What's The Matter With Angie?

WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH ANGIE?


“Daddy said , Buddy and Trina betta’ not let nobody beat me up!” Nine-year-old Angie shouted at her step-mother.
The thirty-year-old Margaret squinted her brown eyes, bent at the waist, and moved toward her step-daughter with a finger pointed. “Believe me little girl. There’s comin’ a day when Buddy and Trina won’t be around to save your hide…”
“It ain’t gonna’ happen!” Angie interrupted, shaking her head and thrusting her mouth forward into her stepmother’s face. “Daddy said if they don’t protect me, he’ll give them a whippin’. So there.” Angie propped a fist on her hip, pursed her lips, and glared at her step-mother.
Margaret straightened herself and stared down at Angie shaking her head. “Mark my words, the day is coming when it will be pay back time for you.” Neither Margaret nor Angie had any idea just how soon those words would come true.
The note from Logan Elementary School informing of Angie’s failing grades came exactly one week after the confrontation with her step-mother. The parent’s conference to discuss what needed to be done about Angie’s education was scheduled and both Margaret and Angie’s dad, Joseph attended. It was decided that Angie was to be transferred to the school across town where she would be placed in Special Education classes for the remainder of the school year.
Joseph delivered the news to Angie. She was devastated to learn she’d be leaving her familiar surroundings. While her father was at work one day, Angie approached her step-mother. “You the one got me sent to that other school.” She folded her arms across her chest as she stared angrily at Margaret.
Margaret, who was washing dishes, turned slowly around to face Angie. “No, my dear. You are the one who got yourself into this mess. If you’d spent more time doing your schoolwork and less time being nasty and mean to your schoolmates maybe this wouldn’t have happened.” She then turned back to the sink to finish the dishes while Angie stomped out of the kitchen.
All the family, Margaret’s three children and Joseph’s three along with the parents were gathered around the TV when Joseph called to Angie to go to bed. It was only 7:00 PM.
“But…” came the protest.
“But nothing,” Joseph cut in interrupting Angie. “Go to bed now! You know you have to be on the bus at 5:45 in the morning. Nobody’s gonna’ fight with you to get up ‘cause you stayed up late.”
Angie pouted and rose from the floor, turned and glared at her step-mother before marching off to bed. By 5:00 AM the next morning, Joseph was pulling away from the house on his way to work and the alarm was going off for Angie.
Margaret lay listening for Angie to get up. When she didn’t hear footsteps, Margaret threw the covers back and went to get her stepdaughter up. Angie was sound asleep. Margaret shook her awake. “Time to get up, Angie.”
The nine-year old moaned and rolled over pulling the covers over her head. Margaret pulled the covers off of her and demanded that she get up. Angie stumbled to the bathroom where she brushed her teeth and wiped her face with a soap-less washcloth. She then came to the kitchen where Margaret waited with a bowl of hot cereal. Standing at the table staring down at the bowl, Angie burst into tears.
“What’s the matter with you?” Margaret asked as she approached the child.
“I can’t go back to that school,” Angie sobbed. “I hate it and the kids hate me.”
“Why would the kids hate you Angie? Did you go to the new school being mean to everyone?”
“No, I tried hard to be nice. They just don’t like me.” She continued to cry.
“What are they doing to you?”
“There’s a boy on the bus that keeps hitting me in the back of my head with his ruler and none of the girls will let me play tether ball. They all tell me to, ‘get outa’ here.’”
“I’ll go out to the bus with you and make sure the driver talks to the boy. But I don’t know what I can do about the girls not playing with you.”
“Ma?”
Margaret gasped. It was the first time Angie had called her, ‘ma’. And it was the first time Margaret had felt any tenderness toward the little girl who had made her life miserable since the day Margaret and her three kids moved in after the marriage.
“Yeah, what is it?” she answered.
“You think if we pray the kids will be nice to me?” Angie had stopped crying. She was looking intently into her stepmother’s eyes.
Margaret smiled and nodded as she reached for the little girl’s hands. “I won’t talk to God for you. It has to come from your heart and…”
“I know, I know. I have to ask for forgiveness first for the mean things I did to the other kids.” There was a pause. “Is that right?”
“You remembered the Sunday school lesson about treating others the way we want to be treated.”
“Yeah, but sometimes it’s hard. I see other kids with their real mom and I think, why I have to have a stepmother? I didn’t think about your kids have a step-father. But Lee, you know, my stepbrother made me think about that it’s better to have a step-father who treats him good than to have no dad at all. He said that’s how I should think about things too.”
“Let’s pray before the bus gets here,” Margaret said, tears welling in her eyes.
“God help me to be a good person, please. And forgive me for the mean things I did to the other kids. Amen.”
With a new relationship forming, stepmother and stepdaughter walked out to the bus together.