Holding Wonder

Next morning I felt a little more cheerful. After all, yesterday had been Dismey's first day at a new school. In fact, it had been her first day at any school. And children adjust wonderfully well-usually.
I looked around for Dismey. I didn't have to look far. She was backed into the angle of the wall by the door of our room, cornered by Bannie and Michael. I might have known. Bannie and Michael are my thorns-in-the-flesh this year. Separately they are alert, capable children, well above average in practically everything. But together! Together they are like vinegar and soda-erupting each other into the wildest assortment of devilment that two six-year-olds could ever think up. They are flint and steel to the biggest blaze of mischief I've ever encountered. Recently, following a Contradict Everything Phase, they had lapsed into a Baby Phase, complete with thumb-sucking, baby talk and completely tearless infantile wailing-the noise serving them in the same capacity as other children's jet-zooming or six-gun banging or machine-gun
rattling.
The two didn't see me coming and I stood behind them a minute, curious to see just what they had dreamed up so soon to plague Dismey with.
"And it's a lectric paddle and it's specially for girls," said Bannie solemnly.
"You stood up in the swing and the 'letric paddle is specially for girls that stand up in swings," amplified Michael soberly. "And it hurts real bad."
"It might even kill you," said Bannie with relish.
"Dead," said Michael, round of eye that shifted a little to send a glint of enjoyment at Bannie.
Dismey hunched one shoulder and drew a shaking hand across her stricken cheek. "I didn't know-" she began.
"Of course she didn't know," I said sternly. "Bannie and Michael, indoors!" I unlocked the door and shooed them in. Then I stooped and put my arms around a rigid, unbending Dismey. I could feel her bones under her scant flesh and flimsy dress.
"It isn't so, Dismey," I said. "There isn't any electric paddle. There's no such thing. They were just teasing you. But we do have a rule about standing up in the swings. You might fall out and get hurt. Here comes Donna now. You go play with her and she'll tell you about our rules. And don't believe Bannie and Michael when they tell you bad things. They're just trying to fool you." In the room I confronted the two completely unrepentant sinners.
"You weren't kind to Dismey," I said. "And she's our new student. Do you want her to think that we're all unkind here at our school?" They had no answer except Bannie's high-pitched giggle that he uses when he is embarrassed.
"Besides that, what you told her wasn't true."
"We were just playing," said Michael, trading sideglances with Bannie.
"Telling things that aren't true isn't a very good way to have fun," I reminded them.
"We were just playing," said Michael, while Bannie had recourse to his thumb.
"But Dismey didn't know you were only playing," I said. "She thought you were telling the truth."
"We were just playing," said Bannie around his thumb.
After we had gone around and around a couple more times, I sternly sent them outside. The two ran shrieking, holding the seats of their Levi's, yelling, "We got a licking! With the 'lectric paddle! A-wah! A-wah!"
And my heart sank. I had a premonition that the Baby Phase was about to give way to a Tease Dismey Phase.
Dismey came slowly to life in the classroom. She began to function with the rest of the class, catching up with ease with the children who had been in school a month before she arrived. She swooped through long and short vowels and caught us in initial consonants. She showed a flair for drawing and
painting. Her number work and reading flowed steadily into her-and stayed there instead of ebbing and flowing as it does for so many children. But all the rest of the classroom activities paled to insignificance as far as Dismey was concerned before the wonder of story time. it was after the first few sessions of story time immediately following the afternoon recess that I realized what Dismey's mother meant by calling her a believin' child.
Dismey believed without reservation in the absolute truth of every story she heard. She was completely credulous.
It's hard to explain the difference between the fairy tales for her and for the rest of the class. The others believed whole-heartedly while the story was in progress and then set it aside without a pang. But there was a feeling of eager acceptance and-and recognition-that fairly exuded from Dismey during story time that sometimes almost made my flesh creep. And this believing carried over to our dramatization of the stories too, to such an extent that when Dismey was the troll under the bridge for The Billy Goats Gruff, even Bannie paled and rushed over the bridge, pell-mell, forgetting the swaggering challenge that he as the Big Billy Goat was supposed to deliver. And he flatly refused to go back and slay the troll.
But this credulity of hers served her a much worse turn by making her completely vulnerable to Bannie and Michael. They had her believing, among other unhappy things, that a lion lived in the housing of the air-raid siren atop the cafeteria. And when the Civilian Defense truck came to check the mechanism and let the siren growl briefly, Dismey fled to the room, white-eyed and gasping, too frightened to scream. She sat, wet-faced and rigid, half the afternoon in spite of all my attempts to reassure her.
Then one day I found her crying out by the sidewalk when she should have been in class. Tears were falling without a sound as she rubbed with trembling desperation at the sidewalk.
"What's the matter, Dismey?" I asked, squatting down by her, the better to see. "What are you doing?"
"My mama," she choked out, "I hurt my mama!" "What do you mean?" I asked, bewildered.
"I stepped on a crack," she sobbed. "I didn't mean to but Bannie pushed me. And now my mama's back is busted! Can you fix a busted back? Does it cost very much?"
"Oh, Dismey, honey!" I cried, torn between pity and exasperation. "I told you not to believe Bannie. `Step on a crack and break your mother's back' isn't for true! It's just a singing thing the children like to say. It isn't really so!" I finally persuaded Dismey to leave the sidewalk, but she visibly worried all the rest of the day and shot out of the door at dismissal time as though she couldn't wait to get home to reassure herself.
Well, school went on and we switched from fairy tales to the Oz books, and at story time every day I sat knee-deep in a sea of wondering faces and experienced again with them my own enchantment when I was first exposed to the stories. And Dismey so firmly believed in every word I read that Michael and Bannie had her terror-stricken and fugitive every time a dust devil whirled across the playground. I finally had to take a decisive hand in the affair when I found Michael struggling with a silently desperate Dismey, trying to pry her frenzied hands loose from the playground fence so the whirlwind could pick her up and blow her over the Deadly Desert and into the hands of the Wicked Witch of the West.
Michael found his Levi's not impervious to a ping-pong paddle, which was the ultimate in physical punishment in our room. He also found not to his liking the Isolation outside the room, sitting forlornly on the steps by our door for half a day, but the worst was the corporate punishment he and Bannie had visited upon them. They were forbidden to play with each other for three days. The sight of their woebegone, drooping figures cast a blight over the whole playground, and even Dismey forgave them long before the time was up.