After a frustrating week, trying to make things right for my daughters, with meeting after fruitless meeting with the counselor, other administrative personnel and finally the headmaster, I had come nowhere in my attempts to have Ms Roberts relieved of her duties. After contacting the school board I'd been informed that Ms Roberts was a valued member of their staff and that I had to understand that I couldn't throw around accusations like that based on what my kids had told me, kids were just kids after all. How you could actually say you cared for children and then say "kids are just kids" in the same sentence, I don't know, but I now had even more serious doubts about the place I was supposed to send my daughters to every day.
I couldn't well keep my daughters home from school forever, so I had to find some other school for them to go to, because as long as the school board didn't listen, as long as "that woman" was responsible for the wellbeing of my children, or anyone's children, I wouldn't send them back there.
My anger had cooled down somewhat on the way to school a week ago, and I had called ahead, adding another lie to my short list, telling the unknown administrative person that I needed to fetch my daughters for us all to be able to say goodbye to their beloved grandmother. She promised to fetch the kids and meet me by the front entrance, and when I saw them standing there, questions written on their faces, I knew I had done the right thing. I needed to talk to them before I went to the school complaining or rather asking for help, thinking that the school would listen if I just had enough information.
I drove to our favorite diner, got us a corner booth, ordered three big milkshakes and started talking, telling them that I loved them, then asking them to forgive me for not seeing, for not understanding that something was wrong. After telling them what I'd been told about their mentor I asked them to please tell me what had happened.
Alanna started talking, waving her hands around in small, agitated movements. There had been two times where Zelena had been forced to sit on her hands for hours, in an attempt to teach her that she had to sit still. Then there had been more than a few times where she'd been yelled at and sent out of the classroom for correcting her mentor when she got her facts wrong. And after a lot of sharp words of correction for "being generally troublesome", the teacher just snapped at the both of them whenever they tried to get her attention.
Zelena just stated that Ms Roberts seemed to have a lot of issues, probably self-confidence ones. With an annoyed huff she added that she probably would have those kinds of problems too if she knew as little about science as Ms Roberts did. My Zelena took knowledge very seriously, and I couldn't help smiling at her upset words, at the same time thinking that she ought to know better, I had taught them both to respect their elders. I wondered how bad a teacher Ms Roberts must be for both of my daughters to forget how to behave, and a short question later all of the teacher's shortcomings were listed. It really was an impressive list of factual errors, the theory of evolution completely abandoned, dinosaur's lived just a few thousand years ago and on and on.
I wondered if I was making a hen out of a feather, but my instincts told me there was more to the story. The worried looks Alanna kept throwing Zelena's way made me think something else had happened, something worse, but my attempts at getting them to tell me more were unsuccessful.
I was grateful for the things that Mary had told me about Ms Roberts, and I sat there waiting for her to come to her weekly appointment so I could thank her. She had never been late for any of our meetings, this was the first time she wasn't already seated in the waiting room when her name was called by one of the clinic's shared assistants. She'd kept me waiting for five minutes already, but I still hoped she would come. What she had told me about her childhood had made a deep impact on me, in a way that no other story had been able to do before. Perhaps it was because she had made connections to me and my daughters throughout it all, perhaps it was that she had used music to tell it, as she had said, her way. In any case, her voice and her songs kept intruding on my thoughts, early mornings, late nights and many moments in the middle of the day. My usual strict separation between work and private life had been thrown slightly off balance, that was for certain.
I heard fast steps approaching my door and I took a deep breath when I recognized them as Mary's strong, decisive ones. An energetic whirlwind of a woman almost bounced into my room, quickly shutting the door and settling in her usual chair. Her hair was back in a tousled knot at the back of her head, her cheeks were pink, her eyes were bright, and she seemed... happy? Or perhaps more like excited?
After all the worrying I'd been doing on her behalf this past week, I'd expected her to be more like the Mary who had left my room the last time I'd seen her, and she'd once more managed to surprise me.
"Hey," she said and looked at me "sorry for being late, but I had to answer an important phone call, and I'm glad that I did, because I had some very good news."
"It's okay," I answered as I looked at the shining creature in front of me "I'm glad you were able to make it."
"Okay, good, okay, fine" she answered with a nod.
"Thank you for telling me about Ms Roberts," I told her with a calm and quiet voice "I've talked to my kids, and she has been treating them badly, so I've temporarily pulled them out of school."
I hadn't planned to reveal what I had done or what decisions I had made about my children's future, so hearing myself tell her that I kept them at home really surprised me. Mary nodded and looked at me, her face thoughtful.
"Has the school done anything, or are they being stubborn and stupid?" she asked.
"They haven't done anything," I answered and I could hear the bitterness in my own voice "so I think I'm going to have to find a new school for them..."
She nodded and looked at me. Her face was back to its overly neutral mask, but I thought I could see a quick flash of something close to anger in her eyes. She exhaled softly and looked down at her hands.
"Except for Ms Roberts, do they like going to that school?" she asked softly.
"Yes, they do," I answered "that's the sad part, and probably at least partly why they didn't say anything about her behavior."
She nodded once more and sat back in her chair, her body relaxing slightly.
"Okay," she said "on to my life and my story then?"
I nodded and leaned back in my chair too, not even remotely relaxed, but more like bracing myself for what was to come.
"Last week was difficult, depressing and a bit destructive, but I suppose there has to be a bit of tearing down to be able to build something slightly more stable. Or at least that's probably something that a psychologist or therapist would say, don't you think?" she said with a wicked smile thrown my way "Today will be a mix of sadness and hope, if we manage to get that far..."
"Take your time," I answered "your hour starts now."
"Alright," she answered "then I'll start where it all ended last week."
After a few seconds of silence, she opened her mouth and started singing.
"Only the lonely
Know the way I feel tonight
Only the lonely
Know this feeling ain't right
There goes my family
There goes my heart
They're gone forever
So far apart
But only the lonely
Know why
I cry
Only the lonely"
Once again her voice sent vibrations through my body and shivers across my skin. With just a few lines from the old Roy Orbison classic she managed to send me back to the feelings of last week's therapy session. She'd changed one word in this song, just as she had in the first one, but more importantly, she made this song her own by slowing it down and switching some of the notes, giving it an even sadder tone. I could feel her cold loneliness in my bones.
"And yes, it was pretty lonely, miserable and all around depressing in that foster care fish tank I ended up in." she said, her voice calm but a bit tense "We had beds and got clothes and food, but no one saw to our emotional needs, and seeing as there were a lot of broken people living in that big, gray house, there was a definite need for some human compassion and loving care."
She shook her head slowly and squirmed in her seat, an obvious reaction to what she was telling me.
"At that point I hadn't realized that my perception was different from everyone else's, and I hadn't learned how to shield myself from other people's pain, so in every interaction I had with the young people of that house I saw, I sensed and I felt everything they did. I was struck by complete sensory overload every time I left my bedroom, and in the end I almost never left the room."
She fell silent for a short moment, first looking down at her hands then taking a quick look at me before running a hand through her hair, a strangely frustrated movement when combined with her almost blank facial expression.
"I separated myself from everyone, and as I said before, that's not very good, we all need to interact with, to connect to, other people, it's one of our most fundamental needs. It wasn't a very healthy time of my life. And it could have easily meant the end of my life, if my foster parents hadn't decided that one more girl could fit in my room. Right there and then it felt like the end of the world, my sanctuary invaded by the enemy, and the poor, sad girl who was shown into my room was met by a very aggressive and in general pretty messed up girl."
Another short, silent break, with some nervous hand movements from her side, before she continued talking again.
"What started as a catastrophe, that end of the world feeling I was talking about, turned into a wonderful friendship in just a few weeks. The girl became my best friend and we told each other almost everything, I told her about my life, my family, my likes and dislikes and she told me about hers. Life became bearable, and I could... breathe... again. I still had problems facing all of the teenagers in the house at the same time but I didn't seal myself off completely anymore."
I nodded, glad that she had found a friend, someone to help her out of the darkness. And the fact that she had several friends now, the ones she had told me about since the first time we met, made the heavy pressure I had been feeling in my chest lighten, and I could breathe more easily.
"My friend's situation was very different from mine, because she still had a family, but she struggled with her beliefs and life choices even more than I did. She had a very happy and outgoing personality in general, but she got stuck in deep, dark thoughts from time to time. It was either bright cheerfulness or darkest despair, and it switched basically from one day to another, sometimes even on an hourly basis. When I think back, that's probably where I learned to use humor as a means to bring some sort of balance to our lives. I could tell stories about the hilarious acts of people falling in love, the obvious signs and rituals. Or stories about my teachers, a few of them almost caricatures of themselves, with all the quirks and issues they didn't think anyone could see or understand. I remember pulling my friend out of her dark mood one time describing the coded language that two of my teachers used to setup dates in one of the unused storage rooms. I made her come to school promising her a spectacular naked butt show in that damned storage room. And we both got a good laugh, that's for sure."
She paused and took a big gulp of water before she continued, her voice rough and almost a whisper.
