“That’s fine for today, while she adjusts,” Mrs. Mint said as she brushed her frizzy brown hair away from her glasses. “Just please, try not to disrupt my class or be overbearing while protecting the girl. If you give a damaged child some space and be patient with her, she’ll eventually recover.”
The officer nodded and took a seat at a table in the back of the classroom. Mariella immediately ran to detective Williams. She patted the girl on the shoulder, kissed her on the cheek and aimed her toward her desk. Mariella walked over and sat down, but kept one eye on the officer the whole time.
“That must be her immigration officer,” Kyle Buckley told his brother, Cole Buckley loud enough so the whole class could hear. “Her daddy got caught running across the border with a sack of tomatoes on his back.”
Their curly mops of blond locks bounced as the brothers whooped it up. Their friends smiled at the racial humor, which the brothers must have picked up from their obnoxious older brother. The bigger Buckley boy tore his way through her class eight years ago and now sat in a juvenile detention center. He sure had paved the way for them-him and their grandfather, a “former” card-carrying member of the KKK.
“That’s the last dirty thing I want to hear out of your mouth today-both of you,” Mrs. Mint told the twins. “We’re all very lucky that we have Mariella back. We should treat her nicely so she stays.”
She hoped they’d go easy on Mariella, who the bullies had found an easy target from Day One because of her ethnicity and heavy accent. What did most children know of loss and grief? Nothing-unless they had lived through it. Yet they could detect a grieving kid getting special attention, which hyperactive children crave above all else.
In her nineteen years of teaching, Mrs. Mint had comforted a handful of students who lost a parent and one student who had lost both parents in a car accident. She had helped students from abusive homes that showed up for school with bruises underneath their shirts. The teacher had nurtured students who bounced between foster homes and didn’t know a single adult they could trust.
Then in walked Mariella, who had been afflicted with all of these plagues at such a tender age. And on top of it, the police were pressuring her to hurry up and identify the monster that ruined her life. Mrs. Mint had spoken with detective Sneed over the phone that morning and she got the impression that he cared more about catching the killer than easing Mariella back into class smoothly. Still, she promised the detective that she’d let him know if the girl dropped any clues in class.
At first, Mariella didn’t do much of anything. Mrs. Mint set the paper and pencil on her desk as the class began copying words from the blackboard. The girl watched her classmates write without even touching her pencil.
Eva Hernandez, the only other Mexican girl in the class and Mariella’s best friend, waved at the girl from a few seats away and said, “Hola.” Mariella gave her a quick glance and then averted her eyes. She picked up her pencil. She pressed down so hard that the lead snapped. Mariella stabbed the hollow point against the page a few times before finally setting it down.
The girl had been so friendly before this happened, Mrs. Mint thought. She loved Eva. She could write and sharpen her pencil by herself.
A horrendous loss can change children completely. Mrs. Mint had seen it in some of her less fortunate students. She had felt it herself in the weeks after her father’s death. Socializing becomes too painful because every word and every gesture reminds them of the person they lost. The numbing grief impedes every function like grimy tar clogging up an engine. It shouldn’t alarm her that Mariella acted like an entirely different girl.
But it did. Her thin lips had once glowed around her smile. As she twirled her black hair around her finger, Mariella had asked her about unicorns and princesses with such innocence. Seeing those lips gone silent and cold profoundly disturbed the teacher. Someone so young should never experience such brutality. She reminded Mrs. Mint of the black and white photos of the hollow-eyed children who had survived the Holocaust.
Mrs. Mint offered Mariella a new pencil. Staring at her outstretched hand apprehensively, the girl didn’t take the pencil until the teacher set it on her desk and backed off. She took a walk around the room and inspected her students’ papers until she came back behind Mariella. She had written the first word on the board, “Jump”, perfectly. Meticulously tracing the letter, “R”, the girl started on the next word. Without speaking, Mariella had demonstrated that she harbored the desire for interaction. She had made the first step toward recovery.
“Great job, Mariella,” Mrs. Mint told her. “You wrote it beautifully.”
Mariella responded with a momentary glance, but Kyle and Cole Buckley gave their teacher a bitter stare. Each of them had written four words and Mrs. Mint realized she hadn’t said a word. She figured they didn’t need it, as their egos were already plenty big enough. But, as usual, the Buckleys would demand attention another way.
It happened in recess. Mariella leaned against a fence with a bush on her side that blocked her off from viewing half the playground. It also kept her hidden from many of the students. Eva found her and kicked a ball her way. Mariella sidestepped it as if the ball had been covered in paint and let it bounce off the fence. Laughing as it rolled back to her, Eva punted it toward Mariella again. This time, Mariella snatched it up, cradled it in her arms and curled up against the fence. Seeing that the girl who had been her friend all year wouldn’t give the ball back, Eva started pleading with her in Spanish. Even as the girl yelped in her face, Mariella watched her without making a sound.
Detective Williams started marching over. Mrs. Mint nearly twisted her clumsy ankles catching up with her. No wonder the teacher had gotten so plump despite chasing the kids all day. She had a much harder time keeping pace with a long-legged adult.
“Officer Williams, please,” Mrs. Mint said as she tapped her on the arm.
Whipping her braids over her shoulder, she turned around and eased up on her pace toward the child. “Why are you letting her jaw at Mariella? Let the girl have her space.”
“I’ve watched these girls play together all year. They’re friends. Eva is frustrated and confused that Mariella is acting differently. I know it’s hard to watch, but it’s part of the healing process.”
“You call that healing?” The officer stopped and got up in the teacher’s face. As her brow tightened with anger, her skin suddenly appeared a lot darker to Mrs. Mint. “Because I call that torturing a kid who’s already been through enough.”
She stood a good five inches taller than Mrs. Mint. She didn’t have a hard, muscle-toned body like the stereotypical female cop, but detective Williams looked plenty pumped as she grew ultra protective of the girl. Even with her uniform, she wasn’t as intimidating as that meddling Principal Callahan. Mrs. Mint wouldn’t let him teach her class for her and she wouldn’t let this brash policewoman do it either.
“We have a saying in this school: progress isn’t painless,” Mrs. Mint said. “We can’t swoop in and rescue children every time they’re in an uncomfortable situation. First of all, there aren’t enough eyes and ears in the school to do that. But most importantly, children must learn conflict resolution through experience. If things get really heated, of course I’ll step in, but not for a pithy argument.”
“You didn’t see what this girl’s lived through. You didn’t see how her parents’ bodies were mutilated before her eyes. So please excuse her if she’s just a little sensitive.”
Wiping the beads of sweat out from under her stubby nose and plump chin, Mrs. Mint swallowed a gulp of humility. Her first instincts as a teacher had blinded her to Mariella’s plight. She couldn’t treat this girl like any other student, at least not yet. If that required walking on eggshells with the entire class, then so be it.
“Okay, Officer Williams. I’ll handle this,” Mrs. Mint said. “Just please sit down while I… Hey! Stop it boys!”
While they were arguing over Mariella, the girl had been cornered against the fence not by an offended former friend, but by kids who never were her friends. Kyle Buckley blocked her off on one side and Cole Buckley grabbed the ball. Mariella wouldn’t let it go, but she couldn’t stop him from dragging her away from the fence and out into the open field, where the whole class could see her ridicule.
“My daddy pays his taxes,” Cole shouted at the Mexican girl. “This is my ball, not yours!”
“If you want our ball, you should ask us,” Kyle said. “Come on, speak some English. Let me hear it. Can you say baaaaall? Or is it ballo? El ballo?”
Mrs. Mint lumbered across the field on her aching feet as Officer Williams dashed out ahead. They both were slowed by the kids running the same direction for a front row seat at simmering confrontation. A chorus of boys started chanting “fight”. It made the teacher absolutely sick. How could those young minds in her class have been molded so cruelly? Cole stood nearly a full head taller than Mariella and must have outweighed her by 25 pounds. Her slender hand could barely fit into the boy’s palm.
Squeezing the ball with both hands, Cole swung Mariella around so fast that she left her feet. The determined
