for Jo-Anne
That morning the children assembled outside their classroom in the usual two lines: girls and boys. After taking attendance, the classroom monitor, Becky Mayfield, chose the quietest line (which was always the girls’) to enter first. Staring-down the goof-offs in the boys’ line, she check-marked on the roster the names of the biggest offenders. She didn’t notice the old woman at the end of the girls’ line: walking in step with her much younger counterparts.
As if by habit, the old woman took an absentee’s aisle seat in the back row. Becky walked down the center aisle to the front of the class to lead the students in the Pledge of Allegiance. “Please stand,” she said. “Place your right hand over your heart.” A few of the students—still uncertain of right-from-left—looked to others to confirm the proper hand placement.
“Ready. Begin.”
The students recited the pledge—most of them inserting “invisible” in place of “indivisible.”
“Please be seated.”
Accustomed to occasional unannounced visitors from the district office, the students paid little attention to the adult sitting in the last row. Even Mrs. Woods, their teacher, seemed unfazed. She started out, as usual, by writing on the chalkboard the News for Today:
“Alaska is now officially our 49th state.”
Under the News for Today she wrote the Thought for Today:
“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”
“Please collect last night’s homework,” Mrs. Woods said to the homework monitors.
Desperately trying to finish his homework, Danny Wyse paused when he heard from behind him the old woman saying something about crossing the street. When he turned around, he saw the old woman staring intently at the clock above the chalkboard. The monitor snatched the homework before Danny could scribble another wrong answer.
“I need to cross the street,” the old woman said to Danny Wyse’s cowlick.
The book monitors passed out the Basic Readers at precisely eight-thirty. Mrs. Woods wrote on the board the page number and title of a Brothers Grimm story: “The Old Man and His Grandson.” Below the title she wrote the words “earthenware” and “trough.” These words were to be looked-up in the Basic Reader glossary.
“Remember,” said Mrs. Woods. “The G-H in trough is pronounced like the G-H in cough.”
Danny Wyse produced a fake cough.
The old woman whispered: “Earthenware . . . trough . . . .”
“Who would like to read first?” said Mrs. Woods.
Five students raised their hands.
The old woman stood up and began to sing:
Good morning, merry sunshine,
How did you wake so soon?
You’ve scared the little stars away
And shined away the moon.
I saw you go to sleep last night
Before I ceased my play;
How did you get way over there,
And pray, where did you stay?
She remained standing.
Twenty-four students swiveled in their seats and beheld an old woman looking like a frightened little girl on her first day of kindergarten. The second hand of the clock made a complete orbit.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Woods said, at last. “What was your name?”
The old woman said nothing.
“Is there something I can do for you?”
“She wants to cross the street,” said Danny Wyse.
Mrs. Woods walked to the intercom phone and informed the school secretary of the “unexpected classroom visitor” dressed in a Katharine Hepburn pantsuit. The secretary suggested the old woman probably escaped from a nearby rest home or something. “Have a student bring her to the office and we’ll see what we can do.”
Mrs. Woods told Becky Mayfield to “accompany our guest to the office.”
With the classroom routine knocked out of sync, the students began chattering about the ghost of a former student. “Simmer down, please,” said Mrs. Woods. A short time later Becky returned to the classroom and reported that the old women had somehow slipped from her grasp—before reaching the office—and disappeared down a path where students were forbidden to go.
Timothy Reilly had been a professional tubist (including a stint with the Teatro Regio of Turin, Italy) until around 1980, when a condition called “Embouchure Dystonia” ended his music career. He gratefully retired from substitute teaching in 2014. Three-times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, he has published in Zone 3, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Main Street Rag, Fictive Dream, and many other journals. His chapbook, Short Story Quartet, is published by Bottlecap Press (https://bottlecap.press/products/quartet). He lives in Southern California with his wife, Jo-Anne Cappeluti: a poet and scholar.