One Nice Thing

The safe, pleasant, unarguable activity was this: one nice thing about yourself.

It could be argued with. Everything, Ms. Dhillon was beginning to understand, could be argued with, in Room 6, by the boy in the second row. But she did not know that yet, and so she smiled, and began.

“We’ll go around the room,” she said, “and everyone tells us one thing about yourself. One nice thing. I’ll go first. My name is Ms. Dhillon, and I grew up right here in Moose Jaw.”

“Me too,” said Madison.

“Me too,” said Cole.

“Me too,” said most of the room, because it was true of most of them.

“I have a dog,” said Madison. “His name is Bandit.”

“I got a real hockey stick,” said Cole. “Wood, not plastic.”

“We went to the lake,” said Payton.

“I can burp whenever I want,” said Dawson.

“Thank you, Dawson,” said Ms. Dhillon.

“I have a notebook,” said Tyler.

“We know, Tyler,” said the room.

“Kabir?”

Kabir thought about it seriously, because he did everything seriously.

“We came on an airplane,” he said. “It was very long. My father’s name is Gurmail, but at the store everyone calls him Gary, so now I have a father called Gary. We have a house, but the bank owns most of it. My mother irons my clothes very hard so nobody thinks we are poor. We are a little poor. So it is a good plan, and it is working.”

The room was quiet.

“Also,” Kabir said, “I am going to marry the girl who lives next door. Her name is Brooke. She doesn’t know yet. She’s sixteen. I’m waiting.”

“What’s ironed?” said Cole.

“It’s when your clothes are flat and hot,” said Aarav, who knew, because his were too.

“My mom says you can’t marry someone who’s sixteen if you’re seven,” said Madison.

“I know,” said Kabir. “That’s why I’m waiting.”

Madison thought about this and could find nothing wrong with it. “Bandit’s still my dog,” she said, in case it had become a competition.

Ms. Dhillon looked at him for a moment. She knew the airplane. She knew the house the bank owned. She knew the ironing, because her own mother had ironed exactly like that, for exactly that reason, in a town not far from this one.

“Thank you, Kabir,” she said. “That was more than one thing.”

“You said one nice thing,” Kabir said. “They were all nice.”

She moved them to the calendar, because the calendar, at least, was simply true.

“Today,” she said, “is Tuesday.”

“How do you know?”

“Because yesterday was Monday.”

“Did you see Monday leave?”

“Kabir.”

“I only want to know who’s in charge of it,” he said. “The days, or the calendar. Because if it’s the calendar, we could give ourselves a Saturday.”

The room liked this idea very much.

“It is Tuesday,” said Ms. Dhillon, “because it is Tuesday.”

“That’s what you said about the list.”

And she had no answer to that one either, because it was the same answer, and it had not worked the first time.

At recess they lined up at the door, because even Kabir agreed that a line was a real thing you could see. He was first, the way he was first for a door and for nothing else.

“Ms. Dhillon,” he said. “Can I tell you something?”

“Is it about the calendar?”

“No.” He looked at her the way he looked at his father when his father needed help. “You’re new, and you did your breathing four times this morning. I counted. So I’ll tell you a thing my mother says. She says if people are going to talk about you anyway, you may as well give them something true to talk about.”

“Your mother says that.”

“She says it to the mirror. Every morning.” He thought about it. “I don’t think it’s working for her. But it might work for you.”

“Thank you, Kabir,” she said, because she did not know what else to say.

“You’re welcome,” said Kabir, who always did.

Then the children spilled into the yard, and Kabir with them. Mrs. Santos put her head in the door.

“You’re still here.”

“He gave me advice,” said Ms. Dhillon. “His mother’s advice.”

“They always pass it on.”

“He won the argument about the attendance. Then he told the class the bank owns his house, and he’s marrying a sixteen-year-old.”

“So he’s settling in.”

“I have him for a year.”

“You have him for a year, and he has you for one right back.” Mrs. Santos nodded at the clipboard. “You marked him in?”

“I marked him in.”

“Then the list is happy. Somebody should be.” And she went to find her next family.

Ms. Dhillon looked at the crooked check by his name. She had known he was there before the list did. So had he.

She turned to a clean page for tomorrow and smoothed it flat with her hand, the way her mother used to smooth a shirt that was already flat.