, she did!”
The principal glanced around the room, nodding at each face. “Let me speak with Gina alone,” she said.
Once the door was closed, the principal said, “So? Gina? I am a little surprised.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I do not believe you started it, but I am surprised that you fought back.”
I had the feeling she was secretly pleased I had defended myself, but she could not encourage fighting.
“What prompted you?” she asked.
“The angel in Italy.”
“Pardon?”
“Angel Lucia. She was with me. She told me to pick up the branch, to swing it around, low, not high, so they would trip and stumble. Then she froze the words in their mouths and all they had left were little eee eee eee whimpers.”
“Well. I see. Hmm. Angel Lucia, you say?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The principal nodded slowly. “I could use an angel like that.”
The Porcupine, the Angels, and the Counselor
But after all that, after the Groubes had moved away and the new, quiet neighbors had been there about a week, I spotted Antonio standing in the middle of our backyard.
“Lose something?” I asked.
“Just checking,” he said, with a ridiculously charming smile. “There was a porcupine here—right here—eating licorice.”
“A porcupine? Licorice?”
“Yes, right here. It was the red kind—not the porcupine, the licorice—you know those sticky whippy things?”
We studied the grass, turned all around. Nothing. No porcupine. No licorice bits.
“When I was little,” Antonio said, “people said I had a lively imagination. Lately, though, people wonder what is wrong with me because apparently I see things that others do not.” A puff of disappointment left his mouth.
“People have said that about me, too,” I admitted.
“They have?” He nodded appreciatively. “That’s good to know.” As he turned away, he said, “Gotta go. Let me know if you see any porcupines—”
“Or licorice,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”
When I told Dad about Antonio and the porcupine, he reminded me of another encounter I’d had at school a few years earlier. From the window of my classroom I had seen two angels sitting in a tree. They were whispering to each other and their wings were folded against their backs and thin gold halos hovered above their heads. They saw me and I saw them. One of them waved shyly. I waved back.
“Gina?” my teacher said. “Gina! This world is waiting for you! Hello, hello?”
I mentioned the angels whispering in the tree. “See? There?”
The teacher and my classmates turned toward the window, peering at the lone tree at the edge of the playground. Then they turned to peer at me. I knew that look. They did not see the angels. They thought I was lying.
My teacher phoned my parents and asked for a conference.
After the conference, my mother took me to an eye doctor to have my vision checked (my father didn’t think it was necessary), and at school a counselor asked me many, many questions. He wanted to know, for example, if anyone was bullying me.
“Of course,” I said.
“‘Of course’? Is it someone in your class?”
“No.”
“At home?”
“No.”
“Then where?”
I tapped my head. “Here.”
“Ah,” he said, adding a little star by my response. I thought maybe the star meant I’d said something especially good. Then he asked if I’d ever been locked in a room or closet.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe? You don’t know for sure?”
“In which world?”
“Pardon?”
“Well, do you mean this world here, or other worlds, like in a movie or in my mind?”
He wrote down some more words and added several stars.
Next we examined splatters of black ink on white paper, and he asked what I saw there.
“Splatters of black ink,” I said.
“Well, yes, but what do the splatters look like?”
“They look like someone spilled an ink bottle on the paper. Maybe they were using one of those pens that you dip in ink, and then maybe they sneezed or something and then the bottle spilled all over the paper and it was a big mess.”
“Erm, yes. How about this one? Does it resemble anything? What does it remind you of?”
“It reminds me of the other one with the spilled ink.”
“But does it resemble, oh, say, a butterfly? Or a bird? Or a dragon?”
“Is that what you see?” I asked.
“Well, yes, this one here reminds me of a fierce dragon with open mouth, but you might see something different, of course.”
I figured this was a trick. If I squinted at the splatters, I could envision many elaborate scenes: a winged hero, an injured dog, erupting volcanoes, but I thought that if I said so, the counselor would think I was childish.
I said, “Do you often have those visions—of butterflies or birds or dragons?”
The counselor scratched his wrist and cleared his throat. “I don’t,” he started, “erm, these aren’t, I was merely suggesting that others often think these—these ink blots—resemble, oh, various other things.” He stared at his shoes, tapping the toes against the carpet. On his tablet, he made some jagged squiggle marks.
The counselor informed my parents and my teachers that perhaps I was “simply a child with an overactive imagination. Very overactive.”
Dad told me that if I ever saw those angels again when I was at school maybe I should just keep it to myself. “But if you see them here at home,” he said, “let me know. I’d like to see them, too.”
The New Teacher
Disappointed:
Antonio was not at the bus stop on the first day of school. Maybe he was being homeschooled or attending a private school and there would be even fewer chances to see him.
Relieved:
My homeroom teacher, soft-spoken Miss Lightstone, was new to the school and would not be aware of the incident with the angels, and she definitely did not seem like my previous year’s teacher. Maybe I could have a fresh start.
My previous year’s teacher was pointy—all sharp angles and shrill voice. She did not seem to like us students and she especially did not like anything I wrote. My handwriting was “messy,” my sentences “awkward,” my spelling “unacceptable,” and when we did a unit on creative writing, she wrote at the top of one paper, What is this supposed to be? and on another, Try again! and on others, Read the directions and do over.
I was relieved that she no longer worked at our school.
The new teacher, Miss Lightstone, was the English language arts teacher. On the board on the first morning, she had written her name and these words: Who are you? With one finger she underlined the words Who are you?
She was probably wondering about each of us, about who we were, but I was wondering—and maybe we all were—the same about her.