gray-green “Well, eyes Mike, were it most of it done. right now, utes and Ross said. but bright with looks as if you tears. have | have to go to the office I'll be I'll help you back then in a few min- okay,” Miss She left the room and Michael began to work on his plaque. Miss Ross said mothers like pink, so all the kids in class had painted theirs pink. Then they cut pictures out of magazines to paste on to it. Michael had cut out a picture of wild flowers. Mama always said she liked flowers, especially wild ones. He bit his lower lips in concentration and carefully smeared glue on the back of the picture and pressed it on to the plaque. The white glue oozed out around the edges and ripples formed in the picture. Worried wrinkles formed on his forehead as the sticky glue stuck to his fingers. “I'm going to make it pretty,’’ he vowed silently. He kept trying to fix it but the more he tried to smooth the picture, the more wrinkles seemed to form. More glue kept oozing on to the plaster, making sticky blotches all over it. Tears trickled down his cheeks as he pressed on the picture more and more. As he cried quietly to himself, Miss Ross walked in. “Come now, Michael. Crying won't help you accomplish anything. Let me see how you're doing,” she said. Michael stopped his sniffling as Miss Ross bent over his desk. ‘Why, you're doing just fine, Here let me smooth out some of the wrinkles in the picture for you.” Miss Ross seemed to make all the wrinkles disappear just by smoothing her hand over the picture. ‘Now get the wrapping paper we made and we'll wrap it up,"’ she said. Michael bent down and once again dug into his desk. He pulled out a torn peper, covered with crayoned flowers. He tried to smooth the wrinkles out of it. A worried frown was on his face as he looked at Miss Ross. “That's fine. Now go get the tape.” His face relaxed when he realized she wasn't going to say anything about the wrinkles in the paper. Maybe, she didn't even notice. He hoped not. Quickly, he got the tape and hurried back to his seat. Miss Ross was sitting in his chair, bending over the package on the desk. “She looks so funny, My chair's way too little for her,’’ he thought, “but she sure is pretty, almost as pretty as Mama." There was really no comparison, ex: cept in Michael's mind, between the twc women's looks. Michael's mother was quite a bit older than Miss Ross. He was her third child. The others were almost grownup. Michael hadn't inherited any of his father’s dark, good looks, as the other children had. He was almost a carbon copy of his mother. Both were short and stout and had the same mousy colored hair. Their eyes were the same gray-green and their faces were lightly sprinkled with freckles. Miss Ross was still young, only 24, but to Michael she was the same age as all grown-ups old? Her blond hair was neatly fixed and her face and clothes showed no sign that for the last 6 hours she'd had full charge of 32 wildly energetic children. Good," she said as Michael handed her the tape. “thank you. Now you hold this here and I'll tape it." They got the package wrapped and although the paper was rather crumpled, Michael thought it was the most beautiful present he had ever seen. “Thank you, Miss Ross, thank you," Michael's pudgy face shone with delight at his present for Mama. He picked up the gift and carefully carried out of the room. As he left, he called, ‘Bye, Miss Ross, a ya Monday. Have a Happy Mother's ay. “Thank you Mike, but | don't have any children yet," she laughed, but the boy had already left. Michael set his treasure on the shelf, above his coat and quickly pulled on the winter coat his mother had made him wear. She had almost made him wear boots too. but he talked her out of it. He hated wearing boots when none of the other kids had to. Then he ran outside, both hands sent, so he holding on tight to the wouldn't drop it. He pre- stopped just outside the school door and breathed in the fresh, almost-spring air. There were still patches of dirty snow in the shady spots of the school yard but Michael didn't even notice them. All he saw and felt was a bright blue sky, the fresh damp earth and the warm, good smelling air. He began running toward home, still holding tight to his package. His dark, blue parka, unzipped, flapped as he ran. He crossed the bridge that went over the irrigation ditch, without stopping to kick pebbles into it like he usually did. He saw someone step out of the bushes in front of him but he was to preoccupied to notice who it was. He was too busy thinking of how happy Mama would be with her present. “Hi Michael.” Startled, Michael looked up and saw Terry standing a little way in front of him. “Oh .. . hi Terry,’ Michael wondered what he was doing here. He didn't even live around here. ‘Decided to wait for you to tell ya I’m sorry for tripping you," Terry said. “Thats o.k. Terry,"’ Michael said as he relaxed. For a minute he had been afraid the other boy was going to beat him up. Terry was kind of famous for how mean he was. Miss Réss always said to try to be extra nice to Terry. There was a big word she used for him, “‘emotionally disturbed’’. None of the class knew what that meant but they still tried to be nice to him because she said to. Besides, Michael's stomach didn't hurt too much where Terry had hit him. Still, he apprehensively held his present a little tighter. ‘Whatcha got Mike," Terry asked, ‘‘can | see it.” ‘| guess so,'’ Michael said and warily handed over the plaque. He wanted to be~nice like Miss Ross said to. “Hey, this is nice, | shoulda made one.” Suddenly, Terry threw the present on to the side-walk. They both heard the sound of the plaster shattering. Terry laughed and ran off shouting back, “‘That’s what you get for hitting me fatso!’’ i TT SE Michael fell to his knees, stunned. His tears blinded him and he just knelt there staring at the brightly colored package. Tears chased each other down his cheeks and fell silently to the sidewalk, making dark circles on the cement. Carefully, he picked up the package and cupped it in his hands. Still not thinking clearly, he plodded home. He reached his house and slowly opened the back door and went in. ‘Hi honey, why are you so late? | expected you quite some time ago . . what's wrong Michael?"’ she had stopped in the middle of her sentence when she saw his stricken face. “What's happened?"’ she asked again. Then she saw the package in his hands, “Oh, this must be the ‘surprise’ you've been talking about is it?’ Eyes still swollen from crying, he set the small shapeless package on the gray chipped formica table. The afternoon sky didn't seem so bright now as it came into the small kitchen. The grayness of the light made his package look dirty and dingy. The cheerful flowers on the _ wrapping paper weren't half as beautiful as when he wrapped the gift. His grubby, fat hands, nails bitten, down, trembled as he untied the little scrap of ribbon he and Miss Ross had tied around the package. He pulled at the tape and loose pieces of plaster fell out. ‘Mama, he broke it! He broke your present,’ Michael sobbed. His mother saw the remnants of his hard work for one piece had not broken and she could see the penciled words on the pink plaster which said, ‘‘With Love from Michael."’ ‘Michael, it’s still beautiful."’ She put her arms around her son and cried with him.