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

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СКАЧАТЬ it was a super time for driving, on an early summer morning. Although we had been in the midst of a string of quite hot days, the air was still cool and the humidity was low, making the far horizon sharp.

      “I wonder what we’re going to find,” Sheila said. “Can we go to the school?”

      “It’ll be closed, but we could look at the playground.”

      While I negotiated the last of the freeway interchanges necessary to get us out of the city, Sheila amused herself trying to tune in a rock station, but my radio wasn’t very good and she finally gave up.

      “After you left my class, where all did you go?” I asked.

      She shrugged. “Lots of places. I was in, like, three foster homes. Four? I can’t remember now. See, we were in Marysville and then we moved to Broadview and my dad got in trouble, like really soon after we moved. So, I went in this one foster home and then I got in another one and another. Then I got sent to a children’s home for a while.”

      “How come?” I asked.

      Another shrug. “Just the way the system works.”

      “What made you move from Marysville in the first place?” I asked.

      “Don’t know. Don’t remember.”

      “Do you remember being in Sandra McGuire’s class the year after my class?” I asked. “When you were seven?”

      “Sort of.” She paused pensively. “Actually, I have exactly one memory. I was sitting at a table and we were getting assigned lockers. We had to share and so I got assigned to share with the girl sitting across the table from me. I remember her, this girl. She was the smartest kid in the whole class, you know, the one that always got the best grades, and I was excited to think I was going to have a reason to talk to her now and she was going to have to talk to me; but then, I was also sort of scared because I knew she didn’t like me very well.”

      “You were the smartest kid in the whole class, Sheil.”

      “No, I wasn’t. She got the best grades. I tried, but she got them.”

      “You were the smartest kid, regardless of who got the grades.”

      “Yeah, I read about what you said my IQ was in your book. I read it and thought, God, you faked that one. That’s not me,” she replied.

      “It is.”

      “It isn’t.”

      “Has no one ever told you in all this time that you were gifted?”

      Sheila shook her head.

      Shocked, I looked over. “You’re kidding.”

      “I’m not gifted, Torey. I know I’m not.”

      “What makes you say that?”

      “Well, just ’cause. I mean, I’m me. I know. And I’m not smart. I’m stupid.”

      “You’re not!”

      She didn’t respond, but I could tell I had not convinced her.

      “So, give me one example of why you think you’re stupid.”

      “Well, like, in class, for instance, everybody else gets the information the first time the teacher gives it out, but I never do. I hear it and I think I understand it, but then I start getting questions. I think, what about this? Or, like, oftentimes, I’ll think, well, that’s true in this instance, but is it true in another instance? And every time I’ll see there’s a time when it isn’t true, but then it is true some of the time. Then I realize there’s this big huge area of junk I don’t understand at all, but everybody else is sitting around me, writing like mad. They understand it and I don’t. And if I ask the questions, then pretty soon the teacher says, ‘We’ve got to move on now. You’re holding us up.’ And then I know for sure I’m some kind of mega-dumbhead, because I only understand a weensy bit of it.”

      Her cheeks grew blotched, making me realize the intensity of her emotions over the subject. Pushing the shaggy mass of hair back from her face, she rested her hands against her reddened skin. “And the kids … Whenever I try to ask something, everybody groans. They say, ‘Oh, God, not her again.’ Or, ‘Shut her up, would you?’ This one kid who sat in front of me in math, he turned around to me and said, ‘Shit, can’t you just do it, for once?’ I wanted to die, I was so embarrassed. I never asked anything again in there.”

      Pointed silence hung between us. Sharp, it was, like a small dagger. Sheila turned to me. “It’s because I’m the youngest in the class. I haven’t had as much school as they have and it isn’t fair.” Her voice was heavy with accusation. “How can they expect me to know as much?”

      “You’re youngest in the class, Sheila, because you know more than they do, not less. The other kids aren’t asking questions, because their minds don’t throw up so many possibilities so quickly as yours. They don’t even realize questions are there.”

      She chewed her lower lip a moment. Staring ahead at the far-stretching road, she sighed wearily. “If I’m so smart, how come I feel so stupid then? What kind of gift is it that turns the world upside down, so that less is more and more is less?”

      We arrived in Marysville in the midafternoon after a leisurely journey across the state. The day had grown very hot, the sky going white with the heat, and coming into the shady streets of the town was a relief. I booked us into a motel on Main Street that, much to Sheila’s delight, had a swimming pool. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a swimming suit, so we made a jaunt out to find one at the shopping mall. The mall hadn’t been there when I had last been in town, and as with all such places, Sheila was keen to explore. Consequently, we wandered around for an hour or two, by which time we were ready for an evening meal; so we stopped for supper in the mall food court before returning to the motel. Feeling overcome with nostalgia as I drove through the familiar streets, I would have preferred going out then and there to visit some old haunts, but Sheila was desperate to go in the pool. Thus, we spent the evening swimming.

      The next morning, it was raining steadily.

      “Oh, geez, would you believe it?” Sheila said in dismay, as she pulled the curtain back from the motel window. “In July? It never rains in July.”

      It certainly did that particular July day and by the looks of the clouds, it was not close to stopping. “Come on,” I said, “it won’t matter. Let’s go.”

      Sheila wanted to go out to see the migrant camp. I thought I remembered the road, but it turned out I didn’t and we were soon lost. This left me feeling a bit irritable, which wasn’t a good start.

      When we did finally locate it, we found the camp full to bursting with seasonal workers. Several types of crops were at a harvestable stage, which had caused the usual swell in camp numbers, but as it was raining and some crops could not be worked, many of the workers were milling around the various buildings.

      The camp itself had changed considerably from what I remembered of it. Two large new housing units had been erected. They were great green-painted aluminum structures reminiscent of the calving sheds I was used to in Montana, and they dominated the camp. Many of the old tar-paper buildings that made up my clearest СКАЧАТЬ