Chapter 6

Cindy’s turn:

It was just another morning in the office when the phone rang and as Maddie was occupied, I answered it. “3Sigma, this is Cindy. May I help you?”

“Cindy? Good, it’s you I wanted to talk to.”

“Hello Mizz Patel. What’s going on today?”

“Would you mind if I drive out to your office? I’d like to talk about something in private.” I noted that she didn’t have her normal happy lilt.

“Of course it’s okay. You’re always welcome here.” This was unusual for her though, so I added, “There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

“No, just a letter I’d like to show you. Twenty minutes okay?”

When she arrived, she seemed unusually hesitant. I’d given her a cup of coffee and we sat down together.

“I received this letter today. It’s ... Well, perhaps it would be better if you read it. I just wondered if there’s any way you might be able to help.”

A few minutes later, I put the letter down, and brushed a tear from my eye. “Is it okay to get the others in on this?”

She nodded. A ‘shotgun’ text and the room filled up with my Dan, Nicki, Tina, Beck, Mizz Lee and Jerry, Kim, Jenn and Laci. Beck left the munchkins with Maddie in the office. The others were all working elsewhere.

“Mizz Patel got a letter. Do any of you remember Tara Helton?” I began.

Nicki did. “Wasn’t she that girl we met at the freshman orientation?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “I’m surprised she never came to the greenhouse. She seemed really keen.”

Mizz Patel took that one. “She was. She came to me to ask about you all. Unfortunately, she left the very next day. Her family were involved in a car accident. Her mother was killed outright. Her father was badly burned which left him disabled with lung damage. She left to look after him and her little brother, who was nine at the time. He’d been thrown clear of the fire, but had been badly hurt. Her father died recently and his lawyer sent me a letter he’d written some months before he died.”

She took out the letter again.”

I heard a sniffle. It was Mizz Lee, crying quite openly. “How old is her brother now?” she asked.

“I think he’d be about eleven or twelve,” Mizz Patel answered.

Mizz Lee looked sad. “I’d offer to take them, but we’re getting on and I don’t think he needs to lose anyone else so young.”

There was a knock on the door. Terri poked her head round. “We heard someone crying. Mizz Lee!”

The three of them ran to Mizz Lee. “What’s wrong?” asked Rachel.

Without thinking, Mizz Patel handed the letter to Terri. The three of them read it.

“That’s really sad,” said Vicky.

“So how are we going to help?” Terri asked.

“Terri, we don’t even know what Mizz Patel is asking for yet,” Tina answered.

“Well, if we can get her back into classes, I just thought your greenhouse could help get her math back to a decent level,” Mizz Patel answered. “I think that would be her biggest problem.”

“I think it’s more than that,” Mizz Lee commented. “I think it’s asking too much of her to move here, manage a place on her own, look after and support her brother, then study on top of that.”

“But we have to help,” Terri insisted. “It’s like giving something back,” she added, staring at me with a grin on her face.

Nicki snorted as she tried not to laugh. She’d heard my ‘giving something back’ rant a time or two. I hate the mindless use of trite phrases.

“Nicki,” I said. “Don’t. Say. A. Word.”

She just smirked at me and said, “Okay. I know I say we all earned our places here, but we’re all here because somebody cared enough to do more than they had to.”

“So it’s karma, as Auntie Jo would say,” said Terri.

I suddenly noticed Kim, staring at Jenn with wide open eyes.

Jenn hadn’t noticed Kim as Laci was also looking at Jenn, but with a questioning look. Jenn gave a quick nod of the head. “We’ll take them. Now there’s room in the apartments, we could move into a one bedroom one, while Tara and her brother have Alan and Tina’s old one next door to it. I’m sure between us all we could home-school, what was his name?”

“Derek,” Terri answered. “And being so close, they’d have all the support they need. Mizz Lee can help with tutoring...”

“And he won’t get picked on here,” said Vicki.

“The biggest problem might be persuading Tara,” Mizz Lee pointed out. “She’s pretty much given up on everything she wanted to do.”

“Cindy could fly down and bring them for a weekend,” suggested Terri. “And I could go with her.”

“We don’t know if Tara will buy into the idea, Terri,” I said. “Dan, this takes out a vacant apartment that we’ve been keeping for a rainy day...”

“Looks pretty rainy to me. I’ll talk with Alan but...”

“He won’t kick,” Tina said. “Guaranteed. Mizz Patel, would you get back with Tara and tell her that we’d like to talk?”

“Look, my ladies,” Mizz Patel said, “Let us not get caught up in the moment. One of the things that makes your community work so well is your cohesiveness in lifestyles. Before we commit to bringing Tara in, remember that we know just a little from her three – almost four years ago. She may have changed.”

“She was sweet and kind of like us, you know, not stupid wild,” Nikki said. “If she’s still that way...”

“Mizz Patel is right. We don’t need drugs and trashy people,” I said. “I know people can change from that to something good and I’ve got a little sister to prove it, but it’s not the way to bet. Mizz Patel, we’ll ask you to sort of make the first contact for us, but you know that if YOU buy in, we’re buying in.”

“I surmised that such would be the case,” Mizz Aneeta stated. “However, I did not want to assume. We shall proceed.”

When the meeting broke up, I imagined that a few side conversations would serve to clarify what we were undertaking. Naturally I had one with Nikki while Dan slipped back to his office.

“Mizz Aneeta’s right, you know,” she said.

“I know. I don’t want us to rush in and bring in something destructive, but at the same time I don’t want to sound judgmental.”

“It’s pretty simple. First responsibility is to family.” She smiled, that particular smile that means she’s got something.

“Spillit!” I said.

She took a breath.

Now this is the Law of the Jungle --
as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper,
but the Wolf that shall break it must die.

As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk
the Law runneth forward and back --
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf,
and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.

“You THING!” I squealed. “You’re gonna quote Kipling?”

“Mizz Lee has introduced it to the Munchkins. I REALLY like sitting in with Mizz Lee being a teacher.” My sister grinned. “You know that part of it is that while you’re sitting there thinking you’re learning language skills, she’s teaching you about life.”

“Consummate teacher,” I said. “Not ‘Professional Educator’. Teacher. But you’re right. We know what we don’t want to bring into the group. But it’s hard to equate what her dad said of her in that letter with somebody who’s given to a profligate lifestyle.”

“She’s Susan’s age,” Nikki said. “That’s a lot of load to put on a young woman – tending to a crippled dad and brother, then losing her dad. That’s a lot of storm to weather.”

“I know. But some things, fire burns. Others, it tempers.”

“I hope she’s the second one.”

“I do, too.”

Of course none of this happens in a vacuum. The next day I have the munchkins in the lab. In the midst of the whirlwind that passes for an R&D cycle, I get the three of them in my little office.

“We want to talk with you about something serious,” Terri said.

I scanned three cute faces “The fact that you asked me like this tells me it has nothing to do with what goes on in this lab, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Vicki asserted. “New kid. We don’t know him.”

“You mean Tara Helton’s little brother?”

“Yes,” Rachel said. “I don’t want to sound mean when I say it, but what if he’s a muggle?”

“Okay, team,” I stated, slipping into my own mentor mode, “statistically speaking, how would you quantify the possibilities that any random kid we met would fall into this group as far as raw intelligence?”

“Astronomical,” Terri said.

“Okay. I agree with that answer. However, like many answers, it...”

“Leads to more questions, right?” Vicki asserted. That’s what I like. I know Terri knows the answer, but she’ll hold back and let Vicki or Rachel step up.

“It does,” I said. “What sort of questions would you imagine we’d need to examine?”

“Do we push him to learn?” Vicki posited.

“How does he fit in with the group? Socially?” Rachel stated.

“Elaborate,” I said.

Rachel took a breath. “Well, with other kids in the home-school group, we’re nice, we go along with the social actions and the games, until the games start being unprofitable for wholesome life.”

“And learning?” I queried.

“We help them,” Terri said. “We try to help where we can, and we pay attention to the idea that other kids just don’t catch on as fast as we do.”

“And could you imagine yourselves doing this with Derek and Tara? Mind you, Tara was a college student, at least up to the point where the world fell in on her. I understand that Mizz Patel says that Tara’s SAT scores are very impressive, so she’s no dummy. I suspect that her brother will also be no dummy. Maybe not up to YOUR level. And do we subject any of the people who show up at the...”

“Greenhouse!” Terri grinned. “I see where you’re going.”

“Look, team,” I said, “We’re fortunate to be in rare air as far as intelligence, and because most of our team are engineers or scientists or students headed in those directions, we deal with a pretty smart segment of the population, but what do we do with those who aren’t?”

“Love trumps brains, Dad says,” Vicki stated.

“Bingo,” I chirped. “We treat people as WE wish to be treated.”

“Golden Rule,” Vicki injected.

“So we know where we’ll be if –that’s IF – we bring Tara And Derek on board.”

“You’re still thinking about it, then,” Terri said.

“Yes, love,” I said. “If you think YOU have questions about a eleven year old boy, imagine the questions we have about a twenty year old girl.”

Kim’s turn:

In some ways I’m getting spoiled, really. I’m actually a pretty good cook, but our little family gets pulled in a lot of directions each day, with Vicki and me in school, and Tim often out in the field working. Tim and I cook breakfast every morning, but it’s usually sandwiches for lunch, wherever we happen to be. Then the major-league spoilage occurs at the Pavilion each evening, with dinner being cooked by Mizz Lopez -- that lady is a culinary genius!

Mizz Lopez, Henry’s sister-in-law. Henry’s an employee. So is Mizz Lopez. We don’t do ‘employees’ though. She’s like another member of the family who happens to collect a paycheck. While Henry stepped up from his original position as utility guy, handling the grounds and buildings for 3Sigma, as the company expanded, we saw fit to advance Henry to ‘physical plant maintenance supervisor’ and now he has a staff to watch over. His sister-in-law cooks for us several days a week, and baby, she’s waaaay past tortillas.

It’s been hilarious, though, watching her and Nikki banging heads over the preparation of a Cajun dish.

“Nikki, I can do this. I’ve been in food service for twenty years.”

“Mizz Juana, I’ve been Cajun all my life.” And they laughed and collaborated. Nikki still shows up if gumbo’s on the menu, though.

Mizz Juana oversees a couple of ladies who handle SOME of the household chores, taking a bit of the load off families where both husband and wife (and precocious kid) work every day.

And we’re in the process of building a house out there, using the same contractor that built the others for the Community. There are several reasons for doing it, but Tim wanted to, and it will resolve a few transportation issues, and allow Vicki to spend a bit more time with her sisters.

Being female, and still pretty young, I thought things were going pretty well, but I should have known better.

Apart from basic things like diet, grooming, manners, and safety, we don’t give the Munchkins much guidance, so they’re always dreaming up ideas for new excursions and adventures. We figure it’s a learning experience, and well worth the chance because of the pace at which they’re learning.

The good news is that they dream up and implement some wonderful ideas, and have managed to turn some of those ideas into a few dollars-in-the-bank. Make that a “few million dollars”, actually.

The bad news is that they can sometimes broadcast some of those ideas into venues that they shouldn’t, and Vicki evidently did that this morning, which gave rise to a frantic phone call from Karen, around noon-time. She’s in California, okay, which means it’s 0900 there.

My caller ID read “Karen” when my phone rang, and the conversation went like this: “Good morning, Karen. How are you today?”

“Good morning to you, Kim, and I’m getting pretty upset here. I just got to the office and was checking my messages, and there’s a video from Vicki showing her flying an AIRPLANE, for God’s sake! What are you doing to my daughter?!?”