“So Jesus has always lived here.”

“Always. Always in the same room. Before he was born, Miguel and I set it up as a nursery, and when he was five we redecorated it for him.”

In the quiet house, an old fashioned clock chimed eleven times. Neil could see the ghost of Miguel Herrera walking about behind his wife’s eyes, but the picture would not come clear. Not yet.

“Miguel must have liked having a son, to go to that much trouble.”

“He loved him,” Mrs. Herrera said, and the ghost became more cloudy still. She meant it. Right or wrong, she believed what she said, so what was the truth? “He couldn’t wait to go to the nursery when he got home. He loved that boy more than anything.”

Neil sat in silent confusion. He remembered her words in Bill Campbell’s office and they were at odds with what she was saying now. She had said,  All Jesus remembers of his father is how he punished him. I don’t want Jesus to remember me that way.

Neil quoted those words to her.

“That was later,” she said. “That was after Miguel got sick.”

“Was he an alcoholic?”

“No, never!”

“What did your husband die from?”

“Cancer.”

Neil finally got a glimmer of understanding. He asked, “Was it a brain tumor?”

Mrs. Herrera nodded.

“And did his behavior change after he got sick?”

She nodded again. Then she suddenly grabbed Neil’s arm as if she had betrayed her husband’s memory and whispered hoarsely, “But it wasn’t his fault!”

Neil took her hand in his and said, “No, Mrs. Herrera, I’m sure it wasn’t his fault. A man who has a something growing inside his head will sometimes do strange things. Things that aren’t like the person he really is.”

In Neil’s imagination, the whole pitiful scene was clear. Miguel Herrera, upstanding, honorable, hard working, had established himself in business first, then had married a woman some years younger than himself. He had moved her directly into the home he had provided for her and there she bore him a child. A child he had loved and cherished. It would have been a just reward for labor and self-sacrifice. And then fate, through disease, had torn it all away from him. 

It was not enough for Miguel Herrera simply to die. The malignancy inside his head had twisted his mind, and in the frustration at the coming end to all he had planned, he had struck out at the ones he loved most.

Neil’s voice almost failed him as he asked, “How long was your husband — very ill?”

“Nearly two years.”

“How old was Jesus when his father died?”

“Seven.”

“So Jesus’s father was — not acting like himself — from the time Jesse was five until he was seven; and then he died.”

She nodded mutely.

“Mrs. Herrera, you have to understand what this means. Those two years are probably the only memories that Jesse has of his father.”

Mrs. Herrera rolled her head up to stare Neil in the face.  She whispered, “Don’t you think I know that!”

“You can’t let him go on like this.”

“I’ve told him what his father was really like. He just won’t listen.”

“Have you told your counselor what you just told me?”

“No.”

“You must. You have to. If you don’t, he can’t help you. You have to let him know about Jesse and his father or there is no use in going to him.” more tomorrow

She motioned him to the sofa and sat in an armchair facing him. He asked, “Is Jesus around?”

“He was already in bed when you called. Do you need him? I would rather let him sleep.”

“No, just the opposite. I was hoping we could talk freely without worrying about whether or not he could hear us.”

“His bedroom is at the back of the house and his door is closed. He’ll never know you were here, unless I tell him.”

It was almost as if she wanted to make sure that Jesse never knew Neil had come into their house. There was no doubt something to be learned from that, but Neil had not come to attend to subtleties. He was here for crude facts.

“Mrs. Herrera, I told you what Jesus did today. His behavior was more than thoughtless or mischievous. The boy is full of hatred. If I am going to help him, I have to understand why. If I can’t, there is no use in having him come back to my class.”

It seemed that Mrs. Herrera had spent the time since he called rallying her resources. She asked sharply, “How did Jesus get home from school? Nobody called me.”

“He walked.”

“He walked! You mean you just sent him away without . . .”

“Oh, shut up!” Neil shouted, then cut back the volume immediately. His outburst stopped them both. He had not realized how close to the edge he was. She burst into tears. “Mrs. Herrera,” he continued, “you have to stop dancing around the problem. How Jesus got home isn’t important now. He has a real problem and if you can’t solve it while he is eleven, how are you going to handle him when he is sixteen?”

Mrs. Herrera wiped her face and slid back in her chair, as if to get as far from Neil as she could.

And, with the cold clarity of inspiration, he knew what had been happening.

To test his sudden understanding, he stood up and moved abruptly toward her. She cowered back into her chair. He stepped back and said, “So that is how it was?”

“I don’t know what you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean, Mrs. Herrera. I’ve seen that reaction twice before, on Jesus. Either you beat him, or his father used to beat him and he never got over it. You just told me which.”

“Miguel never beat anybody!”

“No?”

“No!”

“Then why did you cringe? Why does Jesse cringe?”

“It’s you, that’s why.”

“No,” Neil replied softly, “it isn’t me. I won’t take the blame for this. No one else cringes from me.”

He sat down again and waited for Mrs. Herrera to regain her composure. Then he said, “Tell me about your husband.”

“Miguel didn’t beat me.”

Suddenly, Neil was struck by the falseness of his position. He had no business here cross-examining this woman. If she was a battered wife caught up in a pattern of denial, that was simply none of his business. And how could he be so sure that he had hit the right answer. He was no psychologist.

Yet, now that he had forced himself upon her in the name of saving Jesse from himself, he was committed to stay the course.

“Just tell me about him. How long were you married?”

“Eight years.”

“Did you live here, in this house?”

“Yes.” Her voice was still suspicious, but as she began to talk, she could not stop herself. “We moved here right after we were married. Miguel was ten years older than me, and he had already established himself in real estate before we got married. That’s how he found this house. He looked for one that was a really good deal while he was selling houses to other people. He had bought this one and furnished it before we were married.” more tomorrow

“Of course, you are right.” Neil gnawed on a knuckle for a moment before continuing, “Still, don’t you ever wonder what might become of the kids you teach?”

“Sure.”

“What would it feel like twenty or thirty years from now if one of our kids discovered a cure for a some disease, or won a Nobel Prize — or became a serial killer. Gandhi and Hitler both had parents, and both had teachers. How did they feel, I wonder? Were they proud of what they had done, or were they ashamed? Did they try to hog some of the credit, or shoulder some of the blame?”

Carmen said, “What have you done to bring on this preoccupation with guilt?”

There it was — his opportunity. He would never have a better time to tell her about Alice Hamilton’s false accusations, and get rid of the barrier he had built between them.

She sat, waiting, in faded jeans and a sweater, with her feet tucked up beneath her. Lean and lovely, warm, dark, vibrantly alive, hair a frizzled cloud around her head, and her eyes a brown he could drown in. Waiting.

He asked himself, Do you love her?

He reached out his hand and she took it in hers, running her thumb down his palm. He felt his heart turn over within him at the nearness of her. I have never lain with her, nor even held her naked breasts in my hands, but already I love her more than I loved Lynn, whom I lived with and would have married.

Yet Lynn had betrayed him in his time of need, and he feared to try Carmen’s loyalty for fear that he would lose her too. And so the moment passed.

# # #

Neil drove home and rummaged through his desk until he found Mrs. Herrera’s phone number. She answered on the fifth ring, sounding tired and distracted. He said, “I need to see you tonight.”

“Tonight? You can’t be serious.”

“I have never been more serious. What did Jesse tell you about today?”

“Jesus didn’t tell my anything,” she replied in a sharp, defensive voice.

“He didn’t tell you that I sent him home five minutes after he got there for pretending he was Patrick Purdy and mock-killing half the students on the playground?”

There was silence on the other end for so long that Neil had begun to think Mrs. Herrera had hung up. Finally he heard faint sobs that went on for a long time. Then a very weak voice said, “What can I do?”

“I’m coming over.”

“No! I can’t. I can’t talk to you now.”

“Mrs. Herrera you have only two choices. Talk to me now, and really talk. Don’t give me some run around, but actually tell me what you know about Jesse’s problems. Or start looking for another school tomorrow, because if we can’t get this settled right now, Jesse is not coming back to my room.”

She agreed.

He arrived at her house twenty minutes later. It was larger and in a nicer neighborhood than Neil had expected. Mrs. Herrera would certainly have a hard time paying for such a house on one salary, so it probably dated from before her husband’s death.

She met him at the door and led him into the living room. The furniture was well built and stylish. It had been expensive once, but now it was shabby. It was clean and neat; there were no toys underfoot to give evidence that a child lived there. more Monday

Neil reached down and took Jesse by the back of the shirt and lifted him a foot off the ground. Slowly, the boy unkinked until he could put his feet on the ground again. Neil let go and Jesse stood facing him; fear and hatred were at war in his face, and hatred was winning out. Neil did not care. He said, “Jesse, go home! Don’t come back until I call for you.”

Jesse stood up to him for one more moment, then turned tail and ran, across the campus, across the parking lot, and down the street toward his house.

# # #

You don’t do things that way. You don’t grab a student by the arms. You don’t yell at a student until he cowers at your feet. You don’t pick him up off the ground. You don’t send him off campus on his own. If he must be sent home, you do it through channels, with documentation, and you make the parent come in to get him. The law requires it, and self-preservation requires it. Parents will sue schools and teachers if they are provoked.

Above all, you do not lose your temper.

Neil sat in his room after school, cataloging his failings and feeling low. For a person who had come here to prove himself, he was not doing very well. For a person who had “saved” Jesse from expulsion, he was doing even worse.

Yet he had learned a lot about self-preservation during the last year.  If something like this had happened at his previous school, he would have gone to Dr. Watkins with his problems and asked his advice. This time he kept the incident to himself. He did not even tell Bill Campbell that Jesse had left campus. There was a bare chance that he could salvage the situation; if not, then would be the time to confess.

First, there was one hard question to face. Why did he want to salvage the situation? Because he still believed that Jesse was worth the effort, or just to keep from having to admit his failings? If he was only trying to cover himself, then he had better let the boy go. Maybe in some other school he could make a new start.

In the last analysis, what Neil had to do now hinged on one question: could the boy be saved? And Neil did not know the answer.

# # #

He sought out Carmen at her apartment. “First of all,” Neil said after he had outlined the problem, “did I overreact to what Jesse did? He is only eleven years old. Maybe his was just a natural, stupid reaction to the incident in Stockton.”

Carmen shook her head. “If I had seen him do that, I would have written him up, and that would have been the end of him. I wouldn’t tolerate that from any student.”

“Of course his behavior wasn’t acceptable. I’m not asking that. I’m asking what it means. Is he growing up to be another Patrick Purdy?”

“Oh, Neil, how could we ever know that? Stop trying to play God. You just have to teach them and do the best you can to help them, and then let them become what they become.” more tomorrow

As it turned out, he didn’t have to say very much. Less than half of them were aware of what had happened, and few of them were very interested. They were talking about it when they came in from the busses; those who had seen the news were telling those who had not. But it had come to them through the plastic reality of the television. It was no more real than a drug bust, famine in Ethiopia, or oil spills. Or Miami Vice. It was just another part of the endless effluvium of human suffering that washed about them every day; with marvelous sanity, most of them remained unmoved.

A few of them were affected. Tanya Michelson looked as if she had been crying when she came in and stayed unnaturally quiet all day. Lisa Cobb jumped at every sound. Oscar Teixeira had been thinking hard about what it all meant. He went straight to the fact that the children who had died had all been Asian. With a clarity of thought all out of proportion to his age, he made the connection to the celebration of Martin Luther King Day just before the shooting. Of course he did not speak of irony — not at eleven years old — but he did recognize the juxtaposition.

At noon, Bill Campbell called a special teachers’ meeting to discuss campus security. He stressed that any stranger seen on campus was to be approached immediately and asked his business, and referred to the office if there was any question about why he was there. “This isn’t anything new,” Bill said. “It has been school board policy for about ten years, ever since parents kidnapping their own children became a problem. In light of what happened in Stockton, we have to be even more careful.”

Jesse Herrera came on campus for his afternoon class with Neil just before the final noon recess bell rang. He dropped his book bag outside Neil’s door and slid along the wall of the building. When the bell rang he leaped out, shouting out the sound of gunfire, and pantomimed firing across the playground.

Neil saw him, and his temper exploded. He was a hundred feet away when Jesse “fired”. He covered the distance at a run, grabbed the boy by both arms, and jerked him off the ground as he skidded to a stop.

Then he blew his ears back.

He screamed out how stupid he was being, how insensitive to the suffering of the students who had been wounded, and how disrespectful to the memories of those who had died. Later, Neil could not remember the exact words he had used, but they were loud. All the student on the playground froze in their tracks until Neil finished, then rushed on to class looking back over their shoulders.

Jesse folded up like a rag doll. He buried his head beneath his hands to ward off blows that never fell. Neil stood over him, breathing in gasps as he tried to control his anger. He had never felt more like striking a child. The pathetic cowering that would normally have defused his anger, only made it worse. more tomorrow

Since the American Navy had accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner the previous summer there had been talk of terrorist reprisals, and American schools were one of the targets being threatened. If that was the case, and the school which had already been struck was so close . . .

Neil found himself searching the playground with his eyes, and at the time it did not seem melodramatic. He said, “What do you want me to do?”

“Don’t say anything to your students, but be on the alert. Join Tom and me out front when the busses come to pick them up. It’s late enough in the afternoon that we probably won’t have any parents coming in to pick up their children because they heard it. If some parent comes in, get their child out of the classroom without a fuss. If we can manage it, I want to get these kids home with their parents before they hear about it.”

Bill went on to pass the word and Neil returned to his classroom. Bill’s words “a bunch of dead and wounded” rang in his head as he sat down and looked at his kids. Little Randi Nguyen with her boundless energy; Rabindranath who was calm and bright and utterly without a sense of humor; Lisa Cobb with her erratic behavior and terrible puns; even Jesse Herrera. Dead or wounded . . .; he had to shake his head to drive the vision away.

The bell for the last break of the day caught him by surprise and he jumped. Somebody laughed, then hid his laughter. The students all rushed for the door. Neil was on his feet in an instant and out the door to pace the playground in paranoid fear. All of the other teachers were out, exchanging worried glances and saying nothing.

When the busses came, a phalanx of teachers was there to protect their students from an enemy who never appeared.

# # #

Neil drove to the mall after school and went to a department store where he had seen racks of televisions on display. He had no TV himself and he did not want to watch this with Carmen. He could either watch it alone, or in the anonymity of a public place, but not with someone he loved. He arrived at the store just in time to see the whole bloody scene on the news. All normal business had stopped in the store as clerks and customers stood riveted by the horror of it.

A second channel picked it up and Neil watched again. His fascination was like a private shame. He hated the newsman for the way he shoved his microphone into a child’s face to ask her how she had felt, but he could not turn away.

The next morning the Modesto Bee devoted five full pages to the tragedy. Neil, who did not subscribe, went out early to buy a copy and read it all. Five dead. Thirty wounded. That would be half of the kids he taught. And all the rest, the other three hundred students, would never feel safe again. Like a rape, it would tear them out of their childhoods and plunge them into a mad, adult world long before their time.

What would he say to his own students today? more tomorrow

There is an explanation of how this piece of Symphony came about in today’s post over in A Writing Life.

Terror

Life is not a well told tale. Things come out of nowhere, and in their wake, everything is changed. There is frequently no warning, and even afterward, those events may make no sense.

In Stockton, thirty miles north of Kiernan School, at about eleven thirty in the morning, a distracted young loner named Patrick Purdy parked his car outside Cleveland Elementary School. As he left his car, he used a fourth-of-July sparkler to light a pipe bomb in the front seat, and entered the school yard through an unlocked gate in the fence. He crossed a grassy field, rounded a classroom building and waited there watching the playground where the students were at recess. He was wearing a 9mm automatic pistol and carrying an assault rifle.

Purdy had attended that school for four years when he was a child. At that time it had been a white, middle class neighborhood. Now the community was filled with southeast Asian refugees. Most of the children in the playground were Asian. Purdy had told acquaintances how much he hated Asians.

Two things happened almost at once. The bomb Purdy had left in his car exploded, and the bell ending the recess period rang. The children turned from their play and ran back toward their classrooms. Purdy raised his AK-47 and calmly, matter-of-factly, fired a burst of thirty rounds into the mass of students. They fell, screaming and bleeding, or silent and already dead.

He replaced the ammunition clip and fired again. A teacher herding her children toward safety was shot down, and more students fell. Teachers inside the building at Purdy’s back huddled on the floor with their students, but he did not turn in their direction. He walked to his right, crossing in front of them, still firing into a school yard now littered with huddled heaps of the dead and wounded.

He rounded the far corner of the building just as the first sirens began to sound in the distance. Laying aside his assault rifle, he pulled out his pistol, put the barrel of it to his chin, and fired once.

He was dead when the first officers arrived at the scene. Five students lay dead. Twenty-nine students and a teacher lay wounded.

# # #

Neil had not had a good day. He had obtained a video of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech to show to his students in connection with the holiday. His morning class had responded with very little enthusiasm when he tried to get them to discuss what it meant. There were no black children at Kiernan, and Neil had not been able to convince them that the civil rights Dr. King had fought for were for all of them. To these children the events of the fifties and sixties were another world, as foreign as ancient Athens. They were indifferent to it all.

His afternoon class was even worse. He had almost reached the point of giving up in disgust and trying some other tactic, when Bill Campbell came to the door of his classroom and motioned for Neil to join him outside. The look on Bill’s face alerted Neil that something serious had happened.

“I just got a phone call from Elaine Sanders. There has been a shooting at one of the elementary schools in Stockton. Apparently, there were a bunch of dead and wounded. Elaine wanted us to be on the alert.”

Bill’s words were just words. The reality of them did not hit Neil at once. He said, “On the alert for what?”

“I don’t know. Strangers on campus; anything like that.” more Monday

Oscar took the sheet and hesitated. Laura leaned over and whispered, “You can do it.”

Oscar stood up and tried the first sentence. Those who spoke Spanish looked puzzled, then amused. He stumbled on, his voice breaking, and once he had to stop to wipe his face with the back of his hand. But he kept his jaw set firmly and forged ahead, mispronouncing every other word, and understanding nothing of what went before his eyes.

Neil hurt for him, and wondered if he had pushed him too far. Oscar cast him an angry glance from his set face.

Brandy Runyon snickered. Neil’s snapped, “Brandy!” She stopped instantly. 

Oscar finished, and sat down, looking at the desk to in front of him, humiliated. Neil said, “Thank you, Oscar.”

Flavio looked at his teammate, feeling his embarrassment, but unsure of what had happened out on the playground. He looked at Neil and asked, “What grade do we get?”

“You get the very best grade I have to give,” Neil replied. “I am very proud of Oscar.”

He heard Tony whisper, “But he read it all wrong.” And he heard Lauren silence him fiercely, saying, “Shut up! Don’t you understand anything?”

# # #

Jesse Herrera had returned to Neil’s afternoon class with the rest of the children after Christmas vacation was over. He was very subdued. He was surly, angry, and withdrawn, but he didn’t get into trouble. Neil remained friendly to him, but carefully kept a certain distance between them. The boy was in serious trouble, and there was no point in fawning on him and pretending that he was not.

Neil had a meeting with Mrs. Herrera on the first Friday they were back. It was the first time he had met with her since Jesse’s hearing, and she was full of thanks because Neil had championed her son.

Neil said, “How are things going in counseling?”

“Really well. I think Jesus is doing much better.”

“He had been quiet in school and hasn’t bothered anybody,” Neil replied. He was skeptical of Jesse’s sudden change, but he didn’t say so to his mother.”Can you tell me anything you’ve found out that might be helpful to me?”

“No, not really.”

“Mrs. Herrera, I don’t mean to pry into your personal business. I just want to help Jesse — Jesus. I’m only asking for information so I know best how to handle him.” 

Mrs. Herrera looked trapped and uncomfortable. She said, “Well, the counselor said that I had to set limits and strictly enforce them. I have to say what I am going to do and then do it.”

“And have you been able to do that?”

“I’ve been trying. Just last night, Jesus was bugging me about wanting to watch a program on TV that I didn’t want him to watch. I told him he couldn’t watch it, and when he kept bugging me I made him go to bed an hour early.”

This was apparently her idea of stricter discipline. Neil said, “What would you normally have done?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I would have given in and let him watch it.”

“Well, that’s progress,” Neil said. Privately, it made him wonder if the boy had any chance at all.

# # #

Neil’s meeting with Mrs. Herrera was followed by the three day weekend of Martin Luther King Day. The Tuesday afterward was like any other day at Kiernan, but thirty miles north events were taking place which would shake their school, and other schools across the nation, to their foundations. more tomorrow

Eventually, the sobs died to hiccups and Neil moved away again. He found a clean handkerchief and handed it over. Oscar wiped his face and handed it back. Neil said, “Look at me.”

Oscar was still miserable, but he had regained some composure.

“Oscar,” Neil said, “I want you to think about something that isn’t very pleasant. I want you to think about Pedro. Imagine how he feels when I call on him to read some passage in English and he can’t.”

Neil waited until Oscar had nodded his understanding.

“How do you think he feels?”

“Bad.”

“Bad like what?”

“Bad like I felt when I couldn’t read the Spanish.”

“And what does Pedro do when I call on him?”

“He tries.”

“Even though he can’t read it?”

Oscar nodded.

“Does anyone ever laugh at him?”

Oscar shrugged. “Maybe. Sometimes.”

“Do you suppose they laugh behind his back when he isn’t listening?”

“I suppose.”

Neil sighed and screwed up his own courage. It is no fun to browbeat an eleven year old boy. He asked, “Did you ever laugh at him?”

Oscar only shrugged.

“Do you think he would have laughed at you if you had tried to read that Spanish and been unable to?”

Oscar snapped, “I don’t know! How would I know?”

For a long time then, neither of them said anything. The wind whistled through he short grass and chilled them both. January in Modesto is a good time to play active outdoor sports, not to sit motionless and beaten in the open air. After a while, Neil said, “When Pedro, or Sabrina, or Carlos reads something too hard for them, and takes a chance on being laughed at, would you say that they have courage?”

Oscar took his time and really thought about it. He said, “Yes.”

“Do you think they have more courage than you do?”

Oscar spun angrily to face Neil. Full grown or eleven years old, you don’t call a Chicano’s courage into question. And it was clear now that Oscar wanted to be a Chicano more than anything. He wanted to be one as badly as his father wanted to be something else.

Oscar said with quiet dignity, “I have courage.”

Neil nodded. He said, “Do you have enough courage to go back into that classroom and try a piece of Spanish you can’t read?”

That was hard. Desperately hard. Oscar’s face filled up with fear, and with his fierce fighting against that fear. How unfair, Neil thought, to batter an eleven year old. But courage has its price. And if you don’t learn it at eleven, will it come any easier at twelve? Or thirty?

He waited again while Oscar wrestled with the challenge. Oscar said, “They’ll laugh at me.”

“They might.”

“You want me to go in there and let them laugh at me?”

“I want you to go in there and show them you have the courage to do one time what they have to do every day. If they laugh, it is their weakness, not yours. It is no concern of yours.”

“That’s easy for you to say!”

Neil smiled suddenly and ruffled Oscar’s hair. “I’ve been laughed at before,” he said, “and I’ll be laughed at again.”

They walked back together, side by side but not touching. At the door, Neil said, “Thank you, Evelyn. I’ll take it from here.”

“I let the children free read.”

“Fine. Thank you.” Neil sat down and Oscar took his seat. The other students had all watched them return, but none of them made a sound. Neil took up a copy of the Spanish story and held it out to Oscar. He said, “It’s up to you, Oscar. Make your own decision, and I won’t hold it against you.” more tomorrow

Neil sat back in his seat, faced their disbelief with a bland smile, and said, “Begin.”

Tanya Michelson looked disgusted. Casey Kruger looked over her shoulder and grinned at the humor of the situation. Tanya shoved the paper in front of Pedro and said, “You read it!” But Pedro was illiterate in both languages. Olivia Pinero led them through it.

Duarte Zavala’s group did well under his guidance. He could not read Spanish well enough to go to a Mexican sixth grade, but he could read a first grade book with ease and he took great pleasure in showing his teammates how it went.

All over the room, kids who had never been the best at anything were suddenly their group’s only hope.

Neil gave them the rest of the hour to work. When they came back from break, he called on Delores Perez and she read without error. He wrote an A on the board. He called on Lydia Ruiz; she won her group an A. Dixie Margaret Trujillo, Rafael, Richard Lujan, Olivia, and Elanor all earned As. Then he called on Oscar Teixeira.

Oscar looked stricken. He shook his head. Neil said, “Come on.”

Oscar said, “I can’t.”

“Sure you can.”

“No.”

“Come on, Oscar.”

Oscar slammed the story down on the desk and screamed, “No!” Tears streamed down his face. “I told you, I can’t!”

He shoved his chair back and bolted to his feet, then ran out the back door of the room.

# # #

Neil went straight to the office and borrowed Evelyn, the secretary, to sit with his class while he went looking for Oscar. It didn’t take long. Aside from the main building and the quad of portables, nothing broke the emptiness of the playground but a half dozen walnut trees. Oscar was sitting under one of them, still crying.

Neil squatted down beside him and waited for him to speak, but Oscar was too far gone in his misery to talk. Neil put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, “Tell me about it.”

“Why did you do that to me?”

“Do what?”

“Make me look like a fool.”

“Do you think that was what I was trying to do? I wasn’t. You took me completely by surprise.”

Oscar wiped his face with the back of his hand and said, “What did you expect?”

“I expected you to read the story.”

Oscar looked at him for the first time. It was a quick, furtive  movement, as if to assure himself that Neil was not making fun of him.

“Oscar, who did I call on to read?”

“What do you mean?”

“Name them. Give me their last names.”

Oscar sobbed, “Just go away and leave me alone.”

Gently, Neil repeated, “Name them.”

Oscar looked away from Neil, out across the playground to the trees beyond. Neil tightened his grip on the boy’s shoulder and said in his softest voice, “Name them.”

“Ruiz, Lujan, Ortiz, . . .”  He named them all.

“Yes. And Teixeira. Do you hear any Anglo names in that group?”

“No.”

“Oscar, I set that whole thing up so that those Spanish speaking kids could have a moment of glory.”

“I don’t speak Spanish!” It was an admission torn from the center of his being, and in that moment Neil gained a great insight into Oscar Teixeira.

“You father never taught you? He never let you learn?”

Oscar tried to answer, but sobs rolled up from his chest and cut off his voice. He shook his head.

Neil sat beside him and caught the boy’s head in his hand, drew it to his chest, and held him while he cried. He said, “I’m sorry, Oscar. I didn’t know.” more tomorrow