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March was a painful and humiliating time for Miss Annabelle. She was allowed to continue teaching, but a member of the faculty had to sit in her room and observe at all times.
At first, the children did not talk much. They inherently knew the stranger sitting in their world did not belong there. After a couple of days, however, the children forgot she was even there.
While the world around Miss Annabelle seemed insane, she found peace and sanity in her classroom and in her private world with John. In fact, for most of her day, she was in a world of rationality -- surrounded by her students during the day and by John in the evenings and nights. She kept enormously busy after school developing her lectures around her paperwork. If not for the looming threat of losing her students to these trumped-up charges, she realized her life would be wonderful. So, she determined not to let the insane charges drag her down. She decided to, instead, enjoy every precious moment with her students as if it were the last. Every morning she prepared herself mentally to feel and enjoy the preciousness of rational, happy life. Caught in this topsy-turvy world, she discovered the rightness of happiness.
*
When she arrived to school Thursday morning after the emergency meeting, Miss Annabelle opened the envelop on her desk. It was from Ms. Minner, and it read:
"We understand that you left the meeting due to the sensitive topic. However, we must proceed with this matter. The school board must meet with you to get your story. That's the American way. We will meet again next Wednesday, same place and time. Again, it is a private meeting, but you may bring Mr. Melbourne and Mr. and Mrs. Attison if you so desire."
Miss Annabelle realized this nightmare would not go away. As she put the summons down, an eerie thought rushed through her: What if my students and their parents hear about these accusations? The thought made her shudder.
*
The next morning, Cathy walked into the classroom first, about 10 minutes before the others. Only a little fluffy and round, but certainly no longer fat, one could see her pretty features. She walked directly to Miss Annabelle. Her bright blue eyes looked concerned, and she was not smiling. Her expression revealed the natural beauty of her face that, not long ago, was diluted by fat. She has high cheek bones, Miss Annabelle noticed.
"Good morning Cathy," Miss Annabelle said smiling. But she knew something was wrong.
"Hi," Cathy said. But her full pink lips frowned. "Why is my mom calling people on the phone and talking bad about you?"
"Oh, what's she saying?" Miss Annabelle managed to say cheerfully, yet fearing what she would hear.
"I don't know. Something about you being in the paper."
Just then Teddy walked in.
"Hi Teddy," Cathy said in a low voice.
Teddy walked to the front of the room. "Hi Cathy," he said. Then he looked at his teacher and said, "I read the article about you in this morning's paper. I know it's a bunch of lies and so does my dad."
Miss Annabelle's heart dropped. An article in the paper?
"What does the article say?" she asked Teddy, then wishing she hadn't.
"It says you're being questioned by the school board for misconduct -- for possible child molestation. One man says that if it's true, he would remove you from teaching here, and that scared me."
Miss Annabelle felt enormous pain inside but tried not to show it. The evil was catching up to her and now seemed bigger than her. These children do not even understand sex, she thought, yet here they're going to be introduced to the idea of child molestation!
"Yeah, that's what my mom was telling her friends. What do they mean by that, anyway?" Cathy asked innocently. Miss Annabelle was suddenly confronted with her greatest fear: to have to present this horrific thought to her students.
"Cathy, I don't know how to explain it to you yet," Miss Annabelle said honestly. "But I will answer that question for you and maybe for the whole class tomorrow after I've had time to think about it."
When the other students came in, there was a lot of talk among each other, which made it clear that talk was everywhere. "Class," Miss Annabelle began, introducing some control, "I'm going to make the same deal with you that I made with Cathy earlier. A lot of people have read or been told about an article about me in this morning's paper. I have not seen it yet, but I hear some pretty bad things were written about me. Tomorrow I'll talk about it with you after I've had some time to look at the paper and think things over."
"Miss Annabelle, are they going to make you leave?" Rico asked in such a sad voice from such a macho little man that he almost made Miss Annabelle cry.
"The good news, Rico, is that I was able to teach you wonderful children for six months, and you are already, on your own, seeing through illusions to the essence of things...to what is. And by doing that, you're starting to build new knowledge and real power. That was my goal when we started this school year."
"Are you going to keep on teaching us?" Jeremiah asked very sadly.
"I'm certainly going to do everything in my power," Miss Annabelle said, feeling a lump growing in her throat.
"Can we still get a hug from you sometimes?" Sally asked slowly.
Miss Annabelle's eyes flooded with emotions. She looked over at the woman sitting in her room whose name Miss Annabelle did not even remember, then Miss Annabelle looked back at Sally and said, "Yes, Sally. Whenever you need a hug, I'd love one. I love our hugs, too."
*
John Melbourne gave Miss Annabelle the paper at lunch. The article was on the front page of the local section with a picture of her hugging and kissing an unidentified student. Of course, Miss Annabelle immediately recognized the student was Alan, and she knew it happened at Sally's birthday party.
*
Later that evening Sally's mother called and said she had sent Ms. Minner pictures of the party for the school's yearbook. She said she knew these accusations were ridiculous. With her terminal condition, Sally's mom saw the bigger picture of life now and talked to Miss Annabelle for about forty-five minutes. She also told Miss Annabelle how indebted she felt toward her for shaping Sally's mind so dramatically...and for helping Sally prepare for her loss.
The call was exactly what Miss Annabelle needed after seeing the article. The villain was Hammerschmidt. He was behind the article. As is the case in the world of politics, the villain came across looking like the hero. Hammerschmidt, pressing for public exposure prior to his race for lieutenant governor of New York, repeatedly made a point to assure the people of New York that "...if something insidious is occurring in my school system, I personally will not stop until that filth is removed and the school is restored to a wholesome environment." Also accompanying the article was a picture of Hammerschmidt with a caption that read, "Wholesome minded: School Board Superintendent, Charlie Hammerschmidt, will run for Lieutenant Governor this November."
*
Miss Annabelle's answering machine had seven messages when she had arrived home. Six were from the media: three calls from the local newspaper, two from New York radio stations, and one from the television news! She took her phone off the hook and got to work on her explanation for her class. They needed to understand.
*
Miss Annabelle looked closely at her twelve students. They look like little adults, she thought. Their eyes show me the strength of human beings in control. And that control over life comes from efficiently seeing what is. This Friday morning, my innocent children will learn a lesson about the irrational world that awaits them.
Today, Miss Annabelle would turn the calamity that surrounded her into an opportunity to further develop her students' defenses against imminent irrationality in their futures. She began with a metaphor:
"Forty thousand years ago, animals of all kinds would come to the ponds to drink and cool off. When they waded in certain ponds, however, the animals got stuck, unable to leave. You see, some ponds were illusions. They were actually tar pits, and the poor animals that got stuck would slowly sink in the tar to their deaths.
"That man, Mr. Hammerschmidt, is like one of those tar pits, and I'm caught. He seems like an oasis of fresh water. You saw his picture in the paper. Like any politician, he looks for any opportunity to create an illusion that'll give him an advantage. But his illusion pulls good people down. Put another way, to push himself up falsely, he must push good people down...down into his tar pit. I'm one of those good persons being pushed down, and, I'm sorry to say, so are you.
"In general, when politicians look like they're doing public good, it's a vote-gathering illusion. Good people get stuck. In the end, everyone is stuck in limited economies.
"Hammerschmidt is a politician and a tar pit. But your parents and most others will see him as an oasis. He will pull people down on his way up in politics. We are the first of many to come.
"I was forced into contact with Hammerschmidt in our school board meetings and became caught in his deceptive pit. The article in yesterday's paper was his illusion -- the oasis the public will see."
"Why is he so bad?" a disturbed Natasha asked.
"I can answer that," Johnny said, looking at Miss Annabelle, who nodded permission. "Remember when we all went camping at the beginning of the year?" Several of the children smiled while recalling that fun time. "I remember Miss Annabelle telling us what makes people happy."
"Yeah, making values," Teddy contributed. "It sure makes me happy!"
"What would happen if grown ups did not make values?" Johnny continued. "They'd become unhappy people. I now read the newspapers a lot, and I don't think politicians are really making any values. I think they're unhappy people, and that's why they're so bad."
Miss Annabelle smiled inside at the profound insight into the human psyche.
"It's called self-esteem, Johnny," Miss Annabelle said, adding the final touches to his observation. "Self-esteem is how a person feels about himself. If he feels bad about himself, he'll often do bad things. If he feels a lacking self-esteem, he'll often create illusions so people will like him and give him a sense of importance. But, since he's not making values for the people, he'll have to steal his sense of importance from those who earned it -- namely from good working people, especially those important entrepreneurs and market businessmen. Politicians will make the biggest value producers, the best of the good people, look like bad people who must be controlled by `public servants'...the politicians...the `good' people. Controlling truly good people is how politicians get their power and sense of importance, which they substitute for self-esteem."
"You're a good person, a value producer, and Mr. Hammerschmidt is a bad person, a lying politician. He's making you look bad and himself look good, right?" Johnny asked.
"Right," Miss Annabelle said.
"That makes him a value destroyer," Johnny said with conviction.
*
Later that afternoon when the kids were outside for recess, Natasha bolted through Miss Annabelle's classroom door.
"Miss Annabelle," Natasha cried, "Johnny's in a fight!"
Miss Annabelle and Natasha ran out to the schoolyard. Mr. Kenny, a fifth grade teacher, had the two boys separated. Miss Annabelle ran over and saw a lot of blood coming out of Johnny's badly battered nose. She recognized the other boy, who seemed unhurt. He was the older boy from the lunchroom whose father worked for the EPA.
"I need to take Johnny to the nurse," Miss Annabelle said, taking his arm and acting quickly. She was nervous about how profusely he was bleeding. Mr. Kenny nodded as Miss Annabelle took Johnny's arm. She rushed Johnny into the restroom and wetted a number of paper towels and pressed them against his nose.
"Hold these here, sweetheart," she said like a mother. Then off they rushed to the school nurse.
A few minutes later, the nurse had stopped his nosebleed. His nose was not broken, but it was badly bruised.
"What happened out there?" Miss Annabelle asked Johnny, relieved that he was OK.
"Oh...well...um...I slugged that big kid. Then he beat me up. But I hit him pretty good, too, you know."
Miss Annabelle could not believe what she was hearing. She could not imagine Johnny hauling off and slugging anybody...and that boy looked like he was two years older, six inches taller, and at least fifteen pounds heavier.
"Why did you slug him?" Miss Annabelle asked, still in disbelief over what she was hearing.
"Well...I don't think I should tell you," Johnny said protectively.
"Tell me," his teacher said firmly, looking straight into his eyes.
"He...he called you a pervert. Damn, I hate that punk!" Miss Annabelle could not help feeling flattered by Johnny's courage and passion. He's my little knight in white armor, she thought, smiling inwardly.
At the end of the day, Miss Annabelle had a private talk with Johnny. As they were looked upon by the school observer, Miss Annabelle quietly explained why we must never cross the line and physically strike someone, no matter how powerful our emotions get. Johnny looked so humble and sweet as she talked to him, like a little warrior with his face all bruised from his gallant defense of her honor. She couldn't take it anymore and leaned over and hugged him. "Thank you," she said. "But don't do that again, OK?"
"I won't, Miss Annabelle," he said innocently. He turned his head and gave Miss Annabelle a kiss on her cheek, then turned his little body around and walked out of the room.
Miss Annabelle watched her little hero, her eyes filling with tears of love. A moment or two after Johnny was gone, a noise made Miss Annabelle suddenly remember the school observer who was looking at her. Feeling vulnerable and violated, Miss Annabelle snapped, "To hell with you and your superiors!"
The school observer got up to leave. On her way out she said, "I for one have seen nothing to report...nothing at all." The middle-aged woman then flashed a kind smile at Miss Annabelle.
Surprised by this woman's decency in the indecent setting brought more sensitive feelings rushing to the surface. Miss Annabelle could not speak, but her teary eyes said, "Thank you!"
The kind woman nodded knowingly and left the classroom. Miss Annabelle dropped her face into her hands, and wept.
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