“For those who would squash dreamers and their dreams, God had surely sent Miss Greenlee as the antidote.”
–
Miss Lucinda Greenlee was utterly, completely beautiful from head to toe, and then some.
I could tell right away she loved being a teacher because she smiled freely and often, like sunshine in summer. And kids couldn’t help but smile right back at her.
She didn’t look at all like the other teachers in their plain, prim dresses and drab catalog-order suits. Miss Greenlee wore lovely, smart blouses from sophisticated foreign lands, and skirts splashed with patterns of butterflies or colorful birds or bold, bright stripes running down them — or big flowers you could almost smell like a flow of perfume from the quality fabrics.
Sometimes she even wore handsome slacks with a fitted waist, like the women who’d worked in the factories during the war. Only Miss Greenlee’s slacks were soft and butter colored, like a movie actress might wear. And her shiny, blond hair spilled long and glamorous past the back of her open collars, offsetting her clear, blue eyes.
On the opposite end of the food chain, however, I was shocked to discover one teacher at Havenwood School who was certifiably, pure awful . . .
She was old and sour, with withered skin as blanched as baking flour. And every day wore the same depressing, dark crepe dress that reeked of mothballs, with her sparse, slate-colored hair trapped in a twisted knot at the back of her neck.
Her nose was shaped like a wilted carrot, her mouth an unforgiving slit. And her narrow, hateful eyes were black and gleamless.
Naturally, I figured she was about as friendly as a rattlesnake with rabies.
Artistic License
I’d been going to school for less than a week when I spied the old woman out in the schoolyard, planted stubbornly under a hickory tree with her hands on her bony hips, hurling disapproving scowls like javelins aimed at Miss Greenlee’s classroom.
I watched in awe as she sputtered and spewed the-devil-only-knew-what grievances to our handsome, well-groomed principal, Mister Attabee, while he stood there and took it like a saint.
When she finally stopped to gasp for breath, Mister Attabee removed his hands from his trouser pockets and raised them, ever so slowly, to his chest. Then he hooked his thumbs behind his suspenders, cleared his throat and ended that conversation once and for all.
“Ahem! Pardon me, Miss Hickey, but Miss Greenlee has artistic license. Don’t you have a Latin class to teach somewhere?”
And away she huffed with her pruney face screwed up so tight it practically swallowed her warts — plotting a lonely revenge, no doubt.
Dream Teacher and Witch
Timmy and Mama had warned me about Miss Hickey; they just hadn’t told me how ugly she was.
She’d been terrorizing Havenwood School, droning Latin grammar at snoozing students with her witchy voice and a willow switch hidden under her desk, for as long as anyone could remember. And having witnessed her encounter with Mister Attabee, how she managed to keep her job was a mystery to me. But I concluded that he must have had his reasons to allow it.
One thing was sure: He was right to defend Miss Greenlee.
I imagined she had her artistic license framed somewhere at home, too, because she let us paint pictures of whatever we wanted, She encouraged us to render our art as we saw fit and never questioned our choices. You could draw conclusions in the dirt and call it art, for all she cared . . .
For those who would squash dreamers and their dreams, God had surely sent Miss Greenlee as the antidote.
It was on my first day of school, as I was gazing out the window and across the distant hilltops toward Silver Bear Lake, when she floated like a whisper past my desk and murmured, “Daydreams are like butterflies.”
And her words set instantly in place a precious and unspoken bond between us.
~
Copyright©2008, 2013 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.
Spirit Of The Butterfly by Carol Cavalaris
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Havenwood Tales 