by Torey Hayden
She looked up at me.
“I can’t read music,” I said.
Her brow furrowed. “You sing other songs.”
I nodded. “But that’s because I already know the tune. See, these notes, they tell me what the tune of the song is. But I don’t know this song, so I’d have to read these notes to find out.”
“So, sing it.”
“Except I can’t read them.”
Again she looked up. Again her brow furrowed.
“I don’t know how to read them,” I said. “I know what the names of the notes are. And I know what these lines are called. But I don’t know how to put it all together to make the song. It’s like reading words. Sometimes you will know what the letters are and you can see how they go together, but you still don’t know what the word is that they make because you can’t read it.”
“And you can’t read this?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Because I haven’t learned how.”
There was a pause. She was scrutinizing my face very carefully.
“Are you stupid?” she asked at last. It wasn’t sarcastic. The way she asked it, clearly it was a genuine question.
“On this, I suppose, yes, I am a bit. Because I was taught how when I was little, but I never understood it well enough to learn it.”
Venus looked back down at the book. A pause in the conversation lengthened into a thinking silence. She touched the page with one finger, tracing over a quarter note.
“I’m stupid too,” she said quietly.
“Everybody’s stupid about some things. Everybody has things they can’t do. There’s nobody in the whole world who can do everything,” I said.
“I thought you could,” she said softly, still not looking up.
“I wish I could,” I replied. “But I can’t. Even teachers don’t know everything.”
A pause.
“That’s all right,” she said, her voice still soft. “I like you anyway.”
“Yes, I like you too. A lot.”
She smiled up at me. “Yes. I know.”
Life seeped slowly back into Venus after her big cry at the birthday party. It wasn’t a dramatic change but more of a shading, the way night fades into day. In class she became more responsive, especially to Alice.
Alice was a right little character, who was forever thinking up odd tricks. One of her favorites was to write Venus’s name on her papers and then make this out to be a big joke when they came back in Venus’s folder instead of hers. It struck me more as silly than funny, but Alice thought it was hilarious. And then Venus caught the joke.
“Look,” she said one afternoon. “I’m Alice.” She’d written Alice’s name on the top of a page in her own folder.
“Oh, I have two Alices today,” I cried in mock surprise.
“Call me Alice,” Venus said and smiled.
“Call me Alice,” said Alice. The two of them seemed to find this really funny. They both laughed uproariously. This, in turn, made Rosa and me laugh.
“You guys are nuts,” Billy said.
“No, we’re Alice!” Alice cried, and again, she and Venus fell about laughing.
“You ought to tell them off,” Billy muttered to me. “You’d tell me off for laughing like that. You don’t treat boys the same as you treat girls in this class.”
“I don’t pay any attention to whether you are a girl or a boy, Billy. When I treat people differently, it’s because they have different needs,” I said.
“So they need to laugh?”
“They’re not hurting anything by laughing.”
“Humph,” he muttered. “I liked them better when they were quiet all the time.”
Then we were into the last week of school. I was trying to clear things up in the classroom as we went along, so that on the last day I did not have to stay too late closing the room down. I was going to be in the same room the following year and, indeed, Venus, Alice, and the twins were all due to come back. Nonetheless, because of school policy, everything had to be cleared from the rooms except school property, and those things would need to be stored in drawers and cupboards that were taped shut on the last day. Consequently, whenever there were a few spare minutes during that last week, I encouraged the children to help me sort things out and prepare them to be put away for the summer.
Jesse, in particular, enjoyed this activity. He had a real tidy streak in him and always found organizing and cleaning things an enjoyable pastime. Tuesday of that week dawned overcast and very wet, so the children stayed in for morning recess. When this normally happened, the recess aides organized indoor games in the classrooms with the children. On this morning, Jesse, who had been straightening out the bookshelf, asked if he could be excused from the games and keep working. This seemed reasonable to me, so I said he could and then went on down to the teachers’ lounge for my break.
About five minutes into my break, there was a loud knock on the door. It was one of the boys from the third-grade class next door to mine. “Miss Hayden, you got to come quick. That one boy of yours is in a fight with the girl in the wheelchair.”
I shot out of the teachers’ lounge. The third-grader ran with me.
“I would’ve got the aide but I couldn’t find her,” he said, “and I was scared he was gonna hurt that girl.”
“That’s all right. I’m glad you came.”
“She sounded like he was killing her.”
Cursing the silly idea that two aides could supervise eight classrooms of children, I sprinted up the stairs two at a time. I had been able to hear the yelling from the bottom of the stairwell.
By the time I got into the classroom, both of the aides were there too. Venus was out of her wheelchair and on the floor. Billy was crying. Jesse had a bloody nose. Alice was huddled over in the corner, being comforted by Mimi, who stroked her lovingly on the cheek. The twins were all but bouncing off the walls.
“What is going on?” I demanded.
“She went psycho!” Billy howled and pointed at Venus. “She tried to kill Jesse! I was just trying to settle her down!”
Whatever the third-grader had thought, Venus seemed to have come off the better in this, as she was clearly unhurt. Sitting on the floor, she gave Jesse and Billy a very evil glare.
“She did try to kill me,” Jesse said. “She got out of her chair and I didn’t even know she could stand up and she was gonna grab me.” He had his hand cupped over his nose. Blood dripped through his fingers.
“Come here. Get over the sink, Jesse.” Putting a hand on Jesse’s shoulder, I encouraged him in the right direction.
Billy, weeping more with outrage than anything else, trailed after us. “And I wasn’t doing anything. She hit me and I wasn’t doing anything, ’cept trying to be a good Samaritan and help poor Jesse before he got his lights knocked out.”
“There’s times to be a good Samaritan and times when it’s not such a good idea,” I said.
“I wasn’t doing anything! That girl just went psycho. Again!”
“How did you get a nosebleed?” I asked Jesse. “Did Venus hit you?”
“No, I bumped it on Billy’s head when he jerked back. He was trying to keep her from hitting me and he hit me instead.”
“But not on purpose! I don’t deserve to get in trouble. I was just minding my own business,” Billy howled.
“Yes, okay. Let’s get things settled down first and then I’ll hear all sides of it. Can you help Jesse here? Can you stay with him while I sort the twins out?”
Snorting up his tears dramatically, Billy nodded.
I turned. And that’s when I saw her. Beside the bookcase, Venus had pulled herself up on her feet. She reached over and grabbed her She-Ra sword, which lay on the back of the bookcase. Pulling it against her, she cradled it a moment and then looked back at the wheelchair. Tentatively, she turned, still clutching the cardboard sword.
I watched without speaking, without moving.
There was maybe seven or eight feet between where Venus stood and where her wheelchair was. I could tell by her expression that she was trying to gauge if she could make it. Putting a hand out to steady herself on the bookshelf, she took a faltering step. She stopped, teetered briefly but remained upright. She then looked around and saw me watching her.
“Do you want help?” I asked.
She didn’t answer immediately. For a moment it was the old, closed, unresponsive Venus looking at me. Then she nodded faintly.
I crossed the room to her and put one hand under her elbow, the other on her shoulder to steady her.
She didn’t move and I could sense she’d expected me to pick her up and put her back in the wheelchair.
“Just go slowly. I’ll keep hold of you. You won’t fall.”
“You ought to send her to Mr. Christianson’s,” Billy shouted from across the room. “You ought to punish her! She tried to kill me and Jesse. Just like in the old days.”
I looked at him. The temptation was to tell him to shut up, already. Blather, blather, blather. That was our Billy.
Instead, I started to sing. “High hopes, I’ve got high hopes. I’ve got high, apple pie in the sky hopes. All problems are just a toy balloon. They’ll be bursted soon. They’re just bound to go pop! Oops there goes another problem kerplop!”
It was ludicrous. One of those absolutely, dazzlingly absurd moments, standing there, balancing Venus and singing “High Hopes” to Billy while Jesse bled, the twins ran maniacally around, and Alice talked to her hand. But it worked. Venus managed to hobble slowly back to her wheelchair. Jesse, a huge wad of tissue held to his nose, joined the singing because he loved the kerplop part of this song. So did Billy. He made a loud, juicy sound by rubbing his hand, wrist, and arm practically up to his elbow under his nose. Then he begrudging started to sing. We started the song over at the beginning and did actions for the ant and the ram in the song, and this caught Shane and Zane, who wanted to be ants and rams too. Only Alice was left. I approached her and encouraged her to wave her arms in conducting motions. She looked imploringly at Mimi and Mimi must have said yes. Alice joined in too.
It took us two full rounds of “High Hopes,” plus half a dozen choruses before everyone looked in a halfway reasonable mood. I stopped the song. “Okay. Recess is well and truly over, because look at the clock. It’s ten to. Places, please.”
“Aren’t you even going to send her to the quiet chair?” Billy muttered.
“You get to work. If you’re the innocent party here, I don’t need to talk to you, do I? So you show me I have no reason to think you are a troublemaker.”
Billy made a face and took his seat.
When the boys had their work out, I went over to Venus at her table and pulled out a chair.
“I can’t allow people to hurt one another in here,” I said quietly. “That’s a class rule.”
Venus stared at me.
“Can you explain why you got so upset?”
“He tooked my She-Ra sword,” she murmured. She still had the cardboard sword clutched in her lap.
“I didn’t either!” Jesse shouted from his table. “I didn’t take her stupid sword. I was just straightening up. I just was moving it to put stuff away.”
“Thanks, Jesse, but I’ll take care of it. You take care of your work.”
When I looked back at Venus, she was tearful.
“Your She-Ra sword is very important, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
“Jesse wasn’t going to hurt it. He was just cleaning, just helping me get ready for the end of the year.”
“He said ‘I’m going to throw it away,’” she murmured.
I smiled at her and reached over to touch her cheek. “No, he wouldn’t throw it away. I wouldn’t let him. He was just talking. Your sword’s safe.”
A pause.
“And you know what?” I said.
“What?” she asked.
“I saw your sword doing magic.”
Venus looked up at me.
“It made you walk.” I smiled. “I saw that. Your magic sword made you able to walk.”
Chapter
35
And then it was the last day.
On this occasion the last day wasn’t even a whole day. It was just a half day. In years gone by I’d planned a picnic or other outing for the last day, but with so little time, this wasn’t possible. Nonetheless, I wanted some last way to celebrate our year together, so I suggested to the children’s families that instead of picking them up at lunchtime, that they come into the school and join us for a pizza party. This idea was met with general enthusiasm. The twins’ mother and Billy’s and Alice’s mothers were coming, as was Jesse’s grandmother. Venus’s foster mother was coming too.
After Venus’s and my discussion on the day of the birthday party, I had alerted Social Services and her foster parents to how much Venus missed her brothers and sisters. Efforts had been made to let her see her brothers, who did not live too far away, but she had yet to see Wanda again, largely because Wanda was now living in a sheltered group home about thirty miles away.
I felt strongly about bringing Wanda and Venus together again. If Wanda was Venus’s biological mother, Venus knew nothing about it, as she always referred to Wanda as her sister. However, there was no denying there was a special bond between the two of them. Regardless of their blood relationship, my suspicion was that it had been Wanda, inept as she might have seemed to others, who had managed to keep Venus alive during the horrific period of abuse. It seemed grossly unfair now to keep the two apart. As a consequence, I suggested that it would be very nice if Wanda could also join us for the pizza party at lunchtime.
Arranging this proved to be a logistical nightmare. I must have made at least ten calls to Social Services to clear everything and then another half dozen to the staff of the group home and to Venus’s foster family to organize picking up Wanda and getting her to the school on time. Venus’s foster mother agreed to drive Wanda back to her group home in the afternoon. Indeed, Mrs. Kivie said she had to stop out at the mall after lunch and if Wanda wanted, she could come shopping with them first. But we couldn’t get anyone to bring Wanda. Absolutely no one at the group home or from Social Services was willing to travel the sixty-mile round-trip to pick Wanda up and bring her to us. In the end, Rosa volunteered to do it.
The children and I spent the morning finishing up all the last-minute details. There were things to pass out, bits of bureaucracy to be completed, the finally taking down, handing out, and putting together. Everyone had brought big paper grocery bags to put their things in.
When all was completed, I took out their work folders.
“Oh, no!” Billy cried. “Work? You’re gonna make us work on the last day of school?”
“Oh no! Oh no!” echoed the twins and then Jesse and finally Alice. Even Venus groaned.
“No, this is going to be different. Do these look different to you?” I said, holding up the folders.
“No,” Billy retorted.
“Look closely. What’s different?”
All the children craned to study the folder I was holding in my hand.
“Nothing,” Billy said. “It’s our work folders. That one’s Shane’s.”
“Anybody else?” I asked.
“I don’t see nothing,” Zane said.
“It’s thick,” said Shane.
“That’s right. See all the papers in the folders? You know why? Because these are all the papers you did. All year long.”
“Wow,” Jesse said. “All of ’em?”
“Yep. And I’m going to hand them out to you. You can take them home now. They’re for you to keep. But before you stick them in your bags, let’s look through them. Let’s see how far everybody has come since last September.”
The children accepted their folders as I gave them out. Only Alice’s and Venus’s were thin, Alice’s because she’d only arrived at the beginning of May, and Venus’s because
she hadn’t started doing any real paperwork until about the same time.
“Wow, look at this,” Jesse said. “I was doing single-digit adding when I first came. I can do multiplication now.”
“Well, I wasn’t reading. Look at this. It’s first-grade stuff, practically,” Billy said.
“I was coloring!” Shane said.
“Who’d think I’d go to AP class,” Billy said as he thumbed through his papers.
“I remember this. Remember this, guys?” Zane said, holding up a Halloween poem.
The boys were well occupied, paging through their folders, so I went over to Alice and Venus’s table. I hunkered down beside Venus’s wheelchair.
“You know what I was thinking?” I said. “Wanda is coming at lunchtime and I was thinking maybe you would like to give her a surprise.”
Venus looked at me expectantly but didn’t speak.
“I don’t think Wanda knows you are in the wheelchair and I’m thinking that this might frighten Wanda a little.”
Venus’s eyes narrowed as she listened to me.
“So, while the boys and I are going through their folders, I was thinking maybe you would like to practice standing. Like you did the other day when you got your She-Ra sword. Maybe you could practice taking a few steps. Then, when Wanda comes, you could show her how well you are doing. Then she wouldn’t be frightened by the wheelchair because she’d know you were getting better.”
Venus didn’t speak.
“What do you think?”
Pulling her lower lip in under her teeth, Venus just regarded me.
“I could help,” Alice volunteered. “I could hold your hand so you didn’t fall.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” I said. “What do you think? Do you want to try?”
There was a long moment’s hesitation. Venus studied my face, dropped her eyes, then glanced briefly at Alice. Finally she nodded. “I’ll try.”
And she did. I stayed a few moments, helping her stand in front of the wheelchair, steadying her while she took a few faltering steps. Then Alice took over. Holding onto Venus’s hands, she carefully guided Venus’s steps. Venus didn’t last long on her feet. Less than ten minutes of trying and she was too tired to try any longer, but she had managed it. She had gotten to her feet and walked with Alice’s help. More importantly, she had wanted to.