Read Online What Has Become of You by Jan Elizabeth Watson - Free Book Online Page B

rose over that, with several girls trying to outtalk one another—Autumn, Cecily-Anne, and Harmony the loudest of them all. Seeing that she’d opened the floodgates of healthy debate pleased Vera; the fact that some of the quieter girls in the class had jumped into the fray felt like a success of sorts, even if the discussion had steered toward dangerous waters. Vera wondered if she had been wrong to say what she had said—that
anyone
could kill someone. It seemed like one of those glib comments that wouldn’t hold up under logical scrutiny or, more distressing still, could be taken out of context:
Hey, Mom, do you know what my English sub said today? She said we all could be murderers!
Try as she might, she couldn’t seem to keep her interest in true crime out of the English classroom. But Loo Garippa had started it, not she.
    At the end of class, Vera practically had to yell over the girls: “Please note the reading assignment on the board. And don’t forget, I’m collecting journals on Friday—at least two entries from each of you.”
    Every class, Vera knew, had its regular latecomers and those who were slow to leave at its close. She had come to expect to see Jensen lagging behind the others, but Sufia Ahmed, who was usually eager to get on her cell phone and out the door as soon as class was dismissed, was not one who tended to stay behind. On this day, however, she remained in her seat, hands folded, studying Vera with her large, grave, liquid eyes while the other girls gathered their things and left. The class was empty except for her and Vera and, of course, Jensen, who was bent over tying her bootlace, the muddy sole propped against the chair where she’d sat.
    “Miss Lundy, I would like to speak to you,” Sufia Ahmed said in her soft voice. Vera had to step close to her just to hear her.
    “Yes, Sufia, what is it?”
    “What you said today? I do not think it is right.”
    Here it is,
Vera thought—
a moral dissenter at last.
“Are you referring to my comment that anyone can murder someone?” Vera asked gently.
    “Yes,” Sufia said. “And I do not think such things are right to talk about in class.”
    “I absolutely don’t mean to be offensive to anyone. Please bear in mind that my opinions are just my opinions; you’re encouraged to think critically, to question what I say. But what is right and wrong for
me
to bring up in class is my determination to make.”
    “I am here to learn about the literature of America and of Europe, the great literature of all the world. I am not here to learn about killing. Killing was one of the reasons my parents fled their country.”
    Vera nodded, shutting her eyes for just a fraction of a second. She could not help but feel a pang in her heart, hearing Sufia’s words. “I understand what you’re saying,” she said after a moment’s pause. “But the dark side of human nature is something that is represented in much of the great literature you will read. You really can’t escape it.”
    Sufia shook her head slowly from side to side, her large eyes sad. “I do not think you understand. You say you do, but I don’t think you do. These things you say in class—maybe I will ask Dean Finister if it is okay for you to speak of such things.”
    “Oh, Sufia. I’m so sorry you feel this way, I really am. Do you have some time to talk this through? I don’t have another class for a while yet.”
    “I have my American foreign policy class now.”
    “Can we schedule some time to talk later, then?”
    “I will think about this,” Sufia said, and she turned and seemed to float out of the room, as she always did, with her light, precise walk and the hem of her traditional Somali dress rippling behind her.
    Vera rubbed her eyes as though to clear them of something she wanted to be rid of.
Well, now you’ve done it,
she thought, and tried not to think about the greater implications of this encounter with her student. Surely Sufia would forget all the day’s