Free The Cat at the Wall by Deborah Ellis Page B

it, but she didn’t.
    She closed my file and folded her hands on top of her desk.
    We were dismissed.
    The next morning, my parents gave me the option of changing schools.
    “We talked it over,” my father said, “and if you want to switch, that would be fine with us. We want you to be comfortable at school.”
    I didn’t want to start at a new place as a new girl without my crew with me. And I knew that I could not switch homeroom teachers. I had already tried that. I was stuck.
    “I’ll stay where I am,” I said.
    “Then you are playing in her courtroom,” Mom said. “It’s her rules. So smarten up. I don’t have time for this.”
    She snapped her briefcase closed and headed off to court.
    “Your teacher is a smart woman,” my dad said. “She’ll soon realize what a star you are.”
    Ms. Zero was right about one thing.
    I didn’t care. Not about history and not about English literature. And not about impressing her.
    But my parents started to take notice of me. Those C’s were like the spotlights shining down from the watchtowers along the Big Wall. They shone right down on me. My parents started asking about my assignments and putting limits on my social life. News of all the detentions leaked out to other teachers, who started to look at me in a new way.
    Even my crew was starting to make plans that didn’t include me.
    “We knew you had all those poems to copy out,” Josie said. “That’s why we didn’t ask you to go to the movies with us. We were helping you.”
    I hated Josie. She was such a phony.
    And I hated Ms. Zero. That this one teacher, who didn’t even know me, could destroy my whole life like this was totally unfair.
    After the parent-teacher conference, I decided it was going to be all-out war. I didn’t even pretend to be nice anymore.

Seventeen
    —
    “We have a problem,” Aaron said.
    “You think?” asked Simcha.
    “The old lady with the knitting. She’s put down her wool and is looking over here. Now she is getting up out of her chair and heading for the door.”
    I got up on the windowsill to watch. The old lady had something wrong with her legs. She staggered rather than walked, holding on to the house walls and anything else she could lean on while she took step after painful-looking step.
    “What is all this singing?” she asked, but her wrinkly old face was smiling. Ms. Fahima went over to her and the two women talked quietly, the teacher glancing in the direction of our little house. The smile left the old woman’s face, but she put it on again when she talked to the children.
    “You are such pretty singers that I am going to sit right down here and listen to you. Would that be all right?”
    The little kids thought that would be just great. Ms. Fahima sent a couple of them into the old woman’s house to fetch a chair for her, which they did with great excitement. They brought out her knitting, too. It was funny how excited they got about these silly, ordinary things — seeing a cat, carrying a chair for an old lady. I didn’t get it.
    As they were getting the old lady settled, a Palestinian television truck pulled up. A reporter and her camera operator got out and headed toward Ms. Fahima. Everyone shook hands.
    “Terrific,” said Aaron. He took out his voice recorder. “Media has shown up. There will be no aggression from us. We remain quiet in the house.”
    The reporter briefly interviewed Ms. Fahima. Then the camera was pointed at the house.
    I had the ridiculous thought that maybe my family would see me on TV and know that I was all right.
    The old lady sat and knitted and the children went back to their singing and their lessons. Ms. Fahima regularly called out to Omar, and each time she did, he squirmed and tried to get away from the soldier who was holding him.
    “Omar,” the teacher called out, “I know you know your multiplication tables, so I want you to recite them along with us. Loud as you can, now.”
    The children started at one times