Red’s Hot Honky-Tonk Bar by Pamela Morsi

anywhere or see anyone.
    Olivia, on the other hand, could hardly wait for the school bell to ring. She’d talked eagerly about it to her abuela on their last visit. The old woman still couldn’t speak, but Olivia didn’t appear to need any help with the conversation. Red had waited out in the rehab-facility corridor while the girl had giggled and gushed hopefully about the future. Only the silence in the car on the ride home suggested that perhaps not all of her optimism was genuine.
    “Okay, I’m ready,” Red announced as she stepped into the living room.
    Daniel looked very small, curled in one corner of the oversize reading chair. Olivia was pacing.
    “Let’s go,” the girl responded. She couldn’t get the door open fast enough. She motioned for her little brother, who obediently followed her, albeit with much reluctance.
    The school was only a few short blocks away and Red insisted on walking so that she could be sure Olivia and Daniel knew the way. That it took more time was only a side benefit.
    The three walked together up the sidewalk to the corner doorway of Cambridge Elementary. Red couldn’t remember the last time she’d been inside a school building, but from the moment she stepped across the threshold, the familiar smells of blackboard chalk and library paste brought back memories that were young and happy and hopeful. Deliberately she cast those thoughts off. It was never good to start remembering. She had the real world to face.
    “This looks like the office,” she said of a doorway on the left. She held the door open allowing the children to go first. Olivia walked through without a qualm, while Daniel clung to his sister’s hand.
    “May I help you?” the woman at the desk inquired, without raising her eyes from the computer screen she was viewing.
    A small wooden plaque on the woman’s desk identified her as Ms. Sorenson.
    “I’m here to enroll my grandchildren in school,” Red answered. “I have an appointment with Ms. Kilheeny.”
    She smiled as if to welcome them, but never even glanced in their direction. “Take a seat,” she told them. “I’ll let her know that you’re here.”
    Red glanced around and spotted the row of chairs. All three took seats, though the children sat as far as possible from their grandmother.
    Red heard Daniel whisper something in Spanish to Olivia. His sister replied a bit sharply.
    “What did he say?” Red asked.
    “He wanted to know if this is where you sit when you’rein trouble,” she answered. “I told him we weren’t ever going to find out.”
    Red almost smiled, but found that she was still too edgy to manage it.
    They waited only a few minutes before Ms. Kilheeny appeared. She ushered them into an office stacked with files. Fit, trim and all business, she looked over the paperwork that Red had gotten from the base, as well as the children’s past school records. She hardly looked in Red’s direction, who wondered why she’d taken such pains with her wardrobe.
    Ms. Kilheeny directed several general questions to the children. Olivia answered politely and respectfully and earned an approving smile.
    The questions for Daniel were also answered, but in whispered Spanish.
    The woman looked directly at Red for the first time. “He doesn’t speak English?”
    “Yes, yes, of course he does,” she answered and glanced over at her grandson. Once again he’d drawn his knees up to his chest and scrunched his shoulders down into a hiding position.
    “Sit up straight!” Ms. Kilheeny said a little too sharply.
    Red stiffened her own spine, as if the admonition was meant for her.
    “He understands perfectly,” Red assured the woman. “He is just choosing to speak Spanish.”
    The woman appeared skeptical.
    “We can put him in an ESL class,” she said. “English as a second language.”
    “English isn’t his second language,” Red insisted. “This isn’t about language, it’s about…”
    Red’s explanation trailed off. She didn’t