Beautiful Child (16 page)

Bob smiled. “What if I just talk to her, for a start? Get everything out in the open. See where she stands. See if she can alter her behavior a little. And maybe you can alter yours.”

“As in?”

“As in being a little more tolerant of a different approach.”

I nodded.

“From the sounds of things, I can hear where you’re coming from on this. And I have faith in whatever methods you are using. So, it does sound like Julie has some problems and I will talk to her about them. But there are a million ways of interacting with people. If she isn’t actually hurting the children, if she isn’t upsetting them or interfering with their progress, then we may simply have to accept that this is a way different from our own, but it isn’t wrong. And so we’ll need to adjust too.”

S
ince Venus had returned at the beginning of December, her behavior on the playground had been more controlled. This was due in part to the fact that she was being so closely supervised. She still had her own aide at lunchtime. Julie watched her at morning recess, and I kept her in at afternoon recess. So there was much less chance of her attacking other children. But even so, there seemed to be fewer problems generally. Although there had been some minor scuffles, we didn’t have a serious run-in until early February.

On this particular occasion, Venus simply seemed to be having a very bad day. She had had a small run-in before school. Wanda had trudged up the many stairs to the classroom slowly, huffing and puffing, her ever-increasing weight making the climb hard work. Venus was coming
up behind her when one of the twins, frustrated by Wanda’s slow speed, had pushed on by. This enraged Venus, who let out a howl and took after him, but he had a head start. He shot into the classroom and I managed to snag Venus at the doorway. I plopped her in the quiet chair. Within a few minutes she had collected herself enough to sink back into her normal stupor, so that was the end of it.

Midway through math we had another incident, this time with Billy. I didn’t know what started it, but I suspect it was something totally insignificant, like Billy’s brushing against her. Venus roared to life and socked him on the side of the head before I could intervene. So back to the quiet chair.

Then at recess she again had a flare-up. This time Julie interceded before it went too far and Venus retreated to leaning against her wall, even though it was snow covered. She returned to the classroom soggy and silent when the bell rang and resumed her place at the table.

At lunchtime I was just finishing my soup and sandwich in the teachers’ lounge when I heard Venus’s familiar scream filtering up from the playground. Pam, who was sitting across from me, raised her eyes to meet mine.

“Here we go,” I muttered and rose from my chair.

Looking out the window, I saw a crowd gathered over by the spiral slide. From there I couldn’t tell who all was involved, but I knew I better go down. So I packed up what remained of my meal, set it on the side table, and left the room.

Bob was already on the playground by the time I got there,
as were two other teachers, Julie, and, of course, the aide who was responsible for Venus. It was hard to tell what had happened. No one knew exactly what had set Venus off, but she had taken offense at something that a third-grade girl had done and had chased the girl all the way across the playground until the girl had started to climb up the slide to get away from her. Apparently then Venus had grabbed hold of the girl’s legs and tried to pull her off. She hadn’t managed. The aide who was supervising her had caught up with her by this point, but the third-grader was still screaming bloody murder and Venus was screaming even louder. And fighting harder. She thrashed fiercely, struggling to break the grip of the three adults who held her.

My biggest concern was less Venus herself at that moment than that someone was going to say how inappropriate it was having this girl at school and suggest she be returned to homebound education. Excluding her had happened so quickly on the previous occasion that I was fearful of a repeat. So my focus was solely on getting her off the playground.

“I’ll take her,” I said when I reached the group. “I’ll take her upstairs.”

I grabbed Venus under the arms and flung her up over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I don’t know if it was my sudden movement or if the position itself had an effect, but when I did it, she immediately stopped struggling. She was still screaming, still crying, but she didn’t fight. Clutching her tightly, I headed off for the school building.

Venus sobbed noisily.

I plodded up the stairs, one after the other, and cursed quietly about being on the top floor. She was a child of seven, and so not tiny. It felt like climbing the Matterhorn. At the top, I opened the door into the unlit classroom and set her down.

She was still sobbing in the strangulated half-screaming way that was her trademark.

I took a moment to catch my breath. My intention had been to put her in the quiet chair, but I didn’t. Instead, I came down on one knee to be at her height.

“You’re really having a bad day, aren’t you? Things aren’t going right for you.”

Venus regarded me through her tears. She wasn’t perhaps quite as blank as usual, but nothing gave me the impression she would respond to me either.

“I know the children make you mad sometimes. I know they get on your nerves and you feel very angry. But it is important to handle these feelings in a different way, because I want you to stay in my class. Here. With me. But you have to handle your angry feelings differently. If you can’t, Mr. Christianson will say you need to go on homebound again. Then you will have to stay home all the time.”

There was a flicker of expression on her face. Just enough that I knew what I’d said registered. And that she didn’t want to go back on homebound.

“Did things go wrong before you came to school today?” I asked.

She had stopped crying altogether, although her dark eyes still welled with tears.

Taking a tissue, I reached over to wipe her wet cheeks. She flinched back slightly.

“I’m not going to hurt you. Here. To make you feel better.” I tried again.

Venus was watching me very, very carefully as I lifted the tissue and gently wiped her face. I put my other hand on her shoulder.

I smiled. “You would rather be in here, wouldn’t you?” I asked. “With us. You don’t want to be on homebound. You want to come to school, don’t you?”

She nodded. Very, very, very faintly. I wouldn’t have seen it, if I hadn’t been watching her so closely. But it was a nod. It was a willing gesture.

I smiled more broadly. “You know what would happen, if you didn’t go to school?” I asked and let a teasing note come into my voice.

She didn’t respond except to keep her eyes on me.

“You might grow up to be a mule!” I laughed and then I started to sing one of our favorite songs in the class, indeed, one that I’d used for years in working with children: “Would You Like to Swing on a Star.”

“A mule is an animal with long, funny ears.” I waggled my hands beside my head. “He kicks up at anything he hears.”

This did get a reaction out of Venus. Her eyes went wide in surprise.

I reached down and took her hands. “Here. Step up here. Put your feet on top of mine. We’re going to dance.”

Venus clearly did not expect me to say this. She looked up, startled, then down at her feet.

“Come on,” I said. I bent down and lifted one of her feet onto my shoe. I straightened up and took her hands. “Put the other one on my other foot.”

Cautiously, Venus lifted her other foot and stepped up on top of my shoe.

I continued singing and started waltzing us around the room.

It was a surreal moment, dancing around the unlit classroom with Venus standing on my shoes while I sang an unaccompanied, slightly off-key version of a 1950s pop song.

I hadn’t planned this. Indeed, I hadn’t had even the briefest thought of it beforehand. There had been no “Maybe this will be better for her than the quiet chair,” or “Maybe this will shock a response from her.” There was only that moment of simple connection when I’d said “Do you want to come to school?” and I thought of the words of the song. Then spontaneity took over. Even I was somewhat surprised to discover myself whirling around the room.

We continued. I sang all the verses of the song and we kept dancing. I sang it again. Around and around the room we went.

Originally I was holding her hands in my hands, but as
we progressed, I changed. I kept holding her left hand in my right hand, but with my left hand, I clasped her close against me so that I could move more fluidly. I was a lousy dancer. No two ways about that. I had no idea if this was a waltz rhythm or not, but it didn’t matter, as this was definitely not waltz music. So we went here and there with no rhythm at all. But it didn’t matter. When I looked down, Venus looked up to me. And she smiled. It was only a little smile with lips tight, but there was no denying. It
was
a smile.

Suddenly, the light went on.

“What
are
you doing?”

I stopped abruptly and turned my head. There was Julie in the doorway.

“It’s almost one o’clock,” she said, gesturing toward the clock, as if she realized she was interrupting something private and needed to explain her presence.

I smiled back. “We were dancing.”

“So I see. And I thought you’d come up to visit the quiet chair.” Julie had a wry smile on her face. “Never do know what production’s playing up here, do we?” She grinned at Venus as she went past.

But it was lost on Venus. She had retreated into unresponsive silence.

When afternoon recess came and Julie took the other children out, I went over to the reading corner. Venus followed voluntarily, as she had done for some days now.

“Would you like to pick a book?” I said. Thus far we had
still been working with the two sets of stories about Frog and Toad and about Frances and I had been giving her a choice between two each day. But this afternoon I didn’t pick up any of them.

Venus stopped dead at the edge of the rug in the reading corner when I said that.

“You pick today,” I said. The books we usually used were lying on top of the low bookshelf within easy reach.

No response.

I waited.

No response.

Venus edged a little closer to me. We were perhaps three feet apart when she started. Her steps were minuscule, a few inches at a time, but she came closer. Not toward the books and the bookshelf, but closer to me.

I waited.

We had only twenty minutes, and we used up about ten of them in this agonizingly slow process of crossing the rug. I tried to show no impatience. Indeed, I didn’t feel any, so it wasn’t hard. The natural consequences of running out of time would speak more clearly than I could. I just stood and waited.

By this point, Venus had edged right up to me. She looked up at me. It was a long, searching look, the meaning behind it enigmatic, but it wasn’t blank as usual. Then very, very cautiously she lifted one foot. It hung there, suspended in midair for thirty or forty seconds, before she very, very slowly lowered it on top of my shoe.

“Ah,” I said in sudden understanding. “You want to dance again? You don’t want to read, you want to dance.”

Her eyes still on my face, she gave a small, quick nod.

So we danced. I sang “Would You Like to Swing on a Star” again and swung her around on my feet. Off across the room again, back and forth, holding her left hand with my right, wrapping my other hand around her back to hold her close enough against me so that I could move fluidly. She pressed her face so tightly into the wool of my sweater that I could feel the warmth of her breath through the material.

The next day when morning recess came, the bell rang and the boys shot off for their coats. I went out in the hall to supervise the whooping excitement as my children clattered down the stairs after Pam’s. When I turned to shut the classroom door before going down to the teachers’ lounge, I saw Venus was still inside the classroom.

“Hey ho, recess time,” I said from the doorway.

She crossed over.

“Quick, quick. Get your coat. Julie will be waiting for you. She’ll be saying ‘Where’s Venus this morning?’”

Venus stopped.

“Come on. Quick, quick.”

She looked up at me and I could sense the expectancy.

I smiled warmly. “You’re not in a hurry today, I see.”

Very carefully, she lifted one foot and lay it on my shoe. She was farther away from me than before, so it required
a bit of deft stretching. Resting it ever so lightly, she looked up.

I grinned. “I see. You don’t
want
to go outside today. You want to dance.”

A slight, slight nod.

“I see. Hmmm.”

Venus was watching my face very carefully.

“Can you use the words?” I asked. “Can you say: ‘I want to dance’?”

A pause. She was still watching me intently, her dark eyes searching my face. “Dance,” she murmured so softly it was nothing more than a breath.

And so we did.