“Kids used to do this with language tapes,” Ruth said. “Always the French ones. I don't believe that was a coincidence.”
“How much of a school did you really run, Ruth?”
“Depending on who you ask, close to all of it.”
The door opened and a young man in a Northstar jacket stuck his head in. “Ma'am, could we use the room for a couple of minutes? We've got an employee who could use some privacy.”
“There's a little girl with a court hearing in here in about thirty seconds,” Ruth said. “You may not.”
He saw the little loop of tape hanging out of its shell and seemed to understand at once that these were very serious proceedings. He backed out. Ruth finished winding and slipped the cassette into its case.
“Keep the machine out of it for the moment. Tell the little girl you'll play it from a proper machine tonight.”
“Oh, no. She wants it now.”
“Well, you know the words, don't you?”
On the phone a picture arrived of the inside of a room. Wood paneling, two paper flags, a cheap little microphone stand. An older woman in a black robe was sitting on the front edge of her desk trying to get the courthouse camera to point straight. Behind her assistant was a banner somebody had made on a home printer out of separate letters. The left side said WELC and the right side, almost out of frame, said OME. June could see Noreen's good black jacket, Tess's yellow dress, and Ada sitting between them in purple, with her silver roller skates on the floor beside her, wearing the brown shoes with the buckles June had approved that morning. The socks sparkled whenever she kicked her heels.
“Aunt June!” Ada jumped out of the frame. A moment later all June could see was her niece's nose. “Did you get off?”
“Not without considerable trouble.”
“Are you wearing your fancy dress?”
“No, bug. Are you wearing mine?”
Ada pulled back so she could capture the whole outfit in the camera's gaze. The grown women laughed. June turned her phone sideways and propped it against the silent fountain on the wall. Her own little window showed a green sweatshirt and two eyes that had been recently crying. She dabbed them with her sleeve.
The judge said who she was, which people did in places where nobody expected her to need to. She read the names of every person in the room and asked Ada to confirm the name she wished to use from now on. Ada did this with a sweetness and solemnity that made the muscles at the corners of June's mouth ache. Then she asked if she could play a message.
“Oh, baby, the tape player just ate the tape,” June said. “The tape itself is fine and we'll get to hear it tonight. I've got a lady here who can fix pretty much anything that ever goes wrong in a school, but neither of us trusts the machine.”
Ada considered this. “Do you know what they sang?”
“I do, sweetheart.”
“Can you sing it, then? Because you can fit more people in if they're already inside a different person.”
There are ages at which a child says things an adult will think about for the remainder of her life. At nine, Ada had found her way to this one without a map. June's mother had sung a flat third and her father had hummed through the words he forgot. Neither of them had had a voice you could have sold to anybody. Their music had been invaluable at washing up time. It had been especially good at making two tired children stop fighting long enough to pick up the drying towel. June closed her eyes and sang their kitchen version. Half the words were improvised because she couldn't remember their particular improvisations. In the circumstances this seemed very close to accuracy.
Ruth picked up the harmony on the second line. Her voice surprised them both. It was an old contralto that knew where to go and took no special interest in what anybody might think when it got there. Noreen began to hum the bass line June's dad had always hummed. Tess shook some invisible thing in time. By the end, the judge had slid off her desk and sat down in the ordinary chair with the rest of them. She signed the order without going back to the bench. Ada put one of the spare paper flags in her hair.
“I'd like to say a thing,” the judge said. “It's entirely possible I've said it before. Adults make a fuss about this day because they have to give you papers for something important. You don't owe anybody a particular feeling just because we're all pleased. You're free to have your own day about it.”
Ada thought about this. “I might want to go skating.”
“That would stand up on appeal.”
Outside in the corridor somebody was knocking gently on the door, using a courteous rhythm that could carry on for quite a long time if necessary. June ignored it. She watched her niece take hold of the pen solemnly offered her for the guest book and write the first version of her new signature. She used capital letters for Bell. It was exactly her own business how large she wanted to make the part that couldn't fall out at either end.