…”Eli. He took me off it. I’m not allowed to pick up my own son.”
Then the line went dead.
I sat in my empty classroom for a minute. Then I did what every teacher is trained to do, and what I’d been too unsure to do that morning. I walked down the hall to our school counselor, Mrs. Patel, and showed her Eli’s drawing.
She looked at the red circles for a long time. “You did the right thing calling me,” she said. “And you’re right to be worried. We’re mandated reporters. We’re calling it in together, right now.”
We checked the pickup list first. Eli’s mother’s name had been crossed off in September, at his father’s request. The only adult allowed to take Eli home was his dad.
A caseworker from child protective services came to school the next morning and talked to Eli in Mrs. Patel’s office, with crayons and a stuffed bear. He told her about the cameras. In every room, he said, even the bathroom. And about the speaker in the kitchen, where his dad’s voice would come on in the middle of the day and tell his mom to stop crying.
That’s how he’d known my last name. He was listening the moment I called her, through an app on her phone.
The caseworker and a domestic violence advocate arranged for Eli’s mom to come to our school on Thursday, while her husband was at work, because a school is one of the few places she was allowed to go. She walked into Mrs. Patel’s office, and Eli was already there. Police were waiting in the parking lot. By that evening, she had an emergency protective order and temporary custody, and they were both somewhere safe.
Eli came back to class after spring break. Last week, we did the house project again. He drew a small apartment with a big window and a cat. No red circles anywhere. In the kitchen, he drew his mom, smiling, with a speech bubble that said, “It’s Tuesday!”
