“See how silly that sounds? We are what we are. How silly to tease about something like that. Both of you go wash the dirt off.” I spatted both of them off toward the schoolhouse and sighed as I watched them go.
The second time the calm was interrupted when the ancient malicious chanting sound of teasing pulled me out on the playground again.
“Lu-cine is crazy! Lu-cine is crazy! Lu-cine is crazy!”
The dancing taunting group circled twelve-year-old Lucine where she stood backed against the one drooping tree that still survived on our playground. Her eyes were flat and shallow above her gaping mouth, but smoky flames were beginning to flicker in the shallowness and her muscles were tightening.
“Lucine!” I cried, fear winging my feet. “Lucine!”
I sent me ahead of myself and caught at the ponderous murderous massiveness of her mind. Barely I slowed her until I could get to her.
“Stop it!” I shrieked at the children. “Get away, quick!”
My voice pierced through the mob-mind, and the group dissolved into frightened individuals. I caught both of Lucine’s hands and for a tense moment had them secure. Then she bellowed, a peculiarly animallike bellow, and with one flip of her arm sent me flying.
In a wild flurry I was swept up almost bodily, it seemed, into the irrational delirium of her anger and bewilderment. I was lost in the mazes of unreasoning thoughts and frightening dead ends, and to this day I can’t remember what happened physically.
When the red tide ebbed and the bleak gray click-off period came I was hunched against the old tree with Lucine’s head on my lap, her mouth lax and wet against my hand, her flooding quiet tears staining my skirt, the length of her body very young and very tired.
Her lips moved.
“Ain’t crazy.”
“No,” I said, smoothing her ruffled hair, wondering at the angry oozing scratch on the hack of my hand. “No, Lucine. I know.”
“He does, too,” Lucine muttered. “He makes it almost straight but it bends again.”
“Oh?” I said soothingly, hunching my shoulder to cover its bareness with my torn blouse sleeve. “‘Who does?”
Her head tensed under my hand, and her withdrawal was as tangible as the throb of a rabbit trying to escape restricting hands. “He said don’t tell.”
I let the pressure of my hand soothe her and I looked down at her ravaged face. “Me,” I thought. “Me with the outside peeled off. I’m crippled inside in my way as surely as she is in hers, only my crippling passes for normal. I wish I could click off sometimes and not dream of living without a limp-sweet impossible dream.”
There was a long moist intake of breath, and Lucine sat up. She looked at me with her flat incurious eyes.
“Your face is dirty,” she said. “‘Teachers don’t got dirty faces.”
“That’s right.” I got up stiffly, shifting the zipper of my skirt: around to the side where it belonged. “I’d better go wash. Here comes Mrs. Kanz.”
Across the play field the classes were lined up to go back inside. The usual scuffling horseplay was going on, but no one even bothered to glance our way. If they only knew, I thought, how close some of them had been to death …
“I been bad,” Lucine whimpered. “I got in a fight again.”
“Lucine, you bad girl!” Mrs. Kanz cried as soon as she got within earshot. “You’ve been fighting again. You go right in the office and sit there the rest of the day. Shame on you!”
And Lucine blubbered off toward the school building.
Mrs. Kanz looked me over. “Well,” she laughed apologetically, “I should have warned you about her. Just leave her alone when she gets in a rage. Don’t try to stop her.”
“But she was going to kill someone!” I cried, tasting again the blood lust, feeling the grate of broken bones.
“She’s too slow. The kids always keep out of her way.”
“But someday-“
Mrs. Kanz shrugged. “If she gets dangerous she’ll have to be put away.”
“But why do you let the children tease her?” I protested, feeling a spasmodic gush of anger.
She looked at me sharply. “‘I don’t ‘let.’ Kids are always cruel to anyone who’s different. Haven’t you discovered that yet?”
“Yes, I have,” I whispered. “Oh, yes, yes!” And huddled into myself against the creeping cold of memory.
“It isn’t good but it happens,” she said. “You can’t make everything right. You have to get calluses sometimes.”
I brushed some of the dust off my clothes. “Yes,” I sighed.
“Calluses come in handy. But I still think something should be done for her.”
“Don’t say so out loud,” Mrs. Kanz warned. “Her mother has almost beat her own brains out trying to find some way to help her. These things happen in the best of families. There’s no help for them.”
“Then who is-?” I choked on my suppressed words, belatedly remembering Lucine’s withdrawal.
