* * *
___
I felt so self-conscious, appearing in the doorway for breakfast, all those faces turning to take me in. Jackson, Emma, and Hunter. Darius, Blanca, Mackenzie, and James.
I would have to hear each of their names again and again to learn them. The three high schoolers sat in the far corner. Emma flashed me a bright smile. Hunter smirked and Jackson barely glanced at me at all. We were so close in age. I was grateful that I wasn’t assigned to teach them. Liz, though—now dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, eating an avocado half with a spoon—said, “Let’s make Mila feel welcome, everyone,” and, miraculously, Hunter nodded. Jackson lifted a hand to wave.
Darius, Blanca, Mackenzie, and James—the little ones—perched together in a row on a tall bench at one side of the table. They paid special attention to the cloth napkins on their laps. At each of their places, Terry was setting down small bowls of plain yogurt and a boy followed behind him with a larger bowl, spooning berries into the white.
“Lee’s famous fruit salad,” Terry said.
So this was Lee. He turned, and when he saw me, he set down the bowl.
“Hey!” Blanca shouted. “I want my berries!”
Lee’s eyes widened, but Billy said, “It’s okay, buddy. I got this. You go meet your teacher.” In a low voice, Billy spoke to Blanca, and then I heard her say, “May I have my berries please?” and Billy say, “Certainly.”
Lee stepped toward me and held out his hand. He was nine years old and small for his age. His hand was thin, but his shake was firm, as though he had been practicing. “My name is Lee,” he told me. “I’m your only student for now.”
Terry placed his broad hand on Lee’s skinny shoulder.
“Lee’s been eager to meet you.”
“I’m not very good at math,” Lee said. “But I like to read.”
I sat on a chair so that I would not have to look down at him as we spoke.
“What do you like to read?”
“Everything.”
“I have a feeling we’re going to get along,” I told him. I smiled, and his serious face turned into a grin, and it was so sudden and surprising—that smile—that I felt tears spring to my eyes. I blinked them away fast and turned to the table where Julia had set an empty mug and was offering me coffee.
* * *
___
The schoolhouse was the old barn I’d seen on the drive in, one expansive room with a few salvaged wood tables and chairs arranged throughout. One corner was set up for the preschoolers with mats and pillows and toys to play with. All the dolls were handmade, stitched eyes and mouths, tiny dresses and pants dyed turmeric yellow and beet red. A little city of wood-carved houses sat on a low shelf with matching cars lined up as if at a stoplight.
With windows lining both long walls, the room was filled with morning light. It was relaxed and spacious, a perfect place for learning.
I told Terry as much, and he said, “I’m glad. But you may wish to suspend your praise for another moment . . . Now we let you in on the secret of the supply closet.”
He opened the closet doors to reveal shelves crammed full of typical school stuff—ruled paper and graph paper, protractors and calculators. And unexpected things, too. Sheets of beeswax. More wood toys. A papier-mâché mobile of the solar system with its strings tangled, bins with costumes spilling over their sides.
“One day I will sort through all of this. I told myself I’d do it before you arrived. I told myself I’d do it before Billy and Liz arrived. So much for my good intentions! But anything you need should be in here. If it isn’t, let Julia or me know and we will get it for you or find a good substitute.”
“I’m sure this will be more than enough,” I said.
“We try to always have at least two kids of around the same age so they have someone to do lessons with. For a time, we had Esther along with Lee, but then Esther’s aunt came forward to adopt her. It doesn’t usually happen that way for us—our children usually stay. But there are two girls who may be joining us soon. Eight-year-old twins whose mother’s parental rights were just terminated. We’re waiting to see.”
I nodded.
“All right, enough with the orientation. You read the handbook, yes?”
“Cover to cover,” I said.
“Wonderful. You can help Lee with his equations now. He’s been doing a lot of self-guided work lately and he’ll appreciate having someone dedicated to helping him.”
Lee sat at a table at the far end of the schoolroom with his shoulders hunched.
“May I?” I asked, placing my hand on the empty chair next to him, and he nodded, moving his notebook closer to make more space for me. The notebook was covered with carefully formed numbers and equations and black boxes that confused me until I realized that instead of crossing or scribbling out his mistakes, he had blackened them so no hints of their specific wrongness remained.
“Long division,” I said. “How is it for you?”
His brow furrowed. “Fine,” he said. “Hard, I guess. I’m stuck on this one. I keep thinking I’m getting it right, but when I check in the book, it’s wrong.”
“Can I help you?”
“Sure,” he said.
When he slid his notebook toward me, I saw his hands—olive skin with graceful fingers, each of them straight except for the ring finger of his right hand. That finger turned out above the knuckle where it had clearly been broken and left to heal on its own. I became aware, then, of the way I moved through the world. No unusual scars or crooked bones. Nothing about the way I looked at first glance that gave me away. I wondered who had done that to him. Who had left it untreated.
He must have noticed me looking because he moved his hands under the table. And it struck me how bad it felt to him, to have me look for too long. My face burned. I wanted so much to be good at this.
I gathered my hair as I would if I were putting it into a ponytail.
“Look,” I said, showing him one of my earlobes and then the other. He leaned in, looked closely. I felt the intensity of his gaze, and felt, too, the weight of what I was showing him.
“Do you see how the holes aren’t centered? Do you see how this one . . . is higher than this one?”
Lee nodded.
“I didn’t get my ears pierced because I thought it would look pretty. I didn’t get it done at a mall or in a shop. The person who did it, he did it to hurt me.”
I had never spoken the words before, hadn’t told anybody. Now Lee would know it forever, and it would bond us together, and I hoped he would never again feel like a spectacle of pain around me.