Sheila accepted the ongoing challenge of trying to charm Alejo out. For several days she lay on her stomach on the floor and talked to him, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English. She was surprisingly good at keeping up these one-sided conversations. I had never perceived Sheila as particularly garrulous and would not have expected her to tackle the situation in such a manner, but she did, maintaining a pleasant chatter full of questions to him about what he might like in the way of food or sports or other activities, what he did with his day when he wasn’t here, what his preferences were in regards to animals, school subjects and a host of other areas.
Occasionally, Alejo could be drawn into answering, although he never said much. He seemed to appreciate her efforts at Spanish, as we often heard him murmuring back to her then. And so they went, three and a half hours a day, five days a week.
As she continued to share floor space with him, Sheila grew intensely interested in Alejo’s circumstances. Nothing was known about his real family, not even their names or whether or not any of them were still alive. Repeatedly, Sheila queried the possibility of finding out. I tried to explain the impracticality of it, and most likely the total impossibility of it as well, but Sheila’s curiosity remained.
The tale of how Alejo had been found, living in the garbage can, provoked a particularly large amount of conversation from Sheila. She mused on everything from how cold and hungry he must have been to the logistics of a young child’s actually surviving in such circumstances. My suspicion, of course, was that in some unconscious way, Sheila was relating this to her own abandonment. I could recall how, at six, she used to recount over and over and over again the incident where her mother had left home, taking her and her younger brother Jimmie, and how her mother had stopped the car and pushed Sheila out onto the verge of the freeway, before speeding off into the night, never to be seen again. Sheila’s need now to recount Alejo’s abandonment caused all those long-ago conversations to echo in my mind.
Whatever was happening psychologically, Sheila became increasingly committed to Alejo. She was desperate to reach him, to convince him that he could trust her, and it was this desire that engaged her so completely in her work with him.
Despite this newfound intensity in her work, however, there were still plenty of hot moments with Sheila. One of the most dangerous areas was her appearance.
Having known her as a child, I must admit Sheila did not now look at all as I had expected she would. She had been a very pretty girl, even through the dirt and grime of her early days in my class. Her long hair, a dark honey-blond in color, had been very, very straight, of the sort to slide off the fingers in a fluidlike motion when lifted. Her features were bold, with a cheeky little cleft in her chin and a particularly attractive mouth.
The chin, the mouth, the bold features were, of course, all still there, but the permed, brightly colored hair diminished them, and everything was overshadowed by Sheila’s wardrobe. Where she got her fashion sense I could only guess at. It was so far out as to be almost in.
We had been treated to various combos involving the white long johns and an assortment of dresses and T-shirts. Indeed, one of her favorites included wearing nothing over the long johns except a very baggy peasant-style shirt, which made her look like an extra from Fiddler on the Roof who’d been interrupted in the changing room. She also had an assortment of what appeared to be lacy, white Victorian nightshirts, which she wore as dresses, usually layered over long-sleeved striped T-shirts in loud, occasionally neon, colors. And all of these were complemented by the thick black lace-up workman’s boots.
She had had her ears pierced, the left one five times, the right one twice, although, thank God, no other parts of her anatomy seemed to have received this treatment. She wore nothing more than thin gold rings in her ears, but the sheer quantity made up for their simplicity.
Admittedly, it did all take a bit of getting used to, but the fact was I didn’t mind it. In fact, as I did grow used to it, I found some of the sartorial combinations attractive, if a little bizarre. She did have an obvious flair for clothes, and, moreover, she had the slim, waiflike build needed to carry such outfits off. Had Sheila been among people a little more in the fashion vanguard than Jeff and I could lay claims to, I suspect her imagination would have been admired.
Sheila’s father, however, did not appear to admire Sheila’s dress sense whatsoever, and from what I could make out, there were many arguments over the matter. Moreover, her school hadn’t taken a very enlightened view either and she had, on more than one occasion, been sent home to change. This, I assumed, was what accounted for Sheila’s touchiness over the matter, because it became obvious from the first day that she wanted to wear these things and look the way she did and not have a single person even allude to the fact that she might appear a smidgen peculiar.
Jeff was always landing himself in it. He had nicknamed her the Orangutan as a result of her orange hair and her climbing feat on that second day and this was guaranteed to make her shout, just by his saying it. Worse, he could never resist commenting, “Shall we turn the air-conditioning down for you so you won’t have to come in with your nightgown on over your clothes?” or “Isn’t Grandpa missing his underwear yet?”
Sheila reacted to these comments, like most of his tongue-in-cheek humor, with the spitting rage of a wildcat kitten, and I was quite certain the rage was genuine. Whatever hopes I had had about bringing two such powerful minds together had long since evaporated. Sheila appeared to feel nothing short of hate for Jeff and Jeff was never much help. I tried to get him to turn off his undisciplined mouth, but it made no difference whatsoever. He enjoyed winding her up.
Once I’d adjusted, I didn’t find it too difficult to keep my own mouth shut regarding her appearance. I’m fairly unshockable and can screen out unwanted sensory information quite easily, so except for mediating over the matter between her and Jeff, I could generally steer clear. This was just as well, because on the few occasions when I accidentally got drawn in, Sheila came out with all guns firing. In fact, I suspect there was a provocative aspect to Sheila’s appearance, which, when I didn’t react to it, made her have to come after me occasionally.
On one such time, we were at the back of the room after the session ended. Some of the children had done painting and Sheila was helping me wash out the paint pots. The sink was full of soapy water and Sheila had her arms plunged into it almost up to her elbows.
“Could you get my hair back?” she asked, as I came around the side with more paint pots. “I got a ponytail holder in my left pocket. Could you just pull it back and fasten it for me?”
I reached in her pocket, extracted the holder and began smoothing the hair back to fasten it. What came immediately to my mind were memories of doing Sheila’s hair when she was little. It had been wonderful hair, so silky straight that it was lovely to feel, and I had always enjoyed our mornings before school when I had brushed it. What I felt now was quite a different matter. Treated and colored, it was a crinkly mass.
“I’m thinking of doing my hair yellow this weekend,” Sheila said. “I saw this stuff at the drugstore and it was only two dollars and ninety-nine cents.”
“Do you ever think of letting it grow back like it was?”
In a split second, Sheila had whirled around and whacked my hand down, soapy water flying everywhere. “Stop it! Just stop it!” she shouted in fury.
I jumped back in surprise.
“That’s what you want, isn’t it? To control me! To make me back into your little darling. Well, I’m not her. I’m me! And you can’t tell me what to do anymore.”
She had gotten so angry so quickly that I was stunned into silence. Both Jeff and Miriam were in the room too and they stopped short and stared.
“I’m not your property anymore. You don’t own me. You didn’t create me!”
The