Queen Esther & the Second Graders of Doom. Allie Pleiter

honey…” began her mother.

      “Pop, all she’s…”

      Pop’s next booming question stopped the argument in its tracks: “What on earth is that in my grandson’s mouth?”

      “Now, who knows the story of Jonah?”

      Four cookie-crumbed hands shot up. Essie passed out a second set of napkins before she allowed Justin to answer.

      “He got stuck inside a fish.”

      Essie smiled. “He sure did. You were listening in assembly this morning, Justin. Who knows how he got there?”

      Stanton, a tall boy in pressed pants and gelled hair, strained to get his hand as high as possible. He yipped a series of small “Me! Me! Me!” s. Frantic to be picked, he seemed oblivious to the fact that his was the only hand aloft.

      “Stanton?”

      “I bet he was swimming. My dad, he took us swimming once, on vacation, and I was really worried about the fishes when we were swimming. I didn’t want to swim where the fishes were, but he told me pools don’t have fishes,’ specially hotel pools. And we were in a hotel ’cuz we were on vacation and stuff, ’cuz we went on vacation over Christmas and we got to go somewhere warm so we could go swimming, but my big brother got in trouble ’cuz he…” The entire speech whooshed out of him in a single breath.

      “Okay,” Essie cut in, placing her hand on Stanton’s arm. The boy was wearing a watch. A fancy one. Who buys designer watches for their eight-year-old? Dahlia Mannington, of course. For all his dapper duds, Stanton was a sweet boy with tender green eyes and a near insatiable appetite for attention.

      “Swimming is fun. But Jonah wasn’t swimming for fun. Can anyone tell me why Jonah was in the water?”

      “It’s hot where he lives!” said Decker Maxwell, as he tipped his chair back far enough to send himself head over heels. The resulting laughter stopped any hope of education dead in its tracks for the next five minutes, as all the other boys tried immediately to follow suit. Essie finally had to resume her lesson on the floor in a circle, without the benefit of chairs. She tried to ignore the sensation of her legs falling asleep as she patiently suggested that Jonah was running from God’s commands.

      “Did Jonah get a time-out? I wanna do my time-outs in whale guts!” Peter, a smaller boy with wildly curly hair and an obsession with all things bug-and animal-related, pushed his glasses back up on his face as he joined the conversation.

      “Well,” replied Essie, catching a pencil as Stanton sent it through the air in another boy’s direction, “it was sort of a time-out. In one way, God saved Jonah because he wouldn’t have survived being thrown out into the middle of the ocean like that. But in another way, God gave Jonah a good long time to think about what he’d done.”

      “My mom does that,” grumbled Peter. “In my ‘Think It Over Chair.’” He crossed his arms over his chest in an exaggerated fashion that made his next comment almost unnecessary. “I hate my Think It Over Chair.”

      “Discipline isn’t much fun, is it?” Essie passed around the large blue whales she’d spent two hours cutting out last night.

      “What’s dicey-pline?”

      “Di-sci-pline.” Essie made a mental note to strike any word over three syllables from her lesson plan. “It’s what your mom or dad does to help you think about something wrong you’ve done.”

      “You mean like getting spanked?” Steven Bendenfogle offered. Essie continually felt sorry for a little boy with such a mouthful of a last name. She guessed Steven’s meek demeanor came from endless teasing.

      “That’s one kind of discipline, yes.”

      “God spanked somebody?” Steven seemed scandalized at the idea. “Wow, I bet God hits really hard.” Essie wondered if Steven even realized he was rubbing his backside protectively. Which made her wonder if Steven had considerable personal experience. Did people still spank their kids?

      Would she ever spank Josh? It seemed hard to imagine. She couldn’t fathom doing anything like that to her son. Then again, when Decker took the paper whale lovingly prepared for him, crumpled it without a moment’s hesitation, and threw it straight into Steven’s face—hard—Essie could see where a spanking might have its uses.

      Well, she’d taken on this class as a chance to see what young boys were really like. Oh, Essie, she chided herself, when will you realize it isn’t always great when you get what you pray for?

      “God has never spanked someone, Steven. He— Decker, uncrumple that whale right now, you’re going to need it in a minute. And say you’re sorry to Steven. Nobody throws anything at anyone in this class. God’s so smart, He can find different ways to let us know we’ve not obeyed.”

      “I still like the whale guts,” said Peter, obviously disappointed that a stint in whale innards wasn’t in his immediate future. “I bet they smell really gross.”

      The suggestion sent the boys into a flurry of stinky adjectives, each in a full-out competition to find the grossest possible description for how bad whale guts would smell. How can I hope to teach obedience here, Lord, when I can’t get past the stinky whale guts?

      Just when she thought she could restore order, Peter remembered the lyrics to “Gobs and Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts,” a revolting camp song Essie was horrified to discover had still survived even from her childhood. Within seconds all decorum was lost. Essie stood up as fast as her thirty-one-year-old knees would allow, bellowed out a menacing, “Settle down!” in her most authoritative voice and flicked the light switch. It sent the room into darkness.

      That shocked ’em. All noise and movement stilled.

      “When I turn these lights on, I want everyone to pick up their paper whale and come back quietly to the table. Okay?”

      A few whimpered “Okay” s signaled her return to superiority.

      “Now,” Essie said in a calm voice as she turned the lights back on, “I want each of you to think about something that you know you should do, but is hard. Something that you know you have to do, but you don’t always want to do. Those things are like Jonah’s trip to Ninevah. We’re going to write those things on your whales. Raise your hand when you have an idea of what to write, and I’ll come help you.”

      Peter’s hand shot up first. “I hate getting my allergy shots.”

      Essie nodded in agreement. “That’s a good example. It’s no fun, but you know you’ll feel better when you get them, right?”

      “Yep, but they hurt.”

      Essie wrote “allergy shots” in large letters on Peter’s whale. “When you get them, you can remember that you’re being obedient, and doing what you need to, even though it’s tough. God is very happy when we do obedient things like that.”

      Soon the other boys chimed in with their ideas. “Practice piano.” “Be nice to my new baby sister.” “Go to bed.” And a host of other examples until one little response gave her pause.

      “Like my new stepmom,” said Alex Faber quietly. “She’s my third stepmom,” he added, kicking his chair with his foot over and over. “I don’t like her. And I don’t think she likes me very much.”

      What do you say to something like that?

      “It’s hard to be the new person,” Essie responded. “It’s hard to get used to new people. What makes you think your stepmom doesn’t like you?”

      “She said so.” Alex kept kicking the chair.

      Oh, my.

      “I wonder if that’s really true, Alex. Grown-ups have a funny way of saying things sometimes that little boys don’t always understand.” Essie squatted down beside him, warning her knees to cooperate