One Child (31 page)

"It isn't like that, kitten. I'm not kicking you out. God, Sheila, listen to me, would you?" She had her hands over her ears.

She raised her stormy eyes to me; They were angry and hurt-looking, the old flare of revenge glinting in them.

"This class isn't going to be here next year," I said so softly that it came out almost inaudibly. Yet she heard it through her hands.

Like a wave the expression on her face changed and she lowered her hands. The anger drained away leaving her pale. "What d'you mean? Where's it going?"

"This class won't be here. The school district decided they didn't need it. Everybody can go to other classes."

"Didn't need it?" she shouted. "Of course they need it! I need it! I'm still crazy. I need a crazy kidses class. So does Peter. And Max. And Susie. We're all still crazy kids."

"No, Sheil, you're not. I'm not sure you ever were. But you're not now. It's time to stop thinking that."

"Then I will be. I'll do lots of bad stuff again. I ain't going nowhere."

"Sheil, I'm not going to be here either."

Her face froze.

"I'm moving in June. After school is over, I'm going away. It's really hard for me to say that to you, because I know we've gotten to be such good friends. But the time has come. I don't love you any less and I'm not leaving because of anything you did or didn't do. It's a separate decision I made. A grown-up decision."

She continued to look at me. With elbows on the table, her hands were clasped together and she rested her cheek against her fist. Her underwater-colored eyes studied my face without seeing.

"All things end, Sheil. I'm a teacher, so my ending comes in June. We've had terrific times together and I wouldn't have changed it for anything in the world. You've changed so much. And so have I, really. We've grown together and now it's time to see how good the growing was. I think we're ready. You too. I think you're ready to try it on your own. You're strong enough."

Tears suddenly filled her eyes and spilled over, making fast paths over her round cheeks and down to her chin. Yet she remained motionless and unblinking, her face still propped in her hands. I was running out of words to say. I often forgot she was only six. She would not even be seven until July. I forgot because her eyes were so old.

Slowly she lay her hands on the table and lowered her head. She sat a moment, still not wiping away the tears that continued to fall noiselessly. Then she rose and turned away from me, went over to the far side of the room and sat down amidst the pillows on the floor. Once there she covered her face with her hands. Still no sound came from her.

I sat in silence feeling acutely the pain she radiated, which I suppose was my own pain too. Had I gotten too involved, I wondered? Despite her apparent progress, had I let her grow too dependent on me? Would it have been better to have left her as I found her in January and simply taught her, rather than have accustomed her to the everyday trials of loving someone? I had always been a maverick among my colleagues. I belonged to the better-to-have-loved-and-lost school, which was not a popular notion in education. The courses, the professionals, all preached against getting involved. Well, I could not do that. I could not teach effectively without getting involved, and in my heart, because I did belong to the love-and-lost school, when the end came I could leave. It always hurt, and the more I loved a child, the more it hurt. But when the time came that we had to part or I had to honestly give up on the child because I could do no more, I could go. I could do it because I took with me, every time, the priceless memories of what we had had, believing that there is no more one can give another than good memories. Nothing I could do, even if I worked with Sheila the rest of her school career, could ensure happiness for her. Only she could do that. All I could give her would be my love and my time. When the end came, the parting would be just as painful. In the end my efforts would be reduced once more to memories.

Yet in watching her, I worried that there had not been sufficient time to heal her hurts enough, that she might not be strong enough to tolerate my painful way of teaching. While it was right for me, perhaps I was unfair to her in giving her no choke about it. But what should I have done? My heart ripped with worry that at last I had been given the wrong child, the one I hurt instead of helped. Being a maverick is admissible when one is an academician. When one is a practitioner, it is usually safer to be a conformist.

Slowly I rose and came over to where she sat still noiseless, except for snuffling. "Go away," she stated quietly but firmly through her hands.

"Why? Because you're crying?"

The hands came down and she looked at me briefly. "No." She paused. "Because I don't know what to do."

I sat across from her, arranging a pillow and leaning back on it. For the first time I did not feel like putting my arms around her to soothe away the hurt. Dignity sat as tangible as a cloak about her. We were equals then, not one the older, one the younger. I no longer was the wiser one, the smarter one, the stronger one. We were equal in our humanity.

"How come you ain't staying to make me good?" she asked at last.

"Because it isn't me that makes you good. It's you. I'm only here to let you know that someone cares if you are good or not. That someone cares what happens to you. And it won't matter where I am, I still will always care."

"You're just like my Mama," she said. Her voice was soft and unaccusing, as if she had already resolved how things were and why.

"No, I'm not, Sheil." I regarded her. "Or maybe I am. Maybe leaving you was just as hard for your Mama as it will be for me. Maybe it hurt her that much too."

"She never loved me really. She loved my brother better. She left me on the highway like some dog. Like I didn't even belong to her."

"I don't know about that. I don't know anything about your Mother or why she did what she did to you. And really, Sheila, you don't either. All you know is how it felt to you. But your Mama and I are different. I'm not your Mother. No matter how much you want it to be that way, I'm not."

The tears renewed in intensity. She played with the waistband of her pants. "I know that."

"I knew you did. But I know you dreamed. In the same way, I guess I did too at times. But it never was any more than a dream. I'm your teacher and when the school year ends, I'll just be your friend. But I will be your friend. For as long as you want me, I'll always be that."

She looked up. "What I can't figure out is why the good things always end."

"Everything ends."

"Not some things. Not the bad things. They never go away."

"Yes, they do. If you let them, they go away. Not as fast as we'd like sometimes, but they end too. What doesn't end is the way we feel about each other. Even when you're all grown up and somewhere else, you can remember what a good time we had together. Even when you're in the middle of bad things and they never seem to be changing, you can remember me. And I'll remember you."

Unexpectedly she smiled, just a little smile, and rather sadly. "That's 'cause we tamed each other. Remember that book? Remember how the little boy was mad because he'd gone to all that trouble to tame the fox and now the fox was crying 'cause he had to leave?" She smiled in memory, looking within herself, almost unaware of me. The tears had dried upon her cheeks. "And that fox said it had been good anyways because he would always remember the wheat fields. Remember that?"

I nodded.

"We tamed each other, didn't we?"

"We sure did."

"It makes you cry to tame someone, doesn't it? They kept crying in that book and I never 'xactly knew why. I always thought you only cried when someone hit you."

Again I nodded. "You take a chance at crying when you let someone tame you. That seems to be part of being tamed, I guess."

Sheila pressed her lips together and wiped the last traces of tears from her face. "It still hurts a lot though, don't it?"

"Yeah, it sure still does hurt."

CHAPTER 20.

SHEILA WENT BACK TO MRS. GINSBERG'S ROOM the next morning and made it through the thirty-five minutes without too much trouble. Our problems were by no means resolved. Despite Sheila's recognition that the school year was ending and that we would no longer be together, she could not accept it gracefully. I doubted that she would in the two weeks left to us. Her behavior became a little less polished as she vacillated between anger at me for leaving and fear that I was going to. She could not separate out clearly that what was happening to us was different from what had happened between her and her mother. Time and time again we had to discuss the issue in far more detail than her previous conversational obsessions had required. She clung to The Little Prince as literary proof that people did part and it did hurt and they did cry, but they all still loved each other. The book was never far from her hands at any time and she could quote parts of it from memory. Because it was in print, it seemed to have more validity to her than my words.

She certainly had learned to cry. Most of the next days found her in tears or on the verge of them. Her eyes were almost like leaky faucets after a while; tears streamed over her cheeks even when she was smiling or playing. When questioned about them she often did not know why she was crying. I let the tears run and did not worry about them. So long had passed since she had cried that I believed she had to accustom herself to it, finding the width and breadth of the emotion, and if it helped her to prepare for what lay ahead, so much the better. Slowly the tears began to disappear.

Underneath it all her marvelous core of joy and courage gleamed. This was her hardest task. All else that had happened in her life had not been voluntary and she had had no choice but to let it happen and try to survive in the aftermath. But she knew this was coming and she struggled valiantly to take control of herself. As I watched her coping with her tears, hugging the mauled copy of The Little Prince to her chest and relentlessly plaguing me with questions about what was happening and why, I knew she would make it. She was strong; probably stronger than I. My work with the emotionally disturbed had deeply impressed upon me their resilience. Despite many popular notions, they were far from fragile. To have survived at all was testimony of this. Given the tools that so many of us take for granted, given love and support and trust and self-value that we often do not notice when we have it, they go beyond survival to prevail. In Sheila this was self-evident. She would not give up trying.

In the midst of all the flurry over the ending of the school year, my birthday came. We made a big thing about birthdays in our room, partly because most of the children did not get a celebration anywhere else and partly because I like parties. It seemed only reasonable that the kids should get to celebrate Anton's and Whitney's and my birthdays as well. After all, we had all been born too, and I did not have the modesty to pretend it did not matter. So when my birthday came I brought in a big yellow elephant-shaped cake and chocolate ice cream.

The day did not go well. Nothing especially terrible happened, just the little annoying things that kids seem to be best at doing. Peter had gotten in a fight on the bus and arrived with a bloody nose and a grudge. During recess Sarah got mad at Sheila, who in turn got mad at Tyler, who cried. Then Sheila kicked sand on Sarah and she cried. The quiet corner did a booming business all day long. However, it wasn't until afternoon that I lost my patience. When Whitney went down to the teachers' lounge for the ice cream, she found out one of the fifth grade classes had mistakenly thought it was theirs. I set the cake out anyway. Peter and William were horsing around with each other while we were getting ready. They had a couple of blocks which they were pretending to juggle. I had asked them to stop but they hadn't. One of the other kids was pulling on my arm and I was momentarily distracted. Then crash, William had thrown a block to Peter who, while backing up to catch it, bumped into Sheila sitting on the floor. He fell on her and they both came up swinging. Before I knew it Sheila had one of the blocks poised to throw at Peter. He picked up a chair and flung it angrily in her direction. The chair hit the table, then Max, then the cake. My yellow elephant splattered.