It’s just a cut, I said, my hands shaking.
It’s a One, said John Beeze, sitting in his chair. One times Ann is Ann, said Danny O’Mazzi.
It was Ellen who made the call, rushing from the room to the phone and punching in gil, picking at those plaid pants, pointing to the math room before the laughing parents, now sitting in the kitchen gossiping, even got wind of what had happened.
Then they rushed in.
They found Ann in a heap by the back table, dizzy, choking with sobs, her thigh laced with wings of tissue, drooling blood out of her leg.
Mrs. DiLanno entered, face emptying, scooping up Ann, saying, Baby are you okay? Baby what happened? Is she okay? Call the ambulance! and the sound of the siren could be heard approaching closer, the one ambulance in town, jaunty and clean, red light awhirl, and Ann started to cry louder in response. Lisa had her cheek shoved against the wall.
Elmer’s father ducked through the doorframe. I didn’t know where to stand, where to put myself. The ax was on the floor, blade red-caked, and Gustav Gravlaki picked it up by the handle, boomed: And what is THIS? He brandished it up high, until it grazed the ceiling, and he
looked like a painting, holding my ax, e s I*gn Of the exact muscled mustached woodcutter. I couldn’t meet his eyes.
My boss rushed in, and ordered me to go sit in the kitchen and wait for her, which I did, head down, looking at no one. I could hear the rest of the second grade running outside and getting ready for recess early and Lisa was making her popping sounds and I could hear Ann crying and crying and Mimi was crying and Elmer was crying, talking about the bone, how he heard the bone, how it sounded like a rock, and Ellen had apparently peed the second pair of pants and there were no more pants in the lost-and-found so she had to wear a shirt as a skirt, sleeves hanging off her child hips like tentacles. John was dribbling a kick ball Lisa stopped by the door of the kitchen and looked in at me. In the background, we could hear Ann’s voice shaking down in metered sobs.
You shouldn’t be talking to me, I said to Lisa. Go to recess now.
The ambulance siren arrived, no Doppler effect because it did not pass, but instead stopped, parked. Kids from other classes rushed to the windows to watch. Word got out fast: Ann cut off her leg, Ann killed herself, Ann killed the whole second grade. The paramedics busted in; Lisa didn’t move, didn’t look. She was very used to ambulances. Big deal, she once told me. It’s a white van.
Two huge men in huge outfits ran inside, bright blue and ruddy, the sons of proud mamas, fellows who knew CPR and used it, who birthed babies and put the air from their lungs into the lungs of wheezing town members, who watched people breathing in the park, in the hardware store, in the movie theater, and recognized their own breath in the lives of others-these men ran inside like health embodied, and the kids pulled away from the windows, leaving opaque ghosts of noses and mouths on the glass. I heard scurrying and adjusting as Ann was lifted onto a stretcher and carried out; she went by my door, bloody, wailing,
getting drawings piled on her by the art class in session who all suddenly became very generous with their art and put them on her belly like sacrifices: Here, Ann, a pony; Here, Ann, a flower. Papers that weren’t steady fluttered to the floor. As she exited, I heard Ann wail, through her sobs: This doesn’t look anything like a pony.
The low voice of a paramedic. The opening and closing of the school doors.
She was followed by the parents and then the kids after the parents and then the siren. Then quiet. Elmer crying. John dribbling that kick ball
The rest of the kids started to trickle into the playground. I had my hand flat on the seat of my wooden chair, pressing down, harder, and put my head face down on my other arm, slumped on the table in the kitchen. I could hear my boss shooing away all the remaining kids, telling them to go to recess. I heard Danny O’Mazzi ask, Is Ms. Gray still here? and I felt a rush of love, sweet biceped Danny. An ax? somebody else asked. Can I have Ann’s cubby? asked a third.
No More Questions! my boss said loudly. Go play, children!
I heard the science teacher, releasing his group, talking to a fifth-grader, voice worried, asking what had happened, asking where I was, but my boss swept in and told him if he didn’t do recess duty right that instant he was fired.
That’s three, I thought, vaguely. I almost laughed out loud be cause it was not at all funny. I wanted to see him. I wanted to tell him he was right, every time, he was always right.
I heard my boss click off to her office, feet sharp and fast and angry on the tile. The school quieted.
I breathed in the familiar smell of my skin. The thought of Ann sign in that ambulance, bleeding on a stretcher, made my ribs compact into a box; my breathing was thickening and I thought I might throw up when I heard some kind of shifting sound and picked my head up to see Lisa still standing outside the door, small and tight in her little shorts and shirt, staring at me. Lisa Venus.
Wearing the IN. that first day like a queen. Her eyes were wide and direct.
Well, she said, I guess we killed her.
You’re not supposed to be here, I said. You should be going to recess now. You’re late.
Behind me, the refrigerator whirred. The room was half — dark. I was thinking about Ann saying, That’s not from nature, that’s plastic, about Lisa’s zero-funny Ann, sensible Ann, cut-up Ann the cutup.
Then after a second, I took in what I’d just heard. Wait, what did you say? I said.
Lisa knocked her hips from side to side. She looked perfectly reasonable. She said: I took down the ax and you brought in the ax. We can send secret messages to each other in jail.
Ann’s not going to die, I said.
Lisa’s voice was an afternoon breeze. And, I took the ax to the back of the room, she said. And, I told Ann to cut off her whole arm. And, I hate Ann, she said.
She’s not going to die, I repeated.
She is TOO going to die! Lisa said, her voice rising. Fingers clenching into a fist.
I felt like going to sleep right then, and put my head on the table, closed my eyes. What kind of math teacher keeps weapons in her classroom? The insides of my eyelids were warm and dark. I could barely hear Lisa.
Ms. Gray, Ms. Gray, she was saying, and I ignored her, kept my eyes closed, willing her away, get out, go play some murderous pirate game on the playground, go enslave Elmer who’s probably throwing up himself somewhere from the sight of blood, the sound of bone, and I thought she had left and was sinking back into my deep worm-infested pit of horror and shame when I heard in the background a very familiar sound, one so familiar I thought I was doing it myself until I realized my hands were still. just a simple tapping, the most familiar sound in the world to me.
Knock knock knock. Inhale, exhale. Knock knock knock knock. A perfect replica.
I opened my eyes. She was still standing there in the doorway, intent, her fist now on the wooden door frame. She kept knocking.
Look here, she said, lo okie here I I’m Ms. Gray. Look at me, I’m Ms. Gray. She knocked at exactly the same rhythm I did. She kept knocking. Knock knock knock knock. She drew in her breath Just like I do. It was a very effective imitation. I wanted to knock.
watching her be me, knocking.
I kept my head on the desk, eyes on her steadily. Knock knock knock knock.
Lisa, I said.
Her face was flushed with focus. Sometimes, she said, I do you for Hands-on Health. After cancer. If there’s time.
I pressed my hand harder on the wood of the chair, bothered. I’m not sick, I said, into the crook of my elbow.
Lisa kept knocking. The dull clamor of recess rose outside.
My eyes felt tired against my arm, barely working, watching Lisa knock that door frame. I thought of Mr. Gravlaki waving the ax in the air, his face dark with rage, and panic flared in my ribs.