“Now what about Alice?” Mrs. Martin asked on her own. “I know you’ve only seen her a few times, but do you think she’ll ever understand math? She seems to have it all backward.”
“I’m sure she will. Once she’s shown in a way she understands. But right now, she’s so caught up in trying to fit in at a new school that she isn’t focusing on arithmetic that much. Now, the most important thing in the world to Alice is not to seem different. She just wants to be like everybody else.”
Mrs. Martin leaned forward again. “But that’s just it – she is different. She’s not like everybody else. I mean I know she’s overly sensitive and she does need medicine to calm her down, but so do I. But what I mean about Alice’s being different is that she’s special. I mean you should see the books she reads, and the poetry she writes, and the way she talks. She even named our rabbit after Sigmund Freud, so she’d have someone in the house who would understand her. Now, have you ever heard of an eleven-year-old doing that?”
“No, I haven’t. And I agree with you that Alice is intelligent and sensitive. But it’s because of those very attributes that she needs to fit in at least on the outside, so the others won’t make fun of her.”
“Make fun of her?”
“Her clothes seem strange to the other fifth graders, and also they think she must be sick if she has to take medicine,” I said as gently as I could.
Not gently enough. Mrs. Martin stood up. “It is not my fault or Alice’s if those children don’t understand quality. Alice is quality, and so are her clothes – the finest materials made by the best dressmakers. As for her medicine, that’s none of the other children’s business, now, is it?” Her voice was abrupt, and she moved toward the door.
I put out my hand, and only as I said good-bye could I see the tears standing in Mrs. Martin’s blue eyes. I covered her hand with my free hand. “Moves are always hard for everyone,” I said. “But Alice is smart and you are, too, and we’ll get it worked out. Do you think we could have lunch sometime?”
Mrs. Martin patted the tears on her cheeks. “I’d like that very much,” she said. “Thank you.”
Alice slid out of her shoes and tucked her feet underneath her on the couch. “Thanks for talking to Mommy; it really helped.”
“It did?” I asked in genuine surprise. “I thought maybe I’d made things worse.”
“Nope. Mom actually told me she’d been here and that you were going to have lunch together sometime. Usually she never tells me anything except what to do and how to live my life. Anyway, it was kind of nice just talking to her. You know what I mean, just talking about something, not arguing. So I discussed it with Sigmund. You remember Sigmund?”
“How could I forget?”
“Well, anyway, I discussed things with Sigmund. He communicates now, and he suggested that I make my own sandwich, put the pill in a corner, and punch that corner with a fork. That way, I can bite off the corner, be prepared for the pill, and get it over with and then be able to relax and enjoy the sandwich, and the other kids wouldn’t even notice. And it works. Mom even likes me making the sandwich.”
“That’s terrific, Alice,” I said, meaning it. “In fact, it’s so terrific we’re actually going to spend the rest of our time talking about math.”
Alice groaned.
“It’s not so bad. Actually, it’s a lot easier than it seems. Most of elementary school math – kindergarten through fifth grade – is made up of four things. They call them operations because they’re something you do to numbers, just like doctors do to people. And I imagine you already know these four operations, or their names, anyway – addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Adding just means putting things together, subtracting is separating them, multiplying is putting them together in equal groups, and dividing is sharing.
“Later on, in fifth, there’s maybe a little fractions or decimals, but I can show you those.”
Alice said, “It doesn’t sound hard the way you describe it, but when they put those papers in front of me I can’t remember anything. It all just looks like some sort of stuff from outer space.”
“All right. Let’s start with the first operation – addition. Here, take this paper and give me something to add.”
Alice hesitated but then wrote:
“Okay,” I said, “That plus sign tells me that I’ve got to put those three numbers together. I start at the top and I run my pencil through the numbers, so if the columns are long I can write it out on the side. Like I’d go three and two are five and write five somewhere out on the side – and five and four are nine. I put that in one place. Do you know about places or place value?”
Alice shook her head.
“All right. We’ll talk about that in a minute. Then I go back up to the top of the next column, and one of the things that always used to get me mixed up is that you work right to left in addition – just the opposite of reading. But anyway, add straight down – two and four are six plus five is eleven.”
“But suppose I don’t know that,” Alice said, “that six plus five is eleven, or what thirteen minus eight is, or seven times six. Suppose I don’t know any of that?”
“Well, that’s my job,” I said. “To show you how you can learn them. And you can. But for now write down six (two plus four is six), so you don’t forget that, and ask yourself: what’s six plus five?”
“I don’t know,” Alice answered.
“Ask yourself what’s five plus five?”
“Ten. Oh, I get it. Six is one more than five, so six plus five is eleven.”
“Exactly. Now eventually you’ll know it automatically, just like you know your telephone number. But until you do, I’ll show you ways to figure it out.
“Now, I’m going to write down a harder one, because I want to explain about places.”
“Some of this you probably already know, but remember you have a chart like this: hundreds, tens, ones. Now, the trick to remember is trading. When you add and you get ten ones, you trade them for one ten.
“Sorry, that sounds confusing. Let me try again. We’re adding up the problem:
“Okay, I put the boxes down below – a box for the ones, a box for the tens, and another for the hundreds. Only one number allowed to a box. So six and four are ten plus three more, that’s thirteen. Okay, I’ll put the three in the ones box, but the one can’t go there (only one number to a box), so it goes up at the top of the tens. One and seven are eight and two are ten and two more are twelve. Put the two in the tens box (only one number to a box), and put the one up in the hundreds column. It’s the only thing in that column, so one and nothing is one and that goes in the hundreds box, and the answer is one hundred twenty-three.”
I looked at Alice. She was still looking at the problem. “And if that last number was one hundred twenty-three instead of just twenty-three, then you’d add the two ones and the answer would be two hundred twenty-three?” she asked.
“You got it.”
“Well, that’s rather interesting. Of course, we’re doing things in the thousands in school.”
“Same thing. Same for millions, too. I just have to show you about commas. Let’s try a little of your homework now.”
Alice’s homework was a page of “mixed practice” – a little of everything from fourth grade. The four operations we’d talked about plus a couple of word problems.
As I watched Alice copying the problems I could see how difficult the physical writing and aligning of the numbers was for her. She could remember only one number at a time, so she had to look back and forth continually from book to paper; her numbers were uneven and sketchily formed, and her hooked, left-handed grip covered half the numbers she wrote. She would also read a number as 36 and write it as 32, misforming the 6. I’d have to see if we couldn’t get a workbook for her so she wouldn’t have to waste so much time and energy copying.
Beside the first problem Alice wrote 1 and the problem itself. Unfortunately, her columns drifted to the left so that
she added the 1 into the last column and therefore was 1,000 off. Still, she was pleased that she could do the addition, and we skipped most of that, leaving it for her to do at home.
She could do subtraction as long as there was no regrouping (borrowing) involved and she had enough fingers to count.
Multiplication made little sense to Alice. In fact, she hadn’t really known that multiplication and “times” were related.
She had never seen a division symbol before.
“Just skip those,” I said. “I’ll tell Mrs. Robinson you haven’t had division yet. Now, listen, Alice – I’ve got an idea. There’s a man in school by the name of Mr. Renner, and he gives kids extra help, just like I do, only he does it in school in a place called the resource room. It might be a good idea for you two to do some work together. I think maybe I should talk to your teacher, Mrs. Robinson, and see how things are going and also see if we can’t arrange for you to get some extra help in the resource room.”
Alice shook her head. “I’m not sure you should do that. I don’t believe you’ll hear anything good from Robinson. Besides, I’ve already met that man – Mr. Renner – he gave me some sort of test. I guess it was arithmetic, but it wasn’t any kind of arithmetic I’ve even seen before.”
I knew Mrs. Robinson, Alice’s fifth-grade teacher, from having worked with other children in her class in other years. She was in her mid-forties and had two children of her own, and her husband taught in the high school. She used good materials, she understood the subjects she taught, and she was organized and thorough. But any deviation from her way of doing things was regarded as rebellion, so I could understand why she wasn’t thrilled to have Alice in her class, as well as her reaction to Alice’s medication.
Still, Alice desperately needed a friend and interpreter in her school. I decided to give Mrs. Robinson a call.
“It is incomprehensible to me how they could have let that child enter fifth grade,” Mrs. Robinson almost shouted into the phone, as soon as I’d mentioned Alice’s name. “I don’t care if she is eleven – she doesn’t begin to know the first thing about arithmetic. I have the lowest group, you know, so I’ve seen everything, but nothing close to Alice. The school psychologist tested her and says she’s smart enough but has school phobia – whatever that may be – so he referred her to a psychiatrist. Anyway, I can’t get any help from the psychologist. His caseload is five times what it should be, and once he’s referred a child to what he considers the best source of help, he’s onto his next case, and I can’t blame him. So I sent her in to Jack Renner – he runs the resource room, you know. I didn’t need any more fancy testing, I just wanted to find out what levels she was on.
“He gave her the WRAT – you know that one, the Wide Range Achievement Test. Would you believe she did the wrong section, Level Two? The one for twelve-year-olds and over. Jack didn’t notice. He’d already showed her the page she should do. He told her she had ten minutes and to do as many as she could, and then went back to his regular schedule.
“Well, at the end of ten minutes, Jack collected the paper and Alice had done every single problem on Level Two – fifty or so. Averaging, decimals, percents, fractions, algebra equations, square roots, as well as the ordinary addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Of course, all but two were wrong – I mean way off. She didn’t have any idea in the world what she was doing, but that didn’t bother Alice. She just kept her head in the clouds and wrote down whatever she pleased.
“For one-sixth of thirty, she wrote twenty-two. That kind of thing. Well, in my mind, she should be repeating. I mean it’s not just that she doesn’t know her facts – she lies; she pretends she knows what she’s doing.
“And it’s not just math. She hasn’t ever had cursive, or so she says. She scrawls out these tiny little marks, not even connected half the time, when she’s asked to write. Jack says being left-handed may have something to do with it, but in my view, it’s a lot more than that.
“And you know, she’s lied to her mother about taking her medicine, though that seems to have been worked out, but I simply don’t know what we’re going to do.”
I kept quiet. I knew if I listened long enough, Mrs. Robinson would end up offering to send me Alice’s papers, and extra copies of the books and workbooks they were using in class. She really was organized and generous, but she and Alice were not what you would call made for each other.
“I suggested sending Alice to the resource room the very first day,” Mrs. Robinson shouted over the telephone, trying to be heard above the noise in the teachers’ room, “but you know what that’s like – she has to have such and such to qualify for any additional help, forms filled out, evaluations filed. Besides, she is doing better. She eats her sandwich nicely every day now. I don’t even ask to see her baggie anymore.”
“That’s great. Now what do you say if I just call Jack Renner and see if he can fit Alice in for a half hour somewhere in the day? You are absolutely right about how much help she needs – let’s see if we can’t get that help. The forms will catch up to her, and there’s no question she qualifies,” I said.
“Go right ahead,” Mrs. Robinson said, “if you want to stick your neck out. Your job’s not at stake.”
“Right. Just promise you won’t wave a flag pointing it out.”
I’d played tennis with Jack Renner a couple of times at the club. Just pick-up games when one or the other of us had filled in, but I’d known him for a long time, and I’d seen him on the courts and in the pool as he was growing up. He’d gone away to college, then returned, and had been teaching in the resource room at Bryant Elementary for the past two or three years.
I explained the situation to Jack over the phone.
“Sure, why the hell not? She seems like a nice kid, although somebody ought to get her out of those weird clothes before the kids laugh her off the block. Tell you what, tell her to come into my room at twelve thirty. I don’t think either Alice or I are the hit of the lunchroom. The ladies can hardly wait to get me out of the teachers’ room so they can talk about whatever it is they talk about – and I bet the kids feel the same way about Alice. Besides, if someone tells me I’m ‘bastardizing my position’ – like happened once before when I took an unclassified kid – I can at least say that I’m doing it on my own time.”
I was pleased that Jack had agreed to work with Alice. Not only did she need to catch up and fill in arithmetic facts and concepts, she also needed somebody in the school who was on her side, and I had the feeling that Alice and Jack could become friends.
Also, Jack’s feedback would be invaluable to me. There’s nothing like on-the-spot reporting, particularly from someone on the same team. He was absolutely right about Alice’s clothes. The other kids would laugh at her; in fact, they almost certainly already were.
The snow began about four o’clock in the afternoon – huge, fat flakes that clung to each other and covered the front lawn and driveway within an hour. By morning, the snow was thinner, lighter, but the weather report announced blizzard conditions with the present accumulation twenty-two inches, and up to four more inches predicted. Schools were closed across the state.
An unexpected holiday. We reveled in it, adults and children alike. The children in the neighborhood built snowmen and fortresses and filled the hills with sleds and toboggans. I read and wrote letters, cleaned out a drawer or two, and helped shovel the driveway and paths. Then Cal and I tramped back and forth between friends’ houses for good food and drink and talk.
But the holiday ended as abruptly as it had begun. After two days, the sun came out, streets were cleared, schools reopened, reality returned – and the phone rang unrelentingly, requesting make-up appointments. Finally, I decided we’d just have to double up. I tried to make the “double-ups” as compatible as possible and hoped that Tara Hirsch and Alice would work out. They shared the fact that they both were girls, a minority in my office population, and both were in fifth grade at Bryant Elementary School,
although in different classes.
Tara had short, black, curly hair and the taut body of an athlete. Her math was quite good, but she had the more usual reading and language problems of learning disabled children. I had seen Tara the year before in my other office. In fact, I had been seeing her twice a week for over a year when I moved, and her mother decided to keep Tara with me since the drive was about the same to either office. Tara had been two years below grade level in both reading and spelling when I first saw her – and a snarly little thing besides. Her parents would not let her go out for sports as long as her grades were poor, so her frustration escalated. She was not allowed to do the things she was good at, and she just kept getting worse at the others. But once her parents understood how much she needed to excel at something, they allowed her to enter the after-school sports program, and now she was the star of the acrobatic team and one of two girls on the Little League team – and she was also part of an active social group.
The two girls arrived at the same time, walking up the driveway without speaking to each other. Tara had obviously changed after school and had on jeans, her Little League sweatshirt, and a blue down vest, and she skipped along in her sneakers despite some slippery patches. Alice walked carefully, dressed in fitted brown leather boots and a velvet-collared, dark green wool coat that reached to her ankles.
I introduced the girls, and we proceeded on to my office. Alice hung up her coat; Tara tossed her vest over a doorknob. They both stood staring silently at me.
“Now we have a choice,” I said. “You two can work separately – one at the desk, the other at the table by the couch. Alice can work on math, Tara on reading, and I’ll split my time between you. Or we can all sit around the desk and have everybody work on the same thing – some of the time on this, some on that, but we’ll do it together. Which do you prefer? Alone or together?”
“Together,” answered gregarious Tara.
A Safe Place for Joey Page 17