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rumors of a volcano lurking underneath the city. They had just discovered it, a volcano that had gone unnoticed but was now given official membership in the geological phenomenon known as the Ring of Fire. It was one of those news stories that made everyone giggle butmight also be true. It was like love in that way: Look at this! What’s going to happen here? “Unless the volcano erupts” became a joke, like “See you Friday, unless the volcano erupts,” or “I’ll love you forever, unless the volcano erupts.”
    “So tomorrow I take them to see birds?” Helena said, thinking of what to wear.
    “But today,” Andrea said, “you do a lesson on birds. Magpies in particular. Do you know anything about magpies?”
    When my mother was young she went to Thanksgiving at a friend’s house and asked her friend’s mother what she could do to help. “You can make a butter bird,” the mother said to my mother, and handed her two small paddles and a mound of butter. A butter bird is, butter shaped into the shape of a decorative bird, but the point is, why is there cruelty? Why do people ask other people to do impossible things? Why behave this way? Why is there mean, when there are better things than mean, love particularly? “Oh, I know everything about all kinds of birds,” Helena said, like it might be true. “At university I studied ornithology before switching to poetry.”
    “In America,” said cruel Andrea, “we don’t say at university . We say in college . Do you have information about magpies specifically?”
    “I know a thing or two about magpies,” Helena said helplessly. “A thing or two.”
    “Then I’ll keep all the brochures the Men’s Organization sent me,” Andrea said, standing up smug and skinny and smug. “We’re combining both grades, so it’ll be fifty kids, in one hour from now. You can’t smoke in here.”
    “I just like to keep a cigarette in my hand,” Helena said, putting it back in the pack. “It helps me think. Tell me, what happened to the last woman who had this job?”
    “She did a unit on idiomatic expressions that went way over the kids’ heads,” Andrea said, “so I fired her.”
    The door shut and Helena was alone in the lounge, wishing it were legal to smoke so she could light a cigarette and put it in her eye. Instead she ran to the school library where there was a miracle: The Magpies: The Ecology and Behaviour of Black-billed and Yellow-billed Magpies , by Tim Birkhead with illustrations by David Quinn, T & AD Poyser Publishers, London, England, first printing. By the time the hour passed away Helena had a list of interesting facts which she said out loud, and when Andrea came to check on her the fifty children were silent and interested, working hard on a creative expression exercise. “Attractive, artful, and aggressive are all terms which have been used to describe magpies, and they are all accurate,” is the first sentence in The Magpies: The Ecology and Behaviour of Black-billed and Yellow-billed Magpies , and Helena told them they could write a story which was either attractive, artful, or aggressive, their choice.
    “That worked,” Andrea admitted, giving Helena a shiny smile as the students filed out of the room. “Of course, it was probably your accent. The kids love foreign accents like that.”
    “That would explain America’s rabid interest in audio recordings of Winston Churchill’s speeches,” Helena said, but Andrea was telling her to watch her purse.
    “Watch my purse,” Andrea said, “while I get your paperwork. I’m afraid you won’t get your money for twelve weeks.”
    “Okay,” Helena said, but when Andrea left the room sheopened the purse and found the wallet. There was a ridiculous amount of cash money and she took all of it. It was gone and in Helena’s pocket long before Andrea returned with a plastic cup.
    “We have to test you for drugs, is how we do it in America,” Andrea said. “You have to pee in this.”
    On