Next Page | Contents | Previous Page
The holiday season was approaching, but Miss Annabelle no longer noticed the other adults at the school except for Jessie.
By now, all the children in the third and fourth grade knew her from lunch period. Miss Annabelle's recordings of her General Lectures now went to a cassette duplication service as the other third and fourth graders and several of their parents now listened to those lectures. The positive interest in Miss Annabelle among the students surged at about the same rate as the negative interest among the adults at Duncan Elementary School. But Miss Annabelle did not care. She shut herself off to the adults and devoted herself to the children.
On a chilly morning the week of Thanksgiving, Miss Annabelle's spirits rose when the handle to her door turned, a half hour before class. Someone's here for extra help, she thought. The class had been hard at work on the basics of math, science, literature, history, and two or three times a week, someone would come in early for a little boost, which Miss Annabelle always enjoyed. But Miss Annabelle's spirits sank when she saw two adults at her door. One she recognized -- Ms. Minner, the gloomy principal with a cold corpse-like look. The other pleasant lady, Miss Annabelle did not know.
"Miss Annabelle," the unsmiling principal said, skipping past common courtesies such as a pleasant greeting, "This is Mrs. Shaffer. She'll substitute for you today."
"I don't understand?" Miss Annabelle said.
"We'll talk in my office in fifteen minutes. Right now, please brief Mrs. Shaffer on what she'll be teaching today."
Twenty minutes later, Miss Annabelle walked into Ms. Minner's office without knocking. The principal was about to get a preview of the Miss Annabelle none of the adults at Duncan Elementary School knew: She was more courageous and emotionally stronger than most men...and her students were her treasure of love whom no one was to bother.
"Ms. Minner, don't you ever walk into my room 30 minutes before the day starts and yank me away from my kids. Unlike other yahoos you have here who call themselves teachers, I lecture my class -- or have you forgotten about the old-fashioned lecture method that actually puts knowledge into young minds? I can't possibly turn a lecture over to a substitute in 15 minutes. So you know what that means? My students do not get an education today! But that's probably OK with you, anyway. Now tell me, just what the hell is going on?"
Ms. Minner, who thought she could intimidate and easily handle Miss Annabelle, knew she was outclassed. Miss Annabelle not only was fearless -- she was deeply knowledgeable on teaching. That made the principal nervous, especially when sensing the inseparable love this lioness standing before her had for her twelve students.
Miss Annabelle's gentle looks certainly were deceiving, and the principal was caught off guard. At this moment she had to make an instant decision: to sanctimoniously lecture Miss Annabelle as she had planned...or to just give her the facts. Overwhelmed by Miss Annabelle's fearlessness, the principal retreated and just relayed the facts, "The school board is having an emergency meeting tonight regarding you being able to continue teaching here. Until a decision is made, Mrs. Shaffer will teach your class."
"Continue teaching? What are you talking about!" Miss Annabelle was angry...and scared. She put her hands on the principal's desk and leaned close, seeing eye to eye. Ms. Minner sensed she'd better talk.
"There's been talk of sexual misconduct with your students," Ms. Minner said. She had not planned to reveal that to Miss Annabelle, not until surprising her with it in this evening's emergency meeting.
Miss Annabelle felt like lightning had just discharged from her mind, attacking her heart, burning away everything in between. Then came the thunderclap behind her bosom, rocking all her internal organs, making it hard to breath.
The comment was quick and deadly, like a gunshot in the heart. The impact was so great and left Miss Annabelle in such pain, that Ms. Minner, for an honest moment, felt sorry for the woman. At that moment, Ms. Minner knew Miss Annabelle was a victim of vicious rumors.
Miss Annabelle turned all white and felt faint. The thought that someone could even entertain the accusations that she could be a child molester, and with these children who were like her own, repulsed her to the verge of being sick.
But then, her repulsion shifted to the adults themselves who were spreading this rumor -- those humanoids in the teachers' lunchroom who were either women filled with jealousy or men filled with spite for her constant rejections of their hidden desires to bed her. Of course, she now knew the humanoid who was behind this whole thing -- Burke!
Without saying a word, Miss Annabelle left the principal's office. Ms. Minner was no longer an issue. The school board was.
Miss Annabelle had a sinking feeling inside her as she walked through the empty halls; classes had already begun. My god...I hope the kids don't hear any of this, she thought. But she knew they would. And that thought hurt her more than anything else. How rotten those adults were who put these ugly thoughts out there to enter innocent children! My accusers, she thought, they are the child molesters!
Her color returned now that she was thinking again. She thought: Do I tell the school board about Burke's threats? Will that solve this, or make things worse? Do I get a lawyer, or will that drag everything out? ...One thing she knew for sure, she had to get back to teaching her students. She loved them, and she knew that within the one school year, she could plant the seeds that would grow into fulfilling lives of wealth, power, and love. She knew that nowhere else in public or private education could they get these seeds. Nowhere else would they learn to see through the matrix of illusions to the essence of things -- to the world of building never-before-seen puzzle pictures, creating awesome values for the world and making lots of money, happiness, and love for themselves.
Miss Annabelle loved her twelve students like a mother loves her children. Yet, a mother usually has 21 years to raise her child. Miss Annabelle had just the nine months of a school year. She had no children of her own. Her love really was maternal, protective, everything. Her love for her students, especially now that she could lose them, was all encompassing. She could neither feel nor think about anything else. Nothing else mattered. As she walked down the empty hall, she felt like she was going to panic. She knew she needed a clear head to deal with this. But she couldn't get a clear head.
Although reason told her to stay away, she was pulled to her classroom door from a force beyond her control. She looked through the narrow vertical window at her children. Their faces looked worried. What did Mrs. Shaffer tell them about her? Her fighting spirit swelled up within. She turned away from the window and turned inward and did battle with her emotions to stop herself from entering the classroom and taking over the lecture to her children. She knew that rash act could get her fired, and she had to use discipline.
After a moment, she looked through the window again; the darkness on the children's faces was unbearable to her. She would not -- she could not -- let them worry.
She quietly opened the door. At first, only a couple of faces looked her way. Those two faces suddenly brightened as if a brilliant light shown on them. Then another child turned then about half the children turned to see her standing there. The faces that were turned toward her were bright and brilliant; the faces that were still forward toward Mrs. Shaffer were dark, blending into the background and the shadows. At this moment, the dark and light contrast of faces was striking -- like a Rembrandt painting. As each new face turned toward Miss Annabelle, it glowed as if Miss Annabelle were the Sun itself, lighting and warming those wonderful faces. By the look on their faces, she knew she had done the right thing. She stepped inside the room, but stayed by the door.
"Children, I will be away for a few days," she said, concealing her fears and anxieties. "I'm OK, but I must tend to something very important. There was a sudden situation that came up this morning beyond my control. Mrs. Shaffer will be your substitute until I'm back." Miss Annabelle hesitated, then added, "Until then, remember what you have learned about life -- always see past the appearances to what is."
Mrs. Shaffer did not understand that last comment, but she noticed the kids obviously did.
"When will you be back?" Cathy, the quiet overweight girl called out, surprising everyone including Miss Annabelle, yet asking the question every other child wanted to know.
"Darling," Miss Annabelle said, looking back at Cathy and then the others, "I'll be gone as short of time as is in my power. I should be back in a few days. ...I love you all too much to be gone for long! Bye, bye."
"Bye, Miss Annabelle," the twelve children called out as she slipped out the door. Standing outside her room, Miss Annabelle stood with her back against the wall, next to the door. She sighed deeply and leaned toward the door and peeked through the window. They'll be OK, she told herself, but her eyes welled up with tears.
"They will be OK," a deep, wonderfully understanding voice said, as if reading her doubts. Its paternal quality was so comforting that Miss Annabelle's fears seemed to momentarily vanish. She turned around to find Jessie smiling at her.
"Oh Jessie, I've got to talk to you!"
"I already know. Talk is everywhere." Then he purposely changed the subject. "Thanksgiving is in two days. Do you have plans? If not, Angie and I want you to have dinner with us."
"Oh..." The change of subject in the midst of a crisis felt refreshing.
"Miss Annabelle, spend the afternoon with us. My wife's making a big dinner and baking two pies, and there's just the two of us. We want you to join us. Angie is looking forward to meeting you. She's a wonderful woman. If you feel comfortable, we can talk some about things with Angie. She's been through a lot."
"I'd love to Jessie." Miss Annabelle just realized that Jessie was her only adult friend here, and for the first time since moving to this town, she was looking forward to meeting a woman friend. "I really would like that." They turned and walked in the empty hall toward the janitor's room.
"You're here early today," Miss Annabelle said to Jessie, who normally started work in late morning.
"I'm cleaning the bleachers today, so I wanted to get an early start."
Miss Annabelle nodded and looked down. Jessie knew she was hurting inside. In a moment, she looked up again. Squinting as though squeezing out thoughts and trying to get some understanding, she said, "I see something very different in children. They're able to see what is, not what appears to be. Children absorb reality like a sponge. But I can point out what is to an adult over and over again, yet months or years later, he or she will never get it."
Jessie was a good listener; they were now both sitting in his "office" as Miss Annabelle continued, "In a couple of weeks, for example, I'll tell my kids that no person should tell another person how to live his or her life. The person who tries to rule over others, no matter what the appearances are or how good the reasons may sound, is wrong for doing so. My kids will see right through to the essence...to the fundamental wrong of politicians and regulatory bureaucrats. But if I try to explain that fundamental wrong to an adult, explain that politicians and regulatory bureaucrats are all about ruling over people and that role is fundamentally wrong, he or she will say, `But what about all the good things they do for us? After all, we elect them!' So, for centuries, adults keep putting a ruling class over themselves. But my children, when they grow up, they'll never be controlled by others."
Ever since the first day of school when she sang The Impossible Dream and he listened outside her room, he'd wished someone had talked to him like that when he was a boy. Miss Annabelle did not know that Jessie had listened to the tapes of every General Lecture and loved to hear her insights.
"Looking back over my life," she continued, "I realize how little power and control over life I had before I saw through appearances to the essence of things. The children's uncanny ability to see past the matrix of illusions in this world to the essence of things lets me move quickly. I must get them past the entire matrix of illusions before I leave. It'll take me the full nine months of the school year. I cannot afford to be away from them for long. Every day, every lecture counts. I cannot be fired. I must just get back to teaching my kids."
Jessie understood. He sat quietly thinking.
"If I don't get back to teach my students, they'd go on to live mediocre lives, sinking in silent frustration like most others. If I get back and teach them, they'll go on to live the way people were meant to live...with power, freedom, wealth and love. They'll go on to be spectacularly happy. They'll go on to have three levels of happiness adults today do not have, which I call the celebrations of love every day, the preciousness of every moment, and a bigger-than-life excitement throughout their entire lives."
Suddenly Miss Annabelle's voice deepened and strengthened, "Jessie, I must get back to teaching those kids."
Her love for her children sent a rush through him and made him long again to have children of his own. For a moment, Jessie drifted into the unhappy memory of why he and Angie would never have children: Down in urban Philadelphia thirteen years ago, when Angie was 17 years old and still living at home, she was kidnapped and raped by a gang. The internal damage and resulting infection of her uterus made her unable to have children. Jessie, two years older and deeply embittered about his helplessness to do anything about that crime, vowed to take his childhood sweetheart out of that gang-infested hell swarming with white, black, and Puerto Rican gang members taking revenge upon one another through racial attacks on anyone of opposing color -- even girls like Angie who never associated with gangs. When he got his job in Cheektowaga, a rural town almost four hundred miles North, a whole world away from their violent past, Jessie and Angie had discovered "heaven". They lived with a freedom they never knew existed. Their favorite activity was long walks together after dark. Like children discovering a new sensation, they discovered the night and its peacefulness -- something they never knew existed. Their only empty moments came when they thought about children and the life with children they would never have. And now Miss Annabelle brought that buried longing back to the surface. And it was the depth of his longing for something he could never have that made him genuinely understand Miss Annabelle's crisis. Suddenly, Jessie wanted to punish Burke. None of this would have happened if not for that pip squeak. Burke started the fires that could burn down the fantastic futures of twelve children and their teacher, and Burke just walked away from the damage carefree or laughing. Jessie's thoughts jumped to the gang members who, because of their life threats on Angie and her family, walked away from justice. Burke too, Jessie realized, was walking away from justice. And whereas the gang members diminished the futures of Jessie and Angie and erased the two or three children who never were conceived...Burke potentially diminished the futures of twelve children and their teacher, even more when considering their children who would have also grown up with the life-lifting power of building never-before-seen puzzle pictures, and their children and so on.
Knowing the pain of having to live his entire life without experiencing a daughter and a son to love and to develop...he could relate to the loss Miss Annabelle would feel if this class -- her children -- were taken away from her. He slowly shifted his eyes back toward her and looked straight into her eyes.
"I understand," he said, simply. A wave of relief washed through Miss Annabelle's purple eyes, and she smiled, forgetting for a moment her battle just a few hours away. For once, another adult understood the meaning behind her new life and the importance of her teaching those children...an importance that, to her, went beyond her own wants and emotions. As Jessie watched her smile, he wondered what she had been through in her past. It must have been a struggle, he thought, something she broke free of. His own past and Angie's past were struggles, which they broke free of. The past, somehow, made the three of them different than those around them...and was now bringing them together.
*
Miss Annabelle was nervous when she arrived at seven o'clock that November evening. Seeing the unnatural sight of a dozen or so cars in the parking lot in the dark added to her nervousness. Those are my prosecutors, she thought.
She felt a gush of cold air when she opened her car door, and she started shivering. The cold night unfairly teamed up with her nervousness to send this little warrior into waves of shivers. I hope I'll stop shivering when I'm inside, she thought.
She walked toward the school, which for the first time looked imposing. All she could think about was that she hoped she could stop this uncontrollable shivering. When she entered the school, she quickly walked into the girls' room, partly because she needed to use the rest room and partly to gain composure. As she warmed up, her shivering calmed down, but it still came in waves, particularly when she saw in her mind's eye a table of twelve school board members questioning her sexual behavior. She wondered if she would be able to answer their questions if she were shivering like this. The more she thought about it, the more nervous she got. What if I can't even talk? she thought.
She wished she had worn warmer clothes. She started doing jumping jacks in the empty rest room. That helped. She was thawing out, and the exercise caused her to breathe more deeply and evenly. She started feeling better, and headed out the door, toward the battlefield.
When she approached the teachers' lunch room, where the emergency meeting would be held, she could hear the congregation of adults talking. Suddenly, she was nervous again, the cold feeling and butterflies returned. When she saw the strangers filling two of the oblong tables pushed together into one extra long table, she started shivering again. The adults all seemed excited. After all, they had never been summoned for a sex scandal, especially involving a beautiful woman. They held the power of her future in their hands. She never liked this room; now she hated it.
"Miss Annabelle," she heard Ms. Minner snap, "You will sit there." Miss Annabelle spotted the freshly revived principal who was feeling confident in this den of male wolves. She was gesturing to the chair at the far end of the stretched table. As Miss Annabelle walked toward the chair, she could feel some of the men checking out her body, which made her more uncomfortable. She noticed how big the men seemed. Maybe they were posturing like a rooster, but they seemed unusually wide as they turned their heads to look at her. And the women seemed to be checking out her body and dress too. They also seemed big, wide, broad at the shoulders. Ms. Minner could not help feeling powerful now -- the lioness looked caged and afraid.
As Miss Annabelle turned to face her prosecutors from the far end of the table, her heart jumped in delight as she saw an oasis, sitting behind the crowd of prosecutors: Jessie and Angie were there! They both looked fearless and strong -- two calm black folks who had gone through tough times in the big city, sitting in a room of sheltered, excited rural white folks who never experienced really tough times. Jessie and Angie looked confidently at Miss Annabelle. Before arriving, Ms. Minner had tried to make Jessie and Angie leave, declaring that this was a closed meeting. But it was Angie who, with a voice not to be reckoned with, declared that a public school's school board is exactly what the name implies: public. She declared that she and her husband had every right to be here, to observe, to witness...and they were not leaving. ...No one in the room challenged her.
Miss Annabelle looked back at Jessie and Angie. The eye contact was like a fuel line between them, and Miss Annabelle felt their strength being pumped straight into her. As strength filled her little body, the warmth returned and the shivering stopped. The little warrior sat down, ready to battle.
"Miss Annabelle, sitting before you are the school board members for the school district for which you are employed," bellowed a thick-boned man of German descent, standing at the opposite end of the table. The tone of his voice made it clear that she was on trial here. This was not an inquiry, but an inquisition. "Facing us are several complaints against you. The nature of some of those complaints forced us to leave our families this evening to call together this emergency meeting."
Ms. Minner seemed to settle into a cozy spot, watching her powerful school-board head, the superintendent, overpower this righteous little sharp-tongued lioness. He continued, his voice growing louder, in a barking crescendo, "Do you have any idea of what those complaints are, Miss Annabelle?"
Perhaps from surviving hard times in her past, the little lady instinctively knew she needed control right from the start. The lioness roared back, "You practically yell my name at me and, what? Do you expect me to address you now as -- Sir? If you want to continue with your intimidation tactics, I can make this a very public event to get you a bigger audience. Or, you can cut the show and start by introducing yourselves."
Jessie and Angie leapt for joy, inside of course. Ms. Minner and her allies were shaken from their smug seats. The white folk at the table were looking around, clearing their throats, and then all fixed their eyes nervously at their leader. He was embarrassed. He now hated that woman, and she knew it. But that did not matter. Only getting back to her children mattered, and she knew this was the only way.
"Please excuse me for that oversight." He hated to say those words. "I'm Mr. Hammerschmidt, the superintendent." The other school board representatives introduced themselves one by one, going around the table counterclockwise.
"Thank you. Of course, you all know I'm Miss Annabelle. Now, Mr. Hammerschmidt, before answering your question, I have a legal right to know who my accuser is. Who's making these complaints against me?"
Mr. Hammerschmidt did not expect this. In fact, he really did not know the answer since the allegations just sort of swirled up from a tornado of gossip. He sat, looking at his papers, stumped.
"Let me ask you another question, Mr. Hammerschmidt. Did a single complaint come from one of my students or from one of their parents?" Miss Annabelle had him beaten, and she was ready to make a swift kill of it. "Since you're not answering, I can answer that question: The answer is NO, not a single student, not a single parent made a single complaint, which means, Mr. Hammerschmidt, you're walking on thin ice, about to fall into a pool of defamation. Your so-called allegations come from schoolhouse, lunchroom rumors. You people have no idea how much your giving credibility to such rumors by putting in a substitute teacher and holding this meeting has cost me emotionally and professionally. Let me warn you not to jerk around someone's life like you have mine. Next time, you'll have a defamation lawsuit to contend with -- each of you personally and the state. Let this be a warning to you. I'll be in my room teaching my children in the morning. Good night."
Miss Annabelle walked out of the room unscathed, mission accomplished. She had shocked everyone there, including herself. She could hear Hammerschmidt arguing with Ms. Minner. That's good, she thought, that's perfect. She would be back with her children the next day -- gone for only one day! She was delighted and wanted to be with Jessie and Angie. They wanted to be with her. But they stayed behind, for the three of them knew not to be seen together as allies. As Miss Annabelle walked from the room, Jessie watched her and wondered from where did this archangel come? He kept hearing her words in his head, "Once you see through appearances to the essence of things, then you have honest power in life." Power, indeed.
The next morning felt like heaven -- the preciousness of being reunited with the children reverberated throughout her body all day long. The kids felt it too. Just one day apart -- yet threatened with eternity -- brought them closer together and lifted them together to a new level. The children sensed by now that Miss Annabelle was a precious gift. They did not take her for granted. As each child walked into the room, his or her face lit up upon seeing Miss Annabelle, and so did Miss Annabelle's heart as she enjoyed celebration after celebration with each child who arrived.
All was wonderful on the day before Thanksgiving.
Next Page | Contents | Previous Page
Disclaimer - Copyright - Contact
Online: buildfreedom.org - terrorcrat.com - mind-trek.com