'W-h-a-t, that's what,' laughed Miss Peterson, hugging Linnet's fragile body against her. Linnet considered for a moment and then smiled. 'I mean, you know what happened at our house last night?' 'No, what?' The memory of the previous report from the domestic front sobered Miss Peterson. 'My mother and my daddy had a big fight,' said Linnet 'Not a hitting fight-a holler fight.' 'Oh?' Miss Peterson, still holding Linnet in the circle of her arm, reached for the bell and tapped the double PutAway signal. The clatter crescendoed as puzzles, blocks, books, spools, and scissors were all scrambled into their restorage spots. 'Yes, persisted Linnet. 'I listened. Daddy said Mother spent too much money and Mother said she spent it for food and rent and not on women and she got so mad she wouldn't sleep in the bedroom. She slept all night on the couch.' 'That's too bad,' said Miss Peterson, hating battling parents as she looked into Linnet's shadowed face. 'I took her one of my blankets,' said Linnet. 'It was cold. I took her my blue blanket.' 'That was nice of you,' said Miss Peterson. 'Honey would you help Lila get the doll house straightened out? It's almost Quiet Time' 'Okay, teacher.' Linnet flitted away as soundlessly as she had come, one diminutive oxford trailing an untied lace Miss Peterson gnawed reflectively on a thumbnail. 'Parents!' she thought in exasperation. 'Selfish, thoughtless, self-centered-! Thank Heaven most of mine are fair-to-middling!' For the next few months the state of affairs at Linnet's house could have been charted as exactly as the season's temperatures. When she came hollow-eyed to school to fall asleep with a crayon clutched in one hand, it was either that Daddy had come home and they'd gone to the Drive-In Theater to celebrate, or Daddy had gone away again after a long holler fight the night before. The school year rounded the holiday season and struggled toward spring. One day the children in Group Two sat in the reading circle studying a picture in their open primers. 'How is this bus different from ours?' asked Miss Peterson. 'It's got a upstairs,' said Henry. 'Ours don't got-' he caught Miss Peterson's eye-'don't have upstairses.' 'That's right,' nodded Miss Peterson. 'How else is it different?' 'It's yellow,' said Linnet. 'Ours aren't yellow.' 'Our school buses are,' said Henry. 'They're really orange,' said Linnet. 'And when we go downtown, we ride on the great big gray ones.' 'Well, let's read this page to ourselves and find out what these children are going to do,' said Miss Peterson. A murmuring silence descended, during which Miss Peterson tapped fingers that pointed and admonished lips that moved. Page by page, the story was gone through. Then tomorrow's story was previewed, and the reading group was lifting chairs to carry them back to the tables. Linnet lingered, juggling her book under one arm as she held her chair. 'You know what, teacher?' she asked. 'Last night we rode on the bus a long ways.' 'Downtown?' asked Miss Peterson. 'Farther than that,' said Linnet. 'We even had to get off our bus and get on another one.' 'My! said Miss Peterson. 'You must have had fun!' 'I almost didn't get to go,' said Linnet. 'Mother was going to leave me with Mrs. Mason, but she couldn't. We knocked on the front door and the back door but she wasn't home.' 'So you got to have a pleasant ride after all, didn't you?' asked Miss Peterson. 'Mother cried,' Said Linnet. 'All the way home.' 'Oh, that's too bad.' Miss Peterson's heart turned over at the desolation on Linnet's face. 'She didn't cry till we left the motel,' said Linnet, lowering her chair to the floor and shifting her book. 'You know what, teacher? The lady at the motel got mixed up. She told Mother that Mrs. Luhrs was in one of her cabins.' 'Oh, did you go to the motel to visit some relatives?' asked Miss Peterson. 'We went to find Daddy. The lady said Daddy wasn't there, but Mrs. Luhrs was. But how could she be Mrs. Luhrs when Mother is Mrs. Luhrs? She wasn't in the cabin. 'Well,' said Miss Peterson, wondering, as she had frequent occasion to, how to terminate a conversation with a child unobviously. 'The money went ding ding in the box just like in our song,' said Linnet. 'The money?' 'Yes, when we got on the bus. It went ding ding just like our song.' 'Well, how pleasant!' cried Miss Peterson in relief. 'Now you'd better get started on your writing or you won't have time for your fun-paper before lunch.' 'It makes me so mad I could spit,' she said later to Elsie Estes over the kerthump of the ditto machine she was cranking. The machine was spewing out pictures of slightly drunken cows, mooing at lopsided calves. She stopped and examined one of the pictures critically. 'Well, they'll know what they're supposed to be-after I tell them.' Miss Peterson started the cranking again. 'Why can't that mother manage to keep something from the child? There's no reason to drag Linnet through the nasty mess. Maybe if they had six kids, neither one of them would have time to-Do you want any of these, Elsie?' 'Yes, I guess so,' said Miss Estes. 'I don't know about that. Look at my Manuelo. He's got six brothers and sisters in school and only Heaven knows how many more at home, and papa turns up muy boracho nearly every payday and I get a blow-by-blow account of it next morning. Then Manuelo has a new papa for a while until the old papa beats the new papa up, and then it's all bliss and beans till papa goes on another toot.' 'Well, I'm kind of worried. There, I gave you forty-five, just in case. I met Mrs. Luhrs at a PTA meeting several weeks ago. She looks-well, unstable-the mousy-looking kind that gives you a feeling of smoldering dynamite-if dynamite can smolder. Poor Linnet. I see now where she picked up the habit of .pressing three fingers to her mouth. But I don't like it at all. Linnet's such a sweet child' 'You could break your heart over any number of kids,' said Miss Estes. 'I found out long ago we can't reform parents and it's flirting with termination of contract if we try to. Remember how worried you were over your MexicanoChino last year? Didn't do either one of you any good, did it?' 'No.' Miss Peterson stacked tomorrow's work papers, criss-crossing them. 'And he's in the Juvenile Home now and his father's in the insane asylum. Elsie, when my emotional storm signals go up, something's cooking. You wait and see.' Several weeks later, Linnet leaned against Miss Peterson's desk and asked, 'How much more until lunch, teacher? I'm hungry.' 'Not very long, Linnet. What's the matter, didn't you eat a good breakfast this morning?' I didn't eat any breakfast,' said Linnet, her eyes half smiling as she awaited the expected reaction. 'No breakfast! Why, Linnet, we always eat a good breakfast. Why didn't you eat one this morning?' 'I got up too late. I almost missed the bus.' 'You'd better tell your mother to get you up earlier,' said Miss Peterson. 'She didn't wake up, either,' said Linnet. 'The doctor gave her some sleeping stuff so she won't cry at night, and she didn't hear the alarm clock. She said one morning without breakfast wouldn't hurt me. But I'm hungry.' 'I should think you would be. It's only fifteen minutes till lunch time, dear. That isn't very long.' Then, about a week later, Linnet came to school resplendent in a brand-new dress, carrying a huge box of crayons. 'Even a gold and a silver and a white one, teacher!' She was jiggling around excitedly, her newly set curls bobbing with an animation that they hadn't shown in months. 'You know what, teacher? Daddy came home last night. I woke up and I heard him tell Mother he was through with that double-crossing bitch and he'd never go away again.' Before Miss Peterson could gather her scattered senses to question Linnet's terminology, the child was borne away by an enthusiastic mob of classmates who wanted to try out the gold and silver and white crayons and admire the new dress and the ruffled slip under it . . . 'How long do you suppose it will last?' asked Miss Estes at lunchtime over the Spanish rice at the cafeteria serving table. 'The poor kid must feel like a Yo-Yo. Don't look now, but isn't that your Wayne squirtin' milk through his straw? He just made a bull's eye in my Joanie's ear. Who'll do the honors this time you or me?'
