FAITH
Same Day
All day Devin has been on my mind. So much so that I let the kids do their own thing today. Worksheets, board games, crafts, anything easy and less time consuming, I let them do it. My heart ain't in it today. Badly, I regret what I said. I regret what I did, and I have no way of taking that back. Trish has been calling, but I've been ignoring her. I don't want to hear another Iyanla fix my life speech because she was right from the start and I knew it. When I watched him walk away that night, I broke. All those questions I asked got me nowhere but here. Pissed off with myself. So talking to her would make me have to face that truth again.
“Miss Faith, someone is at the door,” a student of mine yells out. I get out of my seat to see who it is. Peeking out the window, two older women dressed in navy blue suits, skin-toned stocking and kitten heels stand at the doorway with the principal and vice principal at their side. I open the door.
“Faith, Diane and Michelle are here from social services. What's going on?” Principal Erivo asks. I step out of the class, leaving a crack in the door. Everything collides within.
“How can I help you?”
Diane first looks at Michelle and then back at me.
“Your student, Logan Wilhite,” she says. I nod. “We've received a report that we need to get involved due to possible child negligence and homelessness. Do you know anything about that?”
I know the school rules and if I say anything about what I've been doing, I know I'll get fired on the spot.
“Uhmm, I-I don't know. I don't necessarily know the signs of homelessness. I mean she's never missed a day of school or anything,” I say, arms now folding into themselves.
“Hmm. Well upon the call, we've done our bit of investigating. The last place of residency was back in 2013. We've checked, no one is there by that name—“
“Excuse me, ladies, do you mind if I butt in,” the principal says. They step aside. Principal Erivo pulls me to the side, looks me dead in the eyes. Everything is beginning to cave in now.
She whispers, “Faith, what's going on? Did you take the little girl in?” I look at the ladies who clearly can hear the questions just asked. I swallow hard and nervous.
“No.”
“Are you sure about that?” She asks again, her eyes now in a squint. I know she's reading me. I shake my head.
“We've tried to locate her Father and Mother. From what we know, she's been last seen with her Father. No whereabouts with her Mother. Do you know her dad? Do you talk to him often?” Diane interrupts. Either way, I'm screwed. They all know something, and I can't fake it. They're going to want to know everything—where she lives, who she's living with, all of that. And I'm not her legal guardian, and no one knows Devin but me.
“What's going to happen to her,” I ask.
“Well, if we can't find a reliable relative that can take her in while we investigate this case, we're going to have to take her and place her in a home. Do you know her Father or Mother?”
“I know her Father.”
“Has he ever mentioned anything about being homeless?”
“Just answer the question, Faith,” Principal Erivo says. My eyes begin to water.
“I can ask if you need me to.”
“The thing is we can't seem to locate him anywhere which leads us to suspect that the call is very factual. No means of communication other than this school. And so it's up to us to look out for the child's best interest until her Father or whoever can provide us with enough details that he is the sole provider with an available roof with all the necessary essentials for her welfare.”
I nod.
“So I'm going to ask you again,” she says. “Do you know anything about this?”
I look back at my class. Logan is sitting square in the middle, having a good time with her friends, laughing and talking. A tear escapes me, but I wipe it quickly.
“We have surveillance, Faith,” Principal Erivo comes out with it.
“I get that you want to protect her. That's very admirable of you, but in this case, until you or someone can show proof of legal guardianship with required necessities for the welfare of that child, we're going to have to take her and place her in a home.”
“No, please don't do that. Please. She's just a little girl. She's been staying with me for the past two months now. She's fine. Her dad is fine. They're with me. I've been—I've-I've been keeping them with me.”
“You know that's against school policies,” Vice Principal Smith comments. “If anybody found out that you were housing a student as well as her Father, it'll be all over the news. We don't need that kind of publicity. You're going to have to give that little girl over to the state, Faith. This is now out of your hands,” she says so surely as if this was the moment she's been waiting for all of her life.
My confession gives it away, and both Diane and Michelle reluctantly go into the room and retrieve Logan as I point out who she is. I follow closely behind. The tears still streaming down my face, Logan looks up at me.
“Where am I going? Am I in trouble?”
I wipe my face and answer as my voice beaks. “No baby. You're not in trouble. It's just that…”
“Come on sweetie you have to go with us,” Diane says.
“Where? Is my daddy here?”
“No,” I say.
“Then where am I going? Where is he? I want my daddy,” she says as her voice grows louder.
“I know sweetheart, but he's not here right now, so you have to come with us for a little while,” Michelle tells her.
“I want my daddy. Ms. Faith where am I going?”
I wish I had a comforting answer. They help her into her coat. I stand next to her desk trying to keep myself together.
“You gotta go for a little bit baby girl, but I promise you're coming back soon, okay?”
She reaches out to me, her eyes welling up with sadness that her young self shouldn't possess. She begins to cry heavily. I take her hand as she pulls away from them, but they've got her in a tight grip. That feeling of being ripped apart tears me up even more as her small hands hold on for dear life to mine. I try my hardest not to let go.
“Faith I need you to let her go now, please,” Diane says, but I'm not hearing it. Logan continues to look back and forth at me and them, still clutching tight.
“Logan, you can't stay here. You have to go now. It's going to be okay, I promise you,” Diane says. She wails, kicks and screams but they won't let up. My stomach goes hollow. I can't watch it anymore. It hurts too bad but I can't seem to let her go either.
“Do you have to do this now?” I ask them in a quivering tone. My face soaked, they look at me with pity but never give me an answer. Principal Erivo walks in and peels away our fingers like she's had enough of this. Had she kept her mouth shut, maybe we wouldn't have to go through any of it. Nobody needed to interrupt anything we had going.
Logan screams hysterically. The whole world is now looking at us through six and seven-year-old eyes. Teachers from other classrooms peep out of their own rooms to see what's going on. It's embarrassing and uncalled for.
“I want my daddy,” she shouts. Her legs kicking in the air as they carefully drag her out of the classroom. I want to chase after them but I can't. My legs won't move.
“Ms. Faith, please…Please,” her cries echo from afar. Helplessness welds to my bones. The regret in my walk over to the classroom door causes me to stop just at the threshold, hand reaching out to her as she gets lured away by those two witches. It's like a fast pulling of strong duct tape on an open wound. She's been stripped away just like that.
Principal Erivo offers me a touch of the shoulder as she walks up behind me, but it's cold and empty. I know she cares none about what's going on. And it all the more coaxes a churning in my belly, so deep and volatile, that I react in such a way that makes her second-guess touching me again.
They bust open the front door of the school and the only thing left ringing in my ears is the desolate wail of my student begging for me to come and save her. That churning travels through my chest and up to my esophagus with great warning.
“It's the best thing for her right now,” Erivo says. Her words prod at my agony and I make a break for it, run down the hall to the nearest bathroom and throw myself into one of the stalls. My stomach contracts violently, nearly leaving me no time to reach the toilet. Everything comes up. Everything.
For minutes on end, I kneel, retching and gasping for air at the same time until the bile runs clear. My throat so sore and aching from the acid, finally I sit back against the wall, catch my breath, and let my tears burst forth. I press my head against the stall and weep, hands covering every bit of it. I hate myself for this. Nobody was supposed to know.
Nobody.
I don't know how I'm going to tell Devin. Breaking up was one thing, but now him losing his child…that's enough to drive him to his grave. And it's all because of me.
School is over. The children are gone. I need something to keep myself from breaking down. The room was colorful, but now it's drenched in depressing grey. My heads spinning and the walls are closing in. I need to take a seat. At my desk, I close my eyes and despairingly give my aching head to my hands and hold myself there for a while.
“Faith, may I come in?” Principal Erivo knocks on my door. I look up as she shuts the door close and comes my way.
“I want to talk to you about earlier,” she says. I give her my undivided attention.
“We checked the cameras. Went all the way back to December. And we see that it's true. They broke into the school and went into the Janitors closet to stay the night.”
“I know,” I say, solemnly.
“And we saw you finding them the following morning and then they were with you going to your car,” she continues. That's a fact that I can't deny. It's all true. But what I'm trying to figure out is how they put all this together? Who was the caller? Otherwise, there would have been no need to look at any surveillance tapes.
Two months had gone by and all of a sudden, this happens? But I remain quiet though. She's already caught on.
“You do realize we could also press charges, right? Against her Father and you,” she says. I hang my head and nod.
“And you do realize that taking in a school student with no legal permission is against ethics and can immediately get you suspended. Possibly even fired?”
I shake my head. Her tone softens. “Why didn't you say anything?”
“For that very precise reason of what just happened today,” I tell her.
“You know this is going to have to be reviewed by school board now? This could affect your career. This could affect your chances of ever working in the school system again, you do know that? Had you just said something earlier, I wouldn't be sitting here delivering any of this news.”
I don't answer.
“Unfortunately we're going to have to put you on unpaid suspension until we can figure something out.”
I remain quiet. I knew that was coming.
“Faith?”
“Yeah?”
“I know you've probably taken a liking to that little girl, but no one is worth losing their job over. Especially someone you're no kin to,” she tells me. Easy for her to say.
“I'll draw up your letter, and you can go home until we figure something out. Whatever lesson plans you have, just leave for the substitute.” She gets up to leave.
“Marissa?” I stop her. We on first name basis now. She turns around and looks at me.
“You have no idea what it's like being homeless, let alone homeless with a child, do you?” I ask. She stops to think about it, but no words come back to me.
“That's exactly why I did what I did.”