He stops before the next word.
“The word is assimilated,” says Mrs. Beam. “Class, please repeat after me.”
We all say it together. Assimilated.
“Can anyone tell me what that word means?” Mrs. Beam asks.
Mine is the only hand that goes up.
“Yes, RAH-vee?” says Mrs. Beam.
I start to stand up, but catch myself in time. I have been awarded another chance to impress Mrs. Beam, and I am not going to give her any reason to find fault with me.
“Assimilate: to consume and incorporate nutrients into the body after digestion,” I say confidently.
Mrs. Beam smiles, but she has that pity look again. “I’m sorry, RAH-vee,” she says, “I’m afraid I couldn’t understand you. Because of your accent, you’re going to need to speak more slowly in class if you want to be understood.”
My face burns. Is there nothing I can do right? But I refuse to give up. I swallow my pride and try again.
“Assimilate,” I say, slowly swirling my tongue around the words to make them sound more American. “To consume and incorporate nutrients into the body after digestion.”
“Thank you, RAH-vee,” Mrs. Beam says, but the pity look is still there. “In this context, however, the word assimilate means to try to fit in. Don’t feel bad, it was a very good guess.”
A guess? Is that what she thinks? My answer was correct. I am 100 percent certain of that. I have a photographic memory. I can still see the definition from my fourth-grade science notebook clearly in my mind.
Mrs. Beam asks Keith Campbell to continue with his reading.
“Descendants of New Jersey Native American people hid or assimilated into white society.”
“Very good, Keith,” Mrs. Beam says when he has finished reading, then she looks around the room. “Who would like to read the next paragraph? How about you, Joe?”
Big Foot practically falls out of his chair. “No way,” he blurts.
“Excuse me?” says Mrs. Beam.
Her eyebrows are twitching like electrified caterpillars. Mrs. Arun would never have allowed a student to speak to her that way. I wonder what Big Foot’s punishment will be. But just then the door opens and a woman with white hair like a mop sticks her head inside.
“I’m here for Joe,” she says. “I’ll keep him for the rest of the afternoon if that’s all right.”
“That will be fine,” says Mrs. Beam. “Oh, and did you get my note about our new student? I think he could use a little help.”
Could this mop top be Miss Frost? I wonder.
“I did get your message. If you want, I can take him right now,” says Mop Top. “The two of us can get acquainted, and if it seems like a formal assessment is in order, we can deal with the paperwork later.”
What is she talking about?
“RAH-vee,” says Mrs. Beam, “go with Miss Frost and Joe, please.”
I look up at the clock. 11:25.
“What about lunch?” I ask.
“You can eat with Joe and me,” says Miss Frost. “Do you buy school lunch or bring it from home?”
“From home,” I say softly.
I don’t want to eat my lunch in the resource room with Mop Top and Big Foot. I want to go to the lunchroom with my friend.
“RAH-vee,” says Mrs. Beam. “Miss Frost is here to help you. Please take your things and go with her. Hurry up now.”
I want to:
Tell her I don’t need help.
Show her that she is the one who doesn’t know the meaning of assimilation.
Insult her hairy caterpillar eyebrows.
But here is what I do instead:
Sigh loudly.
Put my things in my backpack.
Go and get my tiffin box.
Talk about perfect timing! I could kiss Miss Frost. Well, not really. But I am happy to see her.
“I’ll keep Joe for the rest of the day,” she says.
Fine by me.
Mrs. Beam asks Miss Frost to bring Ravi along too. He seems kind of mad about it. I was mad too when I first started going to see Miss Frost. I didn’t like the way kids looked at me when she came to get me out of class. Now I’m used to it. I like Miss Frost, and I like being in the resource room partly because it’s quiet there, and partly because of the M&M’s—peanut M&M’s come in red, green, yellow, brown, orange, and blue, and they all taste exactly the same.
I walk down the hall next to Miss Frost. Ravi walks a few feet behind us and doesn’t say a word.
“Here we are, RAH-vee,” says Miss Frost when we get to her room.
Miss Frost’s voice sounds like a cartoon bird—chirpy and high. Her hair reminds me of those long strips of cloth they drag over your car when you go through the car wash. She holds the door open for us, but Ravi just stands there.
“Is something wrong, RAH-vee?” Miss Frost asks.
Ravi pushes up his glasses and rubs his nose, then he puts his shoulders back and stands up really straight.
“My name is not RAH-vee,” he says. “It’s pronounced rah-VEE. I’m not going to bother to tell you how to pronounce my surname, because you’ll never be able to say it right.”
Miss Frost looks surprised.
“I’m very sorry if I mispronounced your name,” she says. “I certainly didn’t mean to offend you.”
“I don’t belong here,” he says, pushing his glasses up again. “I speak perfect English. I was at the top of my class in India. My IQ is 135. I don’t need special help. I’m not like him.”
He points his finger at me.
* * *
I’VE BEEN COMING to Miss Frost’s room since kindergarten. She was the one who figured out I have APD. My mom cried when she heard. My dad just got mad. He thinks APD is made up. He says doctors do that all the time to make money.
“Have a seat, Joe, and I’ll be right with you,” Miss Frost tells me now.
I sit down, dig a blue peanut M&M out of the big bowl in the middle of the table, and start sucking on it.
Rah-VEE. Rah-VEE. I say it to myself a few times until it starts to feel natural. I bet I could learn how to say his last name too if I wanted to, but why should I bother? I have more important things to think about. Like the fact that my dad called to say he’s cutting his trip short and coming home early. I have a feeling it’s because my mom told him about what happened in the cafeteria yesterday.
Miss Frost takes Ravi over to the other side of the room to the listening lab. He sits down and puts on a pair of headphones, but his legs are jiggling around under the table and I can tell he’s still mad. For a minute, I thought maybe we could be friends, but now I know that’s not ever going to happen.
Whatever.
After Miss Frost gets Ravi set up in the listening lab, she comes over and sits down beside me.
“Are you okay, Joe?” she asks.
I shrug and dig another blue peanut M&M out of the bowl. Blues are my favorite.
“Ravi was upset,” she says. “He’s a long way from home and still adjusting. I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“He didn’t,” I tell her. “Everybody thinks I’m dumb. I’m used to it.”
Miss Frost looks sad.
“Did you know your mom stopped by to see me on her way to work this morning, Joe?” she asks.
I shake my head. Why can’t my mother keep her nose out of my business?
“Can we talk about something else, please?” I say.
“Like what?” asks Miss Frost.
I try to think of something that has nothing to do with my mom or her new job. “Did you know that if you suck on a peanut M&M long enough and you’re careful not to bite down, you can actually feel each one of the layers dissolving in your mouth?”
Miss Frost smiles.
“Go on,” she tells me.
“Most people probably think there are only three layers in a peanut M&M, but it’s not true—there are four. The first one is the hard colored part on the outside; ne
xt there’s a thin white layer—that’s the part most people don’t know about. Then comes the chocolate, and when that’s gone, if you’ve done it right, you end up with a nice smooth peanut sitting on the end of your tongue.”
Miss Frost is still smiling. “That’s a very interesting observation, Joe,” she says. “It’s also a sequence.”
Sequences are something Miss Frost and I have worked on a lot together. She says if I can think about things in order—first, next, then, and finally—it will help my brain stay organized.
“Pick your distractors,” Miss Frost tells me.
I get up and go over to a shelf filled with things like kitchen timers, windup toys, and music boxes. I choose an old Mickey Mouse alarm clock and a battery-operated snow globe with a Santa Claus wearing a Hawaiian shirt inside. As I carry them back to the table, I catch a whiff of something spicy. It must be Ravi’s lunch.
“Ready?” Miss Frost asks me.
The alarm clock is ticking loudly. I set the snow globe on the table beside it and turn it on. A blizzard of glittering white snowflakes swirls around the plastic Santa Claus.
“Ready,” I say.
She hands me a copy of Sports Illustrated.
“First find a page with no pictures on it, next circle all the words that begin with the letter t,” she tells me. “Then copy the t words out on a piece of paper, and finally fold the paper in half and bring it to me. Got it?”
Tick, tick, tick. I tell my brain to ignore the sound of the clock and the swirling flakes in the snow globe and focus on what Miss Frost just said.
“Find a page with no pictures. Circle the words that begin with t,” I say, repeating the instructions.
“Then what?” she asks.
The Santa in the snow globe is holding a sign that says, HOLLYWOOD, HERE I COME! That gets me thinking about Evan and Ethan. I wonder how they’re doing in California. That gets me thinking about the part in Bud, Not Buddy where Bud tries to sneak onto a train with his best friend, Bugs, only he ends up getting left behind with some girl named Deza who wants to kiss him. I don’t know what I’d do if some girl tried to kiss me. Probably bite her.
“Then what?” Miss Frost asks again.
Crud. I totally lost my train of thought. I hate when that happens.
“Um …”
“Focus, Joe,” Miss Frost tells me.
Tick, tick, tick. I close my eyes, and try hard to remember the rest of the instructions she gave me a minute ago.
“Copy all the t words out and write them on a piece of paper, fold it in half, and give it to you.”
“Way to go, Joe!” Miss Frost says, putting her hand up to give me a high five.
Miss Frost doesn’t know that high fives are corny. I look over at Ravi to see if he’s watching, but luckily he’s busy looking at the dictionary. He asks again if he can go back to class, and this time Miss Frost goes over to talk to him. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I guess she gives in and decides to let him go because he shoves his stuff in his backpack real fast and heads straight for the door.
Fine by me.
Miss Frost offers Ravi an M&M from the candy bowl, and even though there are plenty of other colors, wouldn’t you know it? He reaches in and takes a blue one. What really ticks me off is that it’s a double—two M&M’s stuck together. Those are rare.
He doesn’t say good-bye. He doesn’t eat the M&M either, just puts it in his pocket and heads for the door. Something’s different about him. He’s not mad anymore; he seems more sad. Not that I care how he feels.
I’m glad he’s leaving.
“Joe,” says Miss Frost, “I’ll be back in a minute. Then we can get lunch.”
As soon as she’s gone, I put down my pencil and dump the whole bowl of M&M’s out on the table. I go through them one by one looking for doubles, but there aren’t any more. Doubles are rare—especially blue ones. I’m kicking myself. How could I have missed that?
The eyes are windows to the world, Amma always says.
When I was little, she would look into my eyes and tell me they were bright and sparkling, like my mind. That was before Dr. Batra discovered that I could hardly see. In kindergarten, I had a serious copying problem. I could never copy anything correctly from the board. While reading a book, I had to stick my face so close to the page that my teacher, Ms. Venkat, suspected that I had some serious reading issues. When she called my mother in to tell her to get me assessed, Amma had cried. She couldn’t stand that they were questioning my intelligence. It was Dr. Batra who figured out that the problem was with my eyesight. Now I wear glasses. The power of my lenses is thirteen, and I can see the world clearly.
Miss Frost gives me a book called Fun with Phonics and tells me to read along with a recording of the first story. There is a picture of letters dressed up in funny clothes on the cover. This is ridiculous. Does she think I’m a baby? I pretend to be listening to the story, but instead I turn down the volume and shift the headphones away from my ears so that I can hear what Miss Frost and Big Foot are saying. He is talking to her about candy.
I hear footsteps and people laughing out in the corridor. I recognize Dillon’s voice.
“Last one in line gets a wedgie!” he shouts.
Why must I be stuck in here listening to baby stories when I could be racing off to eat lunch with my new friend, Dillon Samreen?
I pull off the headphones and stand up. “I’ve listened to the story, ma’am. Please can I go now?” I ask, but Miss Frost tells me to sit down and eat my lunch.
Will I be trapped here forever like Bud Caldwell was trapped in the shed with the angry bees? I open my tiffin box and slowly unfold my napkin. How sad Amma would be if she could see me now. No wonder Big Foot made such a fuss when Mrs. Beam called on him earlier to read aloud; he probably doesn’t know how to read a word.
I notice the fat red book sitting on a shelf nearby and realize what I must do. I finish my vegetable biriyani in a few quick bites. Miss Frost is still busy with Big Foot, so she doesn’t notice me get up and pull the heavy dictionary down from the shelf. I lay it on the table, open it up to the section marked A, then run my finger down the page. Askew … assess … Yes! There it is: assimilate. I narrow my eyes and slowly read out the words. To take in, digest, incorporate. Ha!
“I knew it, I knew, I knew it,” I whisper, smiling to myself, and shaking my head from side to side. I will show Mrs. Beam this page, and she will have no choice but to admit defeat. I’ll announce her mistake in front of the whole class, pump my fist, and take a bow.
How sweet my victory will taste!
In the meantime, I eavesdrop and find that Big Foot is talking on and on about candy. He never says a word in class, but here he can’t stop talking about chocolate and peanuts. Will it never end?
I look at the dictionary one last time, just to be doubly sure, running my finger along under the words, this time very, very slowly. I want to make sure I have not missed anything. Take in, digest, incorporate … I bend my head closer. There is something else.
To integrate, to fit in. My finger freezes. Can my eyes be fooling me? No. Thanks to Dr. Batra, I can see perfectly well. I read it again: to integrate, to fit in. I close the dictionary and quickly pull my social studies book out of my backpack, turning to chapter one. In this context, Mrs. Beam had said. I read the passage and my heart feels heavy. Consuming and incorporating nutrients has nothing to do with Native Americans in New Jersey in the 1700s.
Just a minute ago, I had wanted to:
Announce my victory.
Pump my fist.
Take a bow.
But instead this is how I feel:
Embarrassed
Ashamed
Defeated
Miss Frost comes and sits down next to me.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” she says. “I know that you’re eager to get back to class, but I thought it might be a good idea for us to have a little chat.”
What is there to talk about? The taste
of victory is gone.
All I want is to dig a deep hole and hide my head in it forever.
“I’m here to help you in any way I can,” says Miss Frost. “We have lots of ESL materials here in the resource room.”
“ESL?” I say.
“English as a second language,” she explains. “Mrs. Beam mentioned that she and some of the children have been having difficulty understanding you because of your accent.”
I hang my head. English is not my second language—it is my first. My English is much better than my Tamil. Mop Top doesn’t even know me, and now she is criticizing the way I speak?
“I can only imagine how difficult this must be for you,” she tells me. “A new school, in a new country. Maybe it would help to speak with Mr. Garfinkle, our guidance counselor. He’s very easy to talk to.”
I feel like I am suffocating. Now I’m in need of some kind of counseling too?
“Please,” I whisper. “Can I just go back to my classroom?”
“Of course,” she says, and pats my hand. “Mrs. Beam should be back in her classroom by now. I’m sure she won’t mind if you sit quietly and read until the others come back from lunch.”
I nod my head, grateful that my torture is finally coming to an end. Then I quickly stuff my tiffin box and social studies book back in my backpack before Miss Frost can change her mind about letting me go.
Big Foot is looking at a magazine and doesn’t even look up as I walk past.
“Would you like an M&M for the road?” Miss Frost asks me, holding out a big bowl full of colored candies. Amma doesn’t like me to eat sweets, but I don’t want to be rude, so I take a candy—a blue one—and put it in my pocket as I prepare myself for the long walk back.
Miss Frost and I walk down the corridor together. When we reach room 506, she turns to me. “How about we meet again next week?” she says. “Once you’ve had a bit more time to settle in.” I reach to open the door, but Miss Frost puts her hand on my shoulder. “Before you go, can I tell you something? I think you’ve assumed something about Joe that isn’t true. You and he could easily be friends.”
Save Me a Seat Page 4