One for Sorrow

WHAT BROUGHT HER TO me the day the teacher played Mozart in music class?

It was only a recording; a serenade rising from the grooves of a code-laden compact disc, but she was as new as a spring flower, a first grader whose fine hair spilled into her face as she cried. “The music makes me sad,” she said through wet fingers. And I was a counselor, so what could I do but peek under the pile of slippery hair and ask, “Did the music make you remember something?”

“No,” she said, and I leaned forward, maybe even touched a shoulder.

“What did the music make you think of? How are things at home?”

How inconsequential my questions. How little I knew compared to the girl. But I was a school employee, paid to ferret out the source of the girl’s pain while she wept into strands of yellow hair until her breathing slowed and she could talk: “It’s just so pretty,” she said. “The music is very pretty.”

The next girl brought horses; how sturdy their backs, how golden their manes.

They were named for sweet things: Butterscotch, Miss Peachy, and Honey Pie. Her father read the Bible every chance he had, interrupting his scripture only to preach at his family for being so wrong. “My horses,” she answered when I asked her to say more about home, “are the best friends ever.”

Did I breathe a little easier when she brought out those horses, this child with a Bible-thumping daddy who sometimes let his snakeskin boots sink into her mother’s side? I thought they’d lived in the subsidized apartments in the village where so many of the children who came to me lived, but no, this girl knew the feel of a horse, understood the possibilities of an open field. She talked on, dark hair smooth under the Alice band, a little adult as she told what she fed them, delighting us both with her horses, how she kept pictures of them taped over her bed. Until our time was up and I asked, “When will you ride them again, the horses?”

“Actually,” she said, brown eyes going to the wall while the whole of her face became an exaggerated grin, “I was lying about the horses; I just wanted to talk about something nice.”

What exquisite lies they tell, little girls. What perfect fictions.

If only you could press your ear to the wall and hear the silk of another girl who insists she can’t remember her new brother’s name because they’d stolen him just last week. She’s scared her teacher with the story, bringing up kidnapping where other children bring up bedtime stories and new toys. “We took him when his mother wasn’t looking,” she giggles. “Mommy’s been wanting a baby for a long time.” She’s five, a tiny thing—they are all tiny things, all round eyes and new hair—as she says, “Mommy stole him for us.” So solid in her conviction, so thoroughly embarrassed over her failure to remember the pilfered child’s name, there’s no choice but to make calls to see if her mother has ever been pregnant and I must find what I’m looking for because the story stops there. But all these years later I still think of her; the fine cut of the lie, the way it continues to gleam as I look into it, part of me still believing that her baby brother came from the corner near the village gazebo like she said.

She lied too, Halladay.

With such certainty and stony face, there was no invitation to meet her in the land she’d created. Halladay’s lies were like pebbles pelted at the world—lies to get others in trouble, lies to prolong her time out of gym class, lies to get an extra Tootsie Roll: “You promised you’d give me two!” Halladay was cemented by the rightness of her own lies as she stood before me, belly poking from under her sweater, bringing the legs of her pants above the ankles. A round belly for such a small body. One of the few swells of softness about the girl.

The blight of sorrow began that year.

I’d been warned about burnout in graduate school, and once I was hired in my first counseling position, I watched for it—waiting, I suppose, for all those sad stories to worm their way into my heart. But I’d worked with older kids and tougher kids and had heard so many hard stories that I thought I was immune. But no. My heart worked fine, it turns out, and flapped open when I least expected, in a bright school with construction paper fishes decorating the halls. It took years to arrive, but when it came, the sorrow, it arrived in one gigantic wave.

The verb “to sorrow” comes from the Middle English sorwen, the Old English sorgian; cognate with Old High German sorgôn. But sorrow has been with us long before Middle English or any English, before the human condition was parceled into nouns and verbs, from the moment the heart leapt like a fish inside the first human chest.

When tented together, Halladay’s hands made a perfect church of flesh.

Brighter than her years, she’d skipped a grade, and was younger and smaller than the other girls, her hands still dimpled. She offered them to me once, her hands, when she found out I’d written a book. Even in the third grade she was an intellectual and preferred to speak of the writing of books than shows on TV. She liked cooking too and told of the dishes she might one day make and the exotic ingredients she’d need—an artist and snob at such a tender age. Most adults disappointed her, except for the original pair, who as they do for all children, became everything. Except for them, Halladay had no use for grown-ups, so easy to see through, so unaware of what she saw. But a book. Well, she’d heard about it and asked to read it. She’d read Twilight last year, so she thought she could handle it. Instead of answering, I distracted her with my need for a cover image—someone had suggested a child’s hands and while the idea was not great, trying to shoot that cover was the most enthusiasm I’d ever seen Halladay express, almost smiling as she let me zoom in on her hands, the scratch of red nail polish flaking from the tip of each little nail.

A different child, this one with only one hand. She had two, really, but one stayed at her side, fingers locked together. The child had many fortunes. She was sent to school with a well-stocked lunchbox, wore a new dress nearly every week, had sprays of dark curls and eyes like the sea. So gorgeous a child you hardly noticed the hand, but it was there.

She came to me once a week for years. At first she was an elf, charming with her smile, hiding under my desk when I stepped into the hall. Then she read books and made regular reports on Sweet Valley High. Next she grew into a healthy rebellion and challenged me to games of Chinese checkers. Sometimes she asked me to open her milk carton or bag of chips, but only when the door to my office was closed.

We both understood that she’d been sent because of the hand and the way it made her feel; and though she was a beautiful girl with many fine dresses, she felt the weight of that hand—felt it so keenly she could barely speak of it. I was supposed to help her deal with her feelings, to help her see the beauty beyond the broken thing, even to find the beauty within the broken thing; and sometimes we could and sometimes we did, but she was a whiz, this girl, and saw what the world does with broken things. And so I spent my time in collusion, allowing a place where she could talk of the goings on at Sweet Valley, an office bright with posters and potted plants, a place to forget the press of the world outside its doors for a time.

Halladay rarely allowed herself displays of joy, but was incapable of pretense where sorrow was concerned. She cried over the stuffed raccoon she wanted to take from my office after every visit. She howled over the girls who wore matching leopard-trimmed skirts and would not let her sit with them at lunch. She crossed her arms and pushed out her bottom lip as she talked of her mother who swore she would visit this weekend—though her mother had problems of her own to deal with and was not able to come the last time nor the time before.

Another girl. All sun. Cascade of yellow hair, California face, this girl could not sit still. Butterfly. Hummingbird. Busy bee. Perfect except for the glasses perched on her nose that enlarged her already wide eyes so that catching her at certain angles made her face into nothing but eyes. She came because she liked to cut paper and I had good supplies—you can’t imagine how much children will talk while cutting paper. This girl preferred the sort of scissors that turned the edges of paper into lace.

Her inability to be still was only a liability at school. At home it kept her awake until her mother passed out, so she could check to be sure she was still breathing and that the man who’d landed by her side at least looked kind. Sometimes the child’s energy kept her awake enough to get in the car with her mom to watch the swerve of road. They’d landed in a ditch once and another time a man died in their apartment—something to do with drugs—but at least her mother was alive, her beautiful trembling mother. The girl never once complained. She just cut paper with scalloped edges and spoke of watching her mother the way other children talked about tracking the electric blue movements of their betta fish.

There’s nothing like the way girls look at their mothers.

How they hang on every word. Nothing is lost on them. Nothing is wasted. The way her mother folds her arms when the girl begins to tell about her day. The way her mother looks out the window when the girl asks about her father. The way her mother taps her cigarette into the overturned wine cap to let down the ashes. Each and every movement. Her mother is a perfect dance, the sweetest ballet—all the feather steps, pirouettes, and fish dives a girl must study in preparation for the world.

Halladay came to me more than the others.

People warned me about the overly smart girl and her circumstances before she’d set foot in the school. She was one of the few to be sent to counseling twice a week and would have been sent more if she could. She could be nasty. She sometimes refused to cooperate in the classroom. She could not believe anyone liked her. The child who’d learned too early the maneuvers required to survive her particular circumstances. Only the gladness over her coming baby sister was unguarded. Wide smiles, easy laughs. What they were going to name her, where she would sleep. That baby sister. There were other times, I suppose—rare but not impossible—when she’d trip up and show her age, laughing without caution, letting herself push into me for a hug.

Then came one of the mothers, slow as sap, big as a tree.

The woman moved around in such drugged motions that her image was somehow as hard to lock onto as if she’d been quick. Her words came sluiced between thick lips, her eyes sequestered under lids so fleshy they barely opened. But she wanted the best for her kids. That’s what she said, and other than the sad mountain of facts that was her life, I had no reason to doubt it. She showed she wanted the best when she complained about the food baskets I’d delivered, asking, “Why couldn’t y’all get us a ham instead of turkey?” It was Thanksgiving and local food pantries doled out turkeys like Jesus doled out fishes and loaves. She was sick to death of turkey and her lack of gratitude at least showed signs of life.

In fact, when it came to making demands she could be downright energetic, coming in with a list of her daughters’ sizes, having no shame about milking the school community, who in her mind were rich people, those with good haircuts and health benefits, people who talked about 401ks and things she knew nothing about. What she most needed couldn’t be donated anyway and the children had their own troubles. If their backwoods accents didn’t give them away, their ill-fitting clothes did. And they were, both of them, so very big. Baby Paul Bunyans. Replicas of their swollen mother. How the other children moved away. How the teachers tittered, even while offering up cans of sweet potatoes and new winter coats. There was no stereotype of poverty the girls did not embody—the abusive stepfather, bouts of drinking and work release, the broken-down pick up, all that and more. And yet the youngest child had a certain quality. Something about the smile hanging crooked on her oversized face, the light that came from it, as if she held the sun like a lozenge under her tongue. How fully it shone, that light. She’d learn to work it later—to shut down parts of herself to get through another move, another stepfather’s hands—but back then, the child was simply and inexplicably the brightest light in the eastern Great Lakes.

So many hard-luck cases. So many mommas with bad boyfriends, so many daddies in jail. And yet in a school building with over a thousand children, most of them were like New Year’s Day. Open, curious, seeking out sun. Look what I made. Ten days until my birthday. I love you. The age-old song of girls and boys:

One for sorrow, two for mirth;

Three for a wedding, four for birth;

Five for silver, six for gold;

Seven for a secret not to be told.

I indulge myself, hauling them out here.

But then they’ve always been here, swinging their feet, just waiting for me to look again in their direction. And though the sight of her hands clasped over her belly pains me, sorrow is no excuse to leave Halladay sitting for so long, a scowl of impatience taking up the better part of her face.

Is anything quite so withering as the scowl of a nine-year-old girl?

They are not quick to disapprove, but when they do, you know it. Except for the few rare girls deprived of fashion for religious or economic limitations, nobody understands beauty like a third-grade girl. She’ll look you over from head to toe, taking in the bulky sweater, the plain pants, the outdoor boots. If she’s bold, she’ll say, “Why not change into heels when you’re inside?”

They will love you anyway, because they are children after all, but most girls learn by the first grade that women are the bearers of beauty in the world and hope against hope that each one will bring them something new. They will stroke your hair when it shines, touch your earrings when they dangle, and offer up smiles when you remember to pack your heels and wear them inside, even—and especially—when it snows.

One of them made a close study of beauty.

Blue eyes and dark skin, hair that fell in glossy waves. Stunning in second grade, by fourth she’d learned to stop eating. Her chin might have seemed too sharp were it not for eyes that grew even larger in the hollow face—Disney eyes, big inky pupils nearly masking the irises. She tended toward cruelty, and my time with her involved attempts to distract her from the gossip at which she was supremely adept. How sad, you will think, that terribly thin child already so cold, and I thought so too, and still do, except for the day I stood in the bridal shop in a deep lavender gown, one that had looked so good on the display model—one I’d hoped might be dusky enough for the evening wedding I’d arranged, but for which I’d waited too long to find a dress. A circle of mirrors enfolded me, casting so many reflections that I could no longer see. When I finally looked up from the folds of chiffon, there she was seated on a silk pouf chair.

We smiled to see each other outside of school and my wearing a dress the color of smoke. “I’m trying to find a last-minute dress,” I said, and she didn’t blink at the fact that I was getting married—she’d been bridesmaid to her mother already. Marriages come and go. She knew this and showed neither surprise nor delight. She just looked at the dress and shook her head, eyes rolling, tooth tugging a lower lip. No, the look said, that will not do. I tried another—white, this time, thinking she’d be taken in by the expected color for brides, but once again, she shook her head no. I was beginning to feel desperate, I’d waited too long and now nothing worked.

Try another, she said and her aunt shouted from the changing room to ask who she was talking to. My counselor from school, she said, and thank God the third gown, the color of raw silk, brought a smile to her face. That smile, so capable of cutting but also incapable of lying, meant everything just then. How I needed that exquisitely cruel child to save me when I needed to know something of beauty.

They all saved me.

Waves from buses, pushing their book bags into my lap to show the grades they’d gotten on their math tests, stopping by to tell about the dog having puppies. Just looking into their faces, just hearing the plans they had for the weekend and the simplicity of their needs (a hug, a song, a game) was the best part of many days.

Some of them are gone.

You come to expect the occasional tragedy with a parent—the slow mother collapsing in the street, never to snarl over the contents of a food basket again; the father arrested, put away for the best part of a child’s life. Sometimes though, the girl herself is gone. Illness or worse; then it’s a different matter entirely.

Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood,

Be sometimes lovely like a bride,

And put thy harsher moods aside,

If thou wilt have me wise and good.

—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Halladay’s gone.

The girl who came to me two days a week, sometimes more, sliding her soft belly into a chair and asking to play hangman instead of talking about how she’s treating friends. Sometimes managing little truths that she quickly took back and counted as lies. Can I bring the stuffed raccoon home? Yes, I said, and a few more meetings and a hug goodbye and that was the end of things for me. My final year. The mounting sorrow and the business of schools, the little hands posed for a book’s cover—these things sealed the deal and I left. The years passed, but even five states away I recognized the face when it flashed on my computer screen last fall. Halladay and her new sister. Their father. A gun. The children killed near an Adirondack lake before their father turned the gun on himself.

There’s more.

What she wore, the weather that day. Those hands, chipped red polish, pants barely covering the tender slope of belly. Autumn in the Adirondacks. The smell of leaves and wood smoke coming from the cabins nearby, the sound of ducks overhead. There’s more, of course, there’s more. And sometimes I allow myself to think of it. For what is sorrow but the underside of beauty, the long-suffering cousin of joy?

Now it’s time for a boy.

So many girls—but they came to me too, the boys. The same stories, told in different ways. Now comes a boy. See his legs grown long this past winter. Notice the teeth, so white and straight for a sixth grader. His last year of elementary school. He has been sick, but after two visits to the school nurse, she calls me up and I walk over to the row of narrow beds and pull back the curtain to his padded cot.

“Where does it hurt?” I ask, and he says his stomach, a kind of heat, and maybe higher too, in his chest. He hides his face. All I have to say is, “I’d like to hear more about it,” and the tears come and off we go to my office, where he lets it out. The girl, the tall one with a kind smile, the way he sees her in the cafeteria, the way he becomes knotted inside so that he thinks he must be very sick, that surely he will die.

“You like this girl?” I ask. “Yes,” he says, yes, yes.

It’s like a gift to explain love to a sixth-grade boy, to promise he’s not dying so much as coming into another way of living. Lovesick. Something like bees swarming his gut. He’s still pink when he leaves my office, but letting himself believe he will live after all. It will hurt to look at her across the length of cafeteria table, it will hurt to see the brightness of her eyes, but yes, he thinks he will stand up and try once again. Brave and brilliant boy. I close the door as he leaves, letting my head down on the surface of the desk. I put my head down, in the little office, and let it rest.