by Tom Birdseye
Just Call Me Stupid
Tom Birdseye
For those who teach—a noble profession. And for one teacher in particular—Debbie, who seeks the big picture, asks the hard questions, and yet never forgets to speak from the heart.
T. B.
Chapter 1
The White Knight
Mrs. Nagle’s voice came across the table heavy with frustration. “No, Patrick. You’re not paying attention. Look at the letters. Listen to the sound. W and H together says wh. You’re a fifth grader, not a first grader. You know this. Cooperate for a change.” She pointed to her mouth. “Look at my lips. I blow the air out through rounded lips. See, Patrick? Look at my lips.”
Patrick Lowe did as he was told and looked at Mrs. Nagle’s lips. They were bright red and very small, even though she had them sticking out in an exaggerated O-shape.
Mrs. Nagle blew air at Patrick and said the W-H sound over and over. It came at him in strong puffs, mixed with the smell of coffee. “Wh, wh, wh, wh. Come on, Patrick. The letters are here on your worksheet. Read the sound.”
Patrick could feel the heat of Mrs. Nagle’s demands as plainly as he could feel the afternoon heat in the small, windowless Reading Resource Room of Dewey Elementary School. The desert air outside had reached over one hundred degrees again, he could tell, even though it was late September and Tucson should be cooling down.
Mrs. Nagle had put in a request to the maintenance department for the air conditioner to be fixed over two weeks ago. “We’ll be as cool as cucumbers in no time!” she had said with a smile. But the small fan that was only to fill in for a while still purred gently on her desk. It sounded like it was doing its job, but it wasn’t.
Patrick slid over in his chair, even though he knew it would irritate Mrs. Nagle. It wasn’t that he wanted to make her angry. He had to move away. It was that feeling again, as if a weight were pushing in on his chest and the walls were pressing in from all sides.
Mrs. Nagle scooted her chair closer to the table. “Read, Patrick,” she kept insisting. “Look at the letters and read.”
Patrick looked at the letters, but it was no use. The air in the Resource Room seemed to be growing heavier, making it harder to breathe. He needed space and light. Mrs. Nagle leaned even closer, right up near Patrick’s face. Coffee breath. He had to get away.
This time Patrick didn’t slip farther across his chair, but across his mind. In an instant, he turned his thoughts in and fled. Mrs. Nagle faded. So did the Resource Room full of worksheets. And so did his old self. In his imagination he became the White Knight, just like when he played chess at home, riding off the board and across a sunlit meadow, lance held high, the light glinting off his shield—polished silver with a red dragon breathing fire—dazzling the cheering crowd that had gathered to see him joust.
“Pay attention, Patrick,” Mrs. Nagle’s voice cut in, each syllable as pointed as a knight’s lance.
She was losing her patience. From far away on the sunlit meadow, Patrick could tell. He forced himself to blink back the White Knight and looked at Mrs. Nagle’s mouth again. Now it was a firm straight line across her face, an angry line that quivered slightly.
Patrick wished he could make Mrs. Nagle happy. He wanted her to see that he knew the letters W and H, that he knew they said wh. He wanted her to see that he really wanted to read.
Because he did want to read; he had always wanted to. He had loved books and the idea of reading before he started school. He used to sit with a book in his lap and pretend he was reading it, running his finger along the lines and making up the words he thought should go with the pictures.
He had been able to write his name when he entered kindergarten. By the end of the year he had learned all the letters of the alphabet. And he had been able to read words like STOP on the sign at the corner, and CHEERIOS on the cereal box. He had started first grade excited to learn more.
But then his new teacher had asked him to stand up and say the letter sounds in front of everybody. All of the kids had stared at him, and he had gotten mixed up. “That is a B, not a D,” his teacher had said. “If you want to read, you must keep the sounds straight. You mustn’t get them wrong.”
Patrick had panicked. Dad had always said not to be wrong. “Get it right! Don’t be stupid!” His father’s voice so clear in his mind. “You spilled your milk; I knew you would!” All those times he’d made mistakes. “Now look what you’ve done!” Dad’s face red with anger. “Wrecked your new bike? What are you, some kind of a klutz?” Liquor on hot breath. “N, Patrick! L-M-N-O-P! Any idiot can remember that!” Fierce eyes boring into him, driving sharp points straight at his heart. “Get it right, will you! Don’t be so STUPID!”
Standing there in front of his first-grade teacher and all of the kids, Patrick had heard his father’s words echoing in his mind. “STUPID! … STUPID! … STUPID! … STUPID!” He had felt his father’s iron grip on his shoulders, the big hands shaking him so hard it seemed he would shatter and fall into a million pieces. “STUPID! … STUPID! … STUPID! Get it right! Don’t be STUPID!”
Patrick had decided to say nothing rather than be wrong. He didn’t want to be stupid. His first-grade teacher had kept on asking. The kids had kept on staring. But he hadn’t answered.
Finally, after a month of asking, his teacher had called his parents. They went in for a conference while Patrick waited in the hall. He heard his dad get angry at the teacher. Then at home, after his mother went to work, his dad had gotten angry at Patrick, too. “Stupid!” he had yelled. He’d had a drink, then three, and gotten even angrier, so angry a rage had overtaken him and he had locked Patrick in the hall closet, yelling, “Maybe this’ll teach you! DON’T BE STUPID!”
Patrick had been too afraid to tell his mother later—how terrified he had been in that dark, suffocating place. He hadn’t wanted his dad to get angry at her, too.
After that, reading had become the time to go down the hall to the Resource Room and Mrs. Nagle—for worksheets and drill after drill on the letter sounds. Every day he went. Every day Mrs. Nagle asked him to tell her what he knew. Patrick tried. But it all made him so nervous. He made mistakes. Mrs. Nagle asked again. Which made him more nervous, and led to even more mistakes. But Mrs. Nagle kept on asking anyway, until the weight of her questions bore down on his chest, and the walls of the Resource Room began to close in, cutting off the air and the light, just like when he had been locked in the hall closet. And Patrick had come to believe what his dad had said. He couldn’t get it right. He really was stupid.
By the end of first grade, Patrick wouldn’t pick up books anymore. The joy had gone out of them. Instead, he just drew the stories he thought might be between the covers—tales of knights and dragons and castles. Through drawing, he found he could escape into a world of his own making. It became his defense, his way out. And it still worked now, even after five years of Mrs. Nagle’s stubborn insistence otherwise.
Mrs. Nagle. She meant well. Patrick knew that. She worked hard at helping him. Still, she was always pushing, as though she had some calendar that had his name on it, with the dates circled by the days on which she hoped he’d accomplish certain things. Lately, she’d been pressing for him to come to the Resource Room more often, even though Mrs. Romero, his regular classroom teacher this year, disagreed.
Patrick had overheard the two of them, Mrs. Nagle and Mrs. Romero, talking about it just yesterday. He had gone back for his lunch box, and overheard from the doorway.
“I know it’s the policy of this school district to keep children with their age group,” Mrs. Nagle had said, “but I still think Patrick should have been retained in first grade. He’d be doing better now. He needs more work, not less.”
“Maybe if
we took some of the pressure off,” Mrs. Romero had suggested, “and let him learn to enjoy books again. In the classroom with the other children, he might show more interest in—”
“I think,” Mrs. Nagle cut in, “I know what’s best for Patrick.”
The walls had begun to close in on Patrick as the women talked, the weight of their words pressing on his chest. He had slunk away without his lunch box, suddenly not hungry anymore. Behind the bike racks he had hidden in the bushes next to the school wall, drawing pictures in his mind of the White Knight charging off the chessboard into a real-life battle, charging across the sunlit meadow.
He had gotten away then, but now …
“Read, Patrick,” Mrs. Nagle said again, and Patrick could tell that she was hot and tired, and today felt like Friday even though it was only Wednesday. “What sound does W and H make together?”
Patrick strained to say wh. But the sound got stuck somewhere between his brain and his tongue, and the air in the Resource Room seemed to grow even hotter. The weight pushed in on his chest until he couldn’t get a full breath of air. And the walls. They were closing in again. The taste of panic rose in Patrick’s throat. He had to get away. Now!
In desperation, Patrick grabbed his pencil and began to sketch on the W-H worksheet Mrs. Nagle had given him. A white knight—QUICKLY!—on horseback, riding into the meadow where he could breathe. Frantically, Patrick tried to draw his way out.
That’s when Mrs. Nagle lost her patience. In a flash of anger, she reached over and jerked the pencil from Patrick’s hand, then grabbed his chin and forced it up so that he had to look her in the eyes. “Read!” she barked like an army drill sergeant.
For Patrick, it was as if his father had grabbed him again. He could almost smell the liquor, hear the closet door slamming shut. “Don’t touch me!” he yelled, jerking out of Mrs. Nagle’s grasp.
Mrs. Nagle went from angry to livid. “How dare you talk to me like that?” And for an instant Patrick knew that more than anything she wanted to slap him right across the face.
But just then the door of the Reading Resource Room swung open, and Mrs. Hollins stuck her head in. “Excuse me, Linda, but did you see the message from Mr. Gordon in your mailbox?”
Mrs. Nagle blinked hard. The anger slid from her face. A very tired look replaced it. She let out a long sigh, then carefully put another worksheet on the table. “Excuse me,” she said to Patrick, as if nothing had happened only seconds before. “Please work on this while I talk with Mrs. Hollins.” Then she got up and left the room, pulling the door shut behind her.
Still breathing hard, Patrick stared at the new worksheet. It seemed as if there was always one more where the last one had come from. Worksheets, worksheets, worksheets. The room was nothing but a long line of worksheets.
Outside the door, Patrick could hear Mrs. Nagle talking to Mrs. Hollins. Their voices were low, muffled sounds until Mrs. Nagle’s voice rose in frustration. “Another cut in the budget? How are we supposed to teach if we have no money for supplies? How am I supposed to do my job? It’s so hot in my room. Don’t they know how hard it is to teach kids like …”
Mrs. Nagle lowered her voice to a whisper, a mumble through the door. But Patrick knew good and well what she said. He’d heard it before—“How hard it is to teach kids like Patrick.”
Kids like Patrick. Kids like Patrick were what Mrs. Nagle was complaining about. Kids who lived across Verde Road in his neighborhood of small, frayed houses. Kids who were from families that were often only half families, fathers gone as his was now, or such a mess their fathers might as well be gone. Kids who had trouble in school. Kids who would never have what Mrs. Nagle thought nothing of: a shiny car with no dents, trips on an airplane, a big TV, things that smell new. Patrick knew exactly what it was like with kids like him. But Mrs. Nagle didn’t. All she knew was her stupid worksheets.
Anger swelled in Patrick. He tried to hold it back, push it into the spot where he pushed most of his emotions. But he couldn’t get hold. His face went red, his teeth clinched. In a sudden burst of motion, he swept Mrs. Nagle’s worksheets off the table. He jumped up and lifted his foot to stomp on them, to show Mrs. Nagle just exactly how much he hated W-H.
But his foot was stopped short by the sight of the clean white backs of the worksheets. They had landed facedown on the floor. Their blank space seemed to call to him. Such a perfect place to draw.
Patrick checked over his shoulder for Mrs. Nagle. Her voice was back under control again, droning on and on in the hall. She was in no hurry to return to him, he knew. Not today, anyway. He was back under control again, too. No anger. He didn’t care what she thought of “kids like Patrick.”
Leaning down, Patrick quickly retrieved the worksheets, careful not to turn the W-H side up. He returned to the table, picked up his pencil, and began to draw. His hand moved smoothly this time, not propelled by fear. It floated over the paper in assured strokes, full of pleasure, not panic. His breathing returned to normal. The suffocating weight on his chest was gone. The room seemed much bigger, lighter, cooler. As Patrick drew, a smile worked its way onto his lips. He was where he wanted to be—in his own private world where no one, not even Mrs. Nagle, could reach him. “The White Knight is charging,” he whispered, “charging out to fight a huge dragon!”
Chapter 2
Lupita’s Pile of Beans
After school, Patrick took his time walking down the hall to the bus line. As usual, he wanted to be last. First in line, and Mr. Poole, the driver, would herd him to the rear of the bus. “Fill the seats from the back, kids,” Mr. Poole would insist.
Patrick didn’t like the back. It was noisy there, and that was where Andy Wilkinson liked to sit. Sometimes, depending on his mood, Andy would get weird and hassle people, especially Patrick. It was hard for Mr. Poole to see that kind of thing in his rearview mirror. Patrick took his time and got in the bus line last so he could sit up front.
It wasn’t that Patrick was afraid of Andy. Just like Patrick, Andy was in Mrs. Romero’s fifth-grade class. He wasn’t any bigger or tougher than Patrick either.
Patrick and Andy even got along some of the time. Just yesterday at recess they had teamed up on the soccer field for a goal. Patrick had lofted a nice looping pass into the center. Andy had leaped up, his timing perfect, and headed the ball into the corner of the net. Goal! Andy had given Patrick a high five and yelled, “All right!” Some of the time they were almost like friends.
But a lot of the time they weren’t. Today at recess Andy had yelled at Patrick for a bad kick during soccer, then broken in line in front of him at the water fountain. He’d also told Amy Taylor he didn’t want to be in the same social studies group as Patrick. Patrick never knew what to expect—high fives or put-downs.
Some kids said Andy was crazy like his dad. Patrick knew all about crazy dads. Every now and then, when Andy was being nice, Patrick would think about asking Andy if his dad was still around, or if he had left like his own dad had, and never come back. But Patrick never asked. It was easier not to take chances with Andy.
Patrick got off the bus at his stop without a word from Andy. He started walking toward his house, trying to ignore the fierce afternoon sun burning into his shoulders. He was almost to the front walk and the shade of the lone mesquite tree when an all-too-familiar voice called after him: “Hey, Patrick, learn to kick the ball before you show up again for soccer.”
Patrick turned to see Andy yelling out the bus window as it pulled away. “Or is that too hard for somebody like you?”
The bus rounded the corner onto Nathan Avenue, and Patrick couldn’t hear Andy’s other insults. He shrugged them off, and fished in his pocket for his house key.
But the front door was unlocked, and Patrick’s mother was home. “Hi, I’m back here,” she called.
Patrick crossed the small living room to the kitchen. His mother was scrubbing the sink. He stopped in the doorway and watched her work, her dark braid sweeping across her back e
ach time she leaned into that old rust stain that wouldn’t go away.
Ever since Dad had left, he’d taken to thinking of her as “Paulette” instead of “Mom.” It wasn’t as though he had decided to. It had just sort of happened over time. Thinking “Paulette” made him feel closer to her, as though they were partners as much as mother and son. She didn’t seem to mind either, like some moms would.
“How was school?” Paulette asked over her shoulder.
Patrick put his backpack on the counter, pulled out a stool, and sat down. “I thought you had to work the lunch and dinner shifts.”
Paulette stopped scrubbing and turned to face him. Though she was obviously tired—dark circles under her brown eyes, lines of fatigue on her face—her smile was bright. “Got a bigger break today. Thought I’d come home and get a few things done, see how you were doing.” She glanced at her watch. “Gotta go back soon, though. So how are you doing? How was school today?”
Patrick shrugged. He hated that question even more than the “Who are your friends?” question. He knew Paulette was asking because she cared. She wasn’t like Dad. She never yelled or shook him. She never called him stupid and locked him in the closet. Even after a conference with Mrs. Nagle, she always smiled and said she knew he’d do better soon. Still, especially after a day like today, Patrick wasn’t interested in discussing school.
“It was OK,” he said.
“Hmmm,” Paulette said. She rinsed her hands, then dried them. “Had another weird customer in for lunch.”
Patrick perked up. He loved to hear about the strange people who came into Lupita’s Mexican Café, or the new joke Carlos the cook told, or what Lupita and Billy the dishwasher said to each other. They were always teasing.
Paulette leaned against the sink. “This guy wanted his burrito without a tortilla.”
Patrick laughed. “No tortilla? But then it wouldn’t be a burrito.”