By Any Name by Cynthia Voigt

Author:Cynthia Voigt [Voigt, Cynthia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781682303085
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2017-01-23T16:00:00+00:00

MUMMA AND AMY

Mr. Smithers taught Amy’s sixth-grade class, and he was one of those unusually charismatic practitioners of the teaching trade who sometimes come along. I’ve seen a few of them in action and I never know whether to think of them as saints just back from the desert, with their visionary eyes and compelling certainties, or as pied pipers, who lure the young away into mountain fastnesses. They are always the popular teachers. They are usually young men, young women with these qualities tending to find other arenas more satisfying and more rewarding, just as most such young men are found in politics or on a stage. They are rare in education, such young men, and even rarer at the elementary school level. Mr. Smithers was one of them.

He was young, he rode a motorcycle, he wore a jacket and tie to school, he was funny, he worked hard, long hours at full attention, and every Thursday his wife baked cookies for him to give his class at Friday lunch. Mr. Smithers was loved by his students and thus their parents, and naturally also the school principal. He was envied by other teachers. His sixth-graders presented no discipline problems. They did not cheat on tests or assignments. They did their homework carefully and went to school gladly. Amy was in his class and I, a second-grader, could bask in some of the glory of that accomplishment. “My sister’s got Mr. Smithers, and he says…” I could report to my classmates. He had been at Wampanoag Elementary only since September, but already by Halloween Mr. Smithers was a legend.

So that when Amy for the second February morning in a row complained of an undefined sickness, maybe in her stomach, she thought she might throw up, Mumma was suspicious. Her early-warning system was always up and running, her vigilance perpetual, her red alert formidable.

Also, Mumma had read Freud, who in her opinion didn’t know as much as he and everybody else gave him credit for, as well as Jung and Winnicott, plus Melanie Klein for a woman’s point of view. She took pride in her knowledge and understanding of human psychology, and in her ability to ferret out the hidden pistons that drive and define character. She was ready for Amy that second morning.

“You’re trying to get out of going to school.”

“No I’m not. I’m sick.”

“You don’t have a temperature.”

“I feel nauseous.”

“You don’t look nauseous. You ate all of your breakfast.”

“You made me.”

“If you were really sick I wouldn’t be able to make you eat. So what’s the matter at school?”

“Nothing,” spoken in the sullen, secretive way that really means I’m not going to tell you.

“The rest of you go brush your teeth, I want to talk to Amy in private,” Mumma told us. Pops had already left on his commute to Providence. It was midwinter, raw and cold on the Cape. Once she had Amy alone, Mumma asked, “Tell me. It won’t go any farther, you know you can trust me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.