A Safe Place for Joey (24 page)

“Well,” Charlie said, pushing his chair back, “I guess maybe it’s worth a try.”

It was decided that I would see Charlie twice a week beginning the first of July. Summer vacation would have to wait this year.

“Thank you all for coming in,” I said, nodding at Charlie and each of his parents. Charlie
sat behind the desk; I sat beside him. June and Jim Hammond sat on the chairs in front of the desk.

“I’d just like to go over what we’re going to try to do this summer, and I think it’s easier if we all talk about it together.

“We’ve been through Charlie’s evaluation, and Charlie and I have already had a teaching session together. We know his strengths and weaknesses. We also know
that he’s going into fourth grade in the fall and that there’s a lot to do to be ready for it.

“I’m going to talk for a few minutes and tell you what I think we need to work on, and then I’d like to get your ideas.

“First of all, Charlie has to get organized. In order to do good academic work, you have to have a good workplace. A fine woodworker has his workbench and tools in prime
condition and order.

“It’s the same for you, Charlie. You need a desk in your own room, a good light, a supply of various kinds of paper, index cards, paper clips” – I stopped as June Hammond reached for a pad, took a pen out of her jacket, and began making notes – “pencils, pencil sharpener, pens, a digital clock or stopwatch, bookshelves, coloured tape, a book bag, a notebook, and an assignment
pad.”

“You know,” June Hammond said, “I’m as anxious to help Charlie as anyone. Maybe more. But I have to tell you that he has never studied in his room in his life. Whatever work he’s done has been on the floor of the den with the TV on full blast. Isn’t that right, Charlie?”

Charlie nodded, eyes down.

“Look,” I said. “Let’s not waste time talking about the way it used to be.
We need to plan for the fall.”

I turned toward Charlie. “I’m going to give you between fifteen and thirty minutes of homework each day this summer. I won’t give you any once school starts. Do you think you can handle that in your room?”

“Yeah. I think so. Can I play my radio?”

“I’d rather you didn’t. What you’re trying to do is train yourself to concentrate. I think you’ll do
better without any kind of noise while you’re studying. Later on, if you want to try some music without words, you can.”

I explained that Charlie needed a large, well-made book bag. He also needed a special place to keep it. I asked Mrs. Hammond to help Charlie mark out a large square on one of his shelves with brightly coloured tape. Any time Charlie wasn’t studying, his book bag and his
books were to be inside the square. This was to avoid the last-minute scramble that I was sure happened in Charlie’s house: “It’s gotta be here. I saw it just a minute ago …”

I talked for a few more minutes, answered a few questions. It wasn’t until after they’d left that I realized Mr. Hammond hadn’t said a word other than good-bye.

Mrs. Hammond called the next morning. “I’m so sorry
to bother you so soon again, but there are two other things I wanted to talk to you about and I didn’t want to mention them in front of Charlie.

“First of all, he lies constantly, and it’s getting worse all the time. It’s not just about his schoolwork, but outright lies about things he’s seen and done.”

“I know what you’re saying,” I said. “Every once in a while I get a child, usually
a boy, who has to make everything bigger, brighter, louder than it is. Try to ignore it for now. Let’s see what happens. You said there was something else bothering you.”

“Yes, but I’m not sure you can do anything about it. I love Charlie so much, but he is so aggravating. I took him shopping yesterday to get the things for his room – you know, the things you said. Well, I was a wreck by
the time we got home. First he fell over a perfectly obvious chair, then he knocked a lamp off a table. Fortunately, it didn’t break, but it certainly was embarrassing. And then while I was getting my charge plate, he asked the sales-clerk for something to drink. I mean, he acted as if he was a four-year-old, and a dumb one at that. I’m sorry to sound like such a witch.”

I smiled into the
phone. “You sound just fine. But what you’ve described to me is as typical of many dyslexic children as the Fiery Bird story Charlie brought in. Just try to remember he doesn’t do it on purpose. He honestly doesn’t judge distances correctly – that’s why he has a hard time catching and throwing – and he hasn’t assimilated social amenities. We have to try to teach those, too. Now, can I ask you something?
How does Mr. Hammond feel about all this? He was very quiet at our conference yesterday.”

There was a pause. “All I can really say is that he wasn’t entirely in favour of your tutoring Charlie, but he says he’s willing to give it a chance. Anyway, Charlie loves all his new stuff. I don’t know if it’ll do any good, but at least it’s the happiest I’ve seen him in a long while.”

Charlie
was still smiling when he arrived at my office the next day, a navy backpack across his shoulders. “What do you think? Is it okay to use this for a book bag? I got the assignment pad inside.” Charlie’s straight black hair was every which way across his forehead, but his black eyes were shining through his glasses.

We did a quick run-through of the best thing and the worst thing that had
happened to him since I’d seen him last – a perfect opportunity for Charlie to indulge in a few exaggerations. His best was all his new stuff, but his worst was that he’d been attacked by three high school kids when he was walking home from Sam’s last night. This seemed highly unlikely to me, considering Charlie’s neighborhood, but I let it pass without comment and paid fifty for the best and the
worst.

“Now, Charlie, we need to get started. Do you know how many letters there are in the alphabet?”

“Mmm … maybe about thirty-eight.”

“How about vowels?”

Charlie said he wasn’t exactly positive what I meant by a vowel.

“Okay, Charlie,” I said. “In English eighty-five percent of the words are words that you can figure out and spell if you know the rules. The other
fifteen percent you have to memorize. That will be easy for you because you have a good visual memory. In fact, that’s the way you do all your reading now – from having memorized the words or making a guess according to the meaning of the sentence. And that’s fine. Even unknown words that I teach you to figure out will become sight words after you’ve read them a few times.

“We’ll do the
easy part first.” I took out a red folder that contained graded lists of sight words, about four to six hundred words for each grade. I handed Charlie the first-grade list. “I think you know all these,” I said.

He skimmed the pages quickly. “Yeah, I think I do,” he said slowly.

“And most of these, too.” I handed him the second-grade words.

Again Charlie looked over the words.
“You’re right. I didn’t know I knew so much.”

I put the third-grade list in front of him. The lists are labeled VT21 for first grade, VT22 for second grade. This one was VT23. I didn’t cover up the numbers, but I also didn’t stress the grades. “These are a little harder. Just read the first column out loud, and put a dot beside any word you don’t know.”

Charlie had ten dots before
he’d read twenty words. Together we copied the words he didn’t know onto separate index cards and went over them again. With just one review he knew seven of the ten words. I put an elastic band around the cards and put them in an envelope. “Review them at home with your mom and dad. If you forget, have them tell you the word. You’re not supposed to figure it out.” Charlie got out his assignment pad
and carefully wrote, “1. Rid wrds.” He pushed it over to me. “See. Read words.”

“Okay. Fine. Now, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to pretend that you’re Chinese and that you don’t know how to read English. I’m going to begin at the beginning. Okay?” I picked up a pack of white cards, each about the size of a regular playing card. “There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet
– I have a card for each one. Twenty-one of the letters are consonants; they always look the same, except when they’re written as capitals. And they almost always have the same sound. The other five are vowels – sometimes six, if you count
y
– and I’m going to take those out of the pack for now,” I said, lifting out the
a
,
e
,
i
,
o
,
u
cards.

“What we’re going to do now may seem too easy,
but remember, you’re Chinese. When I put a card in front of you, just tell me the sound of the letter and a word that begins with it. I’ll do it first.”

Charlie knew the sounds of all the consonants except
q
,
w
,
y
, and
x
, and he reversed the
d
and gave the
b
sound. We separated those five from the pack and I wrote each one on a separate index card and Charlie traced it with a Magic Marker.
We practiced those five again.

“This time, Charlie, leave those five cards in front of you and I’ll make the sound, and you give me the letter that goes with the sound.”

Charlie had it by the second try and put the index cards in another envelope in his backpack, dated his assignment pad, and made a note to study them: “2. Stude letrs.”

Next I handed him lined paper and a pencil
and asked him to write his name and the date. Charlie was right-handed (although he threw and batted like a lefty). He made his
o
from right to left and his
d
from the bottom up.

“This time I’m going to dictate about fifty letter sounds to you. Just write the letter that goes with the sound you hear me say:
m
,
h
,
b
,
s
,
b
,
t
,
m
,
b
…”

Charlie was struggling. He could easily point to
the card representing the sound, but when it came to transcoding what he heard into written symbols, he had great difficulty.

“Take your time. There’s no rush.” When we’d finished I put his paper in a folder in his bin. In a month or two we’d look back, and he’d be amazed that this had once seemed so difficult.

He had his assignment book open. “What do I write?” he wanted to know.

“Nothing. We’ll do that part here.” I certainly wasn’t going to set Charlie up for failure at home.

I took out the five vowel cards. “These are the key cards. The vowels. And they’re also tricky. They can have several different sounds, and the position of a vowel in a word is of prime importance. You must notice this carefully in order to understand the code.

“Now. This is important,
Charlie. Every word must have at least one vowel, or it isn’t a word. So when you go to spell something, remember that it has to have at least one of these five letters.

“Now, here’s another important thing. There are short words like ‘ran’ and long words like ‘transatlantic.’ The short word has one part, the long word has four parts. We call the parts syllables.”

I wrote the vowels
across the top of the page and the words “ran” and “transatlantic.” “Okay, there’s one vowel sound in ‘ran.’ I’ll mark the
a
and colour it yellow to make it stand out. Now here, you mark the vowels in ‘transatlantic,’ and tell me how many syllables.”

Charlie got it right away. “Four,” he said. “Four silly bulls.”

I hugged him. “You’re one terrific kid, you know that, Charlie? Four
is exactly right.” I could explain about the silly bulls later.

“Now, listen to this. Even when you can’t see the word and count the vowels, you can still tell how many syllables there are. I’ll show you how. What we’re really talking about are vowel sounds. I’ll explain more about that later.”

I put my hand under my chin. “Cat,” I said. “I could feel my mouth open once. Now, catcher.
It opened twice. That means it has two syllables. Try it.”

“Yeah,” Charlie said in surprise, imitating me. “You’re right. Give me some more.”

“Christmas,” I said. “How many syllables?”

“Two.”

“Baseball.”

“Two. Harder.”

“Electric.”

“Three.”

“Blank.”

“One.”

“You’ve got it, Charlie. Okay. Your assignment is to think up two words of one syllable,
two with two syllables, and so on. You don’t have to write them. Just know them and be able to tell me.”

Charlie wrote in his assignment pad, “3. No sily bul – 1, 2, 3, 4.”

I kept quiet. Charlie knew what it meant. That’s what assignment pads are for.

“All right. Now one more thing. Tune in to me, Charlie. This is important.” I took the
a
card. “This letter, this vowel, can have
several sounds. The sound I want you to learn now is called the short
a
sound.” I wrote
a
on an index card and drew an apple on the other side. “Like the sound that begins apple. Say it. Okay. Good. Now you can write Martian words.”

“What do you mean, Martian?”

“Come on, Charlie. You’re through being Chinese. You got to move a little. I’m just fooling around. This stuff can get enormously
boring, you know.”

Charlie bulged his eyes at me behind his glasses. “You’re telling me?” he asked incredulously.

“So, okay,” I agreed. “As I was saying. Now that you know all the consonant sounds, the truth about syllables, and the short
a
, you can write Martian words.”

Charlie shrugged. “Anything you say.”

“Good. Write ‘zad.’”

“Zad? What are you talking about? There’s
no such word.”

“That’s all you know. Martians say it when they’re surprised – like, if they step in a puddle they didn’t see. That’s what they say. ‘Zad!’”

Charlie laughed in spite of himself. “That’s nuts.”

“Don’t insult the teacher,” I replied. “Just write it. Think of the sound that you hear in the beginning, the sound in the middle, and the sound at the end.” I pushed the
pad toward Charlie.

“Zad,” he said to himself, “Z-z-z … okay.” And within a minute he’d written it exactly right.