The note under the third-grade desk

Dear Delyara, I have cleaned the same elementary school for nineteen years, and children leave everything behind: broken pencils, sticky candy wrappers, mitten clips, spelling tests they do not want their parents to see. Tonight, while sweeping under a third-grade desk, I found a folded piece of notebook paper that said, “I wish I could live at school because nobody yells here.” There was no name. I sat in the child’s chair with my broom across my knees and read the sentence until the words stopped looking real. I checked the handwriting against the name cards taped to the desks, but half the children write the same careful rounded letters at that age. Tomorrow morning, they will run into the room laughing, dropping backpacks, complaining about math, and one of them will know that home is something to survive until the school doors open again. I placed the note on the teacher’s desk. Then I cleaned the room more carefully than usual, as though a spotless floor could make at least one child feel safe for another day.