A Safe Place for Joey (11 page)

I’ll never know. But I’ll always wonder and hope that Eric got the help he needed and deserved. There are still six eggshells in a carton somewhere in my attic. The colours have faded, but you can see that each is marked with a different letter.
I take this to be a good omen.

“You are squandering your most precious asset,” the lawyer said in a voice that was mildly accusing.

“What is that?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Time, of course. Time. You are throwing away almost two hours every day in commuting. You should find office space closer to your home or move closer to your office.”

I listened carefully. I’d come to this highly
recommended, successful man for advice. My days had become too crowded, too full. There was never enough time, and yet I loved my work. Instinctively, I trusted this man and knew that what he said was right. Without the long commute each day there would be more time for both my family and the children.

Cal and I talked. Cal – inventor, engineer, entrepreneur, manufacturer, and my friend
and husband – had operated his manufacturing plant for over twenty years in the same city where I had been born. We now rented an apartment almost an hour away from both our offices, and it made a great deal of sense to buy a house that would eliminate commuting for both of us.

We found a house that had been built by an architect as both his office and his home – low and quiet, surrounded
by woods. The office, two rooms and a bathroom above the garage, would be mine, with only a five-minute drive to work for Cal.

I said good-bye to Rea Oldenburg with sorrow. I would miss our conversations and shared lunches.

“No, no,” she said. “The lawyer is right. It is a waste for you to be in the car so long. We will still meet, and now the children will drive to you.”

I moved
my file cabinets and the secondhand desk and chairs (they had been lucky and I had no wish to change). I carpeted the stairs and the floors of the two rooms in blue, painted the walls a creamy white, and bought some new towels and a rug for the bathroom, a five-foot blackboard for one wall of the office, and a secondhand copy machine. The ceiling sloped down low from the roof, and the back window
looked out over the woods. Two walls held deep cabinets, designed for architectural drawings but equally good for children’s games, books, toys, and testing material. I left the walls bare, except for the blackboard, waiting to fill them with the children’s pictures and stories.

Rea Oldenburg was right. Most of the children I had been seeing did drive to me; others were ready to graduate,
and old friends sent new children to take their place. My practice seemed like a kind of garden, with children growing in place of flowers – always new ones shooting up as the older ones matured.

I bloomed along with the children. If I’d been happy before, I was even happier now working out of our home. I loved wearing my sneakers and blue jeans. I loved not having to spend hours on the
crowded highways. And, to my surprise, I loved having the time to do more diagnostic educational evaluations than I’d ever done before.

Some of the evaluations were done simply because parents wanted to know as much as possible about their children – whether they were in the right school, what their interests and aptitudes were – and these evaluations were always a delight. No problems to
uncover, no painful disclosures to parents – just the fresh, wonderful responses of the children. “What does the stomach do?” I asked. (This is a standard question on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale.) Seven-year-old Eva, bright as a dollar, looked at me with confidence. “That’s easy,” she said. “It digests the food.” Then, before I had finished writing the first word, she added with authority, “And
from there it goes straight to the vagina where it’s excavated.”

But most of the evaluations I did were requested because a child was doing poorly in school and parents and/or schools wanted to know why.

The heart of my practice remained remediation, which is exactly the way I wanted it. The word “remediation” is derived from the Latin
remederi
, which means “to heal.” I believed in
this. I did not think it possible to take a slice of a child’s head and merely try to fix up the reading part. I felt and still feel that the reading, or lack of it, must be helped and then integrated into the child’s whole being. My job, as I saw it, was not just to shore up reading, writing, or arithmetic skills, nor to ameliorate dyslexia, dysgraphia, or dyscalculia, but to try to help children
become successful in their place of work – school – and to improve the quality of their lives.

But I was becoming more and more convinced that the first step in the successful remediation of a child with a learning disability is a thorough diagnostic evaluation. How much easier to teach and heal when areas of strength and weakness were clearly defined. I became supersleuth, tracking strengths,
ferreting out weaknesses, drawing hypotheses, translating to parents. I also found that the hour or two that parents and I spent together in conference, going over the tests I had given as well as discussing their deeper knowledge of the child, usually formed a bond of understanding between us that made it easier to help the child.

Yet, ironically, I could remember how I had once loathed
testers and their testing. When I was teaching emotionally disturbed children, the children were required to undergo a kind of cursory testing once a year – and on this superficial testing, judgments were passed.

I hated these testers, and I hated their tests. Perhaps hate is too strong a word, but I certainly didn’t welcome them. Who were these people to tell us about our children? We teachers
had only four children each. We were with them six hours a day, five days a week – teaching, playing, eating – intensely involved all day long. The testers were certified psychologists, but they came to our school for only a few hours a week, observing the children from doorways, discussing them at staff conferences, never really interacting with them. And then “testing” them – taking the
children out to another room, the children protesting, hating to go; I had a strong sense that the feeling was mutual. I doubted that the testers had any more desire to be close to the children than the children had to be with them.

But test they did, and they reported back weeks later that our children were “subnormal.” What did these people know about the real child, I raged silently,
when most of the time the children were frozen with fear and couldn’t have answered the questions even if they had known the answers? I regarded the results of this testing with suspicion and disdain.

Then in graduate school I learned that the fault was not in the tests themselves, but in the way they were used. In a course entitled Individual Psychological Testing taught by Dr. George Kennedy
– a tall, gentle man with a fringe of white hair – I learned how valuable testing could be.

“Each week I will test a child,” Dr. Kennedy told us. “You will observe the child and myself through this one-way window. The child and I will sit here at the table behind the glass.” He tapped the window with his fingers. “And you,” he gestured at the twenty graduate students his class was composed
of, “will sit here in this classroom and watch and record the child’s answers. At our next session we will go over the answers and your scoring and observations.”

He smiled at us benignly. “It will be my job to furnish the tests. It will be yours to furnish the children.”

So each week, sometimes twice a week, we took turns bringing our own or a neighbor’s child to Dr. Kennedy and watched
as he talked and tested and revealed to us the amazing amount of information that he discovered about each. If Dr. Kennedy had been at the school for emotionally disturbed children, I would have trusted his tests. He didn’t give one single test and make broad pronouncements. He gave a battery of tests, each one revealing a different facet of the child. He didn’t rely solely on the number of
rights and wrongs for the final answer. His tests were covered with notes, and from these he taught us that observations were even more important than numbered scores.

Most important of all, the children loved him and opened up easily to him. This was not a painful ordeal for them, but rather a special time spent with a person who cared about them. The children sensed his genuine interest
and responded to it.

I loved every minute of that course and the magical way Dr. Kennedy drew out the children, as well as his meticulous, careful scoring of each test and the conversion of the scores into meaningful statements and recommendations. It was then that I began thinking that maybe, someday, I might have an office of my own and do individualized testing that would form a solid
base for remediation.

I got an A in Individual Psychological Testing, and I immediately signed up for the same course again the next semester, knowing I must learn as much as possible about evaluations from this sensitive, intelligent man. A proper evaluation is more than just a test. It should clear up questions, point out the kind of remediation that is needed, forge a team to work together
to help the child, and bring about changes in the climate and patterns of family life and school.

It is the beginning of the turnabout. At least, it was for Ben.

Benjamin Bradford Aylesworth stood on the low stone porch that runs across the front of our house. Benjamin Bradford Aylesworth was his given name. “Banana Brain” was what the kids at school called him. They just took his first two initials and fashioned him a nickname. Dr. Golden, the psychologist who had referred Ben to me, had heard this from Ben’s teacher. He wasn’t sure if
they called Ben “Banana Brain” to his face; he wasn’t even sure if Ben knew about it at all.

One look at Ben and I knew he knew. He not only knew, he believed it was true. If ever a child projected defeat, it was Ben. He was tall for twelve, with pale gold hair falling down over his forehead, hiding his eyes. His features were even, almost handsome, but his whole body drooped forward in
sullen, melancholy dejection.

“Hello,” I said, stretching out my hand.

Ben’s eyes remained fixed on the toes of his Adidas.

“Ben!” His mother’s voice rose slightly as she spoke. “Say hello to Mrs. MacCracken.”

“’Lo,” Ben muttered without raising his eyes.

There had been a request, almost an order, behind his mother’s words that meant Ben was supposed to extend his
hand and say he was glad to meet me. I knew Ben heard this as clearly as I did. I also knew nothing in the world would make him do it. He had somehow allowed himself to be dragged to my office, but he certainly wasn’t going to shake my hand. I quickly put my hands inside my pockets to show that shaking was not a top priority with me.

I moved my eyes away from Ben and focused on his mother.
This was the first time we had met, although we had spoken on the phone several times. She was slim, her hair only a shade darker than Ben’s, and she rolled the thin gold chain at the base of her neck back and forth between her thumb and forefinger, her fingers trembling slightly. She was obviously very nervous. I longed to reassure her that I would be gentle, careful with her son, but this was
not the time. Later we would spend hours together, but now belonged to Ben. I needed every ounce of concentration, observation, all antennas tuned only to Ben if I were to fathom him. I could only hope she sensed this and understood.

“Ben and I will be about an hour,” I said. “Here is the background information form I mentioned on the phone. If you could just fill it in and drop it off sometime
in the next week or two, I’d appreciate it. Now, would you like to wait here in our den or would you rather come back?”

She hesitated, looking at Ben, then cleared her throat. “Well … uh, Ben, do you want me to stay? Uh … what do you think?”

Ben shrugged without turning his head or raising his eyes.

Mrs. Aylesworth began backing down the front path toward the driveway, the form
fluttering in her hand. “Well … uh, then I’ll be back. Just do a few errands, and be back at … uh.” She stared at her watch, blond straight hair swinging across her face. “What time should I come back?” she asked helplessly.

“A little after two,” I said.

Ben and I watched together as the white Mercedes backed down the driveway.

“We go this way,” I said to Ben, stepping inside,
leading the way to my office.

As we passed the sliding glass doors that look out on the terrace, Ben suddenly stopped. Two chickadees and a tufted titmouse perched on the clear cylindrical bird feeders that hung just outside the doors. Ben stood perfectly still, his eyes riveted on the birds, which were only inches away. His head was up and with his hair back he was far more handsome than
I had first thought. His eyes were greyish violet-blue, the pupils rimmed in black, his nose straight, mouth wide. Only his skin seemed out of place – milk white, almost transparent, without a trace of colour, except at his temples where little purple veins clustered and beat like a tiny heart on the side of his head. His skin made him seem vulnerable, without enough protective colouring.

“Look at that one!” Ben said, pointing to a tufted titmouse. “Look at him g-g-go!” His voice was high and excited, with just a trace of a stutter, and his light-boned, skinny shoulders trembled under the Norwegian patterned hand-knit sweater. The excitement in his voice was in such contrast to his initial behavior that I stood beside him for a moment or two, watching as the birds zoomed out of the
woods behind the terrace, braked to an instant stop on the metal perches that extended from the feeders, plucked out a sunflower seed, and were instantly off again.

“I like the chickadees and the titmouse,” I said, making conversation, giving Ben time, “but not the purple finches. They come in bunches, fill up all four feeders, and sit forever stuffing themselves. If a chickadee comes along,
they squawk and peck at it, until I finally have to open the doors and shoo the finches away so the chickadees can get another chance. Anyway, let’s go on up and I’ll show you my office.”

Actually, there’s not an awful lot to show. Maybe that’s why I like it. Clearly no decorator has ever been near the room. It belongs to the kids and me, and I try to make it a place where people don’t have
to pretend to be something they’re not.

I pointed out the bathroom, the eccentricities of the bathroom light, and the window in the small adjoining room from which the driveway and front lawn were visible. I knew that Ben was both angry and scared, and I wanted him to have a chance to get familiar with the space around him. Then I motioned him to the chair behind the desk and pulled another
one beside it.

“The first thing I want to do is just ask you some general questions – name, age, address, that kind of thing. What’s your full name and what do you want me to call you?”

“Benjamin Bradford Aylesworth.”

“Yes?”

“What?”

“Should I call you Ben?”

“D-d-doesn’t matter. It’s a stupid name anyway.” Ben’s voice was high, almost whiny now.

“Address?”

“One twenty-five Mountain View Road. South M-M-Millwood.”

“Phone?”

“Which one? We got three. Two regulars and I g-g-got one in my room.”

“That’s pretty nice. I guess you better give me all three.” Obviously, Ben did not lack the material things in life.

“How old are you, Ben?”

“Twelve.”

“Birthday?”

“November twenty-third.”

“Do you have any brothers
or sisters?”

“Yeah, one sister. J-J-Jessie.”

“How old is she?”

“Seven.”

“How do you two get along?”

“Jessie’s okay.”

“How about pets?”

“Yeah. I got a dog.”

“What kind?”

“A black Lab. MacArthur. I call him M-M-Mac for short.”

Ben’s voice seemed slightly friendlier, and the occasional stutter did not seem to be connected to the subject
matter. I decided that this was a good time to see if he would be interested in the chips.

“Pull that box over, Ben, and open it up,” I said.

Ben stared at the chips without speaking.

“If you want, you can pay yourself for everything you do here. If it’s too much trouble, that’s okay, too.” I wanted to give him an out if the chips seemed babyish. But Ben was fingering the chips,
letting them slide through his fingers.

“What do you mean?”

“Each colour is worth a different amount. Like yellow is fifty and green is twenty-five. It’s written there on the inside cover.”

I explained about the chips and prizes.

“You can buy things when you’re done. Nothing much. A sticker is worth a hundred, a Matchbox car seven thousand.”

“Seven thousand. That’s
a rip-off.”

I shrugged and counted up the brief information Ben had given me so far. “Okay. Pay yourself sixty-five so far. A yellow, a blue, and an orange. Now, what grade are you in?”

Ben picked out the chips quickly. “Sixth.”

“And your teacher?”

“Mrs. Holber.”

“Who did you have for fifth?”

“Mrs. Andrews.”

I asked and Ben told me the names of each of
his teachers back through nursery school.

“Which one did you like the best?”

Without hesitation, Ben named his kindergarten teacher.

“Why? What was good about her?”

“She didn’t yell.”

It was a familiar answer. So many learning disabled children remember kindergarten as their happiest year in school. Things were okay until it was time to learn to read.

“How about
subjects? What do you like best in school?”

“Nothing.”

I decided to change the subject myself. “What’s your dad’s name?”

“Ralph.”

“What does he do?”

“Zyloc Corporation. He’s p-p-president.”

“Your mom’s name?”

“Carol.”

“And what does she do?”

“Nothing. Well – she d-d-drives us around and she goes shopping and stuff.”

“Okay, Ben. Two more
questions. What do you like to do best when you’re not in school?”

“Sail.” The answer came quick and fast.

“Where do you sail?”

“At the river. In the summer.” For the first time his blue eyes met mine, and I thought, Okay, all right, we’re going to get there.

I smiled at him. “Sounds good. Last question. Why do you think you’re here? I ask everyone that.”

Ben looked
straight at me, every trace of friendliness gone. “Because they s-s-said I had to. D-D-Dad and M-M-Mom and Dr. Crazy all said I had to c-c-come.”

“All right. Thank you, Ben. Let’s see.” I counted up. “Pay yourself one hundred and thirty-five. That would be a silver …”

“I know, I know,” Ben interrupted, picking out the chips. “You don’t have to tell me. I can figure it out.”

I moved from the chair beside Ben to the opposite side of the desk, sat down, and picked up a brown envelope from a briefcase on the other chair. I took a small pack of 4-by-6-inch white cards out of the envelope and placed them upside down in the center of the desk. I gave Ben a pencil and piece of paper (the pencil a number two, the paper 8½ by 12 inches).

“This is called the Bender Gestalt,
and what I’d like you to do first is just copy these designs. Each of these cards has a different design on it. I’ll turn them over one at a time, and you copy it.”

Ben picked up the pencil, holding it in an awkward, hooked, right-handed grip – three fingers on top, close to the point. He copied the circle with a diamond beside it, but somehow he couldn’t get the two figures to touch and
the diamond looked more like a rectangle. At his age this should have been an easy task, and his struggles immediately set off warning signals of the possibility of difficulties with perceptual organization.

He erased and began again, glaring at me across the desk. “What’s the point of this d-d-dumb test? I can’t draw these kinds of things anyway.”

“Just do it the best you can.”

Ben begrudgingly finished the design and I turned over the next card.

Ben counted the dots on the card with his finger, counting backward from right to left. He drew three tiny circles and counted again, this time from left to right. It was obvious that Ben had a great deal of left-right confusion. Inwardly I wondered if he also reversed or had once reversed letters and words, a condition
that often accompanies confused directionality.

As a teacher or tutor I would never have let Ben struggle so, but during these four evaluation sessions it was necessary for me to test and learn what Ben could do on his own – to discover his strengths and also his weaknesses.

The Bender Gestalt is primarily a test of visual motor perception, but it also gives clues to the child’s work
style, his organizational skills, a sense of how he feels about himself. Ben’s left-right confusion and difficulty drawing angles were obvious, but underneath his sullenness was a surprising determination. He continued to work hard, although silently now, at a task that was clearly very difficult for him.

“Okay. That’s fine,” I said as he finished copying the last design. “Now take this
new piece of paper and draw as many designs as you can remember.”

“Oh jeez,” Ben whined. “That’s not fair.” I understood – always I wish the test instructions included the fact that the child will be asked to reproduce the designs later. Somehow it seems so much fairer, but while I may fudge the rules a little with chips, I’m strict with myself about administering tests the way they are
written.

Ben began to draw immediately, despite his complaints, and produced six of the nine designs, although one was upside down and all six were only one-tenth the size of the original. A recall of five designs is considered average.

“Pay yourself twenty-five for each design you remembered, plus ten for each of the nine you copied.”

Ben was counting and figuring and paying
himself. He wasn’t willing to become involved with me as a person yet, but he was certainly into the chips.

Most children dump their chips any old which way into one of the empty containers on the desk, but Ben sorted his by colour and lined them up in even rows.

“Whadda we do now?” he asked, avarice overcoming anxiety.

“Well, we’ll begin the WISC-R. The first part has to do
with information – facts about the world. The questions are easy in the beginning. They get harder, up to high school, so I don’t expect you to know all of them. Here’s the first one. How many pennies in a nickel?”

“Jeez. Whadda you think? A hundred? Five, naturally.”

The questions became increasingly difficult, and Ben’s answers became increasingly inaudible, a stutter in almost every
sentence now. Still, he worked with concentration, and we finished four more subtests of the WISC-R – Picture Completion, Similarities, Picture Arrangement, and Arithmetic.

Finally, I leaned back and said, “That’s it for today, Ben. Count up.”

I helped him separate his chips into piles equal to a hundred, talking to him as we worked together. “I don’t know if your mother told you or
not, but you’ll be coming three more times for testing. If you’ll open that middle drawer and hand me the black book, I’ll tell you when your next appointment is.”

Ben opened the drawer and rummaged around, taking his time, fingering the Mickey Mouse watch and letter opener. There was no hyperactivity in his actions. He was just doing what I’d asked and taking his time about it. That was
okay. If I was going to prowl around in his head, he could at least investigate my desk drawer.