And then Letty said something to the class. She said, ‘My dad taught me that when someone you love is going through something hard, you don’t let them go through it by themselves.’
That was yesterday afternoon.
This morning, they started arriving like this.
One by one. Kids who’d gone home and cut their own hair. Some to donate for more wigs. Some just so that Millie wouldn’t be the only one in the class who looked different. The boys who’d laughed at her — two of them are in this room right now, Mrs. — two of them shaved their heads and came to apologize.
I called you because I have been an educator for thirty years, and I have never seen anything like what your daughter started. I didn’t know how to tell you on the phone. I needed you to see it.”
I found Letty in the crowd. Her jagged shoulder-length hair, her father’s stubborn chin, her eyes shining. She saw me, and she came to me, and I knelt down and held my daughter in a room full of children who had cut off their hair because she’d shown them how.
