“MacCracken, Mary – exam eighty-eight, final grade, eighty.”
I passed! I not only passed, but a B! Exultation flooded through me. How could I care so much about a math grade? I felt foolish, but anyway, I wouldn’t have to take this course again. I did it! We did it!
Ian Michaels’s boot nudged my sneakers. Eyes half-opened, he gave me his accolade before lowering his lids once more. “Way to go, MacCracken.”
The second half of my junior year was still filled with required courses, but the ordeal of scheduling and registration was a little easier the second time around. I was getting to know most of the professors in the special ed department by name and/or reputation and that helped.
“Have you had Bernstein yet? Well, don’t if you can help it. He’s a pig.”
“Jones? A good lady. Marks hard, but knows her stuff.”
“Telker? Terrific if you need an easy B. Never gives anything lower.”
I wondered if the teachers knew their reputations were graven into oral history and available to anyone who listened.
Still, registration was always tedious, sometimes traumatic. We were classified like so many potatoes. With us, the identifying characteristic was the first initial of our last names. On the first day of registration names beginning with A through F were admitted; on the second day, G through L; on the third, M through R; and on the fourth, S through Z. The following semester the order would be reversed. Patiently we lined the walks and stairs and halls of the student union, where various rooms and floors had been partitioned into cubicles representing different courses. The faculty took turns at the adviser’s desk.
To actually get in the front door, an hour process in itself, took two things, your student identification card and your social security number. Nobody cared what your name was, only what letter it began with, to make sure you were with the right potatoes. After that you were known by your social security number. I wondered, as I stood waiting in boredom, if I could find my numerical relatives by adding up my digits and matching the total results. If I was a 46, who were the other members of my clan? Were there 42’s and 48’s around me? I contemplated the girl ahead of me, her hair combed into a high Afro; maybe she was a generic 40.
Behind me a red-haired woman in her twenties shifted from foot to foot. “What’s taking so long? Christ! If Statistics is filled by the time I get there, I’ll kill myself. I only need six more credits, but that one’s required. I’ll have to come back to this hole again next semester if I can’t get that course.” I understood. I had some required courses myself. If I didn’t get them I could quit, I told myself. I could stop taking these inane courses … but what about teaching? What about the children?
Inside, we raced frantically from booth to booth, checking our catalogs against our schedules.
Working with schedule sheets and catalog in hand, I was trying to keep to my plan of double certification (in both elementary and special ed), which meant I had a lot of courses to fit in. Trouble came when the course planned for 10:40 or 11:40 turned out to be filled; then there was a scramble for the catalog. What else have they got at that hour that’s required? Teaching math. Great. Nope – turned out it wasn’t allowed.
“You don’t have the prerequisite. You have to complete Background of Math Two first. Sorry, it’s the rule,” said the graduate student manning the booth.
The rules! I was beginning to understand the frustrations of some of my natural-born children and their friends. It had been different in a small private college like Wellesley, where students were honestly seen as individuals, or at least they had been twenty years ago. But in a state college like the one I was attending, there were no exceptions. As long as it came out right on the computer, it was okay. (Computers don’t make exceptions.)
Well, Statistics and Orientation to Psychological Testing didn’t have a prerequisite – and what’s more, it was required and met only once a week, on Thursdays from 4:00 to 6:30. I signed up. Finally, my spring schedule was complete: Counseling and Guidance for the Handicapped; Current Methods of Teaching Mentally Challenged Adolescents; History of Education in the United States; Background of Mathematics II; Statistics and Orientation to Psychological Testing; and a Practicum in Teaching Reading to the Mentally Chalenged. All required courses.
Schedule and course sheet in hand, I headed for Professor Foster’s office. I had discovered at registration that he had been assigned as my adviser and his signature was required on my completed course schedule. A stroke of luck to get him, I was told. He was considered one of the best.
Foster’s office door stood open and he sat with his feet on the desk, chair tipped back against the wall.
“Professor Foster?” I asked from the hall. “I’m Mary MacCracken. Could I see you for a minute about signing my course schedule?”
“Mary MacCracken? Where the hell do you keep yourself? I’ve been trying to locate you for weeks. Ever since I discovered you’d been a teacher at Doris Fleming’s school and have over six years’ experience with emotionally disturbed kids. Is that right?”
I nodded.
“Well, come in. Sit down.” He lifted a pile of journals from a chair beside the desk. “Do you ever hear from Doris? I’ve been out to that school several times. Damn good reputation, even before it got state approval. Those are tough kids. When did you teach there?”
“Until last year.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Trying to get certified.”
“Ah, I get it. Last year is when the state approval came in, right? No tickee, no job, eh?”
I nodded.
“Well, Doris is a tough old war-horse, but she kept that school alive when no one else could.”
“Yes, she taught me a great deal.” Glad that I could say it. That the hurt of having to leave was easing.
“Okay now,” Foster said, “let’s get down to business. We have come up with a terrific idea.”
“We?”
“Yeah. Bernie Serino and me and the Falls City Mental Health Clinic. You know Bernie?”
“Yes. He was supervisor of special ed when I was teaching and helped me get one of my kids back into a regular class in junior high.”
“Yeah. Well, Bernie and I have lunch every Wednesday. A little business, a little pleasure. We’ve known each other a long time.
“In some of the districts they’re having a hell of a time with the younger kids. Not just truancy, you expect that, but stealing, setting fires, drugs – you name it. So what happens, they call the school social worker or psychologist, she adds a name to her list. Then the truant officer, they call him something fancier, but I don’t remember what it is, checks in. Nine times out of ten he comes back and says it’s a ‘broken home,’ either the father’s skipped or nobody knew who he was. All they got is uncles, Uncle This and Uncle That. Every time Mom gets a new boyfriend, the kids get a new uncle. Convenient, but unstable.
“So they have a conference and call up Bernie and tell him they need ‘special services.’ Well, about the only ‘special services’ Bernie’s got any connection to where he might get help for these kids is the Mental Health Clinic. They’re a good bunch, working hard in the community, but they got an even longer waiting list than the school social worker.”
He paused and I asked what he knew I would ask.
“What happens?”
“What happens?” Professor Foster banged his feet to the floor and leaned toward me.
“Same damn thing happens every time. By June the kid has moved up to number thirty on the waiting list. He’s been picked up by the police, taken to court, warned and fined, and released. The school year ends and the whole thing begins all over again the next fall.”
I said nothing. I sat looking at my hands, feeling the old familiar sadness as I heard about the children. What sense did it make? Any satisfaction I had felt at completing registration faded. What was I doing here in this college memorizing the commutative, associative, distributive m
athematical properties and the content and study skills of reading?
I was so deep in my own thoughts that I missed the first few words or sentences of Professor Foster’s next statement, tuning in when he got to “… the Mental Health Clinic has gotten a grant to put ‘therapeutic tutors’ into one of the schools in Falls City on a trial basis. Bernie’s agreed and picked the school and I’ve offered to supply the therapeutic tutors.”
“What’s a therapeutic tutor?” I interrupted.
“Somebody who’s good with kids. What else? You can hear it in fancy words later. So what do you say?”
“It sounds like a good idea from what you’ve told me.”
“No. Not that. Will you do it? Be a tutor?”
“Me?” I couldn’t believe it. I answered instantly before he could change his mind. “I’d love to. Where do I go?”
Professor Foster smiled at me. “Don’t you want to know about credits – hours?”
I looked down, embarrassed and immediately shy. I had been too eager, revealed too much. I nodded.
“Well, first there’ll be training sessions at the clinic. Then you’ll see your child three times a week for about fifty minutes each session. Eventually you’ll have three children.”
In my mind’s eye, I could see the schedule of courses that I had just completed. Falls City was about twenty minutes from the campus; that would mean another forty minutes each time I went down. There wasn’t a day when there was a block of time long enough. Wordlessly I handed Professor Foster my schedule.
He studied it briefly, then whacked it down on the table.
“What the hell is this? How could you sign up for classes before you checked with me? Am I your adviser or not? Why didn’t you ask for advice?
“Never mind,” Foster said after a minute, picking up my schedule. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to yell. Let’s see what we can do.” He studied it closely and then grinned at me. “At least you’ve got good taste, picking ‘Counseling and Guidance for the Handicapped’ – that’s mine. Unfortunately, it’s only a two-credit course, but at least that gives us a couple of hours to play with. Mmm-de-dum-dum.”
Professor Foster hummed to himself as he flipped through catalog pages, checking them against course requirements and my own schedule. Finally, he looked up at me and said, “That’ll do it. Drop History of Ed and take Independent Study in its place and spend the time of my course at School Twenty-three and you’ll be all set.”
“What’s Independent Study? And what do I do about History?”
“Independent Study is whenever I want you to do something. I just write up a slip and send it to the dean. You’ll get your three credits.”
“Power,” I said.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“Okay, now. Go on back to registration before it closes and drop that history course. You can always take it next year, there are plenty of sections. Here’s a note if you need it.”
“Thank you,” I said as I stood up. “When, where will I start?”
“Well, the other two tutors are both seniors with much more freedom in courses, so scheduling will be a lot easier for them. Let’s see your schedule again. Okay. You’ve got some time on Monday afternoons. We’ll meet down at the clinic at two.” He glanced out his door. Four pairs of blue-jeaned legs could be seen below the hall bench.
“Ah. Gotta rush now, way behind. See you next Monday. Call the clinic to get directions down there. Sorry I can’t talk longer.” He was already standing, tucking in his shirt, smoothing back his hair.
The line was still long at the student union. I went up to the guard at the door. “I’ve already registered. I just want to drop one course. Is it all right if I go in?”
“Name, please.”
“Mary MacCracken.”
“MacCracken. M. That’s all right. Social security number?”
“No. Look, I’ve already done this. I don’t need to regis –” it wasn’t any use. I was just wasting time. I sighed. “One four seven –”
“All right. Step to the back of the line. No exceptions.”
I went back. Six new people in line since I arrived, but I should have known better than to ask the guard. There were no exceptions on the lines, only in professors’ offices.
But if the system bothered me, it couldn’t snuff out the small bubbles of excitement surfacing inside me. What kind of children would they be? What were we going to do together? Who would be my child?
Chapter 3
It was cold, even for the end of January, and the fact that there was no snow made it worse. The campus looked bleak and bare, and the contrast with the remembered warmth of Christmas made it even more difficult for me to return.
We had spent most of vacation and winter break at our house in the country. We cut our own tall, wonderful, scraggly Christmas tree and carried it up from the woods. We hung eleven stockings in front of the stone fireplace, ours and the children’s and the grandparents’ and friends’.
The house was not meant to be a winter house. Cal’s parents had built it for summers fifty years before. It took days to warm the stone walls and floors. The small furnace worked valiantly, shedding soot as well as heat. Gusts of wind and small mice scurried through chinks in the stone walls to the inside warmth of the house.
In the mornings we lay in bed and blew smoke rings of warm breath into the frosty air and then rushed from bed to shiver by the window as we watched deer leap across the meadow. We ate simple meals and trudged along un-plowed roads, chopped logs and read and talked quietly to each other. Happiness was almost visible that week.
Vacation over, spring courses began. I wondered if every one had as hard a time coming back to school as I did. But I did have seventy-six credits now – five A’s and a B – and fifteen more credits coming up this semester. If I could just get through Statistics and Orientation to Psychological Testing and Background of Mathematics II, I’d have ninety-one by May. And now, thanks to Professor Foster, there would be children.
Many of the faces in Background of Mathematics II were familiar, but instead of Dr. Kaiser, the teacher was a man in his thirties, wearing black horn-rimmed glasses – and there, sleeping beneath a grubby tennis hat, was Ian Michaels. My spirits lifted.
I stepped over several pairs of blue-jeaned legs and settled beside Ian, who continued to sleep, or to pretend he did.
On the board was written Background of Math II. Beneath this was the statement:
A denumerably infinite set is one that can be put in a 1–1 correspondence with the set of counting numbers.
Oh, no. Here we go again. I had thought we’d at least be to something like fractions.
I opened my notebook and copied the statement down anyway; I could puzzle over it later.
A familiar hand reached lazily across the page and scrawled an example.
Ex: The set of multiples of 5 is a denumerably infinite set.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, … n …
5, 10, 15, 20, 25, … 5n …
I looked at what Ian had written. Okay, I see that. I smiled at Ian’s tennis hat.
“Thank you,” I said, settling back in my chair. “The one thing I’m good at in math is knowing how to pick the right seat.”
If classes at college were as frustrating as ever, our training sessions at the clinic were fascinating.
The Mental Health Clinic was in the center of Falls City on the second floor of the Logan Building, and although the streets were littered and the surrounding buildings shabby, there was a lingering ambiance of power and elegance.
In earlier years Falls City had been a leading manufacturing center. Its chief industries were the dyeing and finishing of textiles and the manufacture of silk. But with the rising popularity of synthetic fabrics, business declined and companies closed. Although pockets of culture remained, the downtown area had become drab and rundown and the population was predominantly lower middle class.
Inside the Logan Building, shabbiness was more e
vident. Water stains marked the ceilings, walls needed painting, floors were bare, furniture was folding metal. But there was a lot of space, a large waiting room, several secretarial offices, and a half-dozen rooms for therapists to meet with clients. Some rooms were furnished with chairs, table, and couch; another had low furniture and toys for children. We met in the children’s room.
The other two tutors were both seniors, Shirley Hayes and John Hudson. Shirley was quiet, with a soft sure voice and dark smooth skin. Hud was tall, slender, red-haired, filled with vitality. Shirley was going on to graduate school next year, and was working now as a clerk in a department store after her college classes to earn tuition. Hud was job-hunting, hoping to teach teenagers with emotional problems. I liked them both. Hud had worked with multiply handicapped children at summer camp. Shirley with disadvantaged children at a day care center.
Jerry Cotter had been put in charge of the program and conducted our training sessions. He was small, with a brown-gray beard and a gentle handshake. His official title at the clinic was psychiatric social worker.
At our first meeting Jerry said, “This program could be the beginning of a revolutionary change in the treatment of emotional problems in children. The central idea is to expand and intensify mental health services in the schools themselves, instead of letting kids vegetate on waiting lists. We are going to try to do this through therapeutic counseling and tutoring at the school – and you are the ones who are going to do it.”
At later sessions Jerry stressed again that help would go to the child in a familiar place, his school, rather than the child going, or waiting to go, to a clinic. He also said we would not be asked to work with psychotic children, the ones who were so disturbed that they would be considered autistic or schizophrenic. He smiled at me. “These children are not as out of touch with reality as the children you’ve worked with, Mary. Instead, they take their anger out on society, stealing, burning, destroying, and earn the label of ‘socially maladjusted’ or ‘juvenile delinquent.’”
City Kid Page 2