41/365 Meeting Joey

"Hi, I'm Joey," she says as we're introduced in the school hallway. "Bill says we're going to be working on the garden together."

"Yeah, I'm the school liaison or something like that." I unlock my classroom door and the two of us step in. "Bill" slips away, his work done here. Joey goes over to the windows and looks down at the asphalt lot with the dead tree in the middle where there will someday be a garden.

"Well, I've been meeting a lot with the anonymous donor, you know, being on finance commission and all I know who's who." I don't know for sure if this is supposed to get me going, and if so, I don't know how, frankly. I'm not even sure whether I'm supposed to say anything. So I give a minimal response--mmm--and put my things down on my desk.

My desk. I've scrounged it from the defunct library along with a set of bookshelves. My chalkboards can hardly be called that, being nailed up plywood painted with green chalkboard paint. They will eat chalk over the course of the year and I will snatch up the room across the hall for next year faster than you can say gesundheit. But for now, I'm trying to decide how much I need to decorate for middle schoolers and wondering what this Joey wants from me.

I know her from church, meaning, I've seen her around. I don't know her. I've seen her name in the bulletin--all over the bulletin, in fact. And I know she's from California, which does not endear me to her any more than the fact that she doesn't work but also has no kids. And she's maybe 5 years my senior.

"Yeah," she keeps going, "I had my landscaper in on the first meetings. The next one is tomorrow afternoon. I'll be there, but I'll be late. I sit on a board for a women's shelter here in town and they're having a lunch meeting. But Piper will be there, and maybe even our anonymous donor. She's a real treat. She's going to hate that the school has a part in this. I was over at her house the other day. Anyway. I probably shouldn't say anything."

She turns back from the window and I'm struck by two things. First, she is very tall. Second, she is sizing me up. She is looking me up and down and at the things in the room--which aren't my things, after all, but the grungy discarded furniture and books from around the school. But this moment, I know now, defined the first entire year of our relationship. She was a tall blond Californian with insider information and leisure time, and I was a short working class brunette with second-hand ideas and a chip on my shoulder.

Oh, it was going to be GREAT.