Miss Mia.

Missmia, Missmee-ah, Missmeea, Messyemia…

I kept repeating her name in my head as I headed to work.

“Miss Mia, good to see you today. How are you?” I would have to say. Not that I could care.

MissMia wasn’t loved by many. Ugly, haggish, mean, old, she made us all despise her. She worked the students hard and the teachers even harder. If it wasn’t for my groveling need for a paycheck, I would have slammed my papers on her desk and told her I wouldn’t be Missing her anymore.

MissMia had a daughter, Annabelle. A daughter even uglier and haggish than she was and only at the ripe age of twelve. Her daughter had Down Syndrome, you see. Her face looked like a pig cross-bred with a watermelon and we all hated her too, perhaps hated her even more, because she spat on us as she talked, because she would try to put her sticky fingers in our hair and because she talked and laughed and sang when she had no reason to and because she wouldn’t leave us alone and we couldn’t understand her.

What is wrong with her? The children wondered, unable to stop staring at her face.

What is wrong with her? The teachers wondered, unable to comprehend her joy.

And we tolerated her not because we wanted to, but because we had to, because we served the tyranny of Miss Mia. Because we all had mouths to feed, and things we needed.

That was until we learned more about Miss Mia. Miss Mia never seemed a happy woman, and her bitterness only served to make her older. But we soon began to understand why she was so cold, so angry. We learned she was a widow, because her husband had left her when he saw Annabelle’s face, twelve years ago. He had called their child deformed and left them on the spot.

I could never have a wife and child like you two, he had said.

And then one day as I was leaving work I heard Annabelle singing, humming, mumbling gibberish as always. She was trying to learn from a kid’s reader, sticking her stubby thumbs all over the kindergartner’s book. It was about mommy-and-daddy’s, love and kids. I went to pull the book and the kindergartner away.

Miss Mia walked in. Annabelle ran over to cling to her legs.

“Mommy, did I ever have a Daddy?”

Miss Mia was only ever kind to her daughter. “Yes, of course you did,” she replied.

“Did you ever marry him?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Do Daddies give Mommies rings when they marry?”

“Yes, they do.”

“Do Daddies love Mommies if they give them rings?”

“I suppose, yes, they do.”

“Then Daddy never loved you, right? Because you don’t have a ring? And because Daddy is gone?”

I walked out of the room, because I couldn’t bear to eavesdrop any longer on Miss Mia’s stunned, and palpably heartbroken, silence. She was completely wrecked in the one and only moment where her daughter was being exceptionally bright.

All the sad stories in the world, I thought, as I walked to work the next day.

Each and every one of us, and I have hardly enough power to tell them.

Missmia, Missmee-ah, Missmeea, Messyemia. I still mumbled and repeated her name in my mind, under my breath, like a mantra, in solid repetition. It kept me inspired to work.

MissMia, hello. Good to see you. How are you? I asked.

I smiled at her and surprised, she half-smiled at me. And Annabelle came running and clung to me with her sticky fingers, still so full of her simple-hearted mirth. And I was glad for that.

I could no longer hate them, and I no longer wanted to, anyways.