3. Giselle
THREE
GISELLE
All Work and No Play Makes Giselle a Sick Girl
Benny was asleep again.
I tried not to let it distract me, but it was difficult when my mind wanted to overanalyze every single detail I possibly could to figure out if there was danger at home, if it was a growth spurt, or terrible nightmares keeping him up.
I had hoped my counsel would help him instantly even though I had told him that it sometimes took a few tries to find something that worked.
Na?ve optimism, I supposed. But then again, I always liked to think there was a certain kind of strength in holding on to hope in a world that so often liked to treat the idea as if it were a four-letter word.
Either way, I resolved to keep my eye on it. Although his situation seemed very different from Addison’s, there was no reason I couldn’t double/triple/quadruple check. Also, if Benny was having persistent nightmares, even if it wasn’t due to issues at home, it was worth exploring.
But I didn’t draw attention to his snoozing, and thankfully no one else did either.
At least some of what I had said the previous day seemed to have sunk in a little.
I roused him for lunch, and I waited for the lunch monitor to escort all my students in a relatively neat line before I headed to the teacher’s lounge.
I hoped to get some insight there. I was somewhat new as a teacher compared to the tenured staff, so I figured it never hurt to get experienced advice.
No one was there while I microwaved my food, then sat at one of the two circular tables. There were also two couches and two recliners, but I didn’t enjoy eating there. Something about the posture was off. Or at least that was what my brain told me, particular as it could be.
Besides, when I was at a proper table, it gave me a chance to take out my meds, set them on a napkin, and space them throughout my meal.
Before the lunch monitors were hired, I’d used to have to down them all at once in case the kids distracted me, and that was kind of hard on my stomach.
I much preferred the system we had set up now, where only one teacher needed to be present with two lunch monitors to assist them.
I wasn’t alone for long. Three more teachers came in. I recognized them as Mrs. Breechcroft, who taught third grade all the way in the back of the farthest wing of our elementary school; Mr. Gottmik who taught fifth grade; and Mrs. Angie, a Southern woman who also taught fifth grade.
But no Francine Delgato, also known affectionately by most students as Mademoiselle Delgato.
She taught fourth grade and had been at the school for twenty years.
That was nearly as long as I had been alive.
She was a sweet soul, and while she wouldn’t offer advice without prompting, I always found her nuggets of wisdom incredibly helpful.
I supposed I could just hurry up, eat my food, and walk to her room, but there was an unspoken rule between teachers: unless it was an emergency, if a teacher wasn’t in the lounge during lunch, it meant they were off limits.
There were any number of reasons why she was choosing to eat her meal elsewhere, so I wasn’t going to interrupt her.
I settled into my lunch, focusing on each bite.
My doctor had encouraged me to do that because it helped me eat more and feel less nauseous.
I wasn’t sure if it was working, but I was willing to give it a try.
I’d lost so much weight during my last big flare, and while the three months of radioactive iodine treatment had brought me back to normal, my doctor stopped it after I started to display moderate eye symptoms. I was deathly afraid of Graves’ eye disease after watching my mother go through it, so I wanted no part in that.
It was a bit crazy to think that the onset of Graves’ ophthalmopathy was what had finally gotten my mother her diagnosis.
Once she hit college, she started getting sicker and sicker, going to doctor after doctor.
Most refused to test her, citing anxiety, menstrual issues, anxiety, stress, more menstrual issues, oh and…
anxiety. When I was a preteen, it started getting really bad and our town doctor finally started taking her seriously.
But it was clear he never kept up on his continuing education because he never hit anywhere near Graves.
First, it was “stomach sensitivities” then an “unknown psychosomatic illness”, for which he suggested therapy.
When my father had had the last straw, he drove her into the city to see a new doctor. It took six months to get an appointment, but finally, someone took my mother seriously.
But that was over a decade ago, so her treatment wasn’t nearly as good as mine was now, and unfortunately so much damage had been done. The damage to her heart from years of never getting help weakened it so much that after a single thyroid storm, she couldn’t recover.
And that’s when I started to get sick too.
Lucky me, I was an outlier. My symptoms set in during my senior year of high school. Rotten timing, really. But at least?—
“Grace, I hope this isn’t too nosy of me, but did you see the news from your old town?”
I didn’t like to think of myself as a gossip—I had enough on my plate—but my interest piqued when I heard Mrs. Angie’s drawl. I mean, yeah, I was trying to give my lunch my full attention, but yogurt could only be so engaging.
“Oh my gosh, I did! I can’t believe it.”
Interesting…
Was there a teacher scandal? Embezzlement from a superintendent?
While most people thought of small towns as sleepy and boring, everyone I knew who came from them always had the craziest stories and juiciest gossip.
Maybe it was because there wasn’t much to do so they had to make up their own drama.
“So young to have lost both her parents, and an entire semester in the burn unit. I can’t imagine going through all of that at eleven and then trying to hide it to keep going to school.”
Oh no.
This wasn’t fun gossip at all. My heart lurched as I put the pieces together in my head.
A student from Mrs. Breechcroft’s old town had lost her family in a fire and spent a significant time on medical leave, then tried to hide it somehow.
I hated that a young girl who’d gone through so much was scared of that, but I couldn’t blame her kid-logic for putting it together that way.
“I tell you what, though,” Mrs. Breechcroft continued.
“Her teacher’s just a few years younger than me, and I tell ya, he was one of the sweetest boys when we were in school.
It makes sense that he noticed her being cagey about stuff and talked it out with her.
I imagine finding out that she didn’t need to hide and no one was going to force her to change schools just because she was living with her auntie was a huge relief. One she needed.”
“Sweetheart, that’s why I’m sticking to this. I’ve watched my pay go down worse than a skeeter in a bug zapper, but every time I think of leaving, I look at my kids’ faces and think about never getting a new class again, then I chicken out.”
“That’s because you two are good teachers,” Mr. Gottmik murmured. He was a relatively taciturn fellow, which is why he tended to have the more independent, higher-scoring students. “I had some teachers who made me dread going to school every day. They were definitely in the wrong profession.”
“Bless your heart, I know exactly what you mean. I think it’s kinda like nurses, ya know?
Some of them are literally angels put on this earth, and some…
well, some are just looking for some way to be in a position of power over a captive audience.
Always try to speak up when I see it, but I like to think it’s less common as I’ve gotten older. ”
“Well, when you think about it, education is such a new field, compared to human history, that we’re really learning new things every single day. It makes a difference in how we teach generation to generation.”
“I know that’s right! Always growin’, always glowin’!”
Although I could listen to Miss Angie read a phonebook—if those still existed—I zoned out as my thoughts drifted to my own class.
What if one of them was going through something like that and I had no idea?
I didn’t think Addison’s situation was that bad, but perhaps I should make a call home to check? Would that be out of line?
And for that matter… what about Benny? Was he hiding some trauma?
He never talked much about his home life beyond fond things about his father and occasional comments about his little sister.
What was her name? I usually tried to remember such things but names weren’t easy when I didn’t have a face to put to them.
Vanessa? Vicky? It definitely started with a V.
I’d never heard of anyone else, as far as I could recall. No mothers, aunts, uncles. Huh. That could mean something, or it could be nothing. After all, things like divorce, small families, and the like existed.
Maybe I should check his file and touch base with his parents?
Yeah, that sounded like a plan. No doubt I was just too far in my own head with what was going on with Addison and hearing about that poor girl who lost her parents to a fire.
However, it would make me feel better to check, and if it helped Benny, it would be worth the few extra minutes going to the office would take me.
Feeling better with a course of action chosen, I returned my attention to my food and my medication, working through them until it was time to head to my room.
Thankfully, our afternoon was fairly typical—as far as afternoons with twenty first graders went—and before too long it was time for my after-school planning session.
None of my students stayed after class, and an hour later, I closed my door and headed to the office.
The secretary was still there, as I knew she would be, and pulled up the file on her computer for me with SIS, the program we used for such things.
Unfortunately, there was a technical issue with my login information, as well as Miss McCluski’s, Miss Angie’s, and Mr. Dominik’s, so none of us had been able to get into that system since it was updated.
IT was “working on it” but it wasn’t a priority, so the office would be my go-to for most of the year.
“Thank you,” I said as I sat down and scrolled my way to parent information. There wasn’t a lot to go through, since he was only in first grade, so it took me less than a minute.
In the edit log, I saw his preferred parent contact had been changed to his father’s at the start of the year. Hmm, a nasty divorce perhaps?
That kind of information wasn’t likely to be in a school file, but there were advantages to teaching at a relatively small, suburban elementary school.
“Hey, Lizzie, do you know why Benny Poynter’s mother was taken off as his preferred parental contact?”
“Benny Poynter? Benny… Benny… Oh! Junior! Sad story really. His mother died about a year and a half ago, just after he started going to school here. Home invasion turned violent. It was pretty devastating, as I recall, they had family visiting and all of them were wiped out.”
She leaned forward, her eyes gleaming in a way that wasn’t entirely appropriate.
Yeah, I liked gossip as much as the next person, but what Lizzie was telling me was outright horrific.
“Rumor has it, it was a gang hit gone wrong. They had the wrong info on where their rival gang was hiding and wiped out the whole house.”
I didn’t know what to say, and all I could do was stare at her as if she was speaking in a foreign language.
“Please tell me you’re messing with me in a really tasteless way,” I finally said after swallowing hard.
“What? No! This isn’t something to joke about. If his father hadn’t been on a business trip, Ben would be the only survivor.”
“And his sister.”
“Pardon?”
“His little sister. Name starts with a V, I think.”
“Oh, I wasn’t aware he had one. But yes, if it weren’t for that business trip, those two kids would be orphans.”
“How horrifying,” I murmured, my mind spinning.
Well, if I had to guess why a kid might have vicious nightmares, then his family being murdered was pretty high up there.
Poor Benny. I’d lost my own mother, but still…
I didn’t believe in the Suffering Olympics?, but that was so much worse.
“Do you need anything else?” Lizzie asked, her mood seemingly unbothered even though it felt like the world had been ripped right out from under my feet.
Never in all my years did I think I would have a kid in my class who had experienced something so truly awful.
Actually, awful didn’t cover it. Horrific. Catastrophic.
“No,” I said, closing out of the program and standing up. “I’ve got everything I need.”
I kept my breathing steady as I headed to my classroom. Now that I knew the underlying issue, it was time for me to be the ally Benny deserved.