by Torey Hayden
Over the lunch hour, however, the treats arrived. Jesse’s grandmother brought in cupcakes. Shane and Zane’s mother stopped by with a huge tray of cookies cut out in the shape of Christmas trees. Julie arrived and helped me set up the party table. Although the rest of the school was having a Christmas party all afternoon, we were only going to have our party during the time following recess, as that was when Santa Claus was due to arrive in our room. Even with this shortened party time, however, it was impossible from lunchtime on to ignore the fact that Something Exciting was going to take place. When Shane and Zane took all the goodies in, they just went gaga.
The first upset happened even before the bell rang.
“Look what Shane’s done,” Jesse called out.
I was in the process of hanging out my attendance slip and closing the door. I turned to see Shane holding a fat red marking pen. He had colored all the skin on his left hand and up the arm of his shirt.
“Oh dear,” Julie said in an amicable voice. “Did you forget markers are for paper, not for people? Come here, Shane. Let’s wash it off.”
I got started with the afternoon’s activities.
Julie washed Shane’s hand as best she could. There weren’t enough paper towels at the sink, so she went to the cupboard to get a new pack. Shane was splashing water by hitting the flat of his hand on the bottom of the sink.
He looked up at me as he did it, a beady little expression in his eyes because he knew I was watching, and then stuck his finger against the faucet. Water sprayed everywhere.
Julie turned to see the mess. “Oops,” she said calmly. “Water on the floor. Someone might slip. Here, let’s take towels and wipe it up.”
She took paper towels and bent over the spilled water. Shane just took towels. Being meant for a paper towel dispenser, they were loaded into the pack in an interfolded manner, so one towel lifted up the edge of the next towel. He experimented with pulling them apart rapidly, which meant they flew off in all directions in rather graceful arcs.
I didn’t want to undermine Julie’s authority by intervening, but I kept a close eye on the proceedings. Noticing him doing this, Julie rose back to her feet. “Towels are for wiping things with, Shane. Here.” She gave him a towel. “Please help.” She knelt back down to finish wiping up the water.
Shane wasn’t falling for that one. Instead, he started hitting her over the head with the towel. It didn’t hurt, of course, but he was persistent. She ignored him at first until he started swishing the paper towel against her eyes so that she couldn’t see.
“Towels are for wiping, Shane. Will you help?”
Shane continued to hit her with the paper towel.
She rose up and took his hand. “Come back over to your table. You have your folder there. Let’s see if there is a nice picture of Santa for you to color. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”
I watched all this, hypersensitive to how I would have handled it differently. For one thing, I would have raised my voice. Not shouted. But I would have used my voice, as well as my words, to make it very apparent that I considered coloring yourself with a marker, spraying water all over the floor, and then throwing a bunch of paper towels around not acceptable classroom activities. Then I would have ensured he mopped up the floor, and if he hadn’t cooperated, I would have had him in the quiet chair until he felt inclined to do it.
Yet, thinking all that, I felt slightly guilty. I could justify my method as giving Shane a clearer message of how to behave, but the truth was, I would have also done it because I was annoyed with him. I didn’t like that kind of behavior. My reaction would have been—at least in part—personal. But was that right? I was here to help him. These were special children with heavy burdens. Julie stayed so child-oriented, so relentlessly cheerful in her efforts to interact with them in a humane, compassionate way that encouraged good self-esteem. And here was me, reacting out of: “Don’t do that because I don’t like it.”
The afternoon went from bad to worse. For once the traffic light system failed me. They had been going from yellow to red on and off all morning, but by afternoon, everyone was permanently on red and no one cared. Jesse, overexcited, could not control his tics. He barked and flinched and grimaced. When not doing that, he fought. He and Shane biffed it out over a pencil. He and Billy went two rounds on the rug in the reading corner before I managed to pry them apart and get them into separate quiet chairs. Gwennie was also jumpy. She hated Jesse’s barking and sat for long stretches of time with her hands up over her head, trying to shut it out. And when we weren’t looking, she dived into the Christmas goodies, stuffing candy and cookies into her mouth with both hands. Shane and Zane were a nightmare of truly outrageous activities. Shane pulled things off the bulletin board. He kicked over chairs. He tried to break one of the back windows by hitting it repeatedly with a block. Zane unzipped his pants and peed on my chair. Venus was the only one not to cause trouble and that’s because she was absent that day.
The centerpiece of the half-hour party after recess was the arrival of Santa Claus, who was, of course, really Bob. He was visiting each room in the school with a sack of goodies and arriving in our room last, since we were having the shortest party. Most of the children in regular classrooms were getting small bags of candy, but the Lions Club was sponsoring our class throughout that year, so they had provided gifts for each of the children in the room, including Gwennie, even though she was only part-time.
As I was welcoming Santa, Shane and Zane were both up out of their seats and running around. I nodded to Julie to corral them and get them back where they belonged.
Shane, zooming by my desk, picked up the gray cat statue that Billy had given me.
“Put that back, you little fucker! That’s not yours!” Billy shouted. He was out of his seat.
Santa put down his sack and grabbed Billy by the arm.
“Jingle bells, Jingle bells,” I started. “Come on, everyone! Jingle all the way. Oh what fun …”
Santa had joined in, singing heartily and still gripping Billy. Billy started to sing, even though he was still glaring at Shane. So did Jesse. Gwennie kept her head down, her hands over her ears.
Julie crossed over to Shane, took the cat statue from his hands, and put it back on the desk.
I started to clap as I sang. Coming up to Zane I clapped cheerfully in front of him. He joined me, clapping and singing. Then finally Shane started to clap too.
I marched. I clapped and sang “Jingle Bells” until everyone, including Santa Claus, was marching around the room, clapping and singing too. Finally we ended up in the reading corner.
Santa went back to the door to retrieve his bag. Five or six minutes of relative peace followed while Santa gave out the presents and the boys whooped with excitement at tearing off the wrapping paper. This distraction gave Gwennie enough time to elude us and start stuffing her face over at the party table. I don’t know how many cookies she had eaten when I noticed her present, lying still wrapped on the floor. Grabbing her by the shoulder, I led her back to the reading corner.
We had all the children sit down on the rug in the reading corner while Julie and I passed out cookies, cupcakes, and punch. Santa pulled over a little chair and sat down to read “The Night Before Christmas” to the children while they ate.
A tiny moment of peace reigned.
Then, just as he got to the “Now Dasher! Now Dancer!” bit, there was a soft burble and Gwennie started to vomit. It just ran out of her like a fountain, down the front of her dress, into her lap, across her shoes, and over the rug. The boys leaped up in surprise. Gwennie started to cry.
“There, there,” Julie crooned, taking hold of her shoulders. “It’s just throw-up. Don’t cry, honey. Did it scare you? Don’t worry. It’s just throw-up.”
It’s not just “throw-up,” I was thinking irritably. It’s a great big horrible smelly mess that’s wrecked the one peaceful moment in our Christmas party, and if Gwennie wouldn’t stuff her face so, it wouldn’t happen.
I hated myself for having such thoughts, because I knew Gwennie could not help being sick, but I did think it. But, damn it, it was more than “just throw-up.” I felt sorry for Gwennie, but I also felt sorry for the boys, the rug, and Santa, who had vomit on his costume-shop Santa boots. And me.
I moved the boys over to the other side of the room, called in the janitor, handed Santa a couple of paper towels to wipe off his boots, and put the remaining cookies out of reach. Julie took Gwennie down to the girls’ rest room to clean her up.
We only had five minutes of the day left by the time Julie and Gwennie returned. Santa was gone and the janitor was there by then, so I decided to call it a day. I told the kids to get their coats on and we’d spend the rest of the time on the playground.
That’s when I turned around to see Shane picking up the gray cat statue again. He wasn’t doing it maliciously. Clearly he just wanted to look at it, but he picked it up and started toward me with it, probably to show me something about it. But the lace on his left shoe was untied. He stepped on it and stumbled. He didn’t fall, but the cat statue slipped from his hands and fell to the floor. It hit with a dull crash and broke into countless pieces.
Billy instantly burst into tears. He didn’t get angry. He didn’t go into his usual attack mode when something went wrong. He didn’t even move. His face just drew down and he started to bawl. My heart melted for him.
Startled by the crash, Shane started to cry too.
In an instant, Julie was there, her arms around Shane. “Did that scare you? It was just an accident. Don’t cry, sweetheart. It doesn’t matter. Accidents happen.”
I’m embarrassed to admit it, but at that moment, I just lost it.
“It does matter!” I said. “Billy bought that. It was his gift to me. It does matter it got broken!”
Realizing I was very angry, Shane started to cry in earnest.
Billy rushed to join me. “You stupid motherfucker! You broke my cat. I’m gonna kill you!”
This brought me quickly to my senses. “No, you’re not,” I said. I put my hands on his shoulder. “I’m really, really sorry for what happened, but I don’t want you to get into trouble on top of it. Go get your coat on, so you can go on the playground.” I looked at Shane. “I want you in the quiet chair.”
“I didn’t mean to.” Shane was sobbing.
“I’m sure you didn’t, but you shouldn’t have been touching it. It wasn’t yours.”
He didn’t question me. He went over and sat down.
“I’ll stay with him until the bell rings,” Julie said.
I nodded. Turning, I took the other children downstairs to the playground.
Quite frankly, I felt like crying myself. Certainly I didn’t feel like going back upstairs to sort all this out between Julie and me, which is what I knew I had to do once the children had gone home. So once everyone was bid good-bye and put in their respective cars or buses, I reluctantly returned to the classroom.
Julie was on the far side of the room, straightening up things in the aftermath of the janitor, who had shifted the tables around in order to clean the floor in the reading corner.
“Sit down,” I said. “We need to talk this over.”
“It’s just been a bad day,” Julie said. “I’m sorry if things didn’t go like we planned.”
“No, it’s more than that. We need to thrash this out between us.”
Julie came over and pulled out the chair across the table from me. She sat down. I did too.
“I know we have different philosophies. I can respect that,” I said. “In fact, in many ways I’m very impressed by you. You have many admirable qualities. But what’s going on in here, what you’re doing in here … like with Shane … this is a kind of … emotional lying, Julie. You aren’t responding honestly to these situations.”
“What do you mean?” There was a vaguely defensive tone.
“I mean, you’re behaving the same way toward him when he’s splashing water or throwing paper towels as you do when he’s sitting down and doing his work. You use the same loving, peaceful voice. But you can’t be feeling loving, peaceful emotions then. Not when he’s hitting you with a paper towel when he should be helping wipe up the water.”
“Yes, I do,” she replied calmly.
I looked at her.
A silence crept in.
“Yes, I do,” she said again, perhaps a little more quietly this time. “Because I should be loving and peaceful. That’s good, Torey. That’s the way we should be.”
“Not all the time.”
“Why ever not?” she asked.
“Because it isn’t honest. People don’t feel loving and peaceful all the time. People feel annoyed or angry or tired or upset sometimes, and these are all part of us too, and while it is important to be in control of these emotions so that they don’t hurt anyone, that’s not the same as behaving as if they aren’t there. And it isn’t wrong that they’re there. We’re telling emotional lies when we act as if we don’t have these feelings.”
Julie just sat.
“That’s not good. It isn’t giving the children the tools to learn how to control these feelings themselves. Instead, it’s making them think we’re different from what they are. Relentlessly cheerful people aren’t real.”
Julie sighed. “You’re the only person who’s ever made me feel that being cheerful is wrong,” she said.
“There’s a deeper level to this too,” I said. “It has to do with right and wrong. I know it’s important to show acceptance and tolerance, to make people feel good about themselves, but the plain truth remains: if we don’t actively teach right and wrong, children don’t learn it. It’s our responsibility to teach the children how they should behave. Not everything they do is right. They need to be actively shown the difference between right and wrong behavior and shown ways to behave better that will eventually allow them to grow into happier, more fulfilled people.”
“Which is your opinion,” Julie responded.
“Yes, my opinion. And it’s also my opinion that this is the way to good self-esteem. We feel better about ourselves when we behave in ways that make others respond positively toward us. We feel better about ourselves when we have a sense of being in control of ourselves. Self-esteem doesn’t come about by people always telling you good things about yourself. How would all these good words even carry any weight, unless you knew the same people would also tell you not-good things about yourself when the need arose? Self-esteem isn’t passive. It’s active. It comes from mastering your world, from being competent and in control. And how can you achieve those things if people do not help you learn the behaviors involved?”
“But who are we to say what those are?” Julie countered. “I’m not comfortable making all these value judgments. What is right and wrong, Torey? I’m not God, so how do I know? And I’m not willing to set myself up as God. There are too many narrow-minded people in this country already as it is, and I’m not going to be one of them. I don’t think that’s our place. Values should be taught in church. Not in school.”
“Values should be taught everywhere.”
“Yes, but whose? We don’t have the right to judge these things,” Julie replied. “This is a diverse school. We have different cultures here. Different ethnic backgrounds. Different religions. Different socioeconomic levels. This matters, Torey, and we can’t make value judgments for people whose lives are different from ours. I’m not African-American. I’m not Latino. Yet most of the kids in this school come out of those cultures. I’m not living below the poverty line. I’m not developmentally delayed. Yet most of the kids in our class are from one of those groups.”
I hesitated. Again, I was aware of having to fight the opposite side to what I normally did and, again, I felt uncomfortable with this. “There are still some basic values,” I said. “Basic values that have nothing to do with what color you are or what language you speak,” I said, “or how high your IQ is or how much money you have. Human values. One of them sa
ys everyone has rights. So anytime you are doing something that takes away someone else’s rights, that’s wrong.”
Very cautiously, Julie nodded. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I’ll agree with that.”
“So Shane grabs up the gift Billy gave to me and he drops it. And when you say to him, ‘Shane, it doesn’t matter, that was just an accident’—yes, it was just an accident and I realize he had no intention of dropping the statue when he picked it up. So we shouldn’t get disproportionately angry. He was behaving like a kid—but it was still wrong that he did that. It did not belong to him. He’d already been warned off it before. To say it was ‘just an accident’ and ‘he didn’t mean to’ when he broke it might be good for his feelings, but it isn’t good for his morals. Dropping that statue interfered with my rights, as owner of the statue, because now I don’t have it anymore. And it interfered with Billy’s rights. Billy spent his money. It was his gift. It was his heart behind it. It isn’t right to hurt Billy just because Shane ‘didn’t mean to do it.’”
“But he didn’t mean to do it. And it did happen. Getting mad at Shane wouldn’t un-break the statue,” Julie said. “So why should we damage his self-esteem too? This little boy has so many problems already. He couldn’t help it, so why make him feel worse?”
“Because it was wrong.”
“I don’t think it was,” she said.
“And because it was emotionally dishonest. We didn’t actually feel inside like it didn’t matter.”
“It wasn’t to me.”
Silence then.
I regarded her across the table. Finally she shrugged and moved to get up. “I’m sorry, Torey. I wish I could agree with you, because I can tell you think it is important. But the truth is, I don’t.”
Chapter
16
And then it was January.
I continued my reading with Venus during the afternoon recess periods. I chose to stay with the same few books—Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad books and Russell Hoban’s Frances series on the idea that familiarity would be a good way to go. There was still little indication of the level of Venus’s intellectual functioning, and given her family history, I knew she, like the twins, might well be in the “educable” range—shorthand for mildly retarded. If we worked with the same ones, then there was a better chance that she would understand and appreciate the stories. Moreover, familiarity allowed her to anticipate the action in the stories. They were all humorous, so I hoped that as she came to anticipate what was going to happen next, this might evoke a smile or some other indication that I was actually engaging her.