You Think It, I'll Say It(52)

I carried Derek to the light switches, and he turned them off. On the other side of the door, I set him down. He took my hand, and though my entire body was tense from the exchange with Alaina, I felt some of Derek’s placidity, his sweetness, seep into me. Alaina reached for his other hand.

“Oh my,” she said. “What have we here?”

“No!” Derek said. “It’s mine.”

I glanced down and saw that Alaina was extracting from his grip one of the piglets from the farm animals bin.

“That’s not yours,” Alaina said. “That belongs to all the children at New Day. Look.” She held the piglet toward me. It had peach skin and pink hooves and a little curly tail, and its snout pointed skyward. “Frances, don’t you think if he took this pig, the other kids would feel really sad?”

I said, through clenched teeth, “Let him have it.”

“Doesn’t that send a confusing message?” Her voice was normal, no longer singsongy for Derek.

“It’s a plastic pig,” I said. “He’s three.” I thought of the objects I had coveted as a child: an eraser in the shape of a strawberry that belonged to Deanna Miller, the girl who sat next to me in first grade; a miniature perfume bottle of my mother’s with a round top of frosted glass. My mother had promised that she would give me the bottle when she was finished with the perfume, but year after year, a little of the amber liquid always remained. There weren’t that many times in your life when you believed a possession would bring you happiness and you were actually right.

“You know what I’ll do, Derek?” Alaina said. “I’ll put the pig back, but when you come down here tomorrow, you’ll know just where it is.”

I knew she would think we’d compromised, but she could compromise by herself. While she was in the playroom, I lifted Derek again and carried him upstairs.



* * *



—

I kept waiting that week to get a call from Linda, the New Day director, saying she’d received complaints from the mothers about our excursion to the second floor. I would apologize and take responsibility for my participation in the parade, but I’d also explain that Alaina was the one who had initiated it and that, in general, I had concerns about her behavior as a volunteer; while eating my dinner of microwaved cheese quesadillas at night, I rehearsed the way I’d phrase this. But the week passed without a call.



* * *



—

The next Monday was quiet. Orlean had, to the envy of everyone, gone out for pizza with his father, and Tasaundra and Dewey and their mom had moved out of the shelter to stay with a cousin in Prince George’s County. A new girl named Marcella was there, a chubby, dreamy eight-year-old with long black hair.

Alaina’s dress-up clothes went over well enough, except that the entire process, from the kids’ choosing what to wear to putting on the outfits to taking the clothes back off again, took less than fifteen minutes. Alaina encouraged the kids to draw pictures of themselves in the clothes, but all anybody wanted to play was “Mother, May I?” I wondered if Alaina would keep hatching schemes week after week or if she would soon realize that with kids, you didn’t get points just for trying.

While I was putting together a wooden puzzle of the United States with Marcella and Meshaun, Derek came over to the table. He said, “Miss Volunteer,” and when I said, “Yes, Derek?” he giggled and ran behind my chair.

I whirled around, and Derek shrieked. He tossed something into the air, and when it landed on the floor, I saw that it was the pig from the week before. He picked it up and made it walk up my arm.

Alaina squatted by Derek. “Do you like your pig?” she asked.

I couldn’t help myself. “His pig?”

But I noticed that Alaina was fighting a smile the way people do when they’ve received a compliment and want you to think they don’t believe it. “It is his,” she said. “I gave it to him.”

Then I saw that the pig wasn’t identical to the one from before—this pig’s snout was pointed straight in front of it, and its skin was more pink than peach.

“I felt like such a witch taking the other one away,” she said.

I stared at her. “When did you give it to him?”

“I came by last week.”

Knowing that she had been at the shelter at a time other than Monday evening made me curious about what Linda had made of that, or whether Alaina had met other volunteers. And had Alaina summoned Derek in order to give him the pig in private, or had she handed it over in front of other children? She should be fired, I thought, if it was possible to fire a volunteer.

That night as we left the shelter, Alaina said, “Anyone up for a drink?”

“Sounds good to me,” Karen said.

“I need to be at work early tomorrow,” I said. Karen and I had never socialized outside the shelter.

“You know, Frances, I looked at the National Conservancy Group’s website the other day,” Alaina said. “I know your president from back in the day. David, right?”

“I don’t really work with him directly,” I said. “I’m entry-level.”

Alaina elbowed me. “No low self-esteem, you hear? You’re just starting out. Listen—I’m impressed that you landed a job at such a great place.”