planning (Just how much does it cost to raise that failure to use a condom up to college age?).
A few days earlier, Ana had been making her way along the circular hallway, the classrooms opening off to her right and to her left the blank wall broken only by displayed notices, papers, and assorted pieces of student artwork, and she had idly thought what a waste of a long, unbroken stretch of wall it was.
She had mulled it over during the morning and at lunch she had turned to Teresa.
'You know that inside wall of the hallway? Has anyone thought about having the kids do a mural on it?'
'A mural?'
'Yeah. Each class could have a segment, maybe the one across from their doorway, and it could be along a theme like the one in the dining hall, only longer. I was thinking that it would be kind of fun to have the kids trace the historical development of Arizona, from dinosaurs to Anasazi cliff dwellings and settlers to now. It would be a great history lesson for them, and even useful for kids in the future. Of course, there are lots of themes they could work up, but it would be interesting to have the entire wall an integrated unit.'
'It would be an enormous task,' Teresa said dubiously, but Ana had made sure before she began that there were others within earshot, and she pressed on, aware that they were listening.
'It would take a lot of organization, but once it was done it could be left in place for years. Or painted over, if teachers wanted to do their section over again. We could ask about getting the paint donated. The biggest problem I can see would be covering the floor so the carpet didn't get trashed, but I think we could manage that.'
Dominique had been one of those listening in, and she spoke up.
'I think it is an excellent idea. We probably wouldn't finish it before June, but we could stretch it out—or even let the kids work on it over summer vacation if they wanted to. Which they would.'
It was discussed some more and tentatively approved, depending on the cost. The school buzzed, preliminary sketches were made, themes were hammered out.
In the meantime, the business of school went on, and Ana prepared the other half of her plan.
For convenience and interest, Ana had combined her two high-school-level history groups into one. At this time they had been working on the idea of colonialism, with the eleventh graders covering the historical and social aspects and the seniors concentrating on economics and governmental choices. When the topic of the mural came up, she brought the discussion around to their own backyard, as she tried to do with regularity, and asked them what effect colonialism had had on the local inhabitants, the Navajo and Arapaho, the Hopi and Zuni peoples.
She was not actually surprised when few of them could think of any particular effect offhand, nor that fewer of them, even those of minority blood, thought of the white intrusion as colonialism. She professed astonishment, however, and again during lunch she told the story to her colleagues, exaggerating slightly both the ignorance of the students and the consternation of their teacher.
'You know,' she said to Dominique as if the thought were suddenly occurring to her, 'we really ought to take these kids down to the ethnology museum in Phoenix, not only for this but as research for the mural. It's possible to do field trips, isn't it? Just for the day?'
Ana knew it was possible; after all, the students had all been on a field trip when she first arrived. Dominique objected that they had just gotten back from a trip, and Ana retorted that soon it would be too late in the year, that they needed to get the future muralists started in the right direction, and furthermore, she pointed out, they would soon all be so concerned with the end-of-the-year testing that the opportunity would be lost. She kept on, stubbornly finding more reasons that it was a good idea, convincing two or three of the other teachers to join in, until suddenly all opposition collapsed and the trip was set, in ten days' time.
She had forced open the door to an opportunity to make contact with Glen; the delay made her impatient, anxious to get to the heart of this community, get the information Glen needed, and get out again. On the other hand, she did not have a lot of time to fret over the delay, since in addition to planning the mural and her other duties of teaching and taking turns in the manual labor of the community (chicken shed, kitchen, and clean-up crews—gardening and building duties were still on winter status) she had also to prepare herself and her students for the field trip, which involved numerous telephone calls to the museum docents and the school district.
Dozens of times during those days she would look at the telephone sitting on the desk in front of her and think how simple it would be just to phone Glen. She could punch in the familiar numbers and in thirty seconds tell him what she needed and when she would be accessible, but in the end she did not, because she was fairly certain that she would be found out, and that the repercussions would be heavy.
She was fully aware that she was being watched. It was only to be expected. All of the newcomers were under careful scrutiny. She suspected that she was more closely watched than the others simply because she was involved in teaching the children, and Change authorities needed to be certain that she could be trusted not to introduce subversive outside ideas. Her classes were monitored, the papers the students wrote for her gone over by Dominique or one of the others, her reading list vetted, her computer time observed. She took care to stick to the syllabus, and allowed only those diversions and creative ideas that fit with the community beliefs. She kept a tight lid on her personal thoughts, was careful not to voice too much criticism of the outside authorities, and left religion in the realm of sociology. She did not think her rooms had hidden microphones, but she took no chances. She wrote in her diary, she meditated with the others and by herself, she walked out into the desert each morning to watch the sun rise, and she took no chances.
Her main goal was the gathering of information and worming her way into Steven's confidence, and in both of these the school became her focal point. At first it seemed an ordinary enough teaching institution, despite its setting, with very little Change doctrine working its way into the curriculum. Gradually, this picture deepened.
Ana had been given Teresa's class—or, as she discovered, the class Teresa had been forced to assume when Change had lost two teachers, one to apostasy, the other to Boston. It seemed to Ana that her colleague stepped back into her former role as the school's administrator with a trace more relief than a seeker after psychological hair shirts ought to display.
Teresa's removal from the classroom after five months inevitably created a great deal of reorganization and makeup work, and many after-school meetings with the other teachers. It seemed to Ana that the number of these requiring the presence of one particular instructor, Dov Levinski, was quite high, although as he was responsible for the math and science side of the curriculum, it made sense. Still, Ana was intrigued. When Steven began to come down for those meetings as well, although she recalled that Steven too had been trained in the hard sciences, she thought she might take a closer look.
So it was that one afternoon two days before the museum trip was planned, she walked into Teresa's office with an administrative problem she had been saving up and found the three of them sitting at the round conference table. Teresa looked irritated at the disturbance and Dov surprised, but Steven merely wore his customary look of mild interest and wise inner amusement.
'Oh, I'm sorry,' Ana said, coming farther into the room. 'I needed to give you something, but I didn't realize you were busy. I'll just stick this on your desk.'
Teresa nodded coldly and closed the file she had on the table in front of her, which may have hidden the specific information inside but at the same time revealed the cover to be PROPERTY OF THE ARIZONA STATE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION. Seven such files lay on the table, four of them stacked in a pile to one side, the others distributed between the occupants of the conference table.
'Anything I can do to help?' she asked brightly on her way past the table.
'No thank you, Ana,' Teresa said repressively. Dov had closed his folder, too, and was patently waiting for her to leave the room, but Steven sat back in his chair and pushed his own file a couple of inches in her direction.
'Yes,' he said. Teresa's mouth dropped open and Dov looked equally startled. 'Let's see what Ana makes of this decision.'
Ana stood and looked the situation over with care. She wanted to see what the files were, but she did not wish to alienate the two teachers, and although Dov was merely surprised at Steven's words, Teresa's dark cheeks had flushed. However, she couldn't very well withdraw the offer once it had been accepted, so she walked over and sat down in the chair next to Steven's, pulling the folder over in front of her.
It consisted of the brief biography and not-so-brief criminal record of a fifteen-year-old boy named Edgardo Rufina, who three years earlier had gone to live with an alcoholic aunt in Kingman with two charges of prostitution in her past. He had been in and out of trouble ever since. In school he was getting one B, one D, and the rest Cs, and had spent at least a week in custody every term. His violent acts were escalating, with his last offense the serious one of assaulting a police officer.
