My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(19)

That’s why Elsa always tears up the notes she gets in her locker. The notes about how she is ugly. That she’s disgusting. That they’re going to kill her. Elsa rips them into such tiny pieces that they can hardly be seen and then throws them into different wastepaper bins all over the school. It’s an act of mercy to those who wrote the notes, because Granny would have beaten them to death if she’d found out.

Elsa rises slightly from the chair and quickly reaches across the desk to give the globe another spin. The headmaster looks close to despair. Elsa sinks back into her chair, satisfied.

“My God, Elsa! What happened to your cheek!” Mum bursts out with exclamation marks at the end, when she sees the three red lacerations.

Elsa shrugs without answering. Mum turns to the headmaster. Her eyes are burning.

“What happened to her cheek?!”

The headmaster twists in his seat.

“Now, then. Let’s calm ourselves down, now. Think about . . . I mean, think about your child.”

He isn’t pointing at Elsa when he says that last bit, he’s pointing at Mum. Elsa stretches her leg and kicks the wastepaper bin again. Mum takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, then determinedly moves the wastebasket farther under the desk. Elsa looks at her, offended, sinks so deep into the chair that she has to hold on to the armrests to stop herself sliding out, and reaches out with her leg until her toe almost, almost, touches the rim of the wastebasket. Mum sighs. Elsa sighs even louder. The headmaster looks at them and then at the globe on his desk. He pulls it closer to him.

“So . . .” he begins at last, smiling halfheartedly at Mum.

“It’s been a difficult week for the whole family,” Mum interrupts him at once and sounds as if she’s trying to apologize.

Elsa hates it.

“We can all empathize with that,” says the headmaster in the manner of someone who doesn’t know the meaning of the word. He looks nervously at the globe. “Unfortunately it’s not the first time Elsa has found herself in conflict at this school.”

“Not the last either,” Elsa mutters.

“Elsa!” snaps Mum.

“Mum!!!” Elsa roars with three exclamation marks.

Mum sighs. Elsa sighs even louder. The headmaster clears his throat and holds the globe with both hands as he says:

“We, and by that I mean the staff at this school, obviously in collaboration with the guidance counselor, feel that Elsa could be helped by a psychologist to channel her aggressions.”

“A psychologist?” says Mum hesitantly, “Surely that’s a bit dramatic?”

The headmaster raises his hands defensively as if apologizing, or possibly as if he’s about to start playing an air tambourine.

“It’s not that we think anything is wrong! Absolutely not! Lots of special-needs children benefit from therapy. It’s nothing to be ashamed of!”

Elsa reaches out with the tips of her toes and pushes over the wastepaper basket. “Why don’t you go to a psychologist yourself?”

The headmaster decides to make the globe safe by putting it on the floor next to his chair. Mum leans towards Elsa and exerts herself incredibly not to raise her voice.

“If you tell me and the headmaster which of the children are causing you trouble, we can help you solve the conflicts instead of things always ending up like this, darling.”

Elsa looks up, her lips pressed into a straight line.

The scratch marks on her cheek have stopped bleeding but they are still as bright as neon lights.

“Snitches get stitches,” she says succinctly.

“Elsa, please try to cooperate,” the headmaster says, attempting a grimace that Elsa assumes to be his way of smiling a little.

“You be cooperative,” Elsa replies without an attempt to smile even a little.

The headmaster looks at Mum.

“We, well, I mean the school staff and I, believe that if Elsa could just try to walk away sometimes when she feels there’s a conflict about to happ—”

Elsa doesn’t wait for Mum’s answer, because she knows Mum won’t defend her. So she snatches up her backpack from the floor and stands up.

“Can we go now, or what?”

And then the headmaster says she can go into the corridor. He sounds relieved. Elsa marches out, while Mum stays in there, apologizing. Elsa hates it. She just wants to go home so it won’t be Monday anymore.

During the last lesson before lunch, one of their smarmy teachers told them their assignment over the Christmas holiday would be to prepare a talk on the theme of A Literary Hero I Look Up To. And they were to dress up as their hero and talk about the hero in the first person singular. Everyone had to put up their hands and choose a hero. Elsa was going to go for Harry Potter, but someone else got him first. So when her turn came she said Spider-Man. And then one of the boys behind her got annoyed because he was going for that. And then there was an argument. “You can’t take Spider-Man!” shouted the boy. And Elsa said, “Pity, because I just did!” And then the boy said, “It’s a pity for YOU, yeah!” And then Elsa snorted in English. “Sure!” Because that is Elsa’s favorite word in English. And then the boy shouted that Elsa couldn’t be Spider-Man because “only boys can be Spider-Man!” And then Elsa told him he could be Spider-Man’s girlfriend. And then he pushed Elsa into a radiator. And then Elsa hit him with a book.