Death, Unchartered. Dorothy Van Soest

close to cutting his eye,” I said. “You could have blinded him.”

      “I didn’t mean to do that.” Mentayer looked contrite.

      “We know you didn’t,” I said.

      “No matter. It could have been downright awful,” her grandmother scolded. “You woulda been suspended for sure.”

      “He started it.” Mentayer poked out her bottom lip. “I didn’t go asking for trouble.”

      “Both of those things may be true,” I said.

      Mentayer stuck her chin out. “They are.”

      “You’re not responsible for what that boy did,” I went on. “But you are responsible for what you did after he messed with you. Maybe there was some other way you could have handled things? Some way that wouldn’t have gotten you in trouble.”

      Mentayer didn’t say anything. Her grandmother gave her what Mentayer had described to me as her evil eye. In the corner behind his grandmother’s chair, Markus sat up straight, without moving, his hands folded on his lap.

      I stifled an urge to smile. I liked Mentayer’s stubbornness. “If you could do it over,” I said, “what do you think you could do different? Or if it happened again, how could it end better? You know what I’m asking, right? The usual questions.”

      “But, Ms. Sylvia,” Mentayer whined, “that boy isn’t in our class, so he hasn’t learned how to work things out like we have. He doesn’t understand the process.”

      I felt myself melting away and folded my hands over my chest. The girl was a challenge and I had to improvise, even be cunning at times, to stay a step ahead of her. But I had grown fond of her. Her brother, too. Markus was as bright as his sister but without her impatience. And I liked their grandmother. She hovered over both of them, Mentayer more than Markus. She was like a one-woman PTA whose singular charge was to raise her granddaughter to flourish in a world that was certain to ignore and even try to destroy her unstoppable curiosity and free spirit.

      I closed my eyes and, thinking about the LeMeurs with a smile on my lips, fell asleep at last.

      I woke in the light of dawn to the sounds of the city coming alive. A garbage truck screeched to a halt outside; sanitation workers shouted to each other as they threw rubbish onto the back. Smells of human refuse wafted through the bedroom window. Soon people would go into the bodega around the side of the building and come out with their morning cups of coffee. The super would bring out his chair to sit guard in front of his door; maybe he’d talk today, maybe he wouldn’t. Thirty-five third-graders would expect me to show up again today. Their eyes would be bright and their young voices hungry for approval as they shouted “Good morning, Ms. Sylvia.”

      Another day. Another chance. If Frascatore ever hurt another child, I would act right away. Next time, God forbid there be a next time, things would be different.

      Little did I know how different they would be.

      FIVE

      Spring 1968

      Several months passed without another incident. Until not long before the school year ended. It was almost noon and I was wrapping up my class for the day, thinking about how much I was going to miss my students, when I heard a sound that sent a chill through me. The sound I’d been listening for.

      “No! No! No!” I flew out the door and down the hall in the direction of the sound, flailing my arms, running past three classrooms, a distance that felt longer to me than a football field.

      Frank had told me it would never happen again. Whenever something triggered my fear that it would, he contended that I’d squashed Frascatore. In the wake of the tumult and unrest spreading across the country after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, whenever a new undertow of despair threatened to pull me under, he insisted that Frascatore would never dare hurt another child again. I tried to believe him. Tried hard. I squeezed every ounce of hope for the future of humanity onto my students. My belief that at least I could provide for them a safe haven from the violence and degradation of the outside world kept me going. And every day that passed, I found solace in the absence of the sound I’d hoped to never hear again. But Frank had been wrong. Frascatore had done it again. He was doing it now.

      I was close enough to see the fear-filled eyes of the boy being pinned against the wall. Frascatore’s white knuckles pressed down on the small shoulders, his bared teeth close enough to touch the boy’s face.

      “Stop!” I screamed. “STOP!”

      Frascatore turned, his eyes drilling into me. He dropped his arms to his sides, opened and closed his fists.

      I recognized the boy. His name was Dion Brown. He lived in the building next to the one where Mentayer and Markus lived. I put my arm around his bony shoulders. He was trembling.

      “Are you all right?” I asked.

      Dion nodded. He stared down at his feet.

      “You sure?”

      He nodded again but didn’t look up.

      “What grade are you in?” I asked.

      “Sixth.”

      “Who’s your teacher?”

      “Mr. Bernstein. Can I go to the bathroom, please?”

      “Of course. Then go on back to your class, okay?”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      I watched Dion walk to the end of the hall and go into the boys’ restroom. Then I turned my attention to Frascatore, ready to unleash on him the full force of my anger. But he was gone. The bastard had slipped away.

      My breath started coming in short spurts, making my chest shake. I pressed my back against the wall and imagined barging into his classroom, imagined throwing him up against the blackboard, his students cheering me on with their eyes. Then I pulled myself together and went back to my classroom. My students were sitting with their hands folded on their desks. There was fear in their eyes. Mentayer, in her self-appointed role as class spokesperson, shot her hand up in the air.

      “Ms. Sylvia, we would like to know if everything is okay.”

      Something caught in my throat. I coughed. I had never lied to my students before, and I wasn’t about to start now. “No, I’m afraid everything is not okay, but I promise you that it will be.”

      The bell rang, but my students didn’t jump up from their desks like they usually did. “Form a line,” I said. Then I gave each of them a hug with an extra special squeeze.

      “When Markus comes,” I said to Mentayer when it was her turn, “would you help him wipe the blackboard and straighten the desks before you leave, and give him a hug from me?”

      She nodded and stood to the side to wait for her brother. I gathered up my books and papers and headed for the principal’s office to keep my promise.

      I walked down the steps slowly in an attempt to control the heat of my fury and my skyrocketing blood pressure. I strode into the main office filled with determination, to the surprised looks of the office staff. I yanked up the end of the counter and bolted around the filing cabinet without asking permission. I pushed in the door to the principal’s office without knocking.

      “Mrs. Waters,” Miss Huskings said from behind her desk. “I’ve been expecting you.”

      I blinked. So Frascatore had already got to her. I stiffened my back and stepped into the room. He isn’t going to get away with it again. Not this time. “Then I guess you already know why I’m here.”

      The office smelled of tobacco fumes and ash; a smoky haze floated up to its towering ceiling. Gray clouds outside the soaring windows added to the gloom of the room’s dark mahogany walls.

      “Have a seat, Mrs. Waters.” Miss Huskings’s tone contained no inflection, no hint of impatience or anger.

      “Anthony