Rebin duks

Mrs. Booker hummed tunelessly under her breath as she watered the lifeless plant on her desk. “Indirect sunlight my ass,” she muttered. She turned the ivy slightly more towards the window and wondered if the tower of books had something to do with blocking more sunlight than the plant truly needed. She set the water bottle down on her oak desk, or rather on a stack of papers on the top of her oak desk and stared. “Why do I even have this desk? It just gathers so much crap?”  

Her eyes took in the abandoned mechanical pencils that no longer had any lead, but still had perfectly good erasers so she couldn’t throw them away yet, the vibrant pens that still have a little bit of life in them if she shook them hard enough and touched the tip to her tongue now and again, stacks of memos and notes from meetings. Some of those meetings may have even happened this year, but more than likely those papers are years old and should be long since recycled. She recently found an urgent memo from a principal who had retired six years prior shuffled under a pile of catalogs.  

She smiled to see the crayon drawings. “Your mi favrit techr” and “i lov wen yu reb me duks” that were sitting on top of a small pile that she hadn’t hung up on her wall yet. The children loved to see the pictures and notes she received from them hanging on her wall. She had to admit, she loved seeing them up there too.

She sat heavily down in her chair after removing a stack of books. Maybe it was time to give this desk up. She stared at the oak grain and suddenly she was six again. She was standing in front of a large desk dancing from left foot to right foot in her new white tights. Her blond pigtails tapped in perfect rhythm on her shoulders with her buster browns. 

She didn’t remember asking to go. She didn’t even remember being told that she could not go. She only remembers that she went. On the floor. Standing there in front of the large oak desk. And still, not one word was said. There was no embarrassment, no attention called to the accident, and no actions taken except to bring her to the nurse for clean, dry clothes. 

Today there had been an alarmingly large lake under one little girl. Mrs. Booker wasn’t even sure how or where all that water could have possibly appeared from. And then she smelled something that wasn’t quite right for the present setting. It was more of a bathroom scent. Right there on her black and white twelve by twelve tiled floor. 

She thought back in her mind. Jaylee Grace hadn’t even squirmed or wriggled. She hadn’t raised her hand or asked. She simply sat there staring and listening. When the story was over, Mrs. Booker set the book down and told the other children they could go back to class. She asked Jaylee Grace if she would like to go see the nurse. Jaylee Grace actually looked a little shocked that she even needed to go see the nurse. 

“Mrs. Booker, did Wilford Gordan McDonald Partridge really meet Miss Nancy Alison Delacourt Cooper?” Jaylee Grace had asked as they walked hand in hand on their walk down the hall towards the nurse’s office.

“Patricia Polacco introduced them,” Mrs. Booker replied with a smile. She was excited that Jaylee remembered these character names so thoroughly and accurately. Maybe this is why she was so lost in her thoughts, she was repeating the names over and over in her head! “Do you know anyone like Wilford Gordan McDonald Partridge? You are about the same age as he is.”

Bulletin boards decorated the hallway walls encouraging students to put poems in their pockets or to spring into reading! Or asking students how they have used math today. Long gone were the days when student work was showcased. Teachers didn’t hang any student papers up in the hall, or in their classrooms anymore. No one wanted to damage the self-esteem of the small growing children. The bulletin boards all looked like something you would find on pinterest. Generic and pretty. But nothing that actually had the fingerprints of the students smudged on them.

 Classroom doors were closed. Teachers' voices were muted background noise. The only noise was the duck quack squish of Jaylee Grace's wet sneakers. She turned her brown eyes up to look at Mrs. Booker and slowed her pace.

“And did Elizabeth really meet a dragon? I really liked when she called, ‘Heeeey draaagoon!’” Jaylee Grace sang. “But I ‘specially liked when she told Ronald that he was a bum and she wouldn’t marry him.”

“You really scared me on Halloween when you dressed as Miss Viola Swamp. I thought you weren’t going to read any books for real. That was a good trick, Mrs. Booker.”

Mrs. Booker smiled down at the child. She had actually enjoyed covering up her gray hair for the day in the black wig. 

“The best is when you say to me ‘Jaylee Gracie Lou, I do love you’ just like in the book, remember when the mom says that? Koala thinks mom is too busy to remember to love her but a mom doesn’t forget, except that Miss Nancy Alison Delacourt Cooper forgets. Do you think my mom forgot?”

Mrs. Booker opened her mouth to say, she didn’t even know what to say to the child because there are no words for a situation like that. However, Jaylee Grace hardly paused for breath before continuing. 

“You read a lot of books about first graders. And we all have the same names too. Cindy Loo, Molly Lou. I liked Molly Lou because she was short like me. And she lived with her grandma like me. Her grandma was good. Did she die? Hey there was a boy named Ronald in that book too! Are you making these names up?”

“Oh, how could I forget Rufferella? That was the best when she got to go to the palace and meet the queen but the queen didn’t know that Rufferella was really a dog and sometimes you just gotta be yourself because that’s all you can be. Right? Isn’t that what you say Mrs. Booker? Be your best self? A person can’t be someone else. Miss Swamp couldn’t be someone else. She had to be herself at the end of the book. So didn’t Rufferella.”

Mrs. Booker prayed that the nurse would be at lunch so Jaylee Grace would keep talking to her. Up until now Jaylee Grace had quietly entered the library each week. She sat with her classmates, but never near any particular classmate. She didn’t recall any students ever interacting with Jaylee Grace either. She didn’t speak or ask questions. She borrowed one book at a time and returned the book the following week. If pressed, Mrs. Booker would have described the child as obedient, polite, and quiet. Maybe even shy. 

As luck would have it, the nurse was there. Jaylee Grace gave Mrs. Booker’s hand a squeeze then wrapped her arms around Mrs. Booker’s waist before vanishing into the nurse’s office. 

Retirement could wait. Jaylee Grace needed her to be reading books, or ‘rebin duks’ as the notes would read, for a few more years. 

She already knew what book she was reading to Jaylee Grace next. 

“‘If she put her mind to it, she can do anything she want,’“ she read the last page to herself after pulling the book off her shelf. “Grace was a girl who loved stories.” 

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And because the authors need their due recognition:

Wilford Gordan McDonald Partridge, Patricia Polacco

The Paperbag Princess, Robert Munch

Miss Nelson is Missing, Harry Allard

Koala Lou, Mem Fox

Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon, Patty Lovell

Rufferella, Vanessa Gill-Brown

Amazing Grace, Mary Hoffman