Michelle begins each day looking me over from head to toe. Usually her assessment is critical.
“You wore those shoes yesterday.”
“Why are you wearing makeup?”
“Why did you dye your hair that color?”
I ignore most of her disparaging remarks and answer with a sunny, Good morning!” She gifts me with the suggestion of a smile before shrugging.
In class, she challenges me frequently. Instead of copying the vocabulary sentences I model for the class, she makes up her own and shows them to me defiantly. Secretly, I’m delighted that she’s thinking independently, but if I act too pleased, she’ll sulk; she wants to rile me up. I play along, reading her work with the hint of a frown on my face, gently shaking my head. “Well, they’re not what I wrote, but they’re good sentences.”
She snatches her notebook with a triumphant, “I won.” On the few occasions she can’t think of an interesting sentence of her own, she’ll begrudgingly copy the ones I model and smack her notebook on my desk with a disgusted,
“You won today.” I know she’ll be grouchy for at least an hour, and I steer clear of her.
Michelle is easily offended. If I see her raised hand and don’t call on her to read aloud or answer a question, she exhales dramatically, “You never pick me,” before turning away.
Books are another source of conflict between us. Michelle is an avid reader. She follows me through the school library, asking me to recommend books. I pick a few I think she might like, and watch as she discards them. “This looks boring. You always pick boring books for me.” With time and persistence, I can find a book or two that she grudgingly accepts. “I guess I’ll read these. They’re probably boring but there’s nothing else to read.”
When I have recess duty, she follows me around the playground. Between huffing that recess is dull, and reciting the list of errors I made in the morning, she lets tiny slivers of personal information slip into the conversation. I don’t know much about her, but learn that her mom is quite young and that her father has been deported. After any sentence of importance, she closes her mouth tightly and wanders aimlessly away from me, usually only a few yards, before returning to my side to tell me how my drawing of the United States during social studies was crooked or that my new seating chart is a recipe for disaster.
One day at recess, Michelle asks me for help with her hair. She fiddles with her hair often during class, and over the course of a day sports two or three different styles. Michelle is irritated by a chunk of lank hair that once comprised bangs but now just obstructs her vision. Her hair is much like mine, a slippery straight mass that doesn’t stay in place for long. Like me, she gets headaches from hairbands.
I lift the shining mass of hair off her neck. After years of styling hair for my daughter’s dance team or theater cast mates, I can French braid hair quickly and tightly. I lament the lack of hair spray or even water, but keeping one eye on the action on the playground leaves me only seconds to twist her hair into a braid.
I tie off the end with a rubber band, give her a little pat, and send her off to the bathroom to see her reflection. When she comes back, I suppress a grin; Michelle is not an especially beautiful child, but with her hair out of her eyes and a radiant smile on her face, she is transformed.
Michelle continues to seek my attention, still, but now her criticism and arguments are peppered with requests for hairstyles. She comes in before class frequently for French braids; I show her how to use a pencil to divide hair into sections, and how a tiny dab of hand lotion will work for keeping rebellious strands in place. When her back is toward me, she is chattier and she tells me about her father’s years of sobriety and re-entrance into productive society, about pesky stepbrothers, about her dreams of attending Harvard or Yale.
One day she comes into school with her hair already braided. It is crooked and whispy strands stick out at odd angles. It’s clearly her handiwork. Afraid of provoking her prickly defensiveness, I don’t comment. At recess, she rebraids it, a look of steely determination on her face. She is determined to master this skill. Although I know her stubborn independence will serve her well over the long run, I’ll miss braiding her hair.
I hope we can still cling to the moments of peace we have woven together.
