Beautiful Child

by Torey Hayden

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Too slow. Too many family problems. You know.”

  “Life’s crapped on her, so we really shouldn’t worry about her?”

  “No, I mean we win some, we lose some. You have to take that attitude with some kids. Some things you can’t change; so, when it goes out of your hands, you just have to believe it was for the best.”

  I smiled faintly at the irony. “We’ve come a long way, haven’t we—you and I—from where we started.”

  Bob knew instantly I was referring back to those heady, idealistic days together early in our careers when there were no hopeless kids.

  “Are you saying, ‘Have I grown up?’” he asked. “Because if so, Torey, yes. I have. I’ve been around long enough now to know—to really comprehend—that you do win some and you lose some. And you have to go with those you win and, sadly, let go of those you lose.”

  I nodded.

  “It’s sad, I know. But it’s also life.”

  I couldn’t refute him on that. There had been kids I couldn’t help; ones I’d had to give up on. There’d been plenty of them. And I, too, had had to reconcile the better world I wanted with the real world I had. Nonetheless, I still didn’t like being forced to give up on ones I hadn’t yet given up on myself.

  Another pause wandered into the conversation and stayed. Bob started to turn away to go back to his office.

  “Beautiful child,” I murmured.

  “Huh?” Bob turned back toward me.

  “I said, ‘beautiful child.’ Thinking of the irony of it. That’s what Wanda always calls her. ‘Beautiful child.’ When, in fact, Venus is one of the least beautiful children I’ve ever seen. Nothing. That kid has nothing beautiful going for her. But all the time, Wanda calls her ‘beautiful child.’”

  “Well, to Wanda, she probably is,” Bob replied.

  He hesitated a moment.

  “You know the truth about them, don’t you?” he said.

  I looked up.

  “It’s off the record, but it’s true. At least that’s what Social Services say.”

  “What?”

  “Teri isn’t Venus’s mother. It’s actually Wanda. Teri’s last partner, the one before the greasy character she’s got now, he knocked Wanda up.”

  “Oh geez.” It made horrible sense.

  Bob pursed his lips. “This guy didn’t even get done for it. Knocked up a retarded thirteen-year-old and then he just waltzed off.”

  “Oh geez.”

  Bob made a small, defeated sound. “Beautiful child, indeed.”

  My head was going off like a popcorn popper by the time I got back to my classroom. Suddenly many other things were making sense. If Venus was Wanda’s child, what if Wanda had been left with primary care of Venus in her infancy and early childhood? Even if Venus’s IQ was not affected, what kind of environment would she have been brought up in? It would be very questionable that someone of Wanda’s limited abilities could provide adequate stimulation for a baby and certainly not adequate care. I remembered Wanda with her baby doll, held carelessly, loved one moment, then forgotten and left behind the next, when something else distracted her. What if Venus had spent her early years treated like this? There may have been very little stimulation—especially verbal stimulation. Perhaps she was left alone in a crib or playpen until Wanda remembered her. Perhaps she had cried so long that it finally occurred to her that crying did no good, that one simply waited, immobile, like the babies in Third World orphanages with their blank faces and still bodies. What if the only time the other family members interacted with her was to clout her into silence, hence she learned that defense was the best offense? So she attacked before anyone could attack her.

  All supposition on my part, but it fell into place like some horrible jigsaw puzzle.

  The Chipmunk Spy idea wasn’t what one would call successful.

  The first problem was that Shane and Zane had such poor reading skills that they could do none of this by themselves. They had to have Julie help them read who their “victims” were, which made it hard to keep things secret, and they needed help writing out notes to put in the spy box.

  Then there was the small matter of the boys liking the idea of being a spy and, even more, liking the idea of treats on Friday afternoon, but no one actually liking the idea of doing good deeds.

  I could tell things weren’t working out on the very first day. I kept saying, “Have you done your good deed today?” And everybody nodded and said, “Yes.” So I reminded them that they had to get Julie or me to confirm it and the only one who had was Jesse. He was secret spy to Zane, and his good deed had been to pick up Zane’s worksheet paper, which he found on the floor, and put it back on Zane’s table. Not exactly a gold-hearted act, but it was a start.

  On Tuesday, Jesse again came to me. This time he said he’d lent Zane the colored markers during art. I hesitated to point out that I had told him to share the markers because he had hogged the whole box on his desk, and when I did, all the boys had taken some, not just Zane.

  I also saw Billy put a note in the box. “Billy,” I said, “be sure to confirm your good deed with Julie or me, so we know you did it.”

  “I did it,” he replied indignantly. “Don’t you trust me? Fucking place, we got no trust here. How do you expect us to do anything if you never trust us?”

  I put a finger to my lip. “Watch your words, please.”

  “See? You don’t even trust me to talk.”

  Given his brilliant mood, I didn’t persist with interrogating him about good deeds.

  Friday came. The evening before I’d made gingerbread men—great big ones with each child’s name on them—and I brought them in for the spy box treat. I also made a very snazzy “spy badge” for the winner.

  Everyone got extremely excited when they saw the gingerbread men. All morning the boys drooled over them, identifying which one had their name on it. Indeed, the gingerbread men proved so much of a distraction in the morning that I had to hide them in the cupboard.

  When the end of the day arrived, I had everyone sit down at their tables. I put the gingerbread men on my desk and then made a big deal of bringing the spy box over to the middle table and opening it up. “What do you think we’re going to find?” I asked with overexaggerated anticipation. Billy was getting into a fervor already. He wanted to short-circuit all this talk and go straight for the gingerbread men.

  I opened the box. There was only a handful of notes inside. Nine, to be exact. The five I had written on Gwennie’s behalf for Shane, who was her person. Jesse’s two notes for Zane, and two entirely blank pieces of paper.

  “Ah,” I said. “Not much in here.”

  I read out the ones I’d done on Gwennie’s behalf for Shane.

  “I got the most! I got the most!” Shane cried. “Where’s my treat?”

  “That’s not actually the way it works,” I said. “We get the treats for having done the good deeds. But there haven’t been very many done.”

  “But I got the most!” Shane yelled. “I want my treat.”

  “Hold on a minute. You didn’t write any, Shane.”

  Shane burst into tears. “But I won.”

  “I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand what we were doing,” Zane piped up.

  “What about me?” Jesse cried. “I done the most good deeds. I get a treat. I should get all of them. And the badge too. That’s mine. I won it fair and square.”

  “You did two. And what’s this blank piece of paper? Billy? Why did you put that in here?”

  “Teacher!” Billy shrieked in response and pointed. “Look what she’s doing!”

  I whirled around to see Gwennie, standing by my desk where I had set the gingerbread men. She was biting the legs off each one, fast as she could.

  “Teacher!!!!!” Billy screamed, and before I could stop him, he was out of his seat, shooting toward Gwennie.

  I intercepted him but could not catch all the bo
ys. Julie bolted into the fray too, but it was too late.

  Jesse picked up the single whole cookie that remained, which happened to say Zane on it.

  “That’s mine!” Zane shrieked and ran toward him.

  “I won. And I’m not eating anything with that girl’s cooties on it,” Jesse replied and crammed the whole cookie into his mouth with a massive shoving motion.

  Within seconds everyone was in one big writhing, fighting, crying tangle on the floor.

  I pulled them apart. At least I tried to. Jesse was choking over his cookie, because he’d been knocked to the floor before he’d had time to swallow. Gwennie was shrieking in the usual high-pitched banshee wail she gave out when she went on overload. Billy was fighting so hard that he was literally foaming at the mouth. The twins just screamed and lashed out at everyone. About half of what was left of the gingerbread men had been ground underfoot.

  Between Julie and me, we managed to get them apart, to their feet, and into their chairs.

  “Sit!” I said, using my most ferocious teacher’s voice.

  Begrudgingly, everyone stayed in their chairs.

  “Now cross your arms and put your heads down on your desks. The bell rings in just under five minutes, so you stay that way until then.”

  Everyone, even Gwennie, followed those instructions. Except, of course, Billy.

  “You too,” I said, giving him the evil eye.

  “Can’t,” he replied with just the faintest hint of defiance.

  “And why’s that, might I ask?”

  “Because you said put your head down on your desk and I don’t have a desk.” He spread his hands wide, palms upward, like he was the most innocent kid in the world. “Just got this table.”

  “Now, Billy.”

  There was a long look between us. Finally, Billy crossed his arms on the tabletop and lay his head on them. “Fucking school,” he muttered as he did so.

  Thus ended the Chipmunk Spy Club.

  Chapter

  13

  There was no denying that my usual techniques for getting control of a class and making a cohesive group from it were not working with this bunch. All the boys had hyperactivity and attention problems; all were impulsive and aggressive. Gwennie, with her intolerance of sudden noise or movement, added her own brand of chaos to the afternoons.

  Initially I’d looked forward to Gwennie, because I’d been told her autism had only involved social issues, that she was otherwise capable of working successfully in a classroom situation. And, of course, I’d foreseen pairing her with Venus. But in practice I found Gwennie operated much further down the autistic continuum than I’d expected. She was easily overstimulated, easily frustrated, and had very, very little tolerance of disruption to routine. This made her a rather bad fit with Billy, Jesse, Zane, and Shane, who regularly made mincemeat out of any routine and were totally incapable of conducting anything at a noise level much below that of a jackhammer.

  Zane and Shane presented their own special problems. Although they came from a warm, supportive home, their parents, who had adopted the boys when they were less than a year old, were already in their mid-forties when the boys had arrived. They were lovely people and they clearly adored these two boys, but they were not well equipped to deal with Zane and Shane’s serious problems. Neither parent was well educated nor energetic nor particularly young at heart, so I frequently had the mother on the phone. Often she was in tears of despair over something or another they had done before school. Many of the disasters were of the sort any pair of young boys could have gotten up to—irritating and usually very messy, but not really dysfunctional behavior—but she found it very hard to cope, usually because the boys did not remember the consequences of their actions. The same things happened over and over and over again, in spite of all her efforts.

  And goodness knows, when Shane and Zane did behave in a difficult manner, they could be very difficult indeed. The primary effect of FAS is mental retardation, and in that respect the boys had gotten off relatively lightly with a borderline IQ. However, FAS also often causes several behavior problems, among them the triplet bugbears of all special education classrooms—impulsivity, hyperactivity, and poor concentration—as well as some specialized problems. The biggest one with Shane and Zane, which is typical of many FAS children, was an inability to learn from experience. Indeed, memory in all forms was very poor for the boys. They had to be taught things again and again and again, and each time it was like starting over. This meant it was hard for them to “learn the rules” of behavior in the classroom. Moreover, there seemed to be a connector missing between remembering things and understanding how to make use of them. Even if they knew the rules, i.e., could recite them, they still could not apply them. Consequently, I was coming to realize that a lot of the behavior problems I was having with Shane and Zane were a result of their inability to understand the consequences of their actions.

  Another big problem area for us was that neither of them had any real concept of ownership. If they saw something in the classroom or on the playground they liked, they’d just take it. This wasn’t stealing to them. They simply did not understand it belonged to someone else and to use it, you had to ask. This, of course, made them very unpopular, both inside our class and out. Indeed, friendship was a concept quite beyond either of the boys.

  Jesse was the only student in the group who had anything approaching a normal level of activity or concentration, but his tics interfered badly with his learning ability. Stress caused the tics to become more frequent or pronounced, and he had a wide variety—grimacing, jerking his head, sniffing. When he was upset, he often tended to make a fist and repetitively hit the side of his head at just above the temple area. And when concentrating, he was inclined to repeat words over and over. These were usually harmless phrases such as “Oh man. Oh man. Oh man.” Or “Gotta concentrate. Gotta concentrate.” This did get wearing, and the other boys, distractible as they all were, found it hard to attend to their own matters when Jesse was muttering. But his very worst, more intrusive tic was the barking—sudden, loud, almost explosive—and Gwennie, in particular, couldn’t cope at all when he was doing that.

  In addition to the tics, Jesse also had fairly serious learning disabilities. I think until Ben had come to do the testing, we had not appreciated how much of his academic difficulty was due to this, but in the time since Ben had assessed him, I had spent a lot of time trying to discern where his learning problems lay. They revolved mainly around reading and spelling. He had difficulty decoding words and also difficulty comprehending them, once he had ascertained what they were. As with Gwennie, I found that Jesse had a hard time learning in a noisy classroom. He couldn’t discriminate sounds well when there was background noise, so that words like there and chair often sounded alike for him. This made learning in our environment more of a challenge.

  And then, of course, there was Billy. Since the clear indication on the assessment that Billy was gifted, I had made a real effort to engage him productively in class, despite his poor academics and appalling behavior. Not an easy task! Billy did not want to sit. Billy did not want to work. Billy did not want to do reading or math or anything else he was supposed to do. All Billy really wanted to do was talk! And fight.

  I tried to channel this within the confines of our classroom setup. I thought perhaps if I arranged for Billy to do some talking, maybe he wouldn’t want to do so much off-task talking. So I gave him small study projects with the idea that he could “report” to the class the things he learned. This might have worked if I could have gotten Billy to sit still long enough to read anything or write down any notes, or if the others could have been tied to their chairs to listen.

  The sad truth with Billy was that no one had told him that he was a gifted child and thereby should be interested in doing all the clever, creative little things I was arranging for him. No, Billy persisted in being Billy, no matter what I came up with: loud, rambunctious, over-enthusiastic, and with the attent
ion span of a gnat.

  Into this mix came my ongoing problems with Julie. If there was such a thing as “taking a hard line on permissiveness,” Julie was a proponent. She felt children should be loved, encouraged, and rewarded and everything else they did ignored. Period. No other discipline. And as the weeks passed, it became clear that she took an increasingly serious stand on this belief. It was rather like sharing the room with a militant pacifist. Common sense told you that it was an oxymoron, fighting for peace, but it was also very difficult being forced to justify the opposite: let’s fight for violence.

  The practical outcome of this was that we had very different ways of responding to situations in the classroom. If one of the children misbehaved, Julie’s reaction was “Let’s talk about why you threw that book down.” My reaction was, “Pick it up.” If one of the children got out of his seat and tore around the room, Julie’s inclination was to say nothing and praise the ones who were still in their seats. This might have worked, had the one up out of his seat not gotten up in order to beat the other ones over their heads. Or had there been any other ones in their seats. Most of the time, if one got up, they were all up, careering around the classroom in attack mode.

  Given that most days my boys were intent on either killing one another or reenacting some version of Lord of the Flies, Julie became easily overcome in situations where fighting broke out. It wasn’t very practical to ignore fighting or, in the heat of the moment, ask them why they were doing it. But she wasn’t happy raising her voice or ordering people off to the quiet chairs, my two usual reactions. And she was even less happy throwing herself into the fray to pry the boys apart. The best she managed was to try and grab one and hug him, speaking softly over and over about how important it was that we not hurt one another. Meanwhile, his opponents were off locating weapons of mass destruction.

  I had two big problems with all of this. First, I genuinely liked Julie as a person. I liked her sense of humor, her industriousness, her personality. And I wanted her to like me. So it was hard to have to take on the role of the bad guy, always pointing out the drawbacks to her approach, forever saying how it was much more helpful if we presented a united front. Moreover, I didn’t like the position I was having to defend. In previous schools, I’d always been the liberal one, the open-minded one, the least restrictive. I hated suddenly being cast as the conservative. It jarred my self-image. Second, our differences made me feel self-conscious in the classroom. As the weeks went on, I knew I was going to have to structure the environment more strictly to get on top of my little guys’ behavior, but I put it off and put it off, largely because I hated having to tell Julie she was going to have to do it too.