Book Excerpt

It was a dancing-round-the-May-pole-with-bright-ribbon-streamers kind of day. The pink flowering magnolia was in full unfurled peacock-feather bloom in front of the brown brick public school building where I taught a small class of deaf middle school children. I had pedaled my bike to school the short distance up the hill of my street, taking in the fresh spring air and passing the houses fronted with jubilant tulips.

Too often, though, when this thing they call happiness sweeps over me, I automatically pick up my shield of self-protection because it could not possibly last. My happiness scene always has an accompanying gloomy-gowned-in-grey Lady-in-Waiting of Peril.

I entered my classroom that black letter day when dark forces danced their morbid jig and began teaching. As the morning progressed, I was writing a lesson on the blackboard with white chalk when the principal came to my classroom, knocked, and entered. That was highly unusual behavior, and my nervous system kicked into a gallop. He was a former marine with a lower lip in perpetual firm and pursed attention. He looked grim and told me my husband was in the guidance counselor’s office and needed to speak to me.

A heavy red velvet curtain closed in my soul. I knew, right then, I understood. Somehow, I knew the dreaded day had come. All the walls had finally come crashing down, and Dad, the siege engine of our lives, had done it. It was as clear to me as that day’s fanciful sky sprinkled with soaring robins and as ominous as a crawl through a castle’s sewer, the garderobes. The principal’s words were searing through me.

I felt like a spellbound, wafting ghost walking the hall toward the rubble of my life. The everyday sounds of school that came through open classroom doors—teachers instructing, desks moving, students laughing—halted. All sounds were remote, from another world. All sights dimmed, blotted out by my heart, now beating so vigorously that it might have been mistaken for a charging cavalry.

Was this how prisoners felt walking to their execution?