Page 5 of A Class of Her Own

“Have you ever been to Hawaii?” Jasmine asked as I walked around the classroom, checking their progress on a grammar lesson we were working through.

I raised my head and shook it. “No.” Apparently that’s where she’d be going for the holiday. It was a concept so foreign to me that she may as well have asked me if I’d ever trekked to the top of Mount Everest and had a spa day with a Sherpa. “I’ll be staying in town for Thanksgiving.”

“Sad,” Tyson sighed, and I watched as he and Jasmine exchanged pitying glances.

The familiar tightening of my stomach and chest caused me to bite my lips together. I hustled to mentally run through the thoughts I’d long ago learned to use when pitying glances were sent my way. I instantly worked to reframe it. This wasn’t a judgment; this was them caring for me and genuinely feeling sad that I didn’t get to go somewhere so beautiful.There is absolutely nothing lacking in me.

“I prefer it, actually,” I replied kindly as my chest loosened, and I was grateful that it had happened so quickly this time. “It’s nice to be home for holidays.”

“That’s like me,” Katie piped up. “I stay here, and my cousins come to see us.”

I watched her set her pencil down and noticed the others following suit. Apparently lesson time was over. I glanced at the clock and caved. We only had five more minutes left, anyhow, and then it was time to pack up and head home.

“What kinds of food do you make?” Katie continued.

Little faces glanced my way, open with curiosity about their teacher. It never ceased to amaze me how much students wanted a glimpse into my personal life. I remembered being both in awe of and slightly wary about my teachers. As a motherless child they’d seemed almost like fairytale creatures to me, but I’d also kept them at arm’s length, fearing questions that I didn’t want to answer. Adults had always drawn mixed reactions from me until I became one myself.

I pasted on a warm expression, and the practiced lies rolled off my tongue easily. “Oh, my dad starts cooking the turkey early in the morning, so it’s tender and juicy with crispy skin . . . ” I continued painting a scene of yeasty rolls, warm potatoes with melting butter, homemade jams and pies, and everything else that I knew would keep them entertained. “So, I feel pretty lucky.” I finished and then pointed to the clock. “Let’s get packed up.”

The children, always motivated by getting out of school for the day, were quick to clean their desks and begin moving around the room, gathering end-of-day items. As they snagged their lunch boxes from the cafeteria bucket and zipped their backpacks closed, I glanced out the window to see fat, heavy snowflakes beginning to fall. We’d only had a dusting of snow up to this point, but the gray clouds gathering outside, shutting the sun out and making the world appear gloomy, were a sure sign that this storm would really deliver. The good news was that the students would get home before it got too deep. The bad news was that the teachers would probably be driving home in the thick of it -- in run-down cars with teacher’s salary tires.

I briefly wondered if my inflatable yard turkey could dance in the falling snow or if the cold air would deflate it. My spirits lifted at the image of that glorious thing. It had been proudly dancing in my yard for three days now, and Hazel still hadn’t been by to deliver a ticket. I’d caught a couple people walking by and taking pictures, which made me wonder if there was an underground movement of support for my actions. My lips twitched as I told the students to line up, and we marched down the hall to the front door.

I may not get a turkey cooked by my dad for Thanksgiving, but I had an inflatable protest sign proudly shaking its tail feathers in my front yard, so things were going just fine.

I’d been wrong — things were not just fine. Three hours later the snow in my driveway was so deep that my little car couldn’t blaze a trail through it. I looked around and balled my fists in annoyance. In my row of six attached townhouses, all the other driveways and sidewalks were clear. Hazel’s next door? Clear. Across the street from me, Leland, another HOA board member, also had cleared walks, and his driveway looked pretty welcoming under the lights of his townhouse.

In fact, as I sat there and counted, I discovered eleven welcoming townhouses and one icy, dark tundra.

That one was mine.

It not only looked abandoned, but I’d argue that the snow removal company had decided to deposit all the extra snow directly at my door. It was also possible that power had been cut to my place, because the timed outdoor lights that typically shone above my garage were off. To add to the depressing portrait, my inflatable turkey was a shapeless blob. The snow had covered the blower fan, and the poor fella was sagging in the middle, causing his top hat to repeatedly tap the walkway that led to my door. He was bent in half, looking like he was bowing to some unseen royalty so deeply that his brow swiped the ground.

Game point, Brooks VanOrman, I thought.

I put my car in reverse and got in a position where I could park near the curb—an illegal move on snow days. HOA rules clearly stated that cars had to be off the streets in order to keep it clear for plows to have access. Too bad it was after six o’clock and no plows would be coming my way tonight. I’d be shoveling this mess myself, which was a bitter disappointment. I knew from driving across town that it was a wet, heavy snowfall. My back hurt already.

Even more disappointing was knowing that as soon as I finished here, I’d have to drive out to the small town of Paradise to shovel my dad out. He probably hadn’t even noticed the storm. He never did. I’d long ago stopped asking myself why I bothered when he didn’t care how much snow piled up around him. There were simply some things a person did for family and some habits that had been set for years.

With my car parked, I lugged my work items in the house, hissing as snow fell into the tops of my shoes and against my ankles. I made quick work of putting on snow gear and heading back out with my shovel. As I worked my way back and forth across my single-wide driveway in a pattern I believed to be the most efficient, I thought about all the ways I could make this pay off for me. Technically, denying me snow removal was a genuine safety hazard, unlike a big turkey, which was a minor annoyance. I paid money to have my yard kept clear. What would the board say if I asked for a reimbursement this month?

I heated up quickly, both from frustration and the hard work of shoveling the heavy snow. I occasionally got teased about being all pointy elbows and knees. Yes, I had no real meat on my bones, nothing curvy or soft, nothing inviting. Because of that, people assumed that I had no muscle, but muscle was the one thing I did have. In spades. I’d never backed off from a physical challenge, and I wasn’t about to start now.

An hour later I’d finished my own house and was pulling up to my dad’s place. The run-down, two-bedroom house I’d grown up in was dark—no surprise there—but the shed behind the house had light peeking through the tiny slits between boards. It had originally been a barn, and, according to family lore, it was the reason my parents had chosen this house. At the time they’d had me and my younger sister Willow, and they weren’t expecting to have more children. Dad needed a studio workspace, and Mom loved the cozy, little, white house that went along with it.

I occasionally tried to picture it how it would have looked thirty-two years before, the way Mom would have seen it, but it never quite materialized in my mind. It had never been spruced up the way my mom had planned, and a third daughter had arrived, filling up the tiny room that the three of us would share until I moved out after getting my college degree. The house was now gray and peeling, the roof in need of repair, and the front door was so off-kilter that no one bothered using it.

One set of tire tracks led up the gravel drive to the back door of the house, proof that Willow had dropped off dinner as she’d promised. It was her week to feed him, and I was thankful for that little mercy as I followed her tire tracks in the snow, parking where she had.

The doors of the shed were open with no regard for the storm, and I could see Dad’s head bent over his workbench. The past couple of times I’d been out to his house I’d noticed how white his hair had become. His shoulders had always been a little stooped, a byproduct of a life spent hunched over a bench as he created whatever spoke to him at the time. He’d dabbled in everything from glass blowing to portrait painting to wood carving, and the remains of every art form lay scattered around the shop, the edges of the tools throwing shadows across his face.

None of them had come close to making enough money, in spite of the fact that he was very talented at whatever he picked up. But they’d all fed his soul.

I’d have appreciated it feeding mine and my sisters’ stomachs, but you can’t have everything. Mom had been the marketing and budgeting side of their duo, and without her, well . . .

I mentally shrugged off the thoughts as I followed what had to be Willow’s footprints into the shed.

“Hey, Dad,” I called as I entered the circle of light. “What are you working on?”

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