by Torey Hayden
Honestly, I didn’t know what to do with Ladbrooke in such situations. In the classroom she was nowhere near as antagonistic as she was in public. Certainly her defensiveness remained a huge problem for us, but it was fairly superficial. Once reassured, she usually relaxed the bristly guardedness and became tolerable again, but in public, absolutely nothing seemed to reassure her.
Ladbrooke’s other major shortcoming was her poor verbal ability. What I had initially mistaken for a nervous reaction, I soon discovered was a fundamental part of Ladbrooke’s character. Even in the best of moments, she was a taciturn person. There was none of the pleasant chitchat I was accustomed to in my relationships, particularly with other women. There was none of the quiet sharing of thoughts and feelings which usually accompanied familiarity. Instead, we would often spend the entire ninety minutes of prep time after school without exchanging more than a handful of words.
While obviously a good part of Ladbrooke’s silence was her particular personality, I also suspected some of it sprang from genuine inarticulateness. When she did talk, even in relaxed and familiar circumstances, Ladbrooke seldom expressed herself well. She had a poor speaking vocabulary for someone of her apparent intelligence. Indeed, in most instances, she didn’t seem to command many more words than Shamie did. And she could be quirkily unfluent. Quite often she would grind to a halt right in the middle of a conversation, or she’d come up with peculiar responses which, while close to the subject at hand, were strangely out of context. These had a most disconcerting effect, because while they sounded like non sequiturs on one hand, they seemed more like Freudian slips on the other. And on a few occasions, she said things that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. The words would be transposed or completely incorrect, and I’d be left baffled, yet Ladbrooke never heard them. When I kept asking her what she meant, she seemed to feel I was playing a poor joke on her.
But, in spite of everything, we did manage to survive one another. Loath as I was to admit it, Carolyn had been right. Ladbrooke, weighted under all her emotional baggage, had more in common with the children than with me. Good sense told me on more than one occasion to move her on, and I probably should have, but I didn’t. I’d gained what I needed most: a committed, hardworking aide, and I let that justify my actions. The truth, however, was that she had the same compelling impact on me the kids did. By the end of the first month, I was hooked. If she’d left us then, I would have missed her.
The next Monday got off to the kind of start only Mondays seem to be capable of. The hot water in my apartment gave out mid-shower, leaving me to finish washing the shampoo from my hair with cold water. The zipper on my jeans broke, and I hadn’t been to the laundromat yet that week. On the way to school my aging Fiat expired with a shudder in the middle of a five-way intersection, causing me to come struggling into the classroom only minutes before the children.
Dirkie, Leslie and Mariana all came at the usual time, but the other three did not. We waited for them, because I couldn’t imagine all three were ill at once, but Mariana grew restless and Dirkie grew tiresome, so I finally collected everyone together and we had morning discussion. Just as we were finishing, there was a terrible noise from Leslie’s direction. Worse followed, as diarrhea came out around the cuffs of her disposable diapers and all down her legs. Ladbrooke squawked in surprise and snatched Leslie up to make a run for the girls’ rest room.
In the midst of the excitement that followed, Geraldine, Shemona and Shamie arrived. I was in the back of the room washing off the chair. Dirkie was hooting from under the table. Mariana was pounding on the top of it, using two rulers as drumsticks. Leslie had begun throwing clean disposable diapers out of their box and onto the floor. Ladbrooke was scurrying back and forth, trying to distract Leslie, trying to reorient the others, trying to tell me that Leslie had been just fine before school or else she wouldn’t have let her come.
Geraldine walked up to me. “You know why we’re late, Miss? Our pussy got killed right out in the street, while we were getting into the car. Zoom comes this car. Bang, right on our pussy.”
I glanced quickly over my shoulder in the direction of the others. Shemona was putting her coat away.
“Where’s Shamie?” I asked.
“Over by the door. He won’t come in. He’s crying,” Geraldine replied.
“Shamie?” I called. Drying my hands on my jeans, I went to find him.
He was just inside the door. Hands over his face, he leaned against the wall.
“I’m so sorry, lovey. Geraldine’s just told me.” I put my arms around him and drew him close to me.
“Why did it have to happen?”
Beyond us, I could hear chaos. Mariana was relating Leslie’s accident in loud, graphic detail. Dirkie was hooting and clapping, and from the sound of it, leaping up on the table.
“Why did he have to do that?” Shamie wailed. “Of all the stupid places for him to go. We live practically in the country. He had all that nice field next to the house. Why did he have to go in the road?”
“Torey?” Mariana shouted. “Leslie’s just gone poopy again. It’s all over her dress. Come quick!”
“Poopty-doopty-poop!” Dirkie shouted, careening around the corner of the shelves to where Shamie and I were standing. “Poopy! Poopyface!”
This was hardly the atmosphere for giving comfort to the grieving. I gave Shamie one last hug and let go of him. “Stay here a minute, sweetheart. Let me get things settled.”
Back around the corner, I found Ladbrooke struggling unsuccessfully to bring about order. Leslie had made a horrific mess. Mariana was up on the radiator, dancing in a provocative manner and rubbing her fingers enthusiastically between her legs. Shemona had her hands clamped over her ears. Dirkie swirled around us like a dervish. Only Geraldine, looking stunned, was in her chair.
“Take Shamie out,” I said to Ladbrooke, as I caught hold of Dirkie and shoved him into his seat. “Take him down to the teachers’ lounge until he’s feeling better.”
Ladbrooke looked alarmed.
“He just needs a good cry. And this certainly is no place for him.”
“What’ll I say to him?”
“Anything,” I replied, and put a hand on her shoulder to encourage her in the right direction.
“But what?” There was a note of agitation creeping into her voice. “I’ll stay here, Torey, okay? You go.”
“I need to be here. Just take him down to the lounge. No big deal.”
She did not move from my side.
I was beginning to feel a bit frantic myself. The noise level was deafening. The smell in the room was overpowering. We couldn’t stand here talking as if it were Sunday afternoon.
“Look, Lad, don’t worry about this so much. Just do it. He’s too concerned with how much he hurts to listen to your actual words. Little, kind, caring noises will be enough. Just duck.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“I can’t.”
I dug into my pocket for a couple of quarters. “Here. Buy him a Coke.”
“What?”
“Buy him a bloody Coke. Take him down there and buy him a Coke and don’t worry about saying anything to him. Just get him out of this bedlam.” Taking her hand, I slapped the quarters into it and left before she could protest further.
Shamie and Ladbrooke managed. By the time they returned, about twenty minutes later, I had the class more or less sorted out, and everyone was at the table working. Shamie was fairly composed. He’d had the Coke, which had pleased him, and he’d had Ladbrooke’s undivided attention, which, as I’d assumed, had pleased him even more.
Unfortunately, it was just one of those days. Things refused to stay quiet for any length of time. Shemona, too, was upset by their cat’s demise and spent much of the day hiding from us. The remaining time, she covered bits of paper with harsh, heavy crayon strokes. Any effort on my part to comfort her was met with angry snarling. Of the three children, only Geraldine seemed unfazed by th
e cat’s death. I’ve seen people dead, she told me, why should seeing a dead cat bother me?
At lunchtime Dirkie got into a fight with one of the lunch aides and was sent back to the room to finish his meal with Ladbrooke and me, which ruined ours. In the early afternoon, Mariana tipped two jars of mixed tempera paints over Geraldine in what Mariana maintained was a simple accident. At afternoon recess, Shemona fell off the swing and cut her lip. And there was a slip waiting in my box in the office saying that the garage had phoned about my car. I rang back to discover it needed repairs that I could ill afford.
My mood deteriorated progressively as the day went on, and I was feeling absolutely grim by 3:30. On top of everything else, I had a particularly boring meeting coming up at a nearby school. After taking the children down to their rides, I had to return to the room for my belongings and then hightail it over to the other school on foot.
Upstairs, I found Ladbrooke hard at work, stapling dittoed worksheets into packets. “I’ve got to leave right away,” I said. “It’s going to take me that long to walk over to Millington. Can you lock up all right?”
“Could I give you a ride?”
“No, it’s okay. The walk’ll probably do me good.”
Ladbrooke went back to her stapling. I noticed her hands were shaking, and it was making getting the papers together evenly a harder task.
I had seen Ladbrooke’s hands shake on other occasions. True to her word, she had been sober with us every day, but I had no idea how much drinking she was doing otherwise. Feeling as out-of-sorts as I did just then, the thought that she was not controlling the problem irritated me.
“You ought to get help with that,” I said. She looked around, not sure what I was talking about. “It’s not working out, is it? You really should see a doctor or something.”
Realization dawned on her, and she jerked her hands back out of sight. “Look,” she said, “I’m coping. You don’t want me to drink in here, I’m not drinking, am I? Okay? Don’t get on me about it. I’m coping.”
There was sudden silence. Momentarily overcome with the relief of making someone else as miserable as I was feeling, I turned away to get my things.
“Look, Torey,” she said, “I’m coping.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, not bothering to look over. When I didn’t turn to acknowledge her, she flung down the stapler noisily against the table. Storming past me, she left the room. Bang went the door. Bang went my moment of wicked relief. Bang went my sense of self-righteous superiority.
Realizing that I had no alternative but to apologize, I went to find Ladbrooke. She was in the girls’ rest room, standing in front of one of the sinks, wiping tears off her face with a paper towel.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was stupid back there.”
She bristled. I had no intention of coming closer; I knew better. But she moved a step away from me, just to make certain.
“It’s been a lousy day. I know that doesn’t really excuse me, but it’s been bloody atrocious, and I’ve ended up taking it out on you. I’m really sorry.”
“Well, you’re right. I can’t do this. I’m not coping.”
“Oh, you’re coping just fine. I wasn’t even thinking, when I said that. I was just being stupid, that’s all.”
She lowered her head. Her hair, which had been braided back into one long plait, was working loose, and long strands fell forward to obscure much of her face from me. “I can’t do this job. It isn’t working out,” she said softly.
“Don’t talk like that, Lad. I’ve been rude, and you’re justifiably upset. It has nothing to do with your work.”
“I can’t do what you expect of me. I can’t get in there and do what you do. What do I know about telling some kid his cat’s gone to heaven? I couldn’t even put my arm around him.”
“I was probably wrong to force you into that situation,” I said. “I just needed help badly at that moment and didn’t know what else to do.”
“You can do it!” she cried angrily. “You just go up to him, to any of them, and hug them. Christ almighty, you can even hug me. I sat there for ten fucking minutes trying to make my arm go around him. It was like it wasn’t even part of my own body, like it had a mind of its own. I couldn’t do it. Here’s this poor little boy, sobbing his heart out, and I just sat there, having an argument with my fucking arm.” She whipped another paper towel from the dispenser and pressed it to her face. And she began to cry. She’d been teary all along, but now she cried in earnest, head down, one hand up to her face. Like Shemona, she made almost no noise.
I stood, two sinks away, and studied my rather grubby hands.
“Why do you make me cry so much?” she muttered bitterly, and took down another towel to wipe her face. “I’ve cried more since I’ve known you than I’ve cried in all the rest of my life put together. I just look at you and I cry.”
I smiled in spite of myself.
“It’s not funny.”
“I’m not laughing at you, Lad. But that’s a heck of a comment on my character.”
“It’s not funny. I hate crying. It makes me feel so helpless.”
“Yes, me too.”
Silence.
“Do you really feel like you want to quit?” I asked.
“No,” she said quietly. “Yes. No.”
I smiled slightly. “Not quite sure?”
She shrugged.
“I think you’ve been doing really well. Maybe I haven’t said it as much as I should have. I just assumed you knew, because it’s so obvious. Considering that you’ve never done anything like this before, you’re really quite remarkable. I’d be unhappy if you left us now.”
Silence again. Ladbrooke, looking down, discovered a hair caught in the band of her watch. She pulled it out, straightened it to its fall length and stared at it, appearing momentarily mesmerized. Then she dropped it and watched it fall into the sink.
“I haven’t had a drink since I started in here,” she said softly. “I don’t want to go to AA. All that spilling your guts to a room full of strangers, that’s not my thing. So I thought I’d just prove to everybody that I can stop.”
I studied her profile. “Has it been hard?”
She nodded.
A pregnant pause came.
“I’m not being quite truthful,” she said then, her voice low. “I haven’t had a drink during the week since I started in here, but I haven’t quite completely stopped. I’ve been trying, but I did have a drink over the weekend. I didn’t get drunk, but I did have a little drink. I managed to stop it before it got worse. I went over and poured the whole rest of the bottle down the sink to stop myself. But it was a hard weekend. I needed a drink.”
Raising her head, Ladbrooke looked at her reflection in the mirror above the sink. She studied it a long time. “When it gets hard, like it did then, I think about the kids. I think about what Shemona and Geraldine have gone through. Or Dirkie and all those terrible things that were done to him when he was little.” Ladbrooke continued to regard her image. “I want to be like them. Strong.”
I smiled gently. “You already are. But I think you’re just expecting a little too much of yourself too soon.”
Lowering her head, she shook it.
“You’re expecting to be me, Ladbrooke. You’re expecting to have naturally what it’s taken me about ten years to acquire. You’re expecting this to be easy, when no one ever said it would be.”
Silence returned.
Ladbrooke opened both taps on the sink and washed her hands. She splashed cold water on her face.
“I’ve got a headache,” I said. “You want to go get something to eat with me?”
“You’re going to be horribly late to that meeting.”
“I’m going to miss that meeting. Or rather, I won’t miss it—believe me.” I smiled. “Why don’t we go get a sandwich? Maybe at that place over on Second Avenue. Then afterward, you can drop me off at the Fiat garage.”
Thoughtful a moment, Ladbrooke looked back a
t her reflection in the mirror; then her lips slowly quirked up in the hint of a smile. She looked over and nodded. “Okay.”
Chapter 12
A little unvarnished nepotism was at work in creating the Nativity play. By Friday, Shamie and Geraldine had finished the script and had automatically assigned the best parts, those of Joseph and Mary, to themselves. Shemona was a little harder to accommodate. They clearly wanted her to be Angel of the Lord, but because she wouldn’t speak, the part had to go to Mariana. Shemona, they decided, would be a shepherd. Dirkie was cast in two parts, as the innkeeper and a Wise Man. This latter assignment even tickled Ladbrooke, and she had to put a hand up to smother a giggle. Leslie got to be the zoo, playing a sheep in the fields with Shemona and a cow in the stable with Joseph and Mary.
Friday afternoon was devoted to the first rehearsal. Shamie had carefully written out all the parts on little slips of paper and gave them out to each child with much fanfare. We shoved the table back as best we could to make the center of the room into a stage. Geraldine and Shamie were obviously old hands at this business, because they knew precisely what props were needed and where to put them. Shemona, too, was involved serving as a gofer to the other two. In her usual telepathic manner, she responded to her sister and cousin, finding and fetching various things they needed to set the stage. One of the art boxes was emptied and set in the middle to become a manger. A chair served as the location of the inn. The pillows at the back of the room became the Judean hills.
Geraldine went to the toy cupboard and took out a well-played-with, unclothed doll and wrapped it up in a rather grubby receiving blanket. She laid it carefully in the cardboard box. “This is going to be Baby Jesus,” she said to us. “And this is His manger. On the day we give the play, I think we ought to make it look nicer. We can maybe get some real straw.”