“And my story is about fish. Haven’t you learned the listening lesson? I am telling about fish. This is a little story about people at the beach. People playing and having fun, nothing more, and of the worthless fish they caught.”
Anna stared at Joseph. The badly cut hairs of his head were wild beneath the linked fingers of his hands as he lay on the floor. He looked like a prophet; he looked like a mad lion.
“No more story,” said Susanne.
“Please,” said William.
“I want to kill her,” said Joseph.
No one answered. Anna lay, listening to her heart, listening for the mockingbird that had grown silent, watching the fine mist of gray gossamer smoke drift through the window over her head.
Margarette began to sing a nursery rhyme, and Anna faded into sleep.
The opening door woke them all on cue. They sat abruptly, having learned the lesson of quick attention. Anna’s head spun but her eyes were open wide to appear alert. Greta was in another dress, this one green with a White collar. She had brushed her hair up and back, and it was secured in silver. She sat down on her low chair, and the friends scurried to their places in the circle.
“Good news!” she said.
The friends waited.
“My father has found a new friend to join us. He is a little boy, younger than you, Margarette. I had asked my father for a little boy, but my father is a very busy man. But this morning he said he’d found a nice one during the selection, and shall bring him to us tonight after he’s been checked over.”
The friends watched and waited. Obviously Greta had forgotten her promise of bringing the meal early.
“Are you happy?” asked Greta.
All the friends nodded.
Joseph’s fingers slid upward along his neck, found the ragged ruins of his hair, and began to play with them. Anna glanced at him then looked quickly back at Greta. Joseph’s good eye had been hard, bright, and twitching.
“Today’s lesson will be a math lesson,” said Greta.
“I have cards here that I borrowed from my uncle.” She pulled white cards from the pocket of her blue dress. “I’ll hold up the cards and you will tell me the answer to the problem.”
Anna balled her fists in her lap. She was not good at numbers. If Greta would only give her an easy problem.
“You,” said Greta to William. She held up a card that read “5 + 12.”
“Tell me, what is the answer to this?”
William rolled his lips in over his teeth. The tick in his cheek was vivid. Then he said, “Seventeen.”
Greta had to check the back of the card, and said, “Yes, good.” She put that card down and held up the next. To Susanne she said, “Tell me this answer.”
Susanne looked at the card. It said, “18 — 9”
“The answer is nine,” Susanne said immediately. She was good with math.
Greta checked. “Fine,” she said. Then she looked at Joseph. “Your hair looks nasty.”
Anna looked at Joseph. His hair, where his fingers had clutched and pulled, sat up in pointed strands. Joseph flinched and began to rub it down again.
“No, no, no, no,” said Greta. “I think it needs doing again. I think you’ve played with it and ruined the cut. I best cut it over.”
Joseph rubbed harder, trying the flatten the spikes against his scalp. The bright twitching of his eye had become a nervous flutter. His mouth opened as if to say, “No,” but it closed again then, silently.
Margarette said, “I can do a problem. Please show me one.”
Greta stood, the cards falling to the sooty floor. She said, “Joseph, come here and I’ll do your haircut again.”
Joseph looked from Anna to Greta to Margarette. His teeth began to clap together.
“Please let me do a problem,” said Margarette.
Greta opened the chest by the window and took out the sewing kit. She lifted the lid and stared inside.
Joseph licked his lips. William’s tic picked up speed. Susanne looked in confusion between the friends. Margarette folded her hands and trembled. Anna’s heart leapt into a fear-driven arrhythmia.
Greta stared into the open sewing case. Then she slowly lowered the lid. She turned to face the friends.
Margarette said, “Please, let me do a problem. I like numbers.”
Greta said, “You have all been my friends for many weeks now. I’ve brought you good food and have taught you good lessons.” She pressed her fingertips together into a steeple of consideration and control. “Music lessons, art lessons, things other children of your station would beg for.”
Greta walked to her low chair and sat, smoothing down the hem of her green dress with the white collar. “If not for me, you would not have learned to listen, you would not have learned manners at a meal. I have been a good teacher.” Her face clouded over then, darkening storms growing at the corners of her eyes. She said, “But oh. You are still very selfish, selfish children.”
Anna needed to cough, but she swallowed it down. The hairs on the backs of her hands were prickled and alert. She looked at the window and back at Greta.
“My father has told me that I shouldn’t expect very much of you. I don’t want him to be right.”
Joseph began to groan. It was a soft growl that, by the twist of his face, Anna could see frightened even him.
“Joseph,” said Greta. “Is it you who has been selfish?” Joseph’s growl grew louder, a pinched animal sound almost musical in its intensity. Susanne put her hands over her ears; Margarette held a hand up as if to quiet him.
“Joseph,” Greta said. “I asked you a question. Answer. Is it you who stole from me?”
And Joseph stood suddenly, driving his hand into the waistband of his filthy short pants and pulling out the hair scissors. He screamed and lifted the scissors into the air, pointing them at Greta. His good eye was wide and ready. Greta stood from her chair and backed up a step.
Joseph took a step forward, the scissors poised.
Greta said, “Children, if he hurts me none of you will eat for a week, perhaps two weeks. And you know I never lie. I was taught not to lie. Lying is a sin.”
Joseph took another step forward, but Greta did not move. She knew she was safe now. At once, William, Susanne, and Anna were up, taking Joseph’s arms and wrestling them down. William pulled the scissors from Joseph and presented them to Greta like a kitten presenting a prized mouse to its owner.
Greta brushed a tiny strand of hair from her face. She went to the chest and returned the scissors to the kit. Susanne and William and Anna sat down in the circle. Margarette took Joseph gently by the hand and helped him sit.
With her hand on the rough wall, Greta stood for a moment and looked out the tiny window. Anna looked at Greta, at the slice of shed roof outside the window, at the dark tops of the smoke stacks beyond the yard of Greta’s home, at the smoke that hung, like the smoke in Joseph’s story, too thick to reach the clouds.
Greta went to the door. She did not turn back as she whispered, “Selfish children.”
When she was gone, Margarette said, “This won’t be forever. We won’t be here forever.”
Anna did not sleep for a long time that night. She listened as William and Susanne tossed restlessly on the floor. She listened as Joseph buried his face in Margarette’s little-girl arms and, with her words and lullabies, she tried to soothe the insanity away.
Morning came with rain outside the tiny window and stale, humid air in the attic. The mockingbird’s call was faint, as if he had found shelter from the rain in the branches of a distant tree, somewhere outside the yard. Anna lay awake for a long time. Her neck ached from the hard floor and the change of weather. No one spoke. Joseph was up, standing by the empty bookshelf with his face pressed against the slat of one shelf. His eyes were closed. Susanne and William were still asleep, or trying to be asleep. Margarette was making play shadows in the gray, rain-shrouded light on the attic floor.