City Kid

by Mary MacCracken

  “You use worms?”

  “No, minnows. We seined for them in the bay. Shiners, small perch minnows. Perch minnows were especially good when we were out for bass early in the morning.” I stopped, caught up in my own thoughts. Memories of seining with my father. Why did I think it was all right to fish but not to hunt deer? Was it because the people I loved fished rather than hunted? Was it just that I’d had a different kind of model than Luke had had?

  I missed the first part of Bobby’s sentence. “… five sunnies. And I cleaned ’em all myself too. You know how to clean fish?”

  “Not too well. My dad usually cleaned them.”

  “Yeah. Well, I can clean any ole fish. You know what else? I can skin rabbits too.”

  “No?” Remember the fish. Don’t make a judgment.

  “Yep. When me and my brothers go camping we lotsa times shoot rabbits and skin ’em.”

  “How many brothers do you have?”

  “Eight. There’s nine of us Ferraros.”

  Mrs. Karras appeared. “Well, Bobby. Hello, It’s nice to see you somewhere other than the office.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bobby answered.

  I looked at the clock. Eleven-ten exactly. “Come on, Bobby. We have to go. I promised you’d be back by ten after.”

  “I want to talk to you before I go,” I said to Mrs. Karras on my way out.

  Bobby trotted beside me through the halls.

  “You gonna show me how to do that shuffle?”

  “Sure. I’ll show you tomorrow. Here’s your room.”

  “Okay. Listen, I’ll come down myself tomorrow.”

  “Fine with me, if it’s all right with your teacher.”

  “She’ll let me, if you gimme a note to take back saying I got there on time. She just doesn’t want me smokin’ in the head.” At least life was clear and understandable to Bobby.

  Mrs. Karras was sitting in the music room with a pretty little blond girl when I got back.

  “I know I said I was going to leave you on your own,” she apologized, “but you seemed to be running a little late and I didn’t want Maureen to miss her turn.”

  I smiled at Mrs. Karras. “That’s okay. I can use all the help I can get. Hi, Maureen. I’m Mary. Mary MacCracken,” thinking it would be wonderful if it turned out that Maureen was into poker too.

  No such luck.

  Maureen pushed the cards away. “My mother says cards are a waste.” Her voice had a nasal, whiny quality.

  “Does she? Is she a Presbyterian? I was never allowed to play cards on Sunday, but that was because my mom’s dad was a Presbyterian minister.”

  “What’s a Presbetearn?”

  “Presbyterian? It’s a kind of religion.”

  “Like Catholic? I think that’s what we are. But we don’t go except Easter and Christmas Eve.”

  “That’s my favorite time. Christmas Eve. We always go to the midnight service. Last year it was even snowing.”

  Maureen clucked. “I know. I had these new boots? But Jimmy wouldn’t let me wear them. He is sooo mean.”

  “Who’s Jimmy?” I asked, more because she seemed to want me to than for any other reason. I was leery of moving too fast after Louisa Mae.

  “He’s my mother’s boyfriend. But we’re not supposed to talk about him. And if we have to, we’re supposed to call him Uncle Jimmy, so people’ll think he’s a relative. But it’s silly; everybody knows he’s a boyfriend.”

  Maureen had the makings of a realist as well as a truly great gossip.

  She crossed her legs and smoothed her skirt as she continued. “He really is terrible. You know what he did yesterday? Jimmy, I mean. I didn’t eat my cereal fast enough, so know what he did? He just picked up the whole bowl and smushed it in my face. And last week” – Maureen swallowed; she was talking so fast her mouth was dry – “know what he did last week? I didn’t eat my supper. So he saved it all night in the refrigerator and then he made me eat that and the cereal. And once he strapped me in the baby’s high chair and kept me there until I cleaned my plate.”

  Poor Maureen. Also poor Jimmy. Maureen had just met me and was telling lurid tales. What did she tell the neighbors?

  “Well, my mother says she will never have any children with Jimmy. She may marry him, probably not, but even if she does, she will not have children with him. See, we are her children and not Jimmy’s so she has more to say. If the children were part his, she couldn’t control him at all.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I can see that.” I felt full. I needed time to digest all that she said. But there was no stopping Maureen.

  “My mother was going to sign permission for me to be in the program last year. The one with tairipic tutors, But you know how it is – promises, promises. My mother says that program never even got off the ground.”

  “How old are you, Maureen?” I asked, thinking maybe she’d answer a hundred and two.

  “Seven, going on eight. My mother says it’s not that I’m dumb, it’s just that I don’t put my mind to it – that and the allergies.”

  “Allergies?” What now?

  “Oh, yes. I’m allergic to almost everything. Cats, chocolate. Dust even. That’s why I have shots every week. The nurse maybe is going to teach my mother how to give me the shots so it don’t cost so much.”

  A bell sounded throughout the school.

  “That’s the first bell for lunch. I’ll be in tomorrow.” Maureen slipped out of her chair and was gone.

  I sat down at the table waiting for the whir of Maureen’s words to be gone so I could think.

  Louisa Mae, Bobby, Maureen. Why had Mrs. Karras picked them out? Luke – I knew Luke. But it had taken time. How could I possibly help these children in three months’ time? And what about Harold? I hadn’t even met him. Suppose it had only been for six weeks? That would have been worse.

  Again, none of these children seemed so terrible to me. Where was the hostility that I had read so much about? These kids seemed to crave attention rather than reject it. Maybe the secret was getting them while they were young. But even so, how could I help them in so short a time? And yet, what all these kids seemed to want most was somebody to talk to. Could it possibly be that simple?

  Thinking about student teaching reminded me of collage. I had History at one o’clock. If I was going to see Mrs. Karras first, I had to get going.

  “Okay,” I said to Mrs. Karras. “I know you only have a minute and so do I, but now that I’ve lived through trial by fire, how about telling me what you do know about Louisa Mae and Bobby and Maureen?”

  Mrs. Karras smiled. “To tell the truth, I really don’t know much about them. Louisa Mae just moved in with her grandmother, who registered her. Her first-grade teacher reports that Louisa doesn’t know the alphabet or numbers, but more disturbing are quote, the signs of immaturity, unquote. That means she wet her pants the other day.”

  “Wait till I show you her drawings.”

  “What I want you to do is keep an eye on an unknown commodity. I don’t know what we’re dealing with in Louisa.

  “Now, Bobby. I can tell you a little more about him. There are nine brothers. Bobby’s next to last. Every single one has been a troublemaker. Bobby has several arrests for breaking and entering, usually with one of his brothers. None of them are too bright. I do have Bobby’s IQ somewhere, because he was tested by the psychologist at one time. I’ll look it up for you.

  “With Bobby – just get him through. He’s old for his class, anyway. I think they had him in two different kindergartens, but, anyway, no teacher wants him twice. As soon as class lists go out you can hear them yell, ‘Not another Ferraro!’

  “Maureen is something else altogether. She spends half of her day in tears, the other half whining and complaining. That’s on the days she’s here. There’s no doubt in my mind that she’s a very bright little girl. She should be enjoying school. She should be one of the ones to make it out of this life. But not the way she’s going. I honestly don’t know what to
tell you to do with her. She’s on the waiting list at the clinic, but you know what that’s like. They don’t have room for any new cases this semester. So there goes another year.”

  Mrs. Karras got up. “Mary, I don’t expect miracles. You know me well enough for that. You don’t know how badly these kids need somebody to talk to. If you don’t do any more than that, I’ll be satisfied.”

  “Mm-hmm,” I said. “Sure you will.”

  But I didn’t really mind. Mrs. Karras loved her school. All she was trying to do was get as much help as she could.

  The history professor didn’t know it, but the colonists’ revolt against England seemed dull beside School 23, and Philosophy of Education and School in Contemporary American Society couldn’t even place.

  Chapter 28

  I arrived at School 23 at eight-thirty the next morning carrying three marbelized notebooks, clay, salt, an old cigar box, more Magic Markers, index cards, the Spache, and the WRAT. No getting caught short today. Today I have a plan.

  I was greeted by Mrs. Karras. “Good morning, Mary. Coffee?”

  “Thank you. No time to talk, though.”

  I took my mug of coffee and closed the door to the music room. The clay, salt, and cigar box were for Louisa Mae. The index cards and Magic Markers for Bobby, the tests for Maureen. I had what I needed for Luke.

  “Good morning, Louisa Mae,” I said as Mrs. Karras delivered her at two minutes to nine. “How’re you today?”

  Louisa Mae’s pigtails were slightly atilt.

  “Grobby,” she said.

  I could not decipher “grobby,” but it did not sound positive.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Louisa Mae squirmed herself onto the chair. “Sent me home. Hain’t right. Called me a ‘mother –,’ you know. Cain’t call me that. Hit him.”

  “They sent you home? Yesterday? Oh, Louisa Mae, I’m sorry. Who did you hit?”

  “Him,” she said with finality. Was that a personal pronoun or a name? Who could tell?

  I began to divide the clay into separate colors. Red, yellow, white, green. I tore off small pieces and rolled them back and forth against the long table. My plan was to soften the clay and then use it to make letters for Louisa Mae; a clay B might be more memorable than one written on a piece of paper.

  Louisa Mae picked up the piece of white clay I had rolled out. “Cigarette. Burn you cigarette if you don’t mind. Ahhhh. Ahhhh.” The horrendous squeal filled the room. I sat absolutely still watching Louisa Mae. Now she took the clay and hit it with her fist. “You’ll get hit now.” Bam. Bam.

  I began rolling out the red clay. Louisa Mae grabbed it and smashed it on top of the white. “Going to the hospital? Nooo. Nooo. I be good. Not operation.”

  My God, Dear God. Is this child abuse? How can I possibly teach this child letters and numbers with all that’s going on inside of her?

  Suddenly Louisa Mae threw the red and white clay across the room. “Hey!” I said. “Wait a minute now.”

  But Louisa Mae wasn’t waiting. She had thrown the cigar box and had hold of the salt when I pinned her arms.

  “Now just a minute, Louisa Mae. You don’t throw things in here.”

  She turned her head back and bared her teeth, trying to bite my arm. But she was an amateur compared to twelve-year-old Alice whom I had taught four years before.

  “No throwing. No biting,” I said. “Let’s get the clay.” I kept my hold on Louisa Mae and propelled her to the center of the room where the wad of clay had fallen.

  “Pick it up and put it back.”

  And, amazingly, she did. Then she slid down under the table.

  “Gonna sit my house now,” she said from under the table.

  “All right. I’ll sit with you.”

  Louisa Mae and I sat together under the table. I prayed silently that Mrs. Karras would not do one of her routine checks at this moment.

  Then Louisa Mae said, “Wanta draw.”

  “All right.”

  We came out from under and I got the crayons and paper while she waited docilely. More round circles. Ovals. None connected.

  Louisa Mae got up. “Gonna draw on de board.”

  “Okay.”

  More circles. Then a rectangle. “Hit chimley,” she said. “Here smoke.” A long wiggly line came out of the rectangle. “Smoke go sky.”

  “Yes, smoke goes in the sky.”

  “To God.”

  Oh, now, Louisa Mae. Do you have to bring in God?

  But she was sure. “Drawin’ God now,” she said, as huge circles covered the board. Then she stopped and looked at me. “How many feets do God have?”

  Now who could answer that?

  Luke watched from the doorway as Louisa Mae drew little circles up and down the board, hopping with excitement.

  It was time for her to go, but I waited one more minute, hoping for a natural break rather than interrupting her – and got it.

  Louisa Mae put down the chalk and looked almost in Luke’s direction. “Dere’s God’s feet, boy,” she said with pride.

  When I got back from returning Louisa Mae to her classroom, Luke was erasing the board. God and his many feet were almost gone.

  “Thank you, Luke.” I sat down on a radiator cover near the board and watched. It was a pleasure just to look at him. He was tall now, a head above the other second graders, and very handsome. Slim, graceful. He rarely laughed or even smiled, but his interest in everything around him was so intense, he lit up the room when he walked in. In the turbulent sea of Louisa Mae, Maureen and Bobby, I was grateful for Luke. We knew each other and what we were trying to do.

  Luke erased the last of the small circles and then brought his dishpan of materials to the long table. I sat beside him and smiled a welcome.

  “I am so glad to see you. How are you?”

  Luke shrugged, getting out the teachers’ guides to correct his work as well as the graded sight-word list.

  “Okay, I guess.” Luke put his arms on top of his books instead of opening them.

  I waited. There was obviously something he wanted to say before we started working, something that wasn’t easy to say. He was having difficulty finding words. Finally, “You know that little black kid that was just in here?”

  “Yes. Louisa Mae.”

  “’Member I told you she lives across the street?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, last night when I went out to get Frank and Alice to come in for supper, she was out there running down her side of the street, screamin’ and yellin’.”

  Luke paused and then looked at me squarely.

  “She didn’t have nothin’ on but her underpants and it was freezin’ out there.”

  “Thank you for telling me, Luke. I’ll try to find out what’s going on.”

  “Not even any shoes. Her feet must have froze. One of her uncles came out and grabbed her and stuck her under his arm and took her back in.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what’s happening, Luke. I’ll talk to Mrs. Karras before I go back to college. Thank you again.” I changed the subject to focus on Luke himself. “Any trouble with your homework?”

  Luke shook his head. He was still moving steadily ahead: he’d mastered cursive writing and now, after we had edited his first drafts, he copied all his work in what he called “real writing.” I was beginning to show him the similarities between addition and multiplication, nothing much. Just that 2 × 3 meant that there were two threes and 5 × 3 meant there were five threes. Anybody who could add fast could do multiplication. Luke couldn’t believe it could be that simple.

  In fact, he had a hard time remembering why any of the work had once seemed so impossibly difficult. His reading was improving now almost as rapidly as his math. Again it was no miraculous trick on either Luke’s part or mine. We simply added five new words on index cards to his word bank each day.

  In order to make the words more visually memorable to Luke, I printed each one with a different colored Magic Marker
and he traced the letters with his fingers as I wrote them on his back with my finger, saying each letter out loud together. Then Luke used each word in a sentence. His mother reviewed them with him at night and listened with pride as he read her stories made up of the words he’d learned. There were three or four hundred words to each grade on the word lists I’d made from the backs of the school’s basal readers. Luke had known all the first-grade words and most of the second when we started this year, so it was easy to keep building on his solid base of sight vocabulary.

  He still had difficulty figuring out words he didn’t know. He often couldn’t remember the sounds of vowels or blends or how to break a word into syllables. His comprehension and understanding of what he read were high; his word attack skills were low.

  Luke and I were at the board reviewing the short sound of e when the door opened and I turned to see Bobby Ferraro’s ratty little face peering into the room. “Can I come in?”

  “Uh, yes, sure, Bobby.” The clock showed I was already five minutes into his time. “If you’ll sit down over there I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  But Bobby was already with us at the board. “Hey, Brauer, I dint know you got tutored, too. Those your words? Hey, man. I can read those. Those are easy.” He read down the list: “Bed – fed – led – red – Ted.”

  Luke said nothing. Then he looked at me. “Can I still lead one page from Golden Bridges?”

  “Of course.” Golden Bridges was the third-grade basal reader. We always ended with one page of this now because it was composed of the sight words Luke could remember so well and was an antidote for the difficult phonics and word attack skills. I still felt it was important to end each session with success.

  I turned to Bobby. “Would you write a sentence for each of those words on the board while I do this one last thing with Luke? The paper’s over there in that drawer and there should be a pencil there, too.”

  I went back to the long table and sat down beside Luke. He already had the book open and began to read.

  At the end of the first paragraph he looked up. Bobby was standing in the middle of the room listening to Luke with his mouth open. Luke, the school dummy, left back in second grade, was reading the third-grade book with ease.