"A Girl Named Charlie" - 2008
Nothing was out of the ordinary. Charlie was peeling the wax off of her cheese, the other second graders were sipping on juice-boxes and giggling about nothing in particular, and the teacher was on the telephone. When she came to the front of the room, Ms. Lachance clasped her hands in front of her and beamed. All the other teachers at Landmark Elementary could tell that this was her first year teaching by her over-enthusiasm and high expectations. In fact, they talked about her in the faculty lounge, and while she heard most of it, she didn’t let on. She didn’t let on that after school she cried in the ladies bathroom for a few minutes before locking up her classroom, messing up her mascara and thus having to fix it in her car’s rear-view mirror.
Charlie’s jumper had tangerine buttons on it that were much too big and her pigtails were off-kilter. As always she was sitting next to Jay Hwang, a quiet Korean boy who traded snacks with her. She went to his house after school once and his parents made him watch “Muzzy” language videos all afternoon. He was already fluent in three.
Ms. Lachance scanned the room and waited for the children to finish. She wanted their full and undivided attention.
Charlie was still peeling at her cheese.
“Does everyone know what next week is?”
The children lit up. “Thanksgiving!”
Charlie didn’t shout, she was too busy eating. And Jay didn’t, he was much too shy.
“That’s right. Last Friday I told you the story of how the holiday originated. But I didn’t tell you that next week we’ll be acting out the First Thanksgiving!”
The kids were hushed, looking around the room. They weren’t sure what it meant, but it sounded exciting. One little girl, Adrienne Hughes, was fixing the ribbon in her ponytail, and wasn’t hearing a word Ms. Lachance said. When Adrienne grew up, she was going to have three children that she didn’t want, a husband who worked late, and a big colonial house that felt so empty at night she would scream just so the echo would make her feel less alone.
Ms. Lachance paced back and forth in front of the chalkboard. “Some of you will be Pilgrims, and some of you will be Indians. We’ll have a feast, and exchange foods. We’ll teach each other our traditions. You’ll get to see what the very Thanksgiving was like for our settlers. Now, form a line at the front of the room and I’ll write down which group you want to be in.”
The kids formed a line in front of the class. Charlie and Jay were last, Charlie because she was finishing her snack and Jay because he was following Charlie.
One by one, the children told Ms. Lachance excitedly which group they wanted to be in. Adrienne Hughes went first and she chose to be a Pilgrim, so naturally, every girl that followed chose the same. Most of the boys wanted to be Indians because they knew Indians had arrows and little boys will usually choose anything that entails weaponry.
Charlie stepped up and said evenly, “I want to be an Indian.”
Ms. Lachance was puzzled. It seemed all of the girls wanted to be Pilgrims, and while she of course wanted the feast to be historically accurate, she wondered why Charlie wouldn’t want to be with her friends.
“OK, Charlie. May I ask why?”
She sighed. “Because, the Pilgrims came over and took everything that was theirs. That was a pretty crummy thing to do.”
Charlie walked back to her desk and Jay, faithful to their friendship, softly told Ms. Lachance that he would like to be an Indian, too.
That day on the playground Charlie was sitting by the swings making a friendship bracelet out of the new lanyard her Mother had bought her. Jay was drawing a picture in chalk several feet away.
Adrienne was playing with two girls, Kirsten and Dakota. Kirsten was the kind of little girl everyone looks at and knows is going to grow up to be drop-dead gorgeous, and this is something she was told constantly. Dakota was slightly homely looking, but her outfits were always perfectly coordinated by her Mother, who drank so many martinis that she couldn’t ever tuck Dakota in or read her a story.
Adrienne spotted Charlie sitting on the curb, meticulously and patiently working on her bracelet. She walked over to Charlie and put her hands on her nonexistent hips.
“Charlie Strong!”
Charlie didn’t look up at Adrienne.
“If you’re so strong, come and get me!”
Almost every night, Charlie wished that she had a last name that didn’t mean anything.
“Come on, strong girl, come and get me!”
Kirsten and Dakota had gotten off their swings and come to see what Adrienne was doing. They stood behind Adrienne, amused.
“Charlie weak! Charlie weak! Charlie weak!”
Jay looked to Charlie desperately.
“Just ignore it,” she said, focusing intently on starting her next row of stitches.
His lower lip was quivering and he was glaring at Charlie as if to urge her to do something.
Kirsten and Dakota joined in the chanting.
Charlie looked at Jay, who was pleading with his eyes for her to do something. “I don’t like violence. I’m a businessman, blood is a big expense.”
She always forgot Jay hadn’t seen the movie- he wasn’t allowed to see anything that wasn’t G-rated. Charlie looked around for a teacher to stop the girls from taunting her, but Ms. Lachance was tending to a boy who had gotten scraped when his friend pushed him, and the other teachers were talking and laughing with each other, oblivious.
Adrienne, Kirsten, and Dakota kept chanting. With that, Charlie finished one last knot in her box stitch, got up from the curb, and punched Adrienne in the face. Kirsten and Dakota ran screaming to Mrs. Stokes, an angry woman with saggy breasts and a cropped gray haircut. Mrs. Stokes promptly grabbed Charlie by the arm and dragged her inside. Jay watched in silent awe of Charlie’s heroic act. He picked up the half-finished bracelet that Charlie had dropped and tenderly put it in his pocket.
Inside the principal’s office, Charlie, pigtails even more askew, sat next to a fourth-grade punk who had mean eyes and a bruise on his knee. Her feet didn’t touch the ground so they dangled just inches above it.
“Charlie Strong?”
Charlie got up and followed the Principal into her office.
When Charlie’s mother Jane was called into school, she had prepared exactly what she was going to say. Jane knew Adrienne, and she knew that whatever Adrienne had done, it most likely warranted a punch in the face.
Jane sat in the Principal’s office with Ms. Lachance to her right.
The principal leaned back in her chair, which was creaking with her weight. “We’re concerned, Mrs. Strong, because Charlie has demonstrated some abnormal behavior as of late. She just doesn’t seem to get along with the other kids.”
“What do you mean, ‘abnormal behavior’?”
Ms. Lachance piped up, “She hit Adrienne Hughes in the face!”
“I’m sure,” Jane said calmly, “Charlie had good reason or she would not have resorted to physical violence.”
“She hit a child in the face!”
“Mrs. Strong,” the Principal interjected, “When Charlie was brought here, I asked what her motive was in hitting Adrienne. And do you know what she said to me? She wagged her finger and said, ‘Just this one time, this one time, I’ll let you ask about my business!’ ”
“It’s from the Godfather,” Jane explained.
“Do you really think that’s appropriate material for a young girl with a malleable mind like Charlie’s?” Ms. Lachance asked, head cocked to one side.
“I encourage Charlie to have intellectual and cinematic curiosity, and if she wants to watch The Godfather, I don’t see what’s wrong with that.”
“The issue here, Mrs. Strong, is that Charlie appears to have a behavioral disorder. She’s excitable, dramatic, sometimes defiant- questioning the authority of her teacher…”
“Perhaps Charlie is more advanced than the other children, and that’s why she feels frustrated. I don’t think she feels she has much in common with her classmates.”
The Principal sighed. “This is not a question of intelligence. But if you wish, we’ll administer some tests to Charlie.”
After Jane took Charlie home, she considered calling her Father since he hadn’t seen her in months. Jane finally left Charlie’s father five months prior after he came home drunk and damaged the car for what seemed like the hundredth time. Jane and Charlie didn’t have anywhere to go, so they went from motel to motel, most of which smelled of stale cigarettes, until they finally found a nice enough apartment. Charlie didn’t like sleeping alone at night so she often crept into her Mother’s room as quietly as she could and curled up in one corner of the bed.
The next day at school, Adrienne avoided eye contact with Charlie. Adrienne’s Mother had covered the bruise on her face with Mary Kay foundation.
On the playground, Charlie resumed working on her bracelet. Jay was eating his goldfish. A few girls who were making their way to the slide saw Charlie’s bracelet, and one of them approached her.
“Wow! Could you make me one of those?”
“Sure,” she said. “Just pick out what colors you want.”
The girl, ecstatic, skipped over to the slide and told her friends about the bracelet Charlie was making her. Immediately the group of girls ran over to Charlie.
“Could you make me a bracelet, too?” one asked.
Charlie looked at Jay, then back at them.
“Sure,” she said. “But it’s going to cost you.”
The little girl looked to her friend. “Money?”
“I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
“How much?”
“Three dollars.”
“But I haven’t gotten my allowance yet!”
“If you get me the money by the end of the week, your bracelet will be ready.” She crossed her arms in feign defiance. “Well, what’s it gonna be, pop?”
They nodded enthusiastically.
While the two girls picked out colors, Charlie put a hand on Jay’s shoulder and patted it.
“We’re going to the mattresses, Jay. Know what that means?”
He looked at her, his small mouth parting with puzzlement.
“Just forget it, kid. Hey- I’ll trade you a pear for some of those goldfish.”
On the playground that Friday, word had gotten around that Charlie was crafting bracelets for anyone that wanted them, in whatever colors they liked.
There was a line around the tunnel slide and Jay was collecting money and giving change while Charlie displayed her creations out of a small leather briefcase she found in her Mother’s closet. Jay, it appeared, was the accountant behind this operation. He did seem concerned that they’d get in trouble, especially with Mrs. Stokes continually policing the playground, but Charlie assured him otherwise.
“Do I have your loyalty?” she asked.
Jay nodded, blinking rapidly.
Five minutes before recess ended, Mrs. Stokes caught wind (by none other than Adrienne Hughes) of Charlie’s friendship bracelet business and began to stalk toward the tunnel slide with every intention of bringing Charlie back to the Principal’s office. Jay saw her approaching and began furiously tapping Charlie’s arm. Charlie shut the briefcase, Jay shoved the cash in his pocket, and the two criminals ran in the opposite direction.
Five minutes later, they were both waiting outside the Principal’s office.
“You got anything good today?” Charlie asked, fishing out some string-cheese.
Jay handed her a slightly crumbled cookie from inside his lunch-bag.
“Grazie.”
Meanwhile, Charlie’s Mother, Jane, was in a meeting with the Principal.
“Well?”
“We’ve reviewed Charlie’s tests…”
“And?”
The Principal leaned back, pursing her lips and scanning the pages of the exams. “It seems, Mrs. Strong, that Charlie has an abnormally high verbal capacity. In fact, her IQ borders genius.”
Jane paused for a long time. “You know,” she said slowly, “I don’t think Charlie is a misfit, or has a behavioral problem. I just think you weren’t challenging her enough.”
Jane left the office with a smile that held a kind of secret pride.
At the same exact time in another wing of Landmark Elementary, Adrienne Hughes opened a note in her cubby scrawled in crayon that read, “Adrienne Hughes sleeps with the fishes.” She didn’t know what it meant but it sounded gross. She crumpled the note and put it in her magenta backpack.
When Jane exited the Principal’s office, Charlie was sitting in the waiting room, bored, with her chin resting in her little hands. Jay was discreetly counting the money they had earned.
Jane rubbed the top of Charlie’s head.
“You ready to go, kid?”
“Definitely. Can Jay come?”
“Sure. I’ll give him a ride home.”
“Hey- were you talking about me the whole time?”
“Yep.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“No. No, honey, you aren’t.”
A bruise still on her knuckle and a backpack full of merchandise, Charlie walked out to the parking lot with Jay by her side.
Charlie put her arm around Jay and he pulled out a neat stack of one-dollar bills.
She grinned. “How’d we make out, pops?”
Charlie’s jumper had tangerine buttons on it that were much too big and her pigtails were off-kilter. As always she was sitting next to Jay Hwang, a quiet Korean boy who traded snacks with her. She went to his house after school once and his parents made him watch “Muzzy” language videos all afternoon. He was already fluent in three.
Ms. Lachance scanned the room and waited for the children to finish. She wanted their full and undivided attention.
Charlie was still peeling at her cheese.
“Does everyone know what next week is?”
The children lit up. “Thanksgiving!”
Charlie didn’t shout, she was too busy eating. And Jay didn’t, he was much too shy.
“That’s right. Last Friday I told you the story of how the holiday originated. But I didn’t tell you that next week we’ll be acting out the First Thanksgiving!”
The kids were hushed, looking around the room. They weren’t sure what it meant, but it sounded exciting. One little girl, Adrienne Hughes, was fixing the ribbon in her ponytail, and wasn’t hearing a word Ms. Lachance said. When Adrienne grew up, she was going to have three children that she didn’t want, a husband who worked late, and a big colonial house that felt so empty at night she would scream just so the echo would make her feel less alone.
Ms. Lachance paced back and forth in front of the chalkboard. “Some of you will be Pilgrims, and some of you will be Indians. We’ll have a feast, and exchange foods. We’ll teach each other our traditions. You’ll get to see what the very Thanksgiving was like for our settlers. Now, form a line at the front of the room and I’ll write down which group you want to be in.”
The kids formed a line in front of the class. Charlie and Jay were last, Charlie because she was finishing her snack and Jay because he was following Charlie.
One by one, the children told Ms. Lachance excitedly which group they wanted to be in. Adrienne Hughes went first and she chose to be a Pilgrim, so naturally, every girl that followed chose the same. Most of the boys wanted to be Indians because they knew Indians had arrows and little boys will usually choose anything that entails weaponry.
Charlie stepped up and said evenly, “I want to be an Indian.”
Ms. Lachance was puzzled. It seemed all of the girls wanted to be Pilgrims, and while she of course wanted the feast to be historically accurate, she wondered why Charlie wouldn’t want to be with her friends.
“OK, Charlie. May I ask why?”
She sighed. “Because, the Pilgrims came over and took everything that was theirs. That was a pretty crummy thing to do.”
Charlie walked back to her desk and Jay, faithful to their friendship, softly told Ms. Lachance that he would like to be an Indian, too.
That day on the playground Charlie was sitting by the swings making a friendship bracelet out of the new lanyard her Mother had bought her. Jay was drawing a picture in chalk several feet away.
Adrienne was playing with two girls, Kirsten and Dakota. Kirsten was the kind of little girl everyone looks at and knows is going to grow up to be drop-dead gorgeous, and this is something she was told constantly. Dakota was slightly homely looking, but her outfits were always perfectly coordinated by her Mother, who drank so many martinis that she couldn’t ever tuck Dakota in or read her a story.
Adrienne spotted Charlie sitting on the curb, meticulously and patiently working on her bracelet. She walked over to Charlie and put her hands on her nonexistent hips.
“Charlie Strong!”
Charlie didn’t look up at Adrienne.
“If you’re so strong, come and get me!”
Almost every night, Charlie wished that she had a last name that didn’t mean anything.
“Come on, strong girl, come and get me!”
Kirsten and Dakota had gotten off their swings and come to see what Adrienne was doing. They stood behind Adrienne, amused.
“Charlie weak! Charlie weak! Charlie weak!”
Jay looked to Charlie desperately.
“Just ignore it,” she said, focusing intently on starting her next row of stitches.
His lower lip was quivering and he was glaring at Charlie as if to urge her to do something.
Kirsten and Dakota joined in the chanting.
Charlie looked at Jay, who was pleading with his eyes for her to do something. “I don’t like violence. I’m a businessman, blood is a big expense.”
She always forgot Jay hadn’t seen the movie- he wasn’t allowed to see anything that wasn’t G-rated. Charlie looked around for a teacher to stop the girls from taunting her, but Ms. Lachance was tending to a boy who had gotten scraped when his friend pushed him, and the other teachers were talking and laughing with each other, oblivious.
Adrienne, Kirsten, and Dakota kept chanting. With that, Charlie finished one last knot in her box stitch, got up from the curb, and punched Adrienne in the face. Kirsten and Dakota ran screaming to Mrs. Stokes, an angry woman with saggy breasts and a cropped gray haircut. Mrs. Stokes promptly grabbed Charlie by the arm and dragged her inside. Jay watched in silent awe of Charlie’s heroic act. He picked up the half-finished bracelet that Charlie had dropped and tenderly put it in his pocket.
Inside the principal’s office, Charlie, pigtails even more askew, sat next to a fourth-grade punk who had mean eyes and a bruise on his knee. Her feet didn’t touch the ground so they dangled just inches above it.
“Charlie Strong?”
Charlie got up and followed the Principal into her office.
When Charlie’s mother Jane was called into school, she had prepared exactly what she was going to say. Jane knew Adrienne, and she knew that whatever Adrienne had done, it most likely warranted a punch in the face.
Jane sat in the Principal’s office with Ms. Lachance to her right.
The principal leaned back in her chair, which was creaking with her weight. “We’re concerned, Mrs. Strong, because Charlie has demonstrated some abnormal behavior as of late. She just doesn’t seem to get along with the other kids.”
“What do you mean, ‘abnormal behavior’?”
Ms. Lachance piped up, “She hit Adrienne Hughes in the face!”
“I’m sure,” Jane said calmly, “Charlie had good reason or she would not have resorted to physical violence.”
“She hit a child in the face!”
“Mrs. Strong,” the Principal interjected, “When Charlie was brought here, I asked what her motive was in hitting Adrienne. And do you know what she said to me? She wagged her finger and said, ‘Just this one time, this one time, I’ll let you ask about my business!’ ”
“It’s from the Godfather,” Jane explained.
“Do you really think that’s appropriate material for a young girl with a malleable mind like Charlie’s?” Ms. Lachance asked, head cocked to one side.
“I encourage Charlie to have intellectual and cinematic curiosity, and if she wants to watch The Godfather, I don’t see what’s wrong with that.”
“The issue here, Mrs. Strong, is that Charlie appears to have a behavioral disorder. She’s excitable, dramatic, sometimes defiant- questioning the authority of her teacher…”
“Perhaps Charlie is more advanced than the other children, and that’s why she feels frustrated. I don’t think she feels she has much in common with her classmates.”
The Principal sighed. “This is not a question of intelligence. But if you wish, we’ll administer some tests to Charlie.”
After Jane took Charlie home, she considered calling her Father since he hadn’t seen her in months. Jane finally left Charlie’s father five months prior after he came home drunk and damaged the car for what seemed like the hundredth time. Jane and Charlie didn’t have anywhere to go, so they went from motel to motel, most of which smelled of stale cigarettes, until they finally found a nice enough apartment. Charlie didn’t like sleeping alone at night so she often crept into her Mother’s room as quietly as she could and curled up in one corner of the bed.
The next day at school, Adrienne avoided eye contact with Charlie. Adrienne’s Mother had covered the bruise on her face with Mary Kay foundation.
On the playground, Charlie resumed working on her bracelet. Jay was eating his goldfish. A few girls who were making their way to the slide saw Charlie’s bracelet, and one of them approached her.
“Wow! Could you make me one of those?”
“Sure,” she said. “Just pick out what colors you want.”
The girl, ecstatic, skipped over to the slide and told her friends about the bracelet Charlie was making her. Immediately the group of girls ran over to Charlie.
“Could you make me a bracelet, too?” one asked.
Charlie looked at Jay, then back at them.
“Sure,” she said. “But it’s going to cost you.”
The little girl looked to her friend. “Money?”
“I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
“How much?”
“Three dollars.”
“But I haven’t gotten my allowance yet!”
“If you get me the money by the end of the week, your bracelet will be ready.” She crossed her arms in feign defiance. “Well, what’s it gonna be, pop?”
They nodded enthusiastically.
While the two girls picked out colors, Charlie put a hand on Jay’s shoulder and patted it.
“We’re going to the mattresses, Jay. Know what that means?”
He looked at her, his small mouth parting with puzzlement.
“Just forget it, kid. Hey- I’ll trade you a pear for some of those goldfish.”
On the playground that Friday, word had gotten around that Charlie was crafting bracelets for anyone that wanted them, in whatever colors they liked.
There was a line around the tunnel slide and Jay was collecting money and giving change while Charlie displayed her creations out of a small leather briefcase she found in her Mother’s closet. Jay, it appeared, was the accountant behind this operation. He did seem concerned that they’d get in trouble, especially with Mrs. Stokes continually policing the playground, but Charlie assured him otherwise.
“Do I have your loyalty?” she asked.
Jay nodded, blinking rapidly.
Five minutes before recess ended, Mrs. Stokes caught wind (by none other than Adrienne Hughes) of Charlie’s friendship bracelet business and began to stalk toward the tunnel slide with every intention of bringing Charlie back to the Principal’s office. Jay saw her approaching and began furiously tapping Charlie’s arm. Charlie shut the briefcase, Jay shoved the cash in his pocket, and the two criminals ran in the opposite direction.
Five minutes later, they were both waiting outside the Principal’s office.
“You got anything good today?” Charlie asked, fishing out some string-cheese.
Jay handed her a slightly crumbled cookie from inside his lunch-bag.
“Grazie.”
Meanwhile, Charlie’s Mother, Jane, was in a meeting with the Principal.
“Well?”
“We’ve reviewed Charlie’s tests…”
“And?”
The Principal leaned back, pursing her lips and scanning the pages of the exams. “It seems, Mrs. Strong, that Charlie has an abnormally high verbal capacity. In fact, her IQ borders genius.”
Jane paused for a long time. “You know,” she said slowly, “I don’t think Charlie is a misfit, or has a behavioral problem. I just think you weren’t challenging her enough.”
Jane left the office with a smile that held a kind of secret pride.
At the same exact time in another wing of Landmark Elementary, Adrienne Hughes opened a note in her cubby scrawled in crayon that read, “Adrienne Hughes sleeps with the fishes.” She didn’t know what it meant but it sounded gross. She crumpled the note and put it in her magenta backpack.
When Jane exited the Principal’s office, Charlie was sitting in the waiting room, bored, with her chin resting in her little hands. Jay was discreetly counting the money they had earned.
Jane rubbed the top of Charlie’s head.
“You ready to go, kid?”
“Definitely. Can Jay come?”
“Sure. I’ll give him a ride home.”
“Hey- were you talking about me the whole time?”
“Yep.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“No. No, honey, you aren’t.”
A bruise still on her knuckle and a backpack full of merchandise, Charlie walked out to the parking lot with Jay by her side.
Charlie put her arm around Jay and he pulled out a neat stack of one-dollar bills.
She grinned. “How’d we make out, pops?”