When I picked T. up from school on Thursday, she was very thoughtful. Scott was able to leave work to get L., which was a big help logistically for me that day; but also, it gave me the chance to talk with one-on-one T. a little on the ride home--something we don't get to do much if L. is in the car with us.
"Everything go okay at school?" I asked.
"Oh yes!" she said enthusiastically. But then she lapsed into quiet. I waited, knowing T. was gathering her thoughts. Even though she's a chatterbox, she tells stories carefully, sorting through the words in her mind first, before they spill out.
"At recess today we found a praying mantis!"
"I love those," I said. "They're so interesting, and beautiful, too."
A crowd of kids had gathered, T. told me, to watch the insect. It was brown, like the tree trunk it clung to, and had a few mottled spots near its tail. The group had almost instantly divided, T. said, into two: the kids who liked the praying mantis, and those who didn't.
"Were there kids who didn't like it?" I asked, surprised. I shouldn't have been, I suppose, since praying mantises are bugs, after all, and pretty big and leggy ones. But I have always been fascinated and charmed by them. In Greece, they call praying mantises "horses of the Virgin Mary" and they're supposed to be lucky.
"Oh yes," T. said. "I was in the group of kids who liked the praying mantis."
"What did the other kids say? The ones who didn't like it?"
"They said it was too different, and weird-looking to like," she said.
"What did you think?"
"I thought it was beautiful. It wasn't scary at all!"
T. went on to tell me about her friend S., who had fallen in love with the mantis on the spot. She'd wanted to touch it, but the other kids screeched in alarm at this. Then recess was over, and it was time to go back inside. S. was sad that she hadn't reached out to touch the praying mantis, T. told me.
"Maybe it will still be there tomorrow," I said. "She can touch it gently then."
"No, it won't be," T. said emphatically.
"How do you know?"
"Right after the bell rang a boy named B. hit it and knocked it down."
I felt like you might when you've been following a light and interesting story only to have it take an ugly and dramatic twist right at the end. "What? No!"
"He did," T. said.
"Maybe the praying mantis is okay," I said, wanting it to be, so desperately. "I bet it's okay."
"I don't think so," T. said, quietly. "He hit it hard. It was on the ground."
I felt profoundly sad and heavy-hearted, and indignant, hearing that. All of a sudden the praying mantis seemed so symbolic, like a creature in a fable. If I were to write a children's book about tolerance and difference and injustice, I thought, this would be the story I would tell.