Ghost Girl (28 page)

The weekend of Thanksgiving arrived, and the whole school was involved putting on a Thanksgiving “pageant,” as Mr. Tinbergen liked to call it. The third-and fourth-graders were doing a play they had written about Pilgrims, while the rest of us contributed songs, dances, and poems. My group were to represent the Native American point of view, all except for Brucie, who had been aptly designated a pumpkin and simply had to sit on the stage in his orange costume while the rest of the children sang and offered up their baskets of food.

Monday and Tuesday afternoons included time spent making Indian outfits and running through rehearsals with the other classes in the auditorium.

“I’m the only
real
Indian in this,” Jeremiah said as we sat around the table and cut out construction-paper feathers for the headbands.

“Actually, quite a lot of the children in this school are native, Jeremiah.”

“Yeah, but I’m the only one in this here class. Look at him, he’s gonna make a boogy-looking Indian. Look at his black booger’s face,” and he pointed a finger directly onto Philip’s nose.

In all honesty, I thought they were going to make a handsome band of Indians, Philip included. It would have been Brucie, with his white-blond hair, who would have ruined the appearance.

“My dad’s got a real headdress,” Jeremiah said. “My real dad, that is. Not the guy who’s living with my mom now. He’s just some dude that don’t got nothing interesting. But my real dad, he’s got a headdress that hangs clear down to here.” Jeremiah leaped from his seat to demonstrate the length with his hands.

“That must be beautiful.”

“Maybe he could lend it to me. Maybe I could wear that in the pageant.”

“Nice idea, but I think we’ll stick to these.”

“Why? Man, lady, these don’t look like nothing. Boogy, little baby things, these.” He flicked a paper feather in Reuben’s face.

“My friend, Tashee, she used to have a pair of real Indian moccasins,” Jadie suddenly piped up. Her comment was clearly meant for Jeremiah, as she slid her chair back from the table and lifted her foot toward him. “They had beads right across the front, here, and the tops folded over. They didn’t look anything like those moccasins you can buy in the shoe shop.”

Raising my head slightly, I glanced over at her. Jadie still did not speak spontaneously a great deal in class, although she was given to occasional conversations with Jeremiah, some of which could be quite lengthy. This, however, was the first time I’d ever heard a reference to Tashee outside the confines of our cloakroom sessions, and it caught me by surprise.

“Yeah, well, you think that’s great?” Jeremiah replied, nonplussed. “My real dad, he’s got a spearhead. A
real
spearhead, from long ago. The kind they used to tie onto these long poles.” This image proved too tempting for Jeremiah, and he held up one of the paper feathers, spear-style. “They had ’em on these long poles and then they’d go AGGGGGHHHHHHHH!” And with that Jeremiah leaped across the table, plunging the feather against Philip’s shirt. Philip, quickly catching the mood, grasped at the invisible wound and fell from his chair to have death spasms on the floor.

“Enough, you guys. Back in your seats.”

“Man, lady,” Jeremiah muttered, “you never let us have no fun.”

At the end of the day, the children carefully folded their costumes and laid them on the counter at the back of the room in readiness for the pageant on the following afternoon. On top were placed the paper headbands and the few props we’d acquired.

Jadie was still arranging her things when I went back to the sink to wash the glue off my hands. She attentively smoothed the wrinkles from the cloth of the squaw’s dress.

“It’s going to be fun tomorrow, isn’t it?” I said. “Are you looking forward to it?”

She shrugged.

“Is any of your family coming?”

“Yeah, my mom is. And Sapphire, of course.”

“That’ll be nice.”

Just then the going-home bell rang. Jeremiah whooped and dashed for the door. Nearly a year together and the best I’d ever gotten from him was a pause to say good-bye before he bolted out, down to be first on his bus. So hustling the boys together, I chased after him.

Returning to the room after seeing the boys to their rides, I found Jadie still standing back by the counter. Pushing in the chairs around the table as I approached her, I said, “I’m glad you stayed, because I need to talk to you.”

Jadie glanced up, her expression guarded.

“Do you want to go in the cloakroom or are you comfortable here?”

“I don’t think I can stay,” she said warily. “My mom’s taking me and Amber to get new shoes tonight.”

“Yes, okay, this’ll just take a few minutes.”

Jadie looked down at the floor. “My mom’s going to get us them kind of shoes that got dinosaurs on them.”

“Well, what I wanted to say was that I think you’re going to be seeing a psychiatrist at the mental health clinic. That same clinic in Falls River where you used to go when you were littler. Do you remember?”

Jadie leaned back against the counter and lifted up one foot. She caught it with her hand and fingered the stitching of her running shoe.

“Sometimes our feelings get sick, just like our bodies do, and when that happens, we go to a special doctor called a psychiatrist, who tries to make our feelings well again.”

“I’m going to get high-top shoes. Amber wants them, too, but my mom says she can’t have them, ’cause she can’t tie bows yet. She’s got to get the kind with Velcro fastenings.”

“Mr. Tinbergen and Mrs. Peterson aren’t entirely happy with the way we’re getting on in here. They don’t think I’ve been quite as much help as you need, and they think it would be better if you went to see someone who understands more about the kinds of troubles you’ve been having. This isn’t a punishment or anything. This lady’s really nice and she understands kids, and I think it’s the right idea, too. You’ll still be here for school, of course, but she’ll help us out on this other matter.”

“I like them shoes, ’cause they leave dinosaur footprints. Looks like a dinosaur’s been walking there.”

“Jadie
. Are you listening to me?”

She had still been fingering the top of her shoe, but she stopped, her fingers going momentarily rigid. “Why should I?” she said in a disparaging tone and let her foot drop back down to the floor. “’Cause I can tell you never listen to me.”

T
he first heavy snowfall of the winter came the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and turned the plains from buffalo-grass yellow to white. Looking out my window at breakfast time, it was as if the world beyond Pecking had disappeared. The jumble of rooftops was still there, but in the distance, the white prairie was indistinguishable from the white sky.

Fortunately, all my children made it to school, even Jeremiah, who lived the farthest out, and he, as usual, was full of weird and wonderful news.

“I seen you on TV last night,” he announced, as we settled down for morning discussion.

“You did?”

“Yeah, we was watching this here movie and there was these two ladies wrestling. And this one lady, she looked just like you. I says to Micah, ‘Hey, that there’s my teacher!’ But Micah said it probably wasn’t.”

Lowering my head slightly to disguise my smile, I managed a nod. “Micah was right. It wasn’t me.”

“It
looked
like you,” Jeremiah said suspiciously. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, Jeremiah.”

“Well, she was fighting this other broad. Then, just as she was getting her down good, WHAM! She pulls out this great big ol’ knife and stabs her right in the heart. That one that looked like you, I mean. She stabbed the other one. And all this blood goes squirting everywhere. It was really good, man. You shoulda seen it.”

“Mmmm.”

“You
sure
it wasn’t you?”

“Positive, Jeremiah. I haven’t made any movies.”

“I told Micah that was probably where you got so strong at. I said you were one strong broad. I
know.
” He grinned cheekily.

“Where exactly did you see all this?” I asked.

“On my TV. My mom’s boyfriend’s got this friend, see, and he gets stuff free sometimes. He’s always bringing home these movies he gets for free.”

“And you and Micah watch them?”

“Yeah. They’re
good
, man,” he replied enthusiastically.

“Do you think what happens on them is real?”

“You mean like when you was stabbing that other broad?”

I nodded.

Jeremiah paused. “Well, it’s not real. But it’s not
not
real, either. Those things could happen. It’s sort of real, I think. I mean, some of the stuff they show on TV is real, like news and junk. And some of this stuff is sort of real, too. ’Cause I always think if it
could
happen, it could be real, and so maybe it is.”

I glanced over at Jadie, sitting hunched, her head down. Jeremiah was a sturdy child, well-grounded in the world around him, and he clearly did not discern the reality of what he was watching easily. How easy would it be for a confused child exposed to violent, pornographic material to extrapolate it to real life?

For the most part, the day went well. The children were overexcited by the snow, the pageant, and the prospect of four days’ vacation from school, so there was silliness on a monumental scale, but it was good-natured and not too outrageous. Philip and Jeremiah were the worst, egging one another on in the classroom, prancing around in their headbands, having a peeing contest up the wall above the urinal in the boys’ restroom. Reuben caught the excitement of the day, but he and Brucie still found the disruption of routine more disconcerting than fun. Jadie, alone, was the odd one out. Although she now generally enjoyed a warm relationship with the boys during class time, particularly Philip and Jeremiah, on this occasion she kept separate. Badly bent over, her head lowered, her arms drawn up, she fought the rest of us off with irritable silence.

When afternoon came, we joined the other classes backstage and the excitement reached fever pitch, until finally, in a fit of laughter, Philip wet himself. This sobered the others considerably, and they gave their performance flawlessly. Afterward, we all retired to our individual classrooms, where the parents had been invited for cookies and punch. Everyone in my class had family there, except for Jeremiah, so I let him pass around the cookies and punch.

Jadie’s mother came, accompanied not only by Sapphire but also Amber, who, being a kindergartner and attending mornings only, had no school in the afternoon. I found myself watching this little group furtively as I went about my task as hostess. There wasn’t much conversation among any of them, but then conversation with Jadie in her bent-over position would have been difficult in any case. When Jeremiah came around, Mrs. Ekdahl accepted her cookies and punch from him graciously, gave a drink to Sapphire, who was sitting on the floor beside her, and then gave the toddler a cookie. From across the room, I studied her. Was this the face of Miss Ellie? Pam? Sue Ellen? Did she turn into some kind of monster behind closed doors, abusing her child so frightfully that Jadie’s entire self had disintegrated?

I couldn’t see anything. She’d made an effort to look nice, but there was an aura of pathos in the wildly out-of-date turquoise eyeshadow and streaky blusher. I’d always found Mrs. Ekdahl’s well-intentioned but ineffectual efforts poignant, but now I couldn’t dislodge the wariness. Repeatedly, I tried to sense even the slightest thing that might give substance to Jadie’s stories.

After the children had gone, a festive mood remained in the school. Abandoning my room for the teachers’ lounge, I joined the rest of the staff for coffee and sugar doughnuts. No one talked of pupils or lesson plans; all conversation revolved around Thanksgiving dinner, the holiday football games, and the diabolical weather.

Throughout the day, the snow had continued to fall, so when I left the school to go home, there was about eighteen inches on the ground. I got into my car and started the motor. A few cold, misty moments passed before the defroster cleared the windshield on the inside. In the meantime, I ran the wipers to knock the powdery snow off enough to give me a view. Then I shifted into reverse gear and went nowhere. A pause. I tried again and the all-too-familiar sound of spinning tires greeted me.

My car was hopeless at reversing in deep snow. It was too lightweight and it was front-wheel drive. Piqued because I had not had the foresight to reverse into my parking space, I knew the only solution now was to dig a bit of the snow away from the tires in order to get some traction. Pulling my gloves on, I got out again to get the shovel from the trunk.

Looking around the passenger side of the car from where I was standing beside the open trunk, I was startled to see a bit of blond hair sticking out from under the front tire. I quickly went to see what it was but couldn’t pick it up, because as I had been trying to reverse, the car had moved far enough back to run over it.

“What’s that?”

Startled, I turned abruptly.

Lucy stood just beyond the other car. “What have you got there?”

“It seems to be a doll. One of my dolls, you know, those Sasha dolls from the classroom. Only it’s trapped under the car. I was trying to back out, and now I’m going to have to move the car forward to release it.”