Floating Dandelion Heads

Floating Dandelion Heads

They told me at the start of the school year that Alice would be a difficult kid to work with. They had not been wrong, exactly. She was unresponsive, to say the least. She never raised her hand, never answered when I called on her. I tried to pick the easiest questions, things I knew from her tests that she could answer. I did not want to pressure her, just try and get her talking. Each time, though, all she did was look at me with a dull, brown-eyed stare, shrug, and put her head down on her desk.

I knew the other kids had become cruel towards her. They teased her at lunch, ignored her at recess. Jennifer, who taught physical education, told me yesterday that no one would partner with her for any games. She stood at the back, wringing her wrists, until someone hit her with a dodgeball, and she could finally sit out. No one ever chose to bring her back in the game when given the chance.

Normally, it was something that I would want to bring up at a parent-teacher conference, but with Alice, I knew that could never be the case.

She had first been enrolled in my school a few months ago after being removed from her parents’ home. She lived with some distant relative now—a cousin of her mother, I thought. I had only met her guardian once, and she did not seem to have any desire to be involved in Alice’s life. What she really wanted to do was send her off to a child psychologist to deal with her issues, instead of trying to bond with the girl herself. She had only decided against it when she found out how much it would cost her per session. Alice’s wellbeing must not have been worth that much to her.

On Wednesdays, I had recess duties. I stood out in the warmth of early autumn, when the leaves turned golden, but the air still held the heat of summer. All around, eight- and nine-year-olds were running, climbing monkey bars, and swinging. Only one child looked to be absent from the joyful playing, and that was Alice. I sighed, shaking my head. Even though the other children were not doing much to welcome their new classmate, Alice was hardly making any effort herself. I had a feeling that if she joined in with some of the girls jumping rope, they would soon realize she was not as different as they believed her to be.

I crossed the mulch of the playground, looking around for the missing student. I could not force her to play if she did not want to, but as the acting playground supervisor, I had to know where she was. Soon I spotted her, out in the soccer field. She was towards the back, walking along the line of a silver chain-link fence that barricaded the playground from the outer world. Once it seemed that she found what she was looking for, she sat down, crossed her legs, and stuck her hand into an opening.

I hurried over to Alice, worried that the rusty fence could scrape her. Once I got her, I what she had been doing. She was pulling yellow dandelions out of the ground, snapping off the heads and tossing them behind her. She discarded the crushed stems to the ground and reached for another weed.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Making wishes,” she said, not looking up at me.

“How so?”

“Dandelions,” Alice said. “You wish on them.” She popped another sunny head from the stem, unceremoniously tossing it over her shoulder.

“You know.” I knelt beside her. “That’s only the white ones. You blow the fuzzy heads and spread the seeds. That’s what makes the wish work.”

“What makes the yellow ones different?” she asked. “I can still spread them. Watch.”

She gathered a bundle of the dead yellow heads from the ground and moved further down the line of the fence. A few yards down, she sat back down. She reached her hand through the fence, stuffing one head after another through.

At first, I did not understand what she meant. Then, I stood up and looked over the top of the fence and saw that a small stream was behind it. Each time she placed a dandelion head through the fence, it landed in the water, and a gentle current washed it away. Where it landed, neither of us could be sure.

I sighed. “You’re right, Alice.”

She smiled, and I waited for her to place the last withering yellow head through the chains. Then I said, “But you know, you shouldn’t be reaching through the fence. It’s dangerous. From now on, why don’t you stay on the playground with the other kids?”

She looked up at me, a hollowness in her dark eyes. It was not exactly sadness, rather the resolution that someone developed when they were used to being disappointed. She seemed too young to have that resolution yet, but that did not mean it was not possible. I knew better than anyone how possible it was for a child to see the disappointing reality of others early on. Though I could not be certain that she would be stronger in adulthood for it.

The old school bell, back up at the building, rang, signaling to the students that they had three minutes to line up and get back inside. I smiled to Alice and waved my hand for her to follow me. I watched her hover at the back of the group of children, standing in the back of the line, wringing her wrists.

My home had fallen into disarray since the start of the school year. With all the time that I spent on grading and lesson planning, I no longer had it in me to tidy and straighten. So, I tolerated the clutter instead. Voicemails were piling up on my phone. I listened to them, deleting most, as they were not relevant. One was from my sister Jane, asking if I would be at our parents for their anniversary this weekend. It was their thirty-fifth. More impressive than twenty-five years together, but lacking the excitement of a fiftieth anniversary. I deleted the message.

I decided to go through a stack of projects that I had from my class instead. I had asked them to paint self-portraits with watercolors. The results were, of course, not realistic at all, but still amusing. One boy had given himself purple hair, mistaking the color for brown. Another had decided to paint a cartoon character instead. It violated the directions of the assignment, but it was still adorable to look at.

When I got to the end of the stack, I came across the last painting to be turned in, and I frowned. It had taken Alice two extra days to finish her art project, and the result was not what I had been hoping for. Instead of painting her own face, she had painted some vague human-looking figure, then streaked black and red paint across it in angry swirls.

I did not want to fail her on the assignment, especially when I guessed that this was, sadly, probably how the girl viewed herself. Instead, I would turn it into Principal Kelly. Perhaps he could contact her guardian, and then maybe she would get the counseling that I knew she needed.

Before I went to bed, my phone rang again. Instantly, I recognized Jane’s phone number. I sighed and picked up the phone. We would have to have this conversation sooner or later.

“Hello,” I said.

“And how are you, Callie?” she said, a mock interest in her voice. “You must be busy; you haven’t returned any of my calls.”

“School started.”

“I see,” Jane said. “Well, as you know, we have an anniversary dinner to plan, so If you could help, I would really appreciate that.”

“Can we talk about this in the morning?” I asked.

“I wanted to talk about it in the morning,” Jane said. “Which is why I called you this morning, and you didn’t pick up.”

“I was at school.”

“Which is why we have to talk about it now,” she said, ignoring me completely. “It’s as if you don’t want to be involved in this at all.”

“Maybe I don’t,” I said.

“What do you mean?

I sighed. “Jane, do you really care about Mom and Dad’s anniversary any more than I do? Do you really feel that them being together for thirty-five years is something to celebrate? Because I don’t.”

“How can you say that?” Jane asked. “They’re our parents!”

“Doesn’t change a thing,” I said. “They can hardly even be in the same room for longer than five minutes without starting an argument. If they’ve stayed together, it’s just because neither of them wants to give up the house. That isn’t exactly what I would consider an accomplishment.”

“You’re so ungrateful, you know that, Callie?” Jane said. “They stayed together for us, to give us the best chance possible. You should be happy.” With that, she hung up the phone.

My kids were busy the next afternoon as I had them working on addition and subtraction tables. Some of them were doing so well that I thought I might be able to introduce basic multiplication soon. Although, I did not think their fifth-grade teachers would appreciate me stealing their curriculum.

One by one, the children filed to my desk to turn in their work, then they grabbed their lunch pails, anxiously awaiting lunchtime and recess. Alice turned her sheet into me, staring at her shoes. I suspected that she had yet to forgive me for putting an end to her dandelion-wishing yesterday. I was relieved when I started going through her work. Her math skills were improving. Perhaps she was finally starting to pay attention during lessons.

Jack—the third-grade teacher who was on duty for recess today—came to take the children to lunch. I was glad not to have to watch them today, so I had a chance to grade. If I got this afternoon’s math quizzes done before I left, I might have time to clean my house tonight.

I pulled open a desk drawer, looking for a pen to mark scores with. It was there that I came across the invitation I had stashed there days ago, simply because I did not want it lying around my house where I would be forced to read it and consider it. Pulling it out, I read the words across the front. Joseph and Sharon proudly announce their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary! They would like to formally invite you to celebrate with them!

I ran my fingers over the gold, embossed lettering. Celebrate. I wished that they would not call it that. Thinking of my parents, through the course of my entire childhood, the way they raised me and Jane, it was the last thing I wanted to celebrate. I remembered the fights and the yelling, and I remembered the cold-shouldered silence that always inevitably followed. I remembered never knowing which was worse.

When Jane and I had been a bit older, in our adolescent years, our parents had started using us as tokens in their petty games against one another. If my father did not wish to ask my mother a question, he would simply say, “Callie, will you ask your mother something for me?” In most instances, I already knew what her answer would be, and yet still felt compelled to carry out the task. My mother would then answer bitterly, and I would be forced to take the brunt of her rage instead of my father. Then I endured his anger when I carried the message to him.

Jane had always seemed more eager to carry out this job than I had been. She felt that keeping the peace between Joseph and Sharon was something to be proud of. I always wondered if she really thought that it might help heal their marriage and make us a family again. It never did.

“Excuse me.”

I looked up to see Jack standing in the doorway of my classroom, holding the wrist of a child in his grasp. “Miss Tanner, do you have a moment?”

“Of course,” I said.

Jack stepped into the room, revealing Alice cowering behind him. Her fingers were yellow and sticky.

“I found her roaming about the fence line,” Jack explained. “When I told her to knock it off, she ran from me. She’s to have no recess privileges for the next week.”

“Okay,” I said. “She can sit in here until recess is over then.”

Jack turned to leave the room. Alice miserably wandered to her desk, sat down, and buried her head under her arms, leaving traces of yellow in her fair hair.

“Alice,” I said calmly. “I told you yesterday, you aren’t to be playing by the fences.”

“I have to,” she said, her voice close to breaking with tears. “It’s the only place the dandelions grow.”

I sighed. From the bag where I kept assignments that needed returned to the kids, I pulled out Alice’s self-portrait. I carried it over to her and took the seat across from her, fighting a little to fit my body into the child-sized desk.

“You painted this?” I asked her, turning the paper so she could see it.

Alice nodded.

“Is this really how you see yourself?”

Alice shook her head. “Not all the time.”

“Then why did you paint this?” I asked.

“It’s how I feel when my mom and dad used to fight,” she said. “Before I went to live with Aunt Carla.”

I turned the painting back around, looking again at the blurry streaks of red and black covering her head. Red as anger, fear. Black as sadness, hopelessness. I thought back to being Alice’s age, listening to my own parents fighting in their bedroom at night, when they thought that Jane and I were asleep and could not hear them. I realized the girl was right. This was exactly what it felt like.

“Alice,” I said. “What is it that you wish for, when you pick dandelions.”

“I wish for a real mom and dad,” she said. “Aunt Carla doesn’t count. She’s not like moms.”

“I wish for that for you too,” I said.

“Don’t,” Alice said. “You should wish something for yourself. Don’t waste your dandelions on me.”

“Alice,” I said. “You know, there are a lot of kids like you, whose mom and dad aren’t happy. That doesn’t mean you can’t be happy though.”

She glanced at me, but she did not speak.

“Do you know why I wanted to be a teacher?” I asked her, and she shook her head. Then I said, “It’s because I care about kids. Especially kids like you, who need someone to care about them. When I was your age, my mom and dad weren’t very happy either, but I never went to live with my aunt. Even now, they’re still not very happy, but I try not to let that get me down. I try to be happy anyway.”

“Does that work?” Alice asked.

“Sometimes.”

“Do you still get to see your mom and dad?” she asked in a shy voice. “I know mine aren’t happy, but I still miss them.”

“Yes, I do,” I said. “In fact, I’m going to see them this weekend, although I’m not sure I want to.”

“You should wish you didn’t have to see them anymore, then,” Alice said.

I had already wished that many times, at night lying in bed, both as an adult and a child, but it never seemed to work. If I were going to make a wish, I would rather wish for Alice to find some peace, to enjoy the rest of her childhood while she still could, though I did not believe that wishing for such a thing would make it so.

That Saturday morning, I got dressed in one of my nice but respectable dresses. Jane had managed to finish planning the rest of the party herself, though not without her fair share of complaints over being abandoned. I had, reluctantly, agreed to make it up to her by acting civil at the party. To Jane, civility meant that I had to be friendly and over-the-moon happy for our parents’ accomplishment. It also meant that I was not allowed to avoid our parents at all costs, and I had to get them a present.

I had been unable to think of an appropriate gift for them, so I had decided to stop at a florist’s shop on my way to the hall. Even flowers felt too cheerful a gift for Joseph and Sharon, but it was the best idea that I could come up with. I was also hoping that there would be a wait at the flower shop, and I would be late to the party, but with a good excuse. The closer I got to the time of the party, the more reservations I was having about wanting to go. With each step I took out my front door and down the driveway, the urge to turn back around grew stronger.

Before I got in the car to leave, I crossed the street and headed to my mailbox. I was expecting another stack of junk mail that I would toss aside on my cluttered countertops. Pulling the envelopes from the box, I dropped something that looked more like a bill than spam. It was probably important, so I reached for it, pulling it out of a puddle that was forming next to the sewer drain.

Still kneeling, I saw, growing among the weeds and grass around the mailbox post, a small, yellow-headed dandelion. Only one—one wish. I plucked it from the ground, and the broken stem leaked onto my fingers. I paced up my street, following the small stream of water in the direction that it flowed.

I reached the end of the stream. I plucked the head from the dandelion, carefully, as not to destroy it. I cast the stem aside, then I knelt and dropped the yellow head into the stream. I watched it float along the side of the road until it reached the sewer grate and was swept inside the drain, where it ended up, I would never know. As soon as it vanished from my sightline, I made my one wish.