worried about them and wanted to find them if they had? Well, I’ve found a whole Group! But it’s a sick unhappy group. Your heart would break to see them. If you could come and start them on the right path again…”
I put my pen down. I looked at the lines I had written and then crumpled the paper slowly. This was my Group. I had found them. Sure, I’d tell Karen-but later. Later, after-well, after I had tried to start them on the right path-at least the children.
After all I knew a little of their potentialities. Hadn’t Karen briefed me in those unguarded magical hours in the old dorm, drawn to me as I was to her by some mutual sympathy that seemed stronger than the usual roommate attachment, telling me things no Outsider had a right to hear? And if, when I finally told her and turned the Group over to her, if it could be a joyous gift, then I could feel that I had repaid her a little for the wonder world she had opened for me.
“Yes,” I thought ruefully, “and there’s nothing like a large portion of ignorance to give one a large portion of confidence.” Bur I did want to try-desperately. Maybe if I could break prison for someone else, then perhaps my own bars … I dropped the paper in the wastebasket.
But it was several weeks before I could bring myself to do anything to let the children know I knew about them. It was such an impossible situation, even if it was true-and if it wasn’t what kind of lunacy would they suspect me of?
When I finally set my teeth and swore a swear to myself that I’d do something definite my hands shook and my breath was a flutter in my dry throat.
“Today-” I said with an effort, “today is Friday.” Which gem of wisdom the children received with charitable silence.
“We’ve been working hard all week, so let’s have fun today.” This stirred the children-half with pleasure, half with apprehension. They, poor kids, found my “fun” much harder than any kind of work I could give them. But some of them were acquiring a taste for it. Martha had even learned to skip!
“First, monitors pass the composition paper.” Esther and Abie scuffled hurriedly around with the paper, and the pencil sharpener got a thorough workout. At least these kids didn’t differ from others in their pleasure in grinding their pencils away at the slightest excuse.
“Now,” I gulped, “we’re going to write.” Which obvious asininity was passed over with forbearance, though Miriam looked at me wonderingly before she bent her head and let her hair shadow her face. “Today I want you all to write about the same thing. Here is our subject.”
Gratefully I turned my back on the children’s waiting eyes and printed slowly:
I REMEMBER THE HOME
I heard the sudden intake of breath that worked itself downward from Miriam to Talitha and then the rapid whisper that informed Abie and Martha. I heard Esther’s muffled cry and I turned slowly around and leaned against the desk.
“There are so many beautiful things to remember about the Home,” I said into the strained silence. “So many wonderful things. And even the sad memories are better than forgetting, because the Home was good. Tell me what you remember about the Home.”
“We can’t!” Joel and Matt were on their feet simultaneously.
“Why can’t we?” Dorcas cried. “Why can’t we?”
“It’s bad!” Esther cried. “It’s evil!”
“It ain’t either!” Abie shrilled, astonishingly. “It ain’t either!”
“We shouldn’t.” Miriam’s trembling hands brushed her heavy” hair upward. “It’s forbidden.”
“Sit down,” I said gently. “The day I arrived at Bendo Mr. Diemus told me to teach you what I had to teach you. I have to teach you that remembering the Home is good.”
“Then why don’t the grownups think so?” Matt asked slowly. “They tell us not to talk about it. We shouldn’t disobey our parents.”
“I know,” I admitted. “And I would never ask you children to go against your parents’ wishes, unless I felt that it is very important. If you’d rather they didn’t know about it at first, keep it as our secret. Mr. Diemus told me not to bother them with explanations or reasons. I’ll make it right with your parents when the time comes.” I paused to swallow and blink away a vision of me leaving town in a cloud of dust, barely ahead of a posse of irate parents. “‘Now, everyone, busy,” I said briskly. “‘I Remember the Home.’”
There was a moment heavy with decision and I held my breath, wondering which way the balance would dip. And then-surely it must have been because they wanted so to speak and affirm the wonder of what had been that they capitulated so easily. Heads bent and pencils scurried. And Martha sat, her head bowed on her desk with sorrow.
“I don’t know enough words,” she mourned. “How do you write ‘toolas’?”
And Abie laboriously erased a hole through his paper and ticked his pencil again.
“Why don’t you and Abie make some pictures?” I suggested. “Make a little story with pictures and we can staple them together like a real book.”
I looked over the silent busy group and let myself relax, feeling weakness flood into my knees. I scrubbed the dampness from my palms with Kleenex and sat back in my chair. Slowly I became conscious of a new atmosphere in my classroom. An intolerable strain was gone, an unconscious holding back of the children, a wariness, a watchfulness, a guilty feeling of desiring what was forbidden.
A prayer of thanksgiving began to well up inside me. It changed hastily to a plea for mercy as I began to visualize what might happen to me when the parents found out what I was doing. How long must this containment and denial have gone on? This concealment and this carefully nourished fear? From what Karen had told me it must be well over fifty years-long enough to mark indelibly three generations.
And here I was with my fine little hatchet trying to set a little world afire! On which very mixed metaphor I stiffened my weak knees and got up from my chair. I walked unnoticed up and down the aisles, stepping aside as Joel went blindly to the shelf for more paper, leaning over Miriam to marvel that she had taken out her Crayolas and part of her writing was with colors, part with pencil-and the colors spoke to something in me that the pencil couldn’t reach, though I’d never seen the forms the colors took.
The children had gone home, happy and excited, chattering and laughing, until they reached the edge of the school grounds. There, smiles died and
