In school, she ran the show. But she couldn’t reach her own son

"Remember, you’re playing with a life,” Mrs Delmar chokes out, and the line goes dead.

Bluma puts the phone down, a bit too loudly.

Mothers. As if she didn’t know. Rikki Delmar. She writes the name in block capitals in her notepad, underlines it, then draws a rectangle around it. Let her come along on the school shabbaton or not?

She looks up and 500 faces are smiling at her from five 10 inch by 12 inches on the bulletin board. The five graduating classes she’s overseen. She’s been at Ateres for 22 years, first as general studies teacher, then as assistant principal, and now she’s made it to the top.

The pictures blur. Blue and white and forever smiles. She looks over the faces. Last year’s Rikki Delmar. The girl who missed more than she was there; the ringleader from two years ago; the girl who broke the fire alarm glass. They’d graduated, they all had. Rikki would too. You had to keep an eye to the end, you couldn’t get dramatic like Rikki’s mother. Bluma’s been here long enough to know that.

The bell goes. She gives herself a once-over in the mirror, straightens her sheitel. Very dark brown. Once it had highlights, but those don’t fit with who she is now.

Sara Lipkin, 12th-grade mechaneches, is standing near the copy machine. Baila Hoffert is making copies and talking to her earnestly. Her voice is too low for Bluma to catch anything but she can sense the urgency, the sharing and advice as the copier spews out booklets.

Baila absently picks up a booklet. “Oy, these all came out single-sided.” She smacks her forehead.

Duh, Bluma wants to say.

She goes into the teachers’ room, interrupts a conversation about summer camp to ask Esti Lieber about her math class.

“Camp Kayitz,” she hears Miriam Feld say somewhere behind them. “We’re applying there.”

Shmuli also went to Kayitz. In the summer of ninth grade, when he was still getting by. Shmuli. She sighs, and Esti Lieber looks wounded. No. Bluma rearranges her features. Tries to focus.

“The thing is, Mrs. Levine, they probably just need to be tracked,” Esti tells her. “A good number of them really aren’t coping with the material.”

She nods briskly, as if to say leave it to me. Esti sits back down with Miriam Feld and the others.

Bluma doesn’t linger. Her territory is beyond the doors. The inner sanctum. She looks fleetingly as Miriam moves over to make room for Sara, then walks toward her door: Principal. Apex of the pyramid.

It’s lonely at the top. People bandied the expression around, because they were jealous, she used to think. Now she knows.