The Eleven Widows I Called That Night
The Wednesday night before, all seventeen of us sat around two tables in the fellowship hall with weak coffee, and I went over it.
I read them Ms. Keller’s rules. Sign in at the office. Driver’s license. Stay in the room. No pictures of anybody’s child. No candy, Ruthie.
“The teachers will meet us at the door and walk us to a desk. We do not pick, and we do not ask for a list. It is nobody’s business in that room but the teacher’s which children are which.” I looked around the table. “There are twenty-three of them and seventeen of us. I need six people who will sit between two desks.”
Vi’s hand was up before I finished. Then Marge’s. Then Gene’s, and Phyllis’s, and Joan’s, and Don’s.
“And one more rule. This one’s mine. Nobody asks a child where their grandparents are. Not one word. You do not say, oh honey, don’t you have a grandma. They know what they have and don’t have. You ask them what they like. You ask them what they’re good at. You let them show you their papers, and you look at every single one like it’s a deed to the farm.”
“What if they ask us?” Arlene said. “Who we are.”
“You tell them the truth. You tell them, I’m Arlene, I come up here Tuesdays to hear the first graders read, and today I came just to sit with you.”
Vi snapped her pocketbook shut.
“Two children and a little blue chair,” she said. “Lord, give me strength and a hand up.”
The Thursday night before, Henry came out the front doors of the school at a dead run with his coat hanging off one arm.
“It’s tomorrow, Grandma! And there’s more grandmas coming. Extra ones. Mr. Sims said some kids are getting a guest.”
“That’s right.”
He was quiet for most of the nine blocks. He was working on something. I have learned to let him.
We were in the driveway before he said it.
“Leo’s getting a guest.”
“Is he?”
“He sits by me. He told me at lunch. He said he never had anybody come to school before, not for anything.” Henry picked at the buckle of his seat belt. “His grandma’s in heaven, and his other one lives in Arizona, and she can’t walk good.”
“Grandma? Who’s Leo getting?”
“I don’t know, honey. The teachers do the matching. That’s up to Mr. Sims.”
Henry thought it over with his whole face. I could see it cost him something. He had waited since August to have me to himself for one hour.
“He could have you,” he said at last. “I’ll ask Mr. Sims. You could sit in the middle. Then we both get a side.”
I am a Methodist, and we are not much for signs. I will only say that I sat in my driveway a while after he ran in the house, and I was glad it was dark.
We met in the school parking lot at half past eight, because Marge said that if seventeen old people arrived at a schoolhouse one at a time, it would take until noon.
Every woman had on her good cardigan. Phyllis had been to the beauty shop. Harold wore a tie with a pheasant on it, and Gene had on his old bus driver’s jacket, pressed. Norma’s nephew let her out at the curb and waited to watch her in the door, like the first day of kindergarten turned around backward.