We can’t lift her. She stays until morning when the rain slackens. It takes ten of the sisters with ropes, calling instructions to each other, to get her off. When they do, I scramble underneath to survey the damage. Teresa has ripped the earth with her hands, taken out roots and vines. The work nature did for next year, demolished. I kneel. I hold an unattached leaf. It trembles.
Sister Helena says, “We’ll plant a new garden in the spring.”
“Right, yes, certainly.” I am polite with shock.
I feel her hand on my shoulder. Sister Charlene places her hand on my other shoulder. Then Sister Mary, Sister Georgia, and the others I haven’t mentioned by name due to time constraints but who each had their own idiosyncrasies, likes and dislikes, they place their hands on my shoulders, my head.
…
The day before Christmas break, rainbow stickers decide who puts the angel on top of the tree. Chrissy gets it, an I-lost-my-sunglasses-have-you-seen-my-sunglasses-oh-they’re-on-my-head kind of girl.
“God damn it!” someone says, and when Charlene and the kids turn around I realize I have said it. I have sullied the Lord’s name in a Catholic classroom.
Christopher is too in awe of the curse to be upset about the sticker.
“Maybe you are just unlucky,” I say to him.
…
At the Christmas party I realize I haven’t thought of Clive in weeks, so I do this to my mind: I goose-step into thoughts of him, toe first, testing what is still raw, where I will fall through. His ludicrous, twisted feet, his rope theatrics that bordered on genius. Turns out nothing is raw, and I think of him as an autonomous being I hope is doing okay.
One of the presents under the tree bears my name. The sisters gather around as I open it. Red silk slippers.
“Red because you’re unique,” Sister Charlene points out.
“Red because your name is Ruby,” Sister Georgia says.
Sister Helena says, “Your dancing shoes.”
Then the sisters of Saint Joseph and I dance to “YMCA.” We put up our hands to make the letters. I play my leg like a guitar. They look at each other while they prance around, nodding approval and showing each other their hips, their rumps. They look at me too.
…
Valentine’s Day — holiday of choice for five-year-olds. Each kid brings in enough valentines for everyone in class, even an extra for Miss Ruby. We use felt hearts, sequins, and scissors to turn brown lunch bags into mailboxes. In the morning we arrange the mailboxes on the floor in anticipation of passing out the valentines. Christopher goes on yellow for crushing a few of them in an excited carpet slide. During recess he shows me his valentines with the care of a scientist — pale blue robots each bearing his earnest signature. Then, trying to reach the highest monkey bar, he knocks Tyler’s head into a pole. In the moment before Tyler reacts, I will the world to stop. He begins to cry, slowly at first, then with virtuoso feeling.
Christopher looks at me with scared eyes.
Sister Charlene exhales. “Christopher, you are now the first child ever to go on red. Miss Ruby, take him to the office.” Balancing the weeping Tyler, she leans over Christopher. “While everyone else is getting their valentines, you will be sitting in the office. We will pass out your valentines in… your… absence.”
She turns on her heel and leads the ducklings back into the building. Christopher and I are alone in the courtyard, where it has begun to rain. From his backpack he pulls a kid-sized Spider-Man umbrella and opens it. As we walk, he looks around wildly. Something in him knows there is a way to get out of going, but he’s too young to know what it is.
…
I leave Christopher in the office and rejoin the class. Tyler milks his injury, holding an ice bag to a swollen knot on his head. He gets to read on the beanbag while we clean up the morning’s art supplies. Every kid wants to sit next to him, more than they want ice cream. More than they want God’s love. They beg, they twist, they plead. So Sister Charlene lets them take turns, two at a time. At what age does the sick kid become the least popular?
I think of Christopher in the office. This is his Valentine’s Day, and he has to spend it surrounded by brown light and the aggressive penciling of fat Sister Georgia.
I imagine my anger as a thing I can hold and place it beside me. Anger, you are one ugly-looking pile of crap.
The happiness of the valentine promenade seems forced and wrong. I ask if I can be excused.
Sister Charlene glares but nods.
…
Christopher sulks on a folding chair, legs high above the floor. His weeping has downshifted to small chokes of despair.
Sister Georgia looks up when I come in. I ignore her.
“We have to stop meeting like this.” I take the chair next to him.
He raises his tear-streaked face. “Is Tyler okay?”
“He’s fine, Christopher. He’s a big baby. He’s the patron saint of being a baby.”
Sister Georgia clears her throat.
I clear mine back at her. I feel a soft pressure on my hand. It is Christopher, reaching out to me. “I am a bad boy.” His eyes are pretty with tears. He shakes his head, as if there is nothing to be done in the matter of him.
“You are.” I nod. “But there are worse things.”
The door to the office swings open, revealing Sister Helena.
“Ruby,” she says, “there’s a cowboy in the courtyard to see you.”
…
He is in his Lone Star uniform, complete with steakhouse-issued chaps, wig of red corkscrew curls, and cowboy hat, which he doffs when he sees me.
“Howdy.” He holds his lasso. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
“Clive.”
“You haven’t called in a while.”
He releases the rope and it hovers over the ground obediently. He keeps small circles going as we talk. He says to the center of the swirling rope, “Come back.”
I strain toward the office to hear whether Christopher is crying again. All I can hear is Clive’s rope. “That’s so nice,” I say. I mean it. It’s a good day when someone, anyone, wants you. “You’re about six months and a couple weeks too late.” How amazing, I think, to be completely free of this, and how sad, and how pointless. Why do we pretend the people we love are special? I light a cigarette. The shelf life of getting over a rodeo cowboy is one year, tops.
“It’s never too late, Rubes.”
“That statement is inaccurate, Clive.”
He looks up from his rope for the first time. “What do you have to stay around for?”
Around the area of my heart, I feel a sharp pain. It is allegiance, or loyalty.
“Tomatoes,” I say. “You have to talk to them in a certain way. The soil has to be right. You can’t just throw them in.”
Suddenly, in a motion I at the last second perceive could be aggressive, Clive advances toward me. When he is inches away he halts. I exhale smoke into his face. I hear the sizzle of the whip and feel cool air around me. The leaning tower.
“Enough,” I say. One by one, the columns of rope fall against the concrete. He bows his head, summons the rope.
“Good-bye, Clive.” I toe my cigarette out and walk away.
He rat-tails the wrought iron fence where the tomato plants sleep. It makes a pa-twink sound each time. Pa-twink. I used to love all the sounds of him, but now his tricks seem empty and tinny, the activities of a little boy.
Little boy. I am anvilled by a brilliant, sober idea.
“Clive,” I say, “bring your rope and follow me.”
Christopher is staring into a corner, little-boy mournfully. When he sees Clive his eyes widen.
“This is my friend,” I say. “He wants to show you some tricks.”
“Me?” he says.
“Just you. All the other kids can go to hell.”