Beautiful Child (8 page)

One of the children coming to me for extra support was a little girl named Gwen, although everyone called her Gwennie. Gwennie was eight, a very attractive little girl with shiny, straight, bobbed blonde hair and unexpectedly dark eyes. She had originally been diagnosed as having
HFA, which stood for high-functioning autism. Like many autistic-type children, Gwennie was a bright child, doing well academically. Her reading skills were excellent and her math skills were good. However, social skills were another matter altogether, because Gwennie took everything literally and at face value. She could not interpret the nuances of speech, of other people’s facial expressions or their behavior, nor could she understand how to adjust her own behavior to that of those around her. As a consequence, she was unpopular with the children in her class because she often said blunt, hurtful things or barged in on games or activities.

The social inadequacy was further hampered by her interests. Intensely pursued special interests are common in perfectly normal children of this age group and seem to be part of a healthy developmental process. Hence, the typical “collecting” stage, where acquiring trading cards or toys becomes a fascination for most school-age children, and for some, at least momentarily, a real fixation. As is typical for children with autistic tendencies, Gwennie raised these childish obsessions to a whole different level. For example, she collected pencils. While pencils themselves weren’t an unusual object of desire and a lot of the kids collected them, particularly the pretty, shiny ones or those with vivid designs or strangely shaped erasers, Gwennie was fascinated by plain old standard-issue yellow ones. She routinely carried about twenty of them around with her at any given time, and despite the fact that they all looked just alike to the rest of
us, Gwennie knew each of these pencils individually. She liked to feel and examine them regularly and to lay them out on the tabletop and then line them up in ascending order from the longest to the shortest. Every time she went into a new classroom, she insisted on knowing if there were any other yellow pencils in there and couldn’t settle down until she found out if there were and if so, how many and how well used. Each time she saw one, her little eyes just lit up.

This all paled, however, compared to Gwennie’s
big
obsession: foreign countries. Gwennie had acquired an encyclopedic knowledge on this subject and loved nothing better than telling you about the geography of Indonesia or the population statistics of Belgium. The problem was, this was
all
she really wanted to talk about. When I first found out she was due to spend time in our room, I was curious because her academic skills were so good. After half an hour of listening to her, however, I quickly came to suspect it was not so much a matter of giving Gwennie the benefits of my room as it was giving Gwennie’s teacher the benefits of a break from her. We all soon discovered just how tiring she could be.

She came through the door Tuesday just after lunch.

“Hello, Gwennie,” I said. “Here, I’ll show you where you’re going to sit.”

“The total land area of Sweden is four-hundred-forty-nine-thousand, nine-hundred-sixty-four square kilometers. Its capital city is Stockholm and Stockholm is also the
largest city. Sweden is bordered by Norway on the north and Finland on the east. It is one of the five Scandinavian countries. The others are Finland, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. The people are chiefly of Germanic ethnicity with a few ethnic Finns. The other major cities are Gothenburg, Uppsala, Sundsvall, Östersund.”

“Okay, Gwennie, thank you. Would you sit here, please?”

“Have you been to Sweden?”

“No. Here’s your folder.”

“Have you been to France? France has five-hundred-forty-three-thousand, nine-hundred-sixty-five square kilometers and the capital city is Paris. About thirty-four percent of French land is cultivated.”

“Hooo,” Billy said softly under his breath, “this one’s cuckoo.”

Jesse raised one socked foot and wiggled his toes.

As Gwennie was going to come three afternoons a week, I decided that here would be an ideal partner for Venus. She and Gwennie could work on social skills together, which even I realized was pretty much of a long shot, as both girls were virtually at nil in this department. But I felt that having two was better than my working individually with them, as they could model for each other in a way I never could.

The first day I sat the two girls down together, which, of course, meant maneuvering Venus into position like a doll, and corralling Gwennie, who was trying to tell Jesse about
South Korea. I chose just about as basic an activity as I could. I had cut out pictures from magazines and pasted them onto index cards. Each showed a person with a very definite facial expression – smiling, laughing, crying, frowning – and I’d collected about four examples of each.

“Can you tell me how this girl feels?” I asked Gwennie and showed her a picture of a girl beaming at a little puppy.

Gwennie looked at the picture.

“How does she feel? Look at her face. See what her lips are doing? What does that tell you?”

“Do you know the capital of Belize?”

“Gwennie, we aren’t talking about countries just now. Look at the picture, please. What is this expression? It’s a smile, isn’t it? What does a smile tell us about this little girl? What does it tell us she is feeling?”

“Most people in Belize are Roman Catholics. Are you a Roman Catholic?”

“Gwennie, we aren’t talking about that just now. Look at the picture, please. What does this girl’s smile tell us about the way she is feeling?”

Gwennie leaned forward and studied the picture intently.

“What does this picture tell you?”

Gwennie looked up, her eyes wide. “Maybe this girl’s Finnish?”

Of course, doing this activity with Venus was even more fun. I showed her the same picture I had showed to Gwennie. “Look. See this girl?”

Venus stared blankly at my face.

“Down here, Venus.” I reached over and gently tipped her head down enough to see the card with the picture on it. “Look. She has a puppy in her arms. And look at her face. See. See how her lips go up. She’s smiling. She sees that puppy and she obviously likes holding him, because look how much she is smiling at him. Can you make a smile for me?”

Venus stared blankly at me.

“Here. Like this.” I made an obvious smile with my own lips. “Can you do that?”

“I can do that,” Gwennie interjected.

“Good girl. Look at Gwennie. She can smile. How are you feeling when you smile?”

“Ill,” Gwennie replied.

“You’re feeling ill?” I asked with surprise.

“How are you feeling? Ill,” Gwennie said and smiled expectantly, and I realized she was simply parroting back a response she had heard somewhere before. This was conversation as far as she was concerned. Each question had a specific, invariable answer.

“Can you make a smile like that, Venus?”

No response.

“Here. Like this,” Gwennie said and made an exaggerated smile. She leaned toward Venus.

Whether Venus was about to go into attack mode or not, I couldn’t discern, but she shifted in her seat when Gwennie had suddenly moved toward her.

“Not too close. Venus feels nervous when someone gets unexpectedly close,” I said and put an arm out to separate the two girls.

“Is she an Eskimo?”

“No.”

“Eskimos live in the Arctic. Their proper name is Inuit. It means ‘real people.’ They speak more than six different languages.”

“No, Venus is American, just like you. Only she doesn’t always feel like talking.”

“Perhaps she is a Carmelite nun,” Gwennie responded earnestly.

T
he next afternoon started off badly. Billy got into a fight with a child from another class during the lunch break and was banished to the principal’s office. Bob gave Billy the expected lecture and then made him sit in one of the “principal’s chairs,” which were lined up in the hall outside Bob’s office. This was where the “bad kids” sat until Bob told them they could return to their classroom. Billy was incensed. As ever, he couldn’t see how anything that had happened was his fault, and when he came back to my room after the bell rang, his face was red with indignant anger, his voice on the edge of tears at the unfairness of it all.
Everybody
hated him.
Everybody
treated him unfairly. It was this stupid school and why did he have to come here anyway? He wanted to go home
right then
. He wanted his brother. He wanted to
go to school where his brother was, because then people wouldn’t keep picking on him.

Fortunately, Julie was there, so she could take the other kids, because I wanted to spend time alone with Billy. My gut feeling was that what he really needed was sympathy and a cuddle, and I knew if I was nice to him, it would make him cry. I wanted to spare him the humiliation of bawling in front of the others, particularly Jesse, who didn’t have a lot of patience with Billy anyhow.

This would have worked out, if I hadn’t forgotten about Gwennie. I was in the hallway with Billy when she came up the stairs. “Hi,” she said cheerfully. “How come he’s crying?”

“None of your business!” Billy snapped back.

“How come he’s crying? What happened? Did he fall down? I fell down. Yesterday. Look. I was on my bike and my bike fell over.” She showed us two scraped knees.

“Make her go away,” Billy pleaded.

“I got a Raleigh bike. It came from England. England is one of –”

“Gwennie, could you just go on into the classroom, please? I’m talking to Billy just now.”

“Yeah, it’s private!” Billy said.

Gwennie didn’t move. She just stared at us. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked me, as if Billy weren’t even there. “Has he got something the matter?”

“Yeah, you!” Billy cried and swung an arm out at her.

Gwennie wasn’t as out of it as she appeared because she
quite gracefully stepped back out of his swing. And just stood there.

“Gwennie, please. Julie’s waiting for you.”

It was no use. I gave up, opened the door, and took both Gwennie and Billy into the classroom.

Julie was only just coping. Shane and Zane had gotten into an argument about who was supposed to use the cassette recorder first and Jesse barked his nervousness.

“I remember being a baby,” Gwennie suddenly announced. “I remember my mother putting me in a little chair outside.”

“That’s nice,” I said hurriedly. “Now could you find your chair in here, please? You too, Billy, time to start your folder. You find your chair as well.”

“Oh? When did my chair get lost?” he queried.

“I mean, sit down in it.”

“I was sitting in my little chair and I saw a bird,” Gwennie said. “A bobolink. Bobolinks live in the Great Plains. Some live in Canada. The capital of Canada is Ottawa. Canada’s a very big country –”

“
Gwennie
.” I pointed sternly to her chair. That’s when I noticed Venus was not at her table.

“Where’s Venus?” I asked Julie.

Julie, looking decidedly harassed, glanced around quickly. “I think she went to the bathroom. She
was
here. I’m sure she was here.”

I went over to the window. There was Venus, lounging on top of her wall. I had no idea if she had ever come in
from lunch or not. “We can’t have this,” I said. “The amount of time that kid misses because no one notices she isn’t here. I’ll go get her.”

“No,” Julie said with unexpected feeling. “
I’ll
go get her.”

I could hear the unspoken plea not to be left alone in charge of the others. Over the previous few days, I was becoming increasingly aware that I was expecting a bit too much of Julie. While she was experienced in the classroom, she was not a teacher and had no pretensions to be. Obviously, my room had come as a shock after her experiences as a support person to Casey, who was hardworking, sweet-tempered, and confined to a wheelchair.

So while Julie went down to the playground to charm Venus off her wall, I got everyone started on their work. Or at least she tried to charm Venus. Minutes passed. Five, ten. I glanced out the window and Julie was still down there, standing beside the wall, talking up to Venus, who appeared to be ignoring her completely.

About twenty minutes later, Julie returned. She didn’t say anything, but the look of defeat said it all.

“I’ll go get her,” I said. “Everybody here is busy. They can do an activity of their choice, when they’re done with their folders. If you run into problems, call Bob up.”

I think when I said that I knew I wasn’t coming back up myself, at least not for a long time.

Down in the empty playground, I crossed to where Venus was sitting on the wall. “Venus, it’s time for class. When you hear the bell ring, it’s time to come in.”

No response whatsoever. She was in her glamour-queen pose, reclined back with her arms behind her, supporting her weight, head back, eyes closed, one leg up, one leg outstretched along the wall, long hair tumbling down.

“Venus?” I stood below her. The wall was about six feet high, so it was really a very inconvenient height to bring her down from.

She totally ignored me.

“Venus? Do you hear me? It’s time to go in. It’s time for class.”

I knew I’d crossed the Rubicon. By coming out onto the playground myself to get her, I’d played into her game. The only way to make it my game was to ensure she went back with me. I couldn’t back down now and give up. At the same time, I knew whatever I did had to be well gauged. If I reached for her and missed or did not get enough of a grip, she would be over the wall onto the other side and off, the way she had done the other time.

I stood a moment longer, trying to figure out the best way to tackle the problem. It was difficult because the wall was taller than I was and Venus, of course, was on top of it. I didn’t want to lose her but I didn’t want to hurt her either. Nor myself.

Was she aware of me? This was the question that always lurked in the back of my mind. How much awareness was in this incredibly inert child? On the one hand, I felt much of it had to be within her control on some level. There was the definite feel of a power struggle to
much of her behavior, certainly during moments like this. She didn’t
want
to come in and she was accustomed to not having to do what she didn’t want. Like a possum playing dead, if she remained motionless long enough, she was left alone. On the other hand, it was such
total
unresponsiveness. This gave it the feel of something physical, something so globally wrong that it was beyond her control, like brain damage or hearing loss or a very low IQ. And because I didn’t know, because I hadn’t encountered a child like Venus before, I was left feeling scared of doing the wrong thing.

But inaction never accomplished anything. With one sudden move, I jumped up and grabbed hold of her leg with one hand and her dress with the other. She hadn’t been expecting that. I quickly pulled her off balance and she came down off the wall and into my arms.

Venus sprang to life then. She shrieked blue murder and fought furiously against my grip.

I held on. I tried to sit down to keep her from kicking me, because, of course, being outside, she had her shoes on.

Venus screamed and screamed and screamed. Teachers and children came to the windows of their classrooms. Indeed, I saw someone come out of the house across the street and peer over their fence.

I wrapped my arms around her in a tight bear hug and sat down. Venus came down with a thud into my lap. She kicked and screamed and struggled.

Bob galloped out of the building. “Do you need help?”

“Hold on to her legs. I just want to get her controlled.”

Bob grabbed Venus’s legs and pinned them to the asphalt.

“Calm down,” I said in a soft voice to her ear.

Venus screamed and struggled harder. She disliked Bob holding her legs intensely and directed most of her energy there.

“Calm down,” I said again. “I’ll let go when you’re calm.”

She continued to fight fiercely. Minutes ticked by. She still screamed in a high-pitched, frantic manner.

Minutes. Minutes. Minutes. It was hard to hang on to her. Bob grimly kept hold of her legs. My arms hurt with the tension of keeping her against me. How much worse it must have been for her.

Everyone could hear us. There was an embarrassment factor I hadn’t expected. Normally this was the kind of gritty activity that went on behind closed doors.

I kept talking to her, almost whispering in an effort to get her attention. “Calm down. Quiet. Quiet now. I’ll let go when you’re quiet.” Over and over and over again.

A small eternity spun itself out over the playground. I had no idea how long we were there because I couldn’t raise my arm to see my watch, but I was afraid we were going to run into recess. Would the other teachers think to take their children to a different part of the playground? I dreaded the idea of other children surrounding us, watching. Once started, I felt the need to see this through to its conclusion, particularly after the last time with Julie, when Venus had managed to fight long enough to win her freedom.
This was a power struggle I needed to win, if I wanted Venus to start playing the game my way.

Venus went hoarse with her screaming.

“Calm down,” I said for the hundredth time.

Then suddenly she screamed, “Let go!”

Bob and I exchanged surprised glances.

“Calm down. I’ll let go when you’re calm.”

“No! No, no,
no
!”

“Yes. No screaming. Quiet voice.”

“No! Let go!”

So, I thought, she
can
talk.

About twenty minutes passed before Venus actually did start to calm down. Exhaustion was taking over by then. She’d almost lost her voice. Her muscles quivered beneath my grasp. Indeed, mine were quivery too.

“Let go!” she cried one last time.

“Quiet voice,” I said.

“Let go.” It was said softly, tearfully.

So, I did. I loosened my grip and stood up. Bob let go of Venus’s legs. I lifted her to her feet but still kept hold of her wrist because I expected her to bolt.

“Wow,” Bob murmured as he dusted off the pants of his suit. “It’s been a while since I did that.”

Venus was still crying, but they were child’s tears.

Kneeling on the asphalt, I pulled Venus against me in a hug. She cried and cried and cried.

Finally I picked Venus up in my arms and carried her into the building. We started up the stairs but when I hit the
first flight, I didn’t go on up. Instead, I took her down the hall to the teachers’ lounge. As I hoped, the room was empty. I went in and closed the door behind me. I set her down. Indeed, for the first time, I risked letting go of her altogether.

“Why don’t you sit there,” I said and directed her toward the sofa. Venus did as she was told. I took money out of my pocket and put it in the pop machine. “I’ll bet you’re thirsty after all that, hey? Do you like Coke?”

Venus was watching me. I thought perhaps there was the slightest hint of a nod. Perhaps not. Perhaps it was only wishful thinking on my part. I picked the can out of the tray and opened it.

“Here.”

For the first time Venus responded of her own accord. She reached out and took the Coke from me and drank deeply of it.

“That was hard work, wasn’t it?” I said and sat down across from her. “I’ll bet you’re tired. I am.”

She watched me closely.

“Let’s not have to do this again, okay? Next time the bell rings, please come in. The bell says ‘Time for school.’ So you need to come into the building when you hear it ring. That’s the better way. I didn’t like having to do it this way.”

Venus lowered her eyes. She regarded the can of Coke for a long moment. Then she leaned forward and placed it on the coffee table. For that brief moment she looked like any kid. Then she sat back, let out a long, slow sigh, and
the shade lowered again. I could see it happening. It was almost a physical thing passing over her. Venus went blank. Moving that Coke can was the last spontaneous movement she made for the rest of the afternoon.