“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay,” said Miss House.
Now, at least, she had some inkling why Maurice was the way he was. All of the boys in her special ed class had their outbursts and bad moments, but Maurice would get angrier than any of them. In his darkest moods he would just shut down and drift to the back of the classroom, disappearing into himself. At least now there was some context for Maurice’s behavior. After Darcella’s disruptive visit, Maurice stopped coming to school. He missed four days in a row. Miss House asked the principal for permission to visit his home and find out where he was. She went to the Bryant Hotel and saw what I had seen. It was a more deplorable situation than she could have imagined. Then she saw Maurice come to the door, and when he saw her, his face—like hers—registered shock. She could not believe what she was seeing; he could not believe she had come to see it.
While she spoke to Maurice’s grandmother, Maurice cowered behind a bedsheet strung across the room. Miss House knew he was embarrassed. She stood next to Grandma Rose and told her Maurice hadn’t been to school in four days.
“Is he in trouble?” Rose asked. “He been suspended?”
“No, he’s not in trouble,” Miss House said. “He’s just been absent.”
“He’s a good boy,” Rose said. “A very good boy. And you’re a good woman for lookin’ out for him. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.”
Before she left, Miss House said good-bye to Maurice.
She looked him in the eyes and said, “You need to come back to school.”
And he did.
After that, Miss House paid a little extra attention to Maurice. She figured out what it was that set him off—chaos, disorder, disruptions. His life at home was shockingly unstable, and more than anything he needed a little peace and quiet. Her classroom had two carrels in the back for reading, and when things got hectic, she’d have him go back and sit in a carrel. He loved sitting there by himself; he got all his work done that way. Maurice soon figured out Miss House was in his corner, and to him her support was like a life preserver. One day after school, he followed Miss House as she got on a subway and went to a bank in midtown. She finally spotted him lingering in the back as she stood in line.
“What are you doing here, Maurice?”
“I got nothing to do,” he said, “so I just came along with you.”
She bought him a hot dog and told him he had to go home.
Her kindness helped, but Maurice’s troubles did not just disappear. He was still always late in the mornings, and much of the time he seemed exhausted—too tired to focus. His grades were bad, and he didn’t seem to care in the least about making them better. His clothes were still dirty, and he still smelled bad. And he still fought with the boys who made fun of him. The only thing that gave Miss House hope were tiny signs of progress—Maurice was getting a little better at speaking in front of the class, and he was fighting a little bit less.
She also found hope in something she’d hear Maurice say once in a while. Usually, he shared nothing about his personal life with other students, or with her. But every now and then he would tell her something, and he would say it with pride.
“I went to Miss Laura’s house last night.”
When Maurice asked me to come to his school, I asked, “What about your mother? Shouldn’t she go with you?”
“Nah,” he said. “She’s not gonna go.”
“Maurice, I’m happy to go with you, but you need to tell your mother about it and ask her if she can go. If she can’t, I’ll go.”
My brief encounter with Darcella led me to think he was probably right: she wasn’t interested in going. Even so, I didn’t want him to bypass her altogether. She was his mother, and I knew that he loved her, in the unconditional way children love their parents. I never wanted to do or say anything that would get in the way of that. Growing up, I was never allowed to speak badly of my father, no matter how horrible his behavior. I would start to say something, and my mother would cut me off and sternly warn me never to say it again. “But you do!” I’d implore. “You say bad things.”
“I am his wife and I can,” she said. “He is your father; don’t ever forget that.”
Maurice agreed to ask his mother and to tell her I would go if she couldn’t. We had our dinner, cleared the table, and baked our cookies. Afterward Maurice asked, “Miss Laura, when you come to my school, are you gonna wear your same work clothes?”
I’d been meeting him right after work, so he was used to seeing me in my stylish dresses and skirts and sweaters.
“I guess I could come home and change first,” I said.
“No,” he said. “I want you to wear your work clothes. You always look so classy.”
The Wednesday of the parent-teacher meeting, I met Maurice in my garage, and we drove down to I.S. 131. It was a couple of big, drab buildings on Hester Street; one of the wings was curved, sort of like a low-rent Guggenheim. I was surprised to see that I felt nervous. I wanted to make a good impression on Maurice’s teachers. We walked into his classroom, where Miss House was waiting.
“Hi, I’m Laura Schroff. It’s so nice to meet you,”
Miss House shook my hand and said, “It’s very nice to meet you, too. I’ve heard so much about you from Maurice.” Her greeting was warm, but I could tell she was holding back, sizing me up. She had to be curious about who I was and why I had taken this role in Maurice’s life.
“Maurice, why don’t you take a walk around,” she said. “I’d like to speak to Miss Schroff privately.”
Maurice looked panicked and froze in his tracks. He didn’t want to go. Two months earlier, I wouldn’t have been able to decipher his reaction, but now I knew exactly what he was thinking.
He was worried Miss House was going to tell me what a bad student he was and how many fights he got into and why it wasn’t safe for me to spend time with him.
He was terrified he was going to lose what we had.
I looked at Maurice and put my hand on his shoulder. I didn’t say anything; I just looked at him. Words were not going to convey what I needed him to know. I needed him to know I would never walk out on him.
I needed him to believe I wasn’t going away.
I smiled, gave him a little wink, and nodded. His face relaxed and he smiled back at me.
He believed me.
Maurice went into the hallway, and Miss House and I sat in two undersized chairs.
“You should know that Maurice is very proud of you,” she said. “He speaks about you often.”
“I’m very, very proud of him,” I said. “He’s such a special boy.”
“How in the world did you two meet?”
I told her our story, about our dinners on Monday, about my visit to the Bryant, and about how I felt Maurice had finally come to trust me.
“I hope I am making a difference in his life,” I said.
“You are,” Miss House told me. “Maurice is not an easy child to control. He’s always late, if he decides to show up at all. And he’s always getting into fights. He shows enormous anger at times, but he’s smart and sweet, and lately he hasn’t been fighting quite as much.”
I could tell Miss House cared about Maurice. I could tell she liked him. She had a classroom full of kids whose lives were complicated, each with his or her own fears and insecurities, and she cared deeply for them all. But she could see that Maurice’s circumstances were worse than most, and, instead of turning her back on him, she turned to face him head-on. She tried to make a difference. I’m sure she wasn’t making very much money, but that didn’t matter—she was still determined not to let this child fall through the cracks.
“Miss Schroff, I must say something to you,” she said, leaning forward. “Children like Maurice are always disappointed in life. Every day someone else lets them down. I hope you realize you can’t just come in and out of his life. If you are going to be there for him, you have to really be there for him.”<
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Miss House looked me square in the eyes.
“You cannot just wake up one day and abandon this boy.”
I had only known Maurice a couple of months at that point, but I already knew he would be in my life for a long, long time. I just knew that in my heart. And that’s what I told Miss House.
“Maurice is my friend,” I said. “And I would never walk out on a friend.”
After our talk, I met Maurice in the hallway. He was nervous and wanted to know what Miss House had said about him. I told him we would talk about it over dinner. We drove to Junior’s restaurant in Brooklyn; Maurice had heard they made the best cheesecake in the city and was dying to try it. After our meal, I told him what Miss House had said.
“She cares about you and she wants you to do well in school,” I said. “She says you’re very, very smart, and she is on your side.”
Maurice beamed. He was clearly thrilled by the feedback.
“But here’s what she needs you to do,” I said. “You need to stop getting into fights, do your homework, and, most important, get to class on time.
“I know it’s hard to concentrate at home with so much going on, but you have to somehow find a way to get your homework done. And you need to get to school on time. If your class starts at seven forty, you need to be there at seven forty, even seven thirty. You can’t show up at eight or eight thirty. That’s unacceptable, Maurice. Do you understand?”
I didn’t let up on him. I told him how important punctuality was in the working world and how he simply had to get in on time, how it was up to him to take control of his situation as best he could. The more I drilled him, the more confused he looked until he looked away and started to cry.
I had never seen him cry before, and it broke my heart.
“Maurice, what’s the matter? Are you okay?”
“Miss Laura, you just don’t understand,” he said. It occurred to me in that instant that Maurice felt he had disappointed me.
“My room doesn’t even have a clock in it,” he said. “I never know what time it is.”
“Maurice, I’m sorry I was so hard on you. We can figure this out together. Would it help if I bought you an alarm clock?”
“Yeah, that would help,” he said.
“Okay, then, I’ll get you an alarm clock, and I’ll also get you a watch. When you go home, hide them somewhere so no one can take them. Keep them next to you when you sleep. In return, you have to promise me you’ll try your best to get to school on time, okay?”
“Okay, I promise I will,” he said.
“I know it’s not easy, Maurice. I know your life isn’t easy.”
Maurice looked relieved. This was heartening to him; it made him realize bad situations could sometimes be fixed. He could make changes to the life he was living, and, with a little bit of help, maybe live another kind of life altogether.
Maurice told me that for the longest time he believed he was illiterate. He’d been evaluated by school officials, and his mother had been at the evaluation. After it was over, she had told Maurice he couldn’t read or write. He didn’t think this was true—he could write, even though he wrote very slowly—but after a while he just heard it so often from his mother and his cousins that he came to believe it himself. The worse he did at school, the more it proved he’d never amount to much.
That’s when I told him I’d been a terrible student myself, so terrible I flunked a few classes and never went to college.
Maurice was surprised by that. To him, I didn’t seem like someone who’d had trouble at school. And if I had overcome it and become successful, maybe he could, too. Maybe he didn’t have to be what everyone said he was.
I’ve always liked this popular quote by a well-known gardening writer, Elizabeth Lawrence: “There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place were colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again.”
I like this because it captures the wonder of two things, nature and childhood. And because it reminds me of my happier moments in Huntington Station. It’s not like we lived in the country—in fact, we weren’t that far from one of the first fully enclosed shopping malls on Long Island—but we did have lots of trees and some woods nearby and backyards where we could roll around in fresh-cut grass. We never worried about locking our doors, and our parents never worried about us when we ran out to play. Huntington Station in the 1950s was a safe haven. There was something special about the time I spent outdoors as a child—those days when my mother would pack up the towels and the Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Oil and take us all to Robert Moses Beach for the day. Or when I’d chase a pretty butterfly in the yard, or think I’d found a four-leaf clover, or just simply lay in the grass and stared up at elephant-shaped clouds. Moments when I felt the world was a magical place indeed.
Maurice didn’t have any place like that. He didn’t have an enchanted garden. I thought of Lawrence’s words when Maurice told me he had never been outside the city, not even for a day. He’d been locked inside the concrete mass of Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens his whole life; all he knew were noise and traffic and congestion. The closest he came to experiencing nature was walking through Central Park.
Around our eighth week together, I called my sister Annette, who was married with three young children and living in Greenlawn, a lovely town an hour outside the city on Long Island’s North Shore. I asked if it would be okay to bring out Maurice for a visit. Her children were around Maurice’s age—Colette was eleven, Derek, nine, and Brooke, seven—and I thought he’d enjoy spending a day doing all the outdoor stuff they usually did: playing on the swings in their backyard, riding bikes, tossing a baseball around. Annette didn’t hesitate.
“I can’t wait to meet him,” she said.
That Saturday, Maurice and I set out on the Long Island Expressway. He was wearing new pants I’d bought for him and a nice blue sweatshirt, and he was a bundle of excitement and nerves. He had no idea what to expect. This was the first time he was leaving the confines of New York City.
It would also be the first time he ever set foot in a private home.
On the drive out, Maurice sang along to the score from the movie La Bamba. On one of our Mondays, we’d gone to the movies and watched the film about the doomed 1950s singer Ritchie Valens. Maurice loved the movie and loved the song, and I had bought him the sound track. He played it all the time in my apartment and car. He’d belt out the lyrics and ask me to play it again and again. I got a little sick of it, but I was happy to oblige him. It felt good seeing him lose himself in a song.
We got to Greenlawn and pulled into the driveway of Annette’s home. It was a two-story colonial on an acre of land with a sprawling, beautifully manicured front lawn and an even bigger backyard circled by a fence. Greenlawn was a big step up from Hungtington Station, a solidly middle-class town. Maurice couldn’t believe a single family owned all this property. The front lawn alone, with its gleaming green grass, seemed to him an impossibly luxurious expanse. Inside the house I introduced Maurice to my sister and her family—her husband, Bruce, a lovely guy who sold medical supplies, and their three beautiful kids. The children curiously eyed Maurice, as children will do with any newcomer. Their mother had told them about him—how he came from a poor family and didn’t have the things they had and how they should make him feel at home. Derek didn’t waste any time.
“Wanna see my room?” he asked, leading Maurice upstairs. The girls and I tagged along. I could tell Maurice was surprised to see each kid had their own bedroom. This, too, was a luxury he could hardly comprehend. Derek’s had baseball pennants and posters on the walls; the girls’ were frilly and filled with stuffed animals. He walked around wordlessly, taking it all in.
“Let’s go play on the swings,” Derek said, leading all the children out back. I watched Maurice play for a while; his camaraderie with Annette’s son and daughters was effortless. To them, Maurice was not invisible, as he was to so many adults. To them, he was just anoth
er kid. I watched Maurice swing higher and higher, his feet lurching into the sky.
There was a lot about Annette’s house that Maurice couldn’t quite believe. A room just for watching TV? A washer and dryer just for them? A bathroom downstairs and two more upstairs? Most confusing of all was the dining room, devoted solely to sitting and talking and eating. Maurice lived in a single room with eight to twelve people. If he ate there at all, it was in whatever spot he was in when someone handed him food.
Young Derek, in charge of activities, suggested he and Maurice go bike riding. Bruce went to the garage and pulled out Derek’s old bike for Maurice. They rode up and down the quiet streets and didn’t come back for an hour.
Soon, it was time for dinner. Maurice sat across from me at the big dining room table as Annette brought out heaping plates of food—chicken, broccoli, mashed potatoes, the works. Maurice unfolded his napkin and put it on his lap, as I’d taught him, and he looked to me as if to say, “Like this?” I nodded discreetly. Maurice snuck looks at me when he held his fork, cut his chicken, and served himself extra mashed potatoes; I nodded and smiled, letting him know he was doing just fine. Annette and her family treated Maurice like the guest of honor, asking him questions without prying too much. Dinner stretched into a second hour. Later, Maurice told me he couldn’t believe people sat around and just talked to one another over dinner. That was a completely new experience for him. I noticed he was the last one to finish his food; Derek and his sisters were long done while Maurice still had a half-full plate. It wasn’t because he wasn’t hungry or the food wasn’t delicious.
Maurice was savoring the meal.
After dinner the kids watched TV in the den while my sister and I caught up on each other’s lives. I peeked in a couple of times and saw Maurice curled up peacefully on the sofa.
“Laura, stop worrying. He’s fine,” Annette said. It’s true, he was, but I felt anxious, like I was waiting for a shoe to drop. I guess it was ingrained in me to think a quiet afternoon at home could turn chaotic in an instant, but I knew that Annette had vowed long ago to create a childhood for her kids that was different from our own. Now, she had a family that could enjoy a fall Saturday without fighting or, worse, cowering in fear. It had taken her a while—years and years—before she could truly let down her guard and relax, even around her new family. That Saturday when Maurice and I spent the day with her family, I realized my sister was truly achieving her dream; she had the one thing that had eluded us all for so long: peace.
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