23. Zelda
ZELDA
My supervisor closes her office door once I enter.
“Sit down, Zelda.”
Her screen is turned so I can see it. My own face is on it, in Suri’s living room, with my mouth open on a word. I know which word.
“This came to the director last night,” she says. “And to the chair of the Friends committee. Two mothers were copied on it. I don’t know either name. There’s no sender name I recognize. The subject line is Is this who you have running your children’s table?”
She presses play before I can ask her not to.
I’m sorry I slapped you, Candace. It won’t happen again.
I haven’t heard it since December. My voice is steadier on the recording than it was in my chest.
I am twenty-four weeks pregnant, and I think I am going to be sick in her wastepaper basket.
“It isn’t true,” I say. “I know I said it. But that night, it was complicated. I never did it. My husband has written as much under the video in our group chat. I can show you.”
“I believe you.” She says it fast, and it nearly undoes me.
“I’ve watched you with those children. But the director has the Friends chair on the telephone and two mothers on the copy line.
Until the director reviews this I have to take you off the Saturday table.
If he won’t reverse it, I can take it to the board on Tuesday.
You keep your desk shifts. I fought for that. ”
A cold wave runs through me. “I’m off the table.”
On my desk is a paper crown a girl made me last Saturday. It won’t stay on my head. She made me promise to use a clip this week.
“Who’s going to tell them?” I ask.
“I’ll take care of Saturday.”
I want to say the children aren’t a problem to take care of. I want to ask whether she means tell the parents or tell the children. My tongue feels too large to do either.
“One Saturday, perhaps two,” she says. She turns the screen away. “Do you know who would send this?”
Through the glass in her door I can see the paper footprints taped to the floor. The smudged heel is still first.
I have a name in my mouth so quickly it frightens me.
“I think I know. I can’t prove it.”
I make it to the staff toilets. I lock the door and put both hands over my mouth and scream into them. It comes out as a thin whine. Then I cry until my nose runs, and Otto kicks me twice under the ribs.
Candace knows what the Saturday table is to me. I told her about it at my own table, with her folders open in front of us. The paper footprints were her idea.
I had been glad she’d helped. When the boy found the badger, I nearly sent her a picture.
My phone is in my hand before I remember there is nothing on it that will prove who sent that email. Dax’s video is still there. Somebody only had to send it without the words underneath.
I wash my face and dry the hand holding my phone. I have not rung Jeremiah once since Christmas. He rings me, at the time I give him.
He answers before the second ring. “Zelda? Is it the baby?”
“The baby’s fine. Dax’s video is at my work.” My voice shakes and I let it. “Somebody sent it to the director. I’ve been taken off my Saturday program. The one I tried to tell you about while you had a phone in your hand.”
A chair scrapes at his end.
“I’ll kill her,” he says.
“You’ll do no such thing. You’ll listen.
” I am gripping the edge of the sink. “You posted your correction where our friends could see it. These aren’t our friends.
These are the parents of the children I read to.
So you are going to come here on Saturday at ten o’clock, when my table would have started, and you are going to say it to my director’s face with those parents standing there.
All of it, out loud. This isn’t a favor. ”
“Saturday. Ten.” His breathing is ragged. “Can I ring him today as well?”
“Ring whoever you like. On Saturday you stand up. Stand up for me this time. Tell the truth.”
On Friday my supervisor tells me the director has spoken to Suri and two other people who were at the parties. He has read Jeremiah’s correction and the messages I showed her. The table will go ahead. He will speak to the parents who received the email before it starts.
“You’ll be reading,” she says.
I nod. She has to say my name before I look up.
“Zelda. You.”
I get as far as my desk before I sit down hard. The paper crown is beside the keyboard. I straighten one of its points with my fingernail.
On Saturday at ten the children’s corner is full. The boy with the badger is there with his father. The director has come in and spoken quietly to the adults by the picture books. I wait at the returns desk with my book pressed against my stomach.
I know I can go over there. My feet don’t seem to know it yet.
Jeremiah comes through the doors in his work coat, unshaven, with a sheet of paper folded in his fist.
“I’m Zelda’s husband,” he says to the director.
His voice reaches the adults by the picture books.
“Some of you received a video this week. Zelda never hit Candace. I should have believed my wife, but instead I believed Candace, and when Zelda tried to defend herself, I treated her as if she was embarrassing me.”
He looks down at the folded paper. His mouth opens, then closes. He lifts his eyes to the director again.
“I told her to say that, so we could go home and I would listen to her privately if she apologized. That’s why she said it. Then I used it against her.”
He unfolds the paper. One corner is crushed in his fist.
“When Candace admitted she’d lied, I kept quiet for eight days. I asked Zelda to say it again even though I knew she was innocent. This is my signed account, with the names of the people who heard the admission at our anniversary.”
He walks past the director and puts the paper on the returns desk, in front of me.
A mother near the window has her hand over her mouth. The boy looks from Jeremiah to me.
“Did she hit somebody?” he asks his father.
“No,” Jeremiah says. His voice cracks on it. “She never hit anybody. I said she did. I was wrong, and she was telling the truth the whole time.”
The boy thinks about it. “You should say sorry.”
“I’m sorry.” Jeremiah is looking at me. He is crying in front of a dozen children, and he keeps looking. “I’m sorry, Zelda.”
The director takes the statement. “I’ve spoken to witnesses and reviewed the messages,” he tells the parents. “The accusation against Zelda was false. She has my full support.”
Then he turns toward me.
“Your table is ready, Zelda.”
My legs carry me round the desk. I don’t look at Jeremiah as I pass him, because if I do I will put my face in his coat in front of every one of those children. I lower myself onto the small chair. It takes some doing.
“Right.” My voice wobbles. I clear it. “Who can tell me which way a badger would turn at the picture books?”
Three hands go up. The boy is already pointing.
“He’d go there.”
“Would he?”
“That’s where you put him.”
I know the next line. I have read this book so often I can turn the page at exactly the place the children expect. Today I look down and the words blur.
The girl beside me holds up a hair clip. A red one with a flower on it.
“You forgot.”
The crown. I left it on my desk.
“I did,” I say. “Will you get it for me?”
She runs to the desk while her mother watches. When she comes back, I bow my head so she can put it on. The clip catches a few hairs. I don’t tell her.
“Now,” I say, opening the book again.
The boy leans forward. His knee knocks the table. I put a hand over the corner before he can do it twice, and begin.
My voice steadies on the second page. On the third, someone tells me I’ve done the badger’s voice wrong. I do it worse on purpose and they shout at me to stop.
I can’t stop smiling long enough to read.
When I look up, Jeremiah is by the atlases. He has put his hands in his coat pockets. He leaves quietly before the story ends.
The children stay for the next book. I let them choose it. The crown is crooked and pulling at my hair, but I keep it on until the last child has gone.