All the Ugly and Wonderful Things (6 page)

She put the baby up on my lap, but she didn't sit down. Instead, she went around the kitchen, one little hand running along the edge of the sink, the range, the front of the icebox, like she was testing how clean they were. When she came to the end of the countertop, she stepped behind me. I went to turn around, but then I realized she was checking me out, making sure she could trust me. My neck prickled up from her watching me.

“It hurts?” she said.

I rubbed down my hackles with the flat of my palm. Once my hair grew back out, you wouldn't even be able to see the scar running up the back of my head. “Nah. I told you, I'm about as good as new. It wasn't so bad, really.”

Besides the road rash going up my arm, I ended up with this scar like a centipede, the marks from the stitches coming off it like legs. She took another step to my left and looked at it.

“That one hurts a little. They had to operate on me.” I reached around Donal to hike my sleeve up and show her how long the scar was, just that urge to show off a good scar. The way she frowned, I wished I hadn't.

“It wasn't your fault,” I said. “I know better than to come up that road so fast. It's lucky for me you were there. If I'd wrecked with nobody around, I mighta died.”

She shook her head. She wasn't buying that.

 

6

MISS DEGRASSI

September–November 1977

Her first year teaching, Lisa DeGrassi had Wavonna Quinn in her third grade class. One of fourteen names on the roster. Lisa saw them all as possibilities.

Most of the kids' parents came on the first day to meet the teacher, but Wavonna arrived alone and slipped into the desk nearest the door.

“Hi! I'm Miss DeGrassi. Are you in my class?”

The girl unzipped her backpack and handed Lisa a copy of her enrollment form. Wavonna Quinn, age eight, parents Valerie and Liam Quinn, a rural route address. The handwriting was hardly legible, and at the bottom of the form, where there was a place for parents to write comments—allergies, health restrictions—someone had scrawled two short lines. The first was “She won't talk.” The second looked like “Don't try to teach her.”

It unsettled Lisa. Were the Quinns backwoods antigovernment types? Opposed to the public school system, but legally required to send their child? Whatever her parents' politics, Wavonna didn't protest when Lisa moved her to a more central desk, and she eagerly filled out the math worksheet Lisa distributed after lunch.

The problem came when it was time to pass the worksheets forward, and the boy behind Wavonna tapped her shoulder. She turned in her desk and punched him in the arm, sending the worksheets flying.

“Wavonna!” Lisa stood at her desk, scrambling for something to say. “We are not allowed to hit.”

In the time-out desk at the back of the room, Wavonna seemed indifferent to punishment. With nothing to do, she didn't fidget or lay her head on the desk. Given worksheets, she did them without complaint. During the planning period, while the kids were at PE, Lisa reevaluated the scrawled note on Wavonna's registration form: Don't try to
touch
her.

At the end of the day, after the kids left, Stacy, the other third grade teacher, came by to chat. She was a few years older than Lisa and the closest thing to a friend Lisa had found in Powell.

“You got the Quinn girl in your class,” Stacy said.

“Do you know her?”

“Not her. She transferred here from out of state. Her mother, though. I was in the office when she came to register the little girl for school.”

It was a story Lisa would hear several times in the next few weeks.

Valerie had been drunk or stoned. She slurred her words and could barely hold the pen to fill out the registration paperwork. She paid with a hundred dollar bill—registration costs were only twelve dollars for the year—and walked off without her change.

Her hair was a crazed rat's nest of knots and she'd been wearing what one person described as a nighty. With black peek-a-boo stiletto pumps.

And she stank. The assistant principal added that detail: “I mean,
really
stank. Like she hadn't bathed in weeks.”

Wavonna did not stink. Her homework occasionally came back smelling of cigarettes, but there were other kids in the class with less care at home. Children who came in the same clothes three days in a row with sleep gummed in their eyes and their teeth unbrushed.

Then there was Wavonna's refusal to eat lunch. The fourth day of school, she wasn't with the rest of the class when Lisa went to escort them from the cafeteria. Wavonna sat at the teacher's table with a tray in front of her and Mrs. Norton watching her.

“Is there a problem?” Lisa said.

“I have one rule for lunch. Everyone has to try a bite of everything. She won't.”

Lisa disagreed with rules like that, but in her first week of teaching, there was no way to disagree with a thirty-year veteran like Mrs. Norton.

“When will you send her back to class?” Lisa said.

“After she tries a bite of everything.”

At 2:55 p.m., just before the release bell, Wavonna returned to class with a note from Mrs. Norton. Rather than try a bite of each item, she preferred to sit in the echoey cafeteria while the janitor cleaned.

PE was also a dead-end. While the other kids ran around, screaming and laughing, Wavonna sat on the bleachers and read. Take away her book and she would sit on the bleachers staring at nothing.

She was stubborn, but at least she was smart. Her reading was above grade level and she rarely scored less than 100 percent on her math worksheets. She was a problematic student, but she was less trouble than most.

Then the first cold of the season went through school, and Wavonna stayed out sick. Three days later, she returned to school with a severe-looking woman, who marched into the classroom and said, “Who's the teacher here?”

“I'm Miss DeGrassi.”

“I am Valerie Quinn.” The woman was tall and slender, with brown hair, but this Mrs. Quinn didn't stink or slur her words. She was dressed in a white turtleneck, white slacks, red pumps, and she wore her hair pulled back from her bare face.

“How often do you disinfect the desks?” Mrs. Quinn said.

“I'm sure the janitor does it regularly.”

“You're sure? How are you sure? Do you
see
the janitor do it? Or do you just assume that he does it?”

Lisa started to say, “I trust that the janitor is doing his job,” but she never got to finish.

Later, when she told the story, she found there was no way to exaggerate it for more laughs.

“It has to be every day. Every day. Say it with me: the desks have to be disinfected every day. Children are germy. They are covered in germs. These, these, these sweet little angels—” At that point in the story, Lisa swept her arm around her audience, one finger pointed accusingly at them, always aware that she would never master Valerie Quinn's contemptuous gesture. “—are disgusting disease factories. These little angels are going to the bathroom and not washing their hands. They are bringing their germs back to this classroom and smearing them over every surface.”

The diatribe lasted until the cafeteria lady sent Mr. Bunder, the PE teacher, to see why Lisa's students were late to lunch. He found them in the thrall of Mrs. Quinn's unrelenting account of their hygiene failures.

Mr. Bunder was able to convince her to come down to the front office, where she unloaded on the principal and the janitor and the school nurse, too. When it was over, Mr. Bunder sacrificed his planning hour to keep Lisa's students in the gym, while Lisa went back to her room to recover. Alone, she sat at her desk and cried. When she lifted her head, she found Wavonna sitting on the bench under the coat rack, reading a book. She had been there all along, while her mother rampaged.

“Are you okay, sweetie?” Lisa said. Without looking up, Wavonna nodded. It made Lisa wish there were something worth calling Child Protective Services over. A suspicious bruise, an appearance of malnutrition, anything to get that little girl away from her crazy mother.

Mr. Bunder's take on the situation was slightly different. After having Wavy in his PE classes for two months, he suggested having a kid like that would make you bonkers. “Which came first? The crazy chicken or the crazy egg?” he said.

In November, things got better. Maybe it was the influence of Wavonna's father, who started dropping her off and picking her up most days. That was the same time she started writing Wavy on her papers instead of Wavonna.

When the crazy mother and the Hell's Angels father failed to show up for parent-teacher conferences, Lisa mailed a letter to the house. Then she called, but no one answered.

Finally, she did what she'd been too cowardly to do in the first place. At the end of the day, she walked Wavy out to where Mr. Quinn waited on his motorcycle, his hands resting on ape hanger handlebars. With his leather jacket hanging open, Lisa could see sweat stains under the arms of his greasy T-shirt. He was huge and meaty, and if Wavy hadn't been there, Lisa might have backed down from her intention to confront him.

“Hi! I'm Miss DeGrassi. I'm Wavy's teacher.”

He nodded.

“I was sorry we didn't see you and Mrs. Quinn at open house, but I'd like to meet with you to talk about how Wavy's doing. I sent a letter about conferences. Maybe you didn't get it?”

“Uh, sorry,” he said.

“Maybe you could come in right now? It would only take a few minutes.”

He looked at Wavy, and Lisa had the weirdest feeling he was waiting for instructions. All the lights were on but nobody was home?

Wavy nodded.

“Okay,” he said.

In her classroom, Lisa kept two adult chairs for parent conferences, but even they seemed too small for him. As big as he was, he hardly seemed old enough to have an eight-year-old daughter, but Lisa had learned her lesson on that subject. Grandfathers who turned out to be fathers. A mother so young, Lisa mistook her for a student's older sister. Mr. Quinn looked young, sitting across from her like a kid who'd been called to the principal's office.

“Wavonna—Wavy is already over the big hurdles in third grade: multiplication and learning to write longhand.”

Lisa had kept back a sample of Wavy's penmanship to show him, a little essay she'd written about the
Voyager 1
and
2
launches. He looked at it long enough to read it, but didn't say anything.

“But she's still not participating in PE class. I was wondering if we could find a way to encourage her.”

Mr. Quinn shifted in his chair and said, “What's PE?”

“Gym class. They call it Physical Education now. PE for short.”

“Oh.”

“The other thing that concerns me is Wavy's speech. You don't have to decide today, but I want you to think about having Wavy meet with the school's speech therapist. It won't cost anything. It's part of the district's services that are provided to all students and I really think—”

“I don't need a speech therapist,” Wavy said.

Until then Lisa had heard Wavy say exactly three things: “Don't,” “No,” and “Asshole,” which earned her a trip to the office, where the principal butted his head against her indifference to punishment.

“Oh,” Lisa said.

At a look from Wavy, Mr. Quinn stood up, his wallet chain rattling against his leg.

“That it?” he said.

“Um, thank you for coming in.”

After that, Lisa gave up. No wonder Wavy didn't talk. Her role models were a crazy woman who wouldn't shut up and a man who barely spoke. What could you do with a child who had that at home?

 

7

KELLEN

November 1977

At the bike shop in Garringer, Marilyn came around the counter with a big smile and said, “Oh my god, where did this angel come from? I didn't know you had a little girl.”

“She's not my little girl,” I said.

“Who is she then? Who's little angel are you? That hair is just baby fine, isn't it?”

Marilyn reached out to touch Wavy's hair, so I shifted to block her.

“She needs a helmet,” I said.

Sitting there with that teacher thinking I was Liam, I realized it was plain reckless to let Wavy ride without a helmet. Never mind Liam, I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if I wrecked and got Wavy's brains scrambled.

Marilyn brought out three kids helmets. A plain black one, a blue and white striped one, and a pink one.

“I bet I know which one you'd like,” Marilyn said.

Yeah, like hell Wavy wanted a pink helmet. She pointed at the black helmet, which was just a small version of a Daytona with a visor. It fit her, so that was a done deal.

While Marilyn rang up the helmet, Wavy walked down the boot aisle, running her fingertip across the toes. Her old snow boots looked cheap and worn out, so I said, “See any you like?” She nodded.

Marilyn stuck right with us, kept trying to get close to Wavy. The way Wavy looked, all sweet and blond, people were probably all the time trying to paw her. A lot of times I'd almost go to touch her hair before I remembered not to. The way I figured it, she'd let me know when it was okay.

To keep Marilyn from touching her, I had to get down on my knee to adjust the shoe sizer against Wavy's toe.

She smiled at me, her cheeks a little pink. I could see what she was thinking.

“I'm not a shoe salesman,” I said.

That made her smile bigger, almost showed her teeth.

“So she's not your daughter?” Marilyn said.

“No, she's not my daughter.” What was I supposed to say?
She's my bike bitch
? Not everything has a simple answer. I said, “She's a friend of mine.”

Wavy picked a pair of boy's square-toed boots. Good leather to last her for a while. They were a little big, but watching her walk across the store, half strutting, half stomping, I could tell she liked them.