"Get in a chair and put your head down like everybody else. I've had it with the whole lot of you. All you've done all day is bicker. Well, this is where it gets you. Sitting in a chair with your head down."

Sheila remained on the floor.

"Sheila, get up."

With a great sigh she rose and took a chair. Pulling it over next to Tyler, she sat and put her head down.

I looked at them. What a ragtag lot. Whitney and Anton were picking cake out of the carpet. Anton rolled his eyes when I came over. I smiled wearily. What I really felt like doing was crying. For no particular reason except that I had wanted a special day and had gotten an ordinary one. And for my yellow elephant cake that had taken so much time to make and ended up being ground into the rug.

When I turned around to look at the kids, Peter had one eye peering over the side of his arm. I pointed a finger at him and gave him the evil eye. He covered his face again. I looked at the clock and watched the second hand revolve.

"Okay, you guys, if you can act like human beings you can get up. There's about ten minutes left. Help pick up the rest of the cake and then find something quiet to do. I better not hear one single word of fighting."

Sheila remained at the table with her head down.

"Sheil, you can get up."

She remained unmoving, her head in her arms. I came over to her and sat down in a chair beside her. "I'm not so mad anymore. You can get up and play."

"Uh-uh," she said. "This here's my birthday present for you. I ain't gonna be no trouble for the rest of the day."

After school Whitney took Sheila out and Anton and I went down to the teachers' lounge. I was sitting in the one comfortable chair, my head back, my feet up on the table, my arm over my eyes.

"What a h.e.l.l of a day," I said. When Anton "did not respond I sat up and opened my eyes. He was gone. I had not even heard him leave. Oh, well, I leaned back again. I almost fell asleep.

"Tor?"

I looked up. Anton was back, standing over my chair.

"Happy Birthday." He handed me a fat envelope.

"Hey, you shouldn't have done anything. That's the deal around here."

He grinned. "Open it."

Inside was a crazy cartoon card with a green snake on it. Out fell a piece of folded paper.

"What's this?" I asked.

"My present to you."

I opened the paper. It was the photostated copy of a letter.

Dear Mr. Antonio Ramirez: With great pleasure Cherokee County Community College announces that you have been chosen as one of the recipients of the Dalton E. Fellows Scholarship.

Congratulations. We look forward to seeing you in our program this fall.

I looked up at him. Even though he was trying, he could not keep the smile on his lips in check. It spread from ear to ear. I wanted to congratulate him. To tell him how much this piece of paper pleased me. I said nothing. We just stared at each other. And smiled.

I had called Ed about Sheila's future placement and we held a team meeting. I continued to hold out for placing Sheila with my friend, Sandy McGuire, at Jefferson Elementary School. Sandy was a young, sensitive teacher whom I could trust not to lose Sheila in the crowd. She had talked to me about Sheila a number of times when I had first had the notion that Sheila might be ready to go back to a normal setting.

At first Ed did not favor the plan. He disliked advancing children ahead of their chronological peer group. Moreover, Sheila was a small child for her age. Most of the eight- and nine-year-olds would be half a head above her. We did a lot of soul-searching. She was at least two grades ahead of the second graders academically and she was smaller than they were as well. In her case there were no perfect solutions. I was more in favor of placing her with a teacher I could trust to continue supporting her emotional growth than worrying about her size or IQ. Clearly, she would never be normal academically, so there was no point in providing a source of new trouble. I feared that Sheila's unchained mind would go so unchallenged in second grade that she would get into trouble just keeping herself occupied. In the end the team agreed to try Sheila in Sandy's room. She would also get two hours a day in a resource room to help meet her emotional needs and her advanced academic status.

The second to the last week of school I told Sheila she would be at Jefferson the following year. I said I knew her teacher very well and that we had been friends a long time. I asked Sheila if she would like to go visit Sandy in her cla.s.sroom some day after school. The first time I suggested it was coupled with telling her where she was going the next year. Sheila could not accept that all at once and vehemently announced that she would not now nor would she ever want to meet Sandy. But later in the day, after the other kids had heard of Sheila's placement and had been all excited because she was skipping a grade, Sheila decided that she might not mind meeting Sandy so much after all.

Wednesday afternoon Sheila and I climbed into my little car right after the bell rang and started off for Jefferson Elementary on the other side of town. Because we had almost a half hour before Sandy's cla.s.s was finished at three thirty, I stopped at Baskin-Robbins for ice cream cones. Sheila selected a double scoop of licorice. The mistake I made was in not taking any napkins with us when we got back into the car.

By the time we arrived at Jefferson, Sheila looked as if she had changed races. She had black ice cream all over her cheeks and chin, on her hair and down the front of her shirt. I looked at her in surprise because only fifteen minutes earlier she had been clean. I did not even have a Kleenex with me, so I wiped what I could off with my hand. With Sheila clutching at me tightly we went to see the school.

Sandy laughed when she saw Sheila. I couldn't blame her. Sheila looked like a four-year-old with all that ice cream on her and her fear gave her a waif-like solemnity. She pressed close to my leg.

"Boy, you look like you had something good," Sandy said, smiling. "What was it?"

Sheila stared at her wide-eyed. "Ice cream," she whispered. I wondered what Sandy must have been thinking just then. I had enticed her into accepting Sheila mostly by elaborating on Sheila's incredible giftedness and verbal ability. Right then Sheila sounded anything but the epitome of intelligence.

I should have trusted Sandy more. Bringing over chairs, she sat down with us and proceeded to get all the details of Sheila's ice cream pa.s.sions. Then she took us on a tour of the room. It was a typical-looking cla.s.sroom. Jefferson was an ancient, bulky, brick building with huge rooms. The room easily accommodated twenty-seven desks and a variety of "learning centers" around the perimeter. As usual for Sandy's room, it was messy. Stacks of workbooks defied gravity on the corner of a table, bits of construction paper were strewn through the aisles. I had never been known for my neatness, but Sandy's clutter surpa.s.sed even mine. The children must have had half-a-dozen projects going in all states of completion. In the back of the room was a well-stocked bookcase and a gerbil cage.

Slowly Sheila began to thaw out and come to life. The books interested her and finally got the better of her timidity. Soon she was wandering around on her own, inspecting the premises. Sandy flashed me a toothy, knowing smile as we watched Sheila in silence. She'd make it.

Standing on tiptoe to see the covers of the workbooks, Sheila took one from the top of the stack and paged through it. Still holding it, she came over to me. "This here's different than them you got, Torey," she said.

"That's probably the kind you'd use in here."

She continued to look through it. Then she turned to Sandy. "I don't like doing workbooks so well."

Sandy pursed her lips and nodded slowly. "I've heard other kids say that too. They aren't a lot of fun, are they?"

Sheila eyed her a moment. "I do 'em though. Torey makes me. I didn't used to, but I do now. This here one don't look too bad. I'd probably do this one." She examined a page carefully. "This here kid made a mistake. Look, it gots a red mark by it." She showed it to me.

"Sometimes people make mistakes," Sandy said. I made a mental note to tell her of Sheila's allergy to correction. That would be one of next year's tasks: reducing Sheila's anxiety about her errors.

"What d'you do to them?" Sheila asked.

"When they make a mistake?" Sandy said. "Oh, I just ask them to do it over again. If they don't understand, I help them. Everybody goofs up once in a while. It's no big deal."

"Do you whip kids?"

With a grin Sandy shook her head. "Nope. I sure don't."

Sheila nodded toward me. "Torey, she don't either."

We stayed with Sandy for almost forty-five minutes, Sheila becoming bolder and bolder with her questions. Finally, I suggested we leave so we would get back in time for Sheila's bus. As we went out the door, Sandy mentioned that perhaps Sheila would like to come over for part of a day before school let out and see how it was in the third grade when the children were there. I thanked her for her time and we trotted out to the car.

Sheila was quiet through most of the ride back to our school. Just as I turned the car into the parking lot, Sheila turned to me. "She ain't so bad, I guess."

"Good, I'm glad you liked her."

We climbed out of the car. Sheila took my hand as we walked toward the building. "Tor, do you suppose I could go over to Miss McGuire's cla.s.s sometime?"

"You want to?"

"I wouldn't really mind."

I nodded. Stretching up to pick a dogwood flower off the tree that leaned over the school doorway, I fastened it into her hair. "Yeah, Sheil, I reckon we could arrange that for you."

Monday of the final week Anton drove Sheila over to Sandy's cla.s.s. She had elected to remain the entire day, although I had suggested she go just for the morning. But she wanted to eat in the cafeteria, paying for her own lunch and getting to select what she wanted to eat like the other children. At our school my cla.s.s was the last to eat and their trays were all fixed for them and laid out on the table. Sheila wanted to see how it felt to be a regular kid. My heart lurched a little watching her leave with Anton, her small hand in his. She had come wearing the red, white and blue dress Chad had bought her rather than her everyday jeans and shirt that we had gotten with the money her father had given me. She asked me to put her hair in a ponytail and had found a piece of yarn from the sc.r.a.p box to tie around it. She looked so tiny next to Anton as they left, and so vulnerable.

Sheila returned that afternoon a satisfied veteran. The day had gone smoothly and she smiled with pride as she related how she had carried her own lunch tray clear across the cafeteria without spilling anything, and how a girl named Maria, who had the longest, shiniest, prettiest black hair she'd ever seen, had saved a place for Sheila to eat with her. There had been hitches. She had lost her way coming back from the girls' restroom. In the tone of voice she used telling the incident, I gathered she must have been very frightened to find herself in such a spot. But she finally made it back. And, she smiled proudly, she never let on to anybody that she'd been lost. At recess she discovered the long dress, despite its being so pretty, was an impediment to play. She tripped while running and skinned her knees. Sheila pulled the dress up to show me. The "scratches weren't very visible, but they hurt, she informed me. She hadn't cried about it. Sandy had seen it happen and had given Sheila comfort. Beaming, Sheila told me Sandy smelled good when she held you real close and she would blow on your knees 'til they felt better. All in all, it had been a successful day. Sheila affirmed that it would be an okay cla.s.s to be in although she hoped Maria flunked, so she'd still be in it next year and they could be friends. I hastened to mention Maria and she might still be friends without wishing poor Maria such bad luck. For the first time Sheila did not get that stricken look about leaving my cla.s.s; she didn't even mention it. Instead, her conversation was punctuated with "Next year, Miss McGuire says I can..." or "Miss McGuire's going to let me... when I'm in her room next year." It was a sweet-sad moment for me because I knew I had been outgrown.

On the last day of school we had a picnic. I contacted everybody's parents and a number met us over in the park a few blocks from school. We brought packed lunches from the cafeteria and the makings for ice cream sundaes, while the parents brought cookies and other goodies. The park was a huge one, old and sprawling with a small zoo and a large duck pond. It had gardens of flowers all gleaming in the June sunshine. Children scattered in every direction with a parent in tow.

Sheila's father did not come; we had not really expected him. But when Sheila showed up in the morning she was dressed in a bright orange-and-white sunsuit. She seemed embarra.s.sed about having so much of herself exposed and walked around clutching her body for the first half hour with us. But Anton raved about the beautiful color and teased her about stealing it if he got the chance. This loosened her up in a fit of giggles at the thought of Anton wearing her sunsuit and she danced for us across the floor of the cla.s.sroom while we waited for the other children. Her father had bought the sunsuit for her the night before at the discount store and it was the first new thing she could ever remember him getting her. Her mirth bubbled up in her so brightly that she could not stay still. All the way to the park she pirouetted down the sidewalk, her blond hair swirling in the air as she turned.

Once at the park she continued her joyous movements and Anton and Whitney and I sat in the sun by the duck pond after lunch and watched her. She was apart from us, thirty or forty feet down the walk that circled the pond. She was listening to some inner music and gliding in harmony around on the sidewalk. Others on the walk had to step around her, their faces amused. A skip, now a twirl, then a few rhythmic bends. It was almost eerie watching her dance alone in the sunlight, her hair glistening in a wide yellow wheel. Completely oblivious to the strollers on the walk, to the other children, to Anton and Whitney and me, she satisfied some inner dream to dance. The others must have felt the same eldritch fascination that I did. Anton watched without speaking. Whitney c.o.c.ked her head as if trying to catch the music none of us was hearing.

Anton turned to me. "She looks like a spirit, doesn't she? Like if you blinked too hard, she'd be gone."

I nodded.

"She's free," Whitney said softly. And that indeed was what she was.

The end of the day came all too quickly. We packed up our things and returned to the cla.s.sroom to pa.s.s out the last of the papers and say our final good-byes. The narrow, wood-paneled room was almost empty now. Pictures and stories were down from the walls. The animals had all gone to my apartment. The names were removed from the cubbies.

The finality of what was happening dawned on Sheila and she lost her merry spirit. By the time we had given out all the papers and awaited the ringing of the bell to go home, Sheila had retreated to the corner, empty now of its pillows and animal cages. Lacking those, she squatted on the floor. The other children were all chattering, excited about summer vacation and their changes for next year. So while Anton led them in songs, I broke away to Sheila.

The tears coursed silently over her now-tanned cheeks. Without a Kleenex, she used her hair to wipe away the wetness. Her eyes were filled with hurt and sorrow. "I don't wanna go," she wailed. "I don't want this to be over. I wanna come back, Torey."

"Of course you do, honey." I took her in my arms. "But that's just how it feels now. In just a little while you'll have a whole summer ahead of you and then you'll be in third grade, a regular kid. It's just a little hard right now, that's all."

"I don't wanna go, Torey. And I don't want you to go."

I smoothed away her bangs. "Remember, I told you I'd write you letters. We'll still know what's happening to each other. It won't be like we're really apart. You'll see."

"No, I won't. I want to stay." She was struggling to regain control and her wiry little body shuddered in my arms. "I'm gonna be bad. I'm not gonna be nice at all in Miss McGuire's cla.s.s and then you'll have to come back."

"Hey, I don't want to hear that. That's the old Sheila talking."

"I won't be good. I won't. And you can't make me."

"No, Sheil, I can't. That's your decision. But you know it won't change things any. It won't make this year come back or this cla.s.s. Or me. I'll be going to school myself, like I told you. What you do with yourself only you can decide. But it won't bring this year back."

She was staring at the floor, her bottom lip pushed out.

I smiled. "Remember, you tamed me. You're responsible for me. That means we'll never forget we love each other. That means we'll probably cry a little right now. But pretty soon we'll only remember how happy we were with each other."

She shook her head. "I won't ever be happy."

Just then the bell rang and the room was alive with shouts. I rose and went to the other children. Hesitantly Sheila trailed over too. The good-byes came. Tyler and William were teary-eyed. Peter whooped with joy. We all exchanged hugs and kisses and they were gone, running out into the June warmth.

Sheila was catching the high school bus back to the migrant camp. On this last day, it left only a short time after the bus for the grade school children. I figured that, after saying good-bye to Anton and Whitney and collecting her things, Sheila would have just enough time to walk the two blocks to the high school and meet her bus.

Parting from Anton was hard for her. At first she covered her face and refused to even look at him. He kept coaxing her to smile, saying little things in Spanish, which I did not understand but Sheila did. After all, he reminded her, they'd still see each other at the migrant camp. He promised to bring her over to play with his two little boys. Finally I delivered an ultimatum. I'd walk her to her bus, but she had to leave right away. With this she turned to Anton and hugged him, her tiny arms locking him in a wrestler's hold. Then she waved to Whitney and took my hand. At the doorway she paused, broke away and ran to hug Anton again. She kissed his cheek and trotted back to me. Tears sparkled as she picked up her things, a few papers and the worn copy of The Little Prince, a tangible memory of what had been. We descended the steps and went down the walk to the high school.

She did not speak the entire way. Neither did I. We had gone beyond needing words. Talking would have spoiled what we had. The bus was waiting in the semicircle drive of the high school, but the students had not yet loaded. The bus driver waved to us and Sheila ran over to put her things on a seat. The she came out of the bus again, walking back to where I stood.

She looked up at me, shading her eyes from the light. I looked at her. It seemed a small eternity in the bright sunlight. "Bye," she said very softly.

I sank to my knees and embraced her. My heart was roaring in my ears, my throat too tight to speak. Then I rose and she ran to the bus. All the way to the steps of the bus she ran, but as she started up them she stopped. The older kids were there now and she had to wait to get in. She looked over at me. Then suddenly she came running back.

"I didn't mean it," she said breathlessly. "I didn't mean it when I said I would be bad. I'll be a good girl." She looked up solemnly. "For you."

I shook my head. "No, not for me. You be good for you."

She smiled slightly, oddly. Then in a second she was gone, back to the bus already, scurrying up the stairs and disappearing. In moments I saw her face at the rear window, pressed tight against the gla.s.s. The driver shut the door and the bus began to rumble. "Bye," she was mouthing, her nose squashed flat against the window. I could not tell if she was crying. The bus pulled around and down the drive. A small hand waved, frantically at first then more gently. I raised my hand and smiled as the bus turned onto the street and disappeared from sight.

"Bye-bye," I said, the words squeezing themselves almost inaudibly from my stricken throat. Then I turned to go back.

Epilogue.

IN THE MAIL A YEAR AGO CAME A CRUMPLED, water-stained piece of notebook paper inscribed in blue felt-tip marker. No letter accompanied it.

To Torey with much "Love"

All the rest came.

They tried to make me laugh.

They played their games with me Some games for fun and some for keeps And then they went away.

Leaving me in the ruins of games Not knowing which were for keeps and.

Which were for fun and Leaving me alone with the echoes of Laughter that was not mine.

Then you came.

With your funny way of being Until all my tears turned into Joy.

end.