Girls in Trouble (26 page)

When the first of the parents arrived to pick up the kids, Eva was playing Frisbee with a group of them, and none of the kids wanted to leave. “Can’t we stay?” they pleaded.

Gradually, Eva’s hold loosened. The Frisbees fell, the streamers slid to the floor, the kids ran to their mothers, their grandmothers, their nannies.

“See you tomorrow,” Eva called to John and Jack and Harry and Emma, and in the end, it was just Eva and Anne in the chaos of the room.

Eva knelt down by Anne. Both of Anne’s pigtails were undone and Eva smoothed them back. “Did you have fun today?” she asked.

“A lot,” Anne said.

“What was the best part?”

Anne was quiet for a moment, surveying the room. “The books?” she asked.

“Honey, I’m not looking for a right answer,” Eva persisted. “You don’t have to try and please me. I just want to know what you liked. The picnic? The streamers?”

“The books,” she said, and despite her best efforts, Eva deflated.

“Well, good,” Eva said quickly. “I’m glad you had a good time.” Anne shot her an anxious look and then bowed her head. “What is it?” Eva asked. “Are you crying again?”

“Do you like them better than you like me?” Anne whispered and Eva felt something splintering inside of her heart. “How could you even dream such a thing?” Eva asked. “Who’s my girl?” she said. “Who’s my absolute favorite, most loved girl?”

“I love you, Mommy,” Anne said, and Eva bent and held her until Anne pulled away.

By third grade, Anne’s teachers were writing on her report card, “She doesn’t apply herself. She’s off in her own world dreaming.”

Anne was always reading, always telling stories. At dinner she told George and Eva that she had seen a lion in the neighborhood but she had
fed it cookies and it went home. “Oh, a cookie-loving lion,” George said. “My favorite kind.”

On the way to school, Anne told Eva that she thought she was growing angel wings under her dress. “Don’t fly away on us,” Eva said, grabbing hold of Anne’s hand.

When Eva took Anne to the park or the make-your-own pottery place or the pizza parlor, she saw other children in groups, their mothers hovering nearby. “Would you like to make a play-date with someone?” she asked Anne, and Anne shrugged and picked at a scab on her knee until Eva swatted her hand away.

“She needs friends,” Eva told George. “Maybe we should just call some of the other mothers and arrange something.”

“You can’t force friendships,” George said. “And I don’t think we should push her. You wait. She’ll have plenty of friends soon enough.”

Eva only felt a little better when Anne came home one day and announced she had a new best friend at school. “Darnelle,” she said proudly. For weeks, all Anne talked about was this other little girl Darnelle. Darnelle could sing songs backward. Darnelle knew how to speak French. Eva was thrilled that Anne had found a friend. “Invite Darnelle over,” Eva suggested. “We can make cookies together. Or make our own Play-Doh.”

Anne shrugged. Eva kept nudging her to call and finally Anne burst into tears. “We aren’t friends anymore. Darnelle hit me.”

“She hit you?” Eva said, shocked.

Eva didn’t tell Anne that she called her teacher, that she wanted to find out who this Darnelle thought she was. “Darnelle?” Anne’s teacher said to Eva. “Who’s Darnelle? There’s no girl in our class with that name.”

“Why didn’t you tell us the truth?” Eva asked Anne. “Darnelle wasn’t real.”

“She was to me,” Anne said.

She needs realfriends,
Eva kept thinking, even as Anne began playing by herself again. She’d race across the backyard, head thrown back. She jumped rope singing to herself or rode her bike, and she liked to write stories, too, filling up the brightly colored notebooks Eva gave her. Eva tried to coax a look, but Anne held the pad to her chest.

“It’s private,” Anne said.

“Why can’t we see? I know I’ll love anything you do.”

“You promise?” Anne asked.

“I don’t have to promise, I
know.
What’s the story?”

“Oh, let her alone,” George said. He winked at Anne, who laughed. “Our little Greta Garbo. ‘I vant to be a-lone,’” he said and tickled her.

Eva personally hated to be alone. She had always loved big groups and lots of noise, which was one reason why Eva loved teaching preschool. She was thrilled when Anne found girls she liked to be with, real flesh-and-blood friends that Eva liked, too. Anne had first met Flor and June in third grade, two new girls in her class. She came home solemnly asking if she could have them over. “Are you kidding?” Eva said.

The girls came the next day, scrambling up her walk, two bright-faced little girls in brown pigtails and stretchy-waist jeans. They came the next day, too, making Eva’s house a habit, making themselves at home, pouring their own juice, turning the TV on and off. Eva was always on the phone with their mothers, assuring them she’d get the girls home on time, asking could the girls stay for dinner, could the girls sleep over with Anne? Eva grew to expect them, to buy extra juice and cookies so there would always be enough on hand. She was always bandaging their bumps and scrapes, drying their tears and doling out hugs. Sometimes she interrupted their play to ask if they’d like to test-drive a project she was going to try out with her class: making bread from scratch! “Of course, the project is for much younger kids, but I could use the expertise of a few ten-year-olds,” she said. The girls giggled, pleased. They were happy enough to get messy in the kitchen with Eva. She gave them each one of her T-shirts to put over their clothes so they wouldn’t get too dirty. She helped them tie their hair back and showed them how to pound the dough with their hands, how to shape it. She turned to rinse a glass.

“What are you doing? You big silly!” Flor cried, and Eva turned, glass in hand, and saw Anne pushing both elbows into the dough, the same way Sara had when Eva had taught her how to make bread, and for a moment, seeing that gesture, those red curls, it was like seeing a ghost. Eva felt catapulted back in time, when she hadn’t been able to wait for Sara to come to the house, when she couldn’t speak a paragraph without Sara being in it,
and she suddenly missed Sara, only this time, the anger was gone, and now there was only a confusion of yearning and guilt and grief. “Pull your hair back so you don’t get dough in it,” Eva said to Anne.

“You’re spilling water!” June called to Eva and Eva, confused, tilted the glass upright. She walked over to Anne and took her arms. “Not like that,” she said, steadying her voice. “Use your hands. Warm the dough with their heat. See? The way I’m doing?”

“Ow!” Anne looked at her, astonished.

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry—” Eva said. Anne looked down at the dough, but not at Eva. Slowly, she started to knead it, and then Eva turned away to finish the dishes.

They were all laughing, and then Anne left the room, and ten minutes later, Flor said, “Where’s Anne?”

They found her in the backyard, sitting on a swing.

“Anne, you big dodo,” said Flor, “get your butt in here.”

“You said
butt,”
June said, delighted. Then she turned to Anne. “Are you in a mood?”

“I just wanted to be outside for a while,” Anne said, sliding off the swing.

Eva looked at the other girls, how their faces fell and then recom-posed, and then she felt a sudden kinship. /
know how you feel,
she wanted to tell them.

Inside, Eva spread out colored paper and handed out crayons.

“I wish you were my mother,” Flor said, grabbing for a bright green crayon.

“No, I wish, you were
my
mother,” June said.

“She’s
my
mom,” Anne said quickly. “My mommy.”

“Can we come live here?” said June.

“You can visit,” Anne said.

One day, walking by, Eva heard the girls telling stories to each other. She leaned against the wall and listened to one story, and then another, the girls interrupting each other excitedly, adding details, asking questions. The stories were centered around one girl named Betsy, a girl much like
them. Betsy had adventures at camp with a big spanking machine. Betsy was at boarding school with a mean headmistress. The thing that disturbed Eva was that Betsy was an orphan.

She walked into the room. “Great stories, girls,” she said.

“We’ve been working hard,” Flor said. “We’re all writing our own stories, but we talk about what the story’s going to be before we write it.”

June held up a purple crayon importantly. “And we’re
illustrating
them.”

“What happened to Betsy’s parents?” Eva asked.

“They died,” Anne said simply. “That’s it.
Kerplunk.”

Unnerved, Eva looked at Flor and June. “In your stories, too? The parents died?”

“Oh yes,” said June. “That’s the way we do it. All the same.”

“But how does this girl live?” Eva asked.

“Her parents were millionaires and she gets the money.”

“But she has to have a guardian, someone looking over her, doesn’t she?”

Flor and June looked suddenly worried. “Maybe she’s adopted,” June said, and Eva grew still, but Anne shook her head. “She’s not adopted. She’s a millionaire,” Anne said.

Eva went into the other room and sat down, stroking at her temples. Orphans. Adoptions. At the school this year, in another class, there was one mother with two adopted Chinese kids, and every Sunday she sent them to Chinese school so they could know and understand their own heritage. There was another mother who had an adopted boy whose birth mother came to see him every year and stayed in the house. “She’s a member of the family,” the woman had said. “We love her to pieces!”

She and George never talked about Sara anymore. They never discussed if they’d tell Anne about her birth mother or when, and when Eva thought about it, she grew frightened. She got up and went to Anne and held her as if she might contain her in her arms forever. God help her, but the answer to that question of telling was always
not yet.

She heard Anne sobbing. Alarmed, she got up and ran into the other room. Flor and June were murmuring over Anne, rubbing her back, stroking her hair. “What happened? What is it?” Eva cried.

“The headmistress is dead,” said Flor.

“The who?”

“The headmistress. From our stories. We killed her off.”

Eva knelt down beside Anne. “It’s only a story,” Eva said, and Anne wrenched away from her. “Honey” said Eva. Seeing her daughter so upset made her upset, too. “I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching out to hold Anne, who cried louder.

“Okay, okay, the headmistress doesn’t die,” Flor blurted. “Let’s have her just get sick and then recover and she loses her memory and is a nice person. Anne, it’s just a
story.”

Anne snuffled and looked up and then a little smile spread across Anne’s face. “And we can draw her in a pretty new dress,” she said.

It ruffled Eva that the girls could comfort Anne when she herself couldn’t, but she told herself that the important thing was that Anne had been comforted, that she had stopped crying. And she liked those girls. She was sorry when they went home.

“Come back anytime,” she told them.

“Come back! Come back!” Anne waved so hard she had to support one hand with the other. “Please come back!”

The house felt newly quiet. Eva cleaned up the crayons.

“You look like a princess, Mommy,” Anne blurted, and Eva looked over at her.

“I do?”

“Like in one of my stories. Like the headmistress.”

“The headmistress? I thought she was evil!”

“No, no, she’s nice!”

Eva bent and kissed Anne, lightly, barely a butterfly brush. “Want to help me make dinner?” she asked Anne, but Anne shook her head. “I want to work on my story,” she said. “I want to make sure the headmistress doesn’t die.”

Eva started. “Honey, I thought you all wrote her back alive.”

“But what if she doesn’t stay that way?”

“She will, honey.”

When George got home, Anne didn’t run out to greet him the way she usually did. “Hey, I miss that!” he said. They went to find out what was
wrong, and there, in the den, curled in a chair, sleeping, scribbled pages all around her, was Anne. “Let’s get this bunny rabbit to bed,” George said. He gently picked her up and they settled her under the covers. “Sweet dreams, princess,” George said.

That night, long after Eva and George were asleep, Anne woke with a nightmare. “Mommy!” she screamed. “Mommy!”

Startled, Eva threw back the covers. George roused, blinking. “She always calls for you,” Eva said. “Go back to sleep—it’s okay.” He burrowed under the covers.

She dashed into Anne’s room. Anne was sitting up, sweating, her hair damp, clutching the sheets. “Mommy!” she cried.

“It’s okay,” Eva soothed. “I’m here. I’m here.”

She stroked back Anne’s hair and kissed her forehead. “Don’t go,” Anne whispered, grabbing Eva’s hand. “There’s a monster in here.”

Eva lay down on the bed beside her daughter. “There’s no monster,” Eva promised.

“Go look,” Anne urged.

Eva turned on the lights. She looked under the bed and behind the dresser. She looked in the closet and opened every drawer. “No monsters,” she promised, and then she put her hand on the door.

“Mommy, don’t go!” Anne said, sitting up, alarmed.

“You want me to stay?” Eva asked, coming over to the bed and sitting. Anne threw her arm about Eva. “You won’t die, will you?”

“Honey, no,” Eva said, shocked. “I’m right here. I’ll never leave you, don’t you know that?” She smoothed one hand over Anne’s hair, she drew her close. The story, she thought. That silly story about the headmistress had upset her.

The bed was just a twin, too narrow for the two of them. Eva wasn’t tired, there were lesson plans she had to do, but there was nothing in the world that would have compelled her to move. In minutes, Anne was asleep, one hand resting on Eva’s shoulder. Eva lay there beside her, keeping still, so as not to dislodge Anne’s hand from her shoulder.