I LAUGH WHEN I see them bangles on her arms. “You still wear those, Miss Saunders, dang.”

She smiling. On her way to the kitchen carrying her briefcase, she says, “Are we ready, ladies?”

Maleeka came early. Me and her rearranged the furniture. Me and JuJu painted the kitchen walls peach on Thursday. We ain’t talk or say a word. It was nice being quiet together. It was Miss Saunders’s idea to paint one of the walls black. To use it for a chalkboard. Our computer broke. Maleeka don’t got her own. So, Miss Saunders’s idea was a good one.

“We have four hours together, ladies. Let’s make them count.” She sits a package of papers at the table in front of each one of us. “I will be covering your major courses.”

“You mean math, history, and everything?” I flip through the papers.

Maleeka say I owe her one, then apologizes. “I was only joking.”

I do owe her. And I pray for her every night now—for myself too—’cause men like Anthony is everywhere. Plus, I don’t want her mother to die.

“Char?” Miss Saunders bends down low. “Are you okay?”

I nod.

“If you want to talk or—”

“Shut up! Leave me alone! Why everybody treating me like I’m crazy in the head?” Before I know it, I’m crying.

Her eyes go from mine to Maleeka’s. She ask her to take a break and step out of the room for a little while. She in her seat when she say for me to breathe in deep. “That’s it. One more time.”

I sit back, do like she say, catch my breath, finally calm down. “This the first time I ever listened to you, huh?”

“Probably.”

“Miss Saunders. I know you want to help but—”

“Do you mind if I take your hand, touch you?”

JuJu asks my permission a lot now. “It’s okay.”

My hand is a sandwich in between hers. She asks if I know anything about mindfulness. I don’t. She say it just means that you try your best to think on what is happening right now, right in front of you, not what happened to you yesterday, or what you might do tomorrow.

“Oh.”

She not asking me to forget what I went through, she says. Just to try to focus on what I’m doing and thinking one minute, one hour at a time. “If you feel stressed, overwhelmed, or upset, take a deep breath. If that doesn’t work, tell me. This is all for you. We will move at the pace that seems comfortable for you.”

I stare at her. Into her eyes. ’Cause she ain’t nothing like she was in school: loud, clapping her hands to get our attention, shoving assignments at you. Her voice is soft as water rolling over rocks, the wind in trees. “Miss Saunders. Anything this bad ever happen to you before?”

She don’t say. Standing up, she tell me that she the teacher, but I will be teaching her too.

“Teaching you?”

“Yes—you aren’t the only person to go through this sort of trauma. I want to be a good teacher to all my students, not just the ones who make As, have both parents, or sit quietly in the back of the class.”

Maleeka hollers from the other room. “Y’all ready? Can I come back in?”

It’s our first day. We work the whole four hours. After that, we have lunch. My sister made it. We eat, talk, and laugh. It’s the most fun I had since I been back home.