“I’ll just pop out a moment. The guard will buzz us through,” Gran says. I watch with wide eyes as Gran steps out of the taxi, presses a nearly invisible beige button on one of the stone columns, and speaks into camouflaged slats beside it.
She walks back to the taxi and opens my door. “Come,” she says. I step out, clutching her pillow to my chest while the taxi driver rolls down his window.
“I can drive you right up, ma’am,” he offers. “It’s no trouble.”
“That won’t be necessary,” she replies as she opens her purse and fishes out several hard-earned bills.
“I’ll get your change,” the taxi driver says as he opens his glove compartment.
“No, no,” says Gran. “The rest is for you.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he replies, then rolls up his window and waves at us both before turning his taxi in a wide circle and heading back down the road from whence we came.
Gran and I stand between the two stone columns of the wide-open gate. In front of us wends a cobblestone path lined with orderly gardens containing verdant bushes bursting with the largest blood-red rose blooms I have ever seen. At the end of the path looms the mansion, three stories, with a smooth, gray façade, eight black-framed windows set in three rows: two, two, and four. The entire edifice reminds me of the eight-eyed wolf spider Gran and I once marveled at on National Geographic—well, Gran marveled, while I cringed.
I grab Gran’s hand.
“There, there,” she says. “All will be well.”
It’s just another workday for Gran, who has been employed as a maid in the Grimthorpe mansion for a long time, but for me, this is my first visit. Gran has described many details of this mansion over the years—the parlor filled with treasures from Mr. Grimthorpe’s book tours abroad or passed down through his patriarchal line; the abstract artwork in the main hallway that Gran calls the “bourgeois blobs”; and more recently, the newly renovated conservatory off the kitchen, with its automated blinds that open and close with just a clap of the hands.
“That’s only the beginning,” Gran once said when I pressed her for more details. “The lights in the hallway upstairs turn on and off when they sense your presence.”
“You don’t have to flick a switch?” I asked.
“No,” Gran replied. “It’s as if the mansion knows you’re there.”
It sounded supernatural, like magic, something out of a fairy tale. And while Gran has described every detail to me, I’ve never seen the mansion with my own eyes. No wonder I feel like an astronaut landing on the face of Mars. Regardless, I’d rather be here with Gran than at school, which is where I’d normally find myself on a weekday.
That’s where we’re coming from, in fact—school. This morning, Gran was called to an early meeting with my teacher, Ms. Cripps, and despite Ms. Cripps’s protests, Gran allowed me to attend the appointment. We met my teacher in the principal’s office, which I’d visited more times than I cared to remember. Ms. Cripps seated herself behind the principal’s large wooden desk, while Gran and I sat in stiff chairs in front of her.
“Thank you for coming,” Ms. Cripps said. I can picture her face in my mind, that tight smile that I could not read at the time. I thought her the very picture of politeness. I know better now.
“My granddaughter’s education is a matter of utmost importance to me,” Gran said, but as I replay the memory, I note Gran’s folded hands, how she placed them with purpose on the desk in front of her—a small gesture, both a plea and an assertion.
“May I ask where Molly’s mother is?” Ms. Cripps inquired. “Not that I mind dealing with you, but you are one generation removed.”
“Molly resides with me. I am her guardian. And she is my legal ward.”
I was about to tell Gran she hadn’t answered the teacher’s question, something Ms. Cripps frowned upon, but as I opened my mouth to speak, Gran’s hand came down on my knee, which caused my speech to stop in my throat, though I didn’t know why at the time. I tried to work out the connection by humming the Skeleton Song about how the foot bone is connected to the leg bone and so on, but I made it through the entire song without encountering a single lyric connecting my tongue to my knee.
Meanwhile, Ms. Cripps and Gran continued their polite conversation.
“I know you’re busy, Mrs. Gray. You are a married woman, correct? A missus?”
“You can call me Ms. Gray,” Gran corrected.
“I understand from Molly that you still work. I must say it’s impressive at your advanced age.”
Gran cleared her throat.
“The issue is this,” Ms. Cripps continued. “We’re weeks away from the close of the school year, and it’s that time when we think about student placement in the year to come.”
“I commend your advance planning,” Gran replied. “Molly is looking forward to having a new teacher next year, isn’t that right, Molly?”
“I can’t wait,” I said. “I would also like new classmates.”
“That’s just it, Ms. Gray,” Ms. Cripps said as if I hadn’t spoken. “I’ve come to the difficult decision that the best thing for Molly is to hold her back a year. I’m afraid her progress does not meet our educational benchmarks.”
Gran shifted in her chair, looking from me to Ms. Cripps. “I don’t understand. Her progress reports indicate good grades.”
“Yes, her grades are satisfactory. Her language skills and reading ability far surpass those of her peers. She’s often a little too precocious. She corrects her classmates’ grammar and schools them on vocabulary.”
Gran suppressed a laugh. “That’s my Molly.”
“But you see, she’s…different.”
“I agree entirely,” Gran said. “She’s a unique girl. But have you ever noticed, Ms. Cripps, how despite our differences, fundamentally, we are all the same?”
It was Ms. Cripps’s turn to avoid the question. Instead of answering, she said, “Molly’s social development is subpar. She hasn’t made any friends at school. In that way, she’s a failure. Ms. Gray, I’d describe Molly’s social skills as…primitive.”
“Primitive,” I said. “P-R-I-M-I-T-I-V-E. Primitive.” I waited for Gran to approve my spelling, but she didn’t say a word. Even though I knew I’d spelled the word correctly, she appeared on the verge of tears.
I wanted to tell her everything was going to be okay and that I knew the word because of the David Attenborough documentary we’d watched together a few weeks earlier. It was about apes, such incredible animals, so often underestimated. They can use primitive tools to problem-solve, not only in laboratory and zoo settings but also in the wild. Remarkable!
“Ms. Gray,” Ms. Cripps said, “the other day Molly berated a classmate for chewing with his mouth open. She stands so close to the younger children, it frightens them. She insists on calling the janitor Sir Walter of Brooms. Some days, she hides in a washroom stall and refuses to come out. So you see, she’s not at the level of children her age.”
Gran straightens in her chair. “I agree entirely. She is not at the level of the other children. Molly,” Gran said, turning to me. “Why do you hide in the washroom?”
“Dirt,” I replied matter-of-factly.
“Dirt?” Gran echoed, and I was so proud that I’d heard it, the delicate curl at the end of her sentence that meant she wanted to hear more.
“At recess, I was invited to play soccer with the other children. I agreed to be goaltender before I noticed the mud puddle stretching from post to post. When I refused to stand in the goal, my teammates held me in place and my shoes filled with mud. When I screamed, they threw mud at me and told me to get used to it. ‘Dirt is nothing to be afraid of.’ That’s what they said.”