Vinegar Girl (Hogarth Shakespeare)(6)

They had barely finished their ice cream when the five-year-olds arrived in the lunchroom doorway, tumbling all over one another and spilling out of line. Hulking, intimidating giants, they seemed to Kate from the confines of her little world, although only last year they had been her Fours. “Let’s go, children!” Mrs. Chauncey called, heaving herself to her feet. “We’re holding people up here. Say thank you to Mrs Washington.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Washington,” the children chorused. Mrs. Washington, standing by the door to the kitchen, smiled and nodded regally and wrapped her hands in her apron. (The Little People’s School was very big on manners.) The Fours fell into a line of sorts and threaded out past the Fives in a shrinking, deferential way, with Kate bringing up the rear. As she passed Georgina, Room 5’s assistant, she murmured, “I have to go to the office.”

“Eek!” Georgina said. “Well, good luck with that.” She was a pleasant-faced, rosy-cheeked young woman, hugely pregnant with her first child. She had never had to go to the office, Kate would bet.

In Room 4, she unlocked the supply closet to haul out the stacks of aluminum cots that the children took their naps on. She spaced them out around the room and distributed the blankets and the miniature pillows the children kept in their cubbies, as usual thwarting a plan among the four most talkative little girls to sleep all together in one corner. Ordinarily Mrs. Chauncey spent Quiet Rest Time in the faculty lounge, but today she’d returned to Room 4 after lunch, and now she settled herself at her desk and pulled a Baltimore Sun from her tote bag. She must have overheard Mrs. Darling summoning Kate to her office.

Liam D. said he wasn’t sleepy. He said the same thing every day, and then he was the one Kate had to rouse from a deathlike stupor when it was Playground Time. She tucked his blanket underneath him on all sides the way he liked—a white flannel blanket with two yellow stripes that he still called his “blankie” if the other boys weren’t near enough to hear him. Then Jilly needed her ponytail undone so the clasp wouldn’t poke her in the head when she lay down. Kate slipped the clasp under Jilly’s pillow and said, “Remember where it is, now, so you can find it when you get up.” She would probably be back in time to remind her, but what if she were not? What if she were told to pack her things and leave? She ran her fingers through Jilly’s hair to loosen it—soft brown hair with a silky feel to it, smelling of baby shampoo and crayons. She wouldn’t be here to help Antwan work through his little bullying problem; she would never know how Emma B. dealt with the new sister who was coming from China in June.

It wasn’t true that she hated children. At least, a few she liked okay. It was just that she didn’t like all children, as if they were uniform members of some microphylum or something.

But she put on a breezy tone when she told Mrs. Chauncey, “Back in a jiff!”

Mrs. Chauncey just smiled at her (unsuspectingly? pityingly?) and turned a page of her newspaper.

Mrs. Darling’s office was next to Room 2, where the children were so little that they slept on floor pads instead of cots because they might roll off. Their room was dimmed, she could see through the single pane of glass in the door, and an intense, purposeful hush seemed to emanate from it.

The glass in Mrs. Darling’s door revealed Mrs. Darling at her desk, talking on the telephone while she leafed through a sheaf of papers. She said a quick good-bye and hung up, though, as soon as Kate knocked. “Come in,” she called.

Kate walked in and dropped onto the straight-backed chair facing the desk.

“We’ve finally got an estimate for replacing that stained carpeting,” Mrs. Darling told her.

“Huh,” Kate said.

“The question, though, is why is it stained? Clearly there’s some sort of leak, and till we figure it out there’s no sense laying new carpet.”

Kate had nothing to say to this, so she said nothing.

“Well,” Mrs. Darling said. “But enough about that.”

She aligned her papers efficiently and placed them in a folder. Then she reached for another folder. (Kate’s folder? Did Kate have a folder? What on earth would be inside it?) She opened it and studied the top sheet of paper for a moment, and then she peered across at Kate over the rims of her glasses. “So,” she said. “Kate. I’m wondering. How, exactly, would you assess your performance here?”

“My what?”

“Your performance at the Little People’s School. Your teaching abilities.”

“Oh,” Kate said. “I don’t know.”

She was hoping this would qualify as an answer, but when Mrs. Darling went on gazing at her expectantly, she added, “I mean, I’m not really a teacher. I’m an assistant.”

“Yes?”

“I just assist.”

Mrs. Darling continued to gaze at her.

“But I guess I do okay at it,” Kate said finally.

“Yes,” Mrs. Darling said, “you do, for the most part.”

Kate tried not to look surprised.

“I would say, in fact, that the children seem quite taken with you,” Mrs. Darling said.

The words “for some mysterious reason” hung silently in the room.

“Unfortunately, I don’t believe their parents feel the same way.”

“Oh,” Kate said.