I cried, but mostly I remember thinking, This is how it started with Valerie. Of course, skipping school didn’t start with Valerie until she was in high school, but all the same I had a sinking feeling I had failed.
At eight o’clock, I went home and waited to hear from the police. I held the phone on my lap as I soaked my feet. I’d walked I didn’t know how many blocks, knocking on doors all around the school. I needed to call Brenda, but I couldn’t bear the thought of saying, You were right. I can’t handle her.
My doorbell rang and I didn’t know what to feel. Hopeful. Terrified. With my feet wet, I went to the door. Wavonna stood on the porch alone, shivering. Once she was in the house, I locked the door, like that would keep her from escaping.
“You scared me so much! What if something had happened to you?” I knew yelling wasn’t the best way to communicate with her, but I couldn’t help myself. “Never, never do that again! Do you understand me?”
She nodded, but I knew that nod from Valerie. It meant, “I understand you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to do what you say.”
After I called the police to tell them Wavonna was home, I made her some soup and counted out a pile of crackers. While I cried in the bathroom, she ate a few spoonfuls and two saltines. I couldn’t go on like that, but I couldn’t let her go into foster care. Would anyone else eye the level of soup in her bowl as carefully as I did? Would a stranger count crackers to make sure my granddaughter was eating?
I cleared the table and brewed some decaf. When I was sure I was calm, I said, “Wavonna, will you please come into the kitchen and talk to Grandma?”
She didn’t sit down, but she stood waiting for me to talk.
“If you run away from school, they’re going to take you away from me and make you live with strangers. I don’t want that to happen. I want you to stay here with Grandma.”
She didn’t react to that, but I didn’t expect her to. I could have had a French poodle dancing the tango with a monkey on my head and she wouldn’t have reacted.
“Will you tell me what happened at school? Why did you run away? If you’ll tell me, I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
It was like with the alphabet. She had to prepare herself, but after a moment, she said, “The loud lady touches me.”
My stomach almost gave up the coffee I’d drunk. That sweet woman? I couldn’t imagine her doing something like that to a child. In my mind that’s what bad touching was.
“Touches you?”
She stretched her arms toward me, her hands curled into menacing claws, and then brought them back tightly to her chest.
“She hugs you?” I said.
A nod.
“And you don’t like that?”
She shook her head seriously. I was sick with relief, and with knowing how awful the world looked to Wavonna. Of course, she never hugged me, and whenever I touched her, she shrugged out from under my hand.
The next day, we went to school, and I did what I should have done the first day. I walked her directly to class, planning to explain everything to Mrs. Berry.
All that went out the window when I reached the classroom.
In the center of the room sat three children in wheelchairs. I don’t mean to be cruel, but they were drooling vegetables. In one corner, a child flopped around on blue rubber floor mats. The school could paint the walls as bright a shade of yellow as they wanted and hang up all the pretty mobiles in the world, but it was a horrible place. I couldn’t imagine Wavonna spending five minutes there, let alone the four days I’d left her there.
Mrs. Berry hurried over with a big smile and said, “Oh, Mrs. Morrison, what a relief! Wavonna, honey, you had us so worried.”
That was the day I earned Wavonna’s trust. Mrs. Berry swooped toward us, clearly planning to deliver an enormous, smothering hug. I spread my feet and put out my arm to block her.
“Mrs. Berry, we need to talk to someone about changing classes.” She made a wounded face as we backed away from her. I had nothing against the woman, but I was too old to beat around the bush.
When I sat down with the school counselor, I took the same approach. I looked her square in the eye and said, “My granddaughter is not retarded.”
“Mrs. Morrison, we don’t use words like that anymore. Our concern is that her speech problems are a sign of developmental delays.”
“I don’t mean it to offend, but she’s not stupid. Look, here. Wavonna.”
She didn’t look at me, but I knew she was listening.
“Give me paper and a pencil.”