Jodie Picoult - Nineteen Minutes

“Come on,” Alex said, leading Josie upstairs to the bathroom. There, she peeled off her daughter’s shirt, washed her cuts, and covered them with Neosporin and Band-Aids. She sat down in front of Josie, on the bathmat that looked like it was made of Cookie Monster skin. “You want to talk about it?”

Josie’s lower lip quivered, and she started to cry. “It’s Peter,” she said. “Drew picks on him all the time and Peter gets hurt, so today I wanted it to be the other way around.”

“Aren’t there teachers on the playground?”

“Aides.”

“Well, you should have told them that Peter was getting teased. Beating up Drew only makes you just as bad as him in the first place.”

“We went to the aides,” Josie complained. “They told Drew and the other kids to leave Peter alone, but they never listen.”

“So,” Alex said, “you did what you thought was the best thing at the time?”

“Yeah. For Peter.”

“Imagine if you always did that. Let’s say you decided that you liked someone else’s coat better than yours, so you took it.”

“That would be stealing,” Josie said.

“Exactly. That’s why there are rules. You can’t break the rules, not even when it seems like everyone else is doing it. Because if you do-if we all do-then the whole world becomes a very scary place. One where coats get stolen and people get beat up on the playground. Instead of doing the best thing, we sometimes have to settle for the rightest thing.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The best thing is what you think should be done. The rightest thing is what needs to be done-when you think not just of you and how you feel, but also the extra stuff-who else is involved, and what’s happened before, and what the rules say.” She glanced at Josie. “Why didn’t Peter fight?”

“He thought he’d get in trouble.”

“I rest my case,” Alex said.

Josie’s eyelashes were spiked with tears. “Are you mad at me?”

Alex hesitated. “I’m angry at the aides for not paying attention when Peter was getting teased. And I’m not thrilled that you punched a boy in the nose. But I’m proud of you for wanting to defend your friend.” She kissed Josie on the forehead. “Go get some clothes that don’t have holes in them, Wonder Woman.”

When Josie scrambled off into her bedroom, Alex remained sitting on the bathroom floor. It struck her that dispensing justice was really more about being present and engaged than anything else-unlike those aides on the playground, for example. You could be firm without being bossy; you could make it a point to know the rules; you could take all evidence into consideration before coming to a conclusion.

Being a good judge, Alex realized, was not all that different from being a good mother.

She stood up, went downstairs, and picked up the phone. Whit answered on the third ring. “Okay,” she said. “Tell me what I have to do.”

The chair was too small beneath Lacy’s bottom; her knees did not fit under the desk; the colors on the walls were too bright. The teacher who sat across from her was so young that Lacy wondered if she could go home and drink a glass of wine without breaking any laws. “Mrs. Houghton,” the teacher said, “I wish I could give you a better explanation, but the fact is, some kids are simply magnets for teasing. Other children see a weakness, and they exploit it.”

“What’s Peter’s weakness?” she asked.

The teacher smiled. “I don’t see it as a weakness. He’s sensitive, and he’s sweet. But that means he’s far less likely to be running around with the other boys playing police chase than he is to be coloring in a corner with Josie. The other children in the class notice.”

Lacy remembered being in elementary school, not that much older than Peter, and raising chicks from an incubator. The six eggs had hatched, but one of the chicks was born with a gnarled leg. It was always the last to the feed tray and the water trough, and it was scrawnier and more tentative than its siblings. One day, while the class watched in horror, the maimed chick was pecked to death by the others.

“The behavior of these other boys is not being tolerated,” the teacher assured Lacy. “When we see it, we immediately send the child to the principal.” She opened her mouth as if she was about to say something, and then snapped it shut.

“What?”

The teacher looked down at the desk. “It’s just that, unfortunately, that response can have the opposite effect. The boys identify Peter as the reason they’re in trouble, and that perpetuates the cycle of violence.”

Lacy felt her face growing hot. “What are you doing, personally, to make sure this doesn’t happen again?”

She expected the teacher to talk about a time-out chair, or some retributive punishment that would be handed out if Peter was again taunted by the in crowd. But instead, the young woman said, “I’m showing Peter how to stand up for himself. If someone cuts him in the lunch line, or if he’s teased, to say something in return instead of just accepting it.”

Lacy blinked at her. “I…I can’t believe I’m hearing this. So if he gets shoved, he’s supposed to shove back? When his food gets knocked on the floor, he should reciprocate?”

“Of course not-”

“You’re telling me that for Peter to feel safe in school, he’s going to have to start acting like the boys who do this to him?”

“No, I’m telling you about the reality of grade school,” the teacher corrected. “Look, Mrs. Houghton. I can tell you what you want to hear. I can say that Peter is a wonderful child, which he is. I can tell you that the school will teach tolerance and will discipline the boys who’ve been making Peter’s life so miserable, and that this will be enough to stop it. But the sad fact is that if Peter wants it to end, he’s going to have to be part of the solution.”

Lacy looked down at her hands. They looked gargantuan on the surface of the tiny pupil’s desk. “Thank you. For your honesty.” She stood up carefully, because that is how it’s best to move in a world where you no longer fit.

She let herself out of the kindergarten classroom. Peter was waiting on a small wooden bench beneath the cubbies in the hall. It was her job as Peter’s mother to smooth the road in front of him so that he wouldn’t falter. But what if she couldn’t bulldoze on his behalf all the time? Is that what the teacher had been trying to tell her?

She squatted down in front of Peter and reached for his hands. “You know I love you, right?” Lacy said.

Peter nodded.

“You know I only want what’s best for you.”

“Yes,” Peter said.

“I know about the lunch boxes. I know what’s been going on with Drew. I heard about Josie punching him. I know the kinds of things he says to you.” Lacy felt her eyes fill with tears. “The next time it happens, you have to stick up for yourself. You have to, Peter, or I…I’m going to have to punish you.”

Life wasn’t fair. Lacy had been passed over for promotions, no matter how hard she’d worked. She’d seen mothers who’d taken meticulous care of themselves deliver stillborns, while crack addicts had healthy infants. She’d seen fourteen-year-olds dying of ovarian cancer before they ever got a chance to really live. You couldn’t fight the injustice of fate; you could only suffer it and hope that one day it might be different. But somehow, it was even more difficult to stomach on behalf of your child. It tore Lacy apart to have to be the one to pull back that curtain of innocence, so that Peter would see that no matter how much she loved him-no matter how much she had wanted this world to be perfect for him-it would always fall short.

Swallowing, she stared at Peter, trying to think of what she could do to spur him to self-defense, which punishment would make him change his behavior, even as it broke her heart to make him do just that. “If this happens again…no playdates with Josie for a month.”