Girls in Trouble: A Novel

by Caroline Leavitt

  Worried, Eva approached the pediatrician, but he waved his hand. “Kids develop at different rates,” he said. “I had one patient who didn’t say anything until he was three!” He snapped his fingers with a flourish. “Stop worrying. She’ll talk when she’s ready and then she’ll probably talk so much you’ll yearn for this quiet.”

  She drove home, Anne in the backseat, and every time Eva looked in the rearview mirror to check on her, Anne was staring dreamily out the window. Eva felt unsettled. She turned the radio on and began singing loudly. “Come on, honey, make some noise with Mommy!” she urged. She turned around to look at Anne, just for a moment. Was that possible, that her daughter’s slate eyes were now bottle green, or was it just the light? She knew eye color, hair color could change. Maybe all that red would darken into a nice brown, transforming Anne, making her look like a whole different girl. Eva squinted, and then another car bumped into them, jolting her. Anne’s mouth was a startled O and Eva hurriedly unhooked her seat belt and stretched over the seat, checking Anne’s arms, her chubby legs, all the time murmuring, “You’re all right, honey.”

  The car bumped again. “Damn!” Eva cursed, turning back around. She’d have to stop now, exchange licenses.

  “Hang on, honey,” Eva said, digging into her purse.

  “Mommy!”

  Eva turned around, stunned. Anne blinked at her. “What did you say—” Eva whispered. Eva saw the woman from the other car coming around to talk to her, but she wouldn’t take her eyes off her daughter. “Say it again,” she begged.

  “Mommy!” Anne said and squealed with laughter, and then Eva laughed, too, which made Anne jump in her car seat. Eva laughed even harder, so that when the other woman bent to her window, she must have thought Eva was crazy.

  One word, though, didn’t open any floodgates. Slowly, gradually, Anne began to speak, always in individual words, like chips of chocolate on ice cream, sweet, perking your appetite, and frustrating you, too, because what you really wanted was the ice cream. Mommy, daddy, ball, book, crayons, I love you. “She’s not fluent yet,” Eva said to George. She ruffled word flash cards in one hand and held one up. A big red circle. “Ball,” she said, and George lowered her hand.

  “Come on, everything doesn’t have to be a lesson.” He tickled Anne who laughed and wrapped herself about his legs.

  “I’m not making it a lesson! I’m trying to help.”

  “If all she ever said was Daddy, I’d be in seventh heaven forever,” George said.

  He held out his arms and Anne squealed and let go of his legs, leaping up toward George with a ferocity Eva couldn’t help but yearn over. “She likes you better,” she said.

  “I’m here less, that’s all it is,” George said. “I’m the Great God Daddy.”

  Anne’s whole body seemed lit up. George roughhoused with her, swinging her and tickling her, and Anne didn’t grow quiet until George set her back down again.

  When Anne turned three, they started her in the Happy Life Day Care. Eva found work herself as a kindergarten teacher at Northeast Elementary School. Immediately her days were filled with lesson plans and projects, with kids and parents and school meetings. She made friends with Miriam, the other kindergarten teacher, and the two of them sometimes stopped off for coffee before they each went home to their families. Anne seemed happy, George loved his job, and she was back teaching again, with fifteen noisy little voices clamoring around her, and she could never get enough of it.

  The first time Eva brought Anne to day care, half of the other babies were crying, straining for their mothers, but Anne plunked herself down in front of some blocks and began to play. “No separation anxiety there,” said the teacher.

  “I’m the one with the anxiety,” Eva said, trying to smile.

  “Oh, now, she’s going to be just fine,” the teacher soothed.

  And she was fine. When Eva came to pick her up that evening, Anne did cry, but it was because Eva wanted her to come home. “She’s tired,” Eva said out loud and tried to hold her daughter close, even as Anne scrambled to reach the block area. “Mommy!” she cried. “Down! Down!” Eva smiled and held her tighter.

  Eva felt her life was split in two. She went to her class and her kids clamored around her. They climbed in her lap, they reached for her hand, when they drew pictures, they drew Eva’s face, they filled the paper with Eva’s blond hair. “This is you!” they cried, pointing. “You’re on my paper!” She knew exactly how to draw a child out. She’d crouch to their eye level so she wouldn’t seem overpowering. She’d modulate her voice so it was softer, more gentle. She put books into the hands of shy children and drew them out. She gave active kids jump ropes to play with that channeled their energy. “I love you, Miss Eva!” Every day, she heard it. And then she came home to her quiet little girl, and when she crouched down to Anne’s level, Anne took a step back. When Eva handed Anne books or crayons, Anne would sometimes look overwhelmed. Anne could sit in her room for hours coloring, playing with her dolls, and as soon as Eva stepped into the room, Anne would look flustered and Eva couldn’t figure out why.

  “How’d you luck out with such a quiet girl?” Miriam asked her.

  “I wish she’d be more outgoing.”

  “Because you are?” Miriam asked. “Who says your kids are like you? My daughter Brigette’s so different from me I sometimes thought the hospital had switched babies on us. She loves sports, loves roughhousing, and all I want to do is play dolls with her or shop. What are you going to do? They’re their own people right from the start. All you can do is nurture who they already are.”

  Or nurture what you’d like for them to be, Eva thought.

  When Anne turned five, the same age as Eva’s students, Eva decided to bring her to her kindergarten class. “I want to show her off,” Eva said, but the truth was, she wanted to show herself off to her daughter. She dressed up in a rainbow-striped skirt and long beaded earrings. Then she put Anne in a new dress, green as her eyes, and she tidied Anne’s red hair into pigtails, tied with a ribbon. “What color?” she asked, and when Anne said yellow, Eva grinned. “Ah, my favorite color!” Eva said, pleased.

  “Wish I could be there,” George said.

  “Just us girls,” Eva told him.

  The whole ride to the school, Eva kept telling Anne all the wonders that she’d find in Eva’s classroom: music and instruments and art supplies! A cooking center where they could make butter! A dress-up center where they could play theater! “Guess what I have planned today!” Eva told Anne excitedly. “A nature walk!”

  “A nature walk!” Anne’s eyes shone.

  As soon as Eva walked into the room, the children rushed toward her, clamoring. “Miss Eva! Miss Eva!” Fifteen voices were all talking at once.

  Anne hesitated and then shyly leaned along the wall, lowering her eyes. Billy grabbed at Eva’s hands and Anne sprinted forward, tugging them away so roughly Billy cried.

  “Anne!” Eva said, surprised. “That’s not nice!”

  Anne’s hands darted back to her sides. Her lower lip trembled. “Why’re you crying?” Eva asked, crouching down. “Billy’s the one who was startled.” Anne shook her head.

  “Come meet everyone.” Eva sprang up again, like a rubber band. “This is my daughter, Anne!” Eva said. She tugged at Anne’s hand, but Anne hid behind her.

  The kids were excited, restless, churning like a tide, but Eva knew what to do. She clapped her hands, one, two, three, her signal for them to gather round. And then, outside, it began to pour. “The nature walk!” Anne cried.

  Eva stared at the gloomy day. Great, she thought, and then an idea prickled into her mind. “Well, maybe we can have fun anyway,” Eva said.

  “How can we do that?”

  “You’ll see,” Eva said.

  “What are you going to do?” Anne asked, her eyes bright.

  “You wait and see,” Eva whispered. “Your mommy can make magic.”

  While the children played at the activity centers,
Eva got out the blanket and spread it on the floor with the picnic basket. She went next door and borrowed the microwave they used for cooking. There was a package of hot dogs in the fridge and they could nuke them. She got all kinds of summertime songs for the boom box to play for the kids. “We’re having a summer picnic!” Eva announced.

  “But it’s raining,” Billy said.

  “Not inside it isn’t,” Eva said. “Come on, now, everyone line up behind me, hands on the person in front of you.”

  The kids scrambled into a line. Anne lagged in the corner. “Anne, honey, come on!” Eva urged, but Anne shook her head. “Well, join in anytime,” Eva said.

  They all sang “Day-O,” marching around the room, making so much noise, the next-door teacher came by, leaning in the doorway, laughing. “You are one teacher!” she said, but Eva, looking at her Anne sitting alone, couldn’t help feeling that she had failed.

  All afternoon, Eva tried to engage her daughter. When Eva handed out blue and green and yellow streamers for the kids to swirl in the air, pretending they were waves at the beach, Anne waved hers around limply. “Come on, honey!” Eva urged, and Anne waved her streamer harder and when it snagged on something and ripped, she looked stunned. “Never mind!” Eva said, but Anne sat on the floor.

  When the first of the parents arrived to pick up the kids, Eva was playing Frisbee with a group of them, and none of the kids wanted to leave. “Can’t we stay?” they pleaded.

  Gradually, Eva’s hold loosened. The Frisbees fell, the streamers slid to the floor, the kids ran to their mothers, their grandmothers, their nannies.

  “See you tomorrow,” Eva called to John and Jack and Harry and Emma, and in the end, it was just Eva and Anne in the chaos of the room.

  Eva knelt down by Anne. Both of Anne’s pigtails were undone and Eva smoothed them back. “Did you have fun today?” she asked.

  “A lot,” Anne said.

  “What was the best part?”

  Anne was quiet for a moment, surveying the room. “The books?” she asked.

  “Honey, I’m not looking for a right answer,” Eva persisted. “You don’t have to try and please me. I just want to know what you liked. The picnic? The streamers?”

  “The books,” she said, and despite her best efforts, Eva deflated.

  “Well, good,” Eva said quickly. “I’m glad you had a good time.” Anne shot her an anxious look and then bowed her head. “What is it?” Eva asked. “Are you crying again?”

  “Do you like them better than you like me?” Anne whispered and Eva felt something splintering inside of her heart. “How could you even dream such a thing?” Eva asked. “Who’s my girl?” she said. “Who’s my absolute favorite, most loved girl?”

  “I love you, Mommy,” Anne said, and Eva bent and held her until Anne pulled away.

  By third grade, Anne’s teachers were writing on her report card, “She doesn’t apply herself. She’s off in her own world dreaming.”

  Anne was always reading, always telling stories. At dinner she told George and Eva that she had seen a lion in the neighborhood but she had fed it cookies and it went home. “Oh, a cookie-loving lion,” George said. “My favorite kind.”

  On the way to school, Anne told Eva that she thought she was growing angel wings under her dress. “Don’t fly away on us,” Eva said, grabbing hold of Anne’s hand.

  When Eva took Anne to the park or the make-your-own pottery place or the pizza parlor, she saw other children in groups, their mothers hovering nearby. “Would you like to make a play-date with someone?” she asked Anne, and Anne shrugged and picked at a scab on her knee until Eva swatted her hand away.

  “She needs friends,” Eva told George. “Maybe we should just call some of the other mothers and arrange something.”

  “You can’t force friendships,” George said. “And I don’t think we should push her. You wait. She’ll have plenty of friends soon enough.”

  Eva only felt a little better when Anne came home one day and announced she had a new best friend at school. “Darnelle,” she said proudly. For weeks, all Anne talked about was this other little girl Darnelle. Darnelle could sing songs backward. Darnelle knew how to speak French. Eva was thrilled that Anne had found a friend. “Invite Darnelle over,” Eva suggested. “We can make cookies together. Or make our own Play-Doh.”

  Anne shrugged. Eva kept nudging her to call and finally Anne burst into tears. “We aren’t friends anymore. Darnelle hit me.”

  “She hit you?” Eva said, shocked.

  Eva didn’t tell Anne that she called her teacher, that she wanted to find out who this Darnelle thought she was. “Darnelle?” Anne’s teacher said to Eva. “Who’s Darnelle? There’s no girl in our class with that name.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us the truth?” Eva asked Anne. “Darnelle wasn’t real.”

  “She was to me,” Anne said.

  She needs realfriends, Eva kept thinking, even as Anne began playing by herself again. She’d race across the backyard, head thrown back. She jumped rope singing to herself or rode her bike, and she liked to write stories, too, filling up the brightly colored notebooks Eva gave her. Eva tried to coax a look, but Anne held the pad to her chest.

  “It’s private,” Anne said.

  “Why can’t we see? I know I’ll love anything you do.”

  “You promise?” Anne asked.

  “I don’t have to promise, I know. What’s the story?”

  “Oh, let her alone,” George said. He winked at Anne, who laughed. “Our little Greta Garbo. ‘I vant to be a-lone,’” he said and tickled her.

  Eva personally hated to be alone. She had always loved big groups and lots of noise, which was one reason why Eva loved teaching preschool. She was thrilled when Anne found girls she liked to be with, real flesh-and-blood friends that Eva liked, too. Anne had first met Flor and June in third grade, two new girls in her class. She came home solemnly asking if she could have them over. “Are you kidding?” Eva said.

  The girls came the next day, scrambling up her walk, two bright-faced little girls in brown pigtails and stretchy-waist jeans. They came the next day, too, making Eva’s house a habit, making themselves at home, pouring their own juice, turning the TV on and off. Eva was always on the phone with their mothers, assuring them she’d get the girls home on time, asking could the girls stay for dinner, could the girls sleep over with Anne? Eva grew to expect them, to buy extra juice and cookies so there would always be enough on hand. She was always bandaging their bumps and scrapes, drying their tears and doling out hugs. Sometimes she interrupted their play to ask if they’d like to test-drive a project she was going to try out with her class: making bread from scratch! “Of course, the project is for much younger kids, but I could use the expertise of a few ten-year-olds,” she said. The girls giggled, pleased. They were happy enough to get messy in the kitchen with Eva. She gave them each one of her T-shirts to put over their clothes so they wouldn’t get too dirty. She helped them tie their hair back and showed them how to pound the dough with their hands, how to shape it. She turned to rinse a glass.

  “What are you doing? You big silly!” Flor cried, and Eva turned, glass in hand, and saw Anne pushing both elbows into the dough, the same way Sara had when Eva had taught her how to make bread, and for a moment, seeing that gesture, those red curls, it was like seeing a ghost. Eva felt catapulted back in time, when she hadn’t been able to wait for Sara to come to the house, when she couldn’t speak a paragraph without Sara being in it, and she suddenly missed Sara, only this time, the anger was gone, and now there was only a confusion of yearning and guilt and grief. “Pull your hair back so you don’t get dough in it,” Eva said to Anne.

  “You’re spilling water!” June called to Eva and Eva, confused, tilted the glass upright. She walked over to Anne and took her arms. “Not like that,” she said, steadying her voice. “Use your hands. Warm the dough with their heat. See? The way I’m doing?”

  “Ow!” Anne looked at her, astonished.r />
  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry—” Eva said. Anne looked down at the dough, but not at Eva. Slowly, she started to knead it, and then Eva turned away to finish the dishes.

  They were all laughing, and then Anne left the room, and ten minutes later, Flor said, “Where’s Anne?”

  They found her in the backyard, sitting on a swing.

  “Anne, you big dodo,” said Flor, “get your butt in here.”

  “You said butt,” June said, delighted. Then she turned to Anne. “Are you in a mood?”

  “I just wanted to be outside for a while,” Anne said, sliding off the swing.

  Eva looked at the other girls, how their faces fell and then recom-posed, and then she felt a sudden kinship. / know how you feel, she wanted to tell them.

  Inside, Eva spread out colored paper and handed out crayons.

  “I wish you were my mother,” Flor said, grabbing for a bright green crayon.

  “No, I wish, you were my mother,” June said.

  “She’s my mom,” Anne said quickly. “My mommy.”

  “Can we come live here?” said June.

  “You can visit,” Anne said.

  One day, walking by, Eva heard the girls telling stories to each other. She leaned against the wall and listened to one story, and then another, the girls interrupting each other excitedly, adding details, asking questions. The stories were centered around one girl named Betsy, a girl much like them. Betsy had adventures at camp with a big spanking machine. Betsy was at boarding school with a mean headmistress. The thing that disturbed Eva was that Betsy was an orphan.