by Torey Hayden
“Don’t you miss this?” Jules asked, looking across the table at me.
I was uncertain what “this” referred to, whether he meant the theater, life at the clinic, or perhaps simply the cup of well-brewed, good-quality coffee taken in civilized circumstances.
I had to answer yes to all three counts, because I realized there was much I did miss from my old life. On the other hand, I also had to answer no. In the six weeks I’d been back, I was surprised to find myself increasingly uncomfortable at the clinic. I became aware of feeling a quiet resentment toward the patients for the way they could afford to pay for such good treatment, could capture such high-quality professionals with their pocketbooks, and thus, automatically have a better chance of getting over their problems than those less financially fortunate. It brought back to me memories of my early teaching experiences, the only time I’d taught in a regular classroom. I’d had a room full of first-graders, nice, clean kids from a quiet suburb in a midwestern town, and I remembered looking at them and thinking how they never knew they had it so good, and I’d resented them for that ignorance. Realizing such an attitude did no one any good, I left regular education permanently after that year and went on to the special classroom. Now, as this summer had passed, I’d become cognizant of feeling the same sense of resentment and realized it was this, more than anything else, that had driven me from the clinic.
Consequently, when I returned to Pecking at the end of August, it was with positive feelings toward the new year. The move from the Sandry Clinic had been so sudden and impulsive that I’d remained uneasy about it. Why would anyone choose to abandon the city and the clinic for the likes of life in Pecking? Not sure of the answer, I don’t think I had wholeheartedly abandoned it. Five months of living out of packing boxes had reassured me it was just temporary, that I could go as easily as I had come. However, I returned to Pecking more at peace. Impulsive and atypical as the decision may have seemed, for me it was right.
Chapter Twelve
Reuben was the first to arrive. From the window I saw his mother’s car pull up and Reuben hopped out, clutching his lunchbox and something else I couldn’t make out from that distance. He slammed the car door and made a bee-line for the school doors, ignoring the other children on the playground, who were waiting for the bell to ring. I could hear him thundering up the stairs.
“Good morning, Reuben,” I said as he burst into the classroom.
“Good morning, Reuben,” he muttered and searched for his old place at the table.
“Let’s put your sweater on your hook in the cloakroom. You can put your lunchbox on the shelf. And what’s that you’re carrying?”
He appeared to be clutching the top half of a cookie jar. It was in the shape of a Dutch girl, but all we had was her head, her bust, and her arms placed firmly on her hips, which then flared into nothingness.
Reuben clasped the Dutch girl to him as if I might snatch her away.
“Is this a new friend of yours?” I inquired.
“A friend of yours?” he echoed and turned away, still tightly holding the cookie jar girl.
“It’s pottery, Reuben. That’s a type of glass. That means it’ll break if you drop it. Perhaps we’d better leave it with your lunchbox. To be safe.”
But off he went, carrying the lid into the classroom.
Philip arrived next, bursting into the classroom and running toward me at breakneck speed. A huge grin spread over his face, and he leaped up into my arms with such gusto that I staggered backward.
“Hey ho, Phil, good to see you. How was your summer? Good?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “Nhhaaaahhh, haaahh,” he breathed into my face.
“Did you enjoy camp?”
Another nod and another breathy “Haah.”
Then came Jeremiah, looking a little shoddier than in the spring, with his T-shirt dirty and his jeans clearly outgrown. Jeremiah had shot up. He’d been squat and muscular previously, but over the summer he had gone lean and leggy.
“Hi, Jeremiah. Welcome back.”
Finding his old seat at the table, he dropped into it moodily. “Man, lady, what makes you think I want to be in this fucking place, looking at your fucking face?”
Next through the door was my new boy, Brucie. Brucie was six and a half, a short, round boy with a thick thatch of white-blond hair and a cherubic face.
“Oh, look, Brucie!” his mother cried cheerfully, as they came in. “Look at this nice classroom! Oh, you are going to be happy here. And look! Here is your nice teacher.”
I knelt down. “Hello, Brucie. My name is Torey.”
“Will you say hello, Brucie? Come now, do try for Mommy. Say hello to your nice teacher. Isn’t she nice? See her pretty hair? See her nice blue eyes? Just like Brucie has. And Brucie does like nice blue eyes, doesn’t he?” She chucked him under the chin, then turned to me and smiled warmly. “Brucie just loves blond, blue-eyed people.” Brucie, still smiling cherubically, eyed me with the savvy of Dennis the Menace.
“Brucie must have sieved food. Did Dr. Larson tell you that? Have you spoken with Mrs. Peterson about Brucie’s diet? He can’t tolerate lumps in his food. It makes him choke.”
“Yes, I’ve heard.”
“To make things easier here at the beginning, I’ve brought in a few jars of baby food. I don’t want this to be a regular practice, of course; he should have fresh food and here’s his grinder, but until you get used to it, you can use these.” She handed over a carrier bag filled with baby food. “There’s a week’s supply. Two jars at a time. He may also have applesauce or yogurt, if it’s being served, but no lumps. It makes him gag.”
She passed another parcel over. “And here are his diapers. Now, he needs to be changed at least four times a day. He suffers a terrible rash if he isn’t changed often enough, and where he was last year … well, the number of times he had that rash. And it can be completely prevented.”
Smiling politely, I took the baggage.
“Good-bye now, little love,” she said, turning to Brucie. “Say good-bye to Mommy.”
Brucie never turned his head in her direction. He was too busy taking my measure.
Then the bell rang. Jadie, still hadn’t arrived, so I stood waiting a few minutes longer, but when it became obvious she wasn’t coming, I turned to the others.
“Does this kid piss in his pants?” Jeremiah inquired, coming over to where Brucie was. “Has he really got diapers on?” Then Jeremiah peered curiously into Brucie’s face. “Hey, boog, how old are you? Don’t you think you’re a bit big for this kind of shit?”
I stifled a laugh at Jeremiah’s unintended pun and then propelled Brucie in the direction of the table.
“Don’t he talk?” Jeremiah persisted. “What is it with this class? How come I’m the only one who can talk?”
“Because you’re the only one lucky enough.”
“I ain’t lucky. Shit, man, luck don’t got nothing to do with it. You’re supposed to be able to talk. There shouldn’t have to be no luck about it.”
“There shouldn’t have to be luck about a lot of things, Jeremiah, but, in fact, that’s the way it is.”
Brucie’s grin grew less cherubic and more dumb and vacant. Once seated at the table, he started to pound on it rhythmically, as if presented with a set of bongo drums.
“Hey ho,” I said and reached over to quiet his hands. “Too much noise.”
“He don’t half know how to bug a person,” Jeremiah commented. “You didn’t do us no favors letting him in here. I don’t think he’s going to do the class a lot of good.”
We set about reestablishing ourselves in the room. Philip, Reuben, and Jeremiah located their old cubbies and examined the things left in them from the previous school year. They reclaimed favorite coat hooks, bounced again on the floor cushions, visited the animals, and then looked for old friends among the books, toys, and games. Meanwhile, I sat down with Brucie to see what sense I could make out of him.
Just after 9:45
, Mr. Tinbergen appeared at the door. He beckoned me out into the hallway. “Will you go down to Alice’s room?” he asked, when I came out.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Your Jadie is down there. Her sister is in kindergarten this year, and, well … We don’t seem to be having much success in separating them. Would you go down and see if you could get her to come up here?”
My Jadie, indeed!
Downstairs, I found the class seated on the floor around Alice and singing a lively version of “The Wheels on the Bus Go ‘Round and ‘Round.” In a far corner of the room beyond the sand table was Jadie and, behind her. Amber.
Without interrupting Alice’s activity, I went over to Jadie and her sister. “Time to come upstairs now,” I said, matter-of-factly.
The summer hadn’t changed Jadie much. Her thick, tangled mass of hair was perhaps a little longer and a little more matted, but that was all. Hunched deeply over, arms drawn up, hair spilling down, she reminded me briefly of some fairy-tale witch. Amber, cowering pale-faced and wide-eyed behind her, enhanced this image.
“I’m sure you’re ready to join the others with their song,” I said to Amber, reaching my hand across Jadie’s back.
Jadie sprang up to prevent my touching Amber and crowded her sister farther back into the corner. The music momentarily paused, and I could sense the breath-held attention of the rest of the class.
“No, Amber belongs here. This is her room and her teacher.”
The other kindergarteners watched in horrified silence as I firmly pulled Amber up over the top of Jadie and carried her across the room to Alice. Jadie scrabbled along swiftly, grasping, grabbing, finally managing to get hold of one of Amber’s feet before I could transfer her to Alice. Amber began to cry, breaking the appalled silence that surrounded us, although whether her tears were from fear of Alice or from pain at having her foot pulled, I did not know.
Then the moment Alice had hold of Amber, I spun around and grabbed Jadie. Physically lifting her off the ground, I carried her out of the room.
Once I had picked her up, Jadie didn’t struggle any further. In fact, once we were outside the kindergarten classroom, the fight seemed to go out of her entirely, and she wavered uncertainly on her feet when I set her down. The sound of music once again filtered through the door.
“She’ll be all right,” I said quietly. “I know you were just concerned. You were being a good sister. But you don’t need to worry. Mrs. Havers will take good care of Amber. And now it’s time for you to come upstairs to our room. Everyone else is already there.”
We walked up the stairs together, hand in hand, Jadie hobbling laboriously from one step to the next. As we passed the door between the hall and the cloakroom, Jadie paused.
“I used to go in there,” she said.
“Yes.”
We’d reached the classroom door, and beyond I could hear the rise and fall of Mr. Tinbergen’s voice, as he tried to get Jeremiah to stop doing something. I was momentarily distracted by it, worrying what Jeremiah might be up to, but Jadie gently tugged my hand to keep me from opening the door.
“Do you remember that?” she asked, her voice soft but insistent. “Last year? When I used to go in there?”
I nodded.
“You used to let me lock it.”
“You liked to lock it,” I replied.
“Do you remember what I used to be like then? Do you remember what I used to do?”
“You mean when we locked the doors?”
She nodded.
“Yes, I remember.”
She gazed up at me, not an easy thing to do from her doubled-over position. It meant wrenching her head to the side and peering sidelong upward, which gave her a broken, deformed appearance. “You’re not afraid of me, are you?” she asked.
“No,” I said and smiled. “You don’t frighten me.”
“I made you go away.”
I raised an eyebrow quizzically. “What do you mean?”
“That last day. I made you go away. Like I done with the other teacher. And I didn’t think you were going to come back.”
“You didn’t make me go away, Jadie. It was the end of the school year and time for summer vacation, and that’s why I went away. Now summer vacation is over, so I’ve come back again.”
“You’re strong,” Jadie murmured.
I smiled faintly, for want of a better expression.
“I knew you were strong,” she said, as she prepared to go on into the classroom. “I knew you’d come back.”
In a new school year I always reckoned on needing about eight weeks to establish control and bring the children together into a cohesive, well-functioning group. The time in the interim was one of limit setting and limit testing, of taking one another’s measure. With this group, I’d hoped the period of adjustment would be shorter, since all but Brucie were old-timers. This wasn’t the case, however. Chaos was the byword for those early weeks.
Brucie threw a real monkey wrench into the works. Previously, the old four had paired off well. Reuben and Philip functioned on much the same level, while Jadie and Jeremiah functioned on another. But God alone knew where Brucie was. Most of the time he was like a great big baby, willing to lie on the floor until physically repositioned, never making any effort to do things for himself. This made him appear both much younger and much less capable than either Reuben or Philip. It also made him a great deal of work. On the other hand, he had some truly inspired moments of activity. All that time flopped about in a heap had not been wasted; Brucie had unusual savvy about what made others tick, no doubt acquired from so much observation, and his sole joy appeared to come from disrupting relationships. In fact, my gut feeling about Brucie was that he had devoted so much effort to manipulating those around him that he’d had no time left over for normal development.
As a consequence, Brucie wreaked havoc in the classroom during those early weeks, in many respects, simply because of the amount of time he required from me, which was enormous. Feeding him, changing his diapers, dragging him physically from one place to another would have been time consuming enough on their own; encouraging him to do any of these things for himself could easily absorb the entire day. Worse was what he did to the other children. In nasty, small ways he pitted Philip against Reuben, Jadie against Philip, and Jeremiah against everybody. Indeed, Jeremiah suffered most. Impulsive, distractible, and quick to temper, Jeremiah fell and fell again for Brucie’s subtle manipulations, and no amount of forewarning got through to him in time. The quiet corner did a roaring trade. The classroom was seldom quiet and never peaceful.
During this period, I didn’t have much chance to see Jadie alone. Most of her afternoons after school were spent on the playground with Amber. I knew, because I often saw them from the classroom window as they played on the swings. For me, the afternoons in those early weeks seemed to be one long round of staff meetings, in-service training, and individual conferences, making me not very accessible anyway; and the afternoons I did have free, I spent trying desperately to plan for a more successful day than the one I’d just survived. In any case, Jadie gave little indication of wanting to see me. Like the other pupils, she simply came and went with the bells.
Summer left us behind, and the first breath of winter could be felt in the air. Even in the best of years, autumn was a short season across this broad expanse of plains, a brilliant pause between the dry, brown heat of August and the all-too-soon winter whiteness; but this particular year, we had virtually no fall whatsoever. September withered us with eighty-degree heat well into the middle of the month, then came a wet and windy weekend, a frost, and the leaves died on the trees, turning brown and falling within the space of ten days. The wind backed to the north, and the first arctic air mass moved southward. We were dusted with snow by the beginning of October.
It was a gray, overcast afternoon, and I was at the table in the classroom, putting the next day’s work into the children’s folders, when I heard a noise in the hallway. Lo
oking up, I saw Jadie peering in through the window in the classroom door. The unlit hallway had been plunged into premature darkness by the weather, making Jadie, who was standing a bit back from the window, indistinct.
I beckoned to her, but she didn’t respond. Finally, I rose and went to the door. “Do you want to come in?”
She was heavily dressed against the weather, her features disappearing under hat and muffler.
“Do you want to come in?” I asked again.
Nodding slightly, she entered the classroom.
“I’m just getting things ready for tomorrow,” I said and reseated myself at the table.
Slowly, laboriously, she began removing her outer clothing. Piece by piece she laid it on the chair next to her. Finally down to her cardigan and ratty little cotton dress, she stopped. Then she stood. A minute, two minutes passed in complete and motionless silence.
“Would you like to sit down?” I asked.
Slowly, she drew out the chair opposite and then sat. Again, complete silence.
“How are things going?” I asked, trying to keep my tone pleasant and conversational.
There was no answer.
“Are things going all right for you?”
Nothing.
“Amber? How’s Amber liking school?”
Still nothing.
“And Sapphire? I’ll bet Sapphire’s getting big. How old is she now? Can she walk yet?”
I looked over to see Jadie shrunk down and hunched over almost to a point of having her face on the tabletop. Silence thumped down around us like a wet blanket.
“You know what? I’ve still got that key. If we went into the cloakroom, we could lock the door,” I suggested.
Although she didn’t look up, I saw Jadie’s shoulders relax slightly.
“Let’s go in there. It’s cozier. Besides, I think I’ve got things to do at my desk that I’d forgotten about.”
Even after we’d gone into the cloakroom and I’d locked both doors, Jadie remained tense. Sitting down on the right-hand bench, she slumped forward until she was nearly doubled over, her arms clutched around her middle like someone with a bad stomachache. Not wanting to focus too directly on her, I sought something to occupy myself with at the desk.