the children. The difference that one afternoon had made in them! Now they were beginning to feel like children to me. They were beginning to accept me. I swallowed with an effort. How soon would they ask, “How come? How come you knew?” There they sat, all nine of them-nine, because Esther was my first absence in the year-bright- eyed and expectant.
“Can we write again?” Sarah asked. “I can remember lots more.”
“No,” I said. “Not today.” Smiles died and there was a protesting wiggle through the room. “Today we are going to do. Joel.” I looked at him and tightened my jaws. “Joel, give me the dictionary.” He began to get up. “Without leaving your seat!”
“But I-!” Joel broke the shocked silence. “I can’t!”
“Yes you can,” I prayed. “Yes, you can. Give me the dictionary. Here, on my desk.”
Joel turned and stared at the big old dictionary that spilled pages 1965 to 1998 out of its cracked old binding. Then he said, “Miriam?” in a high tight voice. But she shook her head and shrank back in her seat, her eyes big and dark in her white face.
“You can.” Miriam’s voice was hardly more than a breath.
“It’s just bigger-“
Joel clutched the edge of his desk and sweat started out on his forehead. There was a stir of movement on the bookshelf. Then, as though shot from a gun, pages 1965 to 1998 whisked to my desk and fell fluttering. Our laughter cut through the blank amazement and we laughed till tears came.
“That’s a-doing it, Joel!” Matt shouted. “That’s showing them your muscles!”
“Well, it’s a beginning.” Joel grinned weakly. “You do it, brother, if you think it’s so easy.”
So Matt sweated and strained and Joel joined with him, but they only managed to scrape the book to the edge of the shelf where it teetered dangerously.
Then Abie waved his hand timidly. “I can, teacher.”
I beamed that my silent one had spoken and at the same time frowned at the loving laughter of the big kids.
“Okay, Abie,” I encouraged. “You show them how to do it.”
And the dictionary swung off the shelf and glided un-hastily to my desk, where it came silently to rest.
Everyone stared at Abie and he squirmed. “The little ships,” he defended. “That’s the way they moved them out of the big ship. Just like that.”
Joel and Matt turned their eyes to some inner concentration and then exchanged exasperated looks. “Why, sure,” Matt said.
“Why, sure.” And the dictionary swung back to the shelf.
“Hey!” Timmy protested. “It’s my turn!”
“That poor dictionary,” I said. “It’s too old for all this bouncing around. Just put the loose pages back on the shelf.”
And he did.
Everyone sighed and looked at me expectantly.
“Miriam?” She clasped her hands convulsively. “You come to me,” I said, feeling a chill creep across my stiff shoulders. “Lift to me, Miriam.”
Without taking her eyes from me she slipped out of her seat and stood in the aisle. Her skirts swayed a little as her feet lifted from the floor. Slowly at first and then more quickly she came to me, soundlessly, through the air, until in a little flurried rush her arms went around me and she gasped into my shoulder. I put her aside, trembling. I groped for my handkerchief. I said shakily, “Miriam, help the rest. I’ll be back in a minute.”
And I stumbled into the room next door. Huddled down in the dust and debris of the catchall storeroom it had become, I screamed soundlessly into my muffling hands. And screamed and screamed! Because after all-after all!
And then suddenly, with a surge of pure panic, I heard a sound-the sound of footsteps, many footsteps, approaching the schoolhouse. I jumped for the door and wrenched it open just in time to see the outside door open. There was Mr. Diemus and, Esther and Esther’s father, Mr. Jonso.
In one of those flashes of clarity that engrave your mind in a split second I saw my whole classroom.
Joel and Matt were chinning themselves on nonexistent bars, their heads brushing the high ceiling as they grunted upward. Abie was swinging in a swing that wasn’t there, arcing across the corner of the room, just missing the stovepipe from the old stove, as he chanted., “Up in a swing, up in a swing!” This wasn’t the first time they had tried their wings! Miriam was kneeling in a circle with the other girls and they were all coaxing their books up to hover unsupported above the floor, while Jimmy vroomm-vroomed two paper jet planes through intricate maneuvers in and out the rows of desks.
My soul curdled in me as I met Mr. Diemus’ eyes. Esther gave a choked cry as she saw what the children were doing, and the girls’ stricken faces turned to the intruders. Matt and Joel crumpled to the floor and scrambled to their feet. But Abie, absorbed in his wonderful new accomplishment, swung on, all unconscious of what was happening until Talitha frantically screamed, “Abie!”
Startled, he jerked around and saw the forbidding group at the door. With a disappointed cry, as though a loved toy had been snatched from him, he stopped there in midair, his fists clenched. And then, realizing, he screamed, a terrified panic-stricken cry, and slanted sharply upward, trying to escape, and ran full tilt into the corner of the high old map case, sideswiping it with his head, and, reeling backward, fell!
I tried to catch him. I did! I did! But I caught only one small hand as he plunged down onto the old wood- burning heater beneath him. And the crack of his skull against the ornate edge of the cast-iron lid was loud in the silence.
