“My stomach hurts, Miss Waters.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It hurts really bad.” Harper splayed her hands over her stomach, pronouncing each word softly and with intention.
“Tell you what. What if you sit on that bench across from me for a while instead of playing, and I’ll ask you if you are feeling better in a few minutes.”
“Okay.” She drew the word out.
She sat and stood and wandered near the bench for a minute or two while her teacher watched her classmates. Then she spoke.
“Miss Waters?”
“Yes?”
“Do you remember when my hair was long?”
“Yes.”
“When my hair was long, sometimes it touched my arms and it was like spider webs.”
Miss Waters clapped her hands.
“Harper, do you know what a simile is?”
“No.”
“It’s when you say something is like something else, when you compare them. You just did it.”
Harper grinned. “Like, a piece of grass is like a leaf?”
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe. But that one, the two things were already alike. You want to compare things in a way that’s surprising. Like: our big playground tree is like an umbrella, because it shields us when it rains.”
“Sort of. When it isn’t raining very hard.”
“Right.”
Harper thought for a moment. “Flowers are like lace.”
“Okay. Yeah.”
“Different colors of lace.”
“Okay,” Miss Waters said. “I like it. Excuse me, Harper.” She got up to remind Jack and Billy that playground contact was limited to two-hand touches only. They were playing a game that involved the taking of captives. She came back to the bench and sat, but watched the fence line where the “prison” was.
“My stomach still hurts,” Harper said, bending over on the bench where she sat.
“I’m sorry, Harper. Would you like me to call the office?”
She tilted her head. “No.” The word went several notes up and down the scale.
“We’ll check on it again at the end of snack time in a couple of minutes. If it’s still hurting, then we’ll call.”
A few “prisoners” stood with their hands behind them against the fence, and Jack prowled around them like a lion seeking whom to devour.
“Humans are like statues,” Harper said.
“Hmm, I can see that. That one works.”
“Well, when they stand still. And maybe if they painted themselves grey. If they stood really, really still.”
Miss Waters smiled. “Harper, do you know that there are some people who do that?”
“What do you mean?” The words were especially elongated on account of Harper’s surprise.
“Well, it’s a kind of art, like a performance. Sometimes people will go to a park or somewhere, usually in a big city, and pick a pose and stay in it for a very long time. They paint their skin and clothes grey. Well, usually grey. Sometimes they will put a hat or a cup out in front of them, and if someone puts money in the cup they will do something, a dance or something. Then they go back to being statues.”
Harper smiled large. “They paint themselves?”
“Well, make-up.”
“That’s a lot of make-up.”
“Their clothes are already painted, so it’s just their face and hands.”
“What about their eyes?”
“Sometimes they close them, but sometimes living statues have eyes that move.”
“Living statues.”
“That’s what they’re called. Just a moment.”
Miss Waters went to the fence to help mediate the blossoming disagreement she had noticed from the picnic tables. It turned out to be a difference of opinion about whether a magical twig could release the prisoners in Jack’s care. Soon she was back to the table.
“Would you like to try being living statues, Harper?”
Harper nodded, her tongue pointing through her teeth.
“Okay. I’ll set my cell phone timer for two minutes. Pick a pose.”
Harper stood threw her head back and stretched out her hands toward the spreading oak branches above them. Miss Waters crossed her legs and sat straight, one hand over her knee. With the other, she pressed the screen of her phone. “Go,” she said, then trained her eyes toward the fence where the prisoners where being released.
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CC image courtesy of –Tico– on Flickr.