There was quite a brouhaha about that swastika. It was 1960 then, not that long after the war to end all wars. Eve’s parents came to school and impressed everyone with their directness and civility. That made Rita pay a little more attention to Eve.

“She really is bright,” Rita reported to Joan. “She’s been having these headaches and they make her obnoxious. But I had her vision tested yesterday, and she’s getting glasses now. The headaches should go away. I don’t know, Joanie,” Rita conjectured, “but I think that girl will grow into a fine person. Interesting, anyway. Unlike the others.”

“The others in class?”

“No, just the other three. Isolating them has worked for the rest of the class. But Betty Sue and Kurt and Pete? I tell you: I look at their faces and I can imagine them roughening into adulthood and then sagging into age. I can do that. And I can imagine someone analyzing their childhoods at the ends of their lives, turn it around and look from here at the adults they’ll likely be…

“Betty Sue won’t get far from where she is now. Kurt will probably go into sales and be some kind of corrupt, and I imagine Pete will lead your standard life of quiet desperation.”

Rita didn’t manage to forecast the fights.

There were no incidents of note between the swastika graffiti and early spring. Then Betty Sue had occasion to “call out’ first Kurt and then Eve.

Heard on the playground: “Betty Sue’s a re-tard” and “I’m rubber – you’re glue – whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you” and “Make me” and “I don’t make babies; I hurt ‘em.”

Reported to Rita by some of her good students: Betty Sue called Kurt out. They met (with their seconds: Patty for her and Pete for him) in the field between school and the community center. Betty Sue provoked Kurt into throwing the first punch but she won. Smaller than Kurt, she was more athletic than he, and she was angrier.

Reported later, by Eve-with-her-parents: Betty Sue called Eve out and Eve tried to ignore her. She didn’t react to the taunting words during school hours, and she started for home with her neighbor Cindy right after the last bell. Betty Sue and Patty caught up with them in the middle of the fighting field. The taunting began again. Eve tried to keep walking. Betty Sue got in her way and snarled in her face. Cindy just stood there. Other kids arrived and formed a loose sympathetic circle, but no one intervened. Betty Sue continued to provoke, with Patty providing unnecessary encouragement. Still Eve wouldn’t fight. Finally Betty Sue exorcized her hostility by defacing Eve’s white cotton blouse. With a number two pencil, she wrote every bad word or phrase she knew on the blouse yoke and back. Eve endured the inscription in silence. She tried to be dignified. She wondered why no one helped her. When she got home and her mother hugged her out of her wrecked blouse, they both saw that the pressure of the pencil had made small lacerations on her shoulders and upper back.

Betty Sue got suspended for three days. She had to apologize to Eve. Eve got shamed by the fight. She had to work her way through that. Rita got to reckon with the fact that she needed to change jobs. She wasn’t doing these kids any good as a teacher any more.

She made some thoughtful forecasts to Joanie at the end of that year. They had already decided that between Rita’s savings and Joan’s earnings she could afford to go back to school in psychology. So what if she was sixty-three: she came from longevity…

She predicted that Kurt would have an okay life. She figured he’d always have an asshole childhood but he’d likely end up a hospitable, semi-educated man. She predicted a boring future for Pete; he didn’t have the oomph needed to even begin to live up to potential. She knew Eve would grow into her brilliance and be a formidable successful personality. She assumed Betty Sue would continue her family legacy of poverty and sloth. She expected she herself would be a satisfied therapist; that’s why she made the big change.

As it turned out, she was wrong about herself and Betty Sue. Rita made it through the program and got the license, but she found her new career disappointing. It was even more repetitious than teaching, and promoted more pessimism.

Betty Sue blew everyone away by making it to and through college (sociology) on a financial-need scholarship, and then through law school on a scholastic one. She was a litigator for a mere six years before starting on what has been a meteoric political career.

Even Kurt ‘n Pete vote for her.