by Torey Hayden
“Yeah, that too,” Jesse agreed.
“But I don’t know about this heaven business,” Billy said. “When my gerbil died, our priest said he wasn’t going to go to heaven because he doesn’t have a soul. Only things with souls get to go to heaven.”
Jesse wrinkled his nose. “Oh, I don’t think that’s right. My dog got run over and he’s gone to heaven. My grandma said.”
“Maybe he’s got a soul,” Billy offered. “Dogs probably do.”
“Gerbils probably do too,” Jesse said. “I think everything’s got a soul. Like, even rocks and stuff. It’s just we don’t know it. And because we don’t know it, we don’t think it’s true.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. A lot of stuff’s that way,” Billy said.
A pause.
Billy turned to me. “But you know what I think about? It’s not being dead. I don’t think I’d mind being dead, because probably it’s just like being alive, only different. But what I wonder is what it’s like to die. I wonder what it feels like. Do you think it’s really scary? Because I always think it must be scary.”
“Yeah, I’m scared to die,” Jesse said.
“Yeah, me too,” Billy agreed.
“Me too,” I said. “But I think that’s just nature’s way of making sure we concentrate on staying alive. Because otherwise we might forget to take good care of ourselves. But I don’t think dying probably feels scary. If it is something we all do, it must be a natural thing, like growing up is. So, I think that when the time comes to do it, we probably feel ready for it and so it isn’t scary. For instance, when you are very little and you look at a bigger kid going to school, you think, ‘That looks so scary. I’ll have to leave Mom and go away from home all day. I’ll never be able to do that.’ But when you are old enough to go to school, you think, ‘This is pretty interesting. I can’t wait to go.’ And you get to school and you see the big kids reading out of their schoolbooks and you think, ‘That looks so hard. I’m scared I’ll never be able to do that.’ But when you get into fourth or fifth grade, you have the same books and you look at them and you think, ‘This is pretty interesting.’ That’s because by the time you get there, you’ve grown up enough, and what seemed scary before, when you weren’t ready, now seems just right. So, I think it must be just the same with dying. When it comes time to do it, I think we probably feel ready. I don’t think it’s so scary then.”
A pleased smile crossed Billy’s face. “Hey, I get that! Yeah, you’re probably right.”
Jesse was not so easily placated. “But what about little kids? What about when little kids die? They can’t be ready yet.”
A pause then.
I looked at him. “I’m not sure, Jess.”
“A lot of this stuff doesn’t have answers really, does it?” Billy said.
“No,” I replied.
Jesse shook his head in a weary sort of way. “It shouldn’t happen to little kids,” Jesse said. “Little kids shouldn’t have to die.”
“Yeah,” Billy said. He sighed. “A lot of stuff shouldn’t happen to little kids. A lot of stuff shouldn’t happen, period.”
Chapter
29
The weekend came, and those two days had an odd time-warpish feel to them, as if we were trapped in some form of suspended animation. We all desperately wanted information about Venus, about how she was, about what had happened, and it was almost impossible to get anything reliable. The police had placed restrictions on discussing the case, which meant Social Services went mum. They wouldn’t talk to Bob or me. Close as we were to the case, we remained outsiders.
I contemplated just turning up at the hospital and seeing if they would let me in, but, despite having a fairly strong personality, I didn’t have all that bold of one. I was scared of being caught out, of not knowing what to say, of being chased off for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was put off by the thought that someone might perceive my interest as nosiness and my presence as interference. So while I wanted to, I didn’t. I stayed home and waited by the phone, like everyone else.
The suspended animation feeling came from the fact that it was hard to get on with other things without being constantly drawn back to thinking about Venus, and this was a dead end. I had brought home the IEPs and other end-of-year materials I needed to work on in preparation for getting the children ready for their new program the next year, but I kept being drawn to Venus’s. What should I do with hers?
I looked over her IEP—individual educational plan—which was the “prescription sheet” I needed to do for each child, laying out the next steps of learning necessary to reach various educational goals. The idea was that it gave some sort of accountability to the education process. Here was what the child needed to learn. Here was what I was going to teach. Here was how long we had to do it in. Looking over Venus’s current IEP, it was wildly optimistic. “Venus can identify sounds associated with consonants.” I hadn’t even managed to get Venus to speak reliably. I didn’t even know which sounds she could make, much less which ones she could identify. I was almost positive she hadn’t a clue what consonants were.
Where was I with this kid? I don’t think I’d ever had such an enigmatic child. The better part of a whole school year together, and I knew very little more about her than I had when she’d arrived. I clearly remembered that first day when I’d come down the long sidewalk from the parking lot and seen her on her wall, leaning back, her face into the sun. I remembered that sense of languorous mystery about her. I’d thought of old-time screen goddesses, because of the manner in which she was turned away from all of us beneath her on the ground, the way she was relaxed back and oblivious to the comings and goings below the wall, as if they were of no concern to her, as if they were not part of her real world. And I don’t think they were. But what Venus’s real world consisted of, I still didn’t know.
Despite this wide gap, I didn’t feel a sense of failure with Venus. I didn’t feel frustration. While those feelings happened with some children—I knew I was getting nowhere or I was off base—with Venus I’d felt all right. Subtle as it was, I’d always had the sense that she and I were connecting. But … it was not the stuff that could be written down on an IEP. What would I say? The goals I was setting: “Get her to walk across the room without urging,” “Get her to take a videotape and put it into the VCR by herself” were increments that were too small for the IEP. And they weren’t IEP stuff anyway. IEPs were for education. Reading, writing, and arithmetic. Many school districts had them computer generated and not personally written out at all, because despite the “individualized” label, the goals were not really individual at all. I stared at hers with all its formalities so carefully filled in. What was going to happen now?
To add to the general chaos of that period, I got a new girl in the class. Her name was Alice and she was eight, although she looked much younger because she was tiny as a kindergartener. She had long blonde hair pushed back with a headband à la Alice in Wonderland, whom she would have made a pretty good stand-in for, except that her hair ended in a tangle of loose curls that lent her a wild edge, and she had huge, dancing brown eyes. This gave an impishness to her that was heightened by her quick, lithe movements.
She had arrived in our town about two months before with her family. They had previously lived back east, and Alice had attended a private Montessori school, where education was dependent on reaching “developmental” stages and children progressed very much at their own pace. As a consequence, her academic skills lagged well behind what would be expected for her age. She’d been placed in a regular third-grade class in a school across town near where her family lived and given resource help, but it soon became apparent Alice had more than academic problems.
Truth was, Alice was very, very strange. There was no other way to put it. For one thing, she talked to her right hand. Stretching it out in front of her, she would focus intently on it and start talking to it, as if no one else were in the room. Her hand even h
ad a name—Mimi—and she spoke to it rather the way younger children do with imaginary companions.
Alice also had the tendency to say the oddest things. These were just off-the-wall utterances that seemed to have nothing to do with anything, but they were often almost poetic in their form. When she met me, for instance, her first words were, “No one cries. With tears. No one eats. With gulps. No one asks. With pleas.”
I said, “You can sit here, Alice.” And I put her at the table where Gwennie had been before.
Alice replied, “Any child when abandoned withdraws and waits.”
“Do you want to hang your sweater in here?” I showed her the little side entrance where we kept our outerwear.
“They honed their buckles sharp as blades,” she responded.
And yet Alice could talk normally at other times. She greeted the boys appropriately when they came in. She asked Billy where he bought his Adidas jacket. And she could do academic work. Indeed, while she might not have been up to the expected level of your average eight-year-old, she was considerably more able than Jesse and quickly did the worksheets I’d hastily reproduced from his book and put into a folder for her. Indeed, she could rival Billy in reading.
The morning went appallingly. Not in any big way, but rather in the all-too-familiar way of everyday schoolrooms. First Billy and Shane got into a knockdown drag-out fight while I was trying to get Alice started on some work. I don’t know what it was over. Something to do with a pencil, but I never found out whose or why. I separated them and pushed them into quiet chairs.
Jesse’s barking was particularly intrusive. I don’t know whether he was stressed by Alice’s arrival or whether he was just having a bad day, but he kept yelping.
“Why’s that boy do that?” Alice asked.
“Jesse has Tourette’s syndrome,” I said and explained briefly that as a result sometimes he made sudden noises or body movements.
“He sounds like a dingo,” she replied.
“She’s calling names,” Billy hollered.
“No, I’m not. He sounds like a dingo. That’s not a name. It’s an animal. And he does sound like a dingo.”
“What’s a dingo?” Zane asked.
“It’s a dog. A wild dog in Australia,” Alice explained. “And it sounds just like that kid. Ark! Ark! Just like that.”
“Okay, I think that’s enough discussion,” I said.
“She’s making fun of him,” Billy said irritably. “Why are you letting her get away with it?”
“I’m not ‘letting her get away with it,’ Billy. Alice is new. She’s learning the rules. And I’m just about as annoyed with you when you say ‘him.’ Jesse is right here. If you talk about people when they are present, use their names. Otherwise, it’s rude. It makes you feel less than human to have someone talk about you in front of you that way.”
“Well, shit, don’t come over all bitchy with me,” Billy said. “I didn’t know that, did I?”
I pointed to the quiet chair. “That isn’t the kind of language we use in here and it isn’t the way you talk to your teacher.”
“No,” he said defiantly.
“Yes. Or you can sit in Mr. Christianson’s office. Because in here we don’t talk like that.”
Angrily, Billy got up and stomped over to the quiet chair.
“Teacher, you can see that girl’s panties,” Shane cried.
I turned from Billy to look at Alice, whom I expected to have her dress up around her neck. Instead, she was deep in conversation with her hand. And sitting perfectly normally in her chair. Zane, on the other hand, was under his table, peering through the chair legs to see up Alice’s skirt.
“Zane, get back in your chair.”
“Mimi doesn’t like that boy,” Alice announced. “I don’t either. I don’t really like any of these boys.”
“Could you keep your legs together when you’re sitting, please?” I replied.
It didn’t improve. Alice had one of her funny turns after morning recess. “One, two, three, four. Wrap in a package. Take it to the store,” she said in response to my asking her to do a math paper.
Across the room, Jesse had lifted up our huge box of Legos. It was the size of an apple carton and full of zillions of little Legos, and he tipped it. Accidentally. I don’t know if he twitched or if he simply misgauged the weight of it or what, but over it went and Legos spilled everywhere.
“Get a broom to clear it up. That’ll work faster,” I said.
“You’re gonna throw it away?” Billy cried.
“No. He can sweep it up faster with a broom and pan. But he’s just going to put it back in the box that way. We’re not throwing it away.”
“Where’s the broom?” Jesse asked.
“Who had it last?” I responded.
“Not me.”
“Not me.”
“Not me.”
“Not me.”
These responses came so fast, they were almost a chorus. This left only Alice. She went wide-eyed. “Well, not me,” she said.
We couldn’t find the broom, so Jesse was reduced to picking it all up by hand. Billy was desperate to help.
“No, stay in your seat.”
Alice said, “I take red. The game is on.”
“What game?” Billy asked, perplexed.
“God is good. He takes us to his bosom. He takes us to himself,” she replied.
Billy’s eyes went wide. “Man, you are weird.” He shook his head. “I thought Psycho was weird, but, boy oh boy, you are really weird. You know that?”
“Billy.” I fixed my eye on him. “Please stop calling Venus ‘Psycho.’ We’ve talked about that before. And please get back to work.”
“Uh-oh, Teacher! Zane’s got a nosebleed!”
I turned. That was an understatement. Blood gushed from Zane’s nose and down his shirt. It was on his hands, on the table, on his pants.
“Here, come here, Zane,” I said and went across the room to him. “Let’s get you over the sink.” I grabbed the tissue box.
“Eeuwwww!” Alice cried. “Blood! I’m gonna be sick. I’m gonna be sick.”
“No, Alice, you’re not going to be sick. Jess? Could you leave the Legos a minute and come here to help Zane?”
“I am going to be sick,” she said and started to gag. “Blood always makes me sick.”
Abandoning Zane midbleed, I dashed for the trash can by the desk and shoved it at Alice. She promptly vomited into it.
“Eeuwwww!” Billy shrieked.
The only thing I could think to do was sing. The only song that came to mind wasn’t too appropriate. “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!” I started. “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!” Which, of course, I couldn’t do because I was holding a garbage can full of vomit. But the boys, bless them, quickly joined in. Even still-bleeding Zane.
Alice looked at us like we were nuts.
The afternoon saw another new arrival. Rosa Gutierrez. Middle-aged, definitely on the plump side, and with dark, curly hair pushed up onto the back of her head in a straggly bun held with a brightly colored scarf, Rosa entered the room like she’d always been there. She greeted me in a hearty manner and clapped Billy on the back when she saw him.
“Hey, you are a fine boy! How old are you?” she asked.
“Nine,” he replied, a little taken aback. Which impressed me. Anybody who could leave Billy a little taken aback instantly had my respect.
“I’m new,” Alice said. “I just came today.”
“And she’s already barfed,” Billy added.
“Well, sweetie, I am new today too.”
“Where’s Julie?” Shane asked.
“Remember?” I said. “We talked about this the other day. Julie’s going to be working at a different school. And Rosa is going to be in our classroom from now on.”
Shane wrinkled his forehead. Obviously he didn’t remember.
“How come?” Zane asked.
“Because that’s wha
t Mr. Christianson decided,” I replied. “Now, let’s make Rosa feel welcome. Because she’s going to be with us every afternoon.”
“Okay,” Billy said and turned to her. “So, do you sing?”
Rosa proved to be just what we needed. She had been working in the school district for years, mainly with developmentally delayed classrooms, so she was experienced and comfortable with the children. She had a lively, no-nonsense personality and spoke her mind very easily but in a cheerful, good-humored way. And she did sing. A bit off-key and definitely too loudly, but that made her more part of the group than less.
“Lord, I’ve never seen a room like this, bursting into song like you do,” she said when we started up a rousing round of “High Hopes” while waiting for everyone to get ready to go out for afternoon recess.
“Do you like it?” Jesse asked.
“I think it’s screwball,” Alice said.
“God has little angels to sing for him in heaven,” Rosa replied. “I feel like I have little angels to sing here on earth. That must be a good thing, no?”
“I think it’s nuts,” Alice said.
“Why’s that?” Rosa asked.
“I don’t know the words.”
“I don’t know the words either,” Rosa said. “So I just sing la-la-la instead. That’s okay, no? La-la-la will do.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“I still think it’s nuts,” Alice said. “I think this room is just plain weird.”
“Well,” said Billy in a philosophical tone, “you’ve found the right place to be then.”
The day that had started so challengingly ended on a pleasant note. While I took the children down to their rides, Rosa went down to the teachers’ lounge and brought a can of soda pop back to the room for each of us. We sat at the table chatting. I found out she was forty-eight and originally from a small village in the state of Chihuahua in Mexico. She’d come to the United States when she was ten as a migrant worker. She’d married Joe, a garage mechanic, in her teens and had six children in quick succession, which included two sets of twins. She’d started working as an aide for the school district when her youngest started kindergarten because the hours coincided with the children’s hours. The children were all grown now, all with families of their own, except for her youngest daughter, who was getting married in the fall. “She’s a schoolteacher,” Rosa said proudly. “Three of mine are schoolteachers. We got education in our blood.”