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“Well, yeah…”
“Oh.” She seems to think about this for a moment as one huge, broad man and one thick-thighed woman come out before the children in midnight-blue leotards and begin some sort of graceful, ballet-like routine in the grass. “I am sorry to hear.”
“What?” I stare at her, nonplussed.
“President Tzelik’s offspring is…” She shakes her head solemnly as she takes a sip of her champagne. “I know good nannies—strong, well-qualified females, who could do nothing to help the president with that strange boy.” She turns towards me fully, and I think her face is filled with sympathy. “Just know that when the time comes and you can no longer work with him, it is not your fault. Nobody lasts long with Asili Tzelik.”
I feel my mouth fall a little open, but all I can manage is a quiet, “What do you mean?”
Asili is really not that bad. I just don’t understand.
The nanny pats me gently on the shoulder and then turns back towards the children. “He is not like other infants, is he?”
Just then, Asili jumps to his feet, his face screwed up in anger as he shouts something down at the group. One of the other little boys stands, his gray face calm in the face of Asili’s temper as he says something back, and the woman beside me gives me a knowing look of pity.
Asili’s voice raises even higher. “I can imagine whatever I feel like!”
I send a baffled and rather annoyed look at the woman beside me, before heading towards the ruckus.
He’s just a kid,I think to myself. He’s got a bit of a temper, but he’s just a kid! It’s normal.
But I’m starting to notice, as I near the group, that none of the others are reacting like Asili, not even the one he’s yelling at. Asili shoves the little boy as I draw near, his white face scrunched up in anger, cheeks flushed and eyes wet with tears, but the other boy only wipes a hand calmly across his little three-piece suit.
“But there’s no such thing as sea-donkeys with Zvezdi faces,” the gray kid says. “Sea-donkeys have sea-donkey faces. That’s stupid.”
“It’s my story and I can say whatever I want!”
“Stupid people say stupid things,” the other boy replies. “That’s what my father says.”
Mean, I think, like kids often are. Mean, but calm.
The boy’s face only twitches slightly with emotion. His breath isn’t coming any more rushed, his cheeks aren’t flush and his posture is cool and calm while Asili trembles with curled fists before him. The dancers are still swooshing around behind the boys, and half of the kids on the floor are watching as they flip and balance on each other, while the other half stare with a placid sort of quiet at the fight between the boys. All of them interested, alert, but unaffected.
Asili takes another step forward. “I’m not stupid! Just say that again, I dare you!”
The boy looks a little confused as I reach the group and pick my way carefully through the kids still obediently on the floor. “Come on, you two,” I try, but the young gray boy was told to repeat himself, and so he does.
“I said, stupid people say stupid things.”
Asili pushes the boy again with all the force he can, and the kid goes stumbling backwards—and straight into the dancers balancing one on top of the other behind him.
“Oh no…” I whisper.
As the performers go tumbling down in a flailing sprawl of heaving bosoms and sparkling blue leotards, I put my hand against Asili’s shoulder and steer him quietly away.
“Let’s see what’s happening on the other side of the yard, shall we?” I mutter, as we sneak away to the sound of aristocratic exclamations of shock.
