Free Some Wildflower In My Heart by Jamie Langston Turner Page A

mouth so she could examine my teeth.
    â€œOne of my third-grade teachers just this minute went home with chills and a fever,” she said, “and my librarian is lying in the teachers’ lounge with a migraine headache. And besides all this, one of our lunchroom workers just now flounced in and quit without a word of explanation.” The combination of her deep, resonant voice and her unique, delicate southern inflections ( teachers was pronounced “teach-uhs,” for example, lounge was “lou-wunge,” and librarian was “luh-BRAIR-yun”) struck me as comedic, though I made no outward show of such.
    I took her statement to mean that she had no time at present to answer my inquiry. “I will wait,” I said and turned to exit her office. Outside her door there was a small alcove furnished with an unattractive brown Naugahyde sofa and two gold plaid chairs, and I meant to sit here. One of the chairs, I had noted earlier, was occupied by a young boy of a scowling and pugnacious countenance, whom I assumed to be a troublemaker awaiting his own private consultation with Mrs. Edgecombe.
    Before I had taken two steps, however, Mrs. Edgecombe cried out, “Stop!” I wheeled around to see the woman advancing on me, one hand raised as if halting traffic and the other laid gently across her breast. “I can use your help for the next hour if you will be so kind,” she said, passing me at the doorway. “Please follow me.” For so large a woman, she moved with surprising lightness. The word trippingly came to mind. Her feet were quite small, I noticed, and her hands white and eloquent as they floated beside her. She wore an olive green dress, dotted with a print of white stars, and she was shaped like a small stout bureau.
    She led me down a hallway, around a corner, and up a short flight of stairs, which she negotiated quite nimbly. We entered a large sunny room with many low shelves of books, toward which Mrs. Edgecombe made a wide, sweeping motion with her hands, and in a drawl as soft as velvet though paced with urgency, she said, “Choose one to read to the third-grade class. I’m going now to bring them in. They usually have a thirty-minute library time, but we’re going to stretch it to an hour today and shift the fourth-graders to tomorrow.” As she turned to leave, she fixed me with a stern look. “This is not the way we normally handle things around here, miss…now please tell me your name again.”
    â€œMargaret Bryce,” I said.
    â€œYes, well, there’s only a little of the school day left, and I haven’t been able to get hold of a substitute. I’d do this myself except that I have an appointment with two parents in five minutes, and the assistant principal also needs to sit in on it. This is not a meeting we can postpone, unfortunately. You stepped into my office at just the right minute, it seems.” She shook her head briefly, as though recalling with dismay some imminent, unavoidable unpleasantness, and added, “I have no idea who you are, Miss Bryce, but I’m risking my position on your integrity. Something tells me you won’t let me down.” She wavered just a moment as if reconsidering, then turned swiftly and left. Her low black pumps made dainty, rapid echoes as she retreated down the hallway.
    Thus was my introduction to Emma Weldy Elementary School. Though I had never supervised a group of children in my life, I was undaunted by the prospect. I felt completely fortified in the comfortable old library, having spent countless happy hours in such rooms during my early childhood, and I set about quickly to select a book. Almost instantly my eyes lighted on a book titled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , which, upon cursory inspection, seemed appropriate for reading aloud to third-graders, whom I calculated to be eight or nine years of age. I recognized the name of the author, Roald Dahl, for I