City Kid

by Mary MacCracken

  The librarian eyed Luke, started to say something, then glanced over at me and changed her mind. She wrote out Luke’s card, stamped his books, and put his card in a file on her desk.

  “Go ahead, babe,” I whispered to Maureen. But she shook her head. “I can’t, Mary. Jimmy would whup me good if I gave my name and address to a perfect stranger.”

  “It’s okay,” I insisted. “It’s all right to have a library card.” It was more than all right for Maureen. It was important. I had watched her for those few seconds as she sat reading on the floor, completely engrossed in the book. Here was a whole other world for her, where she wouldn’t need to whine and allergies would fade. “Go ahead, Maureen,” I urged again. “Get your card.”

  Maureen inched forward.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Maureen. Maureen Barber,” her voice a whisper.

  “Yes. Well, where do you live?”

  Silence.

  “Speak up.”

  “Thirty-nine Fairview,” Maureen whispered, her breath rattling in her throat.

  “Okay,” I said. “That’s all. Thank you.” I whisked the children out the door.

  Luke took Louisa Mae’s hand as soon as we were outside. “Here’s your book, Louisa Mae. Come on and carry it. Come on.” Over his shoulder Luke said to me, “I’ll tend her, Mary. You watch out for the other two.”

  I glanced at my watch. Ten to twelve. “Hey,” I yelled, “we have to run. Come on now.”

  I grabbed Maureen’s hand and set off full tilt. Luke ran beside me, tugging Louisa Mae along with him. Bobby ran in circles around us, raising his book over his head and shouting for no reason at all, “Yay, team!”

  We were in the front door as the first lunch bell finished ringing and Luke and Bobby dashed for their classes. I deposited Louisa Mae and then trotted beside Maureen to her classroom.

  Her cheeks were pink, her eyes shining. No tears or whining now. Outside the room Maureen reached up and pulled me down and whispered in my ear, “I love you,” and then sat on the floor, took off her right shoe, and stashed her library card safely in her sock.

  Chapter 30

  Mrs. Karras was waiting by the front door when I arrived that first Monday in April.

  “Well, she’s gone,” she said.

  “Who’s gone?”

  “Louisa Mae.”

  I pulled my jacket back on, suddenly cold. “How can she be gone?” I asked without logic. “She was here last week.”

  “Well, she’s gone now.” Mrs. Karras was as angry as I’d ever seen her. “She was here Monday and Tuesday last week, but as you know perfectly well, she was out the rest of the week. The nurse made a routine call on Thursday and the grandmother said Louisa Mae was sick, had the flu. Lies, lies, lies. Why can’t anybody tell the truth anymore?”

  “What happened? Where’s she gone? Why do you think she has gone?”

  “I don’t think. I know she’s gone. On Tuesday I called myself. This time nobody answered. I just got this very strange feeling that something was wrong. You know, the social worker never did get in that house. Somebody always put her off with one excuse or another.

  “Anyway, after school Friday, I got hold of the truant officer and went over there. Nobody answered the bell, so then we went around back, to try the kitchen door, and there was the grandmother, standing in the kitchen stirring something on the stove. We could see her clear as day, through the glass windows in the door, so she had to let us in.

  “Then she tells us that Louisa Mae doesn’t live there anymore. Louisa Mae’s mama had thought she’d move back home to Falls City, but now she’d changed her mind and gone on out to Chicago to stay with her sister.”

  “Chicago? Will Louisa Mae go to school in Chicago?”

  “Who knows! Who –” Mrs. Karras stopped mid-sentence and walked back to her desk and sat down and wearily put her head between her hands. After a minute she looked up at me. “You know, I almost said ‘who cares.’ That’s the first time I’ve ever felt that way.” She rubbed her temples. “It’s the waste that makes me so damn mad. Waste of her teacher’s time, my time, your time. What good did it do? You could have been working with Harold all along if we’d known Louisa Mae was going to skip. And I tell you, I wouldn’t be surprised if that grandmother didn’t know all along that they weren’t going to stay here for good, and just used us for baby-sitting.”

  I walked out and across to my room. I thought of it as my room now, rather than the music room. I didn’t want to hear about Harold or the grandmother. I wanted Louisa Mae. How would I ever find out what “grobby” meant or why God’s feet were so important? Or even more important, why she had been scared of the clay and called it a cigarette. I closed my eyes. “God, watch out for Louisa Mae in Chicago, okay?”

  Someone rattled my door and I reluctantly opened it. Mrs. Karras. I sighed and then realized that Mrs. Karras wasn’t alone.

  “Mary,” she said brightly, “I’d like you to meet Harold Mills. He’s in fifth grade, Miss Kraus’s class … or maybe you’ve already met.”

  I couldn’t believe she was doing this. “Hi, Harold,” I said to the pale pudgy boy who stood beside her. “Have a seat.” I glared at Mrs. Karras. “May I speak to you in the hall?”

  Outside the door I hissed, “What are you doing? The body’s not even cool yet and already you’re dragging someone in on top of it. Did you care about Louisa Mae at all? For that matter, do you care about me or anyone in the world? Or only School Twenty-three? A school is made of children, you know.”

  “I know. I know it all too well, and you’ve got to learn this, too, if you’re going to survive. Schools are made of children and children come and go.” Her voice grew gentler and she touched my arm. “Most schools aren’t like the one you taught at before. There your children stayed for two or three years at a time, often in the same class. You had the luxury of long periods in which to help those children.

  “Well, it’s not like that here in the city. You do what you can with what you have. A child comes, a child goes. You have to hope you touched them for a second. There are too many kids who need help to waste even a minute.” Mrs. Karras turned and headed back to her office. I knew she was right. Without Mrs. Karras there wouldn’t even be a place like School 23.

  I went back into my room. Harold was slouched against the file cabinet, eyes on the floor. I had absolutely no idea how to get started.

  I sat down at the long table and studied him, but nothing came. Then for no particular reason, I remembered the House-Tree-Person test, the same test Jerry had had me give Luke in my beginning sessions with him. Jerry was no longer around to interpret, but perhaps Harold would enjoy the drawings as Luke had. Harold certainly seemed to be nonverbal. At least at the moment.

  I got up and collected paper and pencils. “Harold, would you come on over here and sit down?”

  Harold hesitated, but then shuffled across the room.

  “Do you like to draw?”

  Harold shrugged.

  “Well, here’s a piece of paper. Please draw a picture of a house. The best house you can.”

  Surprise made him look at me. “What kinda house?” His voice was very soft and there was some sort of odd lisp, almost a hiss, on the final s in house.

  “Any kind you want.”

  Harold shrugged again and began to draw. He worked quickly and produced a tall skinny house without a baseline reaching upward from the bottom of the page. The house had nine tiny windows, a wobbly drainpipe, and a toppling chimney.

  Harold pushed it toward me. “Is this all right?”

  My turn to be surprised. I had expected sullenness rather than eagerness to please.

  “That’s fine. Now draw a picture of a tree, okay?”

  I had no training at the time to attempt interpretations of drawings and I still feel interpretations of children’s drawings should be done with caution. Too often, too much is read into them. But at least Harry and I were doing something together and
Harry seemed to be involved.

  The picture of the tree was bare, without leaves or roots, only a round hole bored into the tree halfway up. The tree, like the house, began at the bottom edge of the page.

  “Okay. One more. Draw a person, the best picture of a person you can.”

  Harry said, “Thass hard.” The hiss was more evident and there was something almost girlish in the way he spoke.

  “Well, just give it a try,” I said. Suddenly I realized I was interested. I wanted to see what kind of person he would draw. I shook my head. Where had my resentment gone? Ah, Mrs. Karras. How cagey you are – but God, please remember Louisa Mae, all right? Chicago’s a long way from here …

  When my thoughts came back to Harry, he was still working on his picture, spending far more time on this than either of the other two.

  Finally he was finished. It was a picture of an odd-looking man or boy with a tiny head, even smaller arms, and big feet. The wispy arms and almost invisible hands were holding a heavily penciled barbell with large weights on both ends.

  “Know what he’sss doing? He’ss lifting weightsss. You know what weightsss are?”

  “Mm-hmm. My son has some, but I’ve never used them.”

  “Me neither. But with that many poundsss” – he pointed to the picture – “it’d be very, very, heavy.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “It would be very hard to lift.”

  Later on I would learn more about the House-Tree-Person test and consider it a valuable part of a diagnostic evaluation, although I would always feel it was important not to draw too many conclusions from this, or, for that matter, from any single test. But even in my first meeting with Harold, even with my limited knowledge, I could see how insecure and “wobbly” he felt – and he did seem to be saying he felt weighed down by heavy burdens.

  It was twenty after twelve by the time I had finished my time with Maureen and packed the last items in her dishpan and put it back on the shelf. At the end of the morning I wrote a brief summary of what each child had done that day in their notebooks, so I could keep track of their progress and plan for the next day. Useful, but I was barely making it back in time for History.

  I grabbed my canvas tote and jacket and headed for my car, fishing in my jacket pocket for my keys. Not there. Where did I put them? In my bag? Not there either. Back to my room. Had I left them on the shelf? Not there. Come on. Come on. You don’t have time for this, Mary. Maybe in the car. Back out the door. Down the steps. Across the street. I shook the door handle. Locked. And sure enough, there were the keys dangling from the ignition. Oh, boy! I kicked the tire in frustration and heard echoes in my head. “You must be so patient, Mary, to teach those children.” Patient? Me? They should see me now.

  Well, at least I know what to do. Back into school to the office. I took a wire coat hanger from the rack and untwisted it, forming a small loop at the end as I had seen Cal do one day in the parking lot when he was helping a woman who had locked her keys in the car.

  But I hadn’t counted on the children. It was past twelve-thirty and they were coming back from lunch, assembling on the black macadam. I went around to the far side of the car, feeling foolish, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.

  I slipped the wire between the top of the window and the roof. The worn canvas convertible top gave under pressure and the wire slid in easily. I aimed the loop for the little knob that locked the door. If I could just lift that up I’d be in.

  The loop went over, but then when I tried to lift, it slipped off. Steady. Concentrate. Get it on again. Keep pressing hard. Lift. The lock clicked and I grabbed the door, pulled it open – and looked up to see a dozen or more children peering at me from the back of the car. Front and center was Bobby Ferraro. “See,” he said to what were obviously three other Ferraros, “I told you.”

  “Hi, Bobby,” I said climbing in behind the wheel. “I’m late. Got to hurry. See you tomorrow.”

  But Bobby clung to the side of the car. “I told ’em you could fish and play poker and they wouldn’t believe nothin’. But now they’ve seen you pickin’ locks.” Bobby shouted with pride. “Now they gotta believe me.”

  I felt as if I’d just received the Nobel Prize.

  Chapter 31

  April slid by. My courses at college were almost over. I still had to write a long-term paper for History, chronicles of court cases for School in Contemporary American Society, and another paper for Philosophy of Education. Classes for seniors ended in mid-May. Graduation would be June 6. I knew I wouldn’t go. Especially since Ian wasn’t there. How could I walk the aisle in cap and gown with Ian in Vietnam? Besides, that belonged to another time of life. What mattered was the certification, the right to teach as a “real teacher” rather than as an aide.

  I still didn’t have a job, but somehow that didn’t worry me. More and more the thought of working on my own, testing as well as teaching, was turning over in my mind. In fact much to Cal’s surprise and my own, I drove out to college on Saturday morning and took my graduate record exams, just in case.

  The core of my life was School 23. Bobby Ferraro flourished, down to once a week in the office. He still lied, copied, fought after school, came in with a bruised lip from “talkin’ back” at home, but that was his lifestyle. Nothing was going to change that, but he was going to pass this year, much to his teacher’s relief. And I loved Bobby. I was a pushover for his tough, sinewy survival techniques, his charm as a raconteur, his capacity for delight (he was in heaven for three straight days when the circus was in town), and his occasional unexpected openness.

  “Do you have a best thing, Bobby?” To my surprise, Bobby’s face turned deep red, but he nodded and came up close to whisper to me.

  “Don’t tell nobody. But the crossing guard kissed me today.”

  “Mrs. Renato?”

  Bobby nodded.

  I smiled at him. “She’s nice, Bobby. You’re lucky.” Mrs. Renato was fat, fifty, and friendly. She knew better than most psychiatrists what these kids needed. I was always caught by surprise by how what seemed a tiny gesture was a treasure to be secretly cherished in School 23.

  Harry lugged a suitcase in to show me the matches his father had brought him from bars across the country. His father didn’t live at home anymore. He was evidently a strange, violent man with a drinking problem. Harry told of session after session when his father had tossed the landlord down the stairs and broken his ribs, or thrown knives across the kitchen at his mother. They lived apart now, Harry at home with his mother and two sisters. But his father still came to visit and when his car pulled up outside, it was Harry’s job to hide the liquor behind the attic fan and then run before his dad could make him tell where he’d hidden it. Still, he loved his father and treasured each memento that he brought him.

  Maureen was writing poetry. All through April and now into May, poems poured out of Maureen. No stories or illustrations for her. Instead she wrote sad, wistful little verses.

  I used to like jelly,

  But now I don’t.

  I used to like bubbles,

  But now I don’t

  Because what does it matter.

  She was a strange, unhappy little girl. Part of her seemed an old woman burdened with care, resigned to trouble, another part of her was three years old. One day in the middle of May she asked if she could stand on a chair. I agreed and held her hand to steady her as she climbed up. Once there she took a flying leap, twined her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist, and begged me to carry her to her classroom.

  “We’d look pretty silly to the other kids, wouldn’t we?” I asked, still holding her.

  “Don’t care. Don’t care,” Maureen wailed.

  We compromised with once around the room and as far as the door.

  The next day Maureen told me calmly that she was “finding solutions to her problems.” She said she knew she wanted too much attention, but she was “working it out by writing,” she said, as she smoothed her skirt.
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br />   Louisa Mae, Bobby, Harry, Maureen. I had only vignettes of their lives. But Luke I knew.

  On his birthday his mother and Chuck gave him six ducks. They got them cheap, Luke said, ’cause they were left over from Easter and the pet store wanted to get rid of them. Luke named them Jimmy, Jesus, Patrick, Speedy Gonzales, Road Runner, and Louisa Mae.

  “Louisa Mae?”

  “Yeah. ’Member her? That little black kid that used to live across the street.”

  “I remember,” I said.

  “You ever hear about what happened to her?”

  “No, Luke. I never did.”

  “I didn’t think so. But this one little ole duck just kinda reminded me of her.”

  I silently blessed Luke for remembering.

  A few days later Luke reported that all the ducks were dead. He had buried each one in a separate box out in the field near the brook that he crossed on his shortcut. We went out to look at their graves. Crosses made of two sticks marked each grave.

  Luke and I sat quietly in the field. The grass was still wet and the early morning sun shimmered in each drop, turning the field grass into diamonds. I touched a blade with my finger and the drop disappeared and diamonds vanished, leaving only grass.

  I looked at Luke. He was up, moving around, collecting a few black-eyed Susans, laying them on the graves. It was more than a year now since he had first brought me here. A lot had happened in a year. And now it was almost over. I couldn’t come back again next year. I had to get a job. That’s what going to college had been all about. There would be no point to becoming accredited if I continued to volunteer, but how could I leave Luke? Why was leaving always the hardest part?

  Luke sat down beside me and sliced a piece of field grass down the middle with his thumbnail, put it to his lips, and blew a long, loud whistle.

  “You know what, Mary? Don’t tell my mother, but they shouldn’t never have bought those ducks.”

  I nodded. I had thought so at the time, but hadn’t wanted to spoil his pleasure.