City Kid

by Mary MacCracken

  “May thirtieth.”

  I nodded. “And you remember what he looked like when he was born and when he first walked and what he said when he began to talk. Nobody knows all those things but you.”

  I had Mrs. Brauer’s complete attention now. I hurried on.

  “And you remember how he used to help with Frank and Alice when you were sick, do some cooking –”

  “He did all the shopping, too,” Mrs. Brauer said with pride. “I’d give him a purse with a little money and he’d get the things I told him. He always brought the money back if there was any left. He even got so he knew what things cost!”

  “Yes. I’m sure he did. Luke’s plenty smart enough, Mrs. Brauer.”

  “Then how come he got left back?”

  Her voice sounded like Luke’s now. It almost made me smile to hear how much alike they sounded.

  “I don’t understand it all,” I said. “Maybe he didn’t do as well on tests as he should have. Maybe he’d missed a lot of school over the years. Maybe he set fires because he was feeling mad and sad about a lot of things, your being sick, his dad leaving. Maybe he even felt like there was more to do than he could handle.”

  “I know that feeling for sure,” Mrs. Brauer muttered under her breath.

  “And so maybe he wanted to get back at the world a little, or maybe he just wanted to get away by himself sometimes. Anyway, I think he was thinking about a lot of other things instead of school work. And then when he came back this fall and found he’d been left back, it was too much and he forgot all the progress he’d made. But look, he’s starting again. It will take awhile to come back, but at least he’s starting.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe so.” Her eyes flicked toward the clock. “Listen, I gotta go in a minute. I mean if you’re late, Joe is on your back the whole night and I sure don’t need that. But just tell me this. What’s going to happen now? Chuck says maybe he’ll never get out of second grade. Maybe that’s as far as he can go.”

  “Luke can get out of second, third, fourth, and fifth and sixth. Luke can graduate from high school and get a job and help you, and Chuck too, if he’s around, to pay the bills. At least until he has his own family.”

  Mrs. Brauer was obviously taken aback by the idea of a Luke that large. I took advantage of her silence and the extra minute it gave me.

  “I can help him with his school; I’m going to be at the school every day after Christmas. And I can show you how to help him, too. But I’m just a teacher, and there are hundreds of teachers in the world. But you’re his mom. You’re the only mother he’s got. He needs you to love him, Mrs. Brauer.”

  “I do love him. I always have. It’s just – hard. I mean, it’s really hard now.”

  “I know. It’s hard for Luke, too. And Chuck. But, tell Luke you love him. Tell Chuck how much you love Luke and that you hope Chuck’ll get to like him, too. But in any case, your apartment is Luke’s home. It always has been and it always will be. Tell Chuck to give us till June. If you and Luke and I all work hard, as hard as we can, I bet by June Chuck is going to be proud of Luke.”

  I ordered another cup of coffee after Mrs. Brauer left. I hesitated between the pink packet of artificial sweetener and the white one of sugar. Cancer or diabetes? The world was full of wonderful choices.

  I sat alone at the booth thinking about my talk with Mrs. Brauer. “Just give us till June. Chuck is going to be proud of Luke.” I shook my head. Maybe if I don’t graduate I can get a job giving pep talks to parents, or maybe the football coaches could use me during halftime. “Come on, team, you can do it.”

  What was I doing raising her hopes? And over and above that, suggesting that she stand up to Chuck and tell him she wanted Luke to stay with them?

  How did I dare? What did I know? I sighed and stirred my lethal coffee. Maybe Luke wouldn’t be able to satisfy the Child Study Team’s requirements for third grade. Maybe they’d keep him back again or put him in a special class. Maybe Chuck would leave and they’d be worse off and Mrs. Brauer would blame me. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to tootle “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” on my recorder with a classroom of twenty-year-old kids staring at me. Maybe I wouldn’t pass my exam.

  I could use a pep talk myself.

  Exams. Exams were less than a month away, before Christmas vacation. I’d been cutting a few classes and I sure hadn’t contributed anything during class. But I had completed my assignments and nobody but Mrs. Karras had commented on my absences. Not even the week that I had spent with my father after my mother’s death.

  A familiar sense of loss ran through me and I put down my coffee cup and got out a pencil and a piece of paper. Lists helped. I’d make a list.

  I was used to missing my mother now. I realized that it was something that would be a part of me for a long time. The thing was to keep it in proportion. My father seemed to be all right. He often drove to our house in the country on weekends and sometimes, if he had been visiting my mother’s grave, he would show up at the apartment and stay for dinner. In any event, he would be with us for Christmas.

  I drank my coffee and listed my courses on the piece of paper, the number of classes left for each, reports and projects due. If I alternated cutting, missed different classes rather than the same ones, and if Luke, and Lisa too, could tolerate my coming down at different hours on different days, I could get down to School 23 three times a week and work with Luke for forty minutes each time. If I could get Luke and his mother to agree to fifteen to twenty minutes of practice each night, I was sure Luke could be at least at mid-to late-second-grade level by January. After all, he’d been there the year before. I’d just have to plan his work carefully.

  So much for Luke’s classes.

  So much for mine.

  Enough of both for now.

  I paid for the coffee and raced home.

  Chapter 26

  “Look, Luke. Try this. A whole row of hills and valleys.” I handed him the Magic Marker.

  Luke bent his head over the paper and concentrated on hills and valleys.

  We were working hard on academics now, and besides reviewing first- and second-grade work, I had decided to teach him third-grade script, or cursive writing, as it was called at School 23. I’d discussed it with both Lisa and Mrs. Karras, explaining that Luke’s math was in good shape. He knew his addition and subtraction facts through twenty; he could add two columns, carrying the ones to the tens; he could subtract. He understood time and money. His reading was not as good, but he was working in a second-grade reader and his silent comprehension was fine. It was just difficult for him to read out loud. He omitted some words and put in others of his own. He also had a lot of trouble with phonics. He couldn’t hear the subtle differences between the short vowels, and consequently the instruction to “sound it out” remained a mystery to him.

  We worked on math and reading and written expression every day. Luke still dictated stories to me, but now he copied them himself and drew illustrations into a book that I had made for him. He loved doing this and his “eye-hand coordination” (a college term for the ability to move the hand and eye together smoothly) was so good that it seemed to me that it should be easy for him to learn to write rather than print, particularly if I could demonstrate it clearly.

  The big advantage to cursive writing over printing, as far as Luke was concerned, was that it wasn’t taught until third grade and if Luke learned to do this before anyone else in his class, it might raise his opinion of himself.

  Luke finished his line of hills and valleys. “Okay,” I said. “Now watch this. One hill, one valley. Right? Now watch what happens when I put a line through it – x.”

  “An x,” Luke shouted. “You just made an x. Here, let me try.”

  “Pretty sharp,” I said “How about this one? It’s a little harder. A hill, a valley and a loopy tail. Down and back up again – y. You can check the letters on the strip if you want.”

  I had found a small teachers’ supply house in Fall
s City and had bought adhesive strips showing the alphabet in both block print and cursive. Luke had both strips fastened to a board that we laid out on the long table in the music room.

  “I don’t need to. That’s a y. See.” Luke wrote it quickly. “Show me more.”

  “All right. Can you make waves like this?”

  “Another whole line? Okay. That’s fine. Do one wave and you have a c, close it up and you have an a.”

  Luke made hills and valleys and a’s and c’s and x’s and y’s on his paper and then, not able to resist, on the blackboard as well.

  “Tell Mr. Foley to leave it there, all right? You write right beside it. DO NOT WASH. That’s what Miss Eckhardt does. See, I’m maybe gonna show it to her. All right?”

  “Yes, Luke. That’s a good idea. Here’s your notebook with your work for home. Four math problems, two stories in Getting the Main Idea, and your handwriting page. How’s that?”

  Luke nodded. “Okay. Boy, wait’ll I show Frank I know how to write. I mean really write.”

  Our plan for Luke was going well. I met with both Lisa and Mrs. Brauer at the end of each week, reviewed what we’d each done, and planned for the next week.

  In Lisa’s class Luke was doing the work and handing it in. He still had no friends and rarely spoke, but Lisa was pleased and said so to Mrs. Brauer. “I’ve got him in my top math group now. Would you believe that?”

  Lisa and I planned Luke’s work together, deciding what he should do in class, what he should do in his sessions with me. Neither of us could figure out why Luke had made such a bad impression on the Child Study Team at the end of last year. The only possibilities were that they had tested him after school or on a Saturday and Luke had been nervous and anxious and his basic knowledge had been too shaky to stand up under the pressure of testing, or else they had not tested him at all and just gone by old reports.

  I prepared his homework and the tasks I sent home with Luke were ones that I was sure he could do well. He could use the practice and just as important, he needed to look good in front of his family.

  Mrs. Brauer was doing her share, too. She didn’t leave for work until five so she made it a point to have some milk or juice ready for Luke when he got home from school and then sit with him for fifteen minutes while he showed her what he could do. She didn’t attempt to teach or explain. If Luke got mixed up they just skipped it and Luke brought it back to me. Mrs. Brauer was amazed at how much Luke knew. She didn’t have to try to praise him to make him feel good. Her honest surprise delighted Luke and prompted him to learn even more.

  My three sessions a week with Luke were divided between academic skills and something nameless. Academically, I tried to give him as many successes as possible, gradually shoring up his weaknesses. Once again, I learned more from Luke than from my courses. What he taught me all over again was to teach to his strength first, remediate his weakness later – ninety percent to the strength, ten percent to the weakness in the beginning. Which was why I was concentrating on increasing his sight vocabulary, giving him massive doses of sight words each day. He could remember what he saw. We worked only a little on vowel sounds and word analysis skills. It was also why we ended each session with a few math problems. He always walked out feeling good.

  The something nameless? I don’t know. I couldn’t call it therapy. I didn’t even have a bachelor’s degree in anything. And yet, I knew that Luke had to have a place where he could talk about what he was feeling. He couldn’t do it in class or at home, so I tried to make room for this during our time together. I knew it wasn’t enough, fifteen minutes, maybe, out of the forty, three times a week. But I had already learned that there was never enough time.

  I still asked Luke about the best thing and the worst thing at the beginning of each lesson. This often triggered a thought and because Luke trusted me, he was very honest. His best things now were mainly his school work, sometimes a trip with the neighbors, once a shopping trip with his mom to get new sneakers. His worst things were abundant – the shrimpy babies that made up second grade and the embarrassment of being seen with them; the spankings he got; sometimes no dinner; Wendell’s taunts; nightmares; his mixed feelings toward Uncle Chuck. Sometimes Luke would get down the ancient family of dolls that had been part of my teaching equipment for years and ask me to play the part of his mother or Chuck or Mrs. Karras, while Luke played himself or sometimes his mother or brother.

  Did it help? Who could say? Nobody knew we even did it. I just crossed my fingers and added up each day that he came to school and each day without phone calls from the police.

  Luke was doing better, but my own life was not so peachy. Exams in Education of the Mentally Challenged Trainable, Language Arts, Teaching Elementary School Math, Teaching Elementary School Science, Methods and Materials for Teaching Music were scheduled for next week. The only exception was the seminar in Special Education. There I was supposed to write a report on what I’d learned in student teaching. My student teaching was scheduled for the next semester, but I’d written most of the report anyway. Mrs. Karras said she’d sign it. They’d probably never notice.

  But I was worried about the others and was up at five each morning rereading text books. What did I know about teaching elementary science? Our professor was a nice elderly man who showed us films each day. I’d learned how to build a terrarium, but suppose he asked about electricity or earth science on the exam? And it was almost as bad in all the other subjects. What I’d actually learned about teaching reading and math and language arts, I had learned from teaching Luke – and the children I had known before him.

  Besides my own worries about exams, I was very discouraged about the education young teachers were getting and it was not until later in graduate courses (still at Union State) that I experienced the pleasure and excitement I had always associated with learning. Someday, some way, I vowed to do something about the education of teachers-to-be.

  What’s more, Cal was obviously getting tired of my short-order cooking and the mention of roast lamb or hollandaise sauce crept increasingly into his conversation. Once when he asked if I planned to do a wash that day, I snapped that he went by the laundry room as often as I did – and then I burst into tears.

  And there were the children, our own ever-present children. Seven was a bigger number than I’d realized. Now there were comments about a lack of letters and cards. To compensate, I called as often as I could and told them all not to worry about calling collect if they needed us. Our phone bill skyrocketed. Once again I wondered if I would really make it through to the end. And if I did, if our family would still be intact.

  My last exam was Methods and Materials for Teaching Music. I had practiced and practiced “Aura Lee” and “It Came upon a Midnight Clear” both at School 23 and also on the Sunday school piano on weekends after church was over. I played “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” on the recorder every night ten times, in the bathroom with the water running. I didn’t think Cal needed that on top of everything else. I knew exactly which fingers to put where, but sometimes, for seemingly no reason, a shrill squeal came out instead of the correct note. I would just have to hope, and as the music clerk said, control my breath.

  There were eighteen of us in music class. We performed our solos in alphabetical order as Mrs. Oliphant called off our names. The kids were as nervous as I was and I’m sure it was just as hard for some of them.

  Lewis, the boy ahead of me, got up from the piano after playing “When the Saints Come Marching In” with lefthand chords and took a handkerchief out of the back pocket of his jeans and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

  “That was very good, Lewis.” Lewis nodded his thanks. He was big and black and a guard on our winning football team. He wanted to be a high school coach; it seemed unlikely to me that he would ever need to play the recorder. Not so to Mrs. Oliphant. “Let’s see now, Lewis, you were assigned ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ on the recorder. Class! Shhh!” Mrs. Oliphant tapped her pencil on t
he side of the piano. “We need quiet so we can hear Lewis properly.” Sweat covered Lewis’s brow again, but both hands were on the recorder and he could not wipe. Someone giggled and again Mrs. Oliphant tapped the piano. The room was still. “You may begin now, Lewis.”

  All of a sudden I realized Lewis was playing my song. He couldn’t do that! “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” had been assigned to me! That was the one I’d practiced. I started to raise my hand, then thought better of it. My whole upper body was as damp as Lewis’s forehead. Lewis played through to the end without a mistake. His version sounded much better than mine ever had.

  “Thank you, Lewis. You may sit down. Let’s see now. MacCracken. Uh, yes. Are you ready, Ms. MacCracken?”

  Mrs. Oliphant called everyone else by their first name – me she called Ms.

  I nodded and went up to the piano and played “Aura Lee” without a hitch. I missed two notes in “Midnight Clear,” but managed to keep going and Mrs. Oliphant did not comment.

  I stood beside the piano, holding my recorder and my breath. Maybe both Lewis and I had been assigned “Twinkle.”

  Mrs. Oliphant studied her list. “Your assignment for the recorder was ‘A Tisket, A Tasket,’ Ms. MacCracken. Are you ready now?”

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Oliphant. My assignment sheet says ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’” I could not believe I was having this conversation.

  “Well, mine says ‘A Tisket, A Tasket,’ Ms. MacCracken.”

  “I have practiced ‘Twinkle,’ Mrs. Oliphant.”

  “Do you have your assignment sheet with you, Ms. MacCracken?”

  “I believe so, Mrs. Oliphant.”

  “Then get it. Immediately.”

  I went back to my seat and rummaged through the pile of books beside my chair until I found my zippered notebook. I opened to the section marked “Music” and there in the slotted pocket was the assignment sheet. It said: “Final Examination: piano – two solo renditions of your choice from Musicale. Recorder – one solo rendition of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’”