"It is always the English teacher who holds the dustpan." The last time I saw Mrs. Jones was in 1991. I had graduated from college and, proud of my accomplishments, came back to Douglas Anderson School of the Arts to find and thank the woman, the teacher, who changed my life.

I spoke to her classes that afternoon about the importance of self-esteem and setting high goals for oneself. I heard myself speaking, but I was somewhere else in that classroom, five years back, sitting at the corner desk with my fingers twisting and twisting that long black hair I once had.

In December 1986, my father, a rabbi and teacher himself, had brought me to Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, in desperation. I sat in the hallway while he went into the principal's office and spoke to her. I only heard a few of those words, in between the clutter of strange faces in the hall and the pit-pat of ballet-slippered feet on the white tile, but I knew why I was there and why they chose to whisper. In a nearby practice room, I heard the rhythmic clicking of a metronome, followed by a hesitant piano scale.

"I don't know where else to put her." My father's voice broke, and then I heard a muffle of a deep, authoritative female voice.

"Rabbi, I understand your position, but we only hold auditions in the summer. "For the first time in my life, I heard my father weep. I pressed my head tight against the green door, felt the cold on my cheek, and closed my eyes, tried counting to ten the way my therapist had taught me only a week before, breathing in on every number, then out, slowly.

My father's voice interrupted at seven. "She was raped by a group of boys at her school a month ago.