I stopped and
stared.
Jabez’s desk was empty.
My other students milled restlessly about the
room, wondering aloud where their fellow student was. “I don’t know,” I
admitted. The evening before, the principal had mentioned that Jabez might
transfer to another school, but I’d never dreamed it would happen so soon. I
sat down and tried to quiet my students, but for once they paid no attention. “Where
is he?” “He’s not leaving, is he?” “Surely he won’t leave without saying
goodbye!” I just shook my head helplessly and studied the empty desk. All of
his notebooks had vanished, and his school-issued textbooks were stacked neatly
on his chair. I wondered momentarily where the vocabulary book was that I
borrowed from him every day during class time—there weren’t enough books for me
to have a copy, so I counted on him to let me use his while I quizzed them on
their review words. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I noted that his desk was
also bare of the unique name card I had drawn for him, and knowing that he loved
artistic things, I hoped he had taken it with him and would use it to remember
me by. I sank down into the chair at my desk and looked down. There was the vocabulary
book, placed so neatly on the middle of the desk. I opened the front cover and
saw his full name printed inside, along with the same smiley faces he always drew
on his homework for me. Moisture threatened in my eyes when I realized that in the
midst of the flurry of packing and cleaning up his desk, he had remembered that
my vocabulary class was the next class of the day and had left his book just
where I would find it.
I looked up to find one of my students crying quietly in
the corner, and my heart began to break. How was it that a quiet boy like Jabez
could have impacted all of us like this? How could a boy who smiles much but
talks little have written so much on our hearts? My students were subdued; not
once did I find it necessary to quiet them.
After class, my husband met me at
the door of the classroom and told me that Jabez was leaving in five minutes, and
that anyone who wanted to see him off was to come to the dock. We went. I was
not embarrassed to be seen crying, but I looked around at the others anyway—the
whole campus had shown up to see him off, and I couldn’t help but noticed that
my face was not the only one wet with tears. He hugged everyone—which was no
small feat considering how many people had come to say goodbye—and after my
turn had come and gone, I stood there silently, with the arm of the high school
dorm mom around me. She spoke only Portuguese, and I only English, so we said
nothing—but I had seen her crying the same way several months before when she
had said a permanent goodbye to one several of “her boys” so I knew she
understood how I felt about “my boy.” Words cannot express something like this
anyway, and since we had none, we said none.
My husband and I then followed Jabez
to the end of the dock, where a speedboat was waiting for him and his parents. As
he climbed in, the sudden realization hit me that I had no pictures of him. I toyed
with the idea of taking one right then, but decided against it. I didn’t want
my only picture to be one of him leaving. So I stood there silently again, this
time with Danny’s arm around me, and watched the boat speed off over the Amazon’s
choppy gray waters until they rounded a corner and the jungle hid them from
view.
