Step nodded, leaning against the bookshelves. As she followed Stevie out of the room, she thought she had never seen Step look so bent, so broken, in all the years she'd known him. It made her want to go to him and hold him and comfort him ... but she knew that Step would understand, would agree that it was more important for her to be with Stevie. The child's needs always took precedence over the adult's. That was the way it had to be, when you had children. That was the contract you made with the kids when you chose to call their spirits from heaven into the world, that as long as they were young and needed you, you did whatever you could to meet their needs before you did anything else for anybody else.
They sat next to each other on her side of the queen-sized bed that Step's parents had given them as a wedding present. "What happened today, Stevie," said DeAnne.
Almost immediately, his face twisted up and the pent-up tears flowed again as they had flowed in the car.
"I couldn't understand them, Mom!"
"What do you mean?"
"I couldn't understand what they said! To me, I mean. I could understand them mostly in class, when they were talking to the teacher, but when they talked to me I didn't understand hardly anything and so I just stood there and finally I said, I can't understand you, and they called me stupid and retarded."
"Honey, you know you're not stupid. You know you're a straight A student."
"But I couldn't understand anything." He sounded fierce now; much of his anger, she realized, must have been from the frustration he had felt, being unable to communicate with the other kids. "I asked them what language they were speaking, and they said 'American,' and then they started making fun of the way I talk, like I talked wrong or something. But I didn't say anything wrong!
"Honey, you've got to understand, this is a school in a fairly rural part of Steuben. A country school. They just have thick southern accents."
"Well they understood everything I said."
"Because you talk normal American English. Like on television. They all watch TV, so they're used to understanding the way you talk."
"Then why don't they talk that way?"
"Maybe in a couple of generations they will. But right now they talk in a southern accent. And besides, you did understand some of what they said, or you wouldn't have known they were calling you retarded and stupid."
He began to cry harder. "I made this one girl write it down for me. That's how I knew. And then they all wrote it down. Retarded and stupid. They wrote it on papers and gave it to me. All day. I didn't read them, though. I mean after the first couple."
"That was very wise of you," said DeAnne. "And very cruel of them."
"But when I was leaving at the end of school I left all those notes on the table and Mrs. Jones made me go back and pick them all up and take them with me." The humiliation of it made him shudder. "So I picked them up and threw them in the trash and then she yelled at me."
"She yelled at you?"
"She said that I had an unfriendly attitude and a chip on my shoulder and I'd better learn some manners or I'd never get along."
She put her arm around him. "Oh, son, I'm so sorry. She should never have said anything like that."
"They're all against me there, Mom," he said. "Even the teacher."
"Stevie, I know it seems that way ='
"It doesn't just seem, it is!"
"Mrs. Jones just didn't understand what those papers were, or what the other kids had been saying."
"She talks just like they do, Mom," he said. "They just hate me because I'm from Utah!"
"Kids are cruel," said DeAnne. "You knew that-the way they treated Barry Wimmer." She remembered back to her own childhood, to her parents' words to her. "Not all the kids were making fun of you, were they?
Weren't most of them just standing around watching?"
"They didn't stick up for me, either," said Stevie.
"No, they just watched. They just watched, and that made you feel like they all agreed with the mean ones.
But they don't, not really, Stevie. They just-they just hadn't decided anything at all. So if they see you tomorrow standing tall and-"
"Don't make me go back, Mom!" cried Stevie. He was trembling. "Don't make me go back to class! Not Mrs. Jones's class! Don't make me!"
"Son! Calm down, please, calm down." She had no idea what to do about this. Every natural instinct told her to say, Yes, Stevie, you're right, that class is the last place in the world I'll ever send you, and you can stay home with me and be safe for the rest of your life. But she knew that, however much she might want to say that, she couldn't. It wouldn't be right. "These things aren't under my control-I can't keep you out of school, and I can't get you into another class unless Dr. Mariner agrees."
"Don't make me go back," he whispered.
"Son, you'll see-tomorrow they'll probably still be mean, but it won't be new anymore and so they'll get bored and do some thing else. And in a few days the nicer kids will start being friends with you. Plus you'll get used to the way they talk and you'll understand them and things will be fine."
"They'll never be fine," he said, and he got up and stalked out of the room. It was sadly funny, his furious walk, the way he tried to be forceful as he opened the door, but ended up fumbling with the door handle because he was still small enough that door handles weren't easy. One thing was certain, though. She could not let this go without talking to Dr. Mariner.
The Steuben phone book was by the kitchen phone. Step was at the table, eating a tuna sandwich. With mustard on it, which always made her cringe a little, but he wouldn't have it any other way.
"What was it?" asked Step.
"The kids made fun of his accent and the fact that he couldn't understand their accent, and then Mrs. Jones actually told him off because he wasn't being polite enough to her or to them!"
"Adults can be so stupid with children sometimes," he said.
"He begged me not to send him back to school tomorrow."
"So keep him home," said Step.
"Are you serious?" She could not believe he was saying that.
"The teacher's unsympathetic and the kids are all little shits," he said. "Keep him home."
She hated it when he used words like that, even though he apparently thought it was cute-it was so juvenile of him to use shock words, as if she were his parent instead of his wife. But she had long since learned that it was better to pretend she hadn't noticed than to make a big deal about it.
"We can't do that," said DeAnne. "There are truancy laws, you know."
"Just for a day. And tomorrow you call Dr. Mariner and ask for him to be reassigned to another second- grade class."
"I was going to call her tonight."
"Tomorrow is business hours. Tonight is home time."
"This is a real problem, Step, and she will understand my calling her tonight. I can't let him miss tomorrow or he'll think that he can get out of school whenever he wants to avoid something unpleasant there."
"My mother let us stay home," he said. "One day. One day a year, she said, any one of her kids could stay home just because they couldn't stand to go. They could only do it once, but they got that one day. Most years I didn't even use it. But things were better because I knew I could. And when I went on those days that I didn't want to go, when I had almost decided not to, then I was there because of my own choice, and not because anybody made me. I think it was a good plan."
"But this is only his second day at a new school," said DeAnne. "And what if Dr. Mariner won't let him change classes? Do yo u think that on Wednesday it will be any easier for him to go?"
"It might," he said.
"And it might not," she said. "I can't see that it will help him if he clings to his mother's apron strings just because things were hard for him."
Step sat there, looking at his sandwich. "Do what you want," he said.
"Oh, Step, don't be that way. I thought we were having a discussion."
"No, you're right. He needs to go. I guess I was just thinking that if I didn't have to go back to work tomorrow, that would be the best thing in the world. Only if I stayed home tomorrow, then I'd never go back. So you're right." He looked up and grinned. "You got to send your little boys back into the cold cruel world."