“Well, did you ever get any money?” he insisted.
“Yes. A quarter. A quarter for each tooth.”
“Under your pillow?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe if I’d had a pillow –” Luke’s voice trailed off. “Maybe she wouldn’t know to look in a box.”
He was such a little kid, street-wise, savvy with the police, a budding arsonist, and here we were talking about tooth fairies.
I looked around the room. It was too small for all we had to say. I wanted to take Luke to the mountain, to walk, to picnic, to feed him. But it was already late. It would be almost dark by the time we reached the mountain. The music room would have to do. I turned so I was facing Luke.
“How was your summer, Luke? Did you get my postcards? I tried to call you, but no one answered.”
“Okay, I guess.”
“Did you visit your father?”
Luke began putting the things back in the box. “Yeah.” The pencils and chalk were back in. Luke took the cover off the gold stars and held one on the tip of his finger. “I didn’t stay too long. He hadda go to the hospital so I came back and stayed with my grandma. Alice and Frank went to Florida with Mom and Uncle Chuck. Mom doesn’t like Grandma. She says she spoiled my dad rotten.”
Things seemed worse than ever to me. Somehow Luke’s family was dividing up and because he loved his father, he was being shunted toward his father’s mother, while his mother and brother and sister moved in another direction.
“I’m sorry, Luke,” I said. “You were the one who was supposed to go to Florida.”
Again he hunched his shoulders and put the cover on the box.
“How’s your dad now?” I asked, not wanting to end here.
“Better, I guess. I don’t know. My mom says he’s better, but still in the hospital. She says it’s the best place for him.”
Luke turned toward me. “Did your mom get better? Did she get out of the hospital?”
I looked at Luke and then got up and walked around the room. How did I answer that? So many ramifications to any answer. What would help Luke? I walked to the blackboard and then back to the table. There was no choice. We couldn’t begin again on lies.
“Yes, she got out of the hospital, but she’s not better, Luke. She died a couple of weeks ago.”
Luke looked at me without saying anything. He took the cover off the box and dug down in and found the lipstick tube and the penny. He balanced the penny on the top of the lipstick tube. I sat down beside him again.
“I knowed it,” he said. “I knowed something was wrong when you came to take me home after the fires.”
“Yes,” I said. “I felt like you knew. I didn’t tell many people. It helped me to think you understood. My mother was very old, Luke. Over eighty. Much, much older than your father.”
Now Luke turned the penny on edge and tried to spin it on the table, but it was no longer round and it fell back to the table each time.
“Do you believe in the tooth fairy?”
Impatience surged in me. Back to this? Why?
“I don’t know, Luke.”
“How about Santa Claus? Do you believe in him?”
Okay. I see now! The tooth fairy? Santa Claus? And life? And you? Do I believe in you? That’s what you’re asking.
Easy now, I told myself. Don’t come on too hard.
“Santa Claus? A grown-up like me? How could I believe in Santa Claus?”
But Luke heard behind the words. “Do you hang up your stocking?”
“Well, now that you mention it –”
“Does he come? Does he fill it up?”
I smiled at Luke for the first time that day. “So far. So far he has.”
Luke let out his breath and his tense tight body relaxed a little.
Now I could ask, now was the right time.
“What’s going on, Luke? You’ve got to level with me. What’s with all these fires and coming to school late, not doing any work and not talking to anybody?”
Luke shrugged. “I don’t know.” He twisted back in his chair and flicked the lipstick tube with his finger so that it spun round and round on the table. Almost inaudibly he said, “I’m the tallest one.”
“The tallest one? In your class, you mean?”
Luke nodded. “The other kids are shrimps. Babies. Same as my brother.”
I nodded. What was there to say?
“Frank. My brother. He says I’m mental.”
“Mental?”
Luke tapped his head. “Crazy. Retard. Frank says it comes from drugs.”
“How come Frank thinks he knows so much?” I asked.
Luke hunched his shoulders. “Frank’s smart.” Then without looking up, Luke said, “Does it come from drugs? Like old Mr. Spencer drinking out of his bottle and telling me it’s his birthday. Every day he tells me that. Are drugs like drinking? Is that what’s the matter with me?”
“No, Luke. It’s not like that at all. Look. The Child Study –”
“Mary,” Luke interrupted. “I could of caught it maybe from my dad.” He was crouched back on the chair, his small body intent, fierce. “See, I never told nobody but you. About the shots and things. And I didn’t even tell you, but sometimes I used to pick up the needle and stuff and throw it away. See. I coulda caught it.”
“No, Luke. Frank’s wrong. You can’t catch it. And besides, there’s nothing wrong with you.” Even as I said it, I knew it was foolish. Luke would never believe it. How could I get through? The issues were so big, the hurt so deep, the answers so elusive. Better begin with something on the smaller side.
“Let’s get back to why you’re late for school every day, Luke. Miss Eckhardt says you don’t come in till around ten o’clock.” That’s it. Start with the little things. Leave the fires till later.
Luke shrugged. “I gotta come or Frank will tell on me and Chuck’ll, Uncle Chuck’ll gimme the strap. But Frank doesn’t come lookin’ for me till he goes to the bathroom in the middle of the morning.”
“Frank and Alice get here on time,” I said.
“They leave with Chuck at eight. He says they’re too little to walk so he drops them at school on his way to the factory. But he can’t make me ride with him. I take the shortcut.”
“I remember. But why not till ten? Why don’t you get here at nine so you don’t start out the day in trouble?”
Luke shrugged. “I just put the milk back in the ’frigerator and then I look at Mom sleeping and then I go lie back down again.”
I knew the feeling. When things are really hard sometimes, it just seems safer in bed.
“You could look at the clock. Maybe set the alarm. You could get up when it says eight-forty. You know how to tell time. I remember you knew on one of those tests.”
“Don’t have a clock,” Luke mumbled.
Excuses. He’d never get anywhere till he got through with excuses. “Well, look at the clock in the kitchen.”
Luke shook his head. “Don’t have one.”
Not an excuse. Another way of life. A home without a clock.
“We got a TV, though,” Luke said. “They say what time it is sometimes.”
At home I counted our clocks. The grandfather clock in the living room that I often forgot to wind. Two clocks in the kitchen, one on the wall and one on the back of the stove. Another, digital clock in the bedroom radio, a travel alarm in my bureau. Five clocks, plus Cal’s watch and two of mine. An embarrassment of clocks.
I took the travel alarm out of the drawer and wound the little key. It ticked cheerfully all night and its alarm buzzed beneath my pillow the next morning. I wrapped it in tissue paper and took it down to Luke.
He loved the clock. He set it on the table in front of us. “Does it really work? I mean keep going all night?”
“If you wind it,” I said. “It’s the right time now, but you’ll have to remember to wind it every night. I forget sometimes to wind the ones at home.”
“I won’t forget,” Luke promised.
> I showed him the alarm and how it worked and how you could slide the case up so it covered the face of the clock altogether. Luke tried to put the clock in his back pocket, but then he couldn’t sit down, so he just sat holding it against his stomach. He reminded me of the black Lab puppy we’d had once who huddled tight against the cushion under which we’d put an old alarm clock.
Out loud I said, “Okay. Now what are we going to do about the work?” Not the fires. Not yet.
“I’m too big to be in that class,” Luke protested again. “The biggest kid, next to me, only comes to here.” Luke put his hand just above his chin. “And she’s a girl.” Scorn filled his voice.
“Hey,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with girls. I hear what you’re saying, Luke, but that isn’t going to get you out of second grade. The only thing that’s going to get you to third is to prove you know all the second-grade work.”
“Suppose I don’t? Suppose I can’t learn it?”
“That’s foolish. Of course you can learn it. In fact, you already know a lot of what they’re doing now.”
“It’s dumb anyway. It’s dumb stuff.”
I looked at Luke. “What do you like to do, anyway? You don’t like to get up, you don’t like school. What do you like?” I challenged him.
“Hunting. That’s what I like. Deer hunting. I went with Dad once, I think I did, anyway. And once I went with Mr. Berkus. He lives behind us.”
I wanted to cry. Deer hunting. If there was anything I hated, it was deer hunting. Now at our house in the country, the deer came to feed in the meadow, rooting under the apple tree. There was a fawn, tawny, the same color as the last leaves on the trees, quick, graceful, wary, jumping the stone fence, into the woods at the slightest sound. Fast. Faster than a thought could be spoken. How could anyone want to kill that swiftness?
“I’m maybe going to go hunting again this weekend.”
Skip the lecture on hunting. “I don’t think you ought to go anywhere until you’re doing your work and getting to school on time.”
Luke said nothing.
“Luke, you can’t quit now. You know you can learn that stuff. Even by yourself you could learn it and I’ll come down and help you. In fact, in a few weeks I’ll be here every day. The only reason they didn’t pass you to third grade was that they didn’t think you could do third-grade work.”
Luke thought about this. “Can you show me some sometime? Some third-grade work?”
“Sure. It’s not that hard, you’ll see. If you can do second, you can learn third easy.” I opened the box and took out the mystery box of word chips. “Just run through these, Luke. Let’s see how many first and beginning second-grade words you remember.”
And of course, he knew every one.
After Luke and the other children had left, I copied down the names of each of Luke’s books and got duplicates from the storeroom. I found out from Lisa what page they were on in reading, math, and spelling. I took the books to the music room so that if there was anything Luke didn’t understand in class and didn’t want to ask about in front of the other kids, he could show me and I could explain it to him in the music room. I had to be absolutely sure that Luke’s first- and second-grade basic skills were solid enough not to crumble under the Child Study Team’s testing at the end of the year. I was going to be sure they did test him. His knowledge must be so solidly built by learning and relearning that no amount of anxiety or apprehension could shake him.
My courses at college were a joke this semester. Although I was taking the same or more hours than ever before, the courses were almost all “method” courses – teaching this, teaching that – and yet I learned nothing about teaching. I was making a scrapbook for Education of the Mentally Challenged Trainable; I was learning to print in round fat letters in Language Arts, Special Ed; I was making a game to teach the concept of ones, tens, and hundreds in Teaching Elementary School Math; I was making a terrarium in Teaching Elementary School Science; I was listening to other seniors talk about student teaching in the seminar for Special Ed; and I was playing the piano by number in Methods and Materials for Teaching Music.
I practiced on the piano in the music room and Luke, at least, loved this part of my college course. Soon he memorized which keys were C D E F G A B and together we could play “Merrily We Roll Along,” “London Bridge,” and a snappy rendition of “Jingle Bells.” For my final exam I was practicing a solo of “Aura Lee,” complete with left-hand chords, followed by a seasonal “It Came upon A Midnight Clear.” I was fairly confident about the piano, since the keys obligingly stayed in the same place; it was just like typing once you got everything memorized.
Not so the recorder. A recorder is a wooden instrument that looks like a short flute. By blowing down into it and covering different holes with different fingers, one was supposed to be able to produce a melody. I had taken my first recorder back to the music store, sure that it was defective. Only a shrill squeal came out. In disdainful tones, the clerk informed me it was not the recorder, it was me. My breath was not controlled. Each evening after dinner, I cut out pictures for my scrapbook and practiced my assigned song, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” on the recorder.
Cal thought I was making it all up. I concentrated on breath control.
Luke was up and out of his seat before I could even open the door to Lisa’s classroom.
“Come on,” he said, “I got something to show you.” He almost ran to the music room.
“Mrs. Karras said I could put it in here.” He opened the door to the music room and then quickly closed it behind us. He opened the door to the coat closet in the back, pulled a metal chair over to it, stood on the chair, and lifted down a long box from the shelf.
He put it on the table. “Go ahead, Mary. Open it. It’s for you.”
I stood in front of the table – we hadn’t had time to sit down yet – and looked at the box. A florist’s box. Long and thin. A memory of long-stemmed red roses stirred somewhere in my mind. Where would Luke have got flowers? I looked at him questioningly.
“Go ahead. Wait’ll you see.”
I pulled up the top of the box, expecting green waxed paper. Instead, there was aluminum foil.
“Open it, Mary. I got it for you my own self.”
I separated the aluminum foil gently, carefully. There was an odd odor, and my fingers were sticky.
Hair. It felt like hair. An animal? I pulled the aluminum foil wide open and almost vomited.
A deer’s leg. From the hoof to the first joint. Sticky with blood where it had been severed.
“Oh, Luke.” I sat down.
Luke was dancing with excitement. “I killed it myself. Well, almost Mr. Berkus hit it first, but he let me pull the trigger for the shot that really killed it. And then we put it on the car and brought it home and then we spent all day yesterday out in Mr. Berkus’s garage cleaning it and cutting it up and Mrs. Costa’s even got a freezer and we put it in there all wrapped up and we’re going to eat it on Thanksgiving. Venison. That’s what it’s called. Not deer meat. Venison. It’s very expensive. I’da brought you some, but Mom said it would spoil without ’frigeration, so I brought you the leg instead.”
I had never heard Luke say so many words all at one time. I forced myself to rewrap the leg in aluminum foil. It would be better if I couldn’t see it. “Thank you, Luke, for thinking about me.” I put the top back on the box and swallowed, trying not to think about what was inside.
“Do you like it, Mary? Were you surprised?”
He was so excited. In his culture this was a coming of age. I couldn’t take that away from him. “It must have been scary, Luke, shooting that gun all by yourself.”
“You shoulda heard it. It was louder than any ole firecracker ever –”
He was off again, talking a mile a minute, describing each detail. I listened hard, because I knew Luke was teaching me something important that I must learn. To see things from his point of view. It would have been easy to misconstru
e the deer leg. But Luke hadn’t brought it in to scare or horrify me; he had brought it as a gift of friendship, like the clock I had given him. As I listened, another idea was beginning.
I couldn’t replace Luke’s world of violence, but perhaps I could give him a glimpse of a different kind of world.
“Will you be hunting every weekend now?” I asked.
Luke shook his head. “Not for a while. Mr. Berkus can’t take me all the time. He’s just like a neighbor, know what I mean?”
I nodded, my own excitement growing. “Would you have time then, some weekend, to come to the country with us, if your mom said it was okay?”
Maybe if he could see the deer in the meadow, maybe if he could see how beautiful they were and if he saw Cal watching them, just watching, without a gun – maybe it would make some difference in his life.
“I guess,” Luke said, “if Mom said it was all right, I guess I could.” He looked up at me, his small face round and open. “I could probably come this next weekend, if you want.”
Chapter 24
We picked Luke up at ten o’clock Saturday morning. Cal waited in the car while I rang the doorbell of Luke’s apartment.
Mrs. Brauer opened the door herself. She was dressed in a skirt and sweater, her hair curling around her face, and she looked so young that for a minute it seemed impossible that she was old enough to be Luke’s mother.
But there was Luke, right beside her in his jeans and shirt and jacket, carrying a suitcase.
I smiled at him. “All set, Luke?”
He nodded without answering.
“Okay. Let’s go then.”
“Don’t forget the present,” Mrs. Brauer whispered to Luke. And he picked up a small rectangular box wrapped in flowered paper from the arm of the couch.
Cal was standing beside the car and I introduced him to Luke and Mrs. Brauer. He shook hands with Mrs. Brauer and took Luke’s suitcase and box and put them beside ours in the back seat. Luke started to crawl in with the suitcases, but I touched his arm.
“Sit up front with us. There’s lots of room.”
Mrs. Brauer watched silently as Cal got in behind the wheel and Luke eased through my door to perch in the middle, on the edge of the seat.
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