The Woman Upstairs Read Online Free PDF Page B

Reza and I put one arm on the back of his chair so he’d feel safe, and I said, “Do you want a lemonade? I’ve got one in my bag. And how about an Oreo?” And I plied him with sugar water and cookies, and I plied him for the story, and so had at least the bare and inexcusable bones of it before Sirena arrived. Reza, in spite of the tears caught in his lashes like raindrops on a spider’s web, did not cry, although he hiccoughed a bit, his breathing, like his small shoulders, shuddery.
    I was furious—with the three bullies, with Bethany, Margot and Sarah, who somehow had contrived not to see a thing, and somehow furious also with Reza’s mother, whom I had yet to meet, for leavinghim unprotected in a strange land, for having entrusted him to a system and to people she knew nothing about. If he were mine, I would never have done such a thing: I would have cherished him, surrounded him, not even as a matter of principle (although there was that, too), but because he was Reza, this luminous boy, and so precious.
    When, then, she peered through the glass with a tentative knock, and cracked the door open, I leaped up ready for the sternest of encounters; but was disarmed. The agony of her eyes—they were, after all, his eyes—and her little run across the room to embrace him—the presence of her, in short, was enough. I can only guess what they said. They spoke in French; her arms about him, he turned his face to her breast, as if breathing the scent of her were balm. He was a big boy for such a gesture—most of my third graders wouldn’t have wanted their teacher to see their emotions so exposed, and I admired them, son and mother, for their indifference to me. It took a full minute or even two before she lifted her face, disentangled an arm and extended it. “Miss Eldridge,” she said, “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
    “I’m sorry it’s not in better circumstances.”
    She shrugged, faintly. “I’m glad I got your call.”
    “There was an incident, on the playground.”
    “So I gather.”
    “I wasn’t present, but from what Reza says, it wasn’t at all his fault.”
    She made a face as if to say, “How could it be?”
    “Our school has zero tolerance for bullying, Mrs. Shahid—”
    “I’m sure.”
    “And we’ll find out exactly what went on, and the boys will be disciplined.”
    “Of course.”
    “I’m particularly sorry because it seems as though the boys said—as though they used hurtful and inappropriate words. I want you to know that at Appleton, we don’t have—We haven’t had—This isn’t at all usual. And we’ll make sure that it doesn’t—”
    “I understand.” She stood up, and Reza with her, as if they were in fact joined at the hip. She smiled then—was it because it was his smile? Maybe, although in that moment that was not my thought. What went through my mind, as clearly as if I’d said it aloud, was this: “Oh, it’s you . Of course. I should have known.” And later, when Ireflected upon it, I thought again, in words, “I recognize you.” It was the strangest feeling, of relief and alarm at the same time. Like seeing a ghost, or having an epiphany—who is he who walks always beside you?—a feeling that you have no choice but to trust completely.
    “… so grateful,” she was saying. “This move, so much change for Reza, it could have been … difficult. But he loves coming to your class.”
    “We love having him.” I said this looking at Reza with a big smile, and he looked back at me with the same grave inscrutability of the first day in the supermarket. “And I really hope that what happened today, horrible as it was, doesn’t make you stop liking this school.”
    He shook his head slightly: hard to know whether he meant that it would or it wouldn’t.
    “My little prince is very strong,” his mother said. “He’ll be okay.” She smiled again, looked at me, really looked at me—I felt she saw me—again. I wanted to say,