Free Elena by Thomas H. Cook Page B

at the lines written in Elena’s tiny, strangely broken script. I could not imagine what all the fuss was about.
    â€œI leave it to you, William,” Mrs. Nichols said. “I’m sure you can explain things to Elena.”
    â€œYes, I will,” I assured her.
    She smiled thinly, then walked quickly away.
    I looked down at the poem again and tried to discover what had so distressed Mrs. Nichols. I was still poring over it a few minutes later when Elena came walking up the street. She lifted her hand as she came up to me.
    I held the paper out to her. “Mrs. Nichols brought your poem back.”
    Elena did not seem in the least concerned. “Why?”
    â€œShe didn’t like it,” I told her. “She didn’t like it at all.”
    â€œShe likes Longfellow,” Elena said casually. “‘The Song of Hiawatha.’ That’s what she reads to us in class.” She lowered her voice, imitating Mrs. Nichols’s stentorian style of recitation. “Forth upon the Gitche Gumee. On the shining Big-Sea-Water. With his fishing …”
    â€œIt’s not funny, Elena,” I said sternly. “She came over here to speak with mother.”
    â€œAbout the poem?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œShe said it was bad, disturbing,” I told her. “She said there were a lot of strange things in it.”
    Elena looked entirely puzzled. “Strange? She said strange?”
    â€œThat’s right. It was so bad she came all the way over here to talk to mother. She looked pretty upset, too. Mrs. Nichols, I mean.”
    Elena watched me quizzically but said nothing.
    â€œYou’d better be careful what you write, Elena,” I said. “Mrs. Nichols has her eye on you.”
    â€œBut it’s just a poem,” Elena said.
    â€œMrs. Nichols doesn’t think so,” I said emphatically. “She thinks you shouldn’t write — about black forests, creepy things like that.”
    For a moment, Elena seemed unsure of what to do. She took the poem from me and read it. Then she looked up. “All right,” she said wearily. “I’ll write something else next time.” Then she walked into the house.
    I went for one of my long walks, then returned home around sundown. Elena was still in her room. I knocked on her door.
    â€œCome in,” she called.
    Elena was sitting on her bed, a pad in her lap, a pencil in her hand. She held out the pad to me. “Maybe this is better.”
    There was a poem written on it:
    I like vacations very much.
    I like to feel and smell and touch
    The flowers that grow straight and still
    At the top of some old hill.
    I think that they are best in spring.
    That’s when vacations are the thing.
    â€œDo you like it?” Elena asked.
    â€œIt’s fine.”
    Elena snatched the paper from me, crushed it in her hands, and threw it violently across the room.
    â€œIt’s stupid!” she blurted vehemently.
    I shrugged. “It’s just a poem. What difference does it make?”
    Elena shook her head. “Go away, William,” she said. Then she pointed to the door. “Go away.”
    Martha nodded appreciatively after I had finished my story.
    â€œAh, so Elena was suppressed,” she said.
    â€œSuppressed?”
    â€œHer creativity. It was suppressed,” Martha explained. She took a sip from her glass. “That’s the trouble with bureaucratic education. It’s incapable of dealing with exceptional children, so it suppresses them.
    I nodded. “Perhaps.”
    â€œHave you read Katz’s critique of nineteenth-century school reform?”
    â€œNo.”
    Martha shook her head. “Terrible what that system was designed to do. Not to educate at all.” She smiled. “I can deal with that in Elena’s biography. The school she attended was based on a nineteenth-century model.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œA school system like