The blush flaring on Claire’s cheeks could be seen from space, but she doesn’t dare glance in my direction.
We’re forced to sit on kid-size chairs at the table, where another child and his parents are sitting across from us.Though I’m realizing now I shouldn’t assume they’re his parents. It didn’t even occur to me that Claire would be mistaken for Bea’s mother, but it makes sense. As I look around the room, the majority of children have a female figure accompanying them.
“What do we have here?” Claire asks, breaking up the thoughts swirling inside my brain.
She slides a large piece of white paper closer and examines it. In the middle is the outline of a tree, and “My Family Tree” is printed across the top.
An instruction card taped to the table reads: Draw a picture of yourself on the tree trunk. Write your name. Inside the tree, draw a picture of the people who live with you. (Pets too.) Write their names. Outside of the tree, draw a picture of other people in your family. Write their names.
After I’ve read the instructions aloud to Bea, twice, she picks up a marker and hands it to Claire. “You draw.”
Claire laughs. “This is your first school project, silly. Not mine.”
“But you’re the artist.”
“So are you,” Claire retorts.
Bea scrunches her nose and shakes her head.
“Trust me, kid. I know an artist when I see one. You’re an artist.”
Lips pursed, Bea assesses her, then the piece of paper, hesitant.
“I’ll tell you what,” Claire suggests. “You start drawing your family and I’ll draw some flowers off to the side. How does that sound?”
Bea nods her approval, uncapping a marker and connecting circles and lines.
While Bea and Claire color together, I find myself chatting with a parent who recognizes me fromcamp.
Soon enough, Mrs. Doyle makes her rounds and stops to have a chat with Bea. I turn my attention back to the table.
“Looks like you get your artistic talent from your mommy,” the older woman says, clocking the flowers and bunnies and ducks drawn in the corner.
Claire tenses, her lips parting, but before she can correct the teacher, Bea handles it.
“She’s not my mommy. My mom is in heaven.”
The teacher’s eyes widen with mortification, but she doesn’t treat my daughter with pity like most adults do, which I appreciate. She collects herself quickly and says, “Thank you for sharing. Can you tell me about the people inside your tree?”
My little girl points to the caricatures. “This is Daddy. A-S-H-E-R. I know how to spell his name from the letters on the refidgenator.”
I choke back a laugh at her adorable pronunciation.
“This is me. B-E-A. And this is Claire. C-L-A-I-R-E. She lives with us.”
First of all, kids really are quite literal. Second, I had no idea she knew how to spell Claire’s name. I would be impressed if I weren’t caught so off guard. She not only drew Claire, but she included herinsidethe family tree. Oh boy. My explanation about her spending the summer with us must not have hit the mark.
“Look, look, look,” Bea says excitedly, flapping her hands. “A… B… C. Like the alphabet. Oh, and…” She points to the stick figure she drew on top of a rainbow in the sky. “D for Mommy’s name. Daisy. A-B-C-D.”
All the air is sucked from my lungs. I want nothing more than to get the hell out of here and crash out, but Mrs. Doyle hasn’t even made it through the syllabus she’s written on the dry erase board.
“Your family is wonderful, Bea,” the teacher says. “Howabout you put your tree in that pile over there for safe keeping?” She points to her desk. “And if you want, you can add to it when you come back next week for the first day of school.”
Bea smiles, then skips across the room to where other children are setting their artwork on the table.
We make it through the rest of the open house, though I don’t retain an ounce of information.
On the ride home, Bea talks a mile a minute about Mrs. Doyle and the kids she met, and while Claire offers her one-worded responses when necessary, she otherwise doesn’t engage.
