If Jerry Brown can live like an ascetic monk in Sacramento, I can in Detroit,” Aunt M said when Sylvia tried and failed to hide her surprise at how small her aunt’s apartment was. It was in one of the most neglected parts of Detroit. “It’s the kind of neighborhood where I do my work, and I don’t spend a whole lot of time at home anyway. Besides, the rent is cheap. And guess where I own a house: Grosse Pointe. The tenants pay my mortgage and then some. I need to make some money for my old age, so I invest where the money is.”
There was a small living room and kitchen, a tiny bathroom, and a miniscule bedroom. Aunt M pointed to the sofa in the living room. Sylvia was sure it was secondhand, covered in tired brown. “You might have to bend your knees a little to fit,” Aunt M said. “But you’re young, you’ll be fine. Monday night, you’ll be sleeping in a gym. Plenty of room there to stretch out that long body of yours.”
She went on to explain that she had organized a community presence at a hearing about the proposed building of a city bus parking space in the same low-income area of the city, where there was an epidemic of youth asthma. In the winter, the bus company would have to keep the motors running all night to prevent the diesel fuel from congealing, thus rendering the air even more lethal. Aunt M knew the strategy of the city would be the usual one in such cases: the paid professional advocates of the plan would speak first and late into the night, outlasting the unpaid residents there to fight the plan, who would give up and go home to sleep before they had a chance to speak so they could go to work in the morning, if they were lucky enough to have a job to go to.
“But here’s what’s actually going to happen,” Aunt M said. “The professionals aren’t going to outlast us. And they are the ones who are going to be tired. Because after they finish making their case, we are going to bring in the kids from the elementary school and their parents, and they are not going to be tired because they will have been sleeping right up to that moment. I’ve wangled a gym in a public school not far from where the hearing will be held. The principal is disobeying the law to let them sleep there, of course. That’s what you have to do. Your job is going to be helping out the moms and dads and grandparents with the kids. Helping them find the bathroom. Wiping up the mess when they throw up. That kind of stuff.” She smiled. “Sounds romantic, doesn’t it? Then you’ll help wake them up and walk with them to the hearing. That’s at night. In the daytime you’ll be helping the teachers in their classes.” She paused. “You up for this?”
“Sure,” Sylvia said, wondering if she really was. “But I don’t know a thing about teaching.”
“Yes, you do. You’ve been watching some very good ones for the last four years.”
ADELAIDE TRIPLETT, ALREADY dressed for church, heard a car in her driveway and looked out the window to see a Black woman get out of a car. Another Jehovah’s Witness. It didn’t occur to her that it was maybe just coincidence that every person who had come to her doorway to proselytize that faith for the last several years had been Black, but it had occurred to her, each time, that it was important to open the door to their knock and be polite. She had a lot of respect for people who cared so much about other people’s salvation.
Thus she went to her front door and opened it that Sunday morning and watched the woman approach, a roundish person, who walked with a kind of waddle in an elegant navy-blue winter coat that came down to her ankles and had shiny brass buttons.
But someone was staying behind in the car. Why? Jehovah’s Witnesses always came in twos. “Good morning?” she called.
“Good morning.” The woman climbed the stairs to the porch. “My name is Eudora Easter.”
Eudora? Easter? It’s still the middle of winter.
“I’ve brought your nephew,” this Eudora person said. “He won’t get out of the car unless you say it is all right.”
Adelaide put her hand on the doorknob behind her to steady herself. “All right?” She was flooded with sadness and anger and joy all at once, in the midst of her surprise. And questions too. Who was this woman? What had she to do with Christopher?
“He told me everything,” Eudora Easter said.
“Everything! I don’t know anything. I had no idea whether he was even alive.”
“I’m sorry,” Eudora Easter said. “Shall I tell him he can come in? I’ll stay for a little while to make it easier.”
“Yes, tell him to come in. I’ll be in the living room. I’m too angry to welcome him at the door.”
Adelaide turned away and went back into her house and into the living room and sat in a chair with its back to the door, and when she heard his footsteps she still didn’t turn around. He came around the chair and stood facing her. She didn’t look up at him and he didn’t speak and she still didn’t look up. She heard his breathing and Eudora Easter’s too.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Now she looked up at him. How worn, how old for someone so young, how fragile!
“I really am sorry. And I need a place to stay.”
“Your suit’s upstairs in your room,” she said. “The one I bought for you. You can put it on and come to church with me. Or you can stay away.” She was surprised. She had no idea that was her intention until she’d said the words.
“I’d be glad to,” he said. “You don’t know how glad.”
He left to go upstairs and she turned to Eudora Easter. She started to ask who she was, but changed her mind and said, “Will you come to church with us?” She already knew who Eudora Easter was: the person who’d brought Christopher back to her.
“Why not?” Eudora Easter said. “I’m planning to propose marriage to a minister friend of mine. I might as well get used to going to church.”
THE PRIEST IN her white cassock looked over her congregation, met Christopher’s gaze, and recited the invitation: “Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden.”
But laden, for Christopher, had a heavy sound. It filled his skull and pressed down on top of his shoulders. His arms, straight down at his sides, felt stretched from their sockets by the bucket of nails—shrapnel from a homemade bomb—he carried in each hand across the street… stepping over the dead girl… toward a building whose windows and doors were all blown out. Dark, empty squares in sun-struck walls, coffin holes in the dirt, uncovered.
He put the buckets down on the other side of the street and returned… stepping back over the girl… to his aunt who sat on his right. Her wool suit smelled like his and she wore her stupid little blue hat on her head that he would have felt sad about if she didn’t. On his left, in the pew which smelled like furniture polish, Eudora sat in her gleaming brass buttons.
This morning, on the drive from Michael’s house to his aunt’s, he’d looked through the windshield of Eudora’s car while they were stopped at a red light. A family was crossing the street. He had asked her, “What would you feel if you hit someone?”
The light turned green and Eudora drove on. She said, “That sounds like your question to answer, not mine,” and he told her the story of how he killed the girl. He watched the words slide out faster and faster, like snakes from a cave. They pulled into his aunt’s driveway as he finished, and all the snakes disappeared. “I’m glad you told me,” Eudora had said.
The priest raised up her arms and recited the promise: “And I will refresh you.” A few moments later, his aunt left him to go up front and receive communion. She looked almost jaunty, proceeding forward to get what was hers to have.
The choir began the communal hymn. He remembered standing on the glisten the moon made on the snow outside the music building while the girls sang their communal hymn.
He watched his aunt put out her hands and take the bread, then the cup. Finished, she stood up from the communion rail, turned around, and came devoutly back. She didn’t look any more replete to him than she had before she left, but she sat down on his right, like before, and he was glad for her return. In between her and Eudora to his left, he was safely encompassed again, feeling more hopeful than he had for the longest time, while the choir sang on.
WHEN SYLVIA WOKE up on Monday morning, she didn’t know where she was. There was no clue because the shades were drawn, it was entirely dark, and she had no idea where the light switch was. It was frightening in an existential way, the verge of not knowing who she was. After what seemed a long time, her memory of all that had occurred to bring her to her aunt’s house in Detroit returned and she figured it out, but it was still dark and her panic lingered. So she closed her eyes to control the darkness by making it her own. She lay in that blindness for another moment, marveling that she actually hadn’t known where she was in the world, until she heard a door open and footsteps, and her aunt saying, “Up you get, Sylvia,” sounding more like a boss on a mission than a loving aunt, and the light went on.
Sylvia sat up and swung her legs off the sofa, relieved to stretch them out, but she sat very still, postponing getting dressed. “You nervous about today?” Aunt M asked. Sylvia nodded. She was eager for the day, but she felt like she did when she was getting up the nerve to dive into the river’s cold water for the summer’s first swim.
“It’s natural.” Aunt M pointed at the stove’s clock. It was seven in the morning. “We leave in twenty minutes.” She gave Sylvia cold cereal and toast. Her own breakfast consisted of two cups of black coffee.
On the way to Aunt M’s apartment, they had stopped at a grocery store near the airport and when Sylvia wondered why Aunt M shopped there instead of at a store near where she lived, Aunt M stared at her.
“Oh,” Sylvia had said, embarrassed to have been so slow.
“Good. Because you are about to graduate, and I wouldn’t give a diploma to anybody who didn’t get it. But guess what?” Aunt M had glanced up at the roof of her car as if a new idea were written there. “Maybe we could pressure the city to revoke the permits of the big national groceries to operate in any of the neighborhoods if they don’t do in all of them. What do you think of that idea? You could stay on and help me figure it out if you want.”
“I can’t. You know that. I have to graduate.”
“Of course, hon. But what are you doing this summer?”
The question wasn’t just about “this summer.” Aunt M had really asked, What are you gonna do with the rest of your life? “I’ll think about it,” Sylvia had said. She wasn’t prepared to say more.
Now, in the car, driving Sylvia to the school through streets edged with filthy snow left by the plows, past tired-looking single-family houses in various stages of disrepair, some of which were boarded up, Aunt M said, “Don’t expect anything to be like what’s been planned for the two weeks you’re here. You know the old saying, life is what happens when you’re planning something else. Just relax and go with whatever happens. Get into it, deep as you can go. You’ll be fine.” She pointed to the glove compartment. “There’s a bus schedule in there for getting yourself home.”
Aunt M delivered Sylvia to the school early, before the children arrived. As instructed by her, Sylvia went to the principal’s office where the principal’s secretary, an almost elderly white woman in a red sweater, greeted her enthusiastically and told her she was assigned to Section C of the third grade. Sylvia walked down a long, dark hall and entered a large classroom. It was decorated with children’s work and photographs of notable Black Americans on the walls. But paint was peeling from the ceiling plaster, which sported a brown stain where the roof had leaked, and the windows were streaked with grime. Sylvia wasn’t surprised. She’d read plenty of articles about the disrepair of inner-city schools. Nevertheless, it was a shock to be in such a place. It had never occurred to her that buildings where she went to school at Miss O’s were actually clean and freshly painted.
“Yes?” the teacher said, a handsome middle-aged Black woman in a navy-blue pantsuit, sitting at a desk in the front.
“I’m Sylvia Bickham.”
“And?”
“This is Section C, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. If you are here to enroll your child, that’s not done here. This is where we teach.”
“Oh, I didn’t come here for that!” Sylvia said, shocked for the second time in as many minutes. “I’m not a mother. I came here to help. I’m here with the project about the buses.”
“You know, the ones they want to park.”
“Park?”
“They didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“I can’t believe they didn’t tell you.”
“Please, just tell me, okay?”
Sylvia explained. When she finished outlining the strategy to defeat the plan by keeping the families well rested and comfortable until it was time, the teacher said, “And you actually think that’s going to work? Where do you think they’re going to put the buses? Where people don’t even use them? And anyway, I never heard about your project. I am a substitute teacher. I got the call just this morning. The teacher for this room is sick. She’s coming back tomorrow.”
“Oh, that explains why you didn’t hear about it. My aunt told me stuff like this would happen. But here I am. I want to help.”
“But that won’t work. With you in the room it would be like two subs. I have a routine down for taking over a class of third graders I never have laid eyes on. I actually get a lot done, believe it or not. But if I had to stop and break you in—”
“I’ll just watch. By tomorrow I’ll know how to help. I can’t just turn around and go home.”
“I told you, I won’t be here tomorrow.” The teacher left her desk, went to the blackboard where she wrote My name is Mrs. Abbott. Without looking at Sylvia, she said, “Now please, I have to get ready.”
Sylvia was surprised by how hurt she was. She didn’t even know this woman. “All right, I’ll find someone else to help,” she said, and turned to leave as the third graders began to pile into the classroom. They came up to her hips, brushing against her on both sides. She felt the warmth of them. Their brown faces, momentarily curious, looked up at hers. “Take your seats, children,” Mrs. Abbott said.
Sylvia returned to the principal’s office and told the secretary what had happened. “Can you assign me to some other teacher?”
“Who does that Mrs. Abbott think she is, the queen of the universe?” the secretary wanted to know. “You just go back and tell her that you’ve been assigned to her and that’s that.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can. You just go back down the hall and tell her.”
“I won’t do that.”
The secretary sighed. “You’re right. I wouldn’t either. The principal will have to assign you to someone else. But he’s at a meeting in the district office. He won’t be back till eleven.”
“But it’s only eight-thirty.”
The secretary shrugged.
“Why can’t you assign me?”
“Because I’m not the principal.” She pointed to a chair.
Sylvia thought she might call her aunt and ask her to fix the problem. She couldn’t remember feeling so unwanted, ignored, useless, and alien. But she’d be embarrassed to have to ask for help. And anyway, Aunt M would tell her to figure it out for herself. So she sat down in the chair, determined to wait, the only way she could think of to fix the problem. She was immediately bored though, staring at the clock on the wall, with nothing else to do, nothing to read. It looked like every clock in every school, even the ones in the classrooms of Miss Oliver’s School for girls; they were always the same, she was sure, second hands jerking from one mark to another, round and round all over the world. “The hell with this!” she said, standing up and marching out of the office.
“Where you going?” the secretary called after her.
Sylvia didn’t answer. She went down the hall and entered the first classroom she came to.
There were at least thirty children in the room, several years older than the third graders. A huge man bent over a table where four children sat. He was listening intently to what they were telling him. One of the children at the table pointed to Sylvia where she was still standing just inside the door. He looked up and saw her there. He seemed even bigger now that he wasn’t bending over. He was bald. A Black man in his forties, in a white shirt and a blue tie and black trousers. “I’ve been assigned to this room,” Sylvia said.
He shot her a doubtful look. “You have?” His voice was deep and rasping.
Sylvia nodded.
He grinned. “Well, come on in then. What’s your name?”
“Sylvia Bickham.”
“And you are here to do” He paused, no longer grinning. “What?”
She started to say “to help,” then changed her mind. The children were watching her. “Whatever you tell me to do.”
“Good. That’s the first rule in this classroom. Everybody does exactly what Mr. Carpenter tells them to do.” He looked around the classroom. “Now sixth graders, what do we say to Ms. Bickham?”
“Good morning, Ms. Bickham,” the children chanted in unison.
“Louder, please.”
“GOOD MORNING, MS. BICKHAM!”
“Excellent,” Mr. Carpenter said. “Now back to work.” He gestured to Sylvia to come to the table of four children where he was still standing.
Sylvia crossed the room. Two boys and two girls looked up at her. She was surprised at how big sixth graders were. Beside her, Mr. Carpenter towered. “Who wants to get Ms. Bickham a chair?” he asked. All four put up a hand. Mr. Carpenter smiled. “Shall we let Charlene?” All four dropped their hands and looked at each other. “Charlene, will you get a chair for Ms. Bickham?” Charlene was tiny, her hair in cornrows. She jumped up and went to a table where one of the chairs was empty and tried to pick it up, but it was too big for her. Sylvia moved to help her. Mr. Carpenter put his huge hand on her elbow and held her back. Charlene pushed the chair across the floor, making a squeaky noise, to where Sylvia was standing. She looked up and smiled at Sylvia.
“Thanks, Charlene,” Sylvia said, sitting down in the chair, “but my name is Sylvia.”
“No, it isn’t,” Mr. Carpenter said. “These are professional students. Your name is Ms. Bickham. They’ll tell you what they are doing. And how you can help.” He moved to another table and bent over the children there.
The four sixth graders were silent, their eyes on her, waiting for her to ask what they were doing. Only six years ago she was their age. Her skin was brown too. So why did she feel shy? A square of cardboard was in the center of the table. Placed in the left-hand upper corner of it was a picture of a bottle of Pepsi that had obviously been cut out of an advertisement in a magazine. “What’s that?” she said.
“It’s science,” Charlene said.
“Oh? Can you explain? But first tell me your names.”
They each told their names, except Charlene who said proudly, “You already know.” Brandon was tall with long arms. Sylvia was tempted to ask him if he played basketball. “I do too,” she would have said. Lavinia was a beautiful child, already wearing an assertive look. Sylvia imagined a powerful and glamorous woman ten years from then. Parker wore glasses and was so short, only the top of his chest was above the table.
“We’re studying the ingredients,” Parker said. “They’re written on the bottle.”
“Studying?”
“Yeah, what they do to our bodies.”
“Like sugar,” Charlene said. “See?” She pointed to a composition book. “We’re gonna write it all down there.”
“Can I see?”
“Got nothing in it yet. We just got started yesterday. Mr. Carpenter gave us the picture of the Pepsi bottle. The other tables got different drinks.”
“And you pasted it on the cardboard?”
“Not yet,” Brandon said. He put his hand on the picture and slid it around on the cardboard. “We haven’t decided where it goes yet. We have to put the statement about what the ingredients do in it too.”
“Oh, you’re making a poster to show what happens when you drink Pepsi.”
They glanced at each other as if she were maybe simpleminded.
“I get it. What a great idea!”
“And we’re going to put them up on the bulletin boards in the halls so everybody can see them. But first we’re going to talk about them in assembly,” Brandon said.
“And then you know what we’re going to do?” Lavinia said, leaning forward. “Make an advertisement for Pepsi.”
“An advertisement”
Lavinia wagged her head up and down. “You know why? So we’ll know how advertisements do us.”
“Wow!” Sylvia said. “What an amazing project! Tell me how I can help.”
“Maybe when we write the letter?” Parker said.
“Letter?”
“To the boss of Pepsi.”
“Oh!”
“We’re going to tell him what’s in Pepsi,” Brandon said.
“And ask him why he doesn’t stop,” Parker said.
“Maybe you should ask him when, not why,” Sylvia said.
They all looked at each other. “You think?” Charlene said.
“You can decide when you get to that part,” Sylvia said.
“Yeah, we have three whole weeks before we get to that part,” Lavinia said, pointing to a schedule posted on a bulletin board. “We can wait till then.” The three other children turned to see the schedule; they nodded their heads. Then they turned back to face Sylvia.
“You gonna still be with us?” Charlene asked.
They all waited.
“Are you?” Charlene persisted.
“I’m supposed to be here for only two weeks.”
“Supposed to be?” Lavinia said. “What’s that mean?”
“I have to get back to my own school or I won’t graduate.”
Lavinia and Brandon glanced at each other and shrugged. The message was clear: they weren’t worth three whole weeks of anybody’s time. Except Mr. Carpenter’s, but he was different. Parker didn’t have any reaction at all. Charlene stared at Sylvia. For the rest of the science period, and then all the other periods until the end of day, whenever Sylvia looked up, there were Charlene’s eyes on her.
At precisely seven minutes before the three-thirty ending bell, Mr. Carpenter said, “Professionals, its clean-up time. Begin the process.” He paused. The children watched him intently. He clapped his hands. “Now!” There was a busy scramble, an orchestrated pandemonium whereby the children cleared everything off the tables, returning each item to its exact and only place. They wiped the tables with rags which they refolded reverently and placed neatly in a drawer at the back of the room. They pushed the chairs in against the tables and stood at attention behind them.
Mr. Carpenter moved to the door. “Ms. Bickham, will you be here tomorrow?”
“She’s gonna stay two weeks,” Charlene blurted.
“Charlene, I was speaking to Ms. Bickham.”
“Sorry, Mr. Carpenter.”
“Charlene’s right. I’m staying two weeks,” Sylvia said.
“Two weeks.” He seemed to be mulling over whether that was too short a time or too long.
“If you want me,” Sylvia said.
He smiled. “I’ve watched you. We do.”
The bell rang.
“Table One,” Mr. Carpenter said. The four children at the table farthest from the door stood up, marched to the door. He shook each child’s hand as they passed him and went out. The pattern repeated itself for seven more tables, emptying the room from the back until the classroom was transmogrified into a hollow space. Mr. Carpenter suddenly looked tired. Or maybe just drained of energy, Sylvia thought. That’s different.
He crossed to his desk in the front left corner of the room and folded himself into a chair behind it. “So what do you think?” he said in his dark, rasping voice. “Are we doing all right?”
“Why are you asking me? I don’t know anything.”
“Yes you do. You went to school.”
“I still do. It’s different though. It’s a prep school. Nobody tells us where to put things. When a class is over, we just walk out.”
He made a dismissive gesture with his huge hand and asked his question again. “Are we doing all right?”
“We? I don’t know. I’ve only watched you.”
“I know. You were assigned to Mrs. Abbott, but she didn’t want your help.”
“Oh, you knew.”
He smiled. “She never wants help. And you need to practice lying.”
She flushed and looked away.
“Mrs. Abbott’s a good teacher.”
“She is?” she said, still looking away.
“You surprised?”
Sylvia turned to him again “No, I guess not. But she told me she doesn’t believe in the anti-bus project.”
“Of course not. They could put the buses where she lives, in the suburbs. Would you want that?”
Now she was sure he was mocking her, though gently. It was almost fun.
“So, how are we doing?” he asked for third time. “Are these kids going to make it?”
“They will if all their teachers are like you! Professional students. That’s wonderful. And that science project? That’s as good as anything we have at our school. It would work just as well for high school kids. I’m going to tell my mother about it.”
“Your mother’s a science teacher?”
“For just one class. It’s all she has time for. She’s the head of school.”
“Your mom’s the head of the school where you go? How’s that work?”
“It works okay.”
“Really?”
Sylvia shrugged. “Most of the time.”
“Well, that’s all you can ask for, I suppose.” He stood and looked at his watch. “I’m almost late. I tutor in the after-school. You want to come with me?”
Sylvia hesitated. She had planned to go back to her aunt’s house and get supper before she went to the gym. She said, “I have to be at the gym by seven to help the kids get organized.”
“So do I. I’m in charge.”
“That too?”
“Yep. That too.”
“Okay, sure,” she said, trying to sound eager. “I’d love to help tutor.”
“Well, come on, then.”
MR. CARPENTER ASSIGNED her to a table of four girls who were doing math in workbooks. Two were doing long division, and the other two converting fractions into decimals. They were sullen with boredom, uncooperative, fidgety, and tired. One look at the workbook format and Sylvia was just as bored as they were. Mr. Carpenter must not have had time yet to design the after-school math program. She planned to ask him about it. She worked hard, though, to help the kids get interested. She failed, struggled on stubbornly, and was enormously relieved when, after an hour, recess began. Out on the playground, which was entirely paved in black cement, not a blade of grass in sight, she broke up a fight between two girls and even persuaded them toward a grudging truce. When recess was over, she was assigned to read to the youngest children. She sat on the floor in a circle with them. One of the little boys kept drowsing off. Sylvia moved across the circle and put the boy’s head on her lap and the child put his thumb in his mouth and fell fast asleep. Sylvia felt a rush of tenderness and pride. She knew that Mr. Carpenter would notice.
The after-school program was supposed to end at six, but the last child was picked up at quarter to seven. There’d be no time for supper. She rode to the gym with Mr. Carpenter in his car, a new and shiny Chevy. “It belongs to my wife,” he said. “She’s a banker. The bank’s not far away from where we live. She likes the walk.” Then he asked her to tell him about her prep school.
She discovered she didn’t want to talk about Miss Oliver’s, said only that it’s a boarding school for girls, and asked him about his family. “You’re very good at the changing the subject. Do they teach that at Miss Oliver’s School?” He laughed at his little joke—which surprised her. He didn’t seem like the kind of person who ever laughed. He told her about his wife and two boys, one a senior in high school, the other a sophomore at Oberlin.
By the time they arrived at the high school parking lot, it was well after seven. They heard the roar of a crowd and a referee’s whistle as they got out of the car. “A basketball game?” Mr. Carpenter said. He and Sylvia ran across the parking lot into the school to discover that the children and their accompanying adults were already there, about a hundred people in the hall outside of the gym, many holding little ones in their arms.
Mr. Carpenter, with Sylvia beside him, moved through the crowd and confronted a very large Black man in a dark suit and red tie who stood in front of the big doors to the gym, blocking the way. “What’s happening?” Mr. Carpenter asked him. “We’re supposed to—”
“What’s happening! You kidding? This is the biggest game of the year.”
“But its seven o’clock.”
“Yeah, it was supposed to be an away game, but all of a sudden it gets changed to a home game. Why? I’m just the vice principal. What do I know? Ha.”
“So we’ll use the classrooms.”
“You can’t do that. You don’t have permission.”
“Yes we do. You just gave it to us. Remember?”
The vice principal didn’t answer, and Mr. Carpenter turned to face the waiting people. “Change of plans, people. Follow me.”
He led them to the second floor where, because the lights were out, they milled around in the dark. One of the children started to cry. Sylvia felt along a wall, searching blindly for the light switch while the child’s crying became a scream of frustration. “Shh,” someone attempted to soothe. The lights came on, someone other than Sylvia having found the switch. The bulbs were dimmed by the dirt covering them, their pallid yellow light revealing a long, tiled, exhausted-looking hall lined with classroom doors. The squares of material forming the ceiling hung down at the corners. No one seemed to notice. Sylvia saw a white-haired woman rock the crying infant in her arms, her long, comely fingers cupping the back of his head. Sylvia felt a rush of tenderness for the second time that day.
Mr. Carpenter’s rasping voice sounded over the child’s. He asked for two adult volunteers for each of the eight rooms, four on each side of the hall, to move the desks and chairs out of the way. “So the children can sleep on the floor. But, please, before you move anything, memorize where everything is, so we can put everything back right where it was when we leave. I don’t want one single teacher to find anything different from the way he or she left it.” He paused. “All right?”
The infant’s crying had stopped. Every eye was on Mr. Carpenter. People nodded their heads. Sylvia was lifted in a surge of pride for him—and for these people too—as if she’d known them since long before that day.
It took about half an hour to get the children and their accompanying adults into the rooms, the children bedded down on mats on the floor. Many of the adults lay down beside them. Sylvia and Mr. Carpenter each took a side of the hall, popping in and out of the classrooms, assisting wherever assistance was needed. “Just make sure everything is all right,” Mr. Carpenter said. He looked at his watch. “About three hours from now we’ll get the message that’s it time to wake them up and get them across the street to the hearing.” After a while, there was no more cheering from the gym. Quiet descended. “It’s all good,” Mr. Carpenter said. “Go on in to one of the classrooms and take a nap. It’s going to be a long night.”
Sylvia shook her head. If he was going to stay awake and watch over things, she would too.
At exactly eleven o’clock, Mr. Carpenter’s cell phone rang. “Here it is!” he said. “It’s time to get the children over there.” He pressed the speaker button on his phone and held it up for her to hear.
An agitated male voice yelled over the sound of lots of people talking. “We’re screwed, man. Everything’s fucked.”
“What?” Mr. Carpenter said.
“All the lights are out. Can’t see nothing. These motherfuckers are smart, man. I was getting ready to call you ’cause the lawyers’ time was about up, and bam, they all go out.”
“Well, turn them back on.”
No answer from the messenger, just the background noise of angry voices.
“You already tried,” Mr. Carpenter said.
“You’re lucky you still have lights over there,” the man said. “They must have figured you’d take too long to leave and go home if it was dark. Right now, they’re telling us the fire department’s on its way over here to lead us out. But nobody’s waiting. We’re using the lights on our phones. We ain’t waiting for no fire department.”
Mr. Carpenter looked suddenly exhausted. He ended the call and put the phone back in his pocket. “We should have seen this coming.”
“What now?” Sylvia asked.
“We get these children home.”
“That’s it? We give up?”
“Oh no. They have to finish the hearing. They’ll move it to some place miles from here. We’ll have to organize the transportation.”
“My aunt can do that.”
“In a heartbeat,” Mr. Carpenter said, but he still looked tired. “Now let’s wake up these people. You work that side of the hall”—he pointed to his right—“I’ll take this. Just say the lights went out. The grown-ups will know why. They won’t be surprised. Make sure the kids understand they are still going to have their chance.”
He turned and headed for a classroom on his side of the hall. She crossed to her side of the hall, put her hand on the handle of the door to a classroom, wondering why she felt so presumptuous. She was just delivering a message, that’s all. She opened the door, walked in, and right away smelled the stuffiness of the air. Why hadn’t they opened the windows? Several adults sitting in chairs at the front of the room, looked up at her. One them stood up, an elderly woman still in her overcoat. “Is it time?”
Sylvia shook her head. Several adults who had been lying down with their children stood up. Some of the children stirred in their sleep. How cruel to have to wake them! She gave the message exactly as instructed. As soon as she was finished, she didn’t feel presumptuous anymore. She was one of them now.
She made the same announcement in the three other rooms on her side of the hall, and then she helped the children wake up and helped them get their winter clothes back on and all the furniture back in their original places, and when the school was finally empty, Mr. Carpenter drove her to her Aunt M’s house. He walked with her to the door of the building and waited there until she was safely in. It was one o’clock in the morning.