Beautiful Child (14 page)

Thus, before every lesson – every
single
lesson – I did the shoulders, hips, knees, toes exercise with her. I included the boys, who seemed to profit more visibly from this extra bit of activity inserted regularly into the day than Venus did. They liked the five minutes of jumping around, loved the predictability of its happening every hour, and adored having me choose one of them to pull through the exercises the way I did Venus. But I could only pull them through in the afternoons, when Julie was there to pull Venus through, because she simply would not
ever
do them on her own.

Indeed, I made a conscious effort to use touch in many ways with her. I did talk this over extensively with Bob first, largely because we were just beginning to move into the era of child abuse awareness when physical contact between teachers and students was becoming an issue. But Bob, being of much the same way of thinking as I was, was happy with the approach and understood the value of tactile communication with a child like Venus.

I had three quite separate goals in using touch in this instance. First, as the simple but very effective communication tool it was. Warm, caring touches – pats on the back, quick hugs, a reassuring hand on the shoulder – could communicate more effectively than words that I was aware of her presence, liked having her there, and did not in any way find her disgusting or unpleasant. Second, as a demonstration that touch could be positive, warm, and nonsexual, which was an important distinction to make
with children for whom physical or sexual abuse was a possibility. And third, just as pure tactile stimulation. Approaching Venus’s almost catatonic state from the point of view that she had been vastly understimulated as a baby and young child, I felt it was important to use all senses available to me to “wake her up.”

The other thing I did was read to her. Every day during the afternoon recess. After exhausting Frog and Toad and their various adventures through two or three books, we went on to the rather more sophisticated adventures of Russell Hoban’s Frances, a very human little girl in the guise of a small badger. There are several of these books and the stories are longer and more complex, so I went over them slowly, reading and rereading, talking about all the details of the stories. Having not met a child, girl
or
boy, who did not identify with Frances’s feelings and her juvenile logic, I hoped they would also work their magic on Venus.

About the same time, music made an appearance in the classroom as one of those serendipitous, spur-of-the-moment ideas.

I’m not among the world’s most talented when it comes to music. I can carry a tune and I have a good enough ear for pitch. However, I am also almost completely bereft of any sense of rhythm, and I have a singularly bad problem remembering lyrics. Consequently, I was not naturally attracted to teaching music in the classroom, probably
because I was often no better at it than the children, and in some instances, worse! However, it occurred to me that music would be another important way we could provide positive stimulation for Venus. And … when I considered it, here was another way for the boys to let off energy. So, I thought, what the heck. I
could
sing. And the boys loved singing, whether they could do it or not.

So, I made a conscious decision there in December, heart of the Christmas music season, that we’d make music a part of every day. I had to plan this rather strategically, as we now had the other learning-support children coming in regularly for twenty or thirty minutes here and there, and it seemed unfair to cut into their time in the room. This meant music had to be a “movable feast,” appearing whenever I could squeeze it in. We started with singing. Anytime I could manage it. “If You’re Happy and You Know It” was an old favorite. And “B-I-N-G-O,” which the boys loved because of its shouting. But I included some old-timers, such as “High Hopes,” “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening,” “Little Arrows,” and “If You Want to Swing on a Star,” because they were funny, could be mimed, and stood up well to being sung with gusto. But mainly because
I could remember the words
! And, of course, as it was the Christmas season, this gave us lots of Christmas songs to work with. Indeed, “Jingle Bells” almost became our theme song we sang it so much.

The music thing caught on
very
quickly. We started singing every time someone made it through a whole
period with their traffic light on green. Billy turned out to be quite talented at altering the words of songs, so he was always coming up with a new version of an old familiar. They were usually dopey words but fun, and everyone liked hearing their name in a song. I found it was a good way to get everyone changed from one activity to another, so I often started us singing when it was time to get ready for lunch or the like. Better yet, it proved a foolproof way of distracting everyone’s attention away from doing something they shouldn’t, particularly those times when people were starting to get a bit testy with one another. If I said “Let’s sing,” almost everyone wanted to. Even if the testy person did not join in, the others always would, and the mood would change. Within a short time, we were singing so often, it felt like living inside an operetta. Right down to the slightly surreal quality when people unexpectedly burst into song.

Venus herself never participated in any of this, although Julie or I often chose her as a “dance partner,” if we did actions. But she didn’t ignore us either. I often saw her watching the boys intently as they sang out familiar words and danced and mimed. And Venus wasn’t the only one not ignoring us. One lunchtime, I opened the classroom door to let the boys out to join the other classes going down to lunch. We’d been singing “Little Arrows” while we were waiting for the bell to ring. While it was a rather dippy little love song, the boys simply loved miming arrows zinging back and forth, and it had just the kind of gutsy tune
that worked best for us, so, when the door opened, they all burst out singing the chorus of “Little arrows in your clothing, Little arrows in your hair. When you’re in love you’ll find those little arrows everywhere,” and disappeared down the stairwell.

Pam, who taught third grade in the room next to me, was standing in her doorway, and she shook her head good-naturedly when she caught my eye.

“I probably shouldn’t let them out doing that,” I said. “Somebody downstairs has already complained about all the noise in the hallway!” I laughed.

“You guys are so happy in there, aren’t you?” Pam said.

“It’s crowd control actually.”

“No. I hear you, Torey. You guys are
always
singing.
All
the time.”

It suddenly occurred to me that we might well be disturbing Pam’s class. The building was old and the walls were thick, so not much penetrated, but she was right. “All the time” did describe it.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I hope we’re not too noisy.”

“No. I think it’s great. My bunch would think I was nuts, if I tried to sing all the time. But your little guys … they’re just so enthusiastic about everything. I think you’re lucky to have such a happy class.”

I smiled in surprise. I hadn’t thought of it that way. I hadn’t seen happiness sneaking up on us like that.

I
n our own ersatz – von Trapp family way, we finally started coming together as a class. It mattered to the boys that we sang; it made us “fun,” and it made them want to be included. It gave us a group identity. We were no longer “the resource room.” We were the class that was always singing. Unfortunately, as this happened, it highlighted a different problem – the ongoing discord between Julie and me. In this instance, it was because Julie steadfastly refused to join in all the goofy singing. She couldn’t sing, she said. I laughed it off the first few times, joking that I was hardly Maria Callas, and Shane and Zane wouldn’t have known a tune if it had been spoon-fed to them by Rodgers and Hammerstein. So
good
singing didn’t really come into it. Being able to carry a tune was no prerequisite to joining this sing-a-thon. We were just having fun. Then Julie
became a little more emphatic, explaining that, in fact, she
hated
singing,
especially
group singing. Kids had teased her about her inability to sing when she was little and she still felt sensitive.

I could understand this and I didn’t want to make her feel bad, so I ignored her refusal to take part from that point on. The boys, however, kept pestering her. I’d say, “It doesn’t matter. In this class we let people make these choices for themselves.” But it did matter. Singing had become synonymous with wanting to join us. We were bonding over this, becoming the group we had never previously managed to be. When Julie refused to participate, it cast her in the role of an outsider. The subtext then became that I was excluding her. By using something she was not good at, something she disliked, to bond us, I was implying I didn’t want her. This wasn’t true, of course. The whole singing business had literally just happened. Certainly, it was never something I would have planned to use because I wasn’t very musical myself, but as chance would have it, the boys were, and this just jelled for us. But Julie didn’t see it that way. We had gone beyond things being an issue of my way and her way to a point where she occasionally voiced the feeling that I was
planning
these differences. I was attempting to keep her from being part of us.

This left me deeply dismayed. I disliked the subtle tension that was always present in the room when we both were there. I disliked the sense that I couldn’t depend on Julie to back me up when things got difficult. I disliked
most of all her thinking that any of our discord was intentional, because it never was.

What had gone wrong between us?

I never quite understood what had caused our problems. Was it just a personality clash? Something that didn’t work in the context of my classroom? A deeper problem? I didn’t know. I kept watching, kept thinking, kept trying to analyze what I sensed. My problem was that while I was quite a good analytical thinker when it came to concrete things, I was a much more intuitive thinker at the abstract level. I could “sense” when something wasn’t right, but I had a hard time identifying it. This made it difficult to go to Bob and tell him about the situation because what could I say? She was being too nice in the classroom?

And that, of all the things, was the difference between us that was driving me nuts. I hated the cliché, but this woman really did have the patience of a saint. Perhaps it particularly irritated me because I’d always considered patience to be
my
strength. With many children I had been successful solving difficult problems largely because I simply could be very, very patient and wait things out without feeling frustrated or irritated. Admittedly, it was more of a personality trait than a cultivated virtue, but nonetheless I’d always been rather proud of it. Yet my patience was not even in the same league as Julie’s. She seemed capable of tolerating
anything
without becoming upset or annoyed. One part of me found it almost offensive that she greeted every mishap in the classroom with relentless calm. Another part
of me, however, was green with envy for something I knew I could never do.

Things finally came to a head on the last day before we broke up for winter vacation.

When Billy arrived that morning, he was clutching a brightly wrapped blob of a gift.

“This is for you, Teacher. I bought it myself.”

“How thoughtful, Billy,” I said and set it on my desk. “Thank you so much. I’ll really look forward to opening this.”

“Open it now,” he said.

“Don’t you think I should wait until Christmas?”

“No! Open it now. I want to watch you open it. I want you to see what it is!”

The other children were starting to arrive and they gathered around my desk. Smiling, I undid the ribbon. The irregular-shaped package had been literally mummified in Scotch tape, so I picked up the scissors and carefully cut through the wrapping.

Inside was a statue of a gray cat about a foot high made from glazed pottery. “How beautiful, Billy. Thank you so much.”

Billy was grinning ear to ear. “I bought that myself. I paid my own money for it. Know how much it cost?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “One dollar and ninety-nine cents. I bought it at the Dollar Store. Everything there is supposed to only cost a dollar. But this was one of their
expensive
gifts. And I got it myself with my own money.”

“Well, thank you so much, Billy. I like cats a lot, so I’m pleased to have such a nice cat statue. When I get home, I’ll find a special place to set it up.”

“Yeah, I thought that,” he said. He picked up the cat statue and caressed it lovingly. “I thought ‘Teacher’d like this.’” He looked up. “I really did think that. I was thinking of you.”

I leaned down and gave him a hug. “You are a thoughtful boy, Billy,” I said. “I’ve always known that.”

Looking enormously pleased, he smiled and hugged me back.

I set the cat statue on my desk and went off to start the day.

Our class was having a Christmas party that afternoon, which was courting disaster because of the change in routine. Shane and Zane seemed particularly badly affected by the day’s excitement. Both boys found it very hard to control themselves in anything other than a very structured, predictable setting.

We had worked a lot on helping them deal with this inflexibility. For instance, we’d made up words to some of our favorite songs that helped to remind them to stop, take a breath, think, then act. We regularly played games like freeze, where the class would be doing something and I’d call out “freeze,” and everyone would have to freeze in the position of whatever they were doing, take a deep breath, and hold it until I said “thaw.” We also had special “quiet
music” that I put on when things became too stimulating and a special “quiet place,” where Shane and Zane could sit down and collect their thoughts to help them stay in control, that didn’t have the association with punishment that the quiet chair did. Even so, they could become very, very naughty if their routine changed much.

That morning had been fairly chaotic, but it was helped by the fact that we had none of the part-time students there, as it was the last day before vacation. So I’d been able to give them my full attention and structure the time with a lot of low-key activities.

Over the lunch hour, however, the treats arrived. Jesse’s grandmother brought in cupcakes. Shane and Zane’s mother stopped by with a huge tray of cookies cut out in the shape of Christmas trees. Julie arrived and helped me set up the party table. Although the rest of the school was having a Christmas party all afternoon, we were only going to have our party during the time following recess, as that was when Santa Claus was due to arrive in our room. Even with this shortened party time, however, it was impossible from lunchtime on to ignore the fact that Something Exciting was going to take place. When Shane and Zane took all the goodies in, they just went gaga.

The first upset happened even before the bell rang.

“Look what Shane’s done,” Jesse called out.

I was in the process of hanging out my attendance slip and closing the door. I turned to see Shane holding a fat
red marking pen. He had colored all the skin on his left hand and up the arm of his shirt.

“Oh dear,” Julie said in an amicable voice. “Did you forget markers are for paper, not for people? Come here, Shane. Let’s wash it off.”

I got started with the afternoon’s activities.

Julie washed Shane’s hand as best she could. There weren’t enough paper towels at the sink, so she went to the cupboard to get a new pack. Shane was splashing water by hitting the flat of his hand on the bottom of the sink.

He looked up at me as he did it, a beady little expression in his eyes because he knew I was watching, and then stuck his finger against the faucet. Water sprayed everywhere.

Julie turned to see the mess. “Oops,” she said calmly. “Water on the floor. Someone might slip. Here, let’s take towels and wipe it up.”

She took paper towels and bent over the spilled water. Shane just took towels. Being meant for a paper towel dispenser, they were loaded into the pack in an interfolded manner, so one towel lifted up the edge of the next towel. He experimented with pulling them apart rapidly, which meant they flew off in all directions in rather graceful arcs.

I didn’t want to undermine Julie’s authority by intervening, but I kept a close eye on the proceedings. Noticing him doing this, Julie rose back to her feet. “Towels are for wiping things with, Shane. Here.” She gave him a towel. “Please help.” She knelt back down to finish wiping up the water.

Shane wasn’t falling for that one. Instead, he started hitting her over the head with the towel. It didn’t hurt, of course, but he was persistent. She ignored him at first until he started swishing the paper towel against her eyes so that she couldn’t see.

“Towels are for wiping, Shane. Will you help?”

Shane continued to hit her with the paper towel.

She rose up and took his hand. “Come back over to your table. You have your folder there. Let’s see if there is a nice picture of Santa for you to color. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”

I watched all this, hypersensitive to how I would have handled it differently. For one thing, I would have raised my voice. Not shouted. But I would have used my voice, as well as my words, to make it very apparent that I considered coloring yourself with a marker, spraying water all over the floor, and then throwing a bunch of paper towels around … not acceptable classroom activities. Then I would have ensured
he
mopped up the floor, and if he hadn’t cooperated, I would have had him in the quiet chair until he felt inclined to do it.

Yet, thinking all that, I felt slightly guilty. I could justify my method as giving Shane a clearer message of how to behave, but the truth was, I would have also done it because I was annoyed with him. I didn’t
like
that kind of behavior. My reaction would have been – at least in part – personal. But was that right? I was here to
help
him. These were special children with heavy burdens. Julie stayed so
child-oriented, so relentlessly cheerful in her efforts to interact with them in a humane, compassionate way that encouraged good self-esteem. And here was me, reacting out of: “Don’t do that because I don’t like it.”

The afternoon went from bad to worse. For once the traffic light system failed me. They had been going from yellow to red on and off all morning, but by afternoon, everyone was permanently on red and no one cared. Jesse, overexcited, could not control his tics. He barked and flinched and grimaced. When not doing that, he fought. He and Shane biffed it out over a pencil. He and Billy went two rounds on the rug in the reading corner before I managed to pry them apart and get them into separate quiet chairs. Gwennie was also jumpy. She hated Jesse’s barking and sat for long stretches of time with her hands up over her head, trying to shut it out. And when we weren’t looking, she dived into the Christmas goodies, stuffing candy and cookies into her mouth with both hands. Shane and Zane were a nightmare of truly outrageous activities. Shane pulled things off the bulletin board. He kicked over chairs. He tried to break one of the back windows by hitting it repeatedly with a block. Zane unzipped his pants and peed on my chair. Venus was the only one not to cause trouble and that’s because she was absent that day.

The centerpiece of the half-hour party after recess was the arrival of Santa Claus, who was, of course, really Bob. He was visiting each room in the school with a sack of goodies and arriving in our room last, since we were
having the shortest party. Most of the children in regular classrooms were getting small bags of candy, but the Lions Club was sponsoring our class throughout that year, so they had provided gifts for each of the children in the room, including Gwennie, even though she was only part-time.

As I was welcoming Santa, Shane and Zane were both up out of their seats and running around. I nodded to Julie to corral them and get them back where they belonged.

Shane, zooming by my desk, picked up the gray cat statue that Billy had given me.

“Put that back, you little fucker! That’s not yours!” Billy shouted. He was out of his seat.

Santa put down his sack and grabbed Billy by the arm.

“Jingle bells, Jingle bells,” I started. “Come on, everyone! Jingle all the way. Oh what fun…”

Santa had joined in, singing heartily and still gripping Billy. Billy started to sing, even though he was still glaring at Shane. So did Jesse. Gwennie kept her head down, her hands over her ears.

Julie crossed over to Shane, took the cat statue from his hands, and put it back on the desk.