Child's Play

by Jones, Merry;

  “Maybe not. But she posted bail and she’s been released. So be sure you keep your distance.”

  I was supposed to keep my distance?

  “Anyway, you’d better run along. The bell’s about to ring. After yesterday’s snafu, you want to be there for your class.”

  I clenched my jaw. Decided not to reply. Went to my classroom to find a pile of get well cards on my desk. The substitute had told the children to make them, but each one was heartfelt and sincere. Pictures of flowers, dogs, cats, and sunshine. Wishes for my health. I gathered them together, held them against my chest. Blinked away a tear.

  When the class filed in, I thanked them with a choked voice. Then we had sharing time, where each student could tell something that happened the day before. When it was Seth’s turn, he didn’t notice. He was mumbling to his invisible friend.

  “Seth?” I called his name a second time.

  He looked startled. Some kids giggled. “Seth talks to himself,” someone said. More giggling.

  I scowled at the gigglers, quieting them. “Do you have something to share, Seth?” I asked.

  Seth’s eyes darted back and forth, then down. He shook his head.

  We moved on to Bryan and then to Bethany. Seth went back to his murmured conversation. It continued through arithmetic. It continued even when other children told him to be quiet and tattled on him, complaining, “Mrs. Harrison, Seth’s whispering out loud. I can’t think.”

  I knew Seth was having a hard time, having been taken from his home and moved to a foster family. I didn’t want to add pressure by telling him to be quiet. Instead, I told the children to concentrate on their own work, never mind about other students. But at recess, I asked Seth to stop and talk to me before he went out. He was so focused on his whispered conversation that he didn’t hear me the first time. I had to repeat myself twice more.

  He stood beside my desk looking healthier than he had just days before. His bruises looked fainter, his hair freshly washed.

  I asked how he was. He said good.

  I asked about the house where he was staying. He said it was good, too. A couple of other kids lived there. The house was big. The mom baked every day—blueberry muffins, chocolate cake. He had to make his bed, though. He picked at a fingernail while he talked. His hands were clean. He smelled like soap.

  I changed the subject. “Seth,” I said. “You haven’t been paying attention in class. You’ve been whispering.”

  He shrugged, looked at the wall.

  “Why were you whispering?”

  He shrugged. “I already told you.”

  “Tell me again?”

  “I was talking with my dad.” He shifted his weight, squirmed in his chair.

  Seth needed more than foster care. He needed a therapist. “What were you talking about?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing.”

  I waited.

  Seth scratched his leg. “Just my dad was talking about my brother.”

  About Ty? It made sense. Poor little Seth must be struggling to figure out what had happened, why his brother had killed his father.

  “I guess your dad’s pretty mad at Ty,” I said.

  “Uh-uh.” He rubbed his nose, couldn’t stay still. “Why would he be mad?”

  Seriously? Was it possible Seth didn’t know that Ty had killed their dad? Maybe the family had protected their youngest from the truth.

  “I don’t know.”

  I backpedaled. “What was your dad saying about Ty?”

  Seth’s eyebrows furrowed. He looked at his feet, crossed his arms. “I’m not sure I should tell you.”

  “I don’t think your dad would mind. After all, I’m your teacher.”

  “Yeah, but you’re like everybody else. You think Ty killed my dad, don’t you?” He faced me, watched my eyes.

  So he did know about the murder. And about Ty’s guilt. Seth watched me, deciding how much to trust me. I had to be honest with him. “Ty told the police that he killed your dad, Seth. That’s why he was sent away.” That sounded harsh. But at least I hadn’t told him that his father and imaginary friend had been an abuser. I stumbled. “But no matter what Ty did, I don’t think he meant to do anything wrong.”

  “He didn’t.”

  He didn’t? “Didn’t what?”

  “Ty didn’t do anything wrong.” He was emphatic.

  Okay. Seth was clearly twisting reality so that he could cope. I wasn’t going to argue and disrupt his way of handling the truth. Instead, I was going to ask him to tell his dad that they shouldn’t talk during school. It distracted other students and interfered with Seth’s ability to pay attention. But I didn’t have a chance.

  “Mrs. Harrison.” Seth leaned close, his voice hushed and confidential. “Ty didn’t kill my dad.”

  I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t my place to set him straight or insist that he accept the facts.

  “Everybody says he did, but he didn’t.” He watched me with solemn eyes.

  I measured my words, hoping he’d open up. “Seth, if everybody says he did, why do you think he didn’t?”

  “Because.”

  Why was I pressing him? Seth had been a baby when the murder had occurred. He didn’t know that Ty was innocent. He simply wanted him to be.

  “Because,” he started again, “my dad told me. That’s how I know.” He said it plainly, the same way he’d mentioned his foster mother’s chocolate cake. “He told me Ty didn’t do anything.”

  A shiver tickled my neck. Little Seth had created his own fantasy world where his brother wasn’t a killer and his dad was still around to talk. He looked out the window and slid off his chair, ready to go out and play, his attention span depleted.

  With gooseflesh on my arms, I sent him out to recess and sat thinking about him. Seth was overwhelmed by real life and coped by escaping into his mind. Imagine that. Seth wasn’t the only one who coped that way. I might as well have been describing myself.

  At the end of the day, Seth dawdled. The rest of the class filed out to the bus circle, but he lingered still in the cubbies, organizing his backpack.

  I was about to hurry him when Katie showed up with Trish and Maggie.

  “Katie?” I was surprised to see her.

  “Hi, Mrs. H. Seth ready?”

  She’d come for Seth, just as she had before he’d been placed in temporary foster care. I wasn’t sure what to do. Was it okay to release him to her?

  “The place he’s staying is right near Maggie’s house, where I’m staying.” Katie beamed her shiny smile. She turned to her friends. “Tell Mrs. H how convenient it is.”

  Maggie nodded. “My mom even knows Mrs. Laurence.”

  “That’s whose house Seth is staying at,” Katie explained.

  “We don’t mind taking him there,” Trish said. “Mrs. Laurence always has after-school treats laid out.”

  “She said she’s glad we can walk him back.”

  She did? Shouldn’t I have received a note? I wasn’t sure, didn’t know if there were rules. Under the terms of his temporary placement, was Seth even allowed to see his sister? How did I know that the girls would take him straight home?

  Then again, how did I know where any student went once he left school? I couldn’t know where Seth would go or with whom.

  “Seth?” Katie called. “Where is the little dweeb?”

  I knew where he was. I saw him peeking out from the cubbies, not making a sound. Was he playing some hide-and-seek game? Why wouldn’t he come out?

  “So.” I hoped I wasn’t going to upset her. “How are you doing, not staying at home?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m doing great.” Katie giggled. “It’s like Maggie and I have a sleepover every night. Popcorn and Netflix.” She beamed, squeezed Maggie’s hand.

  “I wish you could stay at my house.” Trish pouted.

  “You’ll stay with us tomorrow night, Trish. Don’t be jealous.” Katie gave her a hug, and her sleeve crept a few inches up, revealing a patch o
f thin red lines. Ink? Had she been drawing on her arm?

  “There he is!” Trish spotted Seth and darted into the cubbies to get him. Seth ducked away, ran out to the classroom, around the desks. Trish, joined by Maggie and Katie, chased him around work spaces, through the reading corner, laughing and calling his name.

  “Okay, hold it.” I moved toward them. “Girls. Stop.”

  But the girls didn’t stop. “Come on, Seth.” Katie laughed. “Come to Katie.”

  Trish came up behind him, Maggie from the side. He scooted, raced through the aisle between stations. Katie cut him off by jumping over a chair.

  “Katie!” I shouted, rushing toward Seth. “Stop. I mean it.”

  She ignored me, reached out to grab him. But Seth burst away, sprinting my way. Breathless and wide-eyed, he took cover behind me. I reached around, my hands on his shoulders, protecting him.

  The three girls stopped chasing, caught their breath, and gathered around us. They saw the fury on my face.

  “What was that?” I glowered.

  “What?” Katie’s eyebrows raised.

  “We’re just goofing.”

  “Goofing? By ganging up on him?”

  “Ganging up?” Katie looked baffled.

  “We weren’t ganging up on him,” Maggie said. “We’d never—”

  “We were just playing,” Trish agreed.

  “You were inappropriate, girls.” I sounded like a schoolteacher. Like Joyce. “You’re in my classroom, not a playground. I expect better of you.”

  “Sorry, Mrs. H.” Three voices apologized.

  “But he likes us to chase him, don’t you, Seth?” Katie smiled. She stooped and reached her arms out for him. “Come here, little bro. Show Mrs. H it was just a game.”

  Seth hesitated, then slowly went to her. Katie embraced him, tousled his hair, called him a little squirt. Stood. “Sorry if we upset you, Mrs. H. We must have looked like maniacs.”

  “Are you okay, Seth?” I knelt to ask him. “Do you want to go home with them?”

  His eyes were large and solemn, but he nodded, yes.

  Later, I realized I should have asked him that privately, not in front of his sister and her friends. But at the time, my only thoughts were of Katie. When she reached her arms for him, her sleeves had risen up her arms again, exposing not ink, but rows of thin incisions cut into her arms.

  Katie was cutting herself. No doubt about it. The cuts were of varying lengths, not exactly parallel in a cluster along her arm. No wonder she wore long sleeves, even in warm weather.

  I went to my desk, Googled “cutting” to refresh my memory about its causes. “For some kids,” a doctor wrote, “cutting is a way to control their emotional pain.”

  I held my breath. Was Katie hurting herself in order to take control of her pain? It made sense. What with her brutal father getting killed, Ty coming back from prison, her mother drinking, her little brother depending on her, and, now, her family being ripped apart, she was probably in a heap of emotional pain, even if she pretended that life was a great big pajama party.

  I scanned the rest of the article. Read that self-injury was a defense against what was going on in the cutters’ families and lives. That cutting not only subdued their emotional pain; it even caused a kind of high.

  And that cutters often had a history of sexual, physical, or verbal abuse.

  I stopped, read that part again.

  Seth had had bruises all over his body. Did Katie have them, too? Had Rose been beating both kids?

  But how? Katie was a cheerleader, physically toned. I couldn’t imagine pint-sized Rose getting the best of her in a physical struggle. And Katie wasn’t shy. If she were being abused, she wouldn’t just endure it. She’d tell someone. Her friends or her teachers. Wouldn’t she?

  I rubbed my eyes, read on. Self-injury wasn’t always a sign of abuse or emotional pain. It could also be a symptom of psychiatric conditions like borderline personality disorder, anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia. I doubted that any of that applied to Katie.

  Then again, as I logged off the computer, I kept seeing the demonic look on Katie’s face while she’d chased Seth around the room. Could she have an undiagnosed mental disorder? No, a bizarre facial expression didn’t mean she was mentally ill. She and Seth were siblings. Siblings played rough. They got wild, even mean. It was normal. The fact was that Katie was an incredibly well-adjusted kid from an incredibly messed-up family. She was cutting herself not because of some underlying mental illness, but because of overwhelming emotional pain.

  Pain, for example, caused by DHS officials barging into her house at sunrise, waking her family, making her and her little brother pack their things and go with them. Pain caused by being ripped away from her mother and brothers, being forced to leave the only home she’d ever known. That kind of pain?

  Oh God. I leaned back, covered my face. What had I done? If I hadn’t insisted that Mr. Royal call DHS, Katie would still be at home. Maybe she wouldn’t be as troubled, wouldn’t be coping by cutting herself. In trying to help Seth, had I caused even more severe problems for his family, making their lives even worse?

  I told myself that Seth, not his entire family, was my student. His well-being and ability to thrive were my concern. I couldn’t be responsible for the repercussions of protecting him.

  And yet, as I turned off the classroom lights and walked down the hall to meet Becky, I couldn’t dispel the image of Katie, pressing a razor into her skin.

  On the way to Becky’s room, though, I was distracted by shouts from the opposite direction.

  “Get out of my way. Let me see him!”

  There was no mistaking the voice. Rose Evans was back. I hurried to the main office, saw her in the waiting area, cornered like a stray dog by Mr. Royal and Stan.

  “You can’t keep me here,” Rose bellowed. “You have no right.” When she saw me, she bellowed, “There she is, the damned bitch—go get Seth. I demand to see my son!”

  “I demand you lower your voice.” Mr. Royal stood tall, his hands on his hips.

  “Seth left a while ago.” I joined them in the corner of the lobby, directed my comment to Mr. Royal, not to Rose. “His sister picked him up.”

  Rose blanched. “No, you’re lying. Katie didn’t pick him up. They separated them.”

  “Mrs. Evans, my understanding is that the Department of Human Services separated the children from you, not from each other.”

  “But he’s staying someplace else—not with Katie. So why did she take him?”

  I didn’t explain it. Didn’t want to converse with her. I looked at Mr. Royal.

  “The police are on the way,” he told me.

  “Yes, they are. This asshole called the cops.” Rose was indignant. “And guess what. They’ll set you all straight. I have every right to be here. This is public property, and I’m a citizen—”

  “Citizen or not, Mrs. Evans, you know very well that you aren’t allowed on school property because of your pattern of intolerable behavior. I explained it to you. The judge explained it to you. And so did your lawyer.”

  “Tell him, Missy. Tell him to let me see my son. I need to see him and know he’s okay.”

  Even several feet away, I smelled Rose’s stale booze breath. Half drunk, she hadn’t grasped the fact that school had ended for the day an hour ago, that Seth had gone. I repeated the information, more slowly. “He’s not here, Mrs. Evans. Katie came for him.”

  She blinked at me, then at Mr. Royal, then at Stan. “Who’s this guy?” she asked. “Why’s he looking at me like that?”

  I glanced at Stan. He hunkered over his broom with his usual vague expression, eyes aimed at the floor.

  Mr. Royal turned to me. “Can you stay with her a minute and make sure she doesn’t take off? Officer Salerno’s out patrolling the grounds. He should be back any second. I’ve already called in the complaint, so you won’t have to stick around long.”

  How could he ask me to stay with her? My c
ar was still dented from our last encounter.

  “Stan here will make sure she behaves, but I’ve got a committee meeting.” He glanced at the wall clock. Didn’t wait for an answer. “Thanks so very, Mrs. Harrison. Much appreciated.” He scooted away.

  I looked down the hall toward Becky’s classroom. She must be wondering what was keeping me. I took out my cell and called to explain. She didn’t pick up, must have stepped out. Meantime, Stan ushered Rose to a bench against a lobby wall. I sat on an adjacent bench a few feet away, beside the American flag.

  We waited. I watched the double doors, wished for cops to appear.

  “Why is everyone so awful to me? You have no idea how hard my life is.” Rose shook her head, gazed across the lobby. “It’s hell. Pure hell.”

  I looked up at Stan. Backlit by the door and windows, he appeared in silhouette. Oh my God. I froze. Recalled the shadowy figure looming over me in the night. Could it have been Stan? Had Stan raped me? I opened my mouth but didn’t know what to say. Should I just ask him? Would he finally look at me? Would he answer? I squinted, shutting out the glare surrounding him. Saw his emotionless face, his glossy, unreadable eyes. He didn’t return my gaze, wouldn’t meet my eyes. Was that out of habit or of guilt? Was he afraid I’d recognize him?

  Rose went on whimpering and complaining. But I kept watching Stan, looking for subtle differences in his behavior, not sure what they would be. How would a rapist act around his victim? A smug smile? A smarmy smirk? A guilty blush? A threatening leer? Stan did none of that. His face, as usual, was expressionless. He stood at his post like a human guard dog, eyes averted. I told myself that my rapist hadn’t been Stan. The sunlight framing him had simply made him look like my shadow man. But my stomach twisted, and my heart banged a warning. After all, what did I know about Stan? I’d worked at Logan for seven years, and he’d been there all that time. Yet, I knew nothing about him. Not whether or not he was married or single. Not if he had kids. Not where he lived. Not if he was a fan of the Eagles or liked cheesesteaks. All I knew was that he was the guy to call when a kid threw up. He emptied trash bins, washed floors and blackboards. He did odd jobs.