A Book of American Martyrs(102)

THEIR EYES like broken glass. She could feel the small shallow cuts in her skin oozing blood.

“OK if I sit here?”

“Actually no. It is not OK.”

Stiffly she smiled. Felt the hot blood rush into her face and knew that her distress was visible and that they would laugh all the more at her, still she smiled for that was Jesus’s way.

“There’s plenty of seats over there. See?”

“OK. Thanks.”

Thanks! Now the eyes laughed, for this was such a craven reply. Her face aflame she turned blindly, and went to another table where boys had sprawled amid a greasy clutter of paper bags, paper plates, glistening patches of wet. Hyena laughter and moans of strangulated hilarity. And here too eyes shifted upon her but these were not sharp cutting eyes of the girls, sly and sidelong; these were blunt, thrilled.

“Hiya. You gonna sit with us, Daw-en?”

Daw-en was Miss Schine’s way of pronouncing her name. Daw-en Dun-phy a way of such extreme care, caution and frank unease it had become a joke.

“We ain’t gonna bite, Daw-en.”

They laughed. Like snarling dogs they bared and snapped their teeth.

She sat. Blindly pulled out a chair, sat. There was a roaring in her ears. She dared not approach another table. But not facing the boys, and not exactly at the table. Just a corner of the sticky Formica top where she could remove her lunch from the crinkly paper bag, unfold the waxed paper, lift out the sandwiches she had prepared for herself that morning—Kraft cheese-slices bright orange and smeared with mustard between pieces of white bread. And gingersnap cookies cracked and broken and yet delicious. She ate turned from the boys in the hope that they would not see her. Ducked her head eating as a dog might eat, rapidly, almost in stealth, in fear that its food would be snatched from it.

The boys were thrilled. The boys rubbed their hands over their bodies, chests, bellies, thighs, groins. They were ninth graders. They were big, boisterous boys whom other boys avoided. In her space at the corner of the table she ignored them. Jesus said I will not abandon you to your enemies.

“Hey Daw-en.”

She tried to ignore them. But she dared not provoke them to anger, she knew.

“You gonna give us some of them cookies?”

No was what she wanted to say but yes OK was what Jesus urged her to say.

She didn’t smile. Her forehead was creased. Yet she passed the gingersnaps to the boys, all of the gingersnaps but one, which was the worst-cracked and crumbling, which she kept for herself.

Billy Beams devoured a cookie with smacking lips. He was grinning foolishly, though he was (it seemed) just a little contrite, that Dawn Dunphy had given him a gingersnap cookie so willingly.

“Billy Beams” was the name she believed was the boy’s name. She had only heard the name spoken aloud in classes, she had never seen it written.

Billy Beams was in ninth grade and old for ninth grade by a year or two. He’d been kept back and now his friends were younger boys.

“You’d be good-looking, Daw-en Dun-phy—y’know how?”

She did not want to know. She was part-turned from the boys, and preparing to escape. Hoping that they would decide to leave first for the bell for one o’clock was about to ring.

The boys were laughing loudly. Had Billy Beams said something she hadn’t heard? She did not want to turn to him. She was preparing to jump to her feet, and run away; but Jesus urged her to remain just another minute, to show that she wasn’t afraid.

Billy Beams had snatched up a paper bag, holding it upside-down, and pretending to lower it over Dawn’s head, so the boys laughed even louder, and Dawn shrank away in embarrassment.

“—that’s how, Dun-phy.”

Her face aflame she jumped to her feet, clumsily knocking the chair aside. It was all she could do, to run from the cafeteria. She did not glance back at the boys who were hooting and hollering and Billy Beams was the loudest and the crudest and where Jesus should have been, close beside her to console her, to murmur in her ear, Dawn realized there was no one.


MISS SCHINE was Penelope Schine, she’d discovered.

No idea how “Pen-el-op-e” was pronounced but it seemed to her a very beautiful name like something in a song.

Miss Schine was taller than Dawn Dunphy by maybe an inch but her waist was half Dawn Dunphy’s waist (it looked like!) and her face was long and slender and her eyes warmly friendly eyes that “lit up” in laughter: Miss Schine might tease you, but it was a gentle teasing not the hurtful teasing of other teachers.

Was Miss Schine pretty? Dawn thought so!

Hearing others say Miss Schine was horse-faced and her fine, flyaway hair real weird but Dawn thought that Miss Schine was very pretty and her hair that was a muted shade of brown mixed with darker and lighter hairs you could see glittering in the sun when Miss Schine went to the window by the blackboard to stand—Miss Schine’s hair was fascinating to Dawn. And her voice like something liquid shining with light.

“Good morning, Dawn! Beautiful day isn’t it!”

What was nice about Miss Schine was, if she asked you a question, you didn’t need to answer except with a quick little nod of the head to indicate yes. For it was like Miss Schine was talking for you, you could participate in talking with Miss Schine by just listening and nodding yes or murmuring yeh, OK. And sometimes Miss Schine sounded so smart and so happy! Just listening to Miss Schine made you feel smart and happy, too.