The Tiger’s Child and Somebody Else’s Kids 2-in-1 Collection. Torey Hayden

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СКАЧАТЬ an indication that she wanted to talk. The conversation Jeff had reported earlier between her and Alejo still disconcerted me a little and I was anticipating that she might want to discuss it or at least discuss Alejo with me; but this didn’t seem to be the case. Once there were just the two of us, we continued to clean up the room.

      Taking a set of fresh erasers from the cupboard, Sheila erased all the colored drawings from the chalkboard, while I tacked up the finger paintings on the bulletin board. When I next looked over, she had a box of the colored chalk in her hand and was drawing on the board. I didn’t say anything, but Sheila quickly became aware that I was watching her.

      “The only other problem with this place is that I don’t get to play too,” she said and grinned sheepishly. “I keep wishing, like, I was one of them instead of one of you guys. God, it looks like so much fun, what these kids get to do. Like a dream school.”

      I grinned back.

      “Can I make a picture with these?” she asked hesitantly, holding up the box of chalks. “Like, maybe it could be decorative? For when they come in tomorrow? It’d look better than just a blank blackboard, don’t you think?”

      “Yeah, sure. Go ahead.”

      Sheila threw herself wholeheartedly into making an enormous picture that took up a whole section of the chalkboard in the classroom. This intensity of concentration surprised me; she worked as if it had been bursting to get out of her all along. As I finished my work and the time drew near to go for lunch, I was reluctant to pull her away, as she was so deeply involved in what she was doing.

      “Shall I go for the hamburgers?” I asked.

      “Would you?” she replied in surprise. “God, like, great.”

      When I returned about twenty minutes later, Sheila was putting the finishing touches on the blackboard drawing. It was an intriguing picture: a desert of gold sand stretching the full length of the board with hardly anything above it. There was one lone saguaro-type cactus and a couple of branched, leafless bushes. Below the level of the sand, however, were an incredible number of little burrows filled with snakes, mice, scorpions, rabbits and beetles. And at the very far end was a female backpacker in hiking boots and shorts with a red scarf on her head.

      “Hey, that’s good. I didn’t know you were such an artist,” I said.

      “There’s lots you don’t know about me, Torey.”

      “It’s really good. You have the woman’s expression very realistic. But I especially like all these things down under the sand. Look at the rabbit burrows. A regular warren, with all those individual rooms for the rabbits to go in. And I could never draw a scorpion just out of my imagination.”

      Sheila grinned. “I like doing things that surprise you.”

      I regarded the picture. “She looks lonely, though. This lone hiker with everything hiding from her.”

      “Now, don’t go into your psychologist mode. It’s just a picture.”

      “So,” I said, “you tell me about it then.”

      “It’s just a picture. She’s walking in the desert. It’s the California desert. I’ve seen pictures of it, of bushes like those.”

      California, where Sheila’s mother had fled, I was thinking, but I didn’t say that. “It still looks lonely from the hiker’s perspective.”

      “Well, yeah, there’s a lot of loneliness in deserts. You kind of feel like there’s this big stretch of emptiness ahead of you,” she replied.

      “And everything that’s alive is hiding from you?” I ventured.

      “Well, yeah, that, or …” She turned and looked at me, a knowing smile crossing her lips. “Or everything is hiding just below the surface, waiting to be discovered. Touché? I caught you at it? I can interpret pictures too?”

      I shrugged good-naturedly.

      “You’re dying to get your hands on me, aren’t you? What you really want is for me to say that this person is me and this desert is my life, isn’t it?”

      “Only if it’s true.”

      “Oh, it’s true,” she said. “And you should know it.”

       Chapter 16

      Sheila’s fourteenth birthday came in early July, just before the program broke up for three days over the Fourth of July. I told Jeff, saying that as it was the only birthday to occur over the course of the eight-week program, it would be nice to have a little party. All the time I was teaching I had always made a special effort to have class celebrations, in part because they provided a pleasant change from routine, but mostly because the handicaps, the emotional dysfunction in the families and/or the financial circumstances often prevented these children from experiencing parties elsewhere. Many were the boys and girls in my classes who had never been invited to a single birthday party or been the center of one for themselves. So I baked us a huge chocolate cake and decorated it with Sheila’s name, while Miriam made up an assortment of small party foods. Jeff provided the paper hats and honkers.

      Sheila made no pretense at sophistication when she saw the streamers and balloons, the colorful Pink Panther paper plates and hats, and the cake. Absolutely delighted, she picked up each and every item and inspected it.

      “God, you did this for me? Shit,” she said, trying a hat on. “God, I’ve never had one of these. How does it look? Where’s a mirror? I’ve got to see.” She went over to the corner where the dressing-up clothes were and took up the small hand mirror. “I’ve always wondered what I’d look like with one of these hats on.”

      The children were equally delighted, squealing with enthusiasm when they spied the bright decorations and the array of party foods. Having lived through dozens of classroom parties before, I knew what a recipe for disaster they generally were. Everyone got a little too excited, the noise level was unbearable and nothing of measurable worth got done. However, there was magic in this sort of chaos, to my mind, and I always enjoyed the ferment.

      We started with party games and ended with a feast of goodies, the finale being the cake. All the children were amazed by the number of candles Sheila got and even more amazed that she had the ability to blow them all out. After cutting the cake and passing out a slice to everyone, Jeff said, “Well, now must be the time for presents.”

      I had gotten her a gift certificate from a local department store, so that she could have the leisure of picking what caught her fancy. Miriam, who was an accomplished craftsperson, had made an attractive woven belt. Then Jeff handed her a small package, prettily wrapped. It was obvious from its shape that it was a book. Taking the gift from him, Sheila paused to look at it. The wrapping, a shimmery gold, was quite unlike anything I’d seen before and I found it amazing to think that Jeff would take time with things like wrapping birthday presents.

      Carefully, Sheila prized the sticking tape off. Inside was a paperback copy of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Sheila lifted it up and regarded the cover. At a loss for words, she just stared at it.

      “Torey said you liked Caesar,” Jeff said. “This is set in the same time СКАЧАТЬ