The Book of Lost Friends - Lisa Wingate Page 0,147
cemetery’s residents. They don’t mind.”
Principal Pevoto draws a sharp breath.
Mrs. Gossett purses her lips. Her nostrils flare. She looks like a skinny Miss Piggy. “I wasn’t teasing; did you think I was? Though I am trying my very best to be nice about this. While that cemetery may not mean anything to you, being from…well, wherever you are from…it surely does matter to this community. For historic reasons, of course, but also because our family relations are laid there. Of course we don’t want them disturbed, their graves desecrated to…to entertain young miscreants. It’s hard enough to keep these kinds of kids from committing mischief out there, much less encouraging them to think of our cemetery as a playground. It’s careless and insensitive.”
“I was hardly—”
She doesn’t even let me finish before she stabs a pointy little finger toward the window. “Some years ago, several expensive grave markers were tipped over in that cemetery. Vandalized.”
My eyes go so indignantly wide, they feel like they’re about to pop out of my head. “Maybe if people understood the history, knew about the lives those stones represent, things like that wouldn’t happen. Maybe they’d even be preventing things like that from happening. Some of my kids have ancestors buried there. Most of them do—”
“They are not your kids.”
Principal Pevoto hooks a finger in his collar, tugs at his tie. He is as red as the volunteer fire truck he mans on weekends. “Miss Silva…”
I blaze forward. I can’t stop myself now that I’ve started. I feel everything, all our plans slipping away. I can’t let it happen. “Or they have ancestors buried next door. Under graves that were left unmarked. In a graveyard that my students are painstakingly working to enter into the computer, so the library can have records of those who lived their lives on that land. As slaves.”
That does it. I have tripped her trigger now. This is the real issue. Goswood Grove. The house. Its contents. The parts of its history that are hard. That are embarrassing. That carry a stigma no one quite knows how to talk about, and tell of an inconvenient heritage that still plays out in Augustine today.
“That is none of your business!” she snorts. “How dare you!”
The sidekick shoots from her chair and stands with her fists balled as if she’s going to take me down.
Principal Pevoto rises, leans halfway across his desk with his fingers braced like spider legs. “All right. That is enough.”
“Yes, it is,” Mrs. Gossett agrees. “I don’t know who you think you are. You have lived here for…what…two months? Three? If the students at this school are ever to rise above their upbringing, become productive members of society, they must do it by leaving the past behind. By being practical. By gaining vocational training in some sort of work they are capable of. Most of them are lucky if they can achieve the functional literacy skills needed to fill out a job application. And how dare you insinuate that our family is uncaring in this regard! We pay more taxes to this school district than anyone. We are the ones who employ these people, who make life in this town possible. Who work with the prisons to give them jobs when they’re released. You were hired to teach English. According to the curriculum. There will be no graveyard program. Mark my words. That graveyard is run by a board, and they will in no way allow this. I will make certain of that.”
She pushes past me, the foot soldier following in her wake. At the door, she pauses to fire off one more volley. “Do your job, Miss Silva. And mind who you’re talking to here, or you’ll be lucky if you still have a job to worry over.”
Principal Pevoto follows with a quick calm-down lecture, telling me everyone stumbles in their first year of teaching. He appreciates my passion, and he can see that I’m building a rapport with the kids. “That’ll pay off,” he promises wearily. “If they like you, they’ll work for you. Just, in the future, stick to the curriculum. Go home, Miss Silva. Take a few days off and come back with