Paper Angels by Donna Obeid

In the winter of the second grade, Miss Rudd wrote K-E-V-I-N in giant chalk letters on the board and told us he’d be coming back that day. Miss Rudd had shiny hazel hair that flowed down to her waist; she wore billowy blouses, bellbottoms, clogs, and blue eye shadow. She called us her sweet kids. Months earlier, she huddled us close and told us – Kevin’s had an accident, sweet kids. He’d been watching television with his big brother, she said, and the wires sparked. It was 1980 and things like that still happened. We were told they tried to run. We were told he’d been brave. We were told to be kind. We were told he’d look different. We were instructed not to touch him. We were firmly told not to stare. We were told, but none of us could look away when he came into the classroom that day. 

He was purple-raw and wrinkly like he’d become an old man. A hole had been made in his esophagus and a plastic tube came oddly out of it, like a pipe cleaner sticking out of a doll. His voice was thin as thread. He coughed in between every few words. His pale hair had been sewn back onto his forehead. His skin had been patched on; in places, we could see the seams between the patches. He smiled and even laughed. He said it was good to be back. 

At the side of the classroom, orange slices floated in the red punch bowl. Ham sandwiches and celery sticks filled with peanut butter and cookies in shapes of cars were neatly lined on trays. We watched as he moved stiffly towards the refreshments. We watched again as he turned away. We watched as he scratched the side of his face with a raw forefinger and looked around the room at our cut-out paper angels and origami butterflies and our little sprouts growing in the Styrofoam cups at the windowsill, and suddenly it seemed like someplace he’d never been. 

His bottom lip quivered. He began to cry. The tears bubbled on his skin like drops of water on a hot stove. His mother, in an orange maternity dress, came from the corner and put her arm around his thin shoulders. She bent down to talk him through it. He sniffled louder. He coughed like something was caught in his tube. 

We watched each other now, wondering what to do. We watched as they left without saying goodbye. We went back to our seats and were allowed to talk quietly amongst ourselves while Miss Rudd stood in the hallway speaking with the principal, a lanky man who wore wire rim glasses and argyle vests. 

“It’s snowing,” someone said when she came back. 

“Is it?” she asked and began slowly erasing each letter from the board. When she turned around, she smiled at us with smeared blue eyes. “OK, sweet kids,” she sighed, beginning the lesson again. 

His desk sat empty by the window for the rest of the school year; a slant of sunlight sometimes falling across it in the afternoons. We learned spelling and the multiplication tables and how to tell time. We learned the Apostles’ Creed. That year, we learned someone’s dog was run over, someone’s sister was stillborn, someone’s father shot himself in the garage. We learned that Charlotte the spider ends up dying. We were the little witnesses to all the despair, learning that none of it would ever be fair. 

Donna Obeid is an award-winning author and educator who has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. She earned a BA in English and Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and an MA and MFA from American University. Donna grew up in a suburb outside of Detroit, has worked and lived in Southeast Asia and North Africa, and currently lives in Stanford, California. Read more of her writing at: www.donnaobeid.com.

3 May 2024