“Ms. Crum…hi…how are you? How did you, uh…find yourself attached to your chair?” Jamie spins her finger in a circle and winces.
I hold back a snort.
Ms. Crum looks like the rusted edge of an old battle-ax—she’s old, wrinkled, and still swinging. Jamie was right, this lady isn’t someone you want to mess with. I imagine she’s been a principal for decades and has crushed hundreds of misbehaving kids like smashing flies under a heavy book. Unfortunately for her, I don’t think she’s ever come up against anyone like Tanner.
“You know very well how I did.” Ms. Crum narrows her eyes on Jamie, her nostrils quivering and her lips folding down. “Your good-for-nothing son can’t sit still, can’t behave for a minute. He is the definition of a bad seed. I told you the last time you were in here, if you couldn’t get your undisciplined, unmotivated, misbehaving children under control I’d have to fail them. It gives me no pleasure to tell you this but your daughter would still rather imagine she’s an animal than learn her letters. Your sons, they’re constantly disrupting, laughing in class, making jokes, they don’t take life seriously. They will never succeed. They will never get anywhere. They’ll end up just like you, ruining lives, ruining—”
“Hold on now.” I step into the office and move between Jamie, the kids, and Ms. Crum. The more she ranted, the angrier I got. The closed-in, dark little room, the musty, pencil shaving and glue smell, the sterile, institutional desk and chairs, it tears at something inside me. There’s an echo deep down telling me this isn’t right. That somehow, a long time ago, I was in a similar situation, and I couldn’t get out of it, and I couldn’t help anyone else. But now I can.
I give Ms. Crum a hard look. “That’s enough.”
Jamie takes in a sharp breath, and I feel her staring at me in shock.
Ms. Crum narrows her eyes on me. The chair sticking out from her behind looks like a grotesque appendage.
“They’re kids.” I look at Elijah, his cheeks red and his eyes wide. Tanner stares at me, his mouth hanging open wide. Shay peers at me from behind the door. “They should be imagining. They should be laughing and joking. They should be playing and having fun. Show me a kid who doesn’t imagine or dream. That would be the failure. That would be the tragedy. Why would anyone want to make a child sit still and be quiet? I don’t know why you’re saying they won’t be a success, but lady, my idea and your idea of success is vastly different. Because to me, someone who is true to themselves, stands up for others, and is honest, and kind, then that person is a success. You don’t have to sit still, be quiet, and do what someone else tells you to do to be a success. I don’t know who you think you are, but you aren’t the end all and be all when it comes to determining what’s right for these kids.” I wave my hand at the metal chair. “And sorry about your…chair.”
I grab Tanner and Elijah’s hands. They both have identical stunned expressions on their faces.
Ms. Crum isn’t done. She smacks her hand on her desk again. “Who I am? Who I am? Who in tarnation are you?”
I narrow my eyes on the woman. “I’m their father.”
Elijah squeezes my hand and Tanner grins up at me, his eyes full of hero worship, for the dad who apparently just slayed a dragon.
Ms. Crum’s coughing, but we don’t need to hear any more.
“Have a good night.” I nod at Ms. Crum, then march the kids from the room. Jamie’s cheeks are flushed bright red. She grabs Shay’s hand and we all walk out the narrow, musty old office, to the fresh air.
* * *
The kids are riding high.Jamie, as usual, takes the curves on the road like she’s running a roller coaster at an amusement park, and faster means more fun. After riding with her, Gran Allwright, and Big Tom, I figure it’s what comes when you know the curves, hills, and turns as well as you know the nose on your own face.
The radio crackles playing some fast-paced bluegrass medley, adding to the excitement from the kids bouncing in their seats and Tanner giving a play-by-play of the superglue incident.
“And then Shay said she really, really had to go to the bathroom, and then Elijah said he did too. But Ms. Crum said she wouldn’t fall for their mischief. And even though Shay was crossing her legs real tight, Ms. Crum said we weren’t allowed to take our tushes off our chairs, not for the bathroom, not for boredom, not even if it was raining frogs. She said we had to learn discipline. So then I figured, what’s right is right, and if we couldn’t leave our chairs, she couldn’t either!”
Jamie glances in the rearview mirror, frowning at the kids. Shay is in the middle seat and the boys are buckled in on either side of her. “Shay, do you still have to go? Elijah? Should I stop?”
Shay shakes her head. “I can hold it.”
“Me too.”
“Fine.” Jamie hits the radio, silencing the music, and leaving only the rumbling of the engine and the wind whistling through the gap in the windows that never seals properly. “In that case, Elijah, Tanner, you think you did good?”
She glares at the boys in the rearview mirror, and the elation coming from the backseat takes a quick plummet back to earth. I study Jamie’s face. Her cheeks are still white, and her lips are tight, all in all she doesn’t look happy. I wonder if what I said back there isn’t what she would’ve done. Maybe she agreed with Ms. Crum, maybe Jamie and I don’t agree on how the kids should be raised, maybe this was a problem before.
The boys exchange a glance, and Shay gives a wide-eyed shake of her head. Elijah speaks up, “Welllll, we don’t think we didn’t do good.”
Huh.
Jamie’s knuckles tighten on the steering wheel. She glances at me, her eyes just as worried as before when she said she had something to tell me, then she quickly looks away. “Boys. Listen carefully. In life people are going to treat you wrong. That’s a fact. People hurt other people. What makes the difference between a good person and not is that when you get wronged you don’t seek retribution. You can stand up for yourself, you can say, no that’s not right, but if you take an eye for an eye, then pretty soon, every single person is blind. Do you understand? You get to choose. Do you want to be a good person, or do you want to blind the world? Every time someone wrongs you, you get to make that choice again. That choice never ends. Keep up the cycle of hurt or be a good person and forgive.”
Jamie turns her face away from me, but even so, I can see that she’s upset. Her shoulders are tense, and the line of her body is rigid.
I reach over and touch her arm, letting her know that I support her. I look over my shoulder at the backseat.
The boys are chewing on what Jamie said, frowning at each other.