Part5
Lydia steadied her breath as the car pulled past the second to last intersection before her primary school came into view. She didn't have the words yet to identify or recognize what was happening or would happen. As she exhaled steadily her hand clutched her satchel tighter. Her small stomach muscles clenched and her shoulders slowly crept up to her shoulders. By the time the driver dropped her off she would be a tense reed of a little girl making a very obvious show of her discomfort and terror as she made her way, as composed as she could be, up the stone steps and through the enormous wooden doors. The driver stared at her making her way. He didn't and could not say anything. He wasn't hired to speak to this little girl, only to drop her off and to speak to her parents only that she had made it to school but his heart ached to watch her amongst her classmates who had the good nerve to say nothing knowing an adult was around or rather an adult that wasn't their teacher.
If Lydia moved fast enough she could make it to the library and dart in along the left back wall where she could make her way up the stairs and find shelving to hide in or if her classmates were bored enough she might be able to sit outside and get some sunshine and eat alone quietly. She hated common meal days where everyone sat at the tables and some days it wasn't so bad she could disappear but if she sat anywhere near Rosie the taunting and the abuse would begin. The snide comments stacked against each other. Most were not particularly observant or clever but all of them together over the hour over the days and weeks and years weighed Lydia down. She couldn't focus knowing Rosie was around and she couldn't focus when she wasn't there because she had to make sure she knew were Rosie was. Lydia had to prepare herself for what she wasn't sure of but she was always wound up, waiting.
Lydia would learn to hate that look in anyone even when she did it herself but then it had only confused and hurt her. Even when Rosie said or did something, it would be accompanied by a gleeful sneer. Rosie was bad enough but the other students didn't make it easier. Their teacher didn't make it easier. She didn't understand what she was doing or saying or could do or say to make it better either. When she would get an answer correct there was no praise, no applause, no encouragement compared to how the other students were treated. If not the sneer, which the teacher also had a soft habit of making, would come out on several occasions even if the answer was correct she would find a reason to make it so the version of the answer, the words, the tone, the context of what Lydia had said made it incorrect. She sighed. Rosie she might avoid but, miss? Not at all.
She lined up at the back at the end of the school day and they were marched out to the line of cars waiting for all of them, their drivers waiting in shiny black sedans like a funeral procession. The Fawley's family driver pulled up in line and watched as he always did leaving the car idling. Even if the car was first in line, which he preferred it to be, the other children were ferried to their cars first. The older students could just walk up to the cars but Lydia waited unspeaking and stoic as the teacher had to either walk them to their cars or wait for her students to be picked up. On several occasions with all the other students gone, her teacher might just turn and walk away leaving Lydia to walk to the car herself. The driver wanted to wave. He wanted to get out of the car and meet her at the doors of the academy to walk with her, hand in hand, to the car but waited glancing out of the corner of his eyes which were shaded by his hat which was silly since he was inside of a vehicle but that was part of the uniform.
Lydia got in the back of the car and she shut the door herself. By the end of the day, when she was back in the safety and quiet of the backseat, Lydia could relax into a sag. Her young, little body unable to carry everything she was feeling for the whole eight hours, ten on special instruction days. He said nothing and neither did she. She wept silently as she sometimes did from the back of the car.
After one especially bleak library lunch in the middle of the week Lydia settled into her seat in class. The students were chatting and blessedly ignoring Lydia as a teacher's assistant and day aid hushed them. Miss was no where to be found. Minutes later she came in the classroom and excused the assistants. She was as tense as if she was Lydia being dropped off in school. She gave a short introduction that a new student would be joining them later in the day or early the next day. Lydia closed her eyes. If this new student became friends with Rosie... The student didn't show up but the next day Lydia walked into class where another little girl stood at the front of the class surveying each student who walked in as if she were the mistress' own boss, as if she was the teacher.
When Lydia passed her on her way to her desk the girl smiled. She looked like Lydia but was very tiny. Very, very tiny. She was thinner and shorter by far than anyone in the classroom. She looked to be several classes below them.
"Students," the teacher addressed the class slightly fearfully. "This is Amina Freeborn Steadhill-Pendelton. She will be joining our class. "Amina, would you like to say anything to introduce yourself?" The teacher's sneer imploded in her. The corners of her lips were pulled toward the bottom of her lips and Lydia couldn't tell if she wanted to smile or cry.
"I would not, miss. Thank you kindly for the introduction." Amina held her small hands clasped in front of her. She had only addressed the first part directly to the teacher the faintest hint of a nod and the rest she said surveying her classmates. The teacher looked as if Amina had started swearing at her. Miss' eyes widened in a slight panic as if Amina had told her that she was sending her off to a war instead of merely declining an invitation to tell her about a teddy bear collection.
"Is there a seating chart, miss?" Amina asked finally turning to face their teacher. The difference in size was starker than usual even as the teacher seemed to shrink in front of them.
"No," the teacher shook her head, breathless and deferring.
"May I take an empty seat anywhere?"
"You may, Amina."
"Might I sit in the front? I don't want to inconvenience anyone if it's too much trouble."
"No, it's quite, alright, Amina. No trouble at all."
Miss motioned for a boy to stand up and he was as confused and shocked as anyone. It seemed as if he got up too slowly for her liking and the teacher in two strides had crossed the room almost lifting him bodily and pointed to no seat in particular while gathering his open exercise books and stuffing them into his arms. The teacher was nearly bowed as Amina half climbed into the seat and organized her things neatly on the desk. Lydia had only seen it happen at the symphony but Amina inclined her head at the waiting teacher as if approving her to continue with the lesson. The gesture was made more ludicrous given that Amina's small frame was nearly swallowed up whole by the already child-sized desk. The teacher continued the lesson until they were let out for break. The students all watched as Amina reorganized the pencils and notebooks in anticipation of her coming back. They had all been instructed to put their things away before every break but already Lydia could tell that the rules somehow did not apply to Amina. She hopped off from her seat and was the first to leave the classroom. Lydia left the class almost last as she usually did. If this Amina could strike far in to an adult there was no telling what she could get away with where she was concerned. She considered staying in the classroom instead but the teacher scowled. There's nothing for it, Lydia thought. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, that's what her father sometimes said. She better understood the idiom as she made the slow steady, death march towards the door.
She left the class and saw Rosie and Amina just outside.
"Excuse me, I've been waiting for her." Lydia heard Amina say. Rosie might as well have rubbed her hands together. They were already allies then. Lydia sped up and considered that today was as good as ever to learn to steel herself against the foulness of eating in a bathroom. She turned down the hallway and up a set of stairs.
At the end of the day the bank of sedans stood in a line as usual but the one in fronts driver stood next to the door. Amina declined help from the teacher with a wave and made her way to the car. She and the driver seemed to exchange pleasantries, something the front of that school any or its teachers and none of the students had ever encountered. He opened the door, she climbed in without his help, he shut the door and they were off. Even the older kids half way into their cars stopped to watch what was going on. Lydia heard someone ask if it was her by a student in the line next to hers and they were shushed by their teacher.
The next morning on the first break, Lydia found out that Amina's family owned several textile weaving centres run by Amina's uncles. Her paternal great grandmother had started selling knit sweaters on the coast and when she married, had grown the business. They left their heirs some money and the family business. Amina's father had used some of his inheritance to start a drilling operation that he grew into leasing mining equipment until he could own his own mines. Their family had several in Asia and Africa. Their wealth had been acquired in only two generations and the mother also worked, Lydia heard one of the librarians say, as if that was the strangest part of the story. Amina was new money but that money rivaled the wealth of the rest of her peers. From the other librarians estimation, she was the wealthiest student at the school. Lydia didn't completely understand how it all worked but she understood enough. Amina, she also, learned was "sickly". That's why she's so small like that, she heard the librarians whispering to each other. They were still in relative awe however. They had heard a rumor that the school schedule would change because Amina might be late to the first part of classes for her treatments. Never, in the history of the school… One said. I like her, the other said. Shaking things up.
Lydia tried as she could to avoid Amina and Rosie all month. The upside was that Rosie was so impressed or distracted that she had less time for Lydia. Then, one lunch, catching a thin sip of sun before autumn ended and the air froze into winter, Amina marched right up to Lydia who had been caught unaware, stuck her hand out and introduced herself.
"Hello, I'm Amina and I'm in your class."
"I know." Lydia grumbled. Amina tilted her head slightly. Lydia wondered how close Rosie might be but didn't want to turn to find out. This Amina had already caught her unaware once that day and it wouldn't again. She sighed.
"Well, I'm sure you noticed how small I am. I have a disorder but we won't talk about that now but I'd thought I'd get it out of the way so you wouldn't feel embarrassed for your curiosity. I transferred to be closer to the hospital where there are specialists." Lydia nodded.
Her ears rang with the idea of being hit, caught off guard.
"Well, what's your name?"
"Lydia."
"I knew that but it was rude of you not to introduce yourself." Lydia was sure that whatever was about to happen would happen then. She just knew it. She shrank involuntarily from the imagined impact.
"Anyway, most of my friends from my old school called me Mouse." Lydia looked up friend?
"Nice to meet you, Lydia." Mouse stuck out her hand again.
"Nice to meet you, Amina. Mouse", she tested and Amina beamed and didn't retract her hand or flinch at the name.
They shook hands. Lydia and Mouse walked back into class together having talked the entire rest of the recess and Lydia, for the first time since she'd know her, didn't notice or think about Rosie's whereabouts at all.
