How much worse it would be for me, if I told.
I was not sure of the names of my tormenters. It was a matter of shame to me, there were so many.
“Well! You don’t have to tell me who the vermin are just yet, dear. You have already been upset enough.” A pause. A stained-teeth smile. “I will drive you home.”
Invited me to sit in the passenger’s seat beside him. Astonishing to me, the math teacher famous for his sarcasm was behaving in a kindly manner. Smiling!
Though glancing about, to see if anyone was watching.
It was late afternoon, early winter. Already the sky was dim, fading.
In my confusion, waking from sleep, I seemed not to know exactly where I was, or why.
Mr. Sandman advised me, I might just “hunch down” in the seat. In case some “nosy individual” happened to be watching.
“One of my teacher-colleagues. Eager for gossip, you bet.”
Quickly I hunched down in the seat. Shut my eyes and hugged my knees. I did not want to be seen by anyone in Mr. Sandman’s car.
Mr. Sandman’s car was a large heavy pewter-colored four-door sedan. Not a compact vehicle like most vehicles in the faculty parking lot. Its interior was very cold and smelled of something slightly rancid like spilled milk.
“You live on the east side, I believe? Is it — Ontario Street?”
This was astonishing to me: how did Mr. Sandman have any idea where I lived?
“Not Ontario? But nearby?”
“Erie...”
“You are wondering how I know where you live, Violet? And how I know with whom you live? Well!”
Mr. Sandman chuckled. It was part of his comic style to pose a question but not answer it.
When I was allowed to sit up a few minutes later and peer out the car window it did not appear that Mr. Sandman was driving in the direction of Erie Street. The thought came to me — He is taking another route. He knows another, better route.
And when it became evident that Mr. Sandman was not driving me home at all I sat silently, staring out the window. I did not know what to say for I feared offending Mr. Sandman.
In homeroom and in math class Mr. Sandman was easily “offended” — “deeply offended” — by a foolish answer to a question, or a foolish question. Often he simply glared, wriggling his dense eyebrows in a way comical to behold, unless you were the object of his ire.
However, Mr. Sandman was in a very good mood now. Almost, Mr. Sandman was humming under his breath.
“You know, Violet, it has been a pleasant and unexpected surprise — to discover that you are an impressively good student. Quite a surprise!”
Mr. Sandman mused aloud as he drove. There was no expectation that I should answer him.
“And also, a pleasant and unexpected surprise, to discover such an impressively good student in my automobile, hiding under a garment like Sleeping Beauty.”
We were ascending hilly Craigmont Avenue. Still we were moving in a direction opposite to my aunt’s and uncle’s house on Erie Street and still I could not bring myself to protest.
“... indeed there are some surprises more ‘unexpected’ than others. And discovering that Violet Rue Kerrigan is one of my better students has been one of these.”
Violet Rue Kerrigan. The name suggested wonder, in Mr. Sandman’s voice. As if referring to someone, or something, apart from me of a significance unknown to me.
Upper Craigmont Avenue was a residential neighborhood of older, large houses. Tall plane trees with bark peeling from them, like flayed skin. Storm debris lay scattered on expanses of cracked sidewalk and broad front lawns. If there had not been (dim) lights in the windows of houses we passed I might have thought that Mr. Sandman was driving me into an abandoned part of the city.
At last Mr. Sandman turned into the driveway of a stone house, bulbous gray stone, cobblestone? — with dark shutters, and a ponderous slate roof overhead.
Crabgrass stubbled the front lawn. A plane tree lay in ruins as if it had been struck by lightning. The long asphalt drive was riddled with cracks. My father would have sneered at such a derelict driveway though he would have been impressed by the size of Mr. Sandman’s house. And Craigmont Avenue looked to be a neighborhood of expensive properties, or properties that had once been expensive. “I am the ‘last scion’ in the Sandman family,” Mr. Sandman said, chuckling. “Since my elderly infirm parents passed away years ago my life is idyllic.”
Idyllic was not a word with which I was familiar. I might have thought that it had something to do with idle.
As Mr. Sandman parked the large heavy car at the top of the driveway, some distance from the street, I managed to stammer, “I... I want to go home, Mr. Sandman. Please.” But my voice was disappointingly weak, Mr. Sandman seemed scarcely to hear.
(By this time I needed to use a bathroom, badly. But this I could not tell Mr. Sandman out of embarrassment.)
“Well, dear! Why are you cowering there like a kicked puppy? Get out, please. We’ll have just a little visit — this time. Just a few minutes, I promise. And then I will drive you home to — did you say Ontario Street?”
“Erie...”
“Erie! Of course.”
A subtle tone of condescension in Mr. Sandman’s voice. For the east side of Port Oriskany was not nearly so affluent as the west side nearer Lake Ontario.
My legs moved numbly. Slowly I got out of Mr. Sandman’s car. It did not occur to me that I could run away — very easily, I could run out to the street.
At the same time thinking — Mr. Sandman is my teacher. He would not hurt me.
“We’ll have just a little ‘tutorial.’ In private.”
Badly wanting to explain to Mr. Sandman — (now nudging me forward, hand on my back, to a side entrance of the darkened house) — that I was concerned that Aunt Irma would wonder where I was for she often worried about me when I was late returning home from school... And this afternoon I’d lost time, might’ve been a half hour, forty minutes or more, in my stuporous sleep in a car I had not realized was Mr. Sandman’s... But I could not speak.
Inside, Mr. Sandman switched on a light. We were in a long hallway, my heart was pounding so rapidly I could not see clearly.
And now, in a kitchen — an old-fashioned kitchen with a high ceiling, the largest kitchen I’d ever seen, long counters, rows of cupboards, a large refrigerator, an enormous gas stove, a triple row of burners and none very clean...
“I was thinking — hot chocolate, dear? At this time of day when the spirit flags, as the blood-sugar level plummets, I’ve found that hot chocolate restores the soul.”
In the center of the room was an old, enamel-topped table with solid legs. On it were scattered magazines, books. A single page from the Port Oriskany Herald containing the daily crossword puzzle, which someone had completed in pencil.
Shyly I agreed to Mr. Sandman’s offer of hot chocolate. I could not imagine declining.
Daring to add that I needed to use a bathroom, please...
Mr. Sandman chuckled as if the request was endearing to him. “Why, of course, Sleeping Beauty. It has been a while since you have peed — eh?”
So embarrassed, I could not even nod yes.
“Even Sleeping Beauty is required, sometime, against all expectations, to pee. Yes.”
Humming under his breath Mr. Sandman escorted me to a bathroom at the end of a dim-lit corridor, fingers on my back. He reached inside the door to switch on the light, and allowed me to close it — just barely.
My heart was pounding rapidly. There was no lock on the door.