Beautiful Child by Torey Hayden Page A

notablething to my mind – indeed, the most intriguing thing – was her wariness. Venus had not clocked out this time. She was watching me intently, not unusual in itself, but this was no vacant stare. The other interesting thing was that she did not appear upset. She had made a remarkable recovery from the incident in the classroom.
    “Hello, Wanda,” I said.
    Wanda had a plastic baby doll in her arms. She smiled brightly. “Beautiful child.”
    I didn’t know if she was referring to the doll or to Venus, who was definitely not being very beautiful at the moment. There was something atavistic about Venus’s pose. She remained crouched, hands and feet on the wall, as if she’d spring off at me any time. With her wild hair and intent, rather fierce gaze, she reminded me of a drawing I’d seen once of a Neanderthal child, hunched over a kill.
    “Venus’s upset,” I said to Wanda. “Do you suppose she will come down from the wall if you ask her?”
    Wanda turned her head and looked up at her sister. “Her no come to school.”
    “She came today. She’s upset now because we had a disagreement, but that happens sometimes, doesn’t it? Sometimes we disagree. But no one is angry. And I’d like Venus to come back to the classroom.”
    Wanda turned her attention back to her doll. She hugged it, nestling it against her breast.
    “Venus?” I asked. “Will you come down, please?”
    Venus remained just as she was, tense, alert, and silent.
    “I’m sorry if I upset you.”
    She watched me.
    “Let’s go back to the classroom.”
    “Her no go to school,” Wanda interjected.
    I looked at the older girl only to realize that she was talking about the doll. At least I think she was. Lifting the doll up, she squeezed it tightly, then she turned it over clumsily. The doll slipped out of its blanket and dropped headfirst onto the ground.
    “Oh dear,” Wanda said.
    Without thinking, I bent down to pick up the doll. When I stood up again, Venus had disappeared off the other side of the wall.
    “Oh dear ,” I said to Wanda. “She’s gone.”
    “Beautiful child go home,” Wanda replied and smiled blandly.
    It seemed pointless to pursue Venus. The school day was only about fifteen minutes from being over; Venus was keyed up, and no doubt any attempt on my part to bring her back would only make things worse. So, I left Wanda to follow her home and went back inside.
    Julie’s efforts to calm down the boys, who’d clearly been distressed by the brouhaha, had been largely unsuccessful, so I returned to the classroom to find them running around chaotically. Feeling frustrated at having lost Venus in the manner I did and annoyed with Julie for her part in it, I was too irritable to deal calmly with them myself. So,in the end I decided we might as well do something to release all this pent-up emotion everyone was feeling.
    “Let’s have music,” I said and went to lift down the box with cymbals, triangles, and tambourines in it, as I, for one, felt like bashing something.
    The rest of the day passed effortlessly, although it had that walking-on-eggshells feel to it. The boys were remarkably well behaved for them, not even becoming overly boisterous when I gave them the chance to clash along to the music. Instead, they sat listening intently for the right places to play their instruments and so performed the song – an inane ditty about an amorous Mexican tomcat named Señor Gatos – with the seriousness of a Bach mass.
    After the bell rang and the boys were seen off, I returned to the classroom, where Julie had remained to clean up. She was reshelving books when I came in.
    “Look, I’m really, really sorry,” she said before I could speak.
    “Yes, we had a bit of a problem, didn’t we?”
    “I just found it really hard to hold Venus like that, Torey. She was so upset.”
    “I know it looked alarming,” I said. “I know it looked like I was being too forceful with her, but I wasn’t. She was seriously out of