Cutting Teeth(92)

The cubbies have been emptied and very little is left in the small teacher desk at the corner—some paper clips, dry-erase markers, and a spool of string. There’s a rolling cabinet on which a TV sits. Mary Beth kneels and tugs the aluminum doors open and—bingo. A neat pile of green two-pocket folders are stacked on the middle shelf there. On each, she finds a label: George, Tamar, Maggie, Zeke. She shuffles through until she finds Noelle’s name.

Mary Beth lets herself drop flat onto her bottom and sits cross-legged, the folder balanced on her inner thighs. She remembers one of the last things Miss Ollie ever said to her: I think it’s time that you, me, and Darby get together to discuss what’s going on between the girls. She thought she knew what that meant.

Inside the folder are the usual assessments. A few writing worksheets. Some pictures. A couple cute photos of Noelle and her classmates that Doug and Mary Beth would have found adorable in this parent-teacher meeting that will never take place. But on the back page, there’s the formal evaluation, written in the handwriting of a dead woman.

And sitting right there on the floor, Mary Beth forces herself to read every last line.





THIRTY-NINE




The last meeting of the Little Academy four-year-old parents begins at dusk. Without Rhea.

She imagines her absence is noticeable as much as it’s noted, the other parents remarking at how they aren’t surprised she’s not there to show her face. She imagines them feeling better for it, savoring it like the last sip from a fine bottle of wine, imagines, too, that while they’re bitching and moaning about how she’s too chicken to show up, they’re secretly glad she’s gone—Ha, proves them right—a free pass to whisper about her as much as they please, to pile on a pile that’s already been dumped over her good name.

Maybe she’s catastrophizing. Or maybe not. She is a small speck in the universe. A single molecule of water floating through the stream. She is dust on the winds of time.

Oh god. When did she become so full of shit?

When she started believing she was a good mother. Like she had this all figured out. Rhea came up with all kinds of rules and decrees, philosophies and lines in the sand, as though that could mean she had it on lock. As though that could mean she didn’t gag at the contents of a super-smelly diaper or long to blast explicit rap lyrics in the car with Bodhi riding in the back seat.

Rhea opens the double doors to the multipurpose room knowing that she’s about to face some different kind of music, but what the hell—she’s a tired mom just like everybody else, too tired to care any longer.





TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW OF WITNESS, LOLA MORTON


APPEARANCES:


Detective Wanda Bright





PROCEEDINGS


DET. BRIGHT: Lola, what did you think of Miss Ollie?

LOLA MORTON: I loved her. She was my best friend.

DET. BRIGHT: What made her your best friend?

LOLA MORTON: She didn’t yell at me for tattling and she believed me.

DET. BRIGHT: Believed you about what?

LOLA MORTON: I don’t know.

DET. BRIGHT: What happened, Lola? I’m like Miss Ollie. I’ll believe you, too.

LOLA MORTON: Miss Ollie said she was disappointed in me. And I pouted and got really mad. She walked me back from Mrs. Parker’s and I think that’s how come she’s dead.





FORTY





Noelle is a smart student who catches on quickly to lesson plans,



Mary Beth reads.

but her social skills leave some areas for concern and will need to be addressed as she moves toward kindergarten. Noelle can be sneaky when she isn’t monitored closely. She has a quietly dominating personality that she uses to manipulate and at times strong-arm her peers. She has taken a special interest in subjugating her best friend, Lola, causing emotional distress for her and little remorse from Noelle. On several occasions, I have caught Noelle taking things that don’t belong to her from her classmates, and even killing a cicada that Lola had “befriended,” but it’s her singular focus on Lola, one of the quirkier personalities in the class, that worries me. I have tried to deal with this in the classroom to the best of my abilities before escalating the matter; however at this point, I would recommend a full assessment by a licensed child psychologist to monitor signs of behavioral disorder for early intervention.



Mary Beth sits back, stunned, wondering if this changes everything or if it even changes anything.

Since the moment she found her daughter covered in Miss Ollie’s blood, she’s been haunted by the idea that Noelle may have made a terrible mistake. Never once did it cross her mind that she may not have made a terrible mistake, but might instead be terrible.

And yet. Here she is, face-to-face with the terrible truth, and what she will do with it next is up to her.

“Nobody’s supposed to be in here outside of school hours.” The voice causes Mary Beth to tense up, but so would the man standing in the doorframe.

Pastor Ben.

Without the lights on, his eyes shine, shadows sharpen the lines of his face, and she can’t quite figure out what she found so handsome about him a few short days before. The scent of his bodywash—clean and decidedly male—reminds her of guys she met in college. Well before Doug.