Beautiful Child (24 page)

This shocked me. Six months together and I had had no idea Julie was a mother. I had assumed she was not married because she wore no wedding ring, but beyond noticing that, I’d had no idea if she was in a relationship. She’d never mentioned a husband or a boyfriend, so I’d assumed
she didn’t have one. But then she’d never mentioned Jon-Paul either. This lack of knowledge astonished me. How was it we knew so little about each other? When had we stopped talking? Because obviously we had and obviously we had quite some time ago.

The school carnival was in full flow by the time we arrived. I always enjoyed this sort of thing and regretted the years I worked in schools that did not have one, because I liked the planning involved in carnival stalls and the happy, relaxed atmosphere that such events evoked.

The stalls were set up in the corridors of the school. It was a relatively modern school, built in a U shape, all on one level. This necessitated going down one arm of the U and then doubling back and going down the other.

Jon-Paul loved all this excitement. He was three, a lively, chatty little boy with an angular face and dark, doelike brown eyes, who delighted in taking both our hands and trying to swing between us. He was too little for most of the stalls, except for the fishing one, which was run by the fifth grade. That involved casting a fishing line over a sheet whereby some fifth-grader on the other side tied on a small gift to be reeled in. Jon-Paul wanted to do this game about fifty times.

It took us a while to find the AP class’s stall. When we did, we found Jesse there too. Billy had him helping set the eggshells back into the sand. Jesse’s tics were rather bad. He grimaced and jerked, but he was clearly enjoying being included in the running of the stall. There were four
other children from the AP class helping too, plus Carol Sprang.

She greeted us cheerfully.

“I see you’ve acquired another of mine,” I said and tipped my head in Jesse’s direction.

Carol nodded. “Billy says, ‘You can’t leave out my friend,’ and, well, when Billy says something, we tend to pay attention. Don’t we, Bill?” She rumpled his hair.

“Yup,” Billy confirmed in a pleased tone. He reached over and grabbed my arm. “Here, take a chance. Me and Jesse set this one up. Take a chance. You can do it for free. I gave Mrs. Sprang a dollar so that all my friends could have a go.”

“That’s wonderfully generous of you, Billy,” I said, “but I’m happy to pay.” I held out a quarter.

“No, I
want
you to do it for free.” He smiled up at me. “’Cause this is my class here too. And I want you to have a good time visiting. On me.”

“Well, thank you.” I reached over and chose one of the eggs in the sand.

Billy pulled it up to reveal it as just an eggshell. “Whoops, you lose. But you don’t really lose,’cause here’s a candy bar. What kind do you like best? I’ll give you a choice.”

I chose a minature Mars bar.

We stayed a few minutes longer, buying two more tries for Jon-Paul, who left gleefully clutching a mini candy bar in each hand.

As we were leaving, I said to Julie, “You want to go get a drink somewhere?”

“I can’t really take him in any place,” she said, nodding toward Jon-Paul.

“No, I wasn’t thinking alcoholic. Just coffee or something.”

We ended up at a nearby McDonald’s that had a play area for Jon-Paul. He was a very lively little character. Despite it’s being almost 9 p.m., he was still full of energy and ran off at full speed toward the play equipment.

“My sister thinks he’s hyperactive,” Julie said, watching after him. “She says I ought to get him on Ritalin. Her son Luke is on Ritalin. He’s six. She says it’s helped a lot.”

“What do you think?” I asked.

Julie was silent a long moment. Finally she gave a little shrug. “I dunno. I hate the idea of drugs. But he is a handful. I come home so tired some nights and he’s just bursting with energy and I think, ‘Oh God, please….’ But that’d be so totally the wrong reason to medicate him.”

Jon-Paul came running back to the table. He clambered up over me and into the seat on my other side.

“Jon-Paul, what do we say when we do that?” Julie asked. “Excuse me. When we want to get by someone, we say ‘Excuse me.’”

“Excuse me,” Jon-Paul said to no one in particular. He reached over for his drink. Grabbing it by the rim, he tugged at it. The cup tipped over and Coke ran everywhere.

“Oops,” Julie said in her usual calm voice. “Spilled drink. Let’s wipe it up.”

“I want that one,” Jon-Paul cried. “Gimme that one.”
He reached for Julie’s. She handed it to him before getting up to get napkins to mop up his drink.

While Julie was up, Jon-Paul attempted to climb over me to get back out.

“Why don’t you leave the drink here?” I suggested and lifted it up before he could grab it.

“No,” he replied curtly. “Gimme!”

“See the sign there. It says ‘No food. No drinks.’ If you want to play, you need to leave your drink here,” I said.

“No!” he said emphatically and made an angry noise.

Julie was back. She mopped up the Coke and handed him the wet napkins. “Here, go throw these away. All right? Please?”

This distracted him and he ran off with the napkins.

Julie flopped down into her seat and took what was left of her drink. “He does go like this all the time. Probably my sister’s right. Probably I should get him checked.”

I was thinking that perhaps clearer limits, less Coke and candy, and a scheduled bedtime might help, but I didn’t say that. Instead, I asked, “What does his father think? Does he give you much input?”

Julie shook her head. “His father doesn’t see him.”

A pause followed, one of those kind usually referred to as “pregnant.” Julie was watching Jon-Paul as he rushed around the play area.

“Truth is,” she said in a soft voice, “I don’t even know who his father is.”

I looked over.

“When college was over, I left for a year of hiking around Europe. It was something I’d always wanted to do, and so I’d had all these summer jobs and stuff and saved money. I only got as far as France. I liked it there. I hung out a lot in Paris. Then I was in Lyon for a while with some friends. And then in Normandy. Then back in Paris. And then I was pregnant.” She shrugged slightly. “Everyone else came home with pictures. I came home with Jon-Paul.”

“Wow,” I said. And it did amaze me. With her long hair in its demure, childlike style, her youthful looks, her quiet manner, Julie seemed the quintessential small-town girl.

“So that’s how I ended up working at the school. I needed work, but it had to be part-time because my mom could watch Jon-Paul in the mornings, but not in the afternoons, and that was the only job I could find. It’s better this year. He’s at the day care center. So that’s why I could work full-time.”

“I see. Were you planning to go into teaching before this?” I asked.

“No. I certainly didn’t plan any of this. Got my degree in history. But what good does a history degree do anybody?” Julie replied and smiled ruefully.

I looked up then, looked across the table at her. She met my eyes briefly and looked down.

“I guess I like it. I like the schedule anyway. But I never planned it.” A pause. “I
planned
big things with my life. I planned on being a lawyer. Maybe politics. The state senate. My mom was a state representative years ago. Did you
know that? Margaret Nicholson? Ever hear of her? I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll do that.’ Only maybe the senate instead. That seemed classier. Be a lawyer and do some politics. I like politics a lot. I like issues. You know, fighting for them. But then I went to France. Went off to see the world and came back with my future.” She nodded toward Jon-Paul, who was tearing around the play area. “And so that was the end of any plans I made.”

I gave a slight shrug. “I never planned this either. I got my degree in biology. I was going to be a wildlife biologist. Study bears in Yellowstone Park. I love Yellowstone. I’ve spent some part of every year of my life there, and that’s just what I wanted to keep doing.”

Her eyes widened. “So how did you end up doing this?”

“I was poor. I took a job to see myself through college and it just happened to be in a program for special ed. kids. I walked through the door and that was it. I never left.”

“How come?” Julie asked.

“The first day I arrived, the director said, ‘There’s this kid you can work with,’and he pointed out this little four-year-old girl who was hiding under the piano. And I said, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ And he said, ‘You’ll think of something.’ And I was scared shitless. I mean, what did
I
– some eighteen-year-old biology major – know about doing this? And I said that. I said, ‘Whatever am I supposed to do? What if I make a mistake?’ And he said, ‘At least try. Your mistakes will still be better than her life is right now, over under that piano. And nothing can change until someone
tries.’ And so that’s what I did. And by the end of it, I was thinking, there is nothing –
nothing
– that I could enjoy doing more than this.”

“You’re lucky,” Julie said. “Most of us don’t live such a charmed life.”

T
he following Monday, Venus again did not turn up for school. This angered me. When I hung out the attendance slip, I underlined Venus’s name and wrote “AGAIN!” in big red letters, hoping it would spur someone in the office into checking on what was going on. However, with the other children there, at that point I was unable to look into the matter myself.

After morning recess I was settling the boys with their folders to do math. It was about 10:40 and I was with Zane, doing counting, when there was a heavy knock at my door. I rose and went over.

Wanda stood in the hallway. She was totally inappropriately dressed. Even though we had reached mid-March, the temperature remained below freezing and there was still snow on the ground. Wanda, however, wore what looked like an
old-fashioned housedress – the sort made of printed cotton that snapped up the front – and a cardigan. No coat, no hat, no gloves. And on her feet she was wearing pink fluffy slippers. This, however, was nothing compared to how Venus was dressed. Venus did have a coat on. However, underneath it she wore a red polyester football shirt about three sizes too big and what looked to be the flannel bottoms of a pair of boys pajamas. That was all. She wore overshoes on her feet.

“Her come to school,” Wanda said. “Beautiful child come today.”

“Yes, you’ve brought her. Thank you, Wanda. But it’s late this morning.”

Wanda looked at me blankly.

“Did you oversleep?”

“Beautiful child come to school,” Wanda replied.

“Where are your proper clothes, Wanda?”

A baffled expression crossed her face. She looked down at herself.

“Where are your gloves?”

Wanda looked at her hands. “No gloves.”

“No, I see no gloves. Remember I gave you gloves last time you were here? Where are they?”

“No gloves.”

Giving up, I sighed. “Okay, thank you for bringing Venus. Good-bye now.” I closed the door gently on Wanda, who was still standing in the hallway. Putting a hand on Venus’s back, I guided her over to the little area beyond my desk where the hooks were for outer clothes.

“Here, let’s take your coat off.”

Venus stood, unresponsive.

“Can you help me? Hold out your arm, please.”

She did nothing.

I was cursing to myself as I lifted her arm to remove her coat. This is what always happened. I’d make a little progress with her, then she’d be absent and lose it all. This was a hopeless situation.

I knelt down. “Let’s take off your overshoes.”

Because Venus was in her totally unresponsive mode, this meant I had to lift her leg myself and pull off the boot, but when I did, it came off easily. That’s because there was no shoe inside. There wasn’t even a sock. She was barefoot inside the plastic overshoes.

“Oh dear, look at this,” I said. “You left the house without your shoes on.”

I looked up at her, shabbily dressed in the oversize shirt and flimsy flannel bottoms, and now, no shoes.

“What happened? Did Wanda put out your clothes?”

It occurred to me to wonder for the first time how she got ready for school in the morning. I had yet to discern if she was as unresponsive at home as she was at school. There seemed no reason to think otherwise. If so, she’d have to be dressed because she wouldn’t do it for herself. Most days she came with reasonably appropriate clothing, so either she
was
doing it herself or someone was laying the clothes out for Wanda. Or maybe Teri dressed her. Whatever, the system had failed this morning.

“I think you’re going to have to leave your boots on,” I said. “It’s too cold to go barefoot in the classroom.”

Venus watched me as I spoke. Her eyes weren’t vacant. It had actually been quite a while since she’d given me the absolutely vacant stare. Now, even when she was totally unresponsive, she still gave the impression of someone being home in there behind her eyes. At home. Just not answering the door.

Lunch was a familiar round of conversations with Bob after I told him about how Venus had arrived an hour and a half late and dressed inappropriately. What was the status with Social Services? Was the truant officer following up on these absences? What was happening with Venus’s older brothers and sisters? Were they absent as much as she was? What could be done for Wanda, who seemed to be simply wandering around miserably?

I was full of angry frustration. I told him that here it was March, almost April, and not only had we made very slow progress with Venus, I had not even managed to determine what her problem was. Despite having visited the home, despite having talked to Teri, I didn’t even know yet if Venus was as consistently unresponsive at home as at school.
After all this time
. No reliable test data had been acquired. Teri’s answers had always been vague and disorganized, never giving useful information. I had no idea of her academic abilities, no understanding of the source of her problems,
nothing
, really. How was it I could see this
child day in and day out and still know so little? How was it we could have a child registered in the school and targeted by Social Services and goodness knows how many other government bodies and we still never accomplished anything? Something
had
to be done for this girl.

Bob was as frustrated as I was. He said this was an instance of bureaucracy tying itself in knots. He told me how he’d been onto Social Services again about Venus. The social worker told him she’d been out to their place about something else. She hadn’t seen Venus but she had talked to Teri and she brought up Venus and her irregular schooling. That was about as close as we were probably going to get with Social Services, Bob muttered.

Bob said at the end of the day, this was a “poverty problem.” He said he knew this was difficult for us to deal with, but sadly about as much was being done as could be done in the circumstances. Which was probably true. Other than the bothersome truancy problem, there was no concrete evidence of law breaking. Just careless or inept parenting. And a lot of stuff that “shouldn’t” happen. But in the real world it did because society had yet to come up with effective, civilized ways of dealing with people who were overstretched by too many children and too little money, of dealing with the subculture surrounding many of them, which was so misunderstood by the middle classes, of dealing with the complex machinations of the modern family, which often contained related and unrelated combinations, including adults who sometimes had little interest in
providing a stable home for children who were not theirs. When Bob said it, I knew his term “poverty problem” was not derisive, either of Venus and her family or of the local Social Services. It was just a statement of the facts. Our town, largely built on the steel industry of the nineteenth century, had been in decline for decades as steel prices fell and contracts had gone elsewhere. Unemployment ran almost three times the national average. The downtown area was full of vacant buildings. Across the railroad tracks were empty, crumbling factories. Venus and her family were not exceptions in our community and certainly not in our school, which drew largely from the poorer part of town. These were things one just couldn’t think about too closely; otherwise it was a temptation to give up before one ever got started.

When I came downstairs after my lunch, there was Venus, waiting for me by the door. I opened it and let her in. She came willingly, clomping along in her shoeless galoshes. With the black humor one tends to develop in circumstances like these, I thought, At least I don’t need to worry about her attacking anyone today. If she tried, the boots would trip her up and she’d fall flat on her face.

Upstairs, I took one of the She-Ra tapes out of the file drawer and held it out to her.

Venus had stopped just inside the door. She looked at me and at the tape in my hand.

“Do you want to put it in the VCR?” I asked.

She didn’t move.

“Come here.”

She didn’t move.

I crossed over to her. Kneeling down, I put my hand on her arm. “What’s the matter?”

She regarded me.

I reached up to touch her face. There was a faint movement from her, a very slight pulling back, but she did let me touch her. “My feeling is that something is wrong. Can you tell me what’s the matter?”

Unexpectedly, tears welled up in her eyes and they were down over her cheeks before I even realized what was happening.

“Come here, lovey. What’s wrong?” I pulled her against me.

With that, she let out an enormous, noisy sob.

“Hey, hey, hey, poor you,” I said. I sat down on the floor right there by the door. Pulling her onto my lap, I wrapped my arms around her.

Venus cried in loud, inelegant sobs.

This was the first time I had seen her cry thus. Previously she’d only cried angrily in response to being thwarted in the middle of one of her explosions.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” I put my hand on her forehead. “Are you not feeling well?”

She wouldn’t answer me. She just sobbed.

Then the bell rang. We were still on the floor by the door. The sound of children pounding up the stairs began to fill
the hallways. Venus tensed. She pulled away from my arms. Although I had the box of tissues down with us, she rubbed her forearm across her face, quickly mopping up her eyes and nose. And she closed back up. It was quite amazing to see, because it was an actual phenomenon, like a time-elapse film of a flower closing. The tears vanished. Her eyes shaded. By the time the boys burst through the door, she looked as if nothing had happened.

After school Bob stopped by my room. I was on my own, as Julie had had to rearrange her schedule that week to accommodate a day care problem with Jon-Paul and had thus left right after the bell.

I assumed he was coming in to talk to me about Venus. One of the plans we’d come up with over the lunch hour had been to try and pull together some kind of coordinating conference with Social Services, the police, and everyone else who was involved with the family to see if we could get some agreement not only about how to proceed, but also about how to communicate better with one another.

Sitting at the middle table, I was grading work and preparing the children’s folders for the next day, so I shoved out the chair across from me with my foot and invited him to sit down.

“About Venus…,” he started.

I looked up.

“Well, not about Venus. This isn’t a continuation of what we were talking about at lunch,” he said and sat down.
“There’s another matter with Venus.” He paused. “I’ve had word about there being a … well, sort of … a racial concern.”

My eyes went wide.

“I hate to bring this up with you, Torey, but I’m afraid I need to. I need to be clear on this. What’s the scoop about your using racially inappropriate material with Venus? Is this the cartoons? Those videos?”

“Julie?” I asked back.

Bob paused. Then slowly he nodded.

“She’s been bearing tales to you?”

“Not ‘bearing tales.’”

“No, it
is
bearing tales. And quite frankly, Bob, that’s what I consider inappropriate.”

“She says she has talked to you about it, so she wasn’t coming to me without having spoken to you first.”

“Well, yes. She did speak to me but I thought we were over it. She’s reading into things what isn’t there,” I said. “It’s more a difference in style than anything else.”

“Fine line here, Torey. Because while I don’t dispute that you’re a good teacher, I must say, your ‘style’ is very much your own. And I’ve been aware of this. It isn’t simply a matter of Julie bearing tales. I’ve been aware of it on my own.”

I regarded him. “Such as?”

“Let’s take your classroom singing, for example. Now, I think what you’ve done is really cool in a way. I mean, it is like one of those stories out of
Reader’s Digest
or something. A bunch of tough little boys who have been tamed by
music. A behaviorally disordered class that works like an operetta. I mean, that’s cool. It
sounds
cool. But out in the real world, how much of it is going to transfer? Are they actually learning to
control
their behavior? Do I need to give all my other teachers singing lessons? Or more to the point, inhibition lessons, so that they can happily burst into song anytime they need to interact with one of your students? Because that’s the ultimate goal here – to get these children out of your class and into theirs. You’ve hit on a very creative way of gaining control in your classroom, but is it a way that will allow these children to rejoin regular education?”

If I was honest, such questions had never even crossed my mind once. I was surprised and, indeed, a little hurt that Bob should consider this innocent activity unsuitable. It had never occurred to me that our singing would be thought of as anything other than positive.

“And now I’m hearing that you are using some toy-company cartoon character as practically your whole way of interacting with Venus. She’s spending her time at school – a sizable chunk of her time at school – indulging in a fantasy world that is both educationally and culturally questionable.”

“Oh geez,” I said angrily. “This is
Julie
, saying this. Doing this.”