Beautiful Child (3 page)

Venus’s mother had a long history of prostitution and had been in and out of detox centers for drug and alcohol abuse. She now lived with seven of her nine children, three of whom had been officially labeled as mentally defective, and all of whom had been in one form of special education or another. The eldest, a son a year older than Wanda,
was now in prison. A fifteen-year-old son was in a juvenile detention center. The next eldest daughter, who was seventeen, had suffered a seizure while in police custody the previous year and was now brain damaged. Two other children, boys aged nine and twelve, were mentioned as having serious communication problems and were receiving speech therapy.

There was actually very little in the file that was specific to Venus herself. I think the general opinion was that by including her family history, Venus’s problems were self-evident. There were no notes on pregnancy or birth complications, nothing to denote whether or not her early development was normal. She had first come to the attention of the authorities when she reached age five and was registered for kindergarten. It was noted at this time that she was almost totally silent and, in general, very unresponsive. Except on the playground. Except when challenged or threatened. Then Venus seemed to call on an inner strength of almost comic book proportions. She screamed. She shouted. Some people even thought she swore. The idea would have seemed almost laughable – silent, unprepossessing seven-year-old girl metamorphoses into vicious little killing machine – if I hadn’t witnessed it for myself.

I flipped the file shut.

W
hen I arrived the next morning, Billy was already there, sitting in the classroom. “What’s this?” I asked in surprise.

“It’s only eight-ten.”

“I gotta come early. My god-damned bus don’t come no later.”

I put a finger to my lips.

“My god-darned bus don’t come no later.”

“How about just ‘darned.’ Darned bus doesn’t come any later?”

He curled his lip up in an irritable snarl.

“So why aren’t you out on the playground?” I asked. “The bell doesn’t ring until eight-thirty-five.”

“Fucking girl’s out there.”

I put a finger to my lips again. “We’ve got to remember.
You’re oldest in here. I’m depending on you to set a good example for the others.”

“I don’t care. Fucking girl’s out there and
I’m
not gonna take my chances. Ain’t no teacher out there guarding us poor kids. Fucking girl’s gonna knock the shit out of me again.”

“Did she say that to you?”

Billy didn’t answer.

“Did she tell you she was going to beat you up?” I asked again.

Head down, he just shrugged. “She’s just got a crazy look in her eyes. Girl’s a fucking psychopath or something. That’s what she is. Like in one of them movies. Like maybe she’s Freddy’s little sister from Elm Street or something.”

“Well, just for this morning you can stay in. But not every morning, Billy. The school rules say that everyone must be outside until the bell rings.”

“You’re not outside.”

“All the
children
stay outside. You know what I meant. We’ll sort something out so that you don’t feel threatened.”

Billy flopped dramatically across his table and sighed in a world-weary way. “I hate this school. I hate being here so much. Why did I have to come here anyway? Why couldn’t I stay at my other school? My brother’s there. My brother’d never let me get beat up by some psycho girl. This is the worst thing in the whole world that could have happened to me. I’m so unlucky. I’m the unluckiest kid in the world.”

“If you work hard in here, Billy, and get your mouth and your temper under control, then maybe you can go back to your old school.”

“Really? Is that all I got to do?” He said this with friendly surprise, as if no one had ever mentioned his behavior to him before. “Well, I can do that. I’m gonna be good as gold.”

“That’d be super. I’d be very proud of you. For now, however, I’d be satisfied if you just got off that table. Please take your seat.”

Cheerfully Billy leaped up and grabbed his chair, swinging it gleefully over his head. “Take my seat? Okay, sure, anything you say, Teach. Here it is. Where you want me to take it?”

The next to arrive in our doorway was Jesse, accompanied by a woman I recognized as one of the school bus drivers. She had him by the collar. She pushed him ahead of her into the room.

“This kid isn’t going to last long,” she said testily.

“What happened?”

“Well, on my bus you’ve got to take your seat, stay seated, and keep your hands to yourself. Those are about the only three things he didn’t do.”

“He was sticking his head out the window and swearing at people,” Billy added.

“You weren’t there, Billy, so please don’t interrupt.”

“He
was
doing that,” the bus driver said. “And he wouldn’t stay in his seat. That kid can’t keep something you tell
him in his head for more than three seconds. I
told
him. I told him to sit down and shut up and quit bothering everybody. He tripped one of the first graders when she got on and then when she tried to get up, he pushed her down again. I said, ‘Keep that up, mister, and you’re going to walk,’ and what he said back, I’m not going to repeat. So I told him when I get him here, his life wasn’t going to be worth living.”

I nodded. “Okay, sit down over there, Jesse.”

In burst Shane and Zane.

“Oh fuck, here come the damned Dalmatians again,” Billy cried.

Shane didn’t even pause to put down his things. He shot across the room and bashed into Billy, thunking him soundly over the head with his lunch box. The crack was audible and Billy let out a howl.

“You
girl
,” Jesse sneered, as if that was the worst possible insult.

Zane joined the fray, kicking hard at Billy. Jesse leaped from his seat to join in. Recognizing discretion to be the better part of valor, the bus driver stopped her complaining and left immediately.

All four boys were in a tangle of flailing arms and legs by the time I reached them and the noise level in the room was absolutely deafening. I was shouting as loudly as anyone else.

Throwing myself in among them, I grabbed one of the twins by his leg and pulled him out. I ripped off his shoes,
because shoeless he couldn’t hurt so much when he kicked, and I slammed him into a chair. “
Stay there.
”

Billy was next. He was screaming, half in pain, half in rage. I flung him into another chair. “Take your shoes off.”

He howled.

“Take them
off
!” I demanded.

Then I grabbed the other twin by the waistband of his pants and lifted him right off the floor. Wrenching his shoes off, I tossed them, one after the other, out of reach. I pushed him into a chair.

Last was Jesse, who was just so angry that there seemed no way to control him other than pin him to the floor until he calmed down. Once he’d stopped thrashing, I took his shoes off too.

“Okay, the four of you,” I said and stood up. Three of the boys were in chairs in a ragged semicircle. Jesse was still sitting on the floor. “From now on, wearing shoes in this room is a privilege, not a right.”

“What do you mean?” Billy asked.

“I mean, I’m not going to be kicked black and blue. Shoes aren’t for kicking. Until everyone knows how to behave when they are wearing shoes, no shoes.”

“You’ve got shoes on,” Billy said.

“Yes, that’s right. Because I’m not going to kick anyone with mine. But until you earn that privilege by showing me you aren’t going to kick anyone, shoes will go off at the door when you come into the room and shoes will not go back on until you leave.”

“You can’t do that,” Jesse said. His facial tic had started – blink, blink, blink, squint, jerk of the head – and it made it hard for him to speak clearly at the same time.

“Watch me,” I said. Picking up a large plastic box, I crossed the room and collected up all the shoes I’d thrown over there.

“I’ll tell my mom!” Zane shouted. “I’ll tell her you’re taking our shoes away and she’ll make you give them back!”

“I intend to give them back when you go home. But in here, they’re off and they’re going to stay off. They’ll be right here in this box.” I put the box up on top of a tall cupboard.

“She’ll make you give ’em back,” Zane cried. “They’re
my
shoes. My mom bought them for me!”

“They’re still your shoes. And your mom will know I’m doing the right thing.”

Zane rose from his seat.

“No, Zane, you sit,” I said. “You too, Jesse. Get up off the floor and get in that chair.”

Zane paused a long moment, clearly weighing the odds that I’d do something unpleasant if he didn’t obey. My look must have been enough, because he plopped back down in the chair. Jesse rose and took the chair I’d indicated, but his body posture, his movements, even the air around him was heavy with barely controlled anger.

Pulling out a chair from the adjacent table, I sat down. We all sat, the boys fuming quietly or not so quietly, in a straggly semicircle.

A minute passed. Another minute, then another.

“How long we got to sit here?” Shane asked.

“Until everyone is calmed down.”

“I’m already calmed down,” he said. “We going to have to sit here all day?”

“I was never upset,” Billy added. “It’s him over there. Jerky Face. He caused all the trouble. If you’re going to punish someone, you punish that ugly black kid.”

“I never hit you!” Jesse retorted. “It’s him that started it,” he said and pointed at Shane.

“You’re all fuckers,” Billy muttered angrily. “I wish I wasn’t in this fucking class. I wish I hadn’t even
heard
of it.”

“Yeah, me too,” Jesse said.

“Me too,” said Shane.

“And me,” Zane added.

“Well, at least everyone agrees on one thing,” I said.

“No sir,” said Billy, “’cause you don’t agree and you’re part of everyone.”

“Truth be known, Billy, I’m not very keen on this class at the moment either. I kind of wish
I’d
never heard of it,” I said.

Billy’s eyebrows rose, and an expression of genuine astonishment crossed his face. “But you
gotta
be in this class. It’s
your
class.”

“Yes. And it’s yours too.”

“But you’re the teacher.”

“But it isn’t much fun this way, is it?” I said. “I don’t like the way things are at the moment any better than you do. So what are we going to do about it?”

This seemed to puzzle the boys. Shane and Zane exchanged quizzical glances, but Billy, ever the class spokesman, offered his take on the matter. “Maybe you’ve gone nuts.”

“What about that girl?” Jesse asked.

And that was the first moment I remembered Venus. She wasn’t in the classroom. The bell had rung while we were having our group fight – which had been almost fifteen minutes earlier.

Rising so that I was still facing the boys, I edged carefully toward the window and glanced out. Sure enough, there was Venus on her wall.

“Don’t you think we got enough problems already?” Billy said to Jesse.

I knew I couldn’t go get Venus. I didn’t dare turn my back on the boys, much less go out of the room. I had to just hope someone in the front office would notice her and get her off her wall, because it was more important that I get things settled down in here in the classroom first. I came back to the circle and sat down.

“So,” I said, “what are we going to do about things in here to make it better?”

“What about that girl?” Jesse asked.

“That girl’s out there and you’re in here. I’m talking to you. And you and you and you. I don’t want every day to be one long fight. I don’t want it to be like now, where I’m making everyone sit in chairs until they calm down. Billy’s right. This is definitely no fun. Nobody would want to
be in a class like this, not even the teacher. So how are we going to change it?”

“Get rid of that ugly black kid,” Billy said.

“Get rid of you, girlie.”

“Get rid of everybody,” Shane added. “Blow up the whole world.”

“Yeah, kapow!” Zane shouted gleefully and threw his hands up in the air.

“Keep your bottom glued to that seat, Zane,” I said.

“Glue! Glue! Got to get the glue!” Billy cried and jumped up.

“
Billy
!”

About ten minutes into my not-very-successful efforts to have a class discussion, the door swung open and Wanda loomed in with Venus trailing behind.

“Got to take her shoes off!” Billy shrieked. “Got to take your shoes off, psycho! Can’t have shoes in here. Teacher says.”

Wanda looked bewildered. Venus looked blank.

I went to the doorway. “Come on in, sweetheart. And thank you, Wanda, for bringing her up.”

“Her don’t want to come to school,” Wanda replied.

“No, me neither!” Billy hollered. “It’s a jail in here. Just like being sent to jail.”

“Oh, shut up, would you, butthead?” Jesse muttered.

My feelings exactly.

Billy was undeterred. “Take off her shoes, Teacher. You got to take off her shoes. That girl’s a psychopath.”

“Billy, wherever did you learn a word like ‘psychopath’?” I asked as I closed the door after Wanda.

He shrugged. “Just know it, that’s all. Just a brain, that’s me. But if I ever seen a real psychopath, that girl’s one. So make her take off her shoes.”

The morning proved absolutely ghastly. There seemed to be no way to keep the boys from fighting. The minute I relaxed my guard, they were at it again. I’d wanted to have everyone help come up with some ideas on how to handle all this aggressive behavior, but the entire time before recess was spent “sitting on chairs.” I normally had a special “quiet chair” for disciplinary purposes, but in this room I very shortly had four. By 10 a.m. I had been forced to move the furniture so that there was one table in each corner of the room and two in the middle. The only way to maintain any kind of peace was by keeping everyone as physically separate as possible.

Venus repeated her previous day’s performance. She sat, completely oblivious of the boys.

When the recess bell rang, the four boys leaped up and dashed for the door before realizing that none of them had shoes on.

“Hold it!” Billy cried. “What we gonna do?”

I lifted down the box with the shoes in it and started taking them out. I handed Shane his sneakers.

“Can’t tie,” he said.