The Best American Mystery Stories 2019

from Boulevard

1.

He would protect me. He promised.

Kissing the scar at my hairline. Smoothing the hair back, that he might press his lips lightly against the scar. Making me shiver.

He would take measurement of me. Establish a record. The size of my skull, the length of my spine, the size of my hands and feet (bare). Height, weight. Color of skin.

Then taking my hand. Pressing it between his legs where he was fattish, swollen like ripe, rotting fruit. Pressed, rubbed. When I tried to pull away he gripped my hand tighter.

Don’t pretend to be innocent, “Vio-let!” You dirty girl.

Sometimes he called me Sleeping Beauty. (Which had to be one of his jokes, I was no beauty.)

Sometimes he called me Snow White.

“I am ‘Sandman.’ Do I have a sandpaper tongue?”

Seven months. When I was fourteen.

If it was abuse, as they charged, it did not seem so, usually. It was something that I could recognize as punishment.

Each time was the first time. Each time, I would not remember what happened to me, what was done to me. And so there was only a single time, and that time the first time as well as the last.

Each time was a rescue. Waking to see the face of the one who had rescued me, and his eyes that shone in triumph beneath grizzled eyebrows. Sharp-bracketed mouth and stained teeth in a smile of happiness.

Vio-let Rue! Time to wake up, dear.

Mr. Sandman was the teacher who’d sighted me lost in the ninth-grade corridor, when I was in seventh grade. When I’d first come to Port Oriskany as a transfer student. The teacher with the grizzled eyebrows and strange staring eyes who’d seemed to recognize me. As if (already) there was a secret understanding between us.

And now you are in my homeroom. “Vio-let Rue.”

No alternative. Mr. Sandman was the ninth-grade math teacher.

At last, I was his. On his homeroom class list and in his fifth-period math class.

For both homeroom and math class Mr. Sandman seated me at his right hand where he could keep a much-needed eye on you.

He’d helped me to my feet. Before he’d been my teacher. Discovered me sleeping in a corner of the school library where I’d curled up beneath a vinyl chair as a dog might curl up to sleep, nose to tail, a shabby little terrier, hoping to be invisible and not to be kicked.

No one else seemed to see me. Might’ve been somebody’s sheepskin jacket tossed beneath a chair at the back of the room.

Standing over me breathing hoarsely for so long, I wouldn’t know.

Time to wake up, dear! Take my hand.

But it was his hand that took my hand. Gripped hard, and hauled me to my feet.

Why did you let him touch you, Violet! That terrible man.

Why, when you would not let others touch you, who’d hoped to love you as a daughter?

2.

“I am the captain. You are the crew. If you don’t shape up, you go overboard.”

Mr. Sandman, ninth-grade math. His skin was flushed with perpetual indignation at our stupidity. His eyes leapt at us like small shiny toads. When he stretched his lips it was like meat grinning, we cringed and shuddered and yet we laughed, for Mr. Sandman was funny.

He was one of only three male teachers at Port Oriskany Middle School. He was advisor to the Chess Club and the Math Club. He led his homeroom class each morning in the Pledge of Allegiance.

(In a severe voice Mr. Sandman recited the pledge facing us as we stood obediently with our hands over our hearts, heads bowed. There was no joking now. You would have thought that the Pledge of Allegiance was a prayer. A shiny American flag, said to be a personal flag, a flag that Mr. Sandman had purchased himself, hung unfurled from the top, left-hand corner of the blackboard, and when Mr. Sandman finished the pledge in his loud righteous voice he lifted his right hand with a flourish, in a kind of salute, fingers pointing straight upward and at the flag.)

(Was this the Nazi salute?) (We were uncertain.)

Mr. Sandman ruled math classes like a sea captain. He liked to shake what he called his iron fist. If one of us, usually a boy, was hopelessly stupid that day he’d have to walk the plank — rise from his desk and walk to the rear of the room, stand there with his back to the class and wait for the bell.

On a day of rough waters there’d be three, could be four, boys at the rear of the room, resigned to standing until the bell rang, forbidden to turn around, no smirking, no wisecracks, if you have to pee just pee your pants — a Sandman pronouncement shocking each time we heard, provoking gales of nervous laughter through the room.

Of course, this was ninth-grade algebra. We were fourteen, fifteen years old. Nobody in this class was likely to pee his pants.

(Yet we were not so old that the possibility didn’t evoke terror in us. Our faces flushed, we squirmed in our seats hoping not to be singled out for torment by Mr. Sandman.)

It was rare that Mr. Sandman commanded a girl to march to walk the plank. Though Mr. Sandman teased girls, and provoked some (of us) to tears, yet he was not cruel to girls, not usually.

Boys were another story. Boys were Schmutz.

Bobbie Sandusky was Boobie Schmutz. Mike Farrolino was Muck Schmutz. Rick Latour was Ruck Schmutz. Don Farquhar was Dumbo Schmutz.

Was any of this funny? But why did we laugh?

Hiding our faces in our hands. Nothing so hilarious as the misery of someone not-you.

You’d have thought that Mr. Sandman would be detested but in fact Mr. Sandman had many admirers. Graduates of the middle school spoke fondly of him as a character, mean old sonuvabitch who really made us learn algebra. Even boys he ridiculed laughed at his jokes. Like a standup TV comic scowling and growling and the most shocking things erupting from his mouth, impossible not to laugh. Hilarity was a gas seeping into the room that made you laugh even as it choked you.

Mr. Sandman was a firm believer in running a tight ship. “In an asylum you can’t let the inmates get control.”

A scattering of boys in Mr. Sandman’s class seemed to escape his ridicule. Not the smartest boys but likely to be the tallest, best-looking, often athletes, sons of well-to-do families in Port Oriskany. These boys who laughed loudest at jokes of Mr. Sandman’s directed at other, less fortunate boys. My goon squad.

He’d get them uniforms, he said. Helmets, boots. Revolvers to fit into holsters. Rifles.

They could learn to goose-step. March in a parade along Main Street past the school. Atten-tion! Ready, aim. He’d lead them.

(Would Mr. Sandman be in uniform, himself? What sort of captain’s uniform? A pistol in a holster, not a rifle. Polished boots to the thigh.)

Boys were goons at best but girls didn’t matter at all. When Mr. Sandman spoke with a rough sort of tenderness of his goon squad it seemed that we (girls) were invisible in his eyes.

“Girls have no ‘natural aptitude’ for math. There is no reason for girls to know math at all. Especially algebra — of no earthly use for a female. I have made my opinion known to the illustrious school board of our fair city but my (informed, objective) opinions often fall upon deaf ears and into empty heads. Therefore, I do not expect anything from females — but I am hoping for at least mediocre, passable work from you. And you, and you.” Winking at the girls nearest him.

Was this funny? Why did girls laugh?

It did not seem like a radical idea to us, any of us, that girls had no natural aptitude for math. It seemed like a very reasonable idea. And a relief, to some (of us), that our math teacher did not hold us to standards higher than mediocrity — (a word we’d never heard before, but instinctively understood).

In fact Mr. Sandman didn’t wink at me at such times. When he made his pronouncements which were meant to make us laugh, and yet instruct us in the ways of the world, he didn’t look at me at all. He’d arranged the classroom seating so that “Violet Kerrigan” was seated at a desk in the first row of desks, farthest to the right and near the outer wall of windows, a few inches from the teacher’s desk. In this way as Mr. Sandman preened at the front of the classroom addressing the class I was at his right hand, sidelined as if backstage in a theater.

Keeping my eye on you. “Vio-let Rue.”

Each math class was a drill. Up and down the rows, Mr. Sandman as captain and drillmaster calling upon hapless students. Even if you’d done the homework and knew the answer you were likely to be intimidated, to stammer and misspeak. Even Mr. Sandman’s praise might sting — “Well! A correct answer.” And he’d clap, with deadpan ironic intent.

As Mr. Sandman paced about the front of the room preaching, scolding, teasing, and tormenting us an oily sheen would appear on his forehead. His stiff, thinning, dust-colored hair became dislodged showing slivers of scalp shiny as cellophane.

It made me shiver, to anticipate Mr. Sandman glancing sidelong at me.

Keeping an eye on you. “Vio-let Rue.”

Ever since you came to us. You.

These were quick, intimate glances. No one saw.

Staying after school, in Mr. Sandman’s homeroom.

This was a special privilege: “tutorial.” (Only girls were invited.)

Told to bring our homework that had been graded. If we needed “extra” instruction.

Mr. Sandman stooped over our desks, breathing against our necks. He was not sarcastic at such times. His hand on my shoulder — “Here’s your error, Violet.” With his red ballpoint pen he would tap at the error and sometimes he would take my hand, his hand closed over mine, and redo the problem.

I sat very still. A kind of peace moved through me. If you do not antagonize them, if you behave exactly as they wish you to behave, they will not be cruel to you.

If you are very good, they will speak approvingly of you.

“‘Vio-let Rue’ — you are a quick study, aren’t you?”

With the other girls Mr. Sandman behaved in a similar way but you could tell (I could tell: I was acutely aware) that he did not like them the way he liked me.

Though he called them dear he did not enunciate their names in the melodic way in which he enunciated Vio-let Rue. This was a crucial sign.

Edgy and excited we bent over our desks. We did not glance up as Mr. Sandman approached, for Mr. Sandman did not seem to like any sort of flirtatious or over-eager behavior.

Leaning over, his hand resting on a shoulder. His breath at the nape of a neck. A warm hand. A comforting hand. Lightly on a shoulder, or at the small of a back.

“Very good, dear! Now turn the paper over, and see if you can replicate the problem from memory.”

Sometimes, Mr. Sandman swore us to secrecy: we were given “rehearsal tutorials” during which we worked out problems that would appear on the next day’s quiz or test in Mr. Sandman’s class.

Of course, we were eager to swear not to tell.

We were privileged, and we were grateful. Maybe, we were afraid of our math teacher.

Eventually, the other girls disappeared from the tutorials. Only Violet Rue remained.

3.

Instinctively Mr. Sandman knew: I did not live with my family but with relatives.

Though each day came the hope — Daddy will come get me today.

Or, more possibly — Daddy will call. Today.

Running home expecting to see my aunt awaiting me just inside the door, a wounded expression on her face — “There’s been a call for you, Violet. From home.”

At once, I would know what this meant.

Even Irma understood that home, for me, did not mean the tidy beige-brick house on Erie Street.

And so, each day hurrying home. But even as I approached Erie Street a wave of apprehension swept over me, my mouth went dry with anxiety...

For there would be no Daddy waiting for me. There’d been no telephone call.

In the meantime reciting multiplication tables to myself. Multiplying three-digit numbers. Long division in my head. Puzzling over algebra problems that uncurled themselves in my brain like miniature dreams.

Such happiness in the Pythagorean Theorem! Always and forever it is a fact, clutched-at like a life-jacket in churning water — the sum of the areas of two small squares equals the area of the large one.

No need to ask why. When something just is.

Math had become strange to me. “Pre-algebra” — this was our ninth-grade curriculum. Like a foreign language, fearful and yet fascinating.

“Equations” — numerals, letters — a, b, c. Sometimes my hand trembled, gripping a pencil. Hours I would work on algebra problems, in my room with the door shut. It seemed to me that each problem solved brought me a step closer to being summoned back home to South Niagara and so I worked tirelessly until my eyes misted over and my head swam.

Downstairs Aunt Irma watched TV. Festive voices and laughter lifted through the floorboards. My aunt often invited me to watch with her, when I was finished with my homework for the night. But I was never finished with my homework.

On her way to bed Aunt Irma would pause at my door to call out in her sweet, sad voice, “Goodnight, Violet!” Then, “Turn off your light now, dear, and go to sleep.”

Obediently I turned off my desk light. Beneath my door, the rim of light would vanish. And then a few minutes later when I calculated that my aunt and uncle were safely in bed I turned it on again.

During the day (most days) I was afflicted with sleepiness in waves like ether but at night when I was alone my eyes were wonderfully wide-open and my brain ran on and on like a rattling machine that would have to be smashed to be stopped.

On my homework papers Mr. Sandman wrote, in bright red ink — Good work!

My grades on classroom quizzes and tests were high — 93 %, 97 %, 99 %. Because I prepared for these so methodically, hours at a stretch. And because of the secret tutorials.

It was true, I had no natural aptitude for math. Nothing came easily to me. But much that passed into my memory, being hard-won, did not fade as it seemed to fade from the memories of my classmates like water sifting through outspread fingers.

My secret was, I had no natural aptitude for any subject — for life itself.

Keeping myself alive. Keeping myself from drowning. That was the challenge.

They would ask Why. But lifting my eyes I can see the synthetic-shiny American flag hanging from the corner of Mr. Sandman’s blackboard, red and white stripes like snakes quivering with life.

Listening very carefully I can hear the chanting. Each morning pledging allegiance. (But what was “allegiance”? We had no idea.) The entire class standing, palms of hands pressed against our young hearts. Reciting, syllables of sound without meaning, emptied of all meaning, eyes half-shut in reverence, a pretense of reverence, heads bowed. Five days a week.

Our teacher Mr. Sandman was not ironic now but sincere, vehement.

Pledge allegiance. To my flag. And to the Republic for which it stands. One Nation, indivisible. With Liberty and Justice for all.

Under his breath Mr. Sandman might mutter as we settled back into our seats — Amen.

4.

Each time was a rescue. No one would understand.

Boys had been trailing me, calling after me in low, lewd voices — Hey baby! Baby-girl! Hey cunt!

Not touching me. Not usually.

Well, sometimes — colliding with me in a corridor when classes changed. Brushing an arm, the back of a hand across my chest — “Hey! Sor-ry.” At my locker, jostling and grinning.

Because I was a transfer student. Because I was alone. Because, like Mr. Sandman, they could see something forlorn and lost in my face, that excited them.

In a restroom where I’d been hiding waiting for them to go away after the final bell had rung I’d asked a girl, are they gone yet, she’d laughed at my pleading eyes and told me yeah sure, those assholes had gone away a long time ago. But when I went out they were waiting just outside the door to the faculty parking lot.

Shouts, laughter. Grabbing at the sleeves of my jacket, at my hair — run cunt run!

Crouching behind a car, panting. Hands and knees on the icy pavement. Desperate for a place to hide trying car doors one after another until I found one that was unlocked. Climbed inside, into the backseat, on the floor making myself small as a wounded animal might. On the rear seat was a man’s jacket, I pulled over myself. Meant to hide for only a few minutes until the braying boys were gone but so tired! — fell asleep instead. Wakened by someone tugging at my ankle.

Mr. Sandman’s dark face. Steel-wool eyebrows above his creased eyes. “Vi-o-let Rue! Is that you?”

His voice was almost a song. Surprise, delight.

“What are you doing here, Vio-let? Has someone been hounding you?”

Of course, Mr. Sandman knew. All of the teachers knew. Though I had not ever told.

How much worse it would be for me, if I told.

I was not sure of the names of my tormenters. It was a matter of shame to me, there were so many.

“Well! You don’t have to tell me who the vermin are just yet, dear. You have already been upset enough.” A pause. A stained-teeth smile. “I will drive you home.”

Invited me to sit in the passenger’s seat beside him. Astonishing to me, the math teacher famous for his sarcasm was behaving in a kindly manner. Smiling!

Though glancing about, to see if anyone was watching.

It was late afternoon, early winter. Already the sky was dim, fading.

In my confusion, waking from sleep, I seemed not to know exactly where I was, or why.

Mr. Sandman advised me, I might just “hunch down” in the seat. In case some “nosy individual” happened to be watching.

“One of my teacher-colleagues. Eager for gossip, you bet.”

Quickly I hunched down in the seat. Shut my eyes and hugged my knees. I did not want to be seen by anyone in Mr. Sandman’s car.

Mr. Sandman’s car was a large heavy pewter-colored four-door sedan. Not a compact vehicle like most vehicles in the faculty parking lot. Its interior was very cold and smelled of something slightly rancid like spilled milk.

“You live on the east side, I believe? Is it — Ontario Street?”

This was astonishing to me: how did Mr. Sandman have any idea where I lived?

“Not Ontario? But nearby?”

“Erie...”

“You are wondering how I know where you live, Violet? And how I know with whom you live? Well!”

Mr. Sandman chuckled. It was part of his comic style to pose a question but not answer it.

When I was allowed to sit up a few minutes later and peer out the car window it did not appear that Mr. Sandman was driving in the direction of Erie Street. The thought came to me — He is taking another route. He knows another, better route.

And when it became evident that Mr. Sandman was not driving me home at all I sat silently, staring out the window. I did not know what to say for I feared offending Mr. Sandman.

In homeroom and in math class Mr. Sandman was easily “offended” — “deeply offended” — by a foolish answer to a question, or a foolish question. Often he simply glared, wriggling his dense eyebrows in a way comical to behold, unless you were the object of his ire.

However, Mr. Sandman was in a very good mood now. Almost, Mr. Sandman was humming under his breath.

“You know, Violet, it has been a pleasant and unexpected surprise — to discover that you are an impressively good student. Quite a surprise!”

Mr. Sandman mused aloud as he drove. There was no expectation that I should answer him.

“And also, a pleasant and unexpected surprise, to discover such an impressively good student in my automobile, hiding under a garment like Sleeping Beauty.”

We were ascending hilly Craigmont Avenue. Still we were moving in a direction opposite to my aunt’s and uncle’s house on Erie Street and still I could not bring myself to protest.

“... indeed there are some surprises more ‘unexpected’ than others. And discovering that Violet Rue Kerrigan is one of my better students has been one of these.”

Violet Rue Kerrigan. The name suggested wonder, in Mr. Sandman’s voice. As if referring to someone, or something, apart from me of a significance unknown to me.

Upper Craigmont Avenue was a residential neighborhood of older, large houses. Tall plane trees with bark peeling from them, like flayed skin. Storm debris lay scattered on expanses of cracked sidewalk and broad front lawns. If there had not been (dim) lights in the windows of houses we passed I might have thought that Mr. Sandman was driving me into an abandoned part of the city.

At last Mr. Sandman turned into the driveway of a stone house, bulbous gray stone, cobblestone? — with dark shutters, and a ponderous slate roof overhead.

Crabgrass stubbled the front lawn. A plane tree lay in ruins as if it had been struck by lightning. The long asphalt drive was riddled with cracks. My father would have sneered at such a derelict driveway though he would have been impressed by the size of Mr. Sandman’s house. And Craigmont Avenue looked to be a neighborhood of expensive properties, or properties that had once been expensive. “I am the ‘last scion’ in the Sandman family,” Mr. Sandman said, chuckling. “Since my elderly infirm parents passed away years ago my life is idyllic.”

Idyllic was not a word with which I was familiar. I might have thought that it had something to do with idle.

As Mr. Sandman parked the large heavy car at the top of the driveway, some distance from the street, I managed to stammer, “I... I want to go home, Mr. Sandman. Please.” But my voice was disappointingly weak, Mr. Sandman seemed scarcely to hear.

(By this time I needed to use a bathroom, badly. But this I could not tell Mr. Sandman out of embarrassment.)

“Well, dear! Why are you cowering there like a kicked puppy? Get out, please. We’ll have just a little visit — this time. Just a few minutes, I promise. And then I will drive you home to — did you say Ontario Street?”

“Erie...”

“Erie! Of course.”

A subtle tone of condescension in Mr. Sandman’s voice. For the east side of Port Oriskany was not nearly so affluent as the west side nearer Lake Ontario.

My legs moved numbly. Slowly I got out of Mr. Sandman’s car. It did not occur to me that I could run away — very easily, I could run out to the street.

At the same time thinking — Mr. Sandman is my teacher. He would not hurt me.

“We’ll have just a little ‘tutorial.’ In private.”

Badly wanting to explain to Mr. Sandman — (now nudging me forward, hand on my back, to a side entrance of the darkened house) — that I was concerned that Aunt Irma would wonder where I was for she often worried about me when I was late returning home from school... And this afternoon I’d lost time, might’ve been a half hour, forty minutes or more, in my stuporous sleep in a car I had not realized was Mr. Sandman’s... But I could not speak.

Inside, Mr. Sandman switched on a light. We were in a long hallway, my heart was pounding so rapidly I could not see clearly.

And now, in a kitchen — an old-fashioned kitchen with a high ceiling, the largest kitchen I’d ever seen, long counters, rows of cupboards, a large refrigerator, an enormous gas stove, a triple row of burners and none very clean...

“I was thinking — hot chocolate, dear? At this time of day when the spirit flags, as the blood-sugar level plummets, I’ve found that hot chocolate restores the soul.”

In the center of the room was an old, enamel-topped table with solid legs. On it were scattered magazines, books. A single page from the Port Oriskany Herald containing the daily crossword puzzle, which someone had completed in pencil.

Shyly I agreed to Mr. Sandman’s offer of hot chocolate. I could not imagine declining.

Daring to add that I needed to use a bathroom, please...

Mr. Sandman chuckled as if the request was endearing to him. “Why, of course, Sleeping Beauty. It has been a while since you have peed — eh?”

So embarrassed, I could not even nod yes.

“Even Sleeping Beauty is required, sometime, against all expectations, to pee. Yes.”

Humming under his breath Mr. Sandman escorted me to a bathroom at the end of a dim-lit corridor, fingers on my back. He reached inside the door to switch on the light, and allowed me to close it — just barely.

My heart was pounding rapidly. There was no lock on the door.

It seemed to me, possibly Mr. Sandman was close outside the door. Leaning against it. The side of his head against it, listening?

Trying to use the toilet as silently as possible. An old, rusted toilet, with a seat made of dark wood. Stained yellowed porcelain at which I did not want to look closely.

Was Mr. Sandman outside the bathroom? Listening? I was stricken with embarrassment.

And then, flushing the toilet. A loud gushing sound that could have been heard through the house.

Washing my hands was a relief. Though the water was only lukewarm I enjoyed scrubbing my hands. Several times a day I washed my hands, took care that my fingernails were reasonably clean.

Noticing now that there were books in the bathroom, on the window sill. Crossword Puzzles for Whizzes. Favorite Math Puzzles. Favorite Math Puzzles II. Lewis Carroll’s Math Games, Puzzles, Problems. The books were small paperbacks with cartoon covers, that looked as if they’d been much used.

When I left the bathroom it was a relief to see that Mr. Sandman was not hovering outside the door after all.

In the kitchen he awaited me with his wide, wet smile that made you think of meat. He’d placed two large coffee mugs on a counter and was preparing hot chocolate on the stove, shaking powdered, dark chocolate out of a container and into simmering water.

In my hands the mug of steaming hot chocolate was consoling. Shyly I lifted it to my lips since Mr. Sandman expected me to drink it; he would observe closely, to see that I did.

The liquid chocolate was thick, slightly bitter. Almost, I’d have thought there was coffee mixed with it. But I was weak with hunger, and with relief that Mr. Sandman had not followed me into the bathroom. And now that I had used the bathroom and washed my hands I could see that Mr. Sandman meant to be kind.

“Would you like to borrow these, Violet? Of course.”

Mr. Sandman was leafing through Lewis Carroll’s Math Games, Puzzles, Problems. Many of the problems had been solved, in pencil. On some pages there were enthusiastic red asterisks and stars.

“See here, Violet. This section isn’t too difficult for you. Shall we do these together?”

Mr. Sandman sat me at the kitchen table. Gave me a pencil. I puzzled over the (comical, far-fetched) cartoon problems as he leaned over my shoulder breathing onto my neck. My head began to swim. “Careful, Violet! Let me take that cup from you.”

Could not keep my eyes open. Would’ve fallen from the chair except Mr. Sandman caught me.

Light was fading. Small spent waves lapped at my feet. Whispers, laughter at a distance. My eyelids were so heavy, I could not force them open...

Waking then, some time later. Groggy. Confused. Not in the kitchen but in another room, and on a sofa. Lying beneath a knitted quilt that smelled of moth balls, my sneakers removed. (By Mr. Sandman?) Across the room, in a leather easy chair, Mr. Sandman sat briskly grading papers by lamplight.

“Ah! At last Sleeping Beauty is waking up. You’ve had a delicious little nap, eh?” Mr. Sandman laughed heartily, indulgently.

My neck was aching. One of my legs was partially numb, I’d been lying on my side. Still very sleepy. A dull headache behind my eyes.

“Dear, it’s late — after six P.M. Your aunt will be worried about you, I will drive you home immediately.”

How long had I been asleep? My brain could not calculate — an hour? Two hours?

Mr. Sandman set aside his papers. He seemed anxious now. His breath smelled pleasantly of something sweet and dark, like wine.

When I stumbled getting up Mr. Sandman gripped me beneath the arms, hard. “Oops! Enough of ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ You need to wake up, immediately.”

Walked me into the kitchen, turned on a faucet and splashed cold water onto my face, slapped my cheeks — lightly! — but enough to make them smart. Bundled me into my jacket and walked me outside into the fresh cold air. My knee had begun to ache, I was limping slightly. Quietly Mr. Sandman told me in the car, “This is our secret, dear. That your math teacher has given you — lent you — the Lewis Carroll puzzle book. For others would be jealous, you know.”

And, “Including adults. Especially adults. They would assuredly not understand and so you may tell them ‘Math Club.’ It’s quite an honor to be selected.”

Cautiously Mr. Sandman drove along Erie Street. When I pointed out my aunt’s and uncle’s house he drove past it and parked at the curb several houses away.

“Goodnight, my dear! Remember our secret.”

Lights were on at the house. An outside porch light. I feared that Aunt Irma would be looking out the window. That she’d seen the headlights of Mr. Sandman’s car pass slowly by.

But when I went inside Aunt Irma was in the kitchen preparing dinner. She asked where on earth I’d been and I told her without a stammer — “Math Club.”

“Math Club! Is there such a thing?”

“I’m the only girl who has been elected to it.”

If Aunt Irma had been about to scold me this declaration intimidated her. “They’d never have let me in any math club, when I was in school.”

And, “Oh, Violet! Did you go out this morning with your shirt buttoned crooked? Look at you...”

I did. Cast my gaze down on myself, seeing that indeed my shirt was buttoned crookedly. Shame.

But why would you go back with him again, Violet? Why — willingly?

5.

Soon then, announcing to Aunt Irma that I’d not only been selected for Math Club but elected secretary.

Which was why I was often late returning home after school. In winter months, after dark.

(And it was true. True in some way. From his several classes Mr. Sandman had “elected” eight students to comprise Math Club. Six boys, two girls. Boys were president and vice president and I was secretary.)

Uncle Oscar seemed impressed, too. When I showed him Lewis Carroll’s Math Games, Puzzles, Problems he leafed through the little paperback with a wistful expression.

“... once, I could probably figure these out. Now, I don’t know...”

Later I would find the little book on the kitchen counter where he’d left it.

Living with adults you live with the husks of their old, lost lives. Like snakes’ husks, or the husks of locusts underfoot. The fiction between you that you must not allow them to know that you know.

How many times Mr. Sandman drove me after school to the stone house on Craigmont Avenue. When I was asked I would say truly I did not know, could not remember for always it was the first time and not ever did I seem to know beforehand what would happen nor even, in retrospect, what had happened.

How many times do you dream, in a single night? In a week? A year?

Snowy nights. The heater in Mr. Sandman’s car. Windshield wipers slapping. Sheepskin jacket, boots. Mr. Sandman taking my hands in his and blowing on them with his hot, humid breath — “Brrrr! You need to be warmed up, Snow White.”

Hot chocolate, with whipped cream. Spicy pumpkin pie, with whipped cream. Jelly doughnuts, cinnamon doughnuts, whipped cream doughnuts. Sweet apple cider, piping-hot. (Mr. Sandman’s word which he uttered with a sensual twist of his lips: piping-hot.)

One evening he had a favor to ask of me, Mr. Sandman said.

For his archive he was taking the measurements of outstanding students. All he required from me was a moment’s cooperation — allowing him to measure the circumference of my head, the length of my spine, etc.

“An archive, dear, is a collection of facts, documents, records. In this case, a very private collection. No one will ever know.”

I could not say no. Already Mr. Sandman was wrapping a yellow tape measure about my head — “Nineteen point six inches, dear. Petite.”

The length of my spine — “Twenty-nine point four inches, dear. Well within the range of normal for your age.”

Height — “Five feet three point five inches. A good height.”

Weight — “Ninety-four pounds, eleven ounces. A good weight.”

Waist — “Twenty-one inches. Good!”

Hips — “Twenty-eight inches. Very good!”

As Mr. Sandman looped the tape measure about my chest, brushing against my breasts, I flinched from him, involuntarily.

He laughed, annoyed. But did not persist.

“Another time, perhaps, dear Violet, you will not be so skittish.”

So many books! I stared in wonderment. I had never seen so many books outside a library.

Proudly Mr. Sandman switched on lights. Bookcases of elegant dark wood lifting from the floor to the ceiling.

Many of the books were old, matched sets. On the lowermost shelf were Encyclopedia Britannica, Collected Works of Shakespeare, Collected Works of Dickens, Great British Romantic Poets. There was an entire bookcase filled with books on military history with such titles as A History of Humankind at War, Great Military Campaigns of Europe, The Great Armies of History, Soldat: Reflections of a German Soldier 1936–1945, Is War Obsolete? In an adjacent bookcase, The Coming Struggle, Free Will and Destiny, The Passing of the Great Race, Racial Hygiene, A History of Biometry, The Aryan Bible, Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf: A New Reading, The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler, Origins of the Caucasian Race, Is the White Race Doomed? Eugenics: A Primer.

On a special shelf were oversized books of photographs. More military history: US, Germany. Tanks, bomber planes. Fiery cities. Marching men in Nazi uniforms, swastika armbands. Saluting stiff-armed as Mr. Sandman saluted the flag in our classroom.

On the shelves of other bookcases were boxes of old, photocopied records, documents. Mr. Sandman gestured toward these with an air of casual pride — “Transcripts of meetings of the Race Betterment Society, 1929–1943. A photocopy of the original manuscript of The Bible of Practical Ethics and the ‘Final Solution.’ And other rare materials I’ve acquired through antiquarian dealers.”

On a table were unframed photographs of local landscapes, skies of sculpted clouds, the mist-shrouded Niagara Falls, which Mr. Sandman had taken himself. And one, apart from the others, that had begun to slightly curl, depicting a girl of about my age lying on a four-poster bed, partly clothed, hands clasped over her thin chest. Long straight pale hair had been spread about her head like a fan. Her eyes were open and yet unseeing.

A girl I’d never seen before, I was sure. I felt a pang of alarm. Jealousy.

Mr. Sandman saw me staring at the photograph and quickly pushed it aside.

“No one you know, dear. An inferior Snow White.”

I would not recall the part-unclothed girl afterward. I don’t think so. Though I am recalling her now, this now is an indeterminate time.

Against the windows of Mr. Sandman’s cobblestone house, a faint ping of icy rain, hail. An endless winter.

“It is a fact kept generally secret in the United States that Adolf Hitler acquired his ‘controversial’ ideas on race and on the problems posed by race from us — the United States. Our history of slavery, and post-slavery, as well as our ‘population management’ of Indians — on reservations in remote parts of the country. How to establish a proper scientific census. How to determine who is ‘white’ and who is ‘colored’ — and how to proceed from there.”

Mr. Sandman spoke casually yet you could hear an undercurrent of excitement in his voice.

Adolf Hitler was a name out of a comic book. A name to provoke smirks. And yet, in Mr. Sandman’s reverent voice Adolf Hitler had another sound altogether.

I’d left my mug of apple cider in the kitchen, half-empty. I had not wanted to drink more of the hot sweet liquid that was making me feel queasy. But Mr. Sandman brought both our mugs into the library, and was handing mine to me.

“Finish your apple cider, Violet! It has become lukewarm.”

Helplessly I took the mug from him. Shut my eyes, lifted the mug to my lips, to drink.

Sweet, sugary apple juice. A taste of something fermented, rotted.

They would ask — But why would you drink anything that man gave you? Why, after what happened the first time?

There’d been no first time. All times were identical. There was not a most recent time, and there was not a present time.

“Some of us understand that we must archive crucial documents and publications before it’s too late. One day, the welfare state may appropriate all of our records. The liberal welfare state.” Mr. Sandman spoke with withering contempt.

Entire populations were falling behind others, Mr. Sandman said. The birthrates of those who should reproduce are declining while the birthrates of those who should not be allowed to reproduce are increasing — “Mongrel races breed like animals.”

When I stared blankly at him Mr. Sandman said, “Violet, you’re a smart girl. By Port Oriskany standards, a very smart girl. You understand that the Caucasian race must preserve itself against mongrelization before it’s too late?”

I had heard that a mongrel dog is healthier and likely to live longer than a pedigree dog. But I did not often reply to Mr. Sandman’s questions for I understood that he preferred silence.

“‘Mongrelization’ is the natural consequence of the slack, liberal illogic — ‘all men are created equal.’ For the obvious fact is, in human nature as in nature itself, all men are created unequal.”

This seemed reasonable to me. I did not feel equal to anyone and certainly not to any adult.

My legs were growing weak. Mr. Sandman took the mug from me, and seated me on a sofa. In his kindly lecturing voice, which was very different from his classroom lecturing voice, he told me that there are hierarchies of Homo sapiens, the product of many thousands of years of evolution.

At the top were Aryans, the purest Caucasians — the “white race.” Northern Europe, UK, Germany, Austria. The crème of the crème. Beneath these were Middle Europeans, and Eastern Europeans, and beneath these Southern Europeans. By the time you got to Sicily you were in another, lower level of evolution — “Though some of the people are very physically attractive, paradoxically.”

There were the Eastern civilizations — Asian, Indian. Here too the lighter-skinned had reigned supreme for many thousands of years though in continuous danger of being infected, polluted by the darker-skinned who resided in the south.

In Africa, Egypt was the exception. A great ancient civilization, and (relatively) white-skinned. The remainder of the continent was dark-skinned — “Indeed, a ‘heart of darkness.’”

Earnestly and gravely Mr. Sandman spoke, facing me. His words were incantatory, numbing.

“Black Africans were brought to America as slaves, which would prove a disaster to our civilization. For the enslaved Africans would not remain enslaved through the meddlesome efforts of Abolitionists and radicals like Abraham Lincoln, and so it was to be inevitable that black Africans were granted freedom, and seized freedom, and wreaked havoc upon the white civilization that had hitherto given them shelter and employment and nurtured them... First, the military was ‘integrated.’ Then, public schools. Then, the Boy Scouts of America!” Mr. Sandman shook his head, disgusted.

“With integration comes disintegration. Some Negroes wish to dilute the white race by interbreeding while others wish to eradicate the white race of ‘demons’ entirely. Revenge is only natural in humankind. As species have to compete for food to survive, so races must compete for the dominion of the earth. The Führer understood this and launched a brilliant preemptive strike but his fellow Caucasians idiotically opposed him — who can forgive them! One day there will be a race war. To the death.” Mr. Sandman’s voice rose, vehemently as it sometimes did in class.

Führer. This too was a word out of a comic book. Yet, there was nothing funny about Führer now.

“Violet, have you heard of the fearful science of eugenics?”

To this, I could shake my head no.

“Why is it ‘fearful,’ you’re wondering? Because it tells truths many do not wish to hear.”

According to eugenics, Mr. Sandman explained, interbreeding — “miscegenation” — was a tragic error that would result in the destruction of Master Races, and free-breeding — “promiscuity” — would result in inferior races having as many babies as they could and overwhelming Master Races with their sheer numbers.

“We have seen how the black race is being contaminated by its own thugs — cities like Chicago have become overrun with gangs and drug addicts. They breed like rabbits — like rats! Slavery is the excuse their apologists give — its shadow has fallen upon all blacks, and renders them helpless as invalids. They have no morals. They are greedy and lustful. Their average IQs have been measured many degrees lower than those of whites and Asians. How many great mathematicians have been Negro? That’s right — none.”

Relenting then, “Well. Almost none. And they were light-skinned blacks, Arabs. In medieval times.”

And, “In all fairness, some dark-skinned persons have realized the danger of promiscuity. Certain black intellectuals and leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois believed that only ‘fit blacks’ should reproduce — not thugs! The ‘Talented Tenth’ of all races should mix.” But Mr. Sandman shuddered at the prospect.

In my fifth-period algebra class there were just three black students — two girls and a boy. Not often but occasionally Mr. Sandman would call upon Tyrell Jones, a stolid, solemn dark-skinned boy with thick glasses: “Ty-rell, come to the blackboard, please. Solve this problem for us.” Because Tyrell was one of the better students in the class, and black, Mr. Sandman seemed bemused by him. Tyrell was not a thug certainly. Yet Tyrell was not what Mr. Sandman called light-skinned.

“Here, Ty-rell. We are waiting to be impressed.”

Mr. Sandman handed Tyrell the chalk, which Tyrell near-fumbled in his nervousness.

Tyrell Jones was in two other classes with me. Teachers were protective of Tyrell for he was cripplingly shy, with few friends even among the black students. He wore heavy tweed jackets that might’ve belonged to his grandfather. He had allergies and was often blowing his nose, sucking air from a plastic device he kept in a pocket. He did not seem young. Standing at the board in Mr. Sandman’s class, chalk in his fingers, he appeared to be paralyzed with fear, staring at the problem Mr. Sandman had scrawled on the blackboard as if he had never seen it before though (probably) he’d successfully solved it in our homework assignment. His eyes magnified by the thick lenses skittered over the class of (mostly) white faces as if, desperate, he was looking for a friend.

I would have smiled at Tyrell Jones if he’d looked at me. Just a quick, small smile. For if I smiled at anyone, I did not (really) want them to see; I did not want to be responsible for a smile.

But I was seated too far to the right, out of Tyrell’s range of vision.

Mr. Sandman had been peering at me, frowning. Could he read my thoughts? In my fear of the man was a numbness of intellect: I had ceased thinking rationally.

“... race war, inevitable. If they can’t mongrelize our civilization they will attack us directly. Even Tyrell Jones of whom you seem fond... he is no friend of ours.”

I could not bear it, the way Mr. Sandman read my thoughts. Often I felt as if my head must be transparent, Mr. Sandman could peer inside.

“Most politicians shrink from associating themselves with the ‘race issue’ at the present time — they’re cowards. As a public school teacher, I am in an awkward position. At least, in this northern state. All around me, I believe are sympathizers — embattled ‘whites.’ And yet, we must not acknowledge one another. I’ve had to be the very soul of discretion. I never ‘discriminate’ against Negro students, when they are in my classes. Nothing could be proved against me if the NAACP tried to sue. I never go out of my way to help, or to hinder. But I rarely acknowledge them, either. For the most part they are invisible to me.”

This seemed sad, and wrong. I dared to ask Mr. Sandman why he didn’t like Ethel, Lorraine, and Tyrell, in our class? They were all nice, and Tyrell was smart.

“It isn’t a matter of ‘liking’ them as individuals. As individuals they might be inoffensive. They do behave themselves in our class. It’s the race that is a threat. Suppose the Negroes were carrying plague virus? You’d avoid them then, even if they are ‘nice.’”

“But — they don’t have the plague...”

“Silly girl! They have something worse than the plague. They have the virus that will destroy the white race, from within. Look, I am one of the most fair-minded teachers in the Port Oriskany school district. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt. But the Negroes, I do not. I draw the line. I don’t ‘see’ them and I don’t want to teach them. I am obliged to teach them, but I am not obliged to ‘see’ them.”

“Did a black person hurt you, Mr. Sandman?”

“Don’t be ridiculous! No one has hurt me. I’ve tried to explain to you! This isn’t personal, it’s principle. Even if I ‘liked’ one of them, I would not want our race to be contaminated by their genes... Some of them are attractive, yes, and even intelligent, to a degree. I grant you, there are astonishing black musicians, singers, dancers. Athletes — of course. But their cousins, brothers, fathers — those are the problems. The race issue in the US isn’t black people we know, our students, our servants, and the people who work for us, for instance in the school cafeteria, or collecting trash, it’s the ones making trouble politically, and the ones who are their relatives. Thugs just getting out of prison, or on their way in.” Mr. Sandman spoke meanly. Words bubbled up like bile.

My eyelids were becoming heavy. Mr. Sandman’s vehement words were like blows of a mallet that has been wrapped in a material like burlap. Hard, harsh yet numbing.

It was not an unpleasant sensation, sinking into sleep. For now my heart was beating less rapidly and nervously and my thoughts were not flashing and darting like heat lightning.

Gently the voice nudged: “Vio-let? Time to wake, dear.”

Gently the hand nudged my shoulder. With an effort I opened my eyes. Seeing a man stooping over me, feeling his humid meat-breath.

Seeing with alarm that the sun had disappeared entirely from the sky and night pressed against the windows.

In a silk robe I was lying on a bed. A four-poster bed that creaked as the man’s weight settled heavily upon it.

The silk robe was royal blue on the outside, ivory on the inside. It required some time for me to realize that something was wrong.

Was I naked, inside the robe? My skin tingled, as if I’d been bathed. Lotion rubbed into my skin. Talcum powder on my breasts, belly.

A shock to comprehend. I could not allow myself to comprehend.

The ends of my hair were damp. At the back of my mouth was something dry and gritty like sand.

“Sleeping Beauty! Time to open those beautiful myopic eyes.”

My eyes were open. But I was not seeing clearly.

Did he — bathe me? Remove my clothes, carry me into the bathroom?

In the bathroom was a marble tub with claw feet. An antique tub, deep as an Egyptian coffin. Vividly I remembered.

A worn tile floor, slick with wet. A camera flash, blinding.

“Ah, good! You’re waking up, are you? Yes.”

Mr. Sandman spoke distractedly. Perhaps I had slept too long.

He had freshly shaved, his skin exuded an air of heat. His thinning gray hair too was damp, brushed back from his creased forehead. Had Mr. Sandman changed into a fresh-laundered white shirt?

A panicked thought came to me — He is naked, below.

But no: Mr. Sandman was fully clothed. White shirt, dark trousers. At school he wore a white shirt, dark trousers, tweed coat. No necktie.

I was very confused. Sitting up, foolishly clutching the silk robe around me. It was shocking to me, to see my bare feet.

You can’t run away. Can’t run far. He would catch you.

He could kill you if he wished. Strangle you.

The man was waiting for me to realize. To scream. To become hysterical.

His fingers were poised. It was up to me.

Lying very still trying to summon my strength. Like water, that falls through outstretched fingers. Despair filled me, yet the calm of reason — silly bare feet, I could not run far.

“Your clothes are here, Violet. I had to launder them — they were soiled...”

Mr. Sandman spoke briskly, disapprovingly. Indicating, at the foot of the bed, clothes neatly folded. Strange to see, how neatly folded.

So grateful to see my clothes! I’d been clutching the silk robe around me, in terror that Mr. Sandman would snatch it away.

But he was a gentleman, you could see. The cobblestone house on Craigmont Avenue. So many books.

Could have wept, suffused with gratitude. For he would allow me to live, and he would forgive me the fear and repugnance in my face.

“Our secret, Violet. Do you understand, my dear?”

Yes. I understood. Understood something.

Understood that I’d been allowed to live. To continue.

Discreetly now Mr. Sandman retreated. Allowed me some privacy.

(A bedroom, dimly lighted. At the windows, darkness. The floor was covered in a thin carpet, against a farther wall a tall vertical mirror reflecting pale-shimmering light.)

Hurriedly I dressed. Underwear, jeans. Shirt and sweater. (It did seem as if my panties had been laundered, and had not quite dried in the dryer, the synthetic white fabric somewhat damp, at the same time somewhat warm.)

In his car driving me to my aunt’s and uncle’s house on Erie Street Mr. Sandman explained that, after school that day, there’d been an emergency meeting of the Math Club. As the Math Club secretary, I had had an obligation to attend.

“You understand, dear, that if you tell anyone about our friendship it will hurt you most. You will be expelled — immediately — from school. You may be sent to a facility for ‘delinquent minors.’ And I, too, might be shuttled to — an inferior — school...”

At this Mr. Sandman chuckled. As if it were so unlikely, such a possibility might occur.

Bathed me. Held me down. Licked me with his sandpaper tongue. Until I squealed, shrieked.

Took my hand in his and guided it between his legs where he was swollen, fattish.

Don’t pretend, Vio-let Rue. Dirty girl!

The face was contorted. Of the hue of a cooked tomato, about to burst. Eyes about to burst out of their sockets. Breath in gasps. Like a bicycle pump, my brothers’ bicycle pump, pumping air into a tire, that wheezing sound it makes if you are not doing it correctly, and air is escaping.

The hand gripping my hand, so that it hurts. Pushing, pressing, urgently, faster and faster, jamming my hand against his swollen flesh, my numbed hand, as he groans, rocks from side to side, eyes roll in their sockets, he is about to faint...

But no. None of this happened. For none of this was witnessed.

6.

“This endearing little blemish, Violet? — not a birthmark, I think, but a scar?”

Mr. Sandman drew his fat thumb over the star-shaped scar at my forehead. Involuntarily, I shivered.

“Futile to try to hide it, you know. And what caused it?”

“I... fell from a bicycle... When I was a little girl.”

“Ah! Tragic, in a female so young.”

Tragic. Mr. Sandman was joking, I supposed.

“Well, dear, if it’s any consolation — you were not destined to be a ‘beauty’ anyway. The scar gives you character. Other, merely pretty girls tend to be bland.”

Steeled myself to feel the fat lips against my forehead, to smell the hot meaty breath. Shut my eyes, shivering, waiting.

7.

One day, discovering Mr. Sandman’s (secret) archive.

A door just beyond the bathroom. A closet, with shelves containing what appeared to be photography albums, dates neatly labeled on their spines. Daring to pull down one of the albums, 1986–87, stunned to see photographs of a dark-haired girl of thirteen or fourteen posed on Mr. Sandman’s sofa, and on the four-poster bed. In some photos the girl was fully clothed, in others partly clothed. In others, naked inside the royal blue silk robe that was so familiar to me.

In the marble tub deep as an Egyptian coffin, head flung back against the rim of the tub and eyes half-shut, vacant. Beneath the surface of blue-tinged water, the pale thin body shimmering naked.

Many photographs of this girl— M.H.

Abruptly then, a sequence of photographs of another girl, of about the same age and physical type— B.W.

Wanly pretty (white) girls. Thin-armed, with small breasts, narrow torsos and hips. Captured in the throes of deep sleep. Positioned as if dead with eyes shut, hair spread out around their heads. Lips slightly parted and hands clasped on their chests.

Turning the stiff pages, and more photos... More (white) girls.

Also, locks of hair. Folded-in notes fastidiously recording measurements — height, weight, circumference of skull, waist, hips, bust.

Clumsily I shut the album, returned it to the shelf. Took down the most recent album which was 1991–92. But before I could open it there came Mr. Sandman’s voice from the kitchen: “Vio-let!”

Mr. Sandman was assuming that I was in the bathroom. In another minute he would come seek me. Quickly I shut the album, returned it to its place on the crammed shelf, shut the door.

Heart thudding in my chest. Such violence, like a fist punching my ribs.

None of the girls I’d recognized. My predecessors.

“Vio-let, dear. Come here at once.”

Already forgetting how in some of the photographs, the camera was close, intimate. Bruised mouth, open. The silk robe had been pulled open, or tossed away. Small pale breasts with soft nipples. The curve of a belly, a downy patch between legs.

In one, a girl with opened, dilated eyes. A look of fear. A smear of blood on her face. Hands not clasped on her chest in that attitude of exquisite peace but uplifted as if pushing away the camera.

But already forgetting. Forgotten. The ugliest sights.

Unless it was myself I’d seen, confused with another.

What had he done to this girl? Stared and stared.

She’d failed to fall asleep properly. She’d been stubborn, resistant.

Or he had not drugged this girl because he had not wanted her to sleep. He had wanted her awake, conscious.

But why was this? Why was one girl treated differently from the others?

You are that girl, you wish to think. Always, you are different from the others.

8.

Not true that all times were the same time. For there was the last time in Mr. Sandman’s house that would not be repeated.

Inadvertently he’d given me an overdose. A fraction of a teaspoon of fine-ground barbiturate dissolved into sweet blueberry juice but he’d miscalculated, or he’d become complacent over the months. For so obediently the stupor came upon me, each time a mimicry of the time before, his vigilance had diminished.

And then, Mr. Sandman couldn’t wake me.

Vio-let! Vio-let! Wake up, dear...

No memory of falling asleep. Only vaguely, something in my hand that had to be taken from my fingers to prevent its spilling.

A terrible heaviness. Sinking downward. Surface of the water far overhead, no agitation of my numbed limbs could bring me to it. Comfort in the dark cloudy water like many tongues licking together.

Violet! Open your eyes, try to sit up — the voice came from a distance, alarmed.

Shaking me, and shaking me. Bruising my shoulders with his hard fingers, naked inside the silk robe. My skin still warm from the bath, not yet beginning to cool into the chill of death. Slick creamy lotion caressed into my skin, smelling of lilac. Talcum powder on all the parts of my body that would be covered by my clothes, when I was clothed again.

Except: he could not wake me.

Did not dare call 911 (Mr. Sandman would confess) for then he’d be discovered, arrested. His secret life exposed.

Yet, he did not want the girl to die.

Well, yes — (Mr. Sandman would confess) — the desperate thought came to him, he might let the girl die, he would never succeed in waking the girl and so there was no alternative, he would let her die, and in that way he would be spared exposure and arrest, the outrage and loathing of the community of decent persons, he would be spared prison, how many years in prison, of which he could not bear even a few days. Yet, he did not want Violet Rue to die for (he would insist) he loved her...

Or this he would claim, afterward.

His solution was to dress me hurriedly, haphazardly, in the clothes he’d removed from me, and had partly laundered, and partly dried, and to wrap me in a blanket snatched from a cedar closet, and carry me out to his car, stumbling and sobbing; in the car, he drove me to the Port Oriskany hospital, to the ER which was at the side entrance of the building; half-carried, half-dragged me inside the plate-glass doors that parted automatically, and left me there, slumped on a chair; hurried back outside even as a hospital security guard was calling after him — “Mister! Hey mister!” He’d left the car running. Key in the ignition. He would make a quick getaway, was the reasoning. But so agitated, within seconds Mr. Sandman collided with a van turning into the hospital drive as he tried to escape.

In the telling it would become a story to provoke outrage, and yet mirth.

For, outside the tyranny of the math teacher’s classroom and house, the math teacher was revealed as bumbling, foolish. Bringing an unconscious fourteen-year-old to the brightly lit emergency room of a hospital, a hastily clothed and (seemingly) dying girl, believing that he might abandon the girl there, might simply run back out to his car idling just outside the entrance and drive away undetected, and then, so agitated, such a fool, colliding head-on with the first vehicle that approached him as if in his desperation he’d failed to see...

But mostly, the story provoked outrage. Of course!

A mathematics teacher entrusted with middle-school students, revealed to have been sexually abusing one of his ninth-grade pupils over a period of seven months, routinely drugging the girl to make her sexually compliant, at last overdosing the girl with barbiturates, bringing her blood pressure lethally low...

In the ER the girl whose heart was barely beating was revived. In the hospital driveway the ninth-grade algebra teacher was arrested by Port Oriskany police officers.

Taken into police custody in handcuffs, brought downtown to police headquarters. Overnight in the county jail and in the morning denied bail by a repelled judge. Suicide watch, for the distraught man had raved and sobbed and uttered many wild things, pleas and threats.

It would be revealed that Arnold Sandman, fifty-one, longtime resident of Port Oriskany, faculty member since 1975 of Port Oriskany Middle School, had been accused of “unacceptable” behavior at previous schools, including a Catholic school in Watertown; but he’d been allowed to resign from the positions, and school administrators at two schools had agreed to provide him with “strong” recommendations, to get him out of their districts without a scandal. For there was the uncertainty of several girls’ accounts — there was the uncertainty that the girls’ parents would even allow them to make statements to the police, which would be revealed to the public. And Mr. Sandman denied all — everything. And Mr. Sandman did speak persuasively. And Mr. Sandman was, all conceded, a capable, if eccentric teacher whose students tended to do well on state examinations; in fact, better on the average than students taught by other math teachers. Jocosely it was said that Mr. Sandman “terrorized” students into learning math, where other, more gentle methods failed.

This time, however, Arnold Sandman would plead “no contest” to charges of protracted child endangerment, sexual molestation of a minor child, drug statute violations, abduction and false imprisonment.

The cobblestone house on Craigmont Avenue would be searched top to bottom. The incriminating archive would be discovered. Of thirty-one girls photographed by Mr. Sandman over a period of eighteen years all but six were identified; of these all but two were living in upstate New York and vicinity; the two no longer living had died “suspiciously” (suicide?) but in no ways connected with Arnold Sandman.

None of the photographed girls could remember being photographed by their ninth-grade math teacher. None could remember having been sexually abused, coerced, threatened by him but most could remember “after-school tutorials” and their math teacher being “very kind” and “patient” with them.

9.

“Violet. Please try to remember. Tell us...”

But I could not. My throat was shut up tight, there were no words to loosen it.

For some time I was very sick. Too weak to sit up in bed. Fluids dripped into my veins, too weak to eat or drink.

No. Can’t remember. Don’t make me.

Amnesia was a balm. Wept with gratitude for all that I did not remember and not for what I did remember.

The shock of it is, what was intimate becomes public. What occurred without words becomes a matter of others’ words.

Sexual abuse of a minor. Abduction. False imprisonment.

In that deep sleep, in which my heart had barely continued to beat, at the very bottom of the marble coffin, I had been protected, safe. Almost I would think that Mr. Sandman’s arms had embraced me.

Vio-let Rue! Vio-let Rue!

You know, I love you.

He had never uttered these words to me, I was sure. Yet often I heard them, confused with voices at a distance. Muffled laughter.

“... what that terrible man did to you. Try to...”

But I did not remember. And Mr. Sandman was my friend. No one else was my friend.

Aunt Irma staring at me, disbelieving. Uncle Oscar, with repugnance.

For I would not testify against the abuser. My eyes were heavy-lidded, my voice was slow, slurred, insolent.

No. You can’t make me. I’ve said — I don’t remember.

There was a female police officer, questioning me. But I knew better than to make that mistake again.

A (female) gynecologist who would report no vaginal or anal penetration, no (physical) evidence of sexual abuse. A (female) therapist who would report probable extreme trauma, dissociation. Ms. Herne from the Children’s Protective Agency.

It would be held against me that I was uncooperative with authorities trying to establish a case of repeated and sustained sexual abuse against Mr. Sandman unless it might be argued that I was a victim, mentally ill, unable to testify against the teacher who’d drugged and abused me for a period of approximately seven months.

Mr. Sandman had been careful, fastidious. My clothes had been laundered — no DNA. (Except an incriminating trace would be discovered on my sneakers.)

If you don’t help to convict him he will hurt other girls, they told me. I thought — Other girls will be hurt whether Mr. Sandman is in prison or not. That is our punishment.

“Violet. No one is putting pressure on you...”

You are all putting pressure on me.

“... but you must tell us, you must take your time and tell us, all that you can remember. When did that man first...”

Ms. Herne was visibly upset. For (she believed) there’d been a special understanding between us, I’d known that I could trust her. And yet, I must not have trusted Ms. Herne for the abuse had been going on for months during which she’d met with me several times and there’d been no hint.

Of course, there’d been a hint. Plenty of hint. Ms. Herne had failed to detect, that was all.

And now with the (ugly, relentless) publicity in the local media it hardly looked as if Dolores Herne of the Port Oriskany Children’s Protective Agency had been very good at her job, one of her at-risk juvenile clients having been sexually abused, terrorized by a teacher, over a period of seven months and she had not noticed.

I’d thought — Not abuse but punishment. And not the worst punishment either.

10.

And what had happened to Arnold Sandman? He’d been in custody in the county jail. Wisely, he would not risk a trial. (The prosecutor was calling for a sentence of ninety-nine years.) Instead, Mr. Sandman would follow his attorney’s advice and plead no contest, and express contrition, and repentance, and shame for his crimes; and the presiding judge would sentence him to twenty-five to thirty years in the maximum-security prison at Attica.

A death sentence. Arnold Sandman would never survive Attica.

None of this was known to me, at the time. Though if I shut my eyes and began to drift in the rapid current that was always there, inside my eyelids, far below the Lock Street bridge, amid the churning writhing snakes of the hue of eggplant, there came Mr. Sandman to stoop over me, his face no longer jocular and mocking but contorted with grief.

Violet! You know, of all the girls I loved only you.

There came a timid knocking at a door. Aunt Irma asking please, could she speak with me?

Pulled the covers over my head. So that I could see Mr. Sandman more clearly. So that I could hear him more clearly.

At last the timid knocking ceased. Whoever was outside the door had gone away and left me alone with Mr. Sandman.