The Drawings Behind the Stop Sign

Vetter’s training told me to stand in the middle of the crosswalk, facing the traffic, with my back to the Quarry Street sign. So that is where I stood, every morning, with my back to that pole.

That is where a guilty mind always goes. I told myself Tamsen had explained to him why we did not talk to the crossing lady.

I told myself he was embarrassed to be walked across the road by the woman who had said a terrible thing in his mother’s hearing.

By Halloween he had stopped looking at me altogether. By Thanksgiving he had started to do the opposite. I would turn my head to check the Church Street traffic and feel his eyes land on me.

When I turned back around, his eyes would be somewhere else.

Then came the last week of school. The oak at the corner was in full heavy green, and everybody had that last-week look, a little wild and a little sad.

I had a plan, if you can call it that. I was going to say good morning to Braylin on Friday. Just good morning.

I had said it to my bathroom mirror and to Arlen’s picture on the dresser. I did not know if I could get it out in front of the line.

I never had to wait that long. On Tuesday, an eight-year-old handed me the rest of my life.

Her name is Ottline. She is in the third grade, a small, wiry child with a gap in her teeth and a voice that carries like a screen door.

She lives in the yellow house on Quarry Street with her mother Sabeth and two cats, and she has crossed my corner since kindergarten. She talks all the way across.

That Tuesday it had been raining since five, a hard June rain coming sideways off the hill. I stood in the road in my yellow slicker with the water running off my hood.

The kids came in a gray stream of hoods and umbrellas. Ottline came running ahead of everyone with no umbrella, her hair soaked flat.

She was holding a piece of notebook paper out in front of her with both hands, like it was a bird.

She said, “Mrs. Threnody, it’s wet. It’s all wet. It’s wrecked.”

I said, “What’s wrecked, sweetheart?”

She said, “Braylin’s picture. The wind took it down and it was in the gutter and I got it, but it’s all wet, and he’s going to cry.”

I said, “Braylin’s what?”

She said, “His picture. For you. He draws you one every day.”

I said, “He draws me what?”

She said, “A picture. Every single day. He does it at night at the kitchen table and he tapes it on the back of the stop sign, down low, where it faces our sidewalk.

Only Quarry Street kids can see it. We’re not supposed to tell.”

She looked suddenly stricken, and she tucked her chin into her wet collar. “I’m not supposed to tell.”

I said, as gently as I knew how, “Why can’t you tell?”

And this eight-year-old, with the rain running down her nose, told me the whole thing in one breath.