School Pictures

Maria is a second grader at my Title I elementary school.

Her parents fled the after-effects of the brutal civil war in El Salvador and found a new life on the farms and in the fields of South Carolina.

She is like those farms and fields, dark skinned the color of the ground, garden-hearted and producing love and joy as if they were tomatoes and beans growing in good South Carolina soil.

I have seen her hold the hand of a frightened kindergartner in the cafeteria line during early morning breakfast and offer her shoulder to a crying friend who scraped a knee on the blacktop during recess. 

She is a beautiful child, beautiful in the way Dostoyevsky meant when he wrote, “Beauty will save the world.”

At school, I can see her smile all the way from the end of the hall.

Sometimes, I can hear her steps from there, too.

On special days, she wears tiny high-heeled shoes that go click, click, click as she makes her way over the tiled floor. 

This always makes me stop and smile.

One day, I realized I had forgotten to send a check through the mail to the water company to pay my bill. 

I stopped by the Greenville Water building to make my payment in person after school.

Three-fourths of the residents of Greenville county must have forgotten to send in their payments, too, because the place was packed with people.

In the middle of that mass of humanity, I heard a click, click, click. 

I looked up, and coming around a desk was Maria!

She was pushing a stroller with a tiny baby inside of it. 

I could barely see her over the handles of the stroller. 

She was leading her mother, who was holding a toddler in her arms.

She saw me. 

Her face lit up with a Maria smile. 

She let go of the stroller for just a moment, wrapped her arms around me and said, “Oh, Mr. Barton! Buenos tardes! I am always so glad to see you!”

Then she took hold of the stroller again.

I heard her voice, her sincere, serious voice, rise above the noise. 

“Excuse me,” she said, “but could you help us pay our bill?”

And there was Maria, 7 years old, translating for her mother.

Helping her family.

Sharing her life with the world.