Vinegar Girl (Hogarth Shakespeare)(4)
The little girls in Room 4 were playing breakup. The ballerina doll was breaking up with the sailor doll. “I’m sorry, John,” she said in a brisk, businesslike voice—Jilly’s voice, actually—“but I’m in love with somebody else.”
“Who?” the sailor doll asked. It was Emma G. who was speaking for him, holding him up by the waist of his little blue middy blouse.
“I can’t tell you who, on account of he’s your best friend and so it would hurt your feelings.”
“Well, that’s just stupid,” Emma B. pointed out from the sidelines. “Now he knows anyhow, since you said it was his best friend.”
“He could have a whole bunch of best friends, though.”
“No, he couldn’t. Not if they were ‘best.’?”
“Yes, he could. Me, I have four best friends.”
“You’re a weirdo, then.”
“Kate! Did you hear what she called me?”
“What do you care?” Kate asked. She was helping Jameesha take her painting smock off. “Tell her she’s weird herself.”
“You’re weird yourself,” Jilly told Emma B.
“Am not.”
“Are so.”
“Am not.”
“Kate said you were, so there!”
“I didn’t say that,” Kate said.
“Did so.”
Kate was about to say, “Did not,” but she changed it to, “Well, anyhow, I wasn’t the one who started it.”
They were gathered in the doll corner—seven little girls and the Samson twins, Raymond and David. In another corner all six of the remaining boys were crowded at the sand table, which they had contrived to turn into a sports arena. They were using a plastic spoon to catapult Lego bricks into a fluted metal Jell-O mold that had been positioned at the far end. Most of the time they missed, but whenever anyone scored a hit there would be a burst of cheers, and then the others would start elbowing one another aside and wrestling for control of the spoon so that they could try for themselves.
Kate should go over and quiet them down, but she didn’t. Let them work off some of that energy, she figured. Besides, she was not, in fact, the teacher; she was the teacher’s assistant—a world of difference.
The Charles Village Little People’s School had been founded forty-five years ago by Mrs. Edna Darling, who still ran it, and all of her teachers were old enough that they required assistants—one assistant apiece, and two for the more labor-intensive two-year-old class—because who could expect them to chase around after a gang of little rapscallions at their advanced stage of life? The school occupied the basement level of Aloysius Church, but it was aboveground, mostly, so the rooms were sunlit and cheerful, with a set of double doors opening directly onto the playground. The end farthest from the doors had been walled off to form a faculty lounge where the older women spent large blocks of time drinking herbal tea and discussing their physical declines. Sometimes the assistants would venture into the lounge for a cup of tea themselves, or to use the faculty restroom with its grown-up-size sink and toilet; but always they had the sense that they were interrupting a private meeting, and they tended not to linger even though the teachers were cordial to them.
To put it mildly, it had never been Kate’s plan to work in a preschool. However, during her sophomore year in college she had told her botany professor that his explanation of photosynthesis was “half-assed.” One thing had led to another, and eventually she was invited to leave. She had worried about her father’s reaction, but after he’d heard the whole story he said, “Well, you were right: it was half-assed,” and that was the end of it. So there she was, back home with nothing to do until her aunt Thelma stepped in and arranged for a position at the school. (Aunt Thelma was on the board there. She was on many boards.) In theory Kate could have applied for readmission to her college the following year, but she somehow didn’t. It had probably slipped her father’s mind that she had the option, even, and certainly it was easier for him to have her around to run things and look after her little sister, who was only five at the time but already straining the abilities of their ancient housekeeper.
The teacher Kate assisted was named Mrs. Chauncey. (All the teachers were “Mrs.” to their assistants.) She was a comfortable, extremely overweight woman who had been tending four-year-olds longer than Kate had been alive. Ordinarily she treated them with a benign absentmindedness, but when one of them misbehaved, it was “Connor Fitzgerald, I see what you’re up to!” and “Emma Gray, Emma Wills: eyes front!” She thought that Kate was too lax with them. If a child refused to lie down at Quiet Rest Time, Kate just said, “Fine, be that way,” and stomped off in a huff. Mrs. Chauncey would send her a reproachful look before telling the child, “Somebody isn’t doing what Miss Kate told him to.” At such moments, Kate felt like an impostor. Who was she to order a child to take a nap? She completely lacked authority, and all the children knew it; they seemed to view her as just an extra-tall, more obstreperous four-year-old. Not once during her six years at the school had the students themselves addressed her as “Miss Kate.”
From time to time Kate entertained the notion of looking for work elsewhere, but it never came to anything. She didn’t interview well, to be honest. And anyhow, she couldn’t think what she might be qualified to do instead.