A Safe Place for Joey (14 page)

Ben hesitated. “I can’t think of anything.”

“Well, try. If you don’t come up with something, I’ll give you a topic.”

Two more minutes of silence and then Ben began writing. He wrote for several minutes, and then pushed the paper toward me.

I pushed it back. “Read it to me first, okay?”

“One day I went sailing with Danny and
a big storm came up …”

Ben read on. The ten or so sentences sounded coherent, but after he’d counted the words and was paying himself ten for each, I looked at the paper and could see that almost a third of the words he’d read to me were left out. Punctuation was nonexistent and spacing irregular. Some words collided with others, some ran off the paper, some wandered up from the line and
would have been indecipherable if Ben had not first read them.

While he figured out the correct amount of chips, I got out the Detroit Test of Learning Aptitude. This is not designed to measure either intellectual potential or academic achievement, but rather to assess various categories of learning, such as visual attentive ability, auditory attentive ability, motor ability, and so forth
– in other words, to discover through which modalities a child learns best.

I started with the test for Auditory Attention Span for Unrelated Words. Here the child is asked to repeat the words the examiner says. First, “cat, ice.” Each sequence becomes longer until eight unrelated words are given at one time. Ben sped along in fine shape until we reached a four-word sequence; here he became
confused and repeated “cart” as “kite.” In a five-word sequence, he could repeat only three of the words correctly, and by the time we reached eight words he could repeat only two. His chin had sunk low on his chest and he muttered, “See. I g-g-guess I really am s-s-stupid.”

I counted the words he had said correctly. “You had forty-one right, Ben. Pay yourself five for each. Besides, this
test doesn’t measure how smart you are – only auditory memory.”

“Audi … what? What do you mean?” Ben asked. “What’s that, anyway?”

“Auditory memory. Just a fancy way of saying ‘remembering what you hear,’” I answered.

Although Ben perked up slightly as he piled up two more silvers, from experience I knew this was indeed a rather low score. “Now try this,” I said. “See if you
think it’s harder or easier than the test we just did.”

I turned to Visual Attention Span for Objects. “This time I’m going to show you some pictures. First, there’ll be two pictures, then three – more each time, and I’ll leave them out a little longer each time, too. Again, remember nobody’s ever gotten them all right.”

The first picture showed a house and a girl. Ben remembered them
perfectly. He also remembered a three-picture sequence and a four and a five. He was becoming increasingly pleased with himself. Even in an eight-picture sequence, he could recall six of the eight correctly.

He piled up his earned silvers and remarked, “That was much easier than saying the words.” What he meant, of course, was that it was easier to remember what he saw than what he heard.

Ben, as well as the test, was telling me that he could process information better through visual than through auditory channels.

I was not surprised. There had been lots of indications of difficulty with auditory processing – the Digit Span of the WISC-R, dictation, and Auditory Memory for Unrelated Syllables on the Detroit. It was as if Ben’s head went on overload when too much material
was presented at one time through his auditory channels. If the material was organized and meaningful, he did better, and he scored somewhat higher in Auditory Memory for Related Syllables, in which he was asked to repeat sentences. It was interesting that the overload factor was not apparent with visual stimuli.

We did five more tests on the Detroit – Motor Speed, Free Association, Memory
for Designs, Oral Directions, and Visual Attention Span for Letters. These tests, too, indicated that visual memory was a strength for Ben, and auditory processing weaker. However, when he had to use a pencil to copy designs or draw them from memory, he once again had difficulty.

As so often happens, a mixed pattern of difficulties was starting to appear. Much as parents, teachers, and I
myself long for one simple answer, it is always more complicated. And as I often remind myself, considering the complexities of our brains this is not surprising.

The last test of the day was my own variation of the Harris Test of Lateral Dominance. I always include this, although there is controversy about the importance of its results. It simply shows which hand, eye, and foot the child
prefers to use for different tasks. The majority of the world is right-handed, right-footed, and right-eyed. For whatever reason, a large percentage of the children I see have what is known as mixed or crossed dominance: that is, they are right-handed and left-eyed or left-handed and right-eyed. Footedness (the foot used for kicking, stamping, and so forth), if there is such a word, is also noted.
Research has not shown this to be a cause of learning disabilities, but still I always check it out. One more piece to the puzzle.

The trick in identifying which eye, hand, or foot a child uses is to have the child focus on the task.

“Okay, Ben. Take this piece of paper. Roll it up and then look through it and tell me how many fingers I have up. I’m going to try and fool you.”

I twined six fingers together and held them out in front of me.

Ben put the paper scope to his left eye. “Six.”

“All right. Fine. Take it down. Now once more. How many?”

Again the scroll went directly to his left eye. “Eight,” Ben said with confidence.

“Now scrunch the paper up into a ball and bring it over here.” I motioned to a spot between the two green chairs on the
far side of the desk. A mural of prancing horses made of different-coloured cloth, a present from a former student, ran across the far wall. “See the orange horse at the end. Try to hit it with that paper ball.”

Ben pegged it hard with his right hand, missed, threw again with his right hand, and got the tail.

“Okay. Now put the paper right here and kick it out the door.”

Right
foot. “Pick it up and hop back and put the paper in the wastebasket.” Left foot. “Now skip to the bathroom and open the door.” Ben turned the knob with his left hand. I handed him the kaleidoscope. “Quickly – how many patterns can you see before I count to three?” Left eye. “Write your full initials on the rug with your toe.” Left foot. “What do you see in this microscope?” Left eye. “Make a cross
on this paper with this marker.” Right hand. “Wind the stopwatch four times.” Left hand.

Ben and I stood facing each other in the middle of the floor. Ben was actually grinning at me. “Touch your right eye.” Ben hesitated, then took his right hand and pretended to write – so he could figure out his right side – then touched his right eye. “Touch your left ear.” Hesitation, but he did it.

“Okay.” I stretched out my hands. “Touch my left hand.”

Ben did just what I would have done. He turned around so he was facing the same way I was, found which was his own left, turned back, and touched my left hand.

“Okay. That’s fine. Pay yourself two hundred seventy-five.”

Whatever mixed dominance means or doesn’t mean, children enjoy moving around and it’s a good way
to wind up a session. Ben looked happier and more relaxed than I’d ever seen him.

He counted his chips carefully, and when he added them to the ones he’d saved he had 6,070.

He asked to see the Matchbox catalog and perused its pages carefully, setting the stopwatch when he started.

I watched Ben as he turned the pages with concentration, wondering, as usual, at the magic of chips.
I was sure Ben had enough money stashed away somewhere to buy everything in the catalog, but somehow earning the chips to buy the car or truck or plane made it special. My guess was that the value of the chips was that each one in essence said, “You’re okay,” “You’re good,” “You’re terrific,” and my kids don’t hear that kind of thing very often.

“Hey, Mary,” Ben said, bringing me back. “Do
you think the wings on this thing move?” he asked, pointing to a small green and white plane.

“I know they do.” It was the first time he’d used my name. I wanted to savor it, but there wasn’t time. “I got one for somebody else last week.” Then, suddenly, I took a breath and asked quickly, quietly, “Why, Ben? Why does it matter if the wings move? Is it like the birds?”

Ben was silent.
Had I gone too far too soon? Ben turned the catalog over and over in his hands. Finally, he said, “Yeah. Sort of.” There was another long pause, and then he added, “That’s what I was doing up there on the roof that day. I couldn’t use the porch anymore – well, I’ll tell you about that later – anyway, see, I sneaked out this old pajama top of Dad’s and I took off my shoes to get lighter, and I figured
if I could flap the right way, kind of like the birds, maybe I could fly. I never did get to try it, though. Ole Jessie came out in the yard and saw me and started yelling, and then Mom called Dad and he came home from the office.” Ben shrugged. “Everybody made such a big deal out of it. That’s why I have to go to that Dr. Golden and come here. They both – Mom and Dad – think I’m crazy, but
I bet it would’ve worked.”

“Suppose it hadn’t, Ben?”

Ben shrugged. “Well, at least I wouldn’t have had to go to school for a while.”

The car honked.

“I’ll check out the airplane,” I said to Ben, thinking, How can we end now? How can I send this child out and away? And yet another child was waiting downstairs, and there would be four more after her.

“Listen, Ben, maybe
you could draw me a picture of what you think it would be like – flying, I mean. Why don’t you borrow these?” I said, nodding toward a box of Magic Markers. “There are sixteen different colours,” I added, as if quantity would help.

I woke early the next morning, thinking about Ben, and went up to my office and scored and reviewed as many of the tests as I could.

I studied the scores
and my notes when I’d finished, and even though all the test scores weren’t in yet, it was easy to see that there was a large gap between Ben’s intellectual potential and his academic achievement. He scored far above the average range of intelligence, but his academic achievements were far below the average. This was related to his difficulties with auditory processing and memory, poor graphomotor
skills, difficulty with verbal expression, and the fact that he had very little confidence in his own abilities. However, he was beginning to open up a little, and I was sure Ben’s understanding exceeded far more than he could explain in words.

I decided to add the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, a test of verbal receptive intelligence, to our last session, even though it would mean extending
his time and rescheduling my following appointments. None of that mattered now. I was hot on the trail, tracking down clue after clue, trying to solve the mystery of Ben.

I had thought about calling Phil Golden for backup information and support, but our usual arrangement was for me to talk with him after I had finished all four evaluation sessions, scored the tests, and reached my own conclusions.
This was partly because Phil did not want to impose his opinions before I had formed my own, and also because he liked to see everything all at once rather than piecemeal.

Also, I liked to acquire as much information as possible directly from the child himself. I knew other people could give me their impressions of Ben. I also knew that only Ben could give me the truth.

Still, the
thought of Ben barefoot, in his father’s pajama top, haunted me. Had he been suicidal?

Certainly he was depressed and discouraged, but then, who wouldn’t be if he were Ben? And, I told myself, Ben had seemed more open and relaxed during his last visit than he ever had before.

I decided to wait.

I was watching for Ben when he came for his fourth and last appointment and went outside
to greet him.

Mrs. Aylesworth lowered the front window of the Mercedes. “Is something wrong? Did I come at the wrong time?”

“No.” I smiled, wanting to reassure her. “I just came out to remind you that we’ll be about an hour and a half today.”

“Yes. All right. How is Ben doing? Have you found out anything? And oh, I’m sorry I haven’t returned that form. I’ll drop it by tomorrow.
It’s just that it’s so … uh … difficult.”

“Just fill in as much as you can. We can complete the rest when you and Mr. Aylesworth come for your conference. Ben is working very hard, but I’d rather not try to talk about it in pieces. Besides, I’d better get to work. We’ll go over everything when you come.”

Ben had already gone in through the side door that I’d left open and was lying
on the floor watching the birds, his head propped on one hand, the markers in the other. There was only one titmouse and a woodpecker on the feeders.

But there were numerous sparrows and one bright red cardinal on the stone steps.

“How come that red one doesn’t fly up?” Ben asked.

“I don’t know. The bird book says that cardinals are ground feeders; it doesn’t say why.”

“Maybe he’s scared.”

“Yes. Maybe he is.”

Ben got up slowly and carefully. Not a bird moved. I smiled to thank him; he smiled back and went up the stairs first, leading the way.

He sat behind the desk, and I pulled the other chair over beside him. He put the box of markers on the desk and then lifted the top off the box and took out a packet of snapshots held together with a rubber
band. Ben didn’t mention the markers or having drawn anything.

“Look,” Ben said, his voice high and excited. “I brought some pictures of the river, but don’t tell Mom. I had to take them out of this p-p-picture al-albin-albinum, uh … whadda you call it … picture book, and she’d have a p-p-purple fit if she knew. She keeps it real neat with everything written underneath – the names of the
p-p-people and the dates, like. But I can put them b-b-back okay. I know where they go.

“See, this is Granny’s house and part of the boathouse and dock. You can see the flagpole out on the rocks – the whole place is mostly rock. I put the flag up every morning when I’m there and take it down before sunset. Granny says it’s my job ’cause I’m responsible.”