our insides knotted in pain and push and push and push until we think we can’t push anymore, when we hold vigil during sleepless nights in rocking chairs and recliners, sweating over the slightest changes in a tiny creature’s appetite, body temperature, weight.
I was insane to come here. I would have been equally insane to stay at home.
And anyway, the choice doesn’t matter, I think, as we pull on our coats and walk back down the empty hall, pass the two Tweedles, and leave the faculty building. Choices don’t matter when they’ve already been made.
We’re the last ones to join the crowd in the dining hall, and draw scowls from Mrs. Underwood. I glance at my watch and see that we’ve arrived five minutes late. A dozen or so men and women in gray uniforms are already seated in groups of four; two middle-aged nurses slide chairs out at the table up front, where Underwood and Miss Gray seem to be keeping an eye on the entire room; and over a hundred children sit cheek by jowl on long, backless benches, plates in front of them.
I’ve seen tens of thousands of school cafeteria scenes. They run and bleed into one another like a montage of film clips: third-graders peeling slices of bologna from bread, folding it just so, and biting a hole from the middle; varsity basketball players practicing their dribbling skills with one hand while taking monster bites from Red Delicious apples; eggheads sitting alone, poring over algebraic equations. And, of course, the requisite food fights.
I know all the sounds and all the sights and all the smells of school lunchrooms, and one look at the dining hall of State School 46 tells me this one is wrong.
One man, slight and semi-hunched over his plate, shifts his eyes from left to right and back, like he’s watching a rapid-fire tennis match. When he lifts his fork, I count three fingers on his left hand. The woman next to him has shocks of gray running through her black hair. She also has a scar on her lip, a souvenir of cleft palate surgery. Otherwise, she’s beautiful.
There are fat men and balding women, hook-nosed profiles and recessed chins. In the far corner, four acne-scarred complexions lean into one another, whispering, then draw back when Mrs. Underwood’s eyes sweep the room. Tucked under a table closer to me are the wheels of a motorized chair.
It’s as diverse as I’ve seen, except for one thing. Everything about the diversity in this room tilts toward fifty-seven flavors of imperfection.
Lissa sees it, too, because she leans close to my ear and says, “I wish I could say we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
“No kidding.”
The kids range from wide-eyed first-graders to lanky teenage boys who are still growing into their manhood. In the middle of a line of girls is Freddie.
Time stops when I see her, and everything that happens next is in slow motion, a film reel clicking from one frame to the next by the measured crank of an invisible projectionist’s arm.
My legs move first, right, then left, then right. Step, step, step. A smile stretches sideways until it seems to reach my ears. Maybe I make a sound, maybe I don’t—the soundtrack of this movie is a series of garbled underwater noises. My hand reaches inside my jacket pocket for the package of cookies I’ve brought. Freddie’s favorite, I think.
Step, step, step. Freeze frame.
I see her shoes first, then the fine, downy hair on her calves, then her knees with the small, faded scars of childhood spills. I take her in my arms and inhale her, smells of plain soap and child filling me up. When she says that one word—Mommy—it’s everything I can do to keep from breaking into tears.
When she tells me she loves me, I break into a million bits. I want to tell her all the things, even if they’re lies. I’m taking you home. Nothing bad is ever going to happen again. We’ll go live with Oma and Opa. Everything will be wonderful.
Freddie takes in these words as if I’ve said them. For once, she’s more than a wall, more than a stiff cardboard cutout of a girl,