The Eleven Widows I Called That Night
Gene sat with a boy on each side and told them what it is like to drive a bus in a whiteout. Their eyes were like dinner plates.
And Vi had Josie.
I did not know for certain, and I never asked. But I saw Ms. Keller stop in the doorway and look at that desk, at a small girl with two braids who had her folder open and was turning the pages one at a time for a loud old woman in a little blue chair. And I saw the principal’s face.
That was the girl. I would bet the farm on it.
Josie had turned her folder to face the chair. And this year, somebody was in it.
I sat in the middle, as agreed.
Henry was on my right. He showed me his subtraction and a drawing of his daddy’s grain cart that was mostly wheels. He leaned against my shoulder the way he does, like I am a doorframe.
Leo was on my left.
He was a small boy, smaller than Henry, with a cowlick and a clean shirt buttoned all the way to the top. Somebody had gotten up early and ironed that shirt. He had his library book held shut against his chest with both arms, and he had not said one word since I sat down. Not hello. Not his name. He just looked at the sticker on my cardigan, and then at the floor.
I did not push him. You do not go at a quiet child. You sit there and let them come to you like a barn cat.
“I’m Dolores,” I said. “I’m Henry’s grandma. Mr. Sims tells me you’re Leo, and I’ve been hoping all week I’d get the seat by you.”
Nothing.
“That’s a nice-looking book.”
He looked down at it. It was about a bear who could not sleep.
“I haven’t read that one,” I said. “I wonder if you’d read it to me. My eyes aren’t what they were.”
That was a fib, the only one I told all morning, and I do not repent of it.
He opened the book. He put it flat on the desk and put one finger under the first word, and he read it to me. Every page. He was a careful reader, not fast, and when he came to a word he did not know, he sounded it out under his breath and then said it. I never corrected him once.
Somewhere around the middle, where the bear tries counting stars, his shoulder came over and rested against my arm.
He did not seem to notice. I did not move a muscle. I would have sat there until my legs fell off.
When he finished, he closed the book and smoothed the cover.
“That was the best I ever heard that story read,” I said. And that was not a fib.
Then Mr. Sims clapped his hands twice, and the whole class stood up beside their desks and said the poem. Eight lines about a grandmother’s hands. Nineteen children in that room, all facing somebody.
Henry got stuck on the sixth line. He squeezed his eyes shut. And Leo, standing on the other side of me, said the first two words of it out of the side of his mouth, quiet, so only we could hear.
Henry got it.