The Spelling Bee Josie Almost Missed

January

The class bee was held on a Friday afternoon, the twenty-third of January, in Room 14. Parents were not invited. I got it secondhand, from Josie, who told it that night in short pieces over mashed potatoes.

There were twenty-two children. Miss Lanier had told Josie ahead of time, kindly, that if a word took a while it would be fine, and I will give her credit for that. Mrs. Dunn, the speech therapist, had written it into Josie’s school plan: extra time to speak, no penalty.

It went fourteen rounds.

Children went out on “necessary” and “February” and “weird,” which makes fools of us all. Josie said that when the room got quiet, she could feel everybody leaning toward her, and instead of making things worse, it made her feel carried.

“Like they were all waiting,” she said. “But nicely.”

It came down to Josie and Piper Wendt.

Piper is the principal’s daughter. Mr. Dennis Wendt runs Calder Elementary, and I worked under him for nine of my thirty-one years. He is a decent man. He was a brand new fourth grade teacher when I met him, with a necktie he kept getting in the chocolate pudding.

His daughter is smooth in the way some children are smooth. She speaks in whole sentences and looks adults straight in the eye. She did not ask for that. It was handed to her, like a coat that happened to be her size.

Piper went out on “conscience.” She put a “t” where it did not belong and knew it the second it left her mouth.

And Josie, who needed to spell it correctly to win, stood up beside her desk and put her hand under it, thumb to finger.

“C,” she said.

It came out clean.

“O. N. S. C. I. E. N. C. E.”

Every letter.

“The room got so quiet I could hear the heater,” Josie told me over the potatoes, and she put her fork down. “And then Cole Tanner said, ‘Whoa,’ and everybody laughed, but not mean. And then they clapped, Grandma. For a long time.”

She looked at her plate.

“Miss Lanier said, ‘Congratulations, Josie.’ I think she was surprised.”

I should have heard something in that, the surprise. But I heard only that my granddaughter had won one thing and someone had said her name for it, and I let myself have a whole weekend of feeling that nothing could ever be taken from her again.

Tuesday

So you understand now what was sitting on my counter on the third Tuesday in February.

I stood the card on the windowsill over the sink, where the light came through the sun on the front. Then I made Josie a grilled cheese, because it was what I had.

She ate half. She pushed the other half toward Biscuit with her foot.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“Nothing happened. I won in class. Miss Lanier gave me a card. She put it in my cubby after lunch.”

“Did she say anything?”

Josie looked at her hands.

“She said, ‘Josie, honey, I want you to know it’s because I care about you.'”

“And you said?”

“I didn’t say anything.” She was quiet a moment. “I didn’t think I should.”

I did not feel hot. That surprised me. I felt something colder and clearer, like the feeling you get in the barn right before the thing you have been dreading actually comes.

What I felt was this: nobody had asked her.

Nobody asked a ten-year-old child who had worked for four months whether she wanted to give up the one thing she had won. They had decided she was too fragile for her own victory, and called it kindness, and put a sun on the front.

I sat down across from her.

“Josie, I want you to answer honestly, not the way you think you ought to. If it were up to you, and nobody was going to be upset, and nobody was going to be nervous for you, would you want to spell on Thursday?”

Her thumb started up. Then it stopped.

“It’s not up to me,” she said. “It’s Piper’s turn.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

She did not answer for a long time. I let her. I have never been so glad that Walt taught me how to wait.

“I w-w-want to,” Josie said.

It took almost twenty seconds to get the first word out. I did not look away from her face once.

“I want to spell in front of people one time. Even if I mess up. I just want somebody to see I can do it.”

“Then that is what we will work on.”

“But Grandma, Miss Lanier said.”

“I know what Miss Lanier said.” I put the card in my apron pocket. “I am going to go talk to her, and I am going to be polite about it, because she is a young woman doing what she thinks is right.”

That night I phoned my daughter Marcy on her break at the care center and told her all of it, flat and in order. She wanted to drive to the school that minute.

“Let me ask the one person who hasn’t been asked,” I said. “Then you can do whatever you want.”

“Okay, Mom. One day.”