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the classroom had given me. This was okay. I had been ready for the change, and thus was finding this new work rewarding.
    Chad and I had parted ways over the summer. We’d been together for much of the previous three years and the last year, in particular, we’d grown close. Sheila, in her own way, had brought us closer still. Previously, Chad had only been part of my personal life, a world I tended to keep strictly separate from my life in the classroom, but with Sheila’s hearing in March, he had been drawn into that too. The magic of that night when Chad had taken Sheila and me out for pizza had been powerful and all three of us, I think, got caught up in a dreamy moment of believing we were a family. It’d seemed so right just then—Chad, Sheila and I; however, in the cold, hard light of day, I knew it wasn’t right. Chad was older than I was and had sown his wild oats, but I was still very young. I knew I was not yet ready for the commitments that a closer relationship with Chad would entail. Because commitments were so important to me, I wouldn’t make them lightly. So, seductive as the vision of family life was at that point, I knew I would fail at it if I tried it now. So this, too, lay behind my decision to change tracks and move away from the area. I loved Chad and I didn’t want to break up our relationship, but I didn’t want to intensify it either. Putting distance between us seemed a reasonable solution.
    Chad, of course, figured out what I was doing and he wasn’t particularly happy about it. For him the time was right to settle down and get married. If anything, those last eight weeks with Sheila had verified for him that this was what he wanted and he chafed at my uncertainty, angry with me onemoment for my immaturity, poignantly vulnerable the next, when he bemoaned the unfairness of the fact that no matter how much a man might be ready to be a father, he couldn’t be one without a woman. I felt awful, as one always does when relationships crumble, but I went ahead with my plans regardless, knowing in my heart even more certainly that this was the right thing to do.
    Sheila went into Sandy McGuire’s third-grade class, and for all intents and purposes, she did extremely well. Sandy kept me well informed with letters each month or so. I was gratified to hear that Sheila was settling in, making friends and achieving good academic results, and even more so to hear that she was coming to school cleaner and better fed, which made me hope the home situation was improving.
    My only other source of information was Anton, who still lived in the migrant camp himself and occasionally saw Sheila there. Despite my misgivings when Anton had first come to my classroom the previous autumn, he had turned out to be a natural teacher. He had tremendous rapport, particularly with the slower children and with the Spanish-speakers, of whom there were many in our migrant population. As a consequence, he had decided to work on his teacher qualifications at the nearby community college while still continuing as an aide in the school district. He was well informed on how all my former students were doing, and thus, a letter from Anton was a real treat.
    I wrote to Sheila, as I had promised her I would do, and Sheila occasionally wrote back. She was, however, only seven, and as with all seven-year-olds, no matter how gifted, letters were clearly a chore. They came erratically and if I had not had Sandy’s letters in the interim, I really wouldn’t have had any idea of what was going on. Indeed, the contents of Sheila’s letters were even more erratic than their number. She was given to sending me her homework for some reason and that was all I sometimes received for months on end.
    All went smoothly. Sheila finished her year with Sandy an enthusiastic, if somewhat quirky, student, and was promoted to the fourth grade. I received a school picture of her from Sandy, showing her in a bright-yellow dress, her smile sweet