"We're something better than that, Sh.e.l.l. We're friends. Friends are better than parents, because it means we love each other because we want to, not because we have to. We choose to be friends."

She looked at me for a long time, sitting on my knees and gazing into my eyes. Finally she sighed and slid off. "I wish we could be both. We could be family and friends both."

"Yes, that would be nice."

Her forehead wrinkled. "Could we just pretend?" she asked tentatively. "Just for tonight, could we pretend? Pretend that you and Chad was my folks and you was bringing your little girl out to buy her a dress? Even though she gots lots of dresses at home, you was bringing her out to buy another cause she wanted it and you loved her a lot?"

All my psychology cla.s.s training urged me to say no. But as I saw her eyes, my heart wouldn't let me. "I suppose just for tonight we could pretend. But you have to remember it's just pretend and just for tonight."

She leaped up in a great bounce and tore out of the dressing room, still in her underwear. "I'm gonna tell Chad!"

Chad was amused to find out that while we were in the fitting room he had become a father. He played the part to the hilt. It was a mystical night filled with a lot of unspoken magic for all three of us. Sheila fell asleep in my arms on the way out to the migrant camp and after Chad parked the car, I woke her.

"Well, Cinderella," Chad said opening the door, "it's time to go home."

She smiled at him sleepily.

"Come on, I'll carry you in and tell your Daddy what we've been up to."

She hesitated a moment. "I don't wanna go," she said softly.

"It's been a nice night, hasn't it?" I replied.

She nodded. A silence fell between us. "Can I kiss you?"

"Yes, I think so." I enveloped her in a tight hug and kissed her. I felt her soft lips touch my cheek. And she kissed Chad as he lifted her out of my lap and carried her into her house.

We drove home in silence. Pulling up in front of my place we sat in the car, not speaking. Finally Chad turned to me, his eyes shining in the wan glow of the streetlight. "She's a h.e.l.l of a little kid."

I nodded.

"You know," he said, "it probably sounds dumb to say, but I pretended right along with her tonight. I wished we were a family too. It seemed so easy. And so right."

I smiled into the darkness, feeling a comfortable quiet drift down around us.

CHAPTER 16.

APRIL CAME IN WITH A SNOWSTORM. Although everyone bemoaned this parting shot of winter, it was one of those deep white fluffy snowfalls that are so lovely to look at. However, it stalled everything with its fierce depth, so school was suspended for two days.

When we returned, Sheila announced during the morning discussion that her Uncle Jerry had come to live with them. He had been in jail according to Sheila, although she couldn't remember what for, and now he was out looking for a job. She seemed quite excited about this new member of her family, telling us how Uncle Jerry had played with her all day during the snowstorm when she was bored.

We quickly returned to our routine. There was a trace of euphoria remaining from our victory in court. Although the children were not aware of what had happened, both Anton and I remained in high spirits. And if we were happy, Sheila in her new dress was positively radiant.

Every day she wore the red-and-white dress, parading in front of the other kids in an obvious attempt to evoke the same kind of jealousy that Susannah had so successfully caused in her. She told them how on her "trial day" she won and got to go to dinner with Chad and me and got her prized dress. Before long, everyone wanted a trial and I had to ask Sheila not to dwell on it. But while her speech with the other children lessened on the topic, with me after school it was the only topic. Like our incident in February over my absence, this had to be gone over repet.i.tively, in minute detail: we had gone to Shakey's, we had had a tremendous pizza, Sheila had eaten lots and lots. Then we went to buy the dress and pretended we were a real family. Over and over and over she would recount the details, her face animated with memory. I let her go on about it because there seemed to be something therapeutic for her in it, just as in the February incident. Interestingly enough, Jimmie had been all but forgotten. I did not hear his name mentioned for days on end. That had been an evening of sheer, unspoiled happiness for Sheila and she didn't seem able to savor it completely enough. But then I suppose when those moments are far and few between, they are even rarer treasures. So I patiently listened, again and again and again.

One morning almost halfway into April Sheila arrived at school subdued. Anton had gone to meet her at the bus, but the bus had been late and she came in after morning discussion had started. She was wearing her old overalls and T-shirt again and was pale. Sitting down on the outer fringe of the group, she listened but did not partic.i.p.ate.

Twice during the half-hour session she got up and went into the bathroom. I worried that she might be ill because she looked so pale and seemed so restrained. But the others were clamoring for attention and my mind was distracted.

When I was handing out math a.s.signments I could not find Sheila, only to discover that she was in the bathroom again. "Don't you feel well today, hon?"

"I'm okay," she replied, taking the math papers from me and going over to her place at the table. I watched her as she went. She was speaking more now, using the proper verbs and I was pleased.

Late in the hour, just before freetime, I came over and sat down with Sheila to show her how to do a group of new math problems. I took her on my lap. Her body was surprisingly rigid as I held her. I felt her forehead to see if she were hot. But she wasn't. Yet she was certainly acting oddly. "Is something wrong, Sheil?"

She shook her head.

"You're all tense."

"I'm okay," she rea.s.serted, and returned to the math problems.

As the lesson concluded, I lifted her off from my lap to the floor. On the leg of my jeans was a widening red spot. I stared at it not fully comprehending what it was. Blood? I looked at Sheila. "What on earth is going on?"

She shook her head, her face emotionless.

"Sheila, you're bleeding!" Down the inside of her right pants leg spread a red stain. Picking her up I rushed into the bathroom and shut the door behind us. Unbuckling the overall straps, I let them fall around her ankles. Blood had stained her underpants and ran down both legs. Wadded into her underwear were paper towels. Apparently that had accounted for the numerous trips to the bathroom earlier. She had been trying to staunch the blood flow so that it would not come through and show.

"Good G.o.d, Sheila, what is going on?" I cried, my voice sounding louder and more alarmed than I had meant it to. Fear rose in me as I pulled away the last of the towels from her clothing. Bright red blood trickled from her v.a.g.i.n.a.

But Sheila stood immutable. No emotion ran across her face. Her eyes were blank, looking at but not seeing me. She was paler than I had thought out in the dimmer cla.s.sroom light; G.o.d, she was white. I wondered how much blood she had lost. In an attempt to wake her out of her stoicism, I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. "Sheila, what happened? You have to tell me. You can't play games now. What happened to you?"

She blinked like one coming out of a heavy sleep. She was paying a great price to cut off the pain and the emotion. "Unca Jerry," she began softly, "he tried to put his p.e.c.k.e.r in me this morning. But it wouldn't fit. So he tooked a knife. He said I was keeping him out, so he put the knife inside me to make me stop."

I went numb. "He put a knife in your v.a.g.i.n.a?"

She nodded. "One of the silverware knives. He said I'd be sorry for not letting him put his p.e.c.k.e.r in me. He said this'd hurt a whole lot more and I'd be sorry."

"Oh G.o.d, Sheila, why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you let me know?" Fearful that she had already lost too much blood, I wrapped a towel around her and picked her up.

"I's scared to. Unca Jerry told me not to tell. He said he'd do it again if I told on him. He said worser thing would happen if I told."

Rushing out of the bathroom carrying Sheila, I told Anton to watch the cla.s.s. I grabbed my car keys and raced toward the office. Briefly I tried to explain to the secretary that I was taking Sheila to the hospital and to have someone find her father and get him there. Time had wound down to that eerie slow-motion pace it a.s.sumes in an emergency. Everyone around me seemed to react as if they were in a movie running at an improper speed. What was happening? The junior high aides peered out of the workroom. What was going on? All the time I could feel the warmth of Sheila's blood against my arm, soaking into my shirt as I held her.

Sheila was whiter now. Clad only in her T-shirt and shoes with the towel I had wrapped around her her only other protection, she was getting sluggish, closing her eyes and leaning heavily against me. I ran for my car. Still holding her in my lap, I turned the ignition and jammed Jibe gears into reverse.

"Sheila? Sheila? Stay awake," I whispered, trying to maneuver the car and keep a hold on her at the same time. I should have taken someone with me, I thought absently, but there hadn't been time. No time to tell them what had happened.

"I do be awake," Sheila muttered. Her small fingers dug into my skin, pulling the tender area of my breast painfully tight as she gripped my shirt. "But it hurts."

"Oh, I'm sure it does, baby," I replied. "But keep talking to me, okay?" The distance to the hospital seemed interminable. The traffic impossible. Maybe I should have waited for an ambulance. I had no idea how much blood she had lost, nor how much was too much, nor what I could do about it. I cursed myself for never having followed through on my Red Cross training.

"My Unca Jerry, he said he was going to love me. He said he was going to show me how grown-up people loved each other." Her voice sounded small and childlike. "He said I better know how grown-up people loved. And when I screamed, he said n.o.body ain't gonna never love me if I can't learn how."

"Your Uncle Jerry doesn't know anything, lovey. He doesn't know what he's talking about."

She caught her lips in a tearless sob. "He said that be how you and Chad loved each other. He said if I want you and Chad to love me, I had to let him show me how, so I'd learn."

We neared the hospital. "Oh lovey, he's wrong. Chad and I love you already. He was just saying that so he could do something wrong to you. He had no right to touch you like he did. What he said and what he did were wrong."

Two young orderlies came running down the emergency ramp with a stretcher. Apparently Mr. Collins had alerted the hospital of our coming. As I placed Sheila on the stretcher for the first time she appeared to register pain and alarm. Moaning, she began to cry loudly but tearlessly. She refused to let go of my shirt and struggled fiercely as the men tried to pry her fingers loose.

"Don't leave me!" she wailed.

"I'm coming right along with you, Sheila. But lie down. Come on now, let go of me."

"Don't leave me! Don't let them take me away! I want you to hold me!" In a contorted ma.s.s the four of us and the stretcher moved toward the door. Sheila retained her terror-wrought grasp on my shirt, ripping the pocket. I did not know what brought her to life so fully. Perhaps she was frightened that I would leave her with these strangers; perhaps she could finally feel the extent of the pain. Whatever it was, she fought so valiantly that in the end it was easier for me to pick her up and hold her again than to pry her off and listen to her scream.

The emergency room doctor examined her briefly while I held her on my lap. Her father was still not there, so I signed a form stating that I would be responsible for emergency treatment until her father could be found.

A nurse came in with a needle and gave her a shot. Sheila had once again become docile and silent, not even flinching when the needle came. Within a short time after the shot, I could feel her fingers relaxing and I laid her on the examining table. Another nurse started an IV in one of her arms while a young Mexican-American intern was hanging a pint of blood above the table. The doctor gestured for me to come away. With a last look at Sheila, who lay with her eyes closed, pale and tiny on the table, I followed the doctor outside the swinging doors. He asked me what had happened and I told him to the best of my knowledge. At that point we saw Sheila's father stumbling down the corridor with the social worker. He was stone drunk.

The doctor explained that Sheila had lost a tremendous amount of blood and they had to stabilize that first. Apparently, from what he could see in the examination, the knife had punctured the v.a.g.i.n.a wall into the r.e.c.t.u.m. It was a very serious injury because of the likelihood of infection and the vast damage done. Once they had stabilized her blood level, the doctor believed there would have to be surgical intervention. Sheila's father weaved uncertainly beside us as the doctor spoke.

There was no more I could do. Undoubtedly my cla.s.s back at school was in chaos. If Susannah had seen the blood, Anton would have more on his hands than he could handle alone or even with the other aides. And the children would be alarmed that I had left so suddenly. It was best that I get back to my job. I looked down at my clothes. Blood had stained the entire front of my shirt. The first spot on my Levi's had already dried into a dark blot. I stared at it. I was wearing part of somebody's life on me, little red tablespoons of a liquid more precious than gold. I was made uncomfortable by it, startled by how fragile life really is, reminded too fully of my own mortality.

I was back in school by eleven. When I looked up at the clock and saw how little real time had pa.s.sed, I was shocked. Less than an hour had pa.s.sed since I had lifted Sheila off my lap during math and seen the blood. The entire drama had taken place in barely fifty minutes. I had even gone home and changed my clothes before returning to cla.s.s. I could not fathom that. To me it had felt as if a hundred years had been compressed into that fifty minutes. I had aged much more.

That night I did not go back to the hospital. I had called the doctor after school and he told me that they had just taken her into surgery and she was not yet out. Despite the blood administered, her condition had not stabilized but remained critical. He did not expect her out of the recovery room until quite late. She had been semi-comatose most of the day and he doubted that she was aware of who had been present. Sheila would go into intensive care after surgery to make sure the hemorrhaging stopped and she would stabilize before she was moved to the children's ward. I asked if I could come up, explaining I was as close to family as the child probably had aside from her father. He suggested I wait until the next day. She would not be conscious enough to know me tonight and I would be in the way in the intensive care unit. They would make her as comfortable as they could, he a.s.sured me.

I asked if her father were still there, but the doctor replied no. They had sent him home shortly after I had gone. He was not sober enough to be coherent. The father's brother, Jerry, had been taken into custody.

In a way I was relieved not to have to go back. It had happened too fast and I could not conceive of the severity of the situation. She had talked to me. She walked all the way from the high school to our room and sat through an hour of cla.s.s. And she had talked to me during the drive to the hospital. She could not be critically injured. I could not believe it.

The blood-stained shirt and jeans lay in a pile where I had hurriedly changed from them before returning to cla.s.s in the morning. I put the Levi's to soak in the bathtub, but held the shirt, examining the pocket torn when Sheila had struggled with the emergency room attendants. Gently I folded the shirt and put it in the back of my closet, I could not bring myself to throw it away. Neither could I put it in the sink and wash it. I knew there was too much blood in it and if I did, the water would color. At that moment I was unable to wash the blood out, unable to see the water redden and go down the drain like so much filth. I would not be able to stand that.

After supper Chad came over and I related what had taken place. Chad was explosive. He paced the room at first saying nothing and shaking his head in disbelief. The anguish was not so much in the seriousness of the injury but in how it had happened. Chad raged with hatred, threatening to do physical harm to Jerry. He had no compa.s.sion for a man who would do such a thing to a little girl and I was frightened by the change in Chad, having never seen him so angry.

Although I was heartsick about the incident, a strange feeling twinged me. Five months earlier, Sheila had been the abuser and someone else had been the victim. Undoubtedly the boy's parents had felt very much the same way as Chad was now feeling toward Jerry. While it did not by any means excuse the gross inhumanity of the crime, it made me aware that the hurt and damage I had found in Sheila was probably in Jerry too. Neither was innocent, but neither was solely evil either. I was sadly plagued by knowing that Jerry was undoubtedly just as much a victim as Sheila. It made things so much more complicated.

The police called later in the evening and asked if I would come down and give them a statement. Together Chad and I went to the police department. In a gray-painted room at a gray-painted table, I told an officer what had happened in my cla.s.sroom that morning. I repeated what Sheila had said to me and what I had done. It was a grim recounting of an even more grim occurrence.

During recess the next morning I called the hospital again to see how Sheila was coming along. The doctor's voice was more at ease this time. She had tolerated surgery well and had stabilized in intensive care during the night. By morning she was alert and coherent, so they had transferred her down to the children's ward. I could see her any time I wanted. I asked if her father had been in. The doctor said he had not. Please let her know I would be in right after school let out, I asked. The doctor agreed, his voice warm. She was a tough little kid, he said. Yes, I replied, there weren't any that were tougher.

Perhaps the most difficult task had been explaining what had happened to Sheila to the children in my cla.s.s. We had already talked about abuse, both physical and s.e.xual, in our room. My kids came from a high-risk population for abuse and I felt it was important for them to know what to do if they found themselves in such a situation or saw it happening to someone else. However, s.e.xual abuse was hard to talk about. In a district where s.e.x education had not made great popular strides in the schools, s.e.xual abuse was taboo. I had worked up an informal unit for my children in which we simply discussed the appropriate and inappropriate ways of being "touched." An adult who held you and hugged you was okay. An adult who held your p.e.n.i.s and hugged you was not. We discussed what one should do if that happened, because no one had the right to touch a boy or girl in some places. Neither should they ask to be touched there. We had done the unit in October and had gone over it a few times since. It provided a measure of relief for the kids to be able to talk about those things, expressing fears about not knowing what to do when someone touched them and it felt "funny."

But Sheila's case, I did not know how to handle. s.e.x and violence together are not good topics for primary-age disturbed children. Yet, I had to say something. They saw us leave so unexpectedly and they did see the blood. Then they saw me return without Sheila. I told them briefly that Sheila had been hurt at home and I had had to take her to the hospital because of it. Beyond that I said nothing.

The children made her get-well cards the next afternoon when I said I had called the hospital and Sheila was in the children's unit and feeling better. Poignant, brightly crayoned messages piled up in the correction basket. The event, however, affected the kids more than I had perceived. At closing time William burst into tears.

"What's wrong?" I asked as I sat down on the floor. The children were gathered around the Kobold's Box with me. William too was there but had suddenly dissolved into tears.

"I'm scared about Sheila. I'm scared she's going to die in the hospital. My grampa went to the hospital once and he died there."

Unexpectedly, Tyler also began to sob. "I miss her. I want her back."

"Hey, you guys," I said. "Sheila's doing really well. That's what I told you after lunch. She's getting better. She won't die or anything."

Tears coursed over Sarah's face although she made no noise. Max began to wail in harmony, although I doubt he had any concept of why everybody else was crying. Even Peter was teary-eyed, despite the fact that he and Sheila were sworn enemies most of the time.

"But you won't let us talk about it," Sarah said. "You never even said Sheila's name all day. It's scary."

"Yeah," Guillermo agreed. "I kept thinking about her all the time and you kept acting like she never was here. I miss her."

I looked at them. Everyone but Freddie and Susannah were in tears. I doubted they were all that loyal to Sheila, but what had happened had frightened everyone. Moreover, it had affected me. I had worried and in an attempt to keep things calm I had said nothing. In my cla.s.sroom we had spent the better part of seven-and-a-half months learning openness and putting ourselves in other people's places. They had learned too well perhaps, because I could not disguise things from them.

So normal closing exercises went undone; the Kobold's Box was unopened, while I talked to them, telling them how I felt and why I had not been as honest as I usually was. We sat down on the floor, all of us together, and had a roundtable.

"Some things are kind of hard to talk about," I said. "What happened to Sheila is one of those things."

"How come?" Peter asked. "Don't you think we're old enough? That's what my mom always says when she don't want to tell me stuff."

I smiled. "Sort of. And sort of because some things are just hard to talk about. I don't even know why. I guess because they scare us. Even us big people. And when big people get scared about things, they don't like to talk about them. That's one of the problems with being big."

The kids were watching me. I looked at them. Each of them, individually. Tyler with her long, ghoulish throat scars. Beautiful black-skinned Peter. Guillermo, whose eyes never really looked anywhere, even when he was paying attention. Rocking, finger-twiddling Max. Sarah. William. Freddie. And my fairy child, Susannah.

"Remember I told you that Sheila got hurt at home. And remember back when we were talking about the ways people can touch you? I was telling you how sometimes people want to put their hands places on a little kid's body that they have no right to touch."

"Yeah, like down where it's private on you, huh?" said William.

I nodded. "Well, someone in Sheila's family touched her where he shouldn't have and when Sheila got unhappy about it, he hurt her."

Foreheads wrinkled. Their eyes were intent. Even Max stopped rocking.

"What did he do to her?" William asked.

"Cut her." As I listened to myself tell these kids, I wondered if I was doing the right thing. Instinctively I felt I was. Our relationship was grounded in the truth, however bad it might be. Moreover, I could not believe knowing could be worse than not knowing, nor worse than the many things these children had seen already. The fact that nothing in their lives was so bad that it could not be talked about had been a cornerstone in this room. Yet, deep inside of me nagged the knowledge that once again I was breaking the rules that I had been taught, overstepping the boundaries of proven educational and psychological practice. And as in all other times I had done that, the worry came that this occasion might be my downfall, that this time I might hurt more than I helped. The war between safety and honesty raged once more.

"Who done it to her?" asked Guillermo. "Was it her father?"

"No. Her uncle."

"Her Uncle Jerry?" Tyler asked.

I nodded.

For a minute there was silence. Then Sarah shrugged.

"Well, at least it wasn't her father."

"That don't make it any better, Sarah," Tyler replied.

"Yeah, it does," Sarah answered. "When I was little, before I came to school, my father sometimes he'd come in my room when my mother was at work and..." she paused, looked from Tyler to me, then down at the rug. "Well, he done that kind of stuff. It's worse when it's your father, I think."