“She’s got your shoe,” Ruth said.
“Take it away from her, will you?”
Ruth got down on her knees and pulled up the bedspread. “You bad dog. Bring it here.”
“You were so crying,” Hazel said.
“Don’t be silly. Bring it here, Wendy.”
“You never admit anything. Maybe if you did, well, people might be able to help you.”
Ruth raised her brows exaggeratedly, repudiating the idea that she was in a position where people could help her. The dog squeezed out from under the bed, wagging her tail to indicate that the whole thing had been an accident. She pressed against Ruth’s apron, burrowing her nose in the pocket.
Ruth laughed. “There, she didn’t mean it. Look, Hazel, she’s apologizing, did you ever see the like? There, there, her mother knows she didn’t mean it.”
“The hell she didn’t,” Hazel said.
“Anyway, I don’t believe in burdening other people with my troubles, even if I had any.”
She rose to her feet, and the dog quietly and with great caution returned to the shoe under the bed.
“I am tired,” Ruth said, “and hot. That’s all. My goodness, when I see those children over there playing so hard all day and getting so dirty... It’s a wonder their mothers don’t look after them.” She went to the front window of the bedroom. Four o’clock, the peak of the day, when the children were dirtiest and noisiest. Their shouts were shriller and their movements had a frenzied quality, as if they knew their hours of play were numbered and they must crowd everything they could into every minute that was left.
“Some people should never have children.”
“Tell it to God,” Hazel said, rubbing her foot, “not to me.”
“I had one little girl in my class... It was almost funny how dirty she was, and without realizing it. I often had to wash her ears, they were so dirty you’d wonder how she could hear out of them. She had beautiful hair, that red-gold color, and naturally wavy. I bought her a little comb to keep in her desk, and whenever she washed her own ears and face I gave her a penny.”
My goodness, how nice you look this morning, Margaret. Here’s your penny.
Thank you, Miss Kane.
Margaret never used the comb or the pennies. She hoarded them in a corner of her desk. On Valentine’s Day Miss Kane received a paper penny valentine, “To a Cross Patch Teacher,” bearing the picture of an old witch in spectacles riding a yard ruler. When Miss Kane took the valentine out of the valentine box, the other children watched in silence while Margaret sat at her desk, snickering behind her hand.
Thank you for the valentine, Margaret.
I didn’t send you no valentine, Miss Kane.
Any valentine.
I didn’t send you any valentine.
I was under the impression, Margaret, that you did.
I wouldn’t have no money to buy one.
Any money.
I wouldn’t have any money to buy one.
“I bought her a little comb,” Ruth repeated. “She was an odd child, I could never get close to her.”
“You took your job too seriously.”
“I hoped, I wanted to give her some pride in herself. It was impossible, I see now. The home factor is so much stronger than the school factor. I couldn’t make up for poverty and neglect and brutality. Years and years—”
The years were numbered, like the hours of the children’s play, and into the last one she had crammed frenzied activity. The last year brought the angel-eyed Mexican boy, Manuel, who never talked.
Thank you, Lucy. And now it’s Manuel’s turn to read. Begin at the top of page 79, Manuel.
Manuel sat mute, unmoving.
Manuel, it’s your turn. Now see if you know what the first word is. It’s a hard one.
Manuel looked weary and innocent while the children giggled, and whispers fluttered in the air like invisible moths.
Is there anybody who can help Manuel with the first word? Janie? That’s right — gradually. There now, Manuel, you have the first word, gradually, can you go on from there?
The book lay unopened on Manuel’s desk.
Home Manuel reeds good or else—
Manuel didn’t play with the other children. As soon as the recess bell rang he dashed across the school yard and swung himself up to the top bars of the jungle gym. There he sat all during recess, with his legs twined around the bars and a faint smile on his face, as if he enjoyed the sensation of being high up, above the other children.
Once he had, without being seen, shinnied up the trunk of the old pepper tree beside the swings, and hidden himself in the feathery leaves. When the time came to return to class Manuel remained in the tree, plucking the pepper berries one by one and letting them slide out of his hand to the ground. He counted them in a whisper — “thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight” — and as they bounced and rolled in the dirt like tiny marbles, Manuel followed each one with his eyes, dreamily. He was Dick Tracy and the berries were drops of his life’s blood. He was Superman and the berries were atom bombs. He was Manuel and Miss Kane was calling him. He heard her calling him and he watched her looking for him, but he made no move to get out of the tree. He would have liked to stay there forever shedding his blood and dropping his bombs, high up above the other children.
Miss Kane knew that Manuel liked to climb, and so she looked first on the roof of the Boy Scout shack, and then on the roof of the kindergarten sandpile. Re-crossing the yard she saw the falling berries, and looking up into the pepper tree she saw Manuel. His eyes were closed, and he seemed to be asleep, entwined gracefully among the boughs. In sleep his right hand dropped the berries, one by one, and the delicate leaves slid over his wrist like lace. He looked so beautiful, so innocent, that she couldn’t say the ordinary words: You know the rules about climbing that tree, Manuel... The bell rang some time ago... The principal wouldn’t like... The bell rang...
“It’s time to come to class,” she said quietly.
Manuel slid down the trunk of the tree and followed her across the yard.
She never again asked him to read, but one afternoon she kept him in and tried to talk to him and to make him talk to her. She tried too hard and Manuel was puzzled and a little contemptuous. When he was gone Miss Kane put her head down on her desk and cried because she had failed. All her failures came back to her and gathered like cysts inside her head and her breasts and her throat. Her tears did not dissolve these cysts, but they altered their substance. The benign I have failed became the malignant They have failed me, and the Mexican boy, Manuel, became the crux and the symbol of this change.
When the janitor came in to sweep the room and collect the waste baskets he found Miss Kane sitting behind her desk, swollen-eyed, reckless.
“As you can see, I’ve been crying, Mr. Thursten. No, don’t go away. It doesn’t matter. We all have our moments.” As she talked she scratched one spot on her head, near her left temple, over and over again. “I do my best. Everyone knows that. I’ve always done my best, without any help from anyone least of all from the ones I’m trying to help. There’s this one boy, Mr. Thursten. It was funny, he climbed the pepper tree, and you know he looked so odd up there, as if he belonged. I didn’t want to bring him down. Perhaps I ought to have left him. It’s difficult, difficult to make decisions all the time. Some of the African tribes live in tree houses to protect themselves from the wild animals.”