A CIRCLE OF CHILDREN
Mary MacCracken
A MOVING STORY OF HOW A TEACHER'S
DEDICATION AND LOVE WORKED MIRACLES WITH
HER EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED CHILDREN.
HOW COULD YOU REACH OUT AND TOUCH A CHILD
LIKE:
Brian, a
nine-year-old who had eaten nothingbut saltines and
chocolate milk since he was a baby, who
flapped his arms and squawked like a bird . .
. Alice,
who spent her whole day drawing different colored
breasts ...
Rufus,
who dressed like a miniaturemiddle-aged
businessman, and acted like a violent infant. ..
Jenny,
who walked in a permanent crouch because she was
convincedshe was a dog
. .
One of the most moving, powerful, and
profoundlyenlightening books, not only about disturbed
children but all children, ever written.
A CIRCLE OF CHILDREN
"A remarkable book"-
Publishers Weekly
. . . "Fiercely honest and intense"
-
Kirkus Reviews . . .
"The children in this book altered the author's life, and
they will affect yours"-
Psychology Today
by Mary MacCracken
[*reg]
A SIGNET BOOK caret NEW AMERICAN
LIBRARY
tMWHS
Minnon
copyright
[*copy]
1973 BY MARY burnham MACCRACKEN
All rights reserved. For information address
J. B. Lippincott Company, East Washington
Square,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19105.
library of Congress Catalog Card Number:

This is an authorized reprint of a hardcover
edition published by J. B. Lippincott
Company.
Lines from "i carry your heart" by E. E.
Cummings are quoted by permission of Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, Inc. from
Complete Poems 1913-1962.
The Edwin Markham quatrain "Outwitted" is
reprinted by permission of Virgil Markham.
Lines from "Beer Barrel Polka" are used
by permission and copyright mcmxxxk by Shapiro,
Bernstein and Co. Inc. All rights reserved.
This book recounts the essence of my experience and in
that sense is a true story. However, it is not
intended as a literal account and it is not to be taken
as a portrayal of any living person. All names
of individuals, places or institutions are
fictitious.
[*reg]
8IOHBT TRADEMARK BEO C B PAT
OFT AND TORBIQN OOTJNTBIBS
BBOI8TBEBD TBADIMABK--MABOA
BEGIBTKADA BXOHO EN CHICAGO,
V
8 A.
signet, signet classics, mentor, plume
AND meridian books
are published by The New American Library,
Inc., 1301 Avenue of the Americas, New
York, New York 10019
first printing, march, 1975 6789
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA
For my mother and first teacher, Florence Ferguson
Burnham.
He drew a circle that shut me out- Heretic,
rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the
wit to win;" We drew a circle that took
him
in!
"comEdwin Markham
I encountered the school without warning, sandwichingthe
appointment between one at the y and another at
the Cerebral Palsy Clinic, where I had been
many times before. It was to be a routine visit;
my tennis racket was packed in the back seat of the
car in case we finished early enough for a set before our
children arrived home from school.
And now, nothing can erase that room, that school. In
the slide file of my mind it has a perfect
print' each line and shadow as clear now as it was on
that first morning. Sunlight slanted across the
blue-painted floor surrounding the woman at the
piano dressed in a flowered blouse, rose and
green, and a green cotton skirt. Small chairs
were placed in a semicircle around the piano, and in
them sat perhaps twenty children and six or seven
adults. The adults, particularly the man, had
their knees bunched up to their chins, and yet they
seemed comfortable, smiling, calling back and forth across
the room to each other.
But there was something strange about the children.it was not their
bodies; no one was deformed. In fact, most were
beautifully made. There was a translucent
quality in their faces, but there was also something more, or
perhaps less: a stillness in their expression. These children
did not call to each other or playfully poke or
tease; instead they sat silently, turned
inward.
Suddenly the room became filled with noise and
motion. Chairs were shoved to the edge of the room while
the Director thumped loudly on the piano. The
children galloped in pairs around and around until
suddenly one tiny girl broke away and flung
herself to the floor, screaming high-pitched,
indecipherablescreams. Her small legs, clad in
red tights, were rigid, spread-eagled against the
blue floor. She pulled her plaid skirt over
her head and beneath it screamed:
"Vacuum cleaner. Look! Aaaaahhh.
Aaaahhhh. Get it! Oooohhh. Aaaaahhhh.
Get it! Here it comes! Aaaa. Aaaa." She
sat up, pointing toward the door. Her terror was
real: I felt it inside me, and I turned toward
the door, expecting to see a monster vacuum
cleaner rolling in, motor running, upright,
unstoppableeasucking us all into its giant bag.
But there was nothing, and gradually the terror in the room
dissolved. The piano quieted and moved to the smoother
rhythm of a waltz, and the children changed from galloping to a
skating motion, pushing their feet across the blue
floor. No one had stopped to look at the small
girl in the middle of the floor or for the
vacuum cleaner: they skated on, stepping over her
arm or leg if they were jostled and pushed too close
to her.
Only her teacher knelt beside her, talking softly,
touching her shoulder, her hair. Then gathering her up,
she held the child against her own body until the terror
dissolved, was gone. As surely as I had seen the
vacuum cleaner, I felt the loving that had
displacedthe terror. In that instant, that dear, bright
second, with no warning, I knew that I would one day
work in this school. I felt I had been here befeasome
other time or else some other place; it was
familiar. I was at home.
They stayed like that, the child standing, the
woman kneeling with her arms about the child for perhaps a
minute more; then the little girl's enormouseyes left
the door and she put her hand against the teacher's head.
They rose then and, hand in hand, rejoined the circle
of skaters.
The woman beside me touched my arm. "My God,
Mary, I can't take much more of this. Let's get out
of here."
I turned to look at her, my friend Ellen, here with
me on the assignment from the Junior League
to investigatethe school for seriously
emotionally disturbedchildren, to visit and see if it would have
good placement jobs for our volunteers; and she
seemed suddenly far away I had known her since
I was a child, I had been with her when she bought the
tweed skirt and blue cashmere sweater that she was
wearing; and yet when she spoke to me it was as if her
words were coming from a distant country. How could we
leave? It seemed to me that we were on the brink of an
enormous secret.
Then as my thoughts returned to her, I saw that she
had been moved, but not to wonder. Revulsion showed in
her face, and I did not know how to tell her about the
excitement that I felt.
I followed her away from the room, out onto the
porch of the big old white-frame building that housed
the school. She said again:
"Mary, this place is terrible. They're crazy.
Those children are crazy. Mad. Just little kids and
they're completely gone. No one in the League could
work here. Think what it would be like to go home to your children
after this. Come on, let's go. We'll have lunch and
then we'll go to the C. P. Clinic and still have time
to get in some tennis before the kids get home."
Crazy. were they? And what does "crazy" mean?
Did she think perhaps that it was catching-that we
might take it home to our children, like measles or a
bad cold? What was it? What caused it?
"You go," I said. "I'll just be a few minutes,
talk to the Director, get some pamphlets and a
little informationeaand then I'll meet you for lunch,
okay?"
Ellen looked at me curiously. "You're going
back in there? What for? There's no point." Then
perhaps recognizing some stubbornness in me reminiscent
of our childhood, she sighed. "Oh all right.
You're a good, responsible placement chairman.
Where do you want to eat?"
Ah, good. She was going. "Doesn't matter.
Anywhere.you choose."
"Well, I did want to pick up a wedding
present for Betsy at Jensen's. Suppose I
do that-then I'll meet you at Lord and Taylor's and
we can eat there."
"Great," I said. "I'll see you in an hour."
I stood on the steps of the school watching Ellen
pull out of the driveway, excited, but knowing that there was
still time to change my mind. Instead of going back
inside, I, too, could leave. I could get into my
car, raise the white convertible top, and drive my
way back to my safe, suburban life.
I could surprise Ellen at Jensen's, and while
she shopped I could linger, drinking in the lovely
things, touching a silver bowl, running my finger along
the edge of a crystal vase when the salesman turned
away, comfortablein a familiar world.
And what if I went back inside? What then?
What kind of world lay there, just a few feet away?
If I opened the door what would I find-what would
I learn?
I lingered a moment more on the steps-then I turned and
went back inside the school.
The Director's office was in the basement, past the
lunchroom. There was a musty smell; and though the
walls had been painted yellow to compensate for the
lack of windows, there was a distinct greenish cast
to both the walls and the air. I stood in the doorway
of the office; the Director, Mrs. Fleming, was
on the phone and I waited hesitantly in the
doorway until she finished,
The rest of the memory is blurred. I know I
asked many questions and she replied with words like "emotionally
disturbed," "schizophrenic," "autistic," which
rolled across my ears as sounds rather than words, almost
meaningless to me then. She mentionedthe school's
tremendous financial needs, the ratio of
four children to one teacher, the newness of the field, the
lack of agreement as to causes: some expertsciting
heredity, others environment, still others, biochemical
causes. She spoke of the waiting list of children they
could not accommodate and her dream of a new building,
a larger school.
"The children?" I asked. "Can you tell me a little more
about the children?"
"Well, as you can see," she said, "they are
physicallyhealthy, attractive children. Their
intelligence is average or above average, but
they're ill, and this illness causes them to function
far below their age level, to live inside themselves and
shut out the world. They are not sure who they are. They
have great difficulty with language, with relationships,
with other people; their behavior is often bizarre,
puzzling."
I stayed well over an hour, fascinated,
intrigued, forgetting the time until I heard the children
gathering in the lunchroom.
But excitement bubbled inside me, could not be put
down. I wanted to teach there. Absurd? Perhaps. But
I wanted it, had to do it, knew that I could.
Unsure
A circle OF chiidren
of many things, I was sure of this. One last question:
What qualifications did her teachers need? The
Director smiled. "Certification in special
education-preferablya master's degree in teaching the
emotionally disturbed-a listening heart and a strong
back."
I thanked her. My own heart was very quiet. I
hadn't even finished Wellesley, having left at
the end of my sophomore year to marry Larry.
But all summer long the children of the school walked through
my dreams, and in September I went back to the
school to ask if I could work there as a volunteer
teacher's aide two days a week. The morning was
warm and the windows of the school were open, and I heard
again the piano as I climbed the wide wooden
steps.
More strongly than ever the
deja-vu
feeling returnsbbperh not this same school, but
somewhere, sometime, I worked in a school such as this. There
is a remembered knowledge that is certain without being
specific.
I find the Director in her office.
"Good morning," she says. "Can I help you?"
"I'm Mary MacCracken," I remind
her. "I was here last June. I ... uh.
Well, what I wondered was ... do you think it would
be possible for me to work as a volunteer with one of your
teachers?"
"Oh, yes, I remember now. You were here with the other
woman from the Junior League. Yes. Well
now, let's see. Yes ... I think we'll put
you as a teacher's aide with Helga. We're
delighted to have you, Mrs.... er-uh ..."
"Mary," I say. "My name is Mary."
"Yes, of course. Mary. Go right on up
to Helga's room. As I say, we're delighted
to have you."
I climbed the empty stairs slowly. There was no
one in the room at the top of the stairs. As I
stood in 13
the hall indecisively a boy of perhaps nine or ten
raced by me, his turtleneck shirt pulled
completely over his head, screaming, "Jesus
Christ, gonna go to Camp Lookout! God save
us all!" He thundered down the stairs, and I
wondered how he was able to judge their height and depth
with his eyes covered.
A man came out of one of the rooms along the hall,
smiled at me, and called softly to the boy:
"Hey, Tom, it's okay. Camp's over, you're
in school," and he walked slowly down the stairs
toward the boy, who was now hesitating on the bottom
step.
I continued walking along the long upstairs hall,
looking in classrooms, searching for Helga's
room. They were all empty except for one
classroom. A small girl watched in fascination
an empty turntable revolve. A gray-eyed
boy sat beside her, smiling and rocking back and forth,
back and forth, until a young woman rose from the table
where she was mixing paints and touched him, blocked the
rocking with her hand, and he followed her back to the
paint table.
A kaleidoscope of impressions was whirling through
my head. Was this teacher Helga? And would she, too,
be "delighted" to have me? As it turned out, she was not.
I found her finally in the bathroom with her class of
four children. She was bent over the toilet bowl with a
rubber plunger.
"God damn fucking stopped-up toilet. How can
you toilet-train a child when the stupid toilet
doesn't even Hush? Who are you?"
"Mary," I answer. "The Director sent me
to be your new volunteer teacher's aide."
Helga wields the rubber plunger even harder
now-brown-gray hair flying straight out from her
head, glasses slipping to the end of her nose. She
must be fifty, arms strong and muscular, moving up
and down, everything about her alive, filled with
vitality.she is wearing a cotton housedress,
and under it I can see wide shoulders, full breasts,
narrower waist and hips-her legs strong and bare above
worn, wet sneakers.
"For Christ sake," she says in a strong German
accent."...How many times do I have to tell her I
don't want any shitty volunteers? I have enough
to do with the children. Go on now. Go tell her to assign you
to somebody else."
But I do not want to go. Intuitively I
recognize in Helga the essence of the master teacher.
I know that she is the one I want to watch; hers are
the techniquesI want to learn. In this school I
do not feel humble or frightened or inadequate, as
I often do with Larry. I am at home here and I
merely smile at Helga and follow her back
to her classroom, watching her quietly. I had
never heard a woman swear like that before. The women I
had known most intimately were lovely, quiet
women-clean and soft, smelling faintly
sweet, dressed always in good taste. I survey
Helga in her cotton housedress and worn
sneakers, and for the first time I wonder what "good taste"
means.
Sunlight lies across the green linoleum floor.
The walls are covered with children's primitive finger
painting; a large rocking chair is in front of the
windoweaa low table with chairs in the middle of the room,
a sandbox on the far side.
One of the boys stands in the sunlight watching the
specks of dust move in the golden air currents.
He is very small, perhaps five or six, with a
small, square face and large gray eyes,
black at the center.
Helga speaks to him. "Take off your sweater,
Chris. Hang it up on the hook." .
Still he stands without moving, arms slack; only his
eyes follow the golden specks of dust. I do not
move to help, only watch as I sit on a
corner of the sandbox, filling a muffin tin with sand and
turning my muffins on a wooden board.
Red-haired Jimmy sticks a crayon in each one
and then pushes them back to the center of the sandpile.
Helga ignores Chris, giving him a chance to act
on his own volition. She notices me and
is obviously annoyedthat I am still there. She no
longer even addressesme directly but instead
mutters toward the window concerning me.
"God in heaven. Give me patience. It is not enough
that I must teach these children all day with no equipment,
only leftover material and promises. Now they
send me volunteers. Over and over I have told
them I do not want the shitty volunteers.
Volunteersto do for the children what they should do for themselves.
Do they listen? No. Jesus, deliver me from these
volunteers. They should take their shitty good works
somewhere else."
The last is delivered pointedly in my direction and
I bend my head in concentration on my muffins.
One last remark from Helga: "Ah-well. It
does not usually take us too long to get rid of
them, does it?"
Helga chooses now to ignore me. All morning
she never looks again in my direction; Instead, she
turns once again to Chris. Her voice lifts,
half a command, half a seduction: "Come now-get
off that sweater and we'll have a bit of a rock before the
day begins."
Chris slides his eyes from the dust specks toward
Helga, not moving, only looking.
She settles herself in the rocking chair and sets it;
in motion. "Come along now," she calls, "get
along."
And, unbelievably, the slack, motionless figure
becomesa boy. Awkwardly he takes off his
sweater and hangs it on a hook beneath his name,
CHRIS, and
be then crosses the room and climbs into the wide
lap
of Helga. And with her legs spread wide and her
foot tapping she sings to him:
"Camptown races is
my
song-do dah, do dah.
Camptown races all day long, all the do dah
day."
And if the words are wrong, it does not bother
Helga or Chris. I watch them and then, noticing
an empty coffee
can lying beside the sandbox, I" go next door to the
bathroom and fill it with water.
"Not this one," I say to myself as the water runs
into the can. "You will not be rid of this volunteer
so easily, Helga." And I smile at her as
I carry the
water back to the sandbox.
So began our relationship, Helga's and mine, and
my education. I learned more from this strong, loving
woman than from any psychology or education
tcourse I have ever taken; more than from any bookeano
matter how distinguished the author. I watched
her, remembering, imitating, gradually doing. She
be breathed life back into the children. Often Iwatched
her gather a child in her arms-one who had gone off to a
corner, retreating from the world, perhaps beginning
to masturbate to start the dreams,
to bring the fantasy world closer. Helga would
gather him up, blow on his neck, murmur some
foolish joke into his ear, take his hand, start the
record player, and then dance with him around the
room.her favorite dance was the polka, and as she
skippedand stomped in her sneakers, gray hair
flying, halfcarrying her small partner with her, she
would sing, ""There's a garden, what a garden, only
happy facesbloom there, and there's never any
gloom there ..." beAnd gradually the child would return,
the faraway 'look would go out of his eyes, and he would
seem once more to be alive, to be back in this world.
There was about Helga such a strong sense of living, of
vitality, that as she came into bodily
contact
with a child-rocking him, holding him from attackinghmf or
others, kissing him, pushing him-her vitality, her
excitement, her desire of life were almvisibly
transferred to the child. She could not have told me any of
this herself; she was totally absorbedin her work, in her"
children-so much so that even at the end of the same day, if
someone had asked her to describe what methods or
techniques she had used to solve a problem, she
would not havebeen able to relate what she had done.
She would not even have tolerated the words "methods" and
"techniques"; she was the totally natural
therapeutic teacher. I was privileged to be able
to watch her and I knew it. A dozen times a day
I would find my self silently saying, "Yes,
yes," as I watched her with the children. It was a feeling
of silent applause and I knew I must pay
attention to it.
She had that rare quality of being alive, involved
in, excited by, her world. Whether this is learned
or an inherited talent I am not sure, but it was
one of her most valuable tools in reaching these children the
electricity that was vibrant in her reached across and
touched the child, often before words could.
Helga's husband Karl worked as a
clerical
their only son was grown, living in the West. They
lived in a small upstairs apartment in a
two-family house, saving money all year in
order to travel. Each winter during Christmas
vacation they went to Puerto Rico; in the summer they
rode bicycles acrossEurope. Looking at
Helga, I would think of my own friends, my own
life, our large homes, all our possessions-and
yet Helga had achieved a freedom, a sense of
joy, that was absent in my own life.
It was not that she always had an admirable re sponse
or even a proper one. She did not. She was no
saint. But the thing was, she did respond! She was
alive, she was human, she cared, and she showed u
that she did. There were no pretenses to Helga.
What she felt, she communicated, and because there was no
veneer it came through straight and clear.
If a child, as he gradually learned or
rediscovered words, came to Helga saying,
"Kite," Helga would listen, repeat, "You like the
kite. Ah-get it then. Get the kite. Let's
see it now, this red kite."
And now Jimmy, excited by the sight and feel of the
kite, tugs Helga's arm: "Kite.
Fly kite. Fly kite." Helga sits back
on her heels from where she hasbeen kneeling beside the
boy and says, "Ah, fly the kite. So you think
we should fly the kite, leave our
papers and crayons, and go fly the kite. Is that
what
you think?"
Jimmy, ordinarily listless, pale as milk beneath his
red hair, hops up and down with excitement. "Fly
kite, Helga. Go fly kite."
Helga grins, satisfied with her work, with the
extrawords she has managed to extract from
Jimmy, and says, "All right, you monkey-we'll
leave thework and go fly the kite."
And soon all of us-the four children, myself, and
Helga-have on our jackets and are trudging out to the
field beyond the school. Jimmy carrying the kite.
Then they run, the small red-haired boy and
Helga in her sneakers. They run holding the string
of the kite together, getting it started-until suddenly the
kite lifts and sails up high, like hope itself,
flashing, tipping against the sky, and we cheer and clap
our hands.
I cannot remember now how many weeks it was
(before Helga spoke to me. I remember that
I felt noresentment because of her silence. It
seemed to me a (logical thing: she was trying to do
something important, and volunteers got in her
way; it was natural
that she be impatient with me. At the same time I
had no intention of leaving.
There were other teachers in the school who were good. I
watched them at Circle and at the playgroundand at
lunch, but none of them rang the bell for me the way
Helga did. Her children grew faster than any
others, became independent sooner-or so it seemed
to me. I knew I could learn more from her than from
anyone else. Whether she liked me or not was not
essential. I was not lonely. I did not need her
friendship; I needed her example.
For instance, I watched her teach Sarah to walk.
Sarah did not walk at all when she first came
to school. She was five, with pale yellow hair and the
fine, silky skin of a baby. She was a week
late startingschool because she had been ill, so I was
there when she came that first day. Her mother carried her
up the stairs to Helga's room, spread a
blanket, and laid her on the floor. There Sarah
curled up on her side, her thumb in her mouth.
Helga said nothingbbb after the mother had left,
Helga slipped the blanket from beneath Sarah,
folded it, and put it in the back of a closed
cupboard. The little girl whimperedand cried, the other
children circling around her as I have seen a flock of
sea gulls do when one of the birds is injured. The
morning was ruined, the children upset and fretful; no work
could be done with Sarah mewling, crying, there on the
floor. Anotherteacher might have let her keep the
blanket that first day while she adjusted to the school.
Not Helga. She would set no such precedent in her
class-room-a five-year-old child was not treated like
an infantealeft lying in a blanket.
Finally Sarah moved. Painfully, slowly, she
crawled across the floor, stopping every few minutes
to rest, then continuing her slow, tortuous journey as
we watched, holding our breath. She made her way
directly to the cabinet where Helga had put her
blanket, and scratched with her tiny hands at the
door. Helga picked her up then and carried her
to the rocking chair, talking to her, mixing German
words with English:
"Come now-come now, little one. It is all right
Everything will be all right. I know you now; you cannot fool
Helga. You are smart and you can move. You try
to fool us,
ja?
Lying there, sucking on your thumb. But you are smart,
ja?
You know just where I hid that blanket, and when you want
it enough and I do not bring it to you, then you yourself go to get
it.
Ja, ja,
my little one, my pretty golden one, we will teach you
to talk and to walk."
Helga rocked her then and sang to her. Each
morning after that, Helga greeted Sarah at the
front door and carried her up the stairs herself.
She did not wish to explain to Sarah's mother what had
happened to the blanket-that it now lay discarded beneath a
box of old records in the recesses of the
cabinet. Before long, it would disappear altogether. Dealing
with parents or the public was not one of Helga's
strong points; she left that to the Director.
Sarah crawled more and more on the green linoleum in
Helga's room, gradually strengthening arms,
legs, curiosity, as she explored the room. A
small rag doll was her favorite toy. She would
find it and play with it long hours at a time. One
morning, before Sarah arrived, Helga moved the
doll from the floor to the top of one of the low
cabinets. Another frustrating, miserable day for
all of us-worse than the first because now Sarah had a
temper. She not only whimpered and whined; she
screamed and kicked her heels against the floor in
rage-but two days later she stood for the first time,
pulling herself up until she could reach the top of the
cabinet, reach her doll. And when she had it safe
in one hand, balanc-
ing herself with the other to stay upright, she laughed out loud
in triumph. Helga let'her have her triumph,
shaking her head, saying, "Ah, you, Sarah, such a
girl. You are too smart for me. Too smart for
old Helga. You find that doll no matter where I
put it."
From crawling to walking to climbing that long flight of
stairs to Helga's room. At first Helga stayed
where she could cushion the fall if it occurred. Then,
as confidence grew, she moved on ahead so that Sarah
could see her there, have incentive to move ahead-not
begging or pleading with the child, simply waiting,
expecting her to be able to do it. And she did. Even
then Helga's praise was short-one word:
"Good!"-brief, clipped: "Hang up your coat
now. We're late for Circle."
Helga, wise, strong, letting Sarah
savor the pride in her own accomplishment, not
setting up a new dependency.even the morning, many
months later, when Sarah came up the whole
flight, breaking away from her mother at the door,
walking fast, climbing without holding on, up the
stairs, up to Helga-even then her kiss on
Sarah's neck was brief, and she said only,
"You've a lot of energy today, girl. Come and help
me." And they went together to do battle against the
toilet.
Helga and I had one thing in common, and it was one of the
things that made me sure that I must work under her,
learn from her, rather than from another teacher. Helga and
I had the same basic language.even though our
native tongues were different-sheborn in Germany,
I in America-we both had a body language and
communicated best through it, trusting it more than words.
It was less tricky, more complete. It is more than
merely touch:
people touch each day and communicate nothing. Body
language is the first language-the way the
mother speaks to the child long before he can understandher words. As
she holds him, bathes him, feeds him, she is
telling him of love or anger or irritation. So,
too, Helga spoke to her seriously
emotionally disturbedchildren, many of whom had rejected
verbal communication, and they listened to this body
language.most of her touching was light and firm and
quick. She used it to communicate affection,
support, pride in the child; usually she touched the
back, shoulders, arm, or head; she used it alone
or with a few simple words. She also used another
kind of touching. It was really more holding. It said in
effectea"...I am here. We will survive." She
reacted this way during violence, when a child tried
to kick her or bite himself-holding him, restraining
him from the destructive act and at the same time
comforting him with the solidness of her body. When violence
explodes inside a child, all things seem unreal,
and the solid strength and warmth of another human being
who is not driven away or shattered by it makes the
terror more controllable.
Never, however, did she use this body language
to express her own anger or irritation. Striking a
child may cause him to become fearful of your touch, and
this is too valuable a tool to lose, too high a
price to pay for momentary frustration. Instead,
Helga swore. She cursed as I had never heard
a woman do before, and it seemed to harm the children not at
all.
If I do not remember when she first addressed me
directly, I do remember when she first called me
by name.
It was in the spring of that first year, more like summer really
although the official date had not arrived.yellow
daffodils had already flooded the hills and fields
where we had sailed our kite. Nick, our
one male teacher, had put up swings under two of the
apple trees, and whenever we could-we took the children
there in the late morning to play and relax before lunch.
I was pushing Chris on a swing-pushing him from in
front instead of from behind so that I could see his face
while I played with him. A small game had
developed between us: he would straighten and stiffen his
legs as the swing approached me, and then laugh out
loud as his feet hit my hands and I pushed against
them, sending him arcing gently back. Helga had
taken the other three children to play some sort of game
with Nick's group. Since Chris was not very good at
games, always running, hitting, biting, Helga had
stated, "It is a good day for a swing for Chris," and
I had known I was to do this. I loved being with Chris
anyway-his very stubbornness fascinated me. Bright
as a button, he refused to speak a word;
perfectly toilet-trained for months now,
he would deliberately pee on the Director's
foot when she brought visitors to our room for
"public relations." She handled it well, though, not
even blanching as the brown leather of her shoe turned
slowly darker and a puddle formed around it as Chris
stood still, looking out the window, smiling, with her hand
stroking his head.
In any event, I was totally absorbed in my
game with Chris and, thinking we were alone, had even
started hamming it up a little as I had with my own children,
making funny faces, pretending to be knocked
backward when his feet hit my hands. I thought he
was beginning to say something: was it "More"-"Mo, mo"?
I had not heard footsteps, and was startled when I
felt a hand on my arm. I turned quickly.
Unexpectedly, Helga was standing beside me.
"Mary," she said, calling me by name for the first
A circle of children SSB
time, "these are for you." She stretched out her hand toward
me and it was full of small wild strawberries.
We ate them there together, standing in the sun, sharing the
sharp, sweet taste, the grittiness. Since then I
have been given many other gifts and some honors, but
none has meant more to me than this. Helga had
acknowledged me; I was sure then that I could
teach.
I worked even harder the remainder of that year with
Helga. I canceled my Tuesday bridge and my
Thursday afternoon tennis foursome and went three days a
week to school rather than two.
From the time Elizabeth and Rick had entered school
I had always worked as a volunteer, either at the
hospital on the library cart or in the county
shelterfor adolescents. There was strong tradition in
our family for community volunteer and board work, and
I had always enjoyed it. But the school comwas
different. I had worked at the hospital and the shelter
because it had seemed part of a responsible way of
living. I worked now at the school because I loved it
and couldn't stay away.
If I had studied Helga carefully before, I
watched her even more closely those last weeks, for
she told me suddenly, one day as we walked with the
childreneat she would not be back the following year.
"Why?" I asked. It seemed impossible to me.
I could not imagine Helga without the children or the children
without Helga.
"They want me to go back to school," she said.
"An old woman like me. What would they teach me?
Ha! What do I need with their fancy
courses, their methods-teaching, visual aids,
curriculum-planning? They say I will not get my
proper salary unless I go to the college and take
courses given by some young pup, because our school is
about to become 26
approved by the state and I will need the courses for
certification. Ach, it is a waste. They can take
their shitty courses.-
"I know what I am saying. Nick took me
to visit the college. The professors either say in
fancy languagewhat I already know, or they speak
foolishness that is best never heard."
"Where will you go? What will the children do without you?" I
asked.
Helga laughed out loud and put her arm around my
shoulders, and I could feel the resiliency of her
strong, still-lithe body.
"There are plenty of sick children in the world. Come with me
on Saturday and I will show you. As for these, my children
here, they will be all right. They are almost ready to go
now-and if not, she will hire another to teach them."
I could not tell whether it was bitterness I heard in
Helga's voice or only disappointment.
On Saturday, Helga picked me up in her
ancient coupe and drove me over to her new
school; she had met its young director many years
before. She led me to the central resource room
filled with shelves lined with paper, paints, clay,
doll families, puzzles, books, workbooks,
textbooks, pencils, blocks, on and on-and
outside in the shed beside the building,
bicycleseascooters-contrasting to our own meager
supplies.
Helga spread her hands. "We are rich!" she
said. "Come, come." Down a long hall, then she
threw open-a door marked girls: there in
white-tiled glory were five sinks and seven
toilets, and Helga flushed each one with
satisfaction.
On Memorial Day weekend Helga went
bicycling through northern New England with her husband.
She was anxious to be gone, and I knew those last
weeks of school were very difficult for her. She
might
say she didn't mind leaving, but I saw her eyes
fill with tears more than once, and her cursing had
increased.she decided to add a day and a half to her
weekend and asked if I would take charge of her
class during that time. I was pleased to be asked, of
course-I was proud that Helga, felt that
I could teach alone. I knew she
cared too much for her children to leave them with anyone she
thought incompetent. It was not until
?"'
much later that I realized that Helga was now
consciously teaching me, preparing me, making me ,
grow, just as she did the children. Helga had never taken
an education or psychology course, but she was a
born teacher, and she knew instinctively when it was
time for me to take on more responsibility.
Now, too, I read, researched, balancing, what
I was reading against Helga's teaching. Helga had not
thought much of education courses, and yet I was greedy
for every morsel of information I could find on childhood
schizophrenia, autism, the emotionally disturbed.
I soon exhausted our local libraries and moved
on to the libraries of New York, and bought my own
books. Still, amazingly little had been writtenab these
illnesses in children, and many of the authorities disagreed
with one another on the cause and range, on
diagnosis and prognosis. I wished Helga would
write her own book. The others were confusing,
contradictory-and yet valuable. So I kept on
reading-textbooks, case histories, personal
experiences-agreeing, disagreeing, gradually
evolvingmy own beliefs, though these, too, I knew
would shift and change as more research was done and my own
experience grew.
The term "seriously emotionally disturbed child" covers
a wide range, including both the withdrawn,
autistic child and the hyperactive, violently acting-out
child. Many of the children in our school were diagnosed as being
autistic, but the Director preferredthe broader
term "seriously emotionally disturbed."
Although there were differing views, gradually a pattern
appeared as I read. Various authorities
differedon cause and treatment, but most writers and
educators seemed to agree on the prime
characteristicsof the emotionally disturbed child.
First of all, he has a lack of awareness of his own
identity. His concept of his own body image is very
small. He seldom speaks properly; sometimes
he may not speak at all. Certainly this was true
at our school; over two thirds of the children had
severe language problems.
The seriously emotionally disturbed child resists
change, often becomes preoccupied with a particular
object, and is filled with excessive anxiety.
His emotionalrelationships with family, peers, and
teachers are severely impaired. He does
not care; he is turned in upon himself. Although he may
appear to be retardedbecause of these things, still he
may often have flashes of brilliance in contrast to the
even performanceof the retarded child.
The books said this and I believed it: still, it was a
conglomerate, whereas to me each child was unique, an
individual.
The more I read, the more certain I became of one
fact: the screening and certifying of teachers of
emotionally disturbed children should not depend solely upon
graduation and completion of required courses; the
screening should be different for this field. The Helgas
of this world must not be lost. The art of communication is just
that-an art-and there must be a talent before the
craftsmanship can be developedeaor you will have only
technicians, not gifted teachers. You can instill a
hundred techniques in a
teacher, have her memorize thousands of technical
terms; but if she cannot make contact with the childrenthey are
useless."
We said good-bye on the last day of school,
Helga and I. We stood on the paint-stained
green linoleum of her classroom and I knew I
would never see her just so again. I tried to memorize
her-the short, thick, straight, graying
hair; the horn-rimmed glasses slipping ever
closer to the end of her nose as she bent her head
nearer, closer, to get a better look; the strong
legs above the sneakers. Not young or fashionableor
beautiful-merely ageless and phenomenal, like the
mountains I had seen in Canada. She had
charted a new course, opened a new door, turned
a new leaf; there were no right words, only cliches;
but Helga had done it for me-and I loved her. I
had wanted to give her a present but I could not think
of the right one, and so I went to her now and put my arms
around her and out loud could only say, "Thank you,
Helga." But I hope my body
languagespoke to her. She held me, too, and
we stood like this. Then she moved back a little and
took my chin and held it in " her hand, smiled, and
said, "You will be a good teacher, Mary. Yes. Just
watch out for the shitty volunteers."
In the fall I went back to work at the school again,
but it was very different. Not only had Helga left.
but most of the staff left with her, having been lured
to higher-paying positions. The Director remained,
strong, resolute, and for the first time I could imagine
her founding the school. She hired a new staff-new
psychologists, teachers, psychiatrist,
speech therapist.
Besides a new staff, there was also a new location.
One of the board members had been instrumental in
persuading a church in a nearby town to let the
school use its building during the week. It was
new and clean and pleasant. There were only two
drawbacksccthere was no kitchen-all the lunches had
to be brought in-and nothing could be left in the
classroomsover the weekends; they had to be cleared
for Sunday school. Each Friday everything had to be
taken down, rolled up, packed away, carried
down a long hall to be stored in a back room;
then early on Monday mornings the process was
reversed.
I was assigned to work with Renee when I went back,
and for the first time I learned what bad teaching was. She
was young and pretty with teased blond hair; but instead
of the happy, confident securityI had come to take
for granted as the school's atmosphereeathere was a
tight, brittle tension in Renee's room behind what
she called "permissiveness."...I watched her narrow
hands clench and 31
her voice rise as she refilled the bathtub of
water she kept in the center of the room; time and time
again the children dumped it over with shrill
laughter.
Her theory of permissiveness, she explained, was one
that was used with great success in Canada. She felt
that all emotional disturbance stemmed from the same
source: the fact that the child had never been accepted
by his parents. So before he could grow up, he must be
allowed to be a baby and do the things he had wanted
to do. Renee brought with her pink tin playhouse
equipment-stove, refrigeratoreasink. I was not quite
sure how these fitted into her theory, but I know that my
major contribution to her class that fall was the lugging
of stove, refrigeratoreasink, and bathtub back and
forth on Fridaysand Mondays.
I was not happy working in that room. All day long the
children destroyed things. "They are gettingthe hate out of
their systems," Renee would say;
but if they were, they did not seem any happier for
it. They whined and cried and lay on the floor, cold
and wet with bath water and urine.
Just before Christmas vacation I spoke to the
Directoreaasking to be transferred to another
room. I did not feel knowledgeable enough to be
critical-it was possible that this was another way
to teach, perhapsa valid way, but it was not for me.
And by now my own self-knowledge had grown to the
point where I did not wish to pretend. At least not
here at school.
There was a great deal of snow that Christmas and our
town was white and beautiful. The schools, of
course, were closed for the holiday and the house was filled
with the noises of my own two children and their friends.
Rick was the oldest, a senior in high
school-tall,
solidly built, good in both sports and his
studies. He was one of those rare children who seemed to have
been born happy, well adjusted in his own world,
tolerant of others.
Elizabeth was four years younger, and whereas Rick was
broad, thick through the shoulders, Elizabethwas
slender with black hair, blue eyes; always late,
always rushing, eager, stormy, both sensitive and
critical-and the most tender and loving of us all. Her
Christmas presents expressed her intimate knowledge of
us, each gift specific and
personal-exactlywhat each of us had wanted but had
not had the time or money or courage to buy.
Larry left early each day for his office in the
city, and so I ate a second, long, lazy
breakfast with the kids, lingering over the pancakes, a
luxury for which there was never time during school.
I savored both my coffee and my children, knowing that after
breakfast they would be gone into the city for a
basketballgame or a movie, or else skating
at the club with their friends.
Thoughts of the school receded slightly from my mind
until one morning just after New Year's Day when the
phone rang. It was the President of the Board of
Trustees of the school saying that there was a vacancy
on the Board and asking if I would be willing to fill
it. I did not really want the position. I had
served on too many boards already, gone to too many
meetings, voted too many times; but this was the school,
and the thought crossed my mind that perhaps this was as far as I
would get there, my dreams of teaching too impossible.
At least this way I could help build a new
school, for our present quarters were only
temporary. I watched a brown femalecardinal in
the pine tree just outside the windowbeside the
telephone, and said, "Yes, I would be delighted
to serve."
I never did, though.
Before that same day ended, the Director of the school
called. She said that Joyce, one of the new teachers,
had been in a bad automobile accident; her car
had skidded out of control and she had slammed
head on into a highway divider. The car was a
total loss, Joyce's injuries serious but not
permanent. Still, they would take time to heal; she would be
in the hospital for six weeks. Could I take her
class during that time at substitute's salary?
The thing I had wanted so badly had happened;
the job I had hoped for had been offered to me. So this
is how it happens, I thought, no heavenly choir like
in the movies, just quietly-a voice on the
telephone.i, too, spoke quietly, using
mundane language.
"I'll speak to my family," I said, "and call
you this evening."
Again I was surprised how small a thing it seemed
to them. The kids said merely that they thought it was great.
They loved to hear stories of the school and had been
over to visit a couple of times.
When I told Larry that I had been asked to teach,
he barely looked up from the television set. I
lingereduncertainly, feeling in some way that I should
warn him that this would change me. I was not sure how,
but if the days as a volunteer with Helga had
influenced me as much as they had, surely a
full-time job would do more. But the commercial came on
and he watched even that with concentration.
I called the Director then and asked more questionsab
Joyce's class. Which children were in it? What were they
like?
Billy, Chris, Louis, and Brad. I knew
none of them except Chris-the same Chris I had
pushed on the swing when I was in Helga's class.
I had seen him only once or twice this year
because his room was at the opposite end of the
buildingfrom Renee's. My head spun-so much
to find out, but I couldn't do it on the phone; no
point in holding the Director. I thanked her and
asked when it would be possible to come and talk with her.
"Oh, I'll see you in the morning," she replied.
"Tomorrow morning?" I asked.
"Yes. Vacation ends today, you know. The children will all
be back tomorrow. You will start then."
I arrived early that first morning, thinking to talk with the
Director, to find out about the children in Joyce's
class, to learn their backgrounds, their case
histories, the results of their psychological and
physicalexaminations. Even more important was
to learn what their routine in school had been, what
they were used to, how Joyce handled their problems, the
daily lesson plan.
The Director was on the phone when I
walked into her office, and I realized that this was my
most familiar memory of her, both in this new
building and in the old school. As I passed the
office I would see her at her desk writing,
talking-cigarette and pencil alternating in her right
hand, the phone in her left.
She had white hair cut short, pushed back from a
small, attractive face, bright brown eyes, and
was somewhere between forty and sixty years old. She was
cheerful and articulate in her speech; her
movementswere quick, strong, and spontaneous. She
smiled and waved a good morning to me across the phone and
cigarette and motioned to me to hang up my coat.
I hung my heavy storm coat in the closet in
her office, took off my fur-lined gloves and
high brown boots, and-in memory of Helga-put
on my sneakers. With my sneakers on, I was ready
to teach.
The Director's voice continued on the phone:
"You're right, it's freezing cold this morning. If
he's 36
coughing you're wise to keep him home. Mmmmm.
Yes. He did? Last night?"
Another ten minutes passed. I was beginning to get
restless. In twenty minutes my class would
arrive.i didn't even know their last names.
Finally the phone call ended and the Director smiled
at me. "I'm so glad you were able to come, Mary.
How about a cup of coffee? First thing I do every
morning when I get here is to plug in the pot." From
the shelf behind her desk she produced two cups and
poured coffee for each of us.
"Could you tell me a little about the children in Joyce's
class?" I asked.
"Well, there are four boys ... oh, excuse
me, the phone. Oh, dear, I forgot to make a
note that Jeff won't be in; I must remember
to tell Clan. Lots of calls on these cold
mornings ..."
And she was gone again. The phone rang four more times.
There was a minor crisis when the woman who was
scheduled to bring the casserole lunch for the children called
to say that she herself was sick and couldn't get out.
"Don't worry. You take care of yourself now.
Thanks for calling. Oh-yes. Yes. Certainly.
No problemat all. Get well in a hurry
now." Cheeriness continuedto flow out of the
Director's voice over the haze of cigarette
smoke.
As soon as she was off the phone she was
putting on her coat. "I'm going to have to dash over
to the store and then back home for a minute to pick up
the hot plate. The woman from the church who was
supposed to bring lunch is sick, or so she says,
so we'll have to heat up some soup. Tell Zoe
to handle the phone till I get back; she'll be in
in a minute. Oh, and I'll see you at Circle
with your class." She emphasized the last two words
and smiled.
"Mrs. Fleming ..." I said.
"No, no. Call me Doris. Here now-here are
the folders on the children ..." She rummaged in a
green file cabinet behind her desk. "Let's see
now- Chris, you remember him. From Helga's
class. Brad, he's a doll. Where's
Billy's-ah-here it is. And let's see. Who
else is there? Oh, yes, Louis. Mmmmm.
Can't find his at the moment. Oh, well, it's not
important.^the will give you a start."
She left then, leaving me holding the pale manila
folders in my hand.
At the front door she turned back. "Don't
worry. Everything will be fine."
I had wished for information, not cheery platitudeseaand
yet I had a small glimpse of the
courage of the woman who had somehow not only founded the
school but kept it together through many desperatetimes when
money had been nonexistent and her own personal
life rocked with the tragedy of her husband'sdeath.
Perhaps she had found it necessary to ignore certain needs
in order to be able to cope with bigger problems-perhaps
cheeriness was the mask she wore.
Nonetheless, I shivered in my red jumper as I
followedher out the door, calling, "Which is my
room. Which door?"
"Oh, my. I forgot that, didn't I? Well, you
can't remember everything. Especially on these cold
mornings.the last one in the back is Joyce's.
Yours, I mean."
I went back inside with a sinking heart. How could
I have been so presumptuous as to think I could handle
all this? It was one thing under Helga's direction.
But alone? I knew the Director scarcely at
all. Helga had always referred to her by title or
as "they," which I had taken to signify authority.
Now I wondered. She had left without introducing
me to
less-than n
the children, without giving me any idea of the day's
routine.
Well, I decided, I would go down to the
classroom and look at the folders. Perhaps I could
at least learn how to recognize Brad from Louis.
The room was L-shaped, painted green. There were
two high windows on the north wall so that the room
was light enough, but cold and wintry. There was a large
wooden jungle gym in one corner, a small
white bookcase which held a few Golden books,
and two Maxwell House coffee cans with wooden
beads, strings, pegs, and missing puzzle pieces.
There were three wooden puzzles and a peg board.
Beside the bookcase was a small wooden chest that
held some blocks, a doll with a missing head, a
small, soiled blanket, and half a dozen clean
diapers. There was also a jumping-jack rocking
horse and a small pink table with chairs. A
complete inventory. It had taken me less than
three minutes to make it. Helga's materials were
sparse, but they were four times this. I looked again at
the chest and bookshelves-couldI teach four children with just
these odds and ends?
There were coat hooks along one wall, though, and these
at least looked familiar-until I saw that there were
more than a dozen and they were labeled with names like
Susan and Diane. Obviously names from the
Sunday school class. Where did Joyce's
boys hang their coats? On nameless hooks or under
someoneelse's name?
Slam! The door of the room slammed shut so hard
the glass in the window of the door rattled. A
tall, dark man stood inside the door leaning against
it, holding a small boy by the arm. It was Chris;
I could not mistake those gray eyes-but if he
recognized me he gave no sign of it,
"I'm Chris's father," the man said. "Will you tell
his teacher he's here?"
Chris twisted his body away from his father, trying
to loosen his arm, pulling at the doorknob, trying
to get the door open, to get out.
And I think. What is this? I have known this child before-he
was always difficult, disruptive, but he never fought
school before. What is this now?
Out loud I say, "Joyce isn't in today. I'm
Mary MacCracken, the substitute teacher."
His eyes travel over me. "Well ... good
luck," he says. Then: "Look, could you just hold
the door while I get out, then I can hold it
closed from the other side till you can slip the
bolt?"
For the first time I see a brass sliding
bolt near the top of the door, and something inside of
me is outraged. I may be new, I may be
inexperienced, but I do not need to lock my children in a
room to were keep them there.
I smile at the man, still not knowing his last name, and
say, "That's all right. You just go on ahead. Thank
you for bringing Chris." And I see my brave,
foolish words reflected in his gray eyes that are
much like Chris's.
I knelt on the floor beside Chris and put my arm
around his waist. The father, in one swift movementeawas
out the door, holding it closed from the outside, peering
in through the window.
Chris gave a tremendous lurch, trying to reach
freedom, but my hand fastened on his belt and I
held on, even as I toppled over and spread
flat against the floor.
Damn that window, I thought, knowing that the father was
watching-but I held on tight. It was important,
what we were doing right then. We were establishing our
code, our
modus operandi,
in this our first meeting and confrontation; our standards
were being set. I would not lock the door. I knew
if I locked it that first morning, it would be
necessary to lock it each successive morning and afternoon-every
time any of us went in or out. I did not want that.
I wanted eventually to develop free access.
I did not think all this as I lay there on the
floor: I just did not want to lock the door, and so
I held on tight and said again softly, "Good
morning, Chris. I'm glad to see you."
I inched my way across the floor, never looking up,
until I had my back against the door. Then I
let go of Chris's belt. He tore at the knob
and rattled the door. I braced my feet on the
tile floor and leaned my full weight against the
door. At least, I thought, the man must be gone
by now.
Chris stopped shaking the door and stood looking at
me. Did he remember those times a year ago in
Helga's class? I thought I saw a flicker in
the huge gray eyes, but I could not be sure.
"Hiya, Chris," I say from the floor.
Momentarily he smiles, but it is so swift a
smile that it ends long before it reaches his eyes. He
moves back away from the door and for one long minute
we look at each other-full, complete eye
contact.
Then deliberately he takes off his coat
and throws it on the floor. Is this what he always
does and why there is no need for his name above a coat
hook-or is he merely testing me?
I get up from the floor. "Hang it up,
Chris."
He laughs and runs and so I go and get him. There
is no point in calling to him: he will not come and I
want to make words meaningful, and so I go and get him
and a red crayon. There is no time to find labels and
make neat lettering.
I lead him to the coat hooks and point to the hook
farthest on the right.
"This is yours," I tell him. "This is where you will
hang your coat."
He does not pull away
from me
now but stands silently as I write CHRIS in
large red-crayon letters on the wall above the hook.
Defacing church property"...So be it.
"Get your coat, Chris. Hang it here."
Wrong. He laughs and runs again.
I go and get him once again and we go together to the center
of the room where his discarded coat lies on the floor
and I take his hand and guide it to the coat-but he will
not pick it up and instead slumps slack and
boneless to the floor, laughing his shrill laugh.
I prop him up, my hand closes over his, and
we take the coat and hang it on the hook beneath his
name.
"Good for you," I say.
But there is a tapping at the door and he does not
even seem to hear me now. Instead, he finds two
drumsticks in the wooden chest and takes them and
climbs up on the jungle gym in the corner of the
room, climbs until he reaches the highest
platform- and there he folds his legs beneath him, and his
mind inside him and his gray eyes look blankly
down.
You are so small, I think. Seven years, and you
cannot weigh more than fifty pounds. Your eyes seem
bigger than the rest of you; they dominate your small,
square face like diffuse gray clouds coveringa
sky.... But I have watched and I have seen you be
aware; I remember when your eyes would clear, lit
from behind-and I will have more of this.
I go to the door to investigate the tapping. A stout
woman is there, holding a large, curly-haired
boy in her arms.
"Miss MacCracken?" Her speech is
cultured, al-
most English in articulation. "I understand that you will be
filling in for Joyce. A tragic thing. Tragic.
For her as well as for our poor children. Well, there's
nothing to do but make the best of it."
She comes into the room, where Chris is beating a
tattoo on the highest platform of the jungle gym,
and stands the boy on the floor, takes off his red
bonnet and mittens; then lays him on the floor and
takes off his white shoes so that she can get the red
snow-suit over his feet-unzips his overalls and
feels inside his rubber pants.
"Oh, dear. He's wet again. Never mind, I'll
fix it." And she changes him there on the floor.
Then she rises and hands me the plastic bag of
diapers, first removing two baby bottles full
of milk, complete with rubber nipples.
"I'll put these in the refrigerator for you, although
I must say I don't think much of that
refrigerator. It must be at least five years
old-not even a separate freezer so the poor children can
have ice cream. Still, we mustn't complain, must we?
Now, the baby food is in the bag. It will be all
right until you open the jars; then be sure
to refrigerate it. Poor girl. It must be
difficult for you to get the hang of things.
Well, you can always call me. I'm never far from
Bradford if he needs me."
She kisses him then and calls to Chris, "Good
morning, Christopher. Have fun with Bradford."
She addresses me: "My, Christopher is
athletic, isn't he? Climbing way up there.
Well, each of us has our own strengths. And the
boys Christopher and Bradford do have such a
marvelous time together."
She left then before I could speak. Which was perhaps just as
well. The only thing I could think to do was to look at
Brad's folder; perhaps I would regain some
semblance of reality.
There it was. Brad. Bradford Turner. I
checked the birth date. He was six years old.
My God, I thought, what kind of a class is this?
I was to find out later that this was the most difficult
class I would ever teach, the hardest, the
lowest-functioning. Four untoilet-trained boys,
three of whom were nonverbal, ranging in age from
five to eight. But I was unschooled-and while I
knew it was somewhat different from Helga's class,
in my naivete I thought, "Well, at least it's
a challenge. In a way, I'm lucky-there's no
way to go but up."
Then in my mind's ear I heard Helga's
voice, "You sound like a shitty Pollyanna.
Get to work." And I laughed out loud.
Louis was brought in by one of the women drivers and I
recognized him immediately. If his name was not familiar
to me, his blue football helmet was, and I
remembered hearing the staff psychiatrist discussing
him in Renee's room. There was discussion as to whether
he should be placed in her room for the remaining days.
This would be his last year at the school; he was having
multiple seizures now, sometimes as many as four
or five in one hour. While it was never stated in
words, most of us were sure these were epileptic in
nature.
There was nothing much to do for Louis now except make
sure his small football helmet was securely
fastened to protect his head, should he fall beyond reach,
and to cover him until he woke again after an
attack. He was staying on at the school only
until his parents could find a suitable residential
setting for him. Some of the staff thought that it was wrong
to keep him on in a school designed for the emotionally
disturbed-wrong for him and an imposition on the
teachers who had not been trained, and did not want
to give the kind of custodial care Louis
needed. But the Director wanted him there.
A circle OF chiuhien
His parents had been strong supporters of the school,
grateful and willing helpers, and the Director
felt a loyalty and a responsibility to help them
now. And right or wrong, if the Director wanted
him there, he stayed. So the problem had been
temporarilyresolved by moving Louis from Renee's
room to Joyce's. Joyce was more tolerant, her
room more removedeaand Louis's unnamed but
ever-increasing seizureswere less noticeable and
distracting to the other children and teachers....
Louis's driver hands me his bib and an extra
set of clothing and says, "Had a seizure on the
way over. Went stiff-then right out-b he came
to soon enough. Seems all right now."
I take off his hat and coat and he climbs upon the
jumping-jack rocking horse and starts the motion that
he will keep up all day unless he is lifted off-
up and down, up and down-the springs beneath him groaning
under the weight of his eight-year-old body.
Saliva runs down his chin and I wipe it with the first
of many Kleenexes and say, "Good morning,
Louis," but his blue eyes do not focus and the
motiondoes not stop-up and down, up and down.
I wonder if there is such a thing as mental
masturbation.
Someone crashes against the door and I open it
to Tom, the boy who ran down the stairs so many
eons ago when I was first searching for Helga's
classroom. Tom is a tall, frail boy with
wispy black hair falling across his eyes. All
his shirts and sweaters have turtlenecks, which he
unfolds and pulls up over his chin and eyes whenever
a situation grows too threatening.
Tom has a bell in one hand; the other is behind his
back. He emerges from the turtleneck, clangs
the bell, and shouts, "Circle time!"
"Thank you," I answer. "Good morning, Tom."
"Good morning, Tom," he replies, and leaves
us. Circle time. The formal day at the school
began with Circle each morning. It was the only time
duringthe day when the Director observed all of us
closely and noted the relationship between child and teacher,
teacher and teacher, and improvements and lapses in each
child. At the beginning of Circle we all sang
to each child, singling him out, making him special, and on
Wednesday afternoons at staff meetingsthere would be
references to how the child acted.group singing followed the
individual greeting, and then the galloping and
skating exercises and other games, which the
Director said were designed for "gross motor
development." These were followed by more social,
nursery-school-type games where the children chose
partners and again the Director watched for "peer
relationships."
It was a warm and friendly time. Most teachers had
aides assigned to them and the aides arrived as
Circle began, so that the ratio of child to adult was
two to one.
And now it is time, the first time, for me to take my own
class to Circle. But so far there are only three
children. Where is my other one? Billy. Well, perhaps
his was one of the phone calls; perhaps the weather or a
cold has kept him home.
I survey my three: Chris on the top of the
jungle gym. Brad sitting placidly on the
floor bulging like a Buddha because of his many diapers,
Louis up-and-downing it on the rocking horse. How
do I gather these three and get them down the long
hall to the room where Circle is held?
I stand beside the jungle gym. "Circle time,
Chris. Let's go."
He spreads himself flat and laughs his silver
laugh. I climb seven rungs until I
can reach the platformeaand then lift his slack body
down beside me. How can he be so heavy when he is so
small? But at least he does not seem inclined
to run, and lets me hold his hand. With the other hand I
disentangle Louis from the rocking horse and support
him against my side. Now Brad-how to get him there?
Lacking alternatives, I simply say once
again, "Circle time. Brad. Come on now." And
surprisingly he stirs. He rocks forward until
he can push against the floor with his hands, push himself up
to a standing position, and then he willingly waddles
to me and holds my skirt-and we are off down the
hall toward Circle.
The others are already there. Twelve more childrenbbq a few
must be absent because I know there are twenty-four children in
the school, and five other teachers, one for every four
children. They call across the room, introducing themselves
to me- Susan, small and blond; Renee;
Carolyn, tall, black-haired, beautiful;
Ruth, red-haired with glasses; and Dan, a new
male teacher replacing Nick, blue eyes,
strong-looking in a khaki shirt. The Director
smiles from in front of the piano and I maneuver
my three to the small chairs in the Circle. The
Director motionsto a woman on the side
of the room who comes and sits next to Louis and so I
put Brad and Chris on either side of me.
The singing starts, all the teachers and some of the children joining
voices-the Director plays the piano, leading
us.
"Good morning to you, Good morning to you, Good morning,
dear Louis, We're glad to see you."
I reach across Brad and touch Louis's shoulder as
we sing to him-the blue eyes are marbles, and the woman
beside him wipes his chin.
We sing to Brad and I smile down at him and
take his pudgy hand and touch his bulging stomach with it,
and he beams up at me-brown curls, rosy
cheeks, brown eyes, a beautiful child, but how can he
manageto look only two years old when he is
six? No time to think now. It's Chris's turn.
He decides that he must leave his chair and sit on
me-he winds his arm tight, tight, around my neck.
From across the room it must look as though he's hugging
me affectionatelyeaandthe teachers smile approvingly
at this sign of rapport. Only I can feel his
sharp fingernails as he pinches the skin below my ear,
pinches hard, and I lift him back to his chair and
my hand holds him there as we finish the song ...
"Good morning, dear Chris, I'm glad
to see you."
I soon saw why there had been no lesson plan.
There was no one to do lessons. Nor was there time. The
day was consumed with eating and eliminating. Circle
took approximately forty-five minutes; when it
was over, the classes went to the bathroom. My
class changed its diapers. The Director told
me this as the other children left the room and I nodded, still
filing away the picture of that morning's Circle
in my mind. It had not changed much since the first day
I visited: although some of the children were different, they were still
beautiful; although Helga was no longer there, the
strength and the loving were.
As we made our slow trek back to our
classroom, we passed the furnace room where
Zoe, chief cook and bottle washer, secretary,
public relations expert, and the Director's right
hand, was beginning to heat a frozen casserole in the
electric warming cart.
We were just rounding the corner, Chris and Louis
holding my hands. Brad waddling behind, when I heard
Zoe say, "Jesus, cut that out, Franklin!"
"Aw, come on, Zoe, one quick one. I never did
it in a furnace room, did you?"
That must be that new teacher, I thought, Dan
Franklin. Zoe called everybody by their last name.
"Go on, get out now. Quit kidding around." But there
was laughter behind her voice.
"Okay. All right. I'll catch you later then.
Incidentallyeawho's the new teacher with Joyce's
class? Where'd she come from?"
"Came from the Junior League. One of the
volunteers."
"The Junior League? You're kidding? Jeez!
Well, Zoe, I'll bet "Junior
League" doesn't last a week. I'll lay a
meatball on it."
"Okay, you're on. Franklin. She's better
than you think. I saw her work with Helga last
year."
Billy was my fourth child. He was the youngest in the
class, just five, with blond, wavy hair and a
soft, unformed face with a rosy, puckered mouth and, like
the others, not toilet trained. His mother was young,
separated from her husband, and she would bring Billy
to school an hour or so late each morning. The
Director spoke to her about this, then Dr.
Steinmetz, the psychologist, finally Vie Marino,
our psychiatrist, each explaining how important
the schedule, the routine, was for Billy, how
necessary the regular scheduling ... and she would agree-and
then the next morning come as late as usual-or
later-dark, bruised hollows beneath her eyes.
It was hard not knowing what happened to the children when they
left school. They did not speak, and so there was no
way to learn from them.
A circle OF children
where they felt safe. I knew no better way
than to feed them there.
We also stripped. There alone in our bare
classroomI took off their clothes. Not
Louis-even I knew that he had left us, was now
beyond reaching. But I took off the clothes of the other
three piece by piece and taught them to put them
back on by themvs.for a half hour or more each
morning we worked on learning to get dressed and
undressed. I took off three pairs of shoes,
three pairs of jeans, three pairs of diapers.
I laid out three pairs of cotton training
pants-one on Brad's chair, one on
Billy's, one on Chris's. I worked with whichever
one I could capture first, sitting him on the floor
in front of his chair, guiding his hand to the underpants,
then pushing him forward, laying the pants out on the
floor in front of him, then bending first the
right leg, aiming the right foot for the proper hole, then
the left leg.
Standing him up, I'd hook his thumbs beneath the
elastic at the top of the underpants and pull them up,
and then, finally, I'd release the child and
captureanother and begin again.
And somehow, it did not seem like drudgery. I was,
after all, in bodily contact with the child the whole time,
touching him, helping him learn. And I knew, without
really knowing it, that this touching was my own best way of
communicating with these children. There are other ways for other
people, but I could almost hear the children through my fingertipseaand
I think I also spoke to them.
That was all I asked for in the beginning, just the
underpants. But I did not set our table or pour the
juice until all the underpants were on.
For Chris, this was merely relearning. I had seen
him put on and take off his own jacket, even his
shoes, dozens of times in Helga's classroom.
I knew
he had not "regressed"; there was too much
intelligencein his laughter, in his willful disobedience.
It was a matter of getting through again.
Brad learned to manage both underpants and
jeans-he could not get past his stomach to his
shoes and socks.
Billy was much slower, finally able to pull on his
underpants with help. I never got as far as taking
off his shirt.
I was happy and totally absorbed. I loved being
on my own with the children; they were making progresseaI was
sure of it-and now I understood Helga's reaction
to having volunteers. I was glad the
Directordid not visit my room, grateful that
no volunteer or aide had been assigned to us-just
the children and myself. Without interference of adult words in the
room, I could hear the unspoken words of the children-their
rage, their refusals, their protests, their pleas,
their questions, compliance, or excitement.
I stopped taking the class to the lunchroom for the
noon meal. There they had been allowed to eat what
they liked, Chris roaming around, snatching food from
other plates. It was not that the school or Joyce was
lax: I felt then and I still feel that of all the
schools I've seen-and there have been quite a few
now-ours was one of the finest. It was not that they were lax;
it was that these four children of Joyce's were so difficult.
They were in many ways more like small animals-some
wild, some tame-than like humanchildren. Because the other
children in the school were more advanced, though perhaps as
sick in their own way, the other teachers were more
tolerant of these four. Asking less, making fewer
demands.
But I did not want this. If I accepted it, or
allowedthe children to, it meant that I did not
believe they could improve; and if this was so then we were
without hope. And it was necessary to hope;
more than necessary-it was essential. On this I built
my own new creed. I believed in the children.
I had tried teaching them to eat sitting in the
lunchroom. But it was too difficult. The day in
my second week that I tried to keep Chris in his
chair at lunch, I could not. He performed his trick
of turninghis small body into a limp, heavy
weight, and slid from his chair to lie beneath the table on
the floor; and when I reached down to retrieve him,
he set his teeth into my hand and bit so hard that I
had to pull it back.
And Brad wept for his bottle and Billy howled
and the other teachers were uncomfortable with the commotion.
Dan spoke to me about it after school. He found me
in my classroom long after the children had gone home.
He came in, turned one of the small pink chairs
backward, straddling it, and studied me with his blue
eyes.
"That was a rough scene today. How's your hand?"
He was too big in my classroom. Incongruous
with the pale green wall and tiny chairs. He was
well over six feet tall, and now his long legs
stretched out interminably across the tile floor. His
remarks to Zoe still burned in my ears and I wished
only that he would leave.
"Fine, thanks. Nothing at all."
But his hand insists, examines the purple swelling,
touching it with his fingertips. "No skin broken. That's
good," he says.
I pull away, conscious of his youth, of the maleness
of him, and go to wash my blackboard. If he
notices he doesn't show it, and goes on talking
in his slow way, actually helping me devise a
plan
whereby my class can eat in our own room. He
believesmy boys can learn to eat like other children and I
am grateful to him for this.
They were learning to feed themselves, to dress themselves; but still
they were not toilet-trained. It had never been a
problem with Elizabeth or Rick, and sometimes I
had felt that some of my friends "were overanxious
concerning their own children's early toilet training. But
here in school it was differentbb^the children were
five, six, seven-Louis was eight, but I did not
try to change him; it would have been cruel and useless.
But I was sure that the otherscd learn to go to the
bathroom in a toilet rather than in their diapers-and
if they could learn to do this, perhaps their parents could take
them with them on small trips or at least feel some
pride and relief, and maybe hope, in their children.
I wanted this, because if I had an enemy, if I
did battleagainst any one thing while I was at the
school, it was against the "institution."
There were some good residential settings, but the cost was
exorbitant-over seven thousand dollars a year
even then. And I had seen some of the others- the state
institutions for the mentally ill where the children were mixed with the
adults and wore only hospital gowns and
dropped their feces upon the floor. I had read and
heard tales of horror, and I fought hard to keep
the children from being sent there. Every time I had to change a
diaper or mop the excrement from my classroom
floor, I fought a little harder, worked more
determinedly, to train my children.
Dan suggested that I speak to the Director about
having the children eat lunch in our room rather than in the
lunchroom. He felt that she would

welcome the relief from the bedlam my four created,
as
long as I was willing to undertake it alone. And he
was right.
So each day after that, Zoe would bring our share of the
casserole, milk, and dessert on a tray and hand
it to me at the door. I would set our table with mats
and paper napkins from the five-and-ten and our plastic
glasses and paper bowls. None of these children had
eating problems in a classical sense; these four were
all hungry; there was no difficulty in swallowing,
no anorexia-they just had not learned how r to eat.
I served each of us a small portion from the large
casserole into the separate bowls, and as long as the child
stayed at the table he could eat. I would not permit
him to carry his bowl to a corner or, as Chris
wished, to the platform of the jungle gym. We ate
together at the table-ate our casserole, our dessert,
drank our milk. At first they ate with their fingers,
were then when I thought they were ready I gave them
spoons and insisted they use these instead of fingers. In
the beginning I used my own fingers, then when I gave
them spoons, I used one myself so that they could see
me, could have a live model to watch closely,
to imitate. It is a tricky thing, getting
food onto a spoon, carrying it to your face and
putting it in the right hole without being able to see what you
are doing. It takes practice; it also helps if
you can actually see someone else doing it. See that it
is possible. It was not that they had never seen people eat
:
at a table before or use silverware; it was just that I
believed that in order to learn to do something you had to understand
it and you had to want to do it. I tried to break each
task into its smallest segments, teaching first one part
and then the next, building on each tiny success.
Chris could do, had done, many of these things before. He
had once been toilet-trained, once had eaten
at a table; I had an advantage here because I had
seen him with Helga and I knew he was capable of
it. But he refused. Willfully he dumped
food, nocked over his chair, peed on the floor-as
if deliberately trying to anger or test
me-laughing all the w
hile.
Yet there was fear inside him; I could feel it when
I touched him, feel it gradually go out as I held
him and he realized I wouldn't hurt him. I
remembered the farm across the road, summers when I
was small, where they bred riding horses. I
remembered the wild kicking and bucking when the saddle
first went on-and the gradual gentling. I was trying
to gentle Chris.
His parents were close to giving up. They loved him,
but the father would come in in the morning and sit awhile now,
and sometimes he would begin to tell me of the night before.
Then I would motion him into the hall where we could
talk, watching C hris through the window in the
door-the unlocked door. He was pleased with that, and
nice enough to tell me. He remembered well that first
morning, with me flat on the floor while he
watched me from this same window, and we laughed together
over that.
At home they locked things too. They now had a
padlock on a drawer in the kitchen. Ever since
they had found the crib slashed. Chris's brother was
four months old now, and one morning they had gone
into his room to find the mattress cut open in a
dozen places, the baby still in the crib-and Chris
there with the knife, laughing. His father took the knife and
all the others in the house and locked them in the kitchen
drawer, and Chris's mother wore the key on a string
around her neck. The carving
set was too large for the drawer; they hid that under the
mattress of their double bed.
It was a terrible thing, a terrible way to live, and I
could not censure them. They were pleased, though, that
Chris no longer needed to be locked in the
classroomccperh sometime other locks could be opened.
Brad was very different. Eager to copy, eager
to please, he followed me everywhere, learning so fast
that it was difficult to keep up with him. The world
delighted him, beginning with his own fat stomach, which he
now could see as he pulled on his underpantsand shirt.
He patted it with proud satisfaction and repeated the
word "Brad." He was discovering himself; what's more,
there was a name. There was a name for everything: nose,
mouth, eyes- Point to it, name it. Often he doubled
the word; if he particularlyliked something it became
"cup-cup" or "ball-ball." I was pleased to be
"Mair-Mair."
It was hard to understand why he hadn't talked before. I
brought it up at staff meeting, but no one seemed
to know or would say. It was difficult for the
staff-psychologist, psychiatrist, speech
therapist, psychiatricsocial worker-impressive
names and for the most part competent people-but they were there only
one day a week. The budget would not allow for more, the
Director said, and I'm sure this was true; also,
she was saving for her dream: a new school,
not rented or borrowed, but built specifically for
these children-her school. It was her dream, and now with her
husband dead and her only son marriedit became her
life.
In any event, the professionals came only on
Wednesday, and most for only half a day or
less, and there were twenty-four children. So it was
difficult for them to see every child weekly, and understandable
that they would hesitate to commit themselves. Yet who
else could help?
Eventually, teachers did evolve their own answers,
knowing they were speculations, subject to error. But as
they searched for solutions to a child's problemeathey were forced
to consider causes and motivations and they did
develop personal, private theories.
In Brad's case, he was bright and beautiful but
infantile.in a way, it seemed as if he had
been kept this way, as if he should remain a
perennial infant, He had one sister, seventeen
years old; both parents were in their late forties.
His father was president of a large insurance company;
both parents had advanced degrees.
I do not think his mother consciously wished to keep
Brad from learning to speak, but his babyish ways and
dependence on her were essential to her, making
her feel needed. Still, I think he had not spoken
primarily because he had never needed to speak. Everything
was provided for him, his wishes anticipated, his
wants satisfied, before he asked. He lay like a
fat, comfy king, satiated and full without lifting his
finger, much less his tongue, while words gushed over
him. He didn't realize that words had a
specific meaning; instead, they were only pleasant
sounds, his mother's speech so fluent and verbose that it
was meaningless to him. So now it was interestingto learn that
things and people had names; to discover that he could make things
happen through speech was exciting. If he said
"water," or an approximationthereof, he got
water. It was worthwhile to learn and use these words.
It was interesting to watch the interrelationships between the
boys begin to develop. Chris watched Brad.
Brad was a better teacher for Chris than I was.
I was an adult, and somewhat suspect. I might
force my ways upon him-indeed, I had and did. But
Brad
was something new; Brad imitated me and gradually
Chris imitated Brad. I laughed out loud one
day when Chris got his shirt on over his head. He
wore it for a half hour, without poking his head through,
then finally it appeared. Brad patted him as
soon as I did, saying, "Gu for you!"
The toilet training was the hardest. I took them
all at regular intervals to the toilet. I still had
to change Louis" diapers, which made it more
difficult;
but I would take each of the other three to the bathroom,
staggering the times, hoping we would have it to ourselves. We
used the girls' bathroom, and it was a typical
Sunday-school setup-two sinks, three
cubicles with toilets, a large counter with a wide
mirror. We went to the bathroom many times a day,
without success-they would wet their pants as soon as
we returned to the classroom.
I bought a small chair potty and put it in the
classroom, thinking immediacy might help. But
it, too, was unsuccessful.
Finally I made a new decision. The way the children
had learned to eat and begin to speak was by watching me,
imitating me. I decided that perhaps this might also be
true of peeing. Brad at least had probably
never seen it done-nor Billy. Louis was without
control; Chris was full of it. A small pun.
Full of control and pee. He could go all day and
never urinate, withholding it carefully unless he
wished to let it go. Once he made an
enormous puddle on the foot of a potential fund
raiser. After that visitors to our classroom
decreased even more.
I waited until the rest of the school was at the
playground; I had made our excuses for remaining
at school. Then I took the boys with me down the
long hall into the bathroom, our voices echoing in the
tiled emptiness. I propped open the door of one
of the cubicles with the bench from the counter and,
leaving the three outside the cubicle, went in,
sat down on the toilet, and peed. They were
fascinated. I was sorry I could not do it standing
up-but at least they were interested.
"Now you," I said.
All the time I had been going I had said, "See
the pee.
Good.
That's pee. That's good. Pee. Pee."
Brad took my place. He sat down on the
toilet and looked between his fat legs.
"Pee?" he asked.
Nothing happened. Then a drop. Then a stream.
"Pee-pee. Brad's pee-pee," he shouted in
delight.
"Good, good!" I said. "Pee in the
toilet. Good." We were both undilutedly
happy. I helped Brad off the seat and he put
his pants back on. Then Chris pushed by us.
I bent forward to help him, but something told me
to wait, to let him do it his own way. Chris turned
his back to us, let down his pants, and stood in
front of the toilet, his buttocks skinny, pale,
vulnerable.stood a minute-two-three-four-and then
it came ... a torrent. Not only was Chris
peeing; he remembered how to do it like a boy; now he
could show Brad. He turned and smiled at us when
he was through, still holding his small penis, shaking it as
though to extract every drop. He smiled, smiled
without the usual accompanying mirthless laugh, and said,
"I peed."
It took Billy longer; he was absent so much. But
he had two good examples now, and three weeks
later all three were peeing with pride, though Billy
still covered his ears when the toilet flushed.
Friday of that week the Director came to my
classroomand asked me to come to her office after
school.
I dreaded going to see her-I had been there twelve
weeks. I knew that Joyce must be ready to
come back, that this was what she wanted to tell
me. I was glad Joyce had recovered; but-oh,
if I could just have had a little longer, a little more time.
There was so much more I wanted to do. We were working hard
on language now that other things took less time, and
this was a fascinating area-communication-Iwanted more.
Ah, but I had had my chance. It had been good. I
had no reason to complain. I walked quietly down
the hall to the office that Friday afternoon.
We were alone, the Director and myself.
"You've done a good job, Mary," she said. "I'm
pleased you could be here with us. I don't know what we
would have done without you. The boys have been happy with you.
I'm sure they would have progressed just as well with
Joyce, but nonetheless they have not regressed. And you
should be proud of that."
"Thank you," I said, feeling somehow sad. What was
the matter with me? What did I want-accolades?
"Joyce will be back on Tuesday. I wanted
to tell you so that you can say good-bye to the boys and
collectyour things."
"Oh, I don't need them," I said. What use
did I have for five small plastic cups, rubber
balls, scrap-books? Whom would I show a
picture to, saying, "Can you see the boy,
Chris? Point to the boy ..."
"Please keep them here. Perhaps Joyce will have some
use for them." Tears were very close behind my eyes and
I was eager to go. "Thank you for lettingme come," I
said and turned to go.
"Mary"-the Director's voice was brisk-"would you
like to continue?"
"Continue ... ?"
"Yes, keep on teaching here. Of course you should
take some courses, but the need for teachers is
desperate and we have an extremely long waiting
list of children. I have been thinking about it, and I think
perhaps we could clear out the storeroom opposite
Dan's room and you could use that. It's small, but
there are only about two months of school left and
I think we could manage."
I couldn't believe it. My whole insides were
singing.
"Yes," I said, "I'd like that. I'm sure we
could manage."
You fraud. You fake. Oh, Mary, you phony.
Think you could manage? You could manage on a
pinhead if they'd let you come back-cool, calm,
collected- how are you going to keep from bursting?
"Well, then," the Director said, "that's
settled. On Monday you can pack up your
things, and then the remainder of the week you can clear out the
storeroomand get settled. I'll call the
Norfolk School District and tell them we have
an opening. I think what we'll do is add the children
one at a time. That will give you a chance to get to know
each one."
I hope I walked out the door. I can't
remember it at all, or walking up the stairs or
out the front door to my car. I only remember
colliding with Dan.
"What did she say? What'd the old bat say?"
Dan was not fond of the Director.
I told him, stumbling over words in my
excitementeaunable to contain myself.
Dan leaned against his Volkswagen and grinned.
"Well, Junior League, I guess I owe
Zoe a meatball."
"I heard that conversation."
"No kidding? Figured it might make you fight a
little harder. Well, babe, I'll tell you one
thing:
you're the best teacher they've got and the old lady
knows it. What salary did she offer you?"
"She didn't. I don't know. I didn't
ask."
"Ohhh, Mary. For Pete's sake. Be careful.
She
hangs on to her money as tight as she can! ...
RegressedffCan't believe she said they hadn't
regressed, although that was probably to keep you from
asking for more salary. Haven't regressed.
Jesus-they've only improved five and a half
million per cent."
"Ah, Dan, thank you. I'm going to have my own
class; can you believe it?"
"I not only believe it. Junior; I'm betting
all my meatballs on you."
On Monday I told the boys that Joyce would be
back the next day. I had spent a large part of the
weekend thinking about how best to tell them. It was not that
I was indispensable to them; it was just that we had started
something together, and I did not want them to think that I
had left without a reasonor because of something they had
done.
I decided to show them where I was going, and we walked
down the hall and inspected the storeroom.
We spent the rest of the day cleaning out the room,
packing books in boxes, carrying old magazinesto
the church secretary. The children pulled out as many
books as they put in and accidentally tore
some pages of the magazines. We did not get much
accomplished, but I hoped they understood, through the
doing, where I would be.
We said good-bye that afternoon. Chris, Brad,
Billy, Louis. I would never forget them, nor the
look and smell of that classroom-my first class,
or if not my own, at least borrowed for a little while.
We had learned a lot together. We had changed each
other's lives more in those twelve weeks than most
people do in a lifetime.
It seems so strange to me, now, that I know only
a paragraph of information about the rest of their lives
after we had such an intimate time together. Occasionally
Chris and Brad would run to me at the 65
playground and put their heads against my knee, but I
was never in that back L-shaped room again
There was inside of me, of all of us teaching there, an
instinctive knowledge of the necessity of letting go. When a
child moved outside our immorbit we did not try
to pursue him. I could not keep from asking Joyce,
however, and I learned from her at the end of the year that a
suitable place had been found for Louis, that Brad
had continued to improve and would enter public school
in the fall, that Chris's family moved South, and
that Billy and his mother quietly disappeared
during the early summer.
I keep my pictures, though, and my slides, in
a carousel inside my head, and they will remain a part
of me forever.
There was a four-day hiatus for me now. I cleaned
the storeroom, and on Thursday I painted it pale
yellow and polished the floor. After school on
Friday, Dan helped me move in the tables,
chairs, and bookcase that the Director had bought
at a secondhandstore. It was a tiny room, but its
window faced east and the morning sun was clear and warming
now with the beginning of spring.
After I had gone home, Dan bought a plant and
put it on the windowsill in my room. I found it
there on Monday morning when I came in. The card
said only, "Every teacher needs a plant to water."
It didn't need a signature.
SEVEN
Brian didn't come and didn't come, and I could not
understand it. I had gotten there early on
Mondaymorning, eager to see my first child, waiting for
him, filled with excitement, anticipation. The
Directorhad told me his name: Brian
O'Connell, from the Norfolk School District.
She had done an intake on him earlier and
said that he was eight and had been kept at home because
the public school system did not have a suitable
place for him and that more complete records would
follow. This was often the case, but I didn't care.
I really wanted to meet him first anyway and form my
own opinion.
He was to be sent by
taxi
that first morning;
meanwhile, bussing would be worked out for him. I waited
in the Director's office by the window, watching each
car arrive, so that I would be there when he came.
But the final car came and went and still no Brian.
I lingered in the office.
"What do you think, Zoe? What do you think
happened"...Do you think they changed their minds?"
"The fool taxi driver probably got lost. Do
you want me to check the cab companies?"
Zoe had little respect for taxi and bus drivers,
and she directed them like a diminutive traffic
cop, morning and afternoon, as they transported the
childreneakeeping them parked so that the traffic could flow,
moving them on as soon as the child was safe, 67
giving them hell if they were late. She would have
tackled the entire Norfolk cab line if
I had asked her to. Loyal, snappy-if Zoe
liked you she could never help enough; if she didn't,
you could court her endlesslywithout winning a glance.
Perhaps the driver
had
gotten lost. Zoe was often right, and I listened to her
pithy wisdom as much as to the words of the
professionals. Still, a call to the cab companies
might prompt a call to the school district-andI
didn't want an emergency alarm the first day.
"I think I'll go outside and wait a few more
minutesea"...I told her.
Down to my classroom, past the Circle room,
where I could hear the strains of "Here we go,
Looby-Loo," and I knew Dan would be gritting
his teeth as he sang. He hated Circle,
considering the songs and games too childish for his
boys. I took my coat from the hook marked
MARY. There had been time to make the labels for this
room-so far we had only two: MARY and
BRIAN.
Outside, spring was beginning again. It always made itself
known so urgently. Summer, fall, winter, did not
impress themselves on my senses quite so ardently, but
spring could never be ignored. The grounds
surrounding the church were beautiful. There were two
gardeners, so everything was carefullymaintained. Just now
there were crocuses and the beginning shoots of jonquils
and daffodils, and forsythia spilled across the edges
of the black macadamdrive, softening its appearance.
It was a long sloping driveway, curving from the
large parking lot at the side around to the back. It
was in the back that the drivers let the children out, by the
Director's office. I waited there awhile and
then, feeling the wind, started to walk in order to warm
myself.
The church itself was new, modern, handsome, in design.
The building holding the Sunday-school rooms, the
minister's office, and so forth, was open and large. It
was here that we had our classes. I walked around it
now, admiring the flow of line, the sensitive use of
wood and stone, the windows, the recesseddoorways.
I stopped suddenly in front of one of the
doorways.there was a small figure crouched on
the steps. I moved closer and saw it was a boy who
arched and stared, instantly, totally still, much like a deer
at unexpected sound or sight. I had the feeling
that he might bolt if I approached too
suddenly.
I waved to him and walked on a little way,
then turned and walked back past him, calling to him
this time, "Good morning." There was a flurry of
movementat my voice, but he did not leave the
step. I went on past but zigzagged my parallel
tracks so that I came closer to the steps.
He was wearing gray pants, a gray peaked cap
pulled low over his eyes, a blue plaid jacket
with a piece of white paper pinned to one shoulder with a
safety pin. Written on it were two words:
Brian O'Connell.
I stopped in front of him. "Hello, Brian,"
I said. His arms began to flap up and down in
rapid motion.he reminded me now of a wounded
bird, desperateto fly away but unable to leave the
ground.
Why would they pin his name on him? Was he unableto
remember it-or unable to speak?
"I'm Mary," I said, speaking slowly, softly,
my voice just above a whisper. "I'm your" teacher.
I'm glad you're here."
What a hell of a way for him to arrive. What a
horrible way to start school. The driver must have been
new, must have let him out at the wrong door, and he
had simply huddled there. Thank God he
had not run. I was not sure how to get him
inside. I talked a little more, softly, waiting
to get an idea or a feel of what was best to do.
But we could not stay there much longer. Soon someone would
come out, the Director, Zoe ...
additionalpeople would frighten him even more.
I moved closer to him and the flapping started again,
wildly, then slowed. I wondered if I dared
to touch him. Not yet. It was not right yet. But I could
see him shivering, even with his heavy jacket.
It was time to go in.
"Come," I said, "it's time for school to begin." And
I led off, slowly, willing him to follow.
As it happened, I was lucky. I had chanced upon
one of the best motivators for Brian: curiosity.
I found out later that he was a naturally curious child,
eager, bright; he was often triggered into trying something
new because of his overwhelming desire to know.
Back up the macadam drive, avoiding the
Director'soffice. That would be too much for him
now. Into a small side door. I walked quickly,
hoping to reach our classroom before Circle ended,
pacing my walk'to the sound of his steps, trying never
to get too far in front for fear of losing him, but
trying to move quickly.
Into the school, down the short flight of
steps-my classroom was the first on the right Good-I
had left the door open. No need to pause. Into the
room, and he followed. I shut the door then-not
to keep him there but to soften some of the noise as the others
burst from the Circle room.
"This is our room," I said. "This is where I
hang my coat."
I pointed to the other hook, the one with BRIAN
neatly labeled over it. "This is where you hang
yours."
The flapping was just in the hands now. He circledthe
perimeter of the room, letting his hands flutter against
the walls. I knew the feeling; often I had
wanted to do it myself at large parties, to know the
beginning and the end, to orient myself in relationto the
periphery.
I sat down and let him flutter by. There was no
hurry. I moved one of the small chairs over to the
window and sat in the sunlight, looking toward the
door. Keeping watch so that I could warn him, soften
the surprise if the Director or someone were to come
in.
Dan's face appeared in the window
of,
the doorway.i smiled to show him that all was
well, and signaled that we needed time. He waved
back and gave the okay sign-thumb and forefinger
together, last three fingers raised.
I knew we were all right then. Dan would tell
Zoe that Brian had arrived and would explain to the
Directoreaif she was there, though often she left right
after Circle to make a fund-raising speech or do
a screening interview.
For almost an hour Brian walked our room, paced
its length and breadth, in the beginning making large
detours around me, making the loop smaller and
smaller until now he passed within twelve inches
of me.
I talked to him from time to time-about the school, where the
bathroom was, how many children were there, where we ate
lunch. It was like singing, more like singing than talking,
really-like the songs I used to sing to Elizabeth and
Rick when they were small and ill with measles or
chicken pox and would wake whimpering in the night. I
would sit on the end of their beds and sing all the songs
I could remember, the songs my mother had sung to me,
camp songs, college songs, love songs; the
content did
not matter, nor the fact that my voice was funny and
off-key. It was a way of telling them that I
was there, so that they could relax and sleep again and not need
to keep opening their eyes or cry or ask questionsthey
didn't want answered. As long as they could hear
my voice, there was no need to check.
It was the same now. I talked to Brian to give
him the feeling of safety, to remove his fear.
He came closer and closer, never speaking himself,
until finally he slowed to a stop in front of me.
Now it was right. Now I could touch him. I reached
toward his shoulder and unpinned the white paper from his
jacket. This touch was light, light-merely the
unfastening of a pin-but a beginning;
we had made contact.
"You don't need this anymore," I said. "I know
your name."
He stood so still; his skin pale, nose and cheeks
sprinkled with freckles, green eyes with black
centersand long black lashes never flickering from
mine.
Then he left me-twice more around the room, then
diagonally across to the center ... around again ... back
in front of me for another long look. Then to the
coat hooks. He stood there a long time. Around the
room, back to the coat hooks. He touched my
coat, touched it so quickly it was almost an
illusion. Around the room to in front of me. So
close his legs almost touched my knees.
I know what he wants now. He wants to stay.
Stay here. But what is the trouble?
Something-somethingmore. Ah, the buttons. He cannot
manage the buttons on his jacket.
There are four. Large black buttons. And I
start with the one at the bottom-easier for him than to have
my hands too near his face, his throat, in the
beginning. I move up the middle, finally the last
button is undone and back he goes to the coat
hook. A flutter now. Back to me ... more
flutter. Ah, but this I won't do for him. He is
eight; he should be able to take off his coat.
The fluttering builds and builds and I say,
"All right now; I'll start one sleeve," and I
tug gently at the right sleeve of his jacket
until it is away from his shoulder and the arm is almost
out.
Back he goes to the coat hook-flapping,
wiggling, flapping, until he gets it off-and the
jacket falls against the floor.
I watch quietly, quietly, never moving from my
chair. And he leans down and picks it up and
hangs it on the hook beneath his name.
It is almost lunchtime. I am sure now and I
move without hesitating. What is it? How do I
know that I cannot lose him now? He has yet
to speak, and yet I know with utmost surety that I
am home free.
I hear noises in the hall and I say to Brian,
"It's time for lunch. Let's go wash."
I take his hand and walk down the hall, depositing
him outside the boys' bathroom without a qualm.
"I'll wait for you here," I say, and when he comes
out I note with delight his unzipped pants. No
toilet training needed here.
"Zipper up," I say. And he looks down at
his pants and solemnly pulls up the zipper.
But in the lunchroom he panics. I sit beside him,
and even though we are not directly touching I can
feel his whole body trembling. They serve his
plate, and his arms begin to flap. Unmeaningly his
flapping arm knocks a tray of paper cups
filled with milk from Zoe's hands.
"Shit," she says.
Brian runs, screaming, flapping. Around the
lunchroom, unable to find the door, bumping blindly
into chairs, other children.
"Awk-awk," he goes. Some strange,
strangled cry, "Awwwwkkk-awwwwwwwwkkk," more
like a dying chicken than a boy.
I get up and gently capture him and lead him from
the room, and as we go out the door he speaks, or rather
screams in terror, his first words.
"Gonna go to the doctor's! Awwwwwkk.
Awwwwwkk. Gonna go to the doctor's!"
Back in our room, I hold him on my lap.
We are both a little too big, a little too old,
for the chair, but we have a need for it.
"Now, what is this?" I say. "What is all this
yellingeascreaming, about the doctor? There comare no
doctorshere." Mentally I apologize to our
psychiatrist. "We do not have time for doctor's
visits when we are at school. Doctors are
all right, but we are too busy here for them. We have
too much to do, you and I, too much to see, to learn,
to have time for doctors."
Again my words do not matter. I use them as a means
to drive away his terror. Inch by slow inch I can
feel the fear go and, sitting on the chair still holding
him, I sing Helga's old song, "Camptown
races all day long-do dah, do dah. Camptown
races, hear my song-all the do dah day."
As his body relaxes, I let my thoughts
drift. Why was he so frightened? Was it the other children?
No. It was the food. It was when they served his food
that the real panic came. And what doctor? Why
had he screamed that? Had he been hospitalized?
Or merely threatened?
Now I needed those charts, those records. I hoped
the Director would get them quickly.
It was two weeks before the records came. I
searched them carefully, but there was no mention of
hospitalization. There was a transcript of an
interviewthat the parents had had at a mental health
clinic. Brian was an only child. The father was
describedas intelligent, aggressive; the mother as
slendereapretty, extremely nervous. He was the
top man in a small wholesale grocery. Both
parents said there had never been any trouble with
Brian; both were described by the social worker as
somewhat uncooperative.
The psychologist reported that it had been
impossibleto examine Brian; he had- run
screaming around the office during the entire testing
period;
his summation read "Impossible to evaluate." A
socialworker had interviewed Brian's mother, who said
that pregnancy and birth had both been
normalbbshe thought the trouble had begun when she had
gone to work, helping out at a local health spa, and
sent Brian to an all-day nursery. She said that
they had abused him there, that he had been fine until
then. But when she was asked the date of Brian's
birth, she gave her own birth date. When she was
asked her own, she gave his. When Brian was
brought in to join his mother after the unsuccessful
psychological testing, he had climbed on her
lap and settled into the nursing position and then lay

quietly. The social worker noted that there was a
symbioticrelationship between mother and son.
I put the folder back in the file. There seemed
to be so much blame. What good was that? Blame
producedguilt, and guilt, hostility; there was no
growth in that.
Brian's mother came to school with him on the second
day. She arrived in the taxi with Brian and,
unasked, uninvited, she settled herself in our
room. She was thin, fragile-looking, and talked
without stopping. Her fingers picked nervously at her
nylon-knit turquoise dress as she chattered
on and on.
Brian ran the whole morning. He
fluttered so hard he seemed palsied. By eleven
o'clock I could take no more.
"Excuse me," I said. And went to look for
Zoe. The rapport that Brian and I had begun
to build was leaking out of the room; I could feel it go.
I found Zoe in the furnace room heating up the
casserole for lunch on
"a.
covered electric hot tray.
"Guess what's for lunch today! Same thing as last
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday: cut-up hot
dogs in canned baked beans. Only today it's
frozen solid. The church ladies who brought it said
they'd made it last week and then forgot to take it out
of the freezer last night. I told them I
understood. Anybodyknows it takes so much time to cut
up twelve hot dogs you have to do it a week ahead
of time. Particularlyeaif there're only five of you
. . . What's the matter?"
"Zoe, can you get Mrs. O'Connell to leave my
room for a little while? She's been there all morning.
Brian's so nervous he's climbing the walls. And
I'm about to follow . . ."
Zoe strode out of the furnace room, hiking up her
skirt-on her five-foot body. She
opened the door to my room.
"Mrs. O'Connell, I need your help with lunch.
Now!"
And Mrs. O'Connell followed Zoe obediently.
I took my chair to the window, and this time Brian
also brought a chair and sat there beside me. I got up
and brought back a wooden puzzle-only four
pieces. I dumped them out and idly began to put
them back in place. Deliberately, I
maneuvered the fourth piece in backward, pushing at
it, unable to make it fit. Then, sighing, I pushed
it away, put it on the windowsill, just beyond
Brian's reach.
My thoughts turned back to Mrs. O'Connell.
Foolisheafoolish I was to be annoyed by her. I
must learn more patience. It was a windfall, really,
to have her here. I should take advantage of the fact,
use it, find out more. I needed her as an ally. The
enemy I fought was too large to defeat alone. I
could not keep the children from the institution by myself; I needed
help. And what better help than from the parents?
Those who had borne him, fed him, cared for him, and
loved him. I saw again the room at an institution
I had visited: there was no love there, only the
revolting smell of Clorox mixed with
urine and excrement. I repented my sin of
omission. After lunch I would invite her back and
see if we could try to hear each other.
Ahhhh now, look at Brian. He cannot resist
that puzzle. He moves his chair closer to the
windowsill and looks quickly at me to see if I
watch him-but I stare sleepily out the window.
Feeling safe, he takes his index finger, the same
hand that could not unbuttona jacket, andwitha quick, deft
movement he spins the missing piece into place. I
feel delight pulse in me-I do not think that there
is any retardationhere. Careful, though. It is too
soon to praise. I long to get up and get another
puzzle, one with five
pieces, perhaps six. But I hold myself in check and
keep my mock sleepiness turned toward the window.
Mrs. O'Connell reappears in the doorway,
gets her purse from the shelf, brings it to me and
takes out a bottle of red liquid.
"Brian's medicine," she says.
"Oh," I say, "what is it for?"-thinking perhaps a
cold.
She leans close to whisper: "Stops the fits."
"Fits?"
"Yes. You know"-and she flaps in perfect
imitation.
The Director has not mentioned medication-how am I
to find out all that I need to know?
"Do you think we could talk a little more after lunch?" I
ask. "The children usually rest then for a half hour.
If Zoe came down and stayed with Brian, could we
talk?"
There is the same startled look that I have seen in
Brian's eyes, but dulled, glazed.
"Lunch?" she says, "Brian doesn't eat
lunch. He doesn't like to eat."
"Oh," I say, "why is that?"
"I don't know. Maybe it was the nursery school.
I shouldn't have worked, shouldn't have sent him there. But
Jack was never home, and I-there was nothing . . ."
Quickly she stops.
"Did he eat before?" I ask.
"Oh yes. He nursed like a little pig-and he loved
the puddings and the applesauce."
Oh,
God,
I think. Only soft foods. And now he's
eight. Eight. I can feel impatience begin to grow
in me again; there is so little time left.
"What does he eat now?" I ask.
"At home, I mean."
"Same as he does anywhere. We take it with us
when we eat at Gramma's. See, I brought it
here."
She brings a paper bag from the shelf above the
hooks. She opens it and hands me a large box of
sal-tines and a jar of powdered chocolate. I read
the label: an instant chocolate-milk drink.
"A snack?" I say, knowing it isn't-only
hoping. "He likes this for a snack?"
She says it for me, blunt and clear. "That's what
he eats. That's all he eats. That's all he's
eaten since he was four."
NINE
We discussed it at staff. I wrote out a
report on Brian's eating, also the incident of
medication, and read it at staff meeting. Read it so
the subject could not be diluted or diverted. I
needed advice. This was a medical problem, and I was
out of my depth. Could a child live on only
saltines and chocolate milk? It seemed
unlikely to me, but to get Brian to eat anything
else would be a major problem and I might
alienate him altogether.
There was some discussion. Dr. Marino, our
psychiatristeawho was, of course, an M.d.,
said he doubted that a child's body could develop
normally on such a diet, adding that it did not sound like
true anorexia in that the child was evidently not starving
himself-actually, he was quite plump.
"Let's see how it goes," Marino said. "We can
discussit again in a couple of weeks."
"We'll leave it up to you, Mary," added the
Director."...ally can keep us filled in."
How can you leave it up to me when I know
nothing"...ationothing. Frustration and weariness pile upon
me. Five experts in the room, at
approximately thirty dollars an hour. We
sit around this table, at this meeting, for two
hours-sixty dollars times five means three
hundred dollars for our professionals this afternoon-and
they decide to leave it up to me.
The discussion has already left Brian, is focusing
on Gene Spencer's penchant for biting. All right.

Okay. What we seem to have here is do-it-yourself
therapy. All the books I've studied warn the
teacher against playing psychiatrist. Good. Right. But
supposenobody else will play? Then what? Then
what remains are teacher's guesses. And the
phrase "uneducated guess" rings in my ears.
Driving home, I have a small consultation with myself
and decide that since there are only six weeks
left before summer I will ask only that Brian sit
quietlywith me at the table during the lunch hour.
He will be served the same food as the other children-no
special chocolate milk or crackers-but he can
eat or drink whatever he pleases. He will not be
forced or even urged to eat. Hopefully, his own
hunger will provide the impetus for eating once his
panic subsides.
Dr. Marino did check on the medication, calling the
family doctor who had prescribed it. A mild
tranquilizer. Yes, it could be discontinued in
school comused only at home. But Brian might
become more hyperactive, more difficult to handle. I
thanked him.
Now was the time to find out-while there were just the two of us.
before another child arrived. I discontinued the midday
dose, and the only change was that Brian's morning
alertness continued into the afternoon. He still flapped and
circled when dangerseemed imminent-morning and afternoon.
Reading was designated dangerous; so was speaking.the
sight of a book or a direct question
producedprodigious fluttering.
Brian did not talk. He had not spoken at all
since he was a toddler-or so his mother said. He had
taught himself to read, and she claimed he had at one
time read the newspaper out loud. Now when his father
urged and urged him to read, he would run and hide his
head in his mother's lap.
That first day he had screamed those few words-
"Gonna go to the doctor's"-and in his three weeks
at school he had not spoken again. But-the terrified,
strangled "Awwwkk, awwwwkk" was diminishing, and
in its place was some kind of jabber:
"Obbety-dijeseomiwag,
iwagotaplaggoblesetofo." This was said with normal
inflection, but no matter how hard I strained there was
no single word that I could understand.our conversations were
unintelligible, but happiness was growing.
I was gradually filling our bookcase with books from
home. There had been none the first day; the
Director had not provided any and I had not known
what kind would be appropriate. My own children had
loved a small book called
Read Me a Story,
and at the end of the first week I brought it to school.
During the morning I sat at our table with Brian
and opened the book. He was immediately up and
away, flapping.
I closed the book. "What? You do not like books
either? You are so silly. All the best things in the
world-and you decide you do not like them. I will read to myself
then."
"Ogoahearetoyosf," from the corner of the room.
"All right. Fine. You stay there; I'll read
here."
I picked a story at random and read aloud. About
a car. A broken-down car that the family wanted
to get rid of so they could buy a newer, fancier
one. But in the end the old car shows its stuff and
triumphs over the newer model.
And here comes Brian. Closer all the time. From the
corner of the room to the middle to stand at the edge of the
table. I start another story.
He is not afraid of the book; he is not afraid
of my reading. Ahhh, it's just that he did not want
to read himself-he was afraid that I would force him to read
out loud to me from the book. Perhaps he has
previously been urged too much, too often.
"Sit down," I say, "I'll read some more."
He teeters on the" brink, wanting to-not wanting
to. "Not you, Bri. Me. It's my book.
I'll do the reading."
This continues for four mornings. I begin to try to edge
the book toward him; he will have none of it. Up and
away, fluttering to the windowsill, to the shelf Dan
has fixed up for us which holds our
puzzles.brian does these easily now, his hands
quick and sure, calling to me as he finishes.
"Oolansethuzialfis."
"Good, Bri," I say and we leave the puzzle
completeall day so that Dan can see it before he goes
home.
"A beauty," he tells us, and Brian and I
exchange looks of satisfaction.
Ah, now. That's what I will do. I will make a
puzzleout of words. I copy the first page of the
story about the car, which is Brian's favorite,
onto a large piece of oaktag and then carefully
I cut it into pieces. How many now? Careful. Not
too easy. Not so easy that it will be obvious; not so
difficult as to be discouraging. I snip with my
scissors. Fifteen pieces. I put them in an
old shoe box on the shelf besthe puzzles.
Brian finds them immediately. He hangs his coat
upon his hook, comes close to me, "Maglateeu,"
he says, and I answer, "Good morning, Brian.
I'm happy to see you."
Almost he smiles. He has not smiled yet. But
this is close and I hug him without reservation.
I go back to mixing paints at the table and he runs
his fingers over the shoe box. Something new.
Suspicious. He flutters around the room once.
Back to the box ... he moves his fingers
cautiously around its outside-he glances at
me-I am absorbed in mixingpaints.
He dips his fingers into the shoe box and feels the
pieces. Only pieces. Nothing to worry about.
He lifts down the box and takes it to the puzzle
board and spills the pieces of cardboard out and
pushes them tentatively with his finger. Now he lines
them up; he makes the top border even. Does
he see that his pieces have made a sentence? Ahh,
there's a flutter. Just a small one, just enough to show
excitement, He knows; he's got it. The rest of the
pieces fall quickly into place. And he turns
to me. "Ha," he says. And I laugh.
"You are so smart," I say, "I cannot fool you at
all. Right? You have made the first page of our
story." I take the book from the bookshelf.
"See. Here. The same words."
He holds the book, forgetting to be frightened. He
holds the book-and when he turns the first
page, I leave him. He does not need me now.
He is reading by himself.
TEN
Matthew arrives unannounced. Brian and I are
doing a picture puzzle of the United States;
he is gettingmuch better at it than I am;
geography itself a puzzle to me.
"Hey," I say, "I'm the teacher. You're not
supposedto be better than me." Grammar is
another puzzle.
"Ha," he answers. Smiles come several times a
day now.
The door bursts open. And there is the Director
hanging on to the shoulder of a small blond boy.
"Whoop-de-doo," she says, "Slow down now.
Whoa. Slow down. This is Matthew, Mary. Your
new boy. Matthew Polatoff."
Matthew wrenches free. Kicks the Director in
the ankle, eyes me, aims a kick in my
direction-but my reflexes remain intact from
Chris's training and he misses. This makes him
even angrier, and he grabs at a corner of our
small white bookcase and pushes it hard enough
to dump it over and spill the books upon the floor.
"Hope you had your vitamins this morning,
Mary," the Director calls cheerily as she
backs out the door.
Brian is jumping up and down in the center of the
room, awk-awking and flapping his arms. 85
Damn it, I think. Why does she have to dump him
in here like this? I could have met him in the office ...
stop it. Forget it. He's here.
"Hello, Matt," I say.
He rushes at me kicking, his small, handsome
face contorted with anger, and I hold him at arm's
length.
"You're in school now," I say. "You don't
kick here."
But he's not about to stop. He kicks first with the right
foot, then with the left; and some detached part of me
notes that they seem to be equally preferred.what
about his hands? Right- or left-handed? Is there a
mixed dominance? I must read more tonight
I try to wait him out; he is only six, after
all-I have thirty more years than he does. I can
hold him at bay indefinitely.
He also seems to be able to kick indefinitely, right
foot, left foot. I do not wish to spend the
entire morning like this, with Brian awk-awking while
Matthew and I are locked in a strange
embrace, slowly, weirdly picking up our feet
and laying them down as in some tribal dance.
I let him go. He almost stumbles from the
unexpectedfreedom-then recovers and takes his
bearings.he sights Brian, a new target, and
lunges toward him. Brian stands totally still,
defenseless, and Matthew cracks his foot
into Brian's ankle. Brian collapses to the
floor, whimpering. And I grab Matthew. Put
my foot behind his legs, bend his arm behind his back and
bring him to the floor. Then I straddle his legs,
facing his feet, and take off his shoes. He will not be
able to do much damage in his stocking feet.
But now his dignity is outraged. He screams at
me wordlessly and then bursts into tears. He goes to the
far corner of the room, sits down on the floor,
wraps his arms tightly around himself and rocks back
and forth in misery. I go over and inspect Brian's
leg;
there is a bruise along the skin, but the bone is
smooth under my fingers and there seems to be no real
damage.
"You're okay," I tell him. "What happened
anyway"...What did you let him do that for?" Brian
does not need sympathy; he needs to learn
to fight.
"Iwanahomhehimel."
"Forget it," I say. "You're bigger than he
is. Don't let him pick on you."
So now there were three of us. I made another
labeleaMATTHEW, for the third coat hook.
The battles of the first day continued. Matthew spent
most of his time in school in socks. I often
wondered what his mother thought of the dirty black soles
on his expensive socks, but she never mentioned it.
Matthew was an exquisitely dressed child.
Everythingwas coordinated, expensive, cleaned and
pressed. His mother was a former model and now his
three-year-old brother, blond and beautiful, was
modeling too. Each day when Matthew arrived, his
clothes looked, not merely clean, but brand new.
Each day when he left they were dirty and
tear-stained.
And so were mine. Matthew was too much for me;
slowly he was wearing me down. Each day I was more
tired; each day he fought harder.
He was a handsome boy. Thick, wheat-colored
hair; a broad, deep forehead, wide-set dark
blue eyes. His features were straight, regular,
he looked
like an illustration from a Christmas catalog.
Only a small strawberry birthmark on his neck
marred the picture of perfection, and when he became
angry the area surrounding the mark also turned a
deep dull red.
Matthew was angry most of the time; there was more rage
inside him than I had ever seen in anyone.
There was no eating or toilet problem. He wolfed
his food, used the toilet regularly, then scrubbed
his hands and face to get them clean, cleaner, until
the fair, sensitive skin was red, almost raw. He
had virtually no speech, but his hearing seemed to be
intact. He could hear my watch tick when I
held it behind his head, and if I whispered to him with my
head turned away he still understood what I was
saying. He could make the beginning, elementary sounds,
but was unable to form an
s, I,
or
w
or thestop plosives, were and
do.
He tried hard to speak; in fact, the only time I
had his total attention was when we worked on sounds and
letters, and then he would rivet his dark eyes
on mine almost as if he could draw the words out of me
and into himself.
I would sit at the low table opposite Brian and
Matt, and while Brian completed the United
States puzzle-eyeing us warily but continuing his work,
making a map now, tracing each wooden state-I
would work with Matt.
He would reach across the table.
"At, M"-his voice urgent.
"What, Matt? What is it?"
And he would grab for the large cardboard letters in my
hand and find the M. I had cut the letters from sandpaper
and pasted them on the cardboard squares, thinking perhaps
the touch would help him. (it was not until much later
that I learned to call
this tactile, kinesthetic teaching; and later still that I
learned I should not have used letters but actual
objectsthat had meaning for him.) But Matthew would
trace the M with his finger, as I had shown him, and
say, "Mm, Mm, Mm." Then he would reach for my
hand, if I did not do it soon enough, and put my
fingers against his mouth and repeat, "Mm, Mm." Then
I would replace my fingers with his own and he would say
again, "Mm, Mm, Mm," feeling the vibration with his
fingertips.
But if I turned from him for a minute-only a
minute-to help Brian trace the jagged edges of
Pennsylvania, he would be filled with fury; grab
the puzzles and throw them to the floor. If I tried
to read a story to both of them at once he would start
a buzzing noise between his teeth and in his throat,
gradually increasing the volume until my voice
could not be heard. Filled with frustration, I would lay
down the book and look at him, and he would laugh at
his victory.
Dan came into my room one morning as I was
sittingon Matthew's legs, removing his shoes after
an early assault.
"Want some help?" he asked.
Perhaps if anyone else had asked, I would have been
too proud to admit my weariness, my sense of
failure, but to Dan I said only, "I'd love
it."
"We're going over to the duck pond now to feed the
ducks. Want to come?"
It was the first of many trips we made together. Dan
loved to take his class outside, teaching them to run,
throw, catch, hammer together an outside run for the
gerbils they had in their room. He teased me about
my "academics"-the alphabet,
numbers, my exercises with body image: "Feel
your head, touch it-like this, see ... your neck, feel
that and your
shoulders-there. Good. See how they fit into each
other-now your arms." And so it would go until we
reached the feet.
Dan teased me, but he came to my room one
morning before school started and said, "How about a swap
today?"
"What do you mean? What kind?"
"Suppose you take Stuart for the morning and I'll
take Matt. Stuart is a funny kid, you know.
Nobody can get close to him. He's smart as
hell-I'm sure of it-but he's also smart enough
to play dumb. And he knows just what to do to turn people
off. Instinctivelyeahe seems to figure out what will
bug a person most and then do it. With me, for instance,
he acts like a goddamn fairy-kissing my hand,
telling me how sweet I am."
Dan was big and rugged-looking with broad
shoulderseastrong forearms. His hair was always tousled and
his clothes clean but rumpled. For the first time I
wondered who did his laundry; he obviously
played the field, a different girl each week
waiting for him in the parking lot after school.
None of us discussed our lives away from school.
The only exceptionwas our own children. All of us,
except Dan and the Director, had children at home,
and occasionallythey would call and leave messages with
Zoe or be sick and need care at home. So we
got brief glimpses of each other's outside
lives through our children; but other than that there was no talk
of our personal lives, mostly, I suppose,
because there was no time. We were always with the children. In this
school there was no teacher's room, no coffee
break, not even a lunch hour. As teachers we
talked to each other in snatches, and usually it was
somethingurgently concerning one of the children at school.
"So," Dan continued, "my idea is that I'll
take Matt off your hands, take
him
outside with us, and run the pants off him. So by the
time I bring him back he'll be so tired he
won't be able to raise a foot, much less kick
you."
"And in return I'll take Stuart-and save you from
homosexual attack? What if I don't want
my hand kissed either?"
"You'll do all right. Besides, he'll figure out
somethingelse for you."
"All right. Except if he really is faggy, he
probablyneeds to be with you-know that you're his friend. How
about if I keep Stuart for an hour, work with him and
Brian, and then we all come join you outside?"
Dan considered. "Okay. That will be even better.
I'll bring Stuart in after Circle. You get in
some of the letter-sound stuff with Matt before we get here,
though why Francis, our esteemed speech
pathologisteac't help you with that, I don't know.
Incidentally, did you know that's what he is now,
that's what he calls himself-a speech pathologist
instead of speech therapist."
"Why? Is there a difference?"
"God knows. Listen, I've got to get back
now. I'll come by right after Circle."
"Okay, good. I'll have Matt ready. By the way,
what's the Director going to say about this?"
"She's not even going to know unless you tell her."
"Oh Dan, I'm not sure that's right."
"Mary, my God. You're such an innocent.
Cool it now, all right?"
"All right." I was not really worried. Dan
talked tough, but he was really very gentle. I had
watched him wash skinned knees and bandage them. I
had watched him hold the gerbils while the
boys cleaned their cage. He was gentle and I
trusted him.
He left and then stuck his head back in the door.
"I won't have time to talk once the kids come. I
wanted to tell you where we'll be. Across the
street." "In the graveyard?" I asked in
amazement. "Yeah, great place. Lots of room
for baseball, and when the kids get tired of that they
can climb Parsons'mausoleum. How's your
baseball?" "Not very good. I throw underhand." "Oh,
my God." Dan moans in mock horror.
"Underhand.wdn't you know? Junior throws underhand."
To say that Stuart Wagner was a strange kid was an
understatement. He was ten; a skinny, gangling kid
with red hair and steel-rimmed glasses.
When Dan brought him in and took Matt out, Stuart
merely stood looking at me mildly. Finally he
said, "Aren't you the darling teacher, though. For your
age." And then he stuck his hand down the back of his
trousers inside his belt and massaged his
buttocks.
I decided I was not going to endure what I
didn't like.
"Take your hand out of your pants, Stuart."
Stuart complied but won the round, removing his
hand slowly and then smelling his finger with great
concentration.
"Okay," I said, "let's get started."
I arranged the alphabet cards on the chalk tray
of the blackboard and started the morning drill. Dan
had told me he wasn't sure how much Stuart
knew. Some days he seemed to be able to remember the
alphabetand count to one hundred;, other days he
knew nothing. By the end of that first hour I was sure
Stuart knew the entire alphabet and a lot more, but
wasn't going to let anybody find it out.
I'd say, "All right, Stuart, let's read off
these letters.i'll start. A, B . . ."
Stuart's voice joined mine: "C, D, E,
Fuck . . ."
"That's F," I said.
"Oh. I thought it stood for 'fuck." his
"F's a letter-"fuck" is a word. I want the
letter."
"Oh. Fine. F, G, H . . ."
I loved the kid. Funny, awkward,
provocative, trying to disrupt me, make me
lose my composure. Swearing was not the way to do it;
swearing had never had much meaning for me, "duck" was
almost the same as "fuck." I really
couldn't see why people got so upset about it. Besides, the
person I knew who swore the most was Helga.
And I loved Helga.
It turned out to be a good arrangement, swapping
Stuart and Matt. It was true. Matt came
back tired and happy. Dan liked him and treated
him in a way that was both rough and gentle. He would
run with him, tackle him, roll on the ground
wrestling with him, letting Matt win occasionally so that
he could sit in triumph upon Dan's chest. Dan
also smacked him-something I could never do. One day we
stopped at the A and P to buy bread for the ducks,
and Matt deliberately knocked six jars of
baby food to the floor. Dan picked him up,
held him under one arm, and smacked him across his
bottom.
But he also held him gently. Once Matt fell
off the bike that Dan was teaching him to ride and
scraped his arm, and Dan carried him to my room.
When I came back with water and first-aid cream,
I could hear him saying, "Okay, bear. Easy
now. We'll get that fixed in a minute." And
Matt sat quietly within Dan's arms while I
washed and bandaged the scrape.
The swap was good for Brian too. Stuart
was exceedinglyverbal and Brian was fascinated by him,
particularly his rudeness to me. Rebellion in
another form. And sometimes he got away with it. I
consoled myself that my lost rounds with Stuart were good for
Brian. I wanted him to see that speech was
effective. Not very good for classroom discipline, but
then I was not much concerned with formal discipline just then.
In any event, Brian was making more and more sounds and
noises; it is true there was a weird falsetto
Donald Duck quality about them, but the output was
increasing and Brian hovered closer and closer as I
worked with Matt.
Each morning I worked with Matthew's speech. We
were exempt from Circle those early weeks, the
Director saying it would be too much for my new
boys at first, and so during that forty-five-minute
period Matthew and I would sit together at the table.
I had no right to work on speech problems, and I
knew it. I had had no training in this specialized
field. True, I had had no training in any
field except my psychology courses at
Wellesley. Somehow, though, speech therapy
seemed to me more specific, more difficult than
teaching a child to eat or go to the bathroom or read.
Each week I would ask Francis if
he couldn't take some time to work with Matthew. And each
week he answered: "He has a language
problem, not a speech problem. When he becomes a
happy child this will cure itself."
No, I would think, that's not true. With Brian,
yes. There is some puzzle there-delicate,
intricate. I would not let you near Brian at this
stage. But with Matt it's different; there is some
mechanical problem.i know, I watch him, I
see him try so hard. He wants to speak, but he
cannot form the letters.
Out loud I say, "He has difficulty forming some
of
the sounds. For instance, even when he wants to he cannot
seem to make the were sound-you know, like in "toe."
If you could just show him how to do it, I think it would
mean a lot to him."
"He is not ready for that. We must wait for him to be
ready."
"Could you just show me, then, so I could show him?"
Francis' voice grows strident, he forgets his
well-modulated tones; obviously I have gone
too far. "I repeat, the child is not ready. Your
job is to help him to find happiness within himself. You
must not be so impatient, Mary-or
attempt to blame someone else if you cannot do your
job."
But I wasn't blaming you. I just wanted to help.
I know so little-you have all that training that I don't have.
And I know, I really know, that instead of just waiting for
Matt to become happy, we should give . him a
chance to learn. It would help him to be happy if he
could learn to make the were sound. Let him have the
chance-he needs to feel he's learning, doing something
about his problem.
Out loud I say nothing. I decide that he is right
about one thing: I must learn to be more patient. I will
practice with you, Francis; you have so much time. I
smile at him and say softly, "Maybe you're
right. I'll talk to you again when you come next week."
"Fine, Mary. That's a much better attitude."
Francis may have lots of time, but Matthew
doesn't, and before I go home I drive into the city
.. and buy a manual on speech therapy, a tape
recordereaanda mirror. And every morning while the rest
of the school goes to Circle I get the mirror and
tape recorder from the closet and set them on the
table in front of me. Matthew races to the chair
beside me
and we begin the exercises in the manual, with
variations. He blows out the candles on the birthday
cake I make him out of clay. More candles each
day. Brian is fascinated and cannot stay away.
He hovers, watching me build the cake. "How
old are you today, Matt? Let's seci You were
five last week, how about being six today?" And then
seven, eight, finally up to nine. "You're big today.
Matt. Nine. Nine candles. Do you think you can
blow them all out?"
Brian leaves his puzzles and flutters over.
"Ucanahanicusisonesx."
"Okay, Bri," I say, "join us." And I
build a clay cake for him too.
As we do more exercises it becomes apparent that
Matt cannot lift his tongue. He can move it from
side to side and point it downward, but he has
difficulty raising it.
He watches in the mirror as my tongue goes out
and up, aiming for my nose.
"Pretend we just had ice cream with our cake," I
say, "strawberry ice cream"-knowing his favorite-
"and we have it all over our mouths, our lips.
Lick it off. Way up there-you've still got some on
your upper lip. Good, Matt. That's it." And his
tongue did touch his upper lip.
"Minosicntuchminowfmitng," says Brian as he
licks away with his long tongue.
After school that afternoon I played the tape back
listening to Matt's noises, planning the set of
exercises for the next day. It seemed to me that his
t
sound was getting clearer. I read the book: the
tongue is on the gum ridge behind the front upper
teeth; I practiced it myself. True, that's where it
was.
I slow the speed of the tape to hear Matt more
clearly. Suddenly I hear a voice saying,
"My nose. I can touch my nose with my tongue."
I can't believe it. I play it over and over. It
is Brian-Brian speaking in full sentences. I
go back and replay the whole tape at the slower
speed.
There's his voice again: "You cannot have nine candles.
He is only six."
Over and over I play the tape while tears
slide down
my
face. I forget the time and when Dan opens the door
he says, "I thought I heard voices. What's
going on? You all right, Mair? Why are
you sitting here with no lights?"
"Listen," I say. And I play the tape again.
"I don't get it. Who's that? Why are you listening
to some kid talk about candles? Come on. Tell me.
What is it? What's wrong?"
"Listen," I say, "Dan, listen."
I want him to hear it. I want so much for it to be
real, not some dream of mine. I can't have just imagined
it, can I?
I play the tape again. It is so clear to me now.
Brian had never stopped speaking-he had simply
revved up his speech so that it made no sense. He
had taught himself to talk in the souped-up high voice
of a 45 record player at 78 speed-but on the
slowed-down tape recorder you can hear his actual
speech. Instead of weird gobbledygook, you hear the
words.
Clan is leaning forward, listening intently. "Play
it again, Mary. Shhh. Oh my God, it's
Brian. Right? That's Bri ... talking. He
said, "I can touch my nose with my tongue." his
He'd heard it. Clan had heard it too. It was
not just in my head. I put my head down on the
table-I cannot help it. I do not want to cry but I
cannot help it. And the tape recorder plays
again.
I can hear my voice, slowed by the tape, saying,
"Good, Matt. That's it," and Brian's voice:
"My nose, I can touch my nose with my tongue."
And Dan's own voice saying above the tape
recorder, "There, Junior, don't cry. It's
good. It's fine."
Time was going too fast. Memorial Day weekend
was coming up, which meant that there were only three more weeks
of school left. Not enough time, the Director said,
to bring in another child. So we continued as we
were-Brian, Matthew, and myself in the converted
storeroom, with Stuart trading places with Matt
after Circle and then all of us going outside to join
Dan and his class of older boys. Tom', stolid
and deliberate, no longer running wildly, hand
across his eyes, but still retreating into the turtleneck of
his sweater when danger was imminent;
Ivan, the most beautiful of the children, with red curly
hair and the grace of a Russian dancer, remindingme
always of Stravinsky and whirling music as he leaped
and jumped; and Jeffy Olivero, wan and thin,
walking curved like a question mark with one hand raised above
his head, thumb and forefingerpinched together-his favorite
position, Dan told me, because he slept
that way each night with his widowed mother, holding her
earlobe between his thumb and forefinger.
"Why?" I asked. "Why does she allow it?"
"It's not a question of allowing it-she loves it," Dan
said.
Sometimes now when we came in from our
baseballgames in the graveyard we ate together in
Dan's room-his four boys and my two. Zoe
was a fan of Dan's and she loved bringing lunch
to his room- 99
"the Diner's Club" she called it-and cheerfully she
pushed the hot cart down to us, coming back later to bring
us coffee and sit and talk with Dan and me for a moment
before she went back to the office.
The boys played quietly around us as we drank
our coffee, Ivan and Tom building with erector
sets or simply spinning the pieces around and around,
Matthew rocking wordlessly beside the record player,
Brian and Stuart at the blackboard
reconstructingone of the prizewinning games on
television.they were both TV devotees and would
play endlessly, drawing prizes on the
blackboard-washing machines, TV sets, mink
coats. They took turns being the emcee; rather we
made them take turns;
they both fought for the position and the chance to say, "And now
for the big question, the chance to win a brand-new Whirlpool
washer-dryer with super-speedextractors. Are you
ready? The question is: How many miles from the earth to the
moon?" Or, "Who is currently in power in
Chile?" They parroted the questions, rarely knowing the
answers, which didn't seem to bother them at all;
at least they didn't have to draw more prizes. Only
if you won was the prize erased.
It was great for Brian's speech; I could say
to him, "Slow it down, Bri, the contestant cannot
understandthe question." And he would repeat what he had said
slowly and distinctly. I had played the tape for him
a few days after my discovery of his speech. I had
thought about it for a long time and finallydecided there was no
better way to tell him what I knew.
Brian loved the tape recorder and eagerly
settled himself to listen, giggling as he listened to me
urge Matthew to lick his lip. The second time I
played the tape, I slowed
the
speed so that my voice came out low and draggy.
Brian was immediately up flapping.
Did he know what was coming?
I couldn't tell; there were only the
fluttering and flapping beside me.
"It's okay, Bri. Listen. Listen to where we're
both talking."
He stays still, still beside me. And his voice comes out of the
record player: "My nose, I can touch my
nose with my tongue."
Quickly, before he can move, I turn off the tape.
"You're so tricky," I say. "Can you still do it
fast?"
No threat in doing it fast, I hoped-and yet we
could acknowledge what he'd done.
"Minosicntuchminowfmitng"-the same high
falsetto.
"Okay," I say. "Now when I turn the knob
one-quarter of a degree to the left, I want to hear
it a littlebit slower." I turn the middle
button on his shirt and he looks at me with
solemn eyes.
"I can touch my nose with my tongue," he says.
"Now a little bit faster, Bri."
He speeds the tempo.
"Icantouchmynosewithmy-tongue."
"How about louder?"
"I CAN TOUCH MY NOSE WITH MY
TONGUE."
"Softer?"
A bare whisper: "I can touch my nose with my
tongue."
"Can you change the tape?" It is a big question and I
ask it softly. He has played with the one
sentenceeabeen willing to manipulate it, to acknowledge
to me that he can control the way it is produced. If
now he will do it with another set of words, I think he
will be okay.
Brian sits on the desk looking at me
solemnly, not speaking but no longer fluttering.
Suddenly he says, "Mary say it,"
"Me? You want me to do it?" His own words as he
speaks are clear. I can hardly contain the
excitement I feel, but I try not to let it
interfere.
Brian's hand reaches toward the button on my
blouse.
"Say it," he says again.
"I can touch my nose ..." I say.
Brian turns my button, my invisible control,
to the right.
"Faster. Do it faster."
"Icantouchmynosewithmytongue."
"No," he says, "Like this." And once more
he mouths the weird, falsetto gobbledygook. I
try again-but he is far better at it than me.
He giggles and says, "Play it again."
That was all there was. No big speeches or even
planned lessons. All I did with Bri was
remind him to slow down when excitement raced his
words. Pronounsremained a problem at times.
Brian trusted them not- at all. "You" was
confusing-sometimes it meant one person, sometimes
another. He was not yet sure enough of his own self
to trust it to a pronouneaand so he often referred to himself
as Brian and me as Mary.
However, he was so delighted with his new power of
communication that he talked all the time, flutteringwith
excitement, giggling at his jokes, which he also
collected from TV programs and delivered to us at
school. His memory was amazing; he knew the names
of each state and its capital and could recite them
at will. It was obvious that I was going to have to develop
a structured academic program for him;
he should have the chance to progress through the steps of math
and reading and science . . .
"What do you say we climb the mountain on
Friday"..."...Dan's voice interrupted my thoughts.
"What mountain?"
"At Milbury. It's a state park, about
twelve hundredacres. The Boy Scouts have
campgrounds there for overnights. It has a lake,
good wide paths, and a small-to-medium mountain.
We could walk up in the morning, have lunch, then come
back in the afternoon."
I was doubtful. "That's an awful lot of walking,
Dan."
"Aw, Mary, come on now. That's what you said when
we went to the lake. You said it would be too much for the
boys. Remember?"
He was right. I had thought that the trip we had gone
on two weeks before was going to be too
difficult.we had walked four miles around a
lake on a narrow path, hiking single file, the
six boys between us-Dan going first, breaking off
branches that grew across the trail, calling to warn us
of rocks and holes. I brought up the rear, carrying
discarded sweaters as the day grew warmer and the boys
hotter.
But they had loved it. No one had ever done this kind
of thing with these children before. The Directorin her
fund-raising speeches often referred to them as
"attic children," meaning that many of the parents had kept the
children secluded at home, never taking them
out, hiding them, unable to cope with them in the outside
world.
But Clan took them out, opening the world to them,
expecting them to be able to cope with it. And they did.
They adored him and followed where he led. In the
following, their legs and backs got
stronger-theygrew. I followed, too-I had met
another master teacher.
So on the Friday morning before Memorial Day we
all gathered in Dan's room. The day was bright and
beautiful, the sun hot in the clear blue sky. The
boys had brought their notes of permission and their
sandwiches wrapped in wax paper.
We had gone shopping the day before and had bought
marshmallows and Band-Aids, and Dan packed these
along with the sandwiches into a brown shoulder pack. He
had also brought two canteens and a camera. Tom and
Ivan were to carry the canteens, Dan the shoulder
pack; the camera was entrustedto me.
We were all in blue jeans and sneakers except
Matthew. He was dressed in gold-green Bermuda
shorts with olive green socks and matching shirt; as
usual, everything looked brand-new and beautiful, and
he was extraordinarily handsome with his blond hair
contrasting with the dull green shirt. I was
concernedab his bare legs-the rest of us had the
protection of jeans-and I went to ask Zoe for an
extrapair of long pants, but there was no extra
clothingggexcept diapers for Louis in Joyce's
room-how long ago that seemed). When I returned
to Dan's room the boys and he were gone. A note
on the blackboard said.
We'll meet you in the parking lot.
Dan and I rode up front in his Volkswagen
bus, and the six boys in back. They were used to riding
together; Friday trips had become a regular thing and
everyone had his favorite seat. We talked a
lleasang a few songs, but for the most part we were
quiet-all of us were excited about climbing a
mountain. Dan had already hiked this particular mountain
and he had drawn a picture of it on the
blackboard for us, showing the parking lot where we would
leave the car, the wide trail weaving up the mountain,
a lake at one far end, even a small brook.
I was as eager as the boys: I had never climbed a
mountain either.
We pulled into the camping ground parking lot about ten
o'clock. It was deserted except for us. Dan showed us
the pump on the west side beyond the picnic tables, and
each of us had a drink from the tin
dipper. I was pleased with the pump. It took two
to get a drink and was a natural lesson in
cooperation. Someone had to hold the dipper; someone had
to pump the handle. The boys had never seen this form of
producing water before and would have lingeredfor hours pumping
and drinking. Progress has its minuses: you can
turn a faucet alone.
At last we were ready, canteens filled, pack in
place on Dan's shoulders, and he said, "All
right, troops, let's go."
The boys bounded off ahead of us and Dan let them
go, quickening his own walk to stay close to them. I
walked behind them, examining the trees, delighting in the
moss, the rocks, the small scurry-ings just off the
path.
We walked for perhaps half an hour before we reached the
brook, larger than I had thought it would be, about
fifteen feet across; fast-moving water. The children
ranged along the edge, watching intently as the water
pushed over the rocky stream-bed, tumbling by us. There
was no bridge, and I waited for Dan to point out the
detour we would take around it. Instead, he said,
"I'll cross first and test the stones, then come back
and we'll all go over together."
I could not believe it. Did he really
think the childrencd walk across that wild water-the brook
filled with the recently melted snows of winter? I
moved close to him and spoke in a low voice.
"Dan, they can't cross here. It's too
dangerous."
A steady look from Dan, his blue eyes even
bluer with sky and water so close to him, his own
voice as low as mine. "If I had thought it was too
dangerous, I wouldn't have brought them. Trust me,
Mary."
Dan walked across the brook slowly, testing each
stone for steadiness. Once he bent and brushed some
leaves from one of the rocks.
When he came back to us he said, "I'll go over
first with Matt; the rest of you wait here with Mary.
Then I want you to walk across one at a time.
Wait until the person in front of you reaches the
other bank and then start. The rocks are good and
steady. You won't have any trouble."
Dan went first-step ... wait ... look toward
Matt ... smile. Matt followed, watching
Dan closely, puttinghis feet in exactly the
same place Dan had. When they reached the other
side we sent up a small spontaneous
cheer-"Ya-aay!"
Matt tried to cheer back, but couldn't and so he
clapped instead. Happy, filled with pride.
"Okay, Tom, come on. You're next," Dan
called.
Tom hesitated, ducked inside his turtleneck,
then emerged, and with unerring accuracy and incredible speed
raced across the rocks, only his arm across his eyes
betraying the fear he felt. We cheered him, too,
and Dan put his arm around Tom's shoulders, "Good
boy, Tom. What a tiger."
Then Jeffy mincing across, arm still upraised, gently
pinching the unseen earlobe as though his mother would lead him
across. Ivan danced over.
Then Stuart, rubbing his thick glasses as he
waited his turn, at the last minute turning back
saying, "After you, Mary. Ladies first."
I shook my head. Brian was fluttering behind me and
Dan called, "Move it, Stuart. Move your
butt across that brook. Fast."
Only Brian left now. And me. But Brian was
gettingmore and more nervous, his speech was too fast
to be intelligible. He made one false start and
splashed water on the'side of his shoe.
"Awk-awk"- back to my side.
"Come on, Mair." Dan called.
"Get the rest of your class over here. It's
getting late."
"Bri," I said, "I'll go first. You come right behind
me."
I started off. The water made more noise than
I'd realized. One step, wait, look back,
smile-just as Dan had done. But when I looked
back, Brian was still on the bank. I couldn't
leave him there, but if I went back he'd never
come. Dan roared something from the other side, I stood
on the first rock, waiting, listening to myself. Hey,
what now?
Ahhh, finally. "Okay, Bri," I called.
"Are you ready? Now for the big
sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. For the chance to win a
brand-new Impala Chevrolet with bucket seats,
air conditioning, and tape deck-can you tell me how
many rocks there are in this path to the other side?"
Brian laughed. He joined me on the first rock.
"One," he said. He moved past me to the next
stone. "Two." I nodded. He went one more.
"Three." And now I followed him. "Nineteen,
twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three.
There are twenty-three rocks, Mary."
"Good for you, Brian. You win the Chevy
Impala."
"Bucket seats," he giggled. "Say with bucket
seats."
"With bucket seats and air conditioning," I said. "
Dan reached and helped him up the bank and then me.
I hugged Bri. We had all made it. We were very
proud of ourselves.
It was pleasant walking now. Dan set a
moderate pace and we all fell into it, moving in
an easy rhythm. I glanced at my watch:
eleven o'clock.
By eleven-thirty it was no longer so pleasant. The
trail was steep now. Jeffy had stumbled twice;
we were all breathing hard.
"How much farther?" I called to Dan. He waved
us to a stop. Brian, Jeffy and I sat down.
"We're almost there now. You're a fantastic bunch
of climbers. Tom, how's the water? Let's all
have a drink."
We passed the canteen around. I had never drunk
from one before; there was a metallic taste but the water
seemed incredibly sweet.
"Okay. Let's go," Dan said. "This is the
hardest part. Don't try to go too fast. Stay in
line up this part of the trail. Don't try
to push past. Watch the man in front of you.
Okay, let's go."
It was steep. All rock now. I wondered how the
boys did it. Matt was as agile as a mountain
goat, not even breathing hard, scrambling behind Dan.
Brian and I were last. In some places it was so
steep that our hands touched the path as we climbed up,
but there was an exhilaration: we were doing it.
And then suddenly we were there. We were at the top. The
ground was level and the sky was pure blue above us and
we lay there on our backs laughingand calling to each
other.
Finally someone said, "I'm hungry," and we opened
the knapsack and ate our sandwiches, Brian his
saltines. I said to Dan, "I'm happy," and he
grinned back at me.
After lunch we lay down and rested before our walk
back. The sun was warm and I think I dozed a
little.
Suddenly something was wrong. I sat up,
frightened.what was it? Everything was still beautiful, no
clouds; the others were still resting, lying down. Dan was
leaning against a large boulder whittling.
I counted heads. Five. There should be six.
Ahhh. The blond one. Where was Matthew?
I moved over to sit by Dan.
"Where's Matt?" I asked.
"Over there, by the big rock."
"Where?"
"Well, he was there just a second ago."
Dan walked to the large rock, perhaps a dozen feet
away. Then farther. Then back to me. "I can't
see him. I'll walk out a bit. Be right back."
He was gone fifteen minutes.
When he came back his face was grave. "There's
no sign of him. We'd better organize
ourselves."
I was frightened. Matt was so little, only six; but
worse than that, he had no speech. If he had
been hurt or was lost, he could not call to us. I
called, "Matt? Matthew? Where are you? Clap
your hands, Matti"
The other five children were awake now, alert, standing
close to us. We all listened intently but there was no
response. Suddenly there was a crackingnoise down
the mountain; Dan ran to peer in that direction, but before
he had gone three feet all was silent again.
"Listen, Mary, can you keep the boys here? I can go
faster without them; I'll cover as much territory as
I can. You keep the others with you and keep
callingto Matt from time to time. He may have just wandered
a short way and your voice will help direct him
back here."
"Dan, how could I have let him get lost? It never
occurred to me that he would leave us. Everyone was tired
and so happy. I should have kept him beside me. Oh
Dan, he can't even call us."
"It's nobody's fault. Or if it's
anybody's, it's mine. I was the one who was keeping
watch. I knew you were resting . . . you looked so
tired. Anyway, there's no time to talk now.
I'll find him. Don't worry. You just hold the
fort here. Do you think you can managemy boys?"
"Yes," I said. But I was not sure at all.
Tom and Jeffy were both almost as tall as I was.
"Good." He looked at his watch. "Ten to one.
I'll be back by one-thirty."
He left, walking rapidly, then came back and
unbuckledhis belt and took off his knife.
"Here. Keep this. Use it if you need to."
I stood holding the knife in its leather case.
Why had he given it to me? were there animals?
Snakes? He couldn't have meant the children.
We watched him go, Tom calling, "Dan, Dan,
can I come?" And Dan calling back over
his shoulder, "No, Tom. Wait there. I won't
be long."
"I won't be long," echoed Tom.
I was near tears. Guilty, frightened. Ashamed.
What would the Director say? She had trusted
me. What about Matt's mother? And his clothes-his
stupid clothes-the same color as the leaves. How
could Dan ever find him?
Still, I was a teacher. Dan had left me with his
class, and I must not now lose these as well. And
they could easily leave me, go running after Dan-
fall-be lost in all directions.
"Let's make a circle," I said. I sat
down and Brian sat on one side of me, Stuart
on the other. Tom pulled his turtleneck over his
entire head. Ivan and Jeffy did not move.
"We must help Matt find his way back to us."
There was no point in pretending. Matt obviously
wasn't there. "We'll take turns calling
to him." I wanted Tom to join us. I felt that if
he would come and sit down, the others would too. I
slipped my watch off my wrist and held it out
to Tom.
"Tom, you be the timekeeper. Every five minutes
we'll call Matt. We'll try
to keep calling as long as we can-a whole minute or
two." I didn't know if Tom could tell time.
"Every time the big hand points to a number, you tell
us, Tom, and we'll call."
"That's a darling watch," Stuart said.
"Shut up, Stuart!" Tom shouted, suddenly
pushingthe turtleneck back inside his jacket.
He sat down opposite me and reached for the watch.
"It is one-o-one. Call the one o'clock call,"
said Tom.
"Matthew! Matt!" I yelled in relief.
Their voices joined mine. "Matthew! Matt!
We're over here. Matt. Come on over here."
We stopped, listening. Nothing. Not even Dan. But
he wouldn't call back; that would be confusing to Matt,
upsetting to the others.
"It is one-o-five. Call," said Tom, and again
we yelled Matt's name, stopping sooner this time.
It was hard to keep calling when there was no answer,
only a vague, distant echo.
"It's one-o-five and a half. Call," said
Stuart, mimickingTom.
"And a half. Goddamn fucking son of a bitch,"
said Tom as he hit Stuart.
"Cut it out!" I said, getting between them,
trying to sound authoritarian. "Cut it out now." I
had betterthink of something, get them interested,
divertedeakeep them from fighting. "Listen," I said,
"we can't just keep shouting his name. That won't do any
good. What we need to do is think up something that will
make him want to come back."
"Tell him we got chocolate," said Stuart.
"He likes chocolate."
"Tell Matt Mary isn't mad at him," said
Brian, fluttering.
"It's one-ten. Call," said Tom.
We lasted somehow, calling, thinking up things that
Matt liked, seeing who could call the loudest, the
longest.
At exactly one-thirty Dan appeared-alone.
"No luck," he said.
He sat down beside me. I handed him the knife and
he turned it in his hands as he talked.
"How are we going to work this now? It took us an
hour and a half to get up here. We have to get the
kids back by three at the latest or the buses
won't wait and everyone will go berserk. I've been
thinking about what you said, about Matt being happy.
You're right, he was-but maybe that's why he left
us. He didn't want to go back; he
likes it here. If that's true, he won't want
us to find him- and in that case it could take a long,
long time. It seems to me we should get the rest of the
kids back. What do you think? Do you want to hike
the five kids down and drive the car back? Or do
you want to wait here alone? One of us should stay in
case Matt does try to come back to us."
"Maybe he's gone to the car. Maybe he followed
the trail back to the parking lot and is waiting for us
there. He's smart. He could have done that," I say
hopefully, but I am grasping at straws. And
even as I say it I remember the trail. The
brook. Full of white, rushing water and Matthew
standing on the rocks ... oh
God,
suppose he's already fallen in?
"You can go faster than I can. You go. But call
Doris, or Zoe if she's not there. Tell them
what's happened. Tell them we'll have to call the
police or someone to help us hunt. Is there a
phone anywhere?"
"Yes. There's one in a shelter just beyond the brook."
Dan's eyes lock with mine, and we both know what
the other is thinking. "I'll call," he says.
"Okay, boys. We're going down.
Get ready."
I stand up to wave to them. And Brian flutters
around me, arms moving rapidly up and down. "Not
going to leave Mary. Not on the mountain. No. No.
Take Mary, Dan. Dan. Take Mary."
"I'll be down in a little, Bri. Now listen, you
look hard for Matthew the whole way down. You've
got good eyes and you know him best."
Dan says, "If I find him, I'll come
back. I'll call the school and then I'll come and
get you. I'll be back as fast as I can. If I
don't find him, I'll still call the school and get
help started-but I'll take the kids back before I
come back for you." He puts the knife quietly in
my hand,
"All right. Dan."
But Stuart stands stubbornly still. ?"'
"Hey, Tom," he says, "give Mary her
watch. She needs her watch."
I stand watching them-the watch in one hand, the knife in
the other-until they are out of sight.
I go and sit against the same boulder where Clan had
leaned, whittling, not so long before. The sun is still
bright and I am tempted to walk out and search among the
rocks and underbrush, but I know how poor
my sense of direction is and I decide against it.
It would not help to have to search for me as well as for
Matt. And so I sit and call to him as we did
befeab the boys are gone now and my single voice
seems lonely on the mountain, and the minutes seem
to be moving so slowly. I stop looking at my
watch and making the five-minute calls and just make
up a song about a mountain and a boy-and sing the chorus
as loudly as I can: "Matt, Matthew. Come
back. I wait for you here."
By four-thirty I knew that Matt hadn't been
waitingby the car. Dan would have been back for me
by now if he had found him. Clouds had begun
to move over the sky, and it was turning much cooler.
I was not sure if this was the way evening arrived here
or if it meant that rain was coming. I was cold, even
in
my jeans, and my heart ached as I thought of Matt
in his gold Bermuda shorts. Where could he have gone?
Was Dan right? Could it be that he didn't want to go
back? That somehow he would rather stay here ... and
remembering his too-perfect little brother, I
decided that this was quite possible. Ahh, Mary,
careful; perhaps it was only school to which he did not
want to return.
Over and over I thought how I should not have come on this
trip-or at least should have kept Matt beside me. I
had not known him well enough to move away so soon; I
did not have enough keys to him yet. Where would he have gone?
He had loved climbing, even in his inappropriate
clothes; why had I let him come in those clothes? I
should have insistedon jeans and sneakers. But even so, he
had done well, climbing at the head of the line of
"boys, never falling behind. He had eaten his
sandwich, sitting next to Brian and me, and then two
marshmallows. I remember giving him those. And
water. I passed him the canteen. But then what?
What had he done then? I had picked up the wax
paper and Saran Wrap from the sandwiches and put it in
the knapsack.then I had sat down; everyone was
quiet, restingbbBrian and Stuart were using small
stones to try and draw TV prizes on the rock.
I think I remember Matt sitting near Dan,
arms folded around himself, watching while Clan
whittled.
I know I put the paper-filled knapsack under my
head and stretched out on the sun-warmed rock. I
remember the feeling of safety and of peace.
That must have been when it happened. Matt must have wandered
off in those few minutes. I should not have lain
down .. . don't think about that now, that doesn't
help. Think about lunch. Matt ... sandwiches,
marshmallows, canteen, sitting arms folded. Why
would he get up right then? What did
he do after lunch at school? The bathroom. He
alwayswent to the bathroom after lunch at school
to wash. He had been taught somewhere to be clean,
too clean. That must be it. He must have felt hot and
sticky from the climb, the marshmallows, and gone
to look for a place to wash-and decided either to stay or
else tried to come back and been unable to find his
way. My heart sank as I remembered the only
place he would know to look for water, and I groaned
out loud. And yet there was the pump . . .
Loud noises. No voices, just rocks slipping;
motion.someone, something, was coming. Run. Should I
run? But where would I run? I loosened the knife
in its leather case and waited.
"Hallooo up there." Two heavy-booted men
came up beside me. "We're looking for a
six-year-old. Boy. Blond hair. Green
clothes. Seen him?" The descriptionreduced Matt
to microscopic size, worse than an obituary.
And yet, Dan must have called. He must have at least
gotten down to the brook and not found Matt
hurt or ... We traded information, the troopers and
I; they thought I should leave the mountain; it was five
o'clock and the sky was darkeningealowering there on the mountain.
But Dan had said he would be back and he would be
tired and hungry by then, anxious to get home himself;
I didn't want him to have to search for me. I stayed
and the troopers left, leaving me their extra
flashlightand assuring me that they would call my
family from the next shelter.
I went back and leaned against the boulder again. sitting
with my knees under my chin, arms wrapped around them
to keep warm. I was conscious of being alone, the
darkness like eternity around me. I had the feeling I
should be thinking big thoughts, but all that filled my head
were images of Matt, leaning toward me across our
worktable, grabbing my hand,
pressing my fingers against his lips, the small
strawberrymark against the white comskin on' his neck,
his dark blue eyes burning with urgency as he said,
"Mm. Mm."
Darkness was complete now, a thick, black pool
above me; there were no stars, only a lopsided moon
beginning to rise against the eastern sky.
"Hallo up there. Hallooo. We've found him.
Are you still there? Come down. Can you come
down?"
I recognize the troopers' voices and shout
back, "Coming. I'm coming. Is he all right?" I
call as I start down the path, slipping, sliding.
"Yes, he's fine. Watch yourself. Don't come
too fast."
I met the troopers partway down. "Where did you
find him?"
"You won't believe it. We found him sitting in a
pile of leaves, half covered with them, not more than
five feet from the trail, just beyond the brook. We'd
been by the spot a half a dozen times before; he must
have heard us calling but just didn't answer. It was
almost as though he didn't want us to find him.
Anyway, when we went back to the brook again we
flashed the light around and the beam hit his face, white
as a ghost in the night, and his blond hair and we
knew we had him."
Ah, Matthew, I think-and there is something in me that
sorrows, as if at the capture of a deer or fox
or some other wild thing-I wish that there were some way that
I could set you free. You must have gotten cold. I
could see it so clearly: Matt covering his bare
legs with the leaves, sitting silently, silently, as
the troopers tramped back and forth.
"Was he all right? What did he do?"
"He's fine. The other teacher, the big fellow,
has him in the car. They're waiting for you. We
came back to tell you we'd found him. Only thing
we
couldn't find was his shoe. He lost one of his shoes;
must be in the-leaves. But he wasn't hurt.
Matter of fact, didn't even seem scared. He
was laughing when we found him. Just sitting there
laughing."
They walk with me to the parking lot, outlining the trail
with their flashlights, and then when the bus comes in view
they leave and I walk the rest of the way across the lot
by moonlight. They are sitting there, Dan and
Matt, in the front seat, and Dan leans across
Matt and opens the door for me.
"You okay. Junior?" Dan's face looks very
tired in the thin light.
I get in and the three of us sit looking at each
other wordlessly.
Finally, Matt leans his head tentatively against
my shoulder and I put my arm around him, and we
drive like that, the three of us in the front seat,
Dan and me, Matthew between us.
We didn't talk. All the things we had
to say were too big for words.
"I don't know anything at all about team
teachingea"...I say to Dan.
"You're an expert."
"How's that? How did I get to be an expert?"
"Because it's just what we've been doing the last couple
of months, combining our classes, except that next
year we'll be in the same classroom all the time.
One big room for eight kids instead of two
small ones. See, the thing is this. Doris wants
to bring in six more kids-two more for you plus one more
teacher and four kids. And if you and I combine in the
big room, that will free one of the rooms for the new
class."
"And our room? What will that be like?" I ask, trying
to get a picture.
"It'll be good. Open. The kids can work in small
groups; we'll have two aides each morning, so that
will be four of us. We can get a science project
going-art, reading, math-and the kids can move back and
forth between the groups. Freedom in a structured
setting."
"Where's the structure?"
"U. We're structured. We believe in the
same things, the same kind of discipline,
responsibility. We let the kids grow at their
own pace, provide the materials and help if they
need it; let them test themselves with us ... For God's
sake, I can't put it in words ... you know what I
mean." 118
I did. I knew.
"What does Doris think?" I asked.
"She's all for it. She wants more kids, hopes
eventuallyto have room for "forty in the new building.
Besides-more kids, more money."
"Dan. That's not fair." This was one of the few things
we disagreed about: the Director. Dan was
antagonistictoward her, whereas I felt an
increasing respectfor this woman who had managed
to found the school and keep it operating for thirteen
years. And her dream was coming closer. There was an
architect's rendering now of the new building. Formal
fund-raising was starting. Dan found her stubborn,
unwilling to change; he disliked the way she said one
thing one day, another the next, agreeingwith the
psychologist during staff meetings, disagreeingwith him
after he left.
To me-she survived. And kept us all surviving with
her. There was tremendous strength inside her slender
body and she used every ounce of it, playing the
odds, swaying back and forth, it's true, like a tree
in a storm, this way toward the board of trustees,
back to the teachers, leaning toward the professionals,
bending to the parents; but this was her secret of
survival. The pressures upon her were incredible.
She could not remain rigid or she would be felled.
She was strange about money, fishing old broken
crayons out of the wastebasket, cutting up partly
used paper for scraps. But she used the scraps.
She sacrificed for her dream-the new school.
Dan was not concerned with some future dream:
he was young, he was interested in now. He wanted good
conditions, good supplies of materials for his kids
right now. Why should they, his boys, suffer for some old
woman's distant dream?
Dan's other complaint was that Doris did not visit
the classrooms enough, was not in close enough
touch with the children, the teachers. She was not, he said, aware
of what we were doing and trying to do. Consequently,
Dan, like a child himself, felt that if she didn't care
enough to find out, he had no obligationto inform her.
But again the fact remained: we did survive, and more
than that, we grew. Through all our crises, big and
small-in spite of ourselves. Matthew on the
mountain, for instance, could have been a tragedy,
but wasn't. Now in some strange way our classes
were closer than ever. We had known fear and not been
torn apart by it; we had made mistakes and not
turned on each other. Matthew was no longer so
wild; when we crossed even the small street to the
graveyard he came and put his hand into mine, never
looking at me-but our hands clasped as we crossed
the street.
In any event, for once Dan and Doris both
wanted the same thing, though for different reasons.
Doris wanted more children; Dan wanted to try the
conceptof team teaching. Whatever my reservations were,
they seemed small in the face of their united
decision.
"All right," I said, "let's try it."
The last days of school were hot. We worked hard,
conscious of trying to prepare the children for summereagive
them as many skills, as much self-reliance, as we
could, then staying late in the afternoon, planningfor the next
year. It was hard to say good-bye. Tired as we
all were, we had grown used to each other and were
conscious of how much we would miss one another.
We had a final party in place of the usual staff
meeting. We held it in Jerry Cramer's
backyard, out on the flagstone terrace,
overlooking a long meadow filled with apple trees
and bordered by low stone walls. The terrace faced
west and the late afternoon
sun hung over the low range of mountains that rose
at the end of the meadow.
Jerry was our psychiatric social worker; he was
also a psychologist. He spent more time at the
school than the other professionals, often without
pay. He had a long, soft, gray mustache,
steel-rimmed glasses, and a gentle manner. Though
he had his human failings (always trying to stop
smoking, which never lasted more than a day), he loved the
children and they knew it. They would often go of their own
volitionto stand beside him or sit near him at
Circle.
Dr. Marino, our psychiatrist, was there too.
Reservedeaalw at a slight distance from all of us, but
able, informed; I wished there was some way that he could
spend more time at the school.
There was no shop talk that day, only gentle jokes
and reminiscences. Zoe drank martinis and sat on
the flagstone terrace like a small guru. Only
our speech pathologist was absent.
I knew I must go-Rick's high-school
graduation was that night-but the tenderness I had
felt all year had risen to the surface, floating
on Jerry's bourbon, and it was difficult for me
to leave these people. I kissed Zoe and hugged Doris,
surprised at myself; I was not usually a woman
hugger.
Then Dan walked me to my car parked in front of the
house, opened the door for me and waited while I
found the key and put it in the ignition.
"How about working with me this summer, Mair? I've
already got eight kids signed up for the summer
program and there are a lot more prospects. I'll
need help. How about it?"
I wanted to. Rick was driving cross-country with
friends before college; Elizabeth had been asked
back to camp as a junior counselor. I wanted
the work, the children, the closeness-but I had prob-
lems to resolve in my marriage; I could not
retreat from them into the joy of teaching.
I turn on the ignition, and regret makes my
voice formal. "Thank you, Dan, but I can't.
I've made other commitments." And the word stands formal
and strange between us.
Dan leans his arms on the edge of the car window and
bends his big frame until his eyes are only an
inch from mine, and I turn my head away
before I say, "Good-bye, Dan. Good luck.
I'll see you in the fall."
He leans there looking at me, not moving, holding the
car door, and then finally he straightens, "Take
care. Junior. Take care of yourself this summer."
I left then and drove down the highway in the heat
of the late afternoon, but before I have gone a mile I
pull to the side of the road and put up the top of my
convertible. Even with the heat I put the top up, and
put my own polished shell back on as well.
I went to the marriage counselor alone. I tried
to persuade Larry to come with me, but he said it was
ridiculous because there was nothing wrong. I thought perhaps
it was true-it might be ridiculous, but for the
opposite reason: everything was so wrong it could not be
put right.
I sat opposite the tall, distinguished
psychiatrist- shy, not knowing what to say,
intimidated by the black leather couch on the outer rim
of my vision. Will he ask me to lie down?
"Yes . . . ?" he says.
I try to tell him about all the good things and the bad.
My voice seems far away. I can hear it while
I am talking, and it is almost as though I am
speaking about another person. I talk about
our children-and Larry's and my good physical
relationship, and the lovely house and tennis-but when I
try to tell him about the bad parts, I find I cannot
talk about them very well; all the reserve I was
taught as a child, the New England sense of
privacy, wells up and sorrow fills my
throat.
"Humph. Now. S. Do you think you are
beautiful?"
Surprise makes me raise my head and look
at him. "No," I say. "No."
All angular and lean is Dr. McPhearson, but
now he smiles at me, a slow, kind smile and
I like him suddenly.
"Ahhrph." This man has his noises, too, not so
differentfrom the children. "S. Well, do 'y feel you
are intelligent?"
"A little. Some. I can think better than I can
talk."
It is easier to talk now, and I tell him more.
How it will not be a"...difficult to live with Larry with the
children gone next year, Rick to college,
Elizabeth to Kent. How we never fight, Larry
and myself-how if I could just be content with the things I have,
it would probably be all right; but there
seems to be so much emptiness. And then, there is all
this love, and I don't know what to do with it. Larry
doesn't really want it. I don't blame
him-it's too much. It gets too much for me too.
I get all filled up with it and I have to let it out.
Do you think maybe it's like too much fat-that it could be
slimmed down?
"The school," he suggests.
"Yes. I am good at that," I say. "I love
teaching there, but, I don't know-it's hard to say it-but
you see, anyone could do that. I mean either a man or
a woman could do that kind of loving and it's-the school
is-good for that part; but there's this other part of me that
loves only like a woman. This part is for a man.
I love being a woman . . ."
He takes off his glasses and smiles again, a
small, tired smile.
"Yes," he says. "Can your husband come with you
next time?"
Larry almost came, but then he was detained at his
bank in the city and so I go alone again. This time we
talk about the laser: Light Amplification
by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Delicate,
intricateeapowerful. Energy harnessed from a larger
source. Is it possible that love could be like
this?
On the fifth visit he says unexpectedly,
"What will you do if you leave your husband?"
"I'll teach."
"And how will you live? Who will take care of you? Have
you ever lived alone?"
It seems amazing to me. I realize I never have.
I have never spent a night alone. First my parents-
overnights with friends-college, roommates-
Larry-my parents when he was in the army-the children.
"No," I say. "Not really. But I am sure that
I can learn."
Dr. McPhearson called Larry and arranged an
appointmenteaand Larry went first alone and then with me.
He explained carefully to Dr. McPhearson how
there was nothing wrong, that I tended to be too
sensitiveeaimagine things.
I sat silently, listening, shrinking, getting
smaller again.
"Hrrmph. Ah. Mmph." Dr. McPhearson
clears his throat, and the familiar noises cheer me.
"Well, Mary. What do you say?"
"I am going"-sounding stubborn, I knew,
unreasoning-butit would take so little. It would be so
easy to stay.
Dr. McPhearson recommends that I take a
trip. Living alone is different from thinking about it,
he says. Larry is enthusiastic. Just what she
needs, he says-a trip, to get away from it all.
He likes the doctoreaand I am glad. He will
need someone to talk to.
I go for one more visit.
"Ahhh," he says, even before we begin. "I am
sorry. Perhaps if you had come ten years ago . .
."
I shake his hand before. I go. Is that how you say
good-bye to a psychiatrist?
"Thank you," I say, "for all your time."
"Yahrmph." A combination of yes and
throat-clearing."...Is there anything more? Anything I can
do? Where will you be?"
"California, I think. I've never been there."
He stands silently.
"There is one other thing," I say. "The guilt.
I feel a big ball of guilt ... Here." I
touch my stomach."...Is there anything I can do about that?"
"Guilt. Why is that? What do you mean, guilt?"
It is so difficult to tell him and I think again how
hard it is to communicate through words, and I marvelto
myself that we all do as well as we do. We
are all interpreters by necessity, even though we
are not trained or suited for the profession.
Simultaneous interpreterseahearing one language
and then speaking another, our own. Ahh, we need more
tolerance, more admiration for one another.
"I feel guilty about leaving him alone. Who will
make the coffee in the morning or put flowers in the
silver bowl? And the animals, will they be all right?
How will Larry know how to order the meat or which
slipcovers to send to the cleaner's? He doesn't
know how to work the dryer or where I packed his winter
things ..." I stop in confusion.
"You are not his mother, Mary."
And I want to say, I know, I know, and yet, part
of me is. Just as I can see separate parts of me,
parts that are satisfied working with the children and other parts that
are man-oriented, so I also see blendedcenters of
me. Where does the mother end and the lover begin? Which is
student, which teacher? Is being a wife supposed to be
a separate, isolate thing? I do not think it can
be.
But before I can speak again Dr. McPhearson
interruptsmy thoughts. "It will be all right," he
says. "It is like grief-the guilt-you must just work it
through."
Coming in from the hot June air, I notice that the
halls of the school are cool and dark, strangely
quiet and empty without the children. The Director is
there, though, talking on the phone, and she waves as
I walk through her office on the way to my
classroom.
There are books and papers I want to take with me
to California, and I had thought merely to drop by the
school and pick them up. I had not realized how
strange the school would seem without the childreneaand now as
I kneel in front of the small white bookcase
thumbing the speech manual, images of Brian and
Matthew superimpose themselves upon the pages and I
cannot concentrate.
The Director's voice floats down the hall,
echoing in the silent spaces: "I think it's going
to come out all right, Arthur. I've just gone over the
books again and I've made a list of the most urgent
bills. Yes. I know. There are quite a few, but a
lot of them we can stall until fall. We'll be
all right then; the school boards will be sending in half
of the tuition."
Arthur must be Arthur Siegal, the school's
accountanteaDoris's cohort in fighting the
never-ending battleagainst the drain of money.
"Yes, all right. I can give you the list of the ones
I've marked most urgent now, but I'd like to get
togetherwith you soon, get these things paid before I leave.
You didn't? Oh . . . Guatemala. No,
no, just 127
for the summer, teaching in one of the colleges. I'll be
back in the fall."
Doris reads off a list of names and amounts,
including bills from the phone and electric
companies. "No. Skip that. Leave it until
fall."
Irritation now in her voice, no cheeriness, just
irritation and weariness.
"Arthur. Look. I told you-I don't need it.
I know I didn't get last month's salary either;
I can read the books as well as you. But I don't
need it. I've got my ticket in my
pocketbook, groceries till the end of the week,
and I'll get an advance when I get there.
"The Board meeting is Thursday night, you know that,
and I want to be in the black. I mean I want
the school to be in the black. When you read the
figures to the Board, I want them to look good,
positive. The Board's enthusiastic now; the
fund-raising for the new school is moving
right along. If they think we've gone in the hole
they'll let down, get discouraged.
"Mmmm. Right. Well, that's your job, Arthur.
You print up the sheets so they don't notice my
salary's not there.
"All right. Good. Thanks a million. See you
tomorrow then."
Chris and Brad and Tom and Billy, Ivan and
Jeffy, and more, more. All the children of the school join the
images of Brian and Matt; all the children Doris
has made room for, all the problems she faces
without complaint.
Unexpectedly, she appears in the doorway of my
small classroom. "Mary, how are you? Can I
help you with anything?"
"No," I say. "I'm just picking up some books
to go over during the summer. Did I hear that you're
going to Guatemala?"
She sits down quickly on one of the tables; her
bright brown eyes move over my face as if to read
me, to see how much else I have heard.
"Yes; I've been there before. I've found it's good
to get away, get a change of scene during the
summer."
We sit quietly, Doris and I, in the
dim classroom until she says, "Fourteen
years now since I opened the school. We started with
just four children-half a day."
"How did you know about them? How did you think to open
a school for emotionally disturbed children?"
"Well, you know, when you look back, it's strange
how
it
happened. The parents really began the school. They
got the idea, four of them, and then came to me and
asked if I'd be in charge.
"I'd done all kinds of things when I was younger.
Then I began teaching and it turned out that I had a
knack with the 'problems," as the other teachers called
them, and one thing led to another, and the next thing I
knew, there we were starting the school.
"Harry ... well, I wish you could have known him.
He supported me all the way, baby-sat at
night with Mike while I got my master's,
built furniture for the school, painted walls.
I didn't marry until late, but he was worth
waiting for. I could never have started the school or
kept it going without him.
"I remember right in the beginning, fifteen years
ago, saying to him, "Harry, I don't
know anything about emotionally disturbed children," and him
saying, "Well, Doris, it doesn't sound to me
like anybodyelse knows either, and at least you admit
it." his
I smile at Doris; she makes it seem so
real. I can almost picture Harry.
"We built our own house, you know, little by ll.bought
the property, then put it up a room at a time, and
while we were measuring or painting or
laying the bricks I'd tell him about the children. He
knew each one as well as I did, and he helped
me
a lot more than anybody else. Had a listening
heart, Harry did."
Doris is quiet for a while; I can almost hear her
listening to me, though neither of us is speaking. If
Helga and I have a body language, Doris
has an innerear and she somehow knows things long before they
are put into words.
Now she says, "I was a funny kid. Always
bringing home sick cats or birds with broken
wings; had a regular clinic in the backyard of our
house when I was young. I must have nearly driven my
mother crazy, but she never said a word until the summer
I brought home Leland Hagstrom. He
was handsome as anything, but weak-drank like a fish,
couldn't seem to leave the bottle alone. After
supper one night that summer my mother took me out on
the back porch and asked me how serious I was about
Leland. I was pretty serious; he needed me, or
said he did-and I liked that.
"I'd never lied to her and it didn't occur to me to do
it then, so I told her the truth, that we were thinking of
getting married. You know what she said? "You're a
fool if you do, Doris. I'm not one to interfere,
but remember"-and I've never forgotten
this-"remember," she said, "never do your social
work at home." his
Doris sighs and gets off the table. "Well, I
didn't marry Leland. I waited, and after a while
I met Harry and we had a love affair that lasted
thirty years ... I don't know what made me
think of it now; I must be getting old, rambling on
like this. Well now, you get to work, don't let me
keep you. Where are you off to for vacation?"
"Oh," I say, "California, I think."
"It's a beautiful state; you'll like it. Have a good
summer now; I probably won't see you until
fall." Another cheery wave and Doris disappeared
out the door.
I finished gathering my books and papers, thinking
all the while about Doris. Had she just been
rambling on or in her own way had she been giving
me advice? In any event, before I went home
I drove five miles beyond the school and put a
deposit on one of the new apartments that would be
completed in the fall.
I am back from California and settled in my new
apartment a week before school opens. The apartmentis
small and there is not much furniture, but it is
carpeted in gold and open on both sides so that the
morning sun pours through the bedroom and livingroom and the
afternoon light fills the small kitchen and dining room.
Larry's and my separation is complete, the final
papers signed; only the formality of the divorce
remainseaand this has been postponed until January
for tax purposes.
Elizabeth and Rick are back in school, tanned
and healthy from the summer, and my own impatience to begin
work, to see the children, wells inside me.
Bedlam. The first day in our new room is bedlam
and Dan and I barely have a chance to speak to each
other. Eight children in the room. Supposedly four
are mine and four Dan's, but we can never
rememberexactly who is whose.
Brian is back, taller, still flapping.
"Hey, Bri, did you have a good summer?"
"Mary. Mary. Is your father dead?"
What is this now? "No. My father isn't dead.
Why?"
"Where does he live?"
"In Guilford, Connecticut."
"Yule O'Toole lives in Guilford." 132
"Who is Yule O'Toole?"
"Yule O'Toole is dead. I thought maybe you
were dead, too-the summer was so long."
"Not me, Bri. I'm going to be around for a long
time. I've got a lot to catch up on." Later
I found out that Brian's grandfather had died during the
summer.
Stuart comes sliding in the door.
"You look perfectly darling this fall, Mary."
"Thank you, Stuart. I'm glad to see you."
"Shit," he says and kisses my hand, licking it
with his tongue. Jeffy Olivero and his widowed mother have
disappeared without a trace over the summer, and I
wonder if he still sleeps beside her, pressing her
earlobe between his thumb and forefinger, whereverthey may be.
Tom and Ivan, Dan's boys from the year before, are
back; the new room is strange to them and
Ivan whirls and jumps in one corner, his
beautiful face a silent mask, while Tom
pulls up his turtleneck and paces back and forth
along the wall.
"Good morning, Tom," I say.
"Good morning, Tom. Goddamn fucking son of a
bitch. Lost on the mountain. Call the one o'clock
call."
And I know that he remembers me, although I am not so
sure that he is glad to see me in this new room.
Changes are difficult for all children; for ours, they
are doubly so. Their own self-image is so
fragile that any alteration in the immediate external
environmentis a major threat.
If it is hard for the returning children, it is even
harder for the four new ones, two boys and two
girls.
Tony, seven years old, black eyes bright,
perches on a table beside me. "Kee-rist. What a
bunch of weirdoes." Tony's mother ran away when
she discoveredshe was pregnant again, and he lives now
in a
single motel room with his father and his father's mistress.
Before the morning is out I am extracting a
five-dollar bill that he is transferring
from my purse to the inside of his shoe. When I take
it back. Tony yells in rage. "See. I
knew it. I knew it. You goddamnwhore, No
matter what you look like, you're mean. Mean. Like
all the rest of them."
Alice is the first girl for either of us. She is
twelve, with tight blond braids and angry,
slanted eyes. She spends the first hour drawing at
the blackboard as the others arrive, drawing huge
ice cream cones, labelingin careful letters each mound
of ice cream ... vanilla breast . . .
chocolate breast . . . butter pecan breast.
Twenty-seven flavors?
Dan asks her what she's doing and she says,
"Shut up. I want my own way in the world. Why
can't I have my own way in the world?"
"You better take her," says Dan. "She
seems to need a maternal influence."
"Thanks a lot," I say.
Jenny Woodriff is our second and only other
girl. She isn't new; she had been in Pence's
class, but neither Clan nor I had known her
well. She is eight but seems much smaller because
she walks doubled over, hands almost touching the ground.
Her auburn curly hair is pulled
down over her eyes, hiding most of her face. She
doesn't speak; she only barks. Jenny thinks
she is a dog.
"She's for me," says Clan.
"Aw, come on. You're making all the decisions."
"Okay, okay. You get to pick the next one."
Rufus stands in the doorway dressed like a
middle-agedbusinessman, blue suit, necktie,
glasses, large briefcase held in front of his
fat stomach.
"I am Rufus Jay Greenberg," he
announces. "I live at Six-eight-nine
Harrison Avenue. You may
call me Rufus, or Rufus Jay-or if you
are very angry, Rufus Jay Greenberg."
"Come on in, Rufus," I say.
Rufus extends his hand, warm, moist, pudgy, and
says, "Is that what you are going to call me?"
"I guess so. Would that be okay? What do your friends
call you?"
For the first time he looks up and I can see the
nystagmus that moves his eyes rapidly back and
forth, back and forth, like the carriage on a
typewriter.
"I don't have any friends," he says.
He spreads his arms wide, the briefcase still
danglingfrom his right hand, and sails to the farthest
corner of the room. He pulls a wooden toy chest
away from the wall and squats behind it, arms wrapped
around his briefcase.
Rufus is eight. His family moved to the area so
that Rufus could attend our school. Both his mother and
father had given up good jobs to make the move, she as
a teacher, he as a chemist in a large
pharmaceutical firm. Rufus had been in a
"special school" in Pennsylvania and, because of the
family's educational and chemical-medical
background, had been tested and retested. Rufus'
file is thicker than the rest of my children's put
together. He has been given tests by psychologists,
psychiatrists, neurologistseain major cities
all over the East. Each report differs from the
next:-"normal intelligence with emotional
disturbance"-"retarded"-"brain-injured" com"...normal
to bright normal with schizophrenic tendencies."
How could there be so many different opinions? No
wonder the parents were discouraged and Rufus himself had
an absentee record that was higher than the days he
had attended school.
"I want him," I say to Dan.
Brian's bright, pointed little face contorts with
un-happiness. He copes with jealousy by accelerating
his flapping and uttering the old-time squawk. "Awk,
awk. Gonna go to the doctor's."
Finally we are all there, the six boys-Dan's
Tom and Ivan from last year, my own Brian
(matthew is in a neurologically impaired
class in a public school) and Stuart, and now the
two new boys, Rufus and Tony, and the two
girls, Alice and Jenny.
We had our own circle now, the eight children- Tom,
Ivan, Tony, Jenny Woodriff, Brian,
Stuart, AliceeaRufus-and of course Dan and me.
Dan ran our circle but it was not called
"Circle" anymore. Dan referred to it as
"opening exercises." "Circle is a baby name,"
he said. "You can't treat these kids like babies and
then expect them to act like eight- or
tenortwelve-year-old kids."
We saluted the flag and sang "America the
Beautiful."...Of course, only Dan and I sang,
and I have a very small, off-key voice so it was
really only Dan, but he sang with gusto. And when
we had finished singing about America he got out his
guitar and sang "A Frog He Did
A-courtin' Go" and "He's Got the Whole World
in His Hands."
By the end of the second week Stuart began to sing with us
in a high, clear tenor. Neither of us had ever heard
him sing before, but now he was totally absorbed. Feet
off the ground, legs stretched straight out in front
of him, eyes fixed on a distant point, hands
moving in some ritual before his face, Stuart sang.
He knew the words, he knew the tune. Across his
head, Dan and I exchanged looks of
satisfaction.
It was not so easy with some of the others. Ivan never
uttered a word and Dan saluted the flag with one arm
around him to stop his constant whirling. The flag
excited Ivan, and it was not until we
A CiRd.e OF CmiDREN
appointed him flag-bearer that he stood still and stared in
fascination at the flag he held. Jenny
Woodriff didn't sing, of course. At first she
refused to sit, pushing the chair away and squatting
on the floor, her hands curled in front of her
chest like a small dog begging. Dan would not let her
stay there: he lifted her up and put her in the
chair-"Hey, bear, keep your bottom on the
chair"-and held her there while she yelped
in fury. Gradually she relaxed and one day she
sat, leaning her small body against Dan as he
strummed his guitar. When he sang directly
to her, was "Miss Mousie, will you marry me?
Mm-hmm, Mm-hmmea* was I was certain that a
smile was not very far away.
Beside me that first day of school, Alice clutched the
seat of her chair with both hands and pounded it against the
floor, filled with rage at having to leave her ice
cream breasts. Between clenched teeth she muttered,
"I want my own way," and suddenly she stood up
and flung the chair across the room, barely missing
Rufus. Dan sat quietly, looking not at
Alice but at me, and I knew this was mine to handle.
I knew that Dan was thinking that I must set the
limitsnow, establish my own relationship with this
strange, tormented girl. He would help me if
I needed it, but he would not do it for me.
I stand, too, and look at Alice. "What's
wrong? Tell me. Can you tell me?" Alice
snarls some curse and then spits directly in my
face.
"Chairs are for sitting," I say. "Get it,
please, and bring it back," and I let the spittle
remain upon my cheek. Tears suddenly
burst out of Alice, and she goes and leans against the
wall and puts her head against her arm. I follow and
turn her from the wall and put my arms around her, and
Dan keeps singing, "... little bitty baby in His
arms. He's got the whole world in His arms."
I
"Come on now," I say finally. "Let's get the
chair and go back," and Alice goes and brings it
back and we both sit down again.
Within a month, however, our opening exercises have
gained form and structure, incidents of this kind are
rare, and everyone is singing except Ivan and Jenny
Woodriff.
Directly after these opening exercises we have our
academics. In those first few days of the new term
I think often of Matthew and wonder how he is doing
in the new neurologically impaired class that has
been established in his home town. I miss his
blond head, but I am glad he qualified for the
class. His speech had been coming faster and faster in
those last days and I feel sure that he will get the
help he needs.
I am going to school three nights a week now,
driving down to the State Teachers College, taking
courses called Introduction to the
Handicapped, a prerequisite for all other
courses; Teaching the Socially Maladjusted and the
Emotionally Disturbed;
and Art in Special Education. I attended
faithfully and finally earned three As, but my
disappointment in the courses became disillusionment when
they asked me to give three lectures on the
emotionally disturbed. Ah, Helga, how much more I
learned from you.
Helga taught me first to begin where the child is. Never
assume-always find out.. In more academic
language this means diagnose, teach, diagnose,
teach. Never go blindly on from lesson plan
to lesson plan, as they seemed to suggest at
college, with so much talk of lesson plans,
unit teaching, curriculum planning. Which of those
professors had been in a class like ours, I
wondered?
My job, as I saw it, was to teach the children how
to live within homes and communities. If what I
taught contributed to that, good; if not, it was a waste.
The children obviously had to learn self-help and
certain social skills. They had to learn how
to adapt their behavior so that it would be acceptable to the
society in which they lived. They could not, for
instance, continue to spit or masturbate in
publicbb^the actions would earn them ridicule or
isolationeaand they must be taught to control them or
substitute other, more acceptable behavior.
This aspect of teaching is first and foremost. We must
first reach the children, reach through the rage and fear and hate,
before we can teach. This is why we are called
therapeutic teachers.
However, I did not believe in basket-weaving.
Unless, of course, you happened to love
basket-weaving above all else. For me, it was
communicationccthe give-and-take between people-spoken,
written, however it came-and I wanted to give my
children the chance to learn these things. I had read their
records, their testing; all of it was sketchy, but every
indication was that they were of normal
intellectualability, or above. They deserved
to be allowedto learn the techniques of communication.
The other teachers thought I was somewhat ambitious.they
were kind and encouraging, but it did not have the same
importance for them as it did for me. And yet, and
yet, if what I loved and wished to teach was reading,
I had as much right to teach that as potato-printing. In
the children's world of violent emotion, where everything
continually changes, I thought it would be
satisfying for them to know that some things remain constant.
A C is a C both today and tomorrow-and
C-A-T remains "cat" through tears and
violence.
I began with the alphabet, in spite of the fact that
Brian and Alice could already read. It wouldn't do
them any harm, and it was necessary to teach below
tei
their level so that we could function as a group. I
taught them each the twenty-six symbols of our
language.first to recognize them, then gradually
to make them and know their sounds.
I would line the chalk tray with letters printed on
cards and ask the children to bring me a D, a B or
an F. As soon as they learned these, I asked them
to make the letter on the board. Within the month Aliceand
Brian were making up their own words, Stuart could
write most of the alphabet. Rufus was just beginning.
"Can you find the D, Rufus?"
Down goes his head onto one of the tables we use as
desks.
"Here now, let's see. I will make a D on the
board. A big one, see? The straight line-then the
fat stomach.okay, now. D. Can you see a letter like
this?"
I nudge the D card more prominently into view- and
slowly, slowly, Rufus gets up from behind his desk
and comes forward to where I stand. I take his finger and
trace it over the D on the board, saying,
"Here's that D, Ruf. Like in 'Dog." Feel
here, see how it's made." I am trying to imprint
the letter in his mind. But his body is tight with fear and
when he goes to the chalk tray of cards to pick out the
D, he just stands looking at them blankly. And I
know that the major problem here is that Rufus is too
frightened to commit himself to a choice, terrified that he
may pick the wrong letter.
Finally a way out of the situation occurs to him, and he
walks across the front of the room trailing his finger
against the ledge of the chalk tray where the alphabet
cards rest, his eyes fastened on me rather than the
cards.
What is this now? Suddenly I understand. In his own
way he is asking for help, and when he goes back
and does it again, his eyes still on me rather
than the cards, I wait. I wait until his finger
touches the card marked D and then I say, "Yes,
Good! That's it. Good, Rufus." And he looks
down and picks up the card and brings it to me.
He looks a't it carefully as he hands
it to me. "Is that right, Mary? Did I get it
right?" "Exactly right, Rufus. Good. That's a
D." His eyes focus on the letter, and the blank,
scared look is gone. For an instant, at least,
fear is forgotten and learning can take place.
Two weeks later when I ask for a Q and start
to draw one on the board for him to trace, he walks
straight to the Q and hands it to me, saying, "Who
needs that baby stuff on the board?"
"Okay, fine, Rufus," is all I say. But
inside I feel that fine surge of excitement that
says, "He's going now. He's off the ground.
We're moving."
One thing I was certain of concerning Rufus. He was
half paralyzed with fear. The ambiguity of the testing
seemed somewhat more understandable to me after the first few
days. Certainly not knowing the alphabet at eight
years of age was below normal achievement. But what
was the cause? Was it lack of capacity? Or was there
something blocking the potential?
Inside myself I bet on a good average
intelligence for Rufus. The phrasing of his
sentences, his mannerismseaall belied retardation; it
seemed more likely to me that there was some
neurological impairmenteasome tiny
section of the pathways of input and output that didn't
function properly, and that this Imperfection had
caused poor performance and, on occasion, failure.
When you have failed often and painfully enough you will do almost
anything to avoid having to try again. But I was
sure-I knew- that he could learn to compensate if
I could reach him. What I was trying to do was
to remove his
blockades of fear so that I could get through. I
knew my best chance was through success. As a
construction crew bulldozes through a jungle, so I
tried to bulldoze my way through Rufus' fears.
Calculate how far he'd come, open up the
situation to the degree where success was ensured-then
get him to try.
The main difficulty was trying to teach on widely
spread levels and keep everyone interested and
learning.
As Rufus hands me an M, I say to Brian,
"Give me a word that begins with M, Brian."
"Mother," he says.
"Good. Spell it, Alice."
"M-o-t-h-e-rather."
"Okay, fine. Use it in a sentence, Stu."
"My mother won't let me play with light
bulbs," says Stuart.
"Why?" asks Alice, interested. And we talk
about this. Alice is fascinated that there is someone
else who cannot have his own way in the world.
"What do you mean, why? I don't know why. She just
says I can't play with them."
"But why not? I mean, what's the matter with light
bulbs?" Alice's voice is gentler than
I've ever heard it. She's honestly interested in
another person.
Stuart is impatient, though. His eyebrows raise
like owl eyes behind his steel-rimmed glasses.
"Jesus. Stupid," he says. "How many kids
do you see building houses out of light bulbs in their
boxes?"
But Alice only sighs. "They're nice and
round," she says. And I can almost see her matching
ice cream breast for light bulb in her head.
There are no easy answers here; at least not for me.
I have no way of knowing what ice cream breasts and
light bulbs mean to Alice and Stuart. All I
know is that these things are part of them, as much
a part of them as the way they stand or speak. And that the
most important thing that I can do right now is accept
them. Accept each child as an individualeathe
way he is-ice cream breasts, light bulbs, and
all. And maybe in this atmosphere of accepting and
trusting each other we can grow a little more.
Finally, I decided we were ready for a series of
books. I inspected all the different series,
finally decidingon "Science Research
Associates," liking the physical production,
the linguistic approach in the basic series, the
wide range of speed and comprehensionin the
laboratory level. It would be good for all the children,
and the workbooks were sufficiently self-explanatory
that the children could work on them independently while I
worked with each of them individually for a short period of
time. And the teachers' manual was clear enough so that the
aides could follow it.
I told Dan of my decision.
"You'll have a devil of a time getting her to spend the
money," he said.
"I'm going to bring it up at staff meeting; I
don't see how she can refuse."
"Good luck," Dan said.
I take the catalog with pictures and description
to staff meeting and pass it around.
"I am sure the children can learn to read," I say.
"But they need a programmed series so that
they can progress from level to level, building their
skills."
Doris says, "In my experience, teacher-made
materialis much more effective."
"I agree," I answer. "And I would supplement
the series with other material that I supply. But I
cannot write a whole series of textbooks for
kindergarten through sixth grade in the next week, and
they're ready to learn now."
"Perhaps you should have thought of that this summer." Doris
smiles at me. "Meanwhile, the Ladies'
Association of the church did donate a whole
carton of books to us, and I noticed just the other day
that there were two
Cowboy Sams
among them. They're excellent, you know.
Excellent."
I look down in frustration and notice that Dan is
scribbling on a piece of paper beside me.
"The way I figure it," he says, "is that
we've got eight kids in our room and the last I
heard, tuition here was three thousand dollars a
year-that's twenty-four thousand dollars just in our
room. Of course, you've got the heat and light
bills. I know the church only donates
the building-then, too, there are our salaries..."
Quickly the Director interrupts. Dan said later
she was ashamed to have my small salary of four
thousanddisclosed.
"What did you say the series would cost, Mary?"
"One hundred and eighty-six dollars for one of
each, plus mailing," and I wonder as I say it
if she knows I probably love and respect her
more than anyone else in the room. And yet I must
fight her for what I believe right...
"The expenditure seems reasonable enough," says
Dr. Marino, our psychiatrist.
"It isn't the money," says Doris. "It's
simply that it is foolish to buy too much material
while we are here. It will be such a job
to transport it all to the new building, the new
school. But, I suppose ... if you're sure it
will be thoroughly used . . ."
"I'll be glad to carry the box to the new
building," says Dan.
I kick him under the table.
"Thank you," I say to the Director. "It will be
used, I promise."
Later in the parking lot I say to Dan, "You're

one I really thank. You got me the books. Of
course,
you
almost ruined it too ... "I'll be glad to carry
the box," was I mimic.
"She makes me so goddamn mad. That school
isn't going to be finished for at least two years,
if ever, and already she's using it as an excuse."
"Anyway," I say, "thank you. I really
appreciate it."
We are being observed all the time now. At first
we-the children and myself-were self-conscious when three,
four, sometimes five, visitors stood in the back
of the classroom watching. But now we are so totally
absorbed in each other and what we're doing that we
barely notice them. The door opens and they file
to the back of the classroom and the Directorwaves from
the door.
Dan is annoyed when Zoe reports that Doris
includesa talk about "our marvelous experiment in
team teaching ... the phenomenal success we've
had," in her public relations sessions.
"We?" he shouts. "What does she mean,
"we"? She never even puts her ass in the
door. Just waves everybodyelse in and then
stands there and wiggles her fingers. She doesn't have
any idea what we're doing."
It was true that word had spread about the school, the
team teaching, and the reading, and the visitors were increasing
in all the classes. Each day of the week there would be
some group-other teachers, doctors, students.
Junior Leaguers, psychiatric
nurseseaoccasionally nuns from the St. Francis
Guild.
I loved the nuns with their black robes and gentle
hands and faces. I had worked in a Catholic
hospital during two summers of my adolescence,
and their quiet ways had made a lasting impression
on me.
There were four nuns there the day that Tony 146
shocked them. Tony, small and sturdy, with his rough
thatch of black hair and broad, short, little
body, was doing well in Dan's group, although both
Dan and I felt he was incorrectly placed in
our school. He was nowhere near sick enough. There was
none of the weird behavior, either aggressive or
withdrawn, that characterized the other children. He stole; he
lied; he cheated-but he was not out of touch with reality.
However, his own school district had refused
to accept him in their public school
systemeasaying he was seriously emotionally disturbed,
and somehow our staff had accepted him.
Tony seemed to us more lonely than disturbed. Because
he had not been allowed in school, he had spent his
days wandering the streets or sitting alone in the cheap
motel room while his father and girl friend worked and the
school board sought "suitable placement" for him.
Consequently, he loved being in our school-the singing,
the trips, the activities-althhe stared with wide
eyes at the bizarre behaviorof the other children. And
now he was beginningto learn to read, and he loved that
even more. Although he was technically one of Dan's
children, he joined my group for academics and was both
a pleasure and a chore: he cheated whenever possible,
stole whatever he could get away with, and conned the
other innocents.
"Mary, Mary. Look at Tony. He's got
Brian's car." And Brian would be flapping.
"Tony. Tony. Give it back. Dead. Dead.
Mary, is the car dead?"
Finally Tony would stop running in circles and
take the car out of his pocket and toss it on the
desk and say, "Here, baby. Who wants a
stupid car anyway?"
Tony was tough; he was also scared. He
sat next to me at lunch and in the car when he could,
and walked closely by my side through the park. He
never mentioned his mother, who had left suddenly-onlya
note one morning that she was pregnantag-and had gone
South to her family. That was over a year ago and there
had been no further word. Tony's father had moved out
of the project where they had lived and taken his girl
friend and Tony to the motel room-one room for three.
The day the nuns were there. Tony had read his first
full sentence out loud and was bursting with excitement.
"Ya gonna tell my father? Hey, Mair, are
ya? You gonna tell him how good I can read?"
"You bet I am. I'm not only going to tell him;
I'm going to show him. Right here in the book."
Tony comes close to me then. We are putting on
our jackets to go outside for a minute before lunch,
and the nuns move forward to thank us, to ask a question.
Suddenly Tony's arms go around my waist and his
small face looks up at me intently. "Hey,
Mary? Can I screw you?" he says loudly,
clearly.
I knew what he meant. He meant, "I love
you." He meant, "I love being able to read, and
love you because you helped." I knew that probably the
only affection or expression of love that
he witnessed in the motel room was couched in such
phrases; he was only using the words that he had
heard.
I heard one nun gasp; another covered her mouth.
And I smiled at them over Tony's head as I
hugged him back and said, "You gotta wait a few
years. Tony. I'm a little old for you." I was
sorry to shock the gentle nuns, but I had to do what
I would have done had they not been there.
Outside, Tony ran ahead toward our baseball
field in the graveyard, carrying the bat, and Dan
said, "Goddamn it, that was great. You kept your
cool, Junior. You could have tried to look good in
front of
the nuns, but instead you heard him, you really heard
him."
I am pleased to be praised for something so easy. But
Dan will not let me bask comfortably in his praise.
He tosses our baseball in the air and catches
it under his knee, grins at me, and says, "How about
me? Can I . . . ?"
It was working. The idea of team teaching for
seriouslydisturbed kids was proving itself. The
therapeuticmilieu that psychiatrists speak of was in
our classroom. It was a place where we
all liked to be, bright, cheerful, filled with things the
children had made. Their arithmetic papers and stories
were on the walls, terrariums filled with collections
from our walks were on the shelves. A new mural was
constantlybeing created on one of the walls.
Right now a huge orange pumpkin made from
hundreds of pieces of crepe paper grinned down
at us. Dan and I had only started it, the children had
done the rest. We had thumbtacked large black
background sheets to the wall. Dan had outlined the
pumpkin and a few cornstalks in chalk, I had
torn and pasted a half-dozen pieces of paper within
the outline and then the kids had taken over. For the rest
of the week they had worked on the pumpkin immediately after
lunch while we sat finishing our coffee.
The old principle of imitation was at work here.
All Dan and I had to do was start the pumpkin. When
the kids saw me tearing up crepe paper (and I
did tear more than I needed in order to tempt them)
and pasting it within the outlines, they wanted to try, to do
it too. No need to insist or to teach-only to let
them take over and imitate-then discard the imitation and
do it in their own way.
As I had learned from watching Helga, as Chris
and Brad had learned to eat and pee, so now
our children were learning to live and work together.
In pairs or threes, they would set up assembly
lines, Brian tearing up scraps of paper,
Stuart smearingon paste, Tony fastening it to the
wall. Other days, they worked separately,
quietly.
There was "a good feeling in the room, "good vibes,"
Dan said, and the worst punishment we could inflict was
to banish someone to the hall for five minutes.
Little of the support we gave each other as
teacherswas planned, but over and over we built on
each other's ideas and bailed each other out when we
got in trouble.
The children could watch us, could see it working. Our children,
all of whom had trouble relating to people, no longer had
to watch silently as a teacher struggled to establish
rapport with a child. Instead, here were two people who worked
together all day long-people who kidded each other, withstood
each other's mistakes without anger, who worked together
and were more rather than less because of it. The atmospherewas
contagious and the children began to kid us, to laugh, and to work
contentedly alone and with each other.
I had good news for Dan and I could hardly wait
to tell him.
Finally he comes to school, looking
bleary-eyed. "Sorry," he says, "I really
had a bad night. Could hardly make it out of the
sack this morning."
He hangs up his coat-the mornings are chilly now
in late October-and takes his electric razor
out of his pocket.
"Wait a minute," I say, knowing the second he
turns on the razor the kids will leave their
early-morning games and books and gather round him.
They love to watch him shave-but I want to tell
him the news and I can't in front of them.
"Listen, Dan. Guess what? They've okayed us
at the Y. We can start next week."
"You're kidding! I was sure they'd stall you through the
year." Even in a hung-over state Dan is
satisfactory in his responses and I settle in
to tell him, unable to contain my excitement.
"No, they didn't stall. I've got the
official letter. I went over to see Mrs. Grady
again yesterday after school, and she finally agreed and I
waited while her secretary typed up the letter."
"Have you shown it to Doris yet? What did she
say?"
"She said 'Fine" We just have to contact the parentsand
get permission slips and have them send in
suits and towels. Beginning next week, we can have

the pool to ourselves every Wednesday from eleven-thirty
to twelve. I did have to promise Grady that there
would be only eight children, so that means only our
class, to start; but I'm sure later we can work the
rest of the school in ... also, we have to have at least
four adults, so we'll have to line up two other
people."
"Fantastic! That's great."
We had started planning this swimming program the
year before. Dan loved taking the kids out of the
school, and as we discussed possible trips swimming
had come up. The idea excited me. It would put the
children in a new milieu; it would let them see that they
could function in an unfamiliar environment. It would
provide a natural way of touching the
children,-municating. It would teach them a new skill,
make the long, hot summers bearable if they could
learn to swim a little.
I had volunteered to get in touch with the Y. When I
had been placement chairman for the League I had
been there several times, arranging for volunteers to work
in various programs. I had met Mrs. Grady
then, and knew that she was community-mindedbbI
felt sure she would open the pool to us if it was at
all possible.
There had been difficulties. They had never had
emotionally disturbed children there-the Board at the y was
concerned about accidents, lawsuits. Also, timing was
difficult. Children were supposed to come in the afternoon, after
school was out. Morningswere reserved for women's
swims, elementary and advanced, and for the synchronized
swimming group; noon hours, from twelve to two, were
for the men. But our children went home at two-thirty.
Finally we found a day, Wednesday, when there was a
half hour we could have: eleven-thirty to
twelve. The time hadn't been booked because there had
been no lifeguard available. I called Jane
Farrow, an old friend from the League. I had seen
her swim at the club, heard her mention having
taken a lifesaving course. She said sure she'd
do it; her bridge club started at one o'clock, but she
was free all morning. At last all the pieces
got put together and now, now, we could start.
At opening exercises that morning we discussed
swimming in general. Nobody but Tony had ever
been in a pool or a lake. Brian had seen
swimming on TV, though.
"Gonna go to the ocean?" he asked.
Brian was an avid television addict and he'd
seen all kinds of rivers and oceans on
television.
Alice's eyes lightened with interest and I could see
her visualizing the exposed bodies, accessible
breasts.
"What are we going to wear?" she asked.
"Bathing suits," I said. "Your mothers will get you
bathing suits."
"The hell they will," said Stuart.
He had a point, we decided, and had a parents'
meeting to explain the program. The idea met with
little enthusiasm, especially from the mothers. They were
sure that none of their children could learn to swim; they
worried about colds, infection. Finally they agreed
to let us try it for a month: we would report back.
We then took the children on a dry run to see the
pool from the glassed-in observation gallery.
That first Wednesday the children came to school carrying
paper bags filled with towels and suits.
Jenny's driver carried in her paper bag, shaking
her head. "Craziest thing I ever heard of," she
said;
"the kid can't even walk right and you want to take her
swimming."
We had plenty of help, at least. Ourselves,
Jane, the lifeguard, and Jerry, our
psychiatric social worker. Later we would have a
volunteer aide, but this first morning no one else
had brought a suit. Jerry would help Dan. There
would be six boys in the dressing room: Dan could
use all the help he could get. I had only the
two girls.
We separated in the large marbled entrance hall of the
y-men's locker rooms were down; ladies', up.
It was a long climb. I had told Jane she could
go straight to the pool, that we could manage without her
in the dressing room; so the two girls and I
climbed the stairs alone. Halfway up I began
to think that had been a mistake. Jenny wanted to go
up on all fours, and I held her hand to keep her
upright as she climbed slowly, slowly, one step at
a time. Alice seethed with impatience, stamping her
feet in exasperation.
At the top of the stairs was a closed door with a
plump, gray-haired lady sitting at a table beside
it.
"See your passes, please," she says without
looking up.
I have no pass. No one had mentioned
anything about a pass. "We're scheduled for
eleven-thirty," I say.
"What? ohhh! These are
those
children. Oh, poor things. And you, dear. What
wonderful work. What patience you must have."
I want to say, "I have little patience, particularly
with someone as insensitive as you," but I can see
Alicegathering saliva in her cheeks, preparing for a
mighty spit, and I say only, "I'm Mary-this
is Alice and Jenny. Is it all right if we go
on in to get changed?"
"Oh yes. Yes. Of course, dear. Here are the
keys for your lockers. The ladies' swim class
has just finishedeab there were only about a dozen women
to-
day. There are plenty of lockers and they should be through
soon anyway."
Inside, there are rows of tall metal lockers with
benches between, and cubicles for dressing with white
duck curtains-that can be drawn closed.
"Okay, Alice," I say. "We need to find
lockers thirty-one, thirty-two, and
thirty-three."
Just then a hefty redheaded woman appears
from the showers wrapped in a scanty towel.
"Water's great," she says. "You girls here
to swim with your Mom?"
Alice's eyes are fastened on the great mounds
bulging over the top of the towel. "Mmmm-mmm.
Strawberry," she murmurs in ecstasy.
"Mmmm."
Alice still clung to her fantasy of ice cream
breasts. She could draw well and in times of stress
she would rush to the blackboard that covered the wall
across the front of our room and begin drawing ice
cream cones, waffle cones with large round scoops
of ice cream, labeling each one with a different
flavor.the chalk made hard, angry marks against
the board as she wrote
vanilla breast ... strawberry breast ...
butter-almond breast
inside each separate mound.
And now Alice gazes in fascination at the huge
breasts protruding above the towel.
The woman, of course, knows nothing of Alice, and
only says, "What, dear? What did you say?
Well, have a good swim."
But Alice cannot let such delights disappear so
easily, and with her eyes bulging she grabs
the curtainbefore I can stop her, and flings it
aside-disclosingthe fat woman, sans towel, bent
over, one foot through her pink underdrawers.
"Here now," she yells. "Close that curtain."
And to me she says, "You ought to teach your children some
manners-trouble with the world today."
"I'm sorry," I say.
"Alice," I say, "the curtain belongs
to whoever's in,- the dressing room. She's the only
one who can open and close it. Here, see, this will be
your room; this is your curtain. Okay?"
Alice comes and moves the curtain back and forth.
Forget the lockers for now, I think. The main thing
is to get them in their suits before the whole
swimmingperiod is used up.
"Good," I say out loud. "That's yours. Your
curtain.you do what you want with it-leave the others
alone. Hang your coat up there, on that hook.
Okay? Good. Now take off the rest of your clothes
and put on your suit. Jenny and I will be right here in
this one."
Alice is trembling with excitement, but she
closes the curtain halfway and peers around at
me. "Don't go away," she says.
"I'm right here," I say.
I open Jenny's paper bag and take out her
suit, a navy blue puckered material. I lay
it on the bench in our cubicle.
"Come on, Jen. Let's get our suits on."
But she just hunches further over. I help her off
with her coat. "You take off your sweater, Jen."
She holds it to her. "Nnn."
I desert my goal of having her undress herself.
Even if I achieved it, it would take the whole
half hour of swimming. So I quickly peel the
clothes from her slumping body; perhaps there will be more
motivation for her to dress than undress. God,
she is so tiny. She seems so fragile in my
hands. I pull on her suit. "There," I say.
"You're all set."
But the minute I let go of her she's out of the
cubicleand running through the rows of green lockers, and
I hear the fat woman say, "See that kid. Her
sis-
ter's even worse. The mother has no control-can't
handle them at all."
But all I am thinking is. She's running. Not
bent over, but up straight; moving quickly,
gracefully. And I smile at the fat lady as
I catch Jen unexpectedlyand lead her
back to our cubicle, saying to Alice as we
pass, "How're you doing, Alice?"
There is no answer, but I hear the pounding of feet,
which means trouble, and I poke my head around her
curtain.
Alice is naked, jumping up and down and at the
same time trying to pull what must have been a
size-three pink bathing suit up over her
twelve-year-old body. I can feel the anger
rise in me. What was her mother thinking to send that bathing
suit? She can't deliberately mean to frustrate
her. Is it possible she still thinks of her as a
three-year-old child-or would like to?
Alice's mother had come to class one day, too shy
to attend the regular mothers' meeting; she lingered in our
class, telling me Alice was better-how
gratefulshe was. But conversation was difficult, and
I could not help but notice the long scars, some still
unhealed, on her face and neck, and I could envision
Alice, tall, strong, flying at this delicate
woman.
Alice had attacked me several times. In the
beginningI was unprepared and she caught me around the
neck in a viselikc grip, cursing, spitting.
I pried myself loose and held her from behind,
but she was strong and wrenched herself free and attacked
again. I knew Dan was watching from across the room,
althhe gave no indication. He quietly included
my other children with his own and continued teaching while
Alice and I struggled.
I said nothing to Alice, too busy physically
to talk, but as we held each other, forearms locked
together, standing face to face, I said, "You don't
hurt other
people, Alice. It's okay to be angry, but say it
in words."
She unlocked her right hand then and, forming it in a
claw, she reached to rake it across my face.
I grabbed her hand and held her hard again and then she
screamed at me, "But I can't do it. Don't you
see? I can't do that problem!" Then she burst
into tears. And I was more shaken by her words than anything
else.
She couldn't do the arithmetic problem on the page.
"Oh, Alice, Alice lovey," was all I could
think to say as I held her.
I was more careful after that. Alice was by far the most
academically advanced child in the school. She had
been in a private school for three years but they
had refused to take her back, so her
parents had enrolledher in public school in the
suburbs where they lived. Two days later she was
brought home aftershe had broken a chair across a
desk, and she was put on home instruction until the
waiting list at our school eased enough for her to be
brought in. I learned now how little frustration she could
tolerate, and I would go over each page with her first
so I could be with her when she came to one she didn't
know.
I also learned her noises. She would work quietly
at her desk, but if she began to rock the chair
back and forth-front legs, back legs-trouble was
brewing.it meant that in minutes she would explode,
and more valuable time would be wasted.
However, I did not believe Alice should be
allowedto rule our classroom. I interrupted the
patternof violence as often as I could when I saw it
begin to build. I would go and remove the paper or
workbook and say, "Okay, Alice. Enough."
She was always surprised to see me, her own
private world, so intense, so isolated, she hardly
saw us most of the time-and as the volcano built
inside her she saw us not at all.
"Alice," I would yell, because if I did not
yell I could not penetrate; she would not
hear me. "Alice, go draw."
Alice would get up then and the breasts would beginto
fill the board, chalk breaking as she drew them in
her fury.
Again, I longed for psychiatric help or training.
I spoke to the staff, asking if they could see her
privatelybbb there wasn't time. She was only one
child out of twenty-four; she would need deep therapy.
Even if they spent all their time with her, it still
wouldn't be enough. She needed to be seen outside
school, they said. I got the name of a woman
psychiatristwith a reputation for excellence and called
her;
but she had no open time at present, so I gave
her name to Alice's mother and was filled with frustrationnow
myself. Who does have time? What kind of world is this
when we don't have time to care?
I pondered Alice's drawing of breasts and took
home her picture captioned FAMILY. It
consisted of four faceless people: mother, father and small boy
standing side by side on the right half of the paper. In
the left corner, far away from the rest, there was an
older girl, faceless as well, completely alone.
I asked Jerry, our psychiatric social worker,
if he could make a house visit. Later
he reported back that the Udalls lived in an
attractive upper-middle-class development, but
knew no one there. Mrs. Udall was a former
violist-now she seldom left the house. Mr.
Udall was an international banker, travelingmost
of the time from one European country to another.
The one time I met Mr. Udall he told me that
he thought our school was excellent but that the
curriculum
needed strengthening. He stressed over and over that
Alice should be getting more social studies-that we were
quite weak in that area. Social studies! My heart
wept and my head raged. Alice's mother shut herself
in the house; her father escaped through traveling,
avoiding, ignoring what she was. Alice needed so
much more than social studies.
Jerry had recommended psychiatric treatment for the
whole family, including Ira, Alice's
brother, who was six years old now and mute. But as
far as I knew nothing more had been done.
"Alice, wait," I say. I know she can never
get that bathing suit on. "Wait just a minute."
My own suit would be too big for her. I go back
to the gray-haired lady at the desk, and she helps
me find a suit in the Lost and Found that
looks as though it might fit, and I think how nice
people are underneath.
Alice loves the suit. A two-piece yellow,
much like my own. She stands quietly as I fasten the
shoulder straps and then pin her long blond braids
on top of her head. Smiling, touching the suit, she
says softly, "It fits me. Doesn't it fit,
Mary? I'm big and it fits me."
Now there's only my own suit to get on. I am
by now covered with a light perspiration, but at least the
women swimmers all seem to have left. I go to the
booth and start to undress but Jenny is up and away
again, and so I go and bring her back and sit her down
on the bench. Alice sits quietly beside her, and
I simply stand in the doorway blocking Jenny's
exit while getting into my suit. Alice
appraises each part of my anatomy and says,
"You're like me. Exceptyou've got bigger breasts
and more hair. But look, our suits are just alike.
Two pieces."
"Right," I say. "We're lucky."
We hang our clothes in the lockers and go through the
shower room," down the stairs, to the pool.
The boys are there before us, sitting on one of the long
benches. Jane is in the lifeguard's
chair. Jerry and Dan are sitting with the boys as we
walk toward them.
"What a perfectly darling body you have, Mary,"
calls Stuart.
I can feel blood rise in my cheeks and an old
shynessreturns, but I know Stuart by now and I
smile and say, "You look pretty good yourself,
Stuart."
"Christ," Dan says, "I'm exhausted. How'd
it go for you?"
"The same. What are we going to do now?
Nobodyseems very anxious to swim."
We decide to demonstrate. Since so much of our
teaching is based on imitation, we think that if we
swim and enjoy it visibly, perhaps some of the childrenwill
be moved to enter the water. Clan does three laps
and then races Jerry, who turns out to be an
excellent swimmer. Jerry's long mustache
flashes from side to side as he churns down the
pool and finishesahead of Dan.
"Not as old as you thought, eh?"
Dan says, "You're good. I've got to get
back in shape." And it's true that Dan seems
to be smoking more than before.
I swim no races. But I do a lazy
crawl and backstrokeand blow bubbles and call and
wave to the children. They sit, unmoving, on the bench,
holding their towels, huddling together.
Only Tony comes close to the edge; finally sits
and puts his feet in the water as I say, "Come on
in, Tony. It's great. Really. Come join me.
Here at the shallow end." Thinking if I can just get
one started maybe the others will follow, I stretch
my hand out to him.
But just at that minute a male lifeguard appears and
shrills on his whistle. "Clear the pooll" he
sings
out. "Clear the pool for the Swim to Trim
Program."
Half a dozen men of various shapes and ages
appearat the far end of the pool, ordinary-looking men
in conventional bathing suits. The lifeguard glows
among them like a paste jewel, shimmering in tight
white elastic nylon trunks, his chest bronze,
his musclesbulging and quivering as he stretches his
excellentbody so that we can'admire it better.
Once more he blows the whistle and flexes his arms
above his head-and even before Alice reaches him I know
what is about to happen. But I can't get out of the
pool quickly enough to reach her; I can only
call to Dan. By the time he comprehends what is
happening, Alice is standing in front of the
lifeguardeastanding quietly in the soft yellow bathing
suit, gazing at him in wonder. The guard is
delightedwith this attention and smiles, flexing his
pectoral muscles now.
Alice says clearly, sweetly, "May I
press your breasts?" Her palms rounding in
anticipation, she reaches toward him, repeating,
"Please, may I press them?"
The lifeguard stands speechless, his face
horror-stricken, his arms folded protectively
across his chest. Dan puts an arm around Alice and
leads her away, "Come on, bear. Time to get
dressed." And to the stunned lifeguard he says,
"See you next week, Mac."
Upstairs, the three of us. Jenny and Alice and
I, stand in our suits under the shower and let the warm
water run over our heads and down our faces.
Jenny stands beside me, and as she lifts her hands
to wipe the water from her eyes I can see her fingers
open and relaxed. A normal hand, no longer
cramped and turned inward. Alice hums beside me,
singing a little now and then. "My suit is like yours,
Mary. I'm going to be like you, have hair and
breasts like you. We're lucky. Right?"
There is a close, warm intimacy there in the shower.
I unbraid Alice's hair and let the clean
warm water run through it. We know each other, we like
each other, which is good because when we get out I make
them put on their own clothes. This is hard,
especially for Jenny, her hands moving slowly,
awkwardly, but finally she is done and I hug her,
and she stands straight again while I brush her
auburncurls dry in front of the mirror.
Alice's hair shines and I brush it too,
until it hangs straight, free of braids.
Dan and the boys are already in the bus waiting for us.
We are all very tired and very hungry and we know
displeasure awaits us at school. We are over
an hour late for lunch.
"What do you think?" Dan asks. "Was it worth
it?"
Images fill my head-Jenny standing straight,
runningeaunfolding her hands, dressing herself; Alice
humming in the shower, saying, "We're lucky.
Right?"
"Yes," I answer, "yes. For you?" knowing as much
or more has happened with him;
"Yeah. Really good!"
And yet if anyone asked us we would have to admitthat
not one of the children had even been in the water.
I was gradually learning as a teacher why teachers"
colleges were wrong to spend so much time on
planning.the most important thing to learn was to be
able to throw the plan away, whatever it was. What was
necessary was to listen, to follow each minute to its peak,
learning as you went. And this is difficult. It
takes experience and self-confidence and courage. I
had been lucky; Helga had these in abundance.
But what of the teachers in training now, learning to keep
such careful records, to prepare to the final
detailseaspending hours preparing materials to turn
in for a grade from a professor?
If you have spent much time and energy in preparationeax is
natural to want to cling to your plan, preserve all
you have prepared. If I were ever to teach a college
class, I would teach that a lesson plan should never
be more than five lines long. A teacher should know where
she is going, what her goals are, but a five-line
plan can be easily discarded or postponed.
Instead of so much training in plan preparation, we should
have training in reaction, role play with the
unexpected. I would not advocate only
spontaneityor tolerate laziness: I
would also insist on tremendousamounts of background
reading in learning theories, psychology, all
fields of education. The goal would be to have the information
so absorbed and internalized that what was most pertinent
could be used at the right time.
Although our swimming program had gotten off to what
might euphemistically be called a slow start, we
continued. This, too, I was learning: to continue. Not
to abandon a plan simply because it did not work well
the first time or on a particular day. I was learning so
much, so fast that it was hard to keep up with myself. That
is, some parts of me were ahead of other parts, and I was
excited all the time.
In any event, we continued with our swimming
program at the y, and gradually, gradually, it
began to work. Some of the children stood on the steps of the
pool, going a little farther each week until
finallythey were walking back and forth across the shallow end.
The others we simply picked up and carried into the
water, and they howled above our heads as we walked
back and forth with them in our
arms. Finally when everyone could stand alone in the pool
we
began
games. At first, childish games-
Ring-Around-the-Rosy, so that heads could duck underthe
water when we "all fall down."
"Jesus," Dan said, "if any of my buddies
could see me now," as he and I and Jenny and
Brian walked round a circle in the water.
Later we graduated to water polo and leaped
wildly after the rubber ball; the children in their
excitementwd forget for a second or two that they could
not, would not, ever remove their feet from solid contact
with the bottom of the pool.
Rufus, surprisingly, was the first to allow me to put
my hands under his white, pudgy stomach and guide him
across the pool. Where he gathered his faith from I
don't know, but he would say, "Help me, but go
slow. Slower, Mary. Okay? Slow."
And we would proceed at a snail's pace across the
pool with Rufus's head arched as far away from the
water as he could get it, his eyes squeezed shut and
his ordinarily pale face crimson from holding his
breath.
We were strict about the deep end. No running along
the pool edge or you were benched. The fact that this was a
deprivation was progress in itself. No going to the
deep end until you passed the Lifeguard'sTest.
I printed the rules in black ink on
white oaktag and posted them in our classroom.
To pass the test you had to first swim back and forth across
the shallow end four times; you had to float on your
back; you had to be able to stay underwaterfor a count of
twelve; and finally you had to swim the length with Dan
or Jerry beside you.
Several of the kids were making it across the shalowend now,
but it was Rufus who did the whole four widths first.
In spite of his fears, he was the one

against the end of the pool, then begins to feel his way
down to the corner where the steps are. Slowly he
climbs out, shivering, vision blurred without his
glasses and I put a towel around his shoulders.
"I did it," he says. Then pulling the towel a
little tighter around him, he looks at me fuzzily.
"I did do it, didn't I, Mary?"
Yeah, Ruf," I say. "You sure did do it."
We were even later getting back for lunch than
usual that day; even Zoe was mad at having to keep
food warm for so long. But it couldn't be helped: we
had to stop and buy ice cream and cake to celebrate
our first swim party.
The swimming program was good, but Friday trips were
better. Every child needs to get out of the
classroom and explore the world, but for our childrenit was
vital. Many of them knew only their own homes and the
school. They had never been in a park, a museum
or even a grocery store. They had never ridden a
bus, a subway, a train, a merry-go- round or
a pony. We did all these things on Fridays.
Here again, team teaching made it possible. It was a
lonely, even dangerous thing for one teacher to take
disturbed children in a car or in a crowded place.
Explosion was never far away. But now both Dan and
I found that all the children knew each of us well enough so
that one could handle seven while the other took care of
an emergency.
On one of the bulletin boards in the classroom we
kept an ever-evolving list of trip
possibilities. Wheneverany of us had a suggestion
we added it to the list.
On Mondays we voted on where to go on Friday.
Everyone had his favorite. Brian and I loved
picnics at the boat basin. We could explore the
white yachts moored on the long piers; we could
watch the fishermenpull in their catch; we could climb
narroweawinding paths and finally eat at one of the
picnic tables off the path. Sometimes we brought
sandwiches; sometimes Dan cooked
hamburgers on one of the grills.
Because we were a private school and because the
Director also believed in our trips, and most of
all because the parents were tremendously enthusiastic,
there was little red tape. Things were kept simple.
Each child brought in a quarter a week; when we had enough
money for a train ride or bowling, they were included
on the list. When there wasn't any money, we went
to the nature center or the museum or the boat
basin or the airport.
There was little formal planning. Whatever we needed we
bought together.
No group of kids was ever better. There was no
crying, no whining on long trips. The Volkswagen
had become a second home to them and often they dozed
as we drove back.
In November we had enough money to ride the train.
We drove down to the station in the Volkswagen and
parked it in the lot. The inside of the station was dusty,
smelly, exciting-especially excitingbuying a
round-trip ticket to New York City.
We boarded together. Jenny's short legs barely
making the big step; but then we separated, ranging out
over the car, each choosing his own green
upholsteredseat, pressing his face against the
window.
The children held their own tickets for the conductorto
punch, waiting their turn with excitement. I knew
that on Monday their stories, both oral and
written, would be full of the train, the whistle, the
noise of the wheels, the roar as we entered the darkness
of the tunnel.
When we were well under way. Jenny moved over
to sit with Alice, and Dan came and sat beside me,
stretching his long legs under the seat in front.
"Can I talk to you a minute, Mary?"
I turned to look at him. He rarely called me
by name, using instead the half-mocking, affectionate
"Junior." He was still rumpled, rangy,
attractive in a
Strong, loose kind of way. I felt a great
wave of warmth and affection for him. Dan was good for
all of us-he took the fear out of every situation: none
of us were scared when he was there. We knew he would
take care of us; he also believed we could take
care of ourselves and we knew that as well. The result
was confidence, and there is no more nourishingclimate than
this.
"Anytime," I say.
But Dan doesn't smile. Instead he
says abruptly, "I'm going to fly down
to Florida over Christmas."
"Florida?"
"I've been wanting to talk to you about this. There's a
school there for emotionally disturbed children run by a man
named Burmeister. I haven't met him yet, but
we've been corresponding for several years. He
had a great article in one of the journals a couple
of years ago about emotionally disturbedadolescents,
kids too old to stay in the few e.d. schools there
are. Most schools are like our school, with a top
age limit of twelve.
"There's no place for these teen-age kids to go if
they haven't made it back to a public school
yet. They're usually too young and too bright for a
sheltered workshop and their families can't seem
to handle them on a full-time basis; so they end up
in institutions. And unless the family is wealthy or
can borrow the money, the kid is put into a state
institutionand never comes out."
I shiver in the seat beside Dan and turn away from him
for a minute, trying to erase the specter of an
institution. The one in our state is huge and bleak
and monstrous. Dan and I had visited it togetherone
day, and we had come back more determined than
ever to work harder with the children, be more patient with the parents,
to find or create some other alternative.
Dan's voice is insistent beside me. "This guy
Burmeister has gotten a school going that is part
day school, part residential. He's gotten
financial support from the state so that the cost to the
parents is nominal.
"I'm thinking about next year, and the year after that. The
reason I'm going down over vacation is that
Burmeister is sounding me out about taking over his
shares. I wanted to talk to you about it. What do you
think?"
I look at Dan-the square, serious face,
laugh lines already outlining the blue eyes at
twenty-seven. He is a fine teacher, sensitive,
committed, strong. He had taught science for three
years in a secondary school before moving
into special education, and he knows what his goals are
for our kids. He should have a school of his own, a
place to explore and build his own dream, not have
to simply follow and execute someone else's.
Out loud I say, "It sounds right for you, Dan.
You've always liked the older kids. They hold no
threat for you."
"Would you come with me, Mary? We could finish
the year here and then begin down there next fall."
My hand moves to cover his on the green
upholsteredseat. Only the outer part of me is
surprised. Inside me, I think I have always known
that we would want to keep teaching together and that the time would
come when Dan would have to make his move away from
Doris. "Thank you. But my own kids are in
school here. I think this is where I belong."
Theconductor calls our station and Dan stands up
and the boys immediately surround him in the aisle.
"Well," he says, "next year is a long way
away. Just keep it in mind and I'll let you know more
after I get back."
We walk all over Grand Central Station and then
go out on the streets of New York. Cold,
dirty, gritty-freaky people; a drunk with a tin cup
pushes against me. A prostitute in a short red
skirt and white boots approaches Clan with
"Wanna go to
my
place?" and Clan grins at her as he leads us
down the street. "Not particularly," he says.
"I got my own place."
I love the city. I don't care how it
looks-frumpy Broadway or elegant
Park Avenue, they're all okay with me. It's the
feel I like, the energy, the excitement.
But it's too much for the children. They crowd against us,
overcome by the hordes of people, the volume of noise,
the height of the buildings.
"How do people stay alive up there?" Rufus
worriesout loud.
So we ride the elevator in an office building
to the twenty-seventh floor and realize suddenly that
if some people look freaky to us, it's the reverse for
other people.
A man in the elevator taps Dan on the shoulder
to point out to him that Ivan, beautiful Ivan, has
stepped out of his shoes so that he can whirl, turn
faster, in the corner of the elevator.
"Put your shoes on, Ivan," Dan says and
Ivan slows and slips his feet back into his
shoes.
Again the man taps Dan's shoulder. "He's got
them on the wrong feet," the man whispers.
"That's the way he likes them," Dan whispers
back.
When we get off at
the
twenty-seventh floor, silent stares
follow us out the elevator door.
The children plaster themselves against the windowat the end of the
hall, fascinated by the tiny cars and people below.
"How come they're so little and we're so big?"
Rufus wants to know.
Dan laughs and puts an arm around him. "That's
called point of view," he says.
We spent the whole staff meeting discussing
Brian's eating-or lack of it. We have kept
careful records in school of what he has eaten
and drunk, and his mother and father have done the same at
home. The pattern has not changed: still he eats and
drinks nothing but crackers and milk, and now he is
almost nine.
There is improvement in communication, though. Brian
is talking fluently both in school and at home,
although he still uses more proper names than
personalpronouns. But what delights me most is
that his parents seem to be getting along better,
talking to each other more, as well as to Brian and to us.
Here is proof that a day school can work, that a
residentialsetting is not always necessary. As the child
grows, the parents, often for the first time, feel some
hope, feel that someone is on their side trying
to help with the ponderous burden they have been
carryingalone. They continue to make mistakes, but
so do we all. As long as we live we will make
mistakes. The secret I'm finding out is to be
able to forgive ourselves and one another.
By the end of staff meeting it was decided that Brian
must eat. He could not develop normally without
food. His parents would be asked to cooperatein not
offering him food between meals; they would augment his diet
of saltines and milk with 175
vitamins and continue to keep a careful record of the
food he ate.
We, Dan and I, would insist that Brian eat.
Dr. Marino had visited our classroom, a more
lengthy visit than usual, and felt that our
rapport with Brian and his relationship with us was strong
enough now to withstand the pressure of being made to eat.
Staff meetings were held on Wednesday
afternoons.thursday morning before the children arrived, Dan
said, "What do you think? Shall we start today with
Brian?"
"Okay, fine. Let's go over it again."
We were going to ask that Brian eat one bite of
lunch. Only that. Not a whole lunch-not a whole
plate. Only a bite. His glass of milk would
be poured like everyone else's (he was now
drinking regular milk but he still refused the food).
Now he would have to eat one bite of ordinary food,
whateverwas being served that day.
I think now we should have waited-at least until we
knew what we were having for lunch that day. Or
waited for a day when there was soup or even a noodle
casserole, something that would have been soft in Brian's
mouth-not so different in texture from milk and soggy
saltines. But then, too, we did not realize we
would have frankfurters on rolls that day. It was a
first.
The morning had been a good one. The kids had worked
on their arithmetic and each read in his own reading
book, and we were writing a story about swimming at the
pool at the y during language arts.
At lunchtime Tony set the table, his turn that
week. Stuart poured the milk. Ivan put around the
napkins while Tom sat on a high stool watching
and reciting the Gettysburg Address.
Brian was at the blackboard, starting to draw the
telethon for cerebral palsy that he had watched the
night before. I went and stood beside him. How to tell
him? How to prepare him? I tried to think of the right
way, but it would not come and time was running out. I would
tell him as best I could.
"Bri," I said, "you're doing a good job. You've
learned to talk and read and hike; yesterday you got in
the water at the pool. Today you're going to learn
to eat."
"Crackers? Gonna eat good crackers?"
"No. No more crackers. Today you're going to eat
food. Like me. Like Dan. Okay?"
Brian began to flutter and hop up and down.
"No food. Brian doesn't want food."
"One bite today, Bri. You take one bite of
food today."
"No food. Only crackers. Brian will eat
some nice saltines-from the little baker."
Dan came over and said, "Forget the little baker,
Bri. Here comes Zoe with the lunch. Today we eat,
buddy."
Tears welled in Brian's eyes, but he followed
me to the table and sat down.
Dan lifted the lid from the covered heating cart and
said, "Kee-rist."
"Don't swear out loud in here," said Stuart.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Nothing," said Dan. "I mean-it is something.
Something new. A treat. Yep, a real treat.
Hot dogs on rolls. Just like at the
ball game."
He rolled his eyes at me and held one up.
Never had a hot dog looked so long, so red-so
unconsumable. Beside me, Brian said, "Gonna go
home now, Mary. Brian's gonna go home."
"Brian and I will share a hot dog," I say
to Dan. "Here, put it on my plate." I knew
he couldn't stand
seeing that huge roll and frankfurter on his
plate:
even if he didn't have to eat it all, just the sight
of it would make him panic more.
I cut the hot dog into two pieces-two thirds
for me, one third for Brian-and put it on his
plate.
"Gonna go home now. All through. School's all
through now, right?"
"We're going to eat now, Bri. See. Watch
me." I spread mustard on my roll and then put
one end in my mouth and bit through the roll and hot
dog.
Brian watches closely.
"Oh. Oh," he says, "poor Mary.
Good-bye, Mary. See you tomorrow."
He gets up and starts to leave the table.
I take his hand and pull him back down again.
"Your turn now. Do it just like I did. Put it in
your mouth and bite."
Brian closes his mouth and presses his lips
together-hisface turns red and he shakes his head from
side to side, "Nnnnnn-Nnn," he says through his
clenched teeth.
My own voice comes out harder now. "Yes, Bri.
One bite. Remember. You are going to eat one
bite."
"Nnnnn-NNNNN." He starts to slip under the
tableeareminiscent of days with Chris.
I put my arm beneath his armpit and pull him up,
keeping him close to me.
"Hey, now. Come on. You can do it. It's not that
hard, really. Look at me again."
I take another bite; the hot dog is cold
by now.
"Okay. You try it."
He squirms away and I pick up his piece of
roll and hot dog and put it to his lips, still
keeping one arm around him.
He spits when the roll touches his lips and pushes
against me, and I say, "Listen now. You're going
to
eat one bite today. We're going to stay here, you and
I, until you do."
A threat? Maybe, but not an idle one-I am be
prepared to stay the rest of the afternoon.
Dan joins us. "What's all this? Hurry up.
Eat your lunch, Brian."
Amazingly, Brian picks up the hot dog and
lifts it to his mouth and I think. Ah, good-this will
soon be over. But just at the second it reaches his
mouth he turns and flings the frankfurter and roll
across the room.
Dan picks it up and brings it back, jamming the
hot dog into the roll, jamming the whole thing
into Brian's hand.
"Forget that stuff, friend. You're going to eat it. Now
get with it."
Tears are streaking down gentle Brian's face
now. I feel like crying myself. Dan, huge,
immovable, stands over Brian and myself.
Between tears and gasps Brian says, "Just the
roll, okay? Brian will eat one bite of the
roll. The nice soft roll. Right, Dan
Franklin?"
Brian nibbles at the side of the roll like a small
" mouse, a few crumbs entering his
lips. And I would have settled for that. That was far enough for
Brian to have come in one day.
But instead I hear Dan's voice saying, "A
hot dog on a roll has two parts, the roll and the
hot dog. Okay, you ate the roll. Now one
bite of the hot dog."
Oh, Dan, you ask too much. But I do not, cannot,
desert you.
I cut off a small piece of my hot dog with the
mustard knife and eat it slowly, chewing with my
face close to Brian's, my arm still around him.
"Actually," I say, "it's easier this way.
See, Bri. About five good chews and it's ready
for swallowing."
A circle OF children
Brian will have none of it. He throws the hot dog
across the room again-Brian, who has never thrown
anything.
"Goddamn it, you don't throw food in here. Now
you get it and bring it back." Dan's voice
fills the room.
Brian gets up, but instead of heading for the hot dog
he runs toward the door.
Stuart says, "Don't swear in here, Dan," very
self-righteous now that he has stopped
swearing himself.
And I look and realize that all seven kids are
watching us in fascination.
"Cool it, Stuart. Just cool it," Dan says as
he takes Brian by the shoulder and leads him to the
hot dog. Brian picks it up and we start again.
This time Dan sits in another small chair behind
Brian and pushes a piece of hot dog into his
mouth.
Brian spits it out.
Clan sticks it back in.
Brian spits it out.
"For Christ's sake, swallow it. Swallow the
damn thing," says Clan.
Zoe comes in to clear away the dishes and pour us
coffee.
"Oi-yoi-yoi-yoi-yoi," she says, raising her
eyebrows. "I guess you won't be wanting coffee
today."
I nod in agreement and she passes out Drake
cupcakes to the rest of the class. "I'll be back
to see if you need me," she says. And I nod
to her gratefully.
Dan himself is now perspiring, great wet patches
beneath his arms. He leans back in his chair,
gatheringstrength, holding Brian against him. There is
no anger in him now, only resolution. They could
almbe lovers, there is so much tenderness in the way
he holds the boy.
Then he says, "No joke, Bri. Today's the day
that you're going to eat."
Brian shakes his head in negation and they begin again.
I cannot help but feel surprise-and some sort of
admiration for the spirit inside this pale, pudgy boy that
keeps him resisting. He is strong; he can do all
sorts of things if that strength can just be channeled.
Dan crams the piece of hot dog in. Brian
spits it out.
"Maybe some water would help," I say. A
poor suggestion.
I put the hot dog in and Dan dumps water from a
paper cup quickly into Brian's mouth.
Brian spits it all out. Now we are all wet
with sweat and hot dog water.
Zoe opens the door. "Want me to take the kids
to the park with the other classes?"
"Please," I say. Dan and Brian say
nothing-just sit back resting as though between rounds.
When all the kids are gone, Dan says, as much
to Brian as to me, "All right. How are
we going to work this now?"
I have no ideas and just sit, facing Brian.
Brian sits resolutely in his chair, and even
when Dan gets up from behind him and walks to the window
to light a cigarette, Brian doesn't move.
He no longer runs for the door, no longer even
cries-just sits with his mouth clamped shut until
Clan returns.
"What we'll do," Dan says to me, "is get the
hot dog in and then hold his mouth shut so he can't
spit it out. I remember I got my dog
to swallow a pill that way once."
"All. right," I say. I am not convinced but I
know without question that we are all committed now, Brian
as much as us, and there is nothing to do but play it out.
"You put it in, Mary. I'll hold his mouth
closed."
I force Brian's small white teeth open and
put a

piece of hot dog the size of a thimble in his mouth.
Quickly Dan closes his big hand under the boy's
chin.
"Good. Okay, Bri. Now swallow. All right.
Good. That's it."
Dan takes his right hand away. Splat. Out comes
the hot dog on the floor.
"Get another piece, Mary. Put it in again.
Farther back this time. Swallow it, Bri.
Swallow the damn thing," Dan shouts in Brian's
ear. Brian never says a word-just spits it out.
All afternoon this continued. All three of us were wet,
exhausted.
When the kids came back from the park it was
two-twenty. Zoe looked at us. "I don't
believe it," she said, and took the rest of the children
to wait in the office for their buses.
At two-forty-five she came to our room again.
"Brian's driver is here," she said.
"Get his coat," Dan said to me. I brought the
blue plaid jacket.
"Put it on him."
As I pushed his arms into the sleeves Dan kept
pushing the hot dog back into his mouth. Then with one
arm around Brian's shoulders and one hand over his mouth
he led him to the taxi.
When Dan came back to our room I was still
sittingat the scene of the battle. "Oh, Dan,"
I said, "that was so awful. I'm sure we did it
all the wrong way."
Dan sat next to me, put his arms on the table, his
head on his arms. "Yeah. I know. But what's the
right way? Who knows a right way? At least we did
something."
"Did he finally swallow it?" I asked.
"I don't know. All I know is that when I put
him
in the taxi door he still had the damn hot dog in his
mouth."
I got to school early the next day. So did
Dan. I knew we were both wondering the
same
thing:
Would Brian be back? Would his parents come in?
How about the Director? Perhaps we had lost
Brian for good.
At exactly nine-fifteen exactly the same as
any other day, Brian appeared in the doorway and
said, "Good morning. Gonna draw the men.
Johnny Carson.frankie Laine. Yule
O'Toole and Perry Como. Saw them all on
TV. On the telethon. Gonna draw it on the
board now. Okay?"
And he hung his jacket on the hook beneath his name.
All morning I was edgy. I didn't
see how we could stand a repeat of yesterday.
At eleven o'clock I excused myself and went down to the
furnace room to find Zoe-to find out what we were
having for lunch.
She looked up from the hot tray. "You won't
believeit," she said.
"What?"
"Baked beans with sliced hot dogs."
"Oh, no-o-o."
I told Dan as we set the table.
"Jesus. Well, here we go again."
"Oh Dan? Are you sure . . . ?"
"Pour the milk, okay?"
Zoe wheeled in the cart and then waited in the
doorway as I served the children. Lots for Tom,
Dan, Ivan, and Tony-medium for Alice,
Rufus, Jenny, and me. Just a spoonful for
Brian.
I sat down and started eating without comment.
And next to me, out of the corner of my eye, I saw

Brian pick up his fork and carefully, carefully
spear one baked bean and one slice of hot dog.
Don't say anything, I think. Eat your own
lunch. Let him keep his dignity, his
privacy. Let him do it his own way.
Quietly I see him raise the fork to his mouth-and
I look around the table. There is no sound; everyone
is eating his own lunch. Seven pairs of children's
eyes watch Brian. Dan and I watch each
other.
Then Brian pokes me. "Gotta eat one
bite-right? Not just the bean. One bite of both.
Look at it." He opens his mouth to show me the
bean, the hot dog slice, so that there will be no
mistake.
"Right," I say.
His face contorts. He chews-once, twice-then
swallows and grabs his milk.
Dan raises his own paper cup of milk. "Here's
to Bri," he says. "Let's drink to Brian,
King of Hot Dog Palace."
Even now I think that what we did was wrong. There
must have been some better way. When I think of
Brian and the hot dog now, I think of it mainly as
a lesson in how much children can survive, as an
example of one of the many mistakes I made that should
have hurt the children but somehow didn't. But perhaps Brian
knew that he must eventuallylearn to eat in order
to survive-and that it was our
responsibility, as adults and teachers, to insist that
he do so. Perhaps he recognized the loving that we
felt.
Each day from that time on Brian ate a little more,
balking at new foods sometimes but eating more and more-at
home as well as in school. At a parent's
conference his mother told me happily how he made his
own sandwiches on weekends-ham on rye bread.
Many months later, we talked about this. I had been
asked to speak at the state convention for
psychologistseaand as "a token of appreciation" they
sent ten dollars to the school. The Director
gave it to me, saying, "You earned it. Use it any
way you want."
I took my class to Howard Johnson's with the
money, just four of them and myself, and said,
"Orderanything you want. The sky's the limit."
Brian sat beside me, tall now, almost eleven,
handsomein his blue plaid shirt. "Two franks on
rolls and a side order of french fries," he
told the waitress.
As we waited for our lunch to come, I said
to Brian, "Do you remember the first time you ate a
hot dog?"
He turned his fork on the white and orange
mat in front of him. "Yeah," he said. "And
Dan Franklinyelled in my ear, 'Swallow it.
Swallow the damn thing." his
I wished he would have told me more-told me why,
how-but he couldn't Nor did I ask for more. There was
enough absolution, enough happiness, for both of us in his
order of two franks with french fries on the
side.
Transitions are important-in school as well
as in grammar. A child can fall apart as easily as a
paragrapheawith meaning and content lost, if the
transitionsare not well carried out.
I was concerned about an upcoming transition for
Stuart. He had made such fantastic progress
since that first day (a, B, C, D, E,
Fuck). From no reading at all, he had moved through
primers, first grade, second grade-and now was
reading on a third-grade level. This, of course,
was far below grade level for him; he was almost
twelve now. Still, it was a long way to come in a
year. I was particularly concerned about Stuart's
move because of his age. The other children who had left had
gone into elementary schools where classes were small
and the pace at least relatively slow. But if
Stuart was to make it in a public school,
it would be a junior high. The junior high in his
town was housed in an old brick
buildingeaovercrowded now but still maintaining its good
academic rating. I had gone there alone a week
befto talk to the principal, who had then referred
me to the head of special services. They did have a
class for e.d. students and I asked if we could
visit.
There were twelve students, working on various
levels, with the teacher, male, about thirty, moving from
desk to desk. I talked to the teacher about the class,
about Stuart. Both of us were hopeful. It seemed as
though it might work. 186
"Why not bring him in next week? It's a short
week-just the three days before Thanksgiving. We're
not going to get an awful lot done anyway," the
teacher said.
When I asked Stuart, however, he said flatly,
"I'm not going."
"Why not?" I asked. "It's just to look."
"Yeah? Well, I don't want to look. I'm
gonna stay in this crazy baby school."
A typical Stuart remark-need phrased as
insult.
Still, he had grown. He was a pleasure
now on trips, capable, helping with the younger ones.
He worked eagerly on his academics and was getting
along better with the other boys, although his sharp tongue
still made them regard him with caution.
Volunteers had a difficult time in our room because
of Stuart. He effectively excluded them beche
wished to be taught by us, not volunteers- and as Dan
had told me those many months ago, Stuart had an
uncanny knack for getting to a person.
The first volunteer who came to our room was a
Junior Leaguer, young and tall with long blond
hair She was intelligent, finely bred,
courteous. As she leaned over Stuart on her
second morning he smiled up at her, eyes
blue and deceptively innocent behind his thick
steel-rimmed glasses, and said quietly"...What do
you usually use for your halitosis?"
She got herself assigned to another room.
Even our psychologist, Dr. Steinmetz-a
rotund man with curly gray hair and a full
beard-seldom came to our room. He had tested
Stuart, and Stuart desired no more testing. When
Dr. Steinmetz appearedin the doorway Stuart would
carefully inquireafter Weight Watchers,
feigning surprise when Dr. Steinmetz
said he knew nothing about it.
In the beginning, Stuart had tried to get rid of me,
too. On one of our Friday trips we rode the
Staten Island ferry, and before we were" halfway
across the bay he had cleared our side of the
ferryboatof all but a peaceful drunk and me.
Every time someone sat down next to him on our bench he
began to swear in a soft, clear voice. "Fuck.
Shit, Son of a bitch. Bastard." If his
language didn't drive them away, he farted,
raising himself on one buttock, almost seeming to take
aim, then saying, "Oh, excuse me. I seem
to be having trouble farting."
I didn't leave. I didn't even say anything,
although later I would tell Stuart and enforce it that if
he wished to swear he was to do it under his breath; he
did not have the right to disturb other people. But I couldn't
really think of anything appropriate to say.
Inside me, I knew what was happening. Stuart was
saying to me, "I'm testing you. Nobody loves
me. Nobodycan love me. I'm too awful.
I trust no one. Not you Not anyone. You'll leave
me too. See, you can't take this. You'll go
soon, like all the others." This was no time for
discipline; that would come later. This was a time
for loving. So I sat in my navy blue
double-breasted coat looking out the window at the brown
waters of the Hudson while Stuart aimed his ass
at me and neither of us spoke.
Back at school, our relationship grew, but
slowly. Stuart would stand by the door flicking the light
switch on and off, on and off, gazing unblinkingly
at the ceiling light fixture. His fascination with
light bulbs and switches was paramount-on and off,
on and off-sometimes I thought he longed to control us the
way he could the light switch. In any event, any
fact, word, or number that Stuart had difficulty
remembering I could teach him easily by drawing a
light bulb around it in colored chalk-and
"comprehend"...or "7 x 12" was fixed forever in his
head.
He used touch in an odd way. If he had had a
difficult morning, immediately after lunch he would begin
to fiddle with the light switch, then he would revert
to his old trick of kissing Dan's hand-finally he
evolved one for me. He would deliberately wet his
forefinger and then as I bent to sip my coffee, he would
move quietly behind me and slip the wet fingerinto
my ear.
And he'd get his response. Startled
reaction would snap my head up, coffee spilling
on the table and me, and Stuart would smile, finally
satisfied, and go to play his collection of
favorite records.
We held each other once, though without tricks or
games.
During reading I had put a relatively easy
compoundword on the board, asking the children to divideit,
spell the separate parts, use the whole word in a
sentence. I always put new words on the board before the
children encountered them in their books, and I always asked the
child to use the new word in a sentence in which the context of the
sentencedefined the meaning of the word. This way I knew
that he understood it, was familiar with it- and the word was now
his to use as he wished.
I did this while the word was on the blackboard because
I wanted books themselves to retain the feelingof
success, not to be the place where a child had to struggle
with a word. This way when a child met the word on the printed
page he already knew it and said, to himself at least,
"This is an easy book,"
I write COBWEB.
"C-o-b-cob. W-e-b-web," says
Tony.
"Good, Tony. Use it in a sentence,
Stuart."
"Uh. Cobweb. There were cobwebs in the cellar."
Unexpectedly, Stuart puts his head down on the
table.
"Okay," I say, "but tell me more. Lots of
things can be in a cellar."
A circle OF children
But Stuart doesn't raise his head.
"Stu, are you okay?"
No answer.
I leave the blackboard and go to his desk, and he
raises his head just long enough to take off his thick
eyeglasses and cram a handkerchief against his eyes.
I squat beside the chair. "In the cellar?"
"Yeah, yeah, the cellar. That day. There were
cobwebsall over the bottles in the corner. The
kind with metal squirters on the top."
Stuart raises his head. "You know? You know the kind
I mean?"
I nod.
"I liked to squirt "em but I knew I
wasn't supposedto be down there. My mother didn't
like me down there when I was little. She said it was
dirty. All of a sudden I heard somebody coming
down the stairs and I hid. It was Daddy.
He took big, slow steps and I hid in the
corner where he couldn't see me.
"He sat down on the washtubs and took a
bottle out of a bag and drank, sort of moaning.
"I got scareder, but I didn't know how to get out
of there without him seeing me. I wasn't supposed
to know about the bottle. When they thought I was asleep,
my mother would yell at him to leave it alone.
Anyway, after a while he got up and I was glad
because my legs hurt so much from sitting on them, but he
didn't go away. He just went over to an old army
trunk, got it unlocked, took an old gun out,
and then he stood there-and after a long while he shot the
gun in his head."
I don't speak, though my insides ache for him;
I know I have to let him finish, without touching him,
without interrupting.
Stuart slams his hand against the desk and then again harder
against my shoulder.
"In the head. In his fucking, shitty head. Then
he fell down. I was too scared to come out. I thought
he'd get me if he knew I'd seen him. So
I stayed in the fucking corner and wet my pants.
I couldn't help it. A long time later my mother
came down and turned on the lights, and
yelled-and I ran-and- and ..."
The sobs began then, building until they drowned his
words and he reached for me. I half pulled him out from
behind his desk and held him. We walked to the wall and
leaned against it, still holding each other. Then when he
had quieted, I got my coat and his and signaled
to Dan; and we went outside and walked around the
building and then across the street through the cemetery,
neither of us saying anything.
The main thing I wanted Stuart to know was that I
wasn't going to leave him. I was there, no matter
what.
I called the psychiatrist at lunchtime to find out
what I should do-how to handle it, thinking perhaps he should
come in, talk to Stuart himself. "No need for that.
What you did was right. That was fine." And I thought.
There must be more.
Now I realize what a unique position we were
in. Where a child psychiatrist could see a child once,
twice, three times a week for an hour at a time
in a specialized setting, we saw our children five
hours a day, five days a week. We learned with
them, we played with them, we ate with them. We
lacked psychiatricknowledge, but we had a deep and
special knowledge of the child. I knew none of this
then;
felt only that Stuart had trusted me with a secret
part of him, had given me some sort of key to hmfeaand
I wanted guidance so I would use it
correctly.i talked to the Director, asked if
I should call
Stuart's mother. She said yes, that I definitely
should. I called, and Rita Wagner came in the
next afternoon.she was tall, in her early thirties,
with the statuesque body of a showgirl and long black
hair.
I told her as gently as I could what Stuart had
told me.
"Who'd believe it?" she said. "He was only
four. I didn't think he even remembered.
Charlie drank a lot. Always did. But then he
lost his job and I went back to working as a
waitress-more a hostess, actually.charlie's
drinking got worse, and then he got this crazy
idea that he had cancer and that we were all hiding it from
him. We couldn't talk him out of it. Not the
doctor, not me-nobody. So he drank more and more so
he wouldn't have to think about it. Then one day he just went
down in the cellar and blew his brains out. And
Stuart's right-I found him down there hiding
in the corner and carried him up the stairs and got my
next-door neighbor to take him to her house. But
I didn't think he remembered; he never mentioned
it. Look, let me show you."
She opened her pocketbook, her wallet, and
took out a faded picture of a small redheaded
boy. "See? That's what he looked like then. He
was such a beautiful little kid. The fellow down the
street even wanted to put him in a movie, he was
so beautiful. Everybody said so." She sighed and
put the picture back. "Of course, that was before he
got so crazy-acting."
The important thing was, she loved him. I knew
she did. She wouldn't carry that picture around, or
come in right away when I called her, taking off from
work, if she didn't.
Everything was going to be all right. She loved him.
Stuart was going to make it.
I thanked her for coming in, for talking to me;
and showed her Stuart's reading workbook and spelling
papers. All she said was, "Who'd believe it?
Who'd ever believe it?" I was not quite sure what she
was referring to, but it didn't matter. I knew
she was going to be on his side and I knew the odds were
good that he was going to be all right.
The thing was, though, I had made it pretty clear
that I wasn't going to leave Stuart. He could count
on me. I would be there. But the fact remained that he
was almost twelve, and by the rules of the school this was his
last year.
I pondered solutions. It seemed that the thing to try
to do was to get him to want to leave school hmf.finally
he agreed to go and look at the junior high,
extracting promises from me-written at his
insistencein red Markalot-that I would not leave him
there. So on the day before Thanksgiving vacation Stuart
and I left Dan and the other children and drove to the
junior high in my car.
We arrived as classes were changing, and the
contrastbetween our own small sunny room and the
huge, dim corridors of clanging lockers and
halls jammed with superstar kids could not have been more
pronounced.
I thought Stuart might be frightened, but his abilityto
insulate, isolate, himself stood him in good stead,
and while he seemed to have pulled on a plasticcovering
he also seemed interested.
We proceeded on down to what would be his
classroom.officially it was called a "traveling
class"; this meant that the kids in the class
were gradually integratedinto the regular
classrooms, at first staying in the homeroom most
of the time; then gradually, as their abilities and
emotional stability increased, they "traveled" to more
and more regular classes. Some moved totally out of the
traveling class and into a regular classroom at
the end of a year. Others stayed there throughout junior
high. Either way was all
right
with me: both were a long way from the institution.
Stuart feigned his bored, superior air when I
introducedhim to the teacher, but he looked good; I was
proud of his cool.
Back in the hall on the way out, Stuart pointed
to the green lockers and addressed me:
"Would I have one of those?"
"Yes. Sure. Everybody has one. That's where you
keep your coats, books, things like that."
"Do you get a key? I mean, you know, your own
key? So you can open and close it when you want to?"
"Sure," I said. Then another thought occurred.
"Listen, Stu, do you want to see the cafeteria?"
"What do you mean?"
"Come on," I said. I should have thought of it
earlier.food was far more interesting to Stuart
than a classroom.
We went down and walked through the cafeteria. Stuart
was filled with awe.
"You mean they have three kinds of soup on the same
day? You're kidding? Three kinds, and you get
to choose what you want?"
Obviously Stuart had become a convert. No more
need for a sales job here. I was suddenly conscious
of the hour, of the fact that we were late for our own lunch
back at school.
I nudged Stuart along, though he was in no hurry
now, lost instead in admiration of the fluorescent
lights that lined the ceiling. All those and three soups
too. We would hear about this the rest of his remaining time
with us. Happiness and hunger mixed inside me.
"How'd it go, Stu?" Dan asked as we came
in.
"Okay Where's lunch?"
"Right here. We decided to wait for you and Mary
so we could hear about the school. Go wash and we'll
get it set up."
Zoe had served the other classes and then left the
hot cart in our room. While Stuart went to wash
I decided to get the lunch ready-I'd skip
washing td.it was late; I'd save time.
I went over to the hot cart, intending to push it to our
waiting lunch table. It seemed to be slightly
stuck. I pulled harder and it came loose-not
only came loose, but shot out from the wall, wavered
back and forth, and then fell sidewise, crashing against
the tile floor.
Zoe had put the coffee pot on the bottom of the
cart and plugged it in to keep it warm, and I had not
looked closely enough to notice. When I pulled, the
plug resisted, then came loose, and the sudden jolt
tipped the cart over.
A gigantic pool spread at my feet, brown
liquid coffee mixing in the dumped-over casserole
of franks and beans. I looked at it in horror:
they'd waited for us and now I'd ruined everyone's
lunch. It was un-savable; coffee grounds floated
on top of the beans.
Tony came over to my side and surveyed the mess
with awe. "Gee, they look just like black ants
crawling on the beans, don't they?" he
volunteered.
Dan said, "Get the pail. Tony. Ivan, you
get the mop."
Dan himself got the garbage can.
There were no recriminations, no accusations.
We all mopped and scraped; even Jenny
unfurled her cramped fingers and helped me wipe the
last sticky residue from the floor.
"I'm so sorry."
"Couldn't matter less. Glad to get rid of those
beans. Right, kids? Right, Tom?"
"Right, Tom," Tom said.
When the floor was clean I went down to the
furnace room and told Zoe, who helped me
find the peanut butter and bread she kept in a
corner of the refrigerator for emergencies. I
carried them back to our classroom, and the kids and
Dan and I sat around the table while I spread
cold peanut butter on unbuttered bread, making
sandwiches for all of us.
We ate them with delight. Once again, disaster had not
torn us apart; only made us closer. They forgave
me my mistake, as I suppose I had theirs, and
there was a feeling in our room that day that we could do
anything.
The kids laughed and ate their peanut butter
sandwiches without complaint. As for me, it was the nicest
lunch I'd ever had. I knew it was corny; I
knew it was sentimental. I also knew it was
somethingmore. And I valued the more.
Unexpectedly, Dan tilted his head back and
laughed out loud.
"What's funny?"
"We are. Me particularly. Didn't get
married- wanted to play the field, keep my
freedom-right? And now look what's happened right
here in school. We've turned into a goddamn
family."
And he was right. That was the more. We were a family.
I had forgotten how beautiful my own children are. It
has been a long time from September
to Thanksgiving, and I can hardly take my eyes
off them when I first see them. I drive
to Elizabeth's school, pick her up, meet her
roommate, her teacherseaand then we drive back
together, talking all the way. Rick arrives that
same night, Wednesday, in his battered car, and we
all hug each other and laugh. We have never been
apart from each other for this long before, and it is
important to catch up on everythingthat's
happened-Rick's courses, soccer, the new girl
he's met; Elizabeth's roommate, the
lesbian science teacher, the election that made her
secretary of her class. We don't mention the
divorce at all; we had been over it
thoroughly earlier, and there was, I think, a
desire inside all of us to make our brief
holidaytgr as happy as possible.
All the time they talk I memorize them.
Elizabeth'sslim body now turns with grace;
her neck arches like a young colt as she tosses her
long black hair back from her forehead; and intensity
lights her face as she leans toward Rick to say,
"But wait, listen to this. We were supposed to . .
." and the rest of her words are lost to me as I etch the
entirety of her being into my mind.
Rick has not changed as much; only grown more what
he was. His handsome, regular features seem
somehow larger, his brown hair longer, curling at

the base of his neck. Gone is the little-boy look.
He lights a cigarette and leans back against the
couch, relaxed, talking easily, one boot resting
on the opposite knee.
I lean forward and talk now, too, telling them about
the children at school, about the various theories of
childhood schizophrenia, talking about causes,
environment, the biochemical makeup of the child.
"Is it the parents. Mom, do you think? If they had
loved their child more, would he have been all right?"
Elizabeth asks.
"I don't think it's that simple-love. I think
too often educators, researchers, doctors,
take that as an easy way out. I don't care for
Bettelheim's huge stone mother built in the
courtyard of his treatment center so that the children can kick
her, let out their aggressions-although I do agree with
other things he says. But this seems too easy
to me, almost like saying to the parents, 'allyou have almost
destroyed this child. Now we'll try to help, try
to undo the damage, but who knows how much we can do
now?"' Saying this absolves therapists or
educators of responsibility-if there's
improvement they can say, "Ah, see what we have
done." If the child remains the same or
regresses they can say, "Ah well, too much
damage had already been done."
"It seems to me more complex than that; these same
parents often raise other normal children. I think there
must be a combination of causes. I'm sure the parents
are important, but there must be something else, something
inside the child himself, specific to him, maybe a
different body chemistry, maybe a tremendous
sensitivity that means he's hurt more easily than
other children by factors in his environment. But
the thing that strikes me most is the uniqueness, the
enormous individuality, of each child, despite the
superficially common symptoms.
There is no one picture, no one description,
of a schizophrenic or autistic child."
We talk again in the morning, through breakfast and
extra cups of coffee, through stuffing the turkey and
putting it in the oven to roast, through our late- afternoon
Thanksgiving dinner.
Too soon it is Saturday afternoon, and the childrengo
to visit Larry and attend the holiday dance at the
club. After they leave I clean up their debris with
reluctance; the apartment is lonely without it and I
stay for a long time on the little porch, looking after
Rick's car that is no longer there. Finally I
shiver in the cold and go back inside.
With the children gone for the day and night, I begin to read, an
old solution to loneliness. But I find I cannot stay
lonely long. I am so excited by the thoughts inside
my head.
I am still taking courses in special education,
graduallyaccumulating the credits I need for
certificationbbb these education courses don't seem
to be answering the questions I am seeking answers to.
How do we teach most effectively? How
do we educate"...What is education?
I go back and reread parts of Erikson, and then
start on Fromm and Rollo May-and come back
to teaching and involvement.
The teacher, any teacher, must be involved-involvedwith the
subject that he's teaching, with the children he's teaching, and
preferably, demandingly, with both. What is school
anyway but a preparation for the rest of your life?
Okay. Then how do you get these teachers, the ones who
are willing to be involved? Where do you find them?
I don't know. Don't know. But I know that I will
be one. And when I have learned how, I will continueto
learn more, and all the time I will welcome
into the classroom any new teacher who wishes
to learn whatever I know.
It is a disgrace to the teaching profession that it is so
difficult to "place" student teachers, that
colleges pay out a paltry bribe of sixty
dollars or so to a teacher who will take a student
teacher. Ah, Helga, I wish you were here so that I
could argue with you. You would tell
me
that the children are the importantthing. But I would tell you
what I have now found out. You are unique, but you will not
live foreverbby must allow others to learn from
you.
All right. This is nothing new-practical teacher
training, in-classroom training, is being touted
all over now. What "new" is there to that? Okay.
One new thought is to offer these master teachers credits
rather than money if they must be offered something.in our
degree-mad society, let them earn
creditseainstead of dollars, for their work training young
teachers, because without fail the older teachers will learn from
the younger ones as well.
My head pauses, but not for long. Back
to involvementccwhat is it? What do I mean? I
mean a very activeforce, energy going back and forth between
two or more people, an excitement, a caring. A caring?
A loving? Do I dare to say loving? Could the
communityeacd the schools, could the parents admit,
dare to admit, that there should be loving in our schools?
No matter what they admit, this is what I think.
Not only should there be loving, there must be lovingeain our
schools. Tough, strong, responsible loving by people who
can accept other people's weaknesses and ignorance-and their
own as well. They must accept and then attempt and
act, taking the responsibilityfor the consequences the
actions bring. Becthere is no real loving without
action and responsibility.
The loving to which I refer must be better than
what we ordinarily mean by loving. As the laser is
beyond light, this, too, must be more.
The laser fascinates me; I review the
acronym, made up of letters from the words Light
Amplificationby Stimulated Emission of
Radiation, and considerag how the laser consists of
ordinary light, but light that has been concentrated,
channeled, directedeas that it is fine, true,
delicate, powerful.
Ah, the words form in my head. That is what I will
have. Laser teaching: Love Amplified
by StructuredEducational Reality. This is what we
need in our schools. This is what I must learn
to practice. But as the laser must be handled with knowledge and
skill so that its power does not damage, so my
laser teaching would require intelligent, sensitive
teachers.
An idealistic dream? Perhaps, but I write it in
big letters on the kitchen blackboard, happy,
happy, with the thought. Then inside my mind I write
it once again before I go to sleep.
Jenny Woodriff came back from Thanksgiving
vacationwearing bright red corduroy overalls
exactly the same color as the wagon in
the back of our room, and this became her favorite
spot. Each day after lunch, while Dan and I
drank our coffee. Jenny perched in the wagon
surveying us like a small gnome.
I had known Jenny first at the old school. She
had been in Nick's class, and occasionally his
class had joined Helga's for walks to the
village. Helga knew, as Clan did, how
important it is to make the children a part of the world and the
world accessible to them.
One day Nick had asked me to keep track of
Jenny on our walk. You could not hold her hand,
curled tight as a bird's claw. She walked
doubled over-thin as a matchstick, long, skinny arms
swinging back and forth, hands almost touching the ground. I
tried simply to keep in body contact with her, my
thigh against her shoulder, my hand occasionallypushing back
the heavy wool bonnet that she continually pulled down
over her eyes.
Unexpectedly a truck had roared by, close
to us, loud, noisy, and Jenny had turned and
screamed. Screamed and wound her arms around my
legs, burying her face against me, then turning,
pointing, still screaming words or almost words as she
pointed to the truck that thundered by.
Nick had come then and taken Jenny, and I had

moved to walk beside another child-but what
remainedindelibly in my mind was Jenny's
response. Though it was terror, she had
responded. Though she turned her hands inward and her
body downwardeashe had not yet turned herself off.
She still responded.and if this was true, she could be
reached-and that meant she could and did still learn, and that we
could teach.
But the next year, in Renee's room, I was not so
sure. She was one of the children who lay on the floor in
the cold, wet bath water. In fact, she began
to go deliberately-or so it seemed to me-to the
puddle of water around the tin tub to move her
bowels. This was when Renee had explained to me that
Jenny thought she was a dog, that it was part of her
hate, her revolt, and that she must be allowed
to express it. It was also when I had gone to the
Directorand asked to be transferred to another
room.
Renee did not return the following year. Jenny was
assigned to our room, and Dan loved her from the first
instant, claiming her for his class. Whatever
toilet-training problems she had had before
had been resolved over the summer, and though her
cramped body posture continued and she pulled her
curly hair down over her eyes and nose, leaving
only her mouth visible, nonetheless I would catch
brief glimpses of a smile as Dan sang to her
at beginning exercises, "A frog he did
a-courtin' go, mmhmmmmhmm," or carried her high
on his shouldersas we jogged around the duck pond.
I knew Jenny best at the swimming pool. Here
Alice, Jenny, and I struggled each week with the
problems of showers, dressing and undressing,
hair-combing, and coping with the ladies from the
synchronizedswim class. Fearful at first,
gradually Jennylearned to love the water, and as the
weeks went by she began to paddle back and forth across
the
shallow end of the pool, her hands, her whole body,
relaxed and mobile.
What puzzled us most, however, was her lack of
speech. Her gentle mother would come to conferenceseach week
and ask the same question each time: "Did Jenny say
anything yet?" And always we had to answer, "Not
yet," sometimes adding, "She climbed on the bike of
her own accord," or "She set the table for us this
week"; but never had we heard a sound from
Jenny. In our class there had not even been the
scream of two years before.
She did talk at home. Not to her brothers or
sistersor her father; but she spoke to her mother. Each
week Mrs. Woodriff would tell us of their
talks. Jenny whispered, spoke so that only her
mother heard, but spoke in full, complete sentences.
In school she not only didn't speak-she didn't
make a sound. Not a cough or a hiccup; even her
footsteps were silent on the tile floor.
Silently she sat in the wagon; silently she
surveyed us.
But if Jenny loved the red wagon, Brian loved
Jenny. Of all the children in the school Brian loved
Jenny the most. Whenever possible he tried to sit
besher in the bus, read his book out loud to her, give
her his cupcake at lunch. But Jenny
acknowledgedhim not at all, wrapping her coat around
her, pulling her hat over her eyes, pretending she
never saw the cupcake Brian offered.
Now, though, as she sits in the wagon she is more
vulnerable, more accessible, and Dan and I watch as
Brian gently invades Jenny's isolate world as
we once invaded his.
It has taken him a week or more, but he
has gottenJenny to let him sit on the table beside the
red wagon and hold the long handle as he talks
to her. He tells her the details of each
telethon and joke
after joke. "What happened to the cat that drank the
lemonade. Jenny Woodriff?"
Not a glance from Jenny.
"He turned into a sour puss," and Brian laughs
so hard he has to get off the table. Although Jenny
tries she cannot keep her smile totally inside.
Three days later. Jenny lets Brian pull
her around the classroom in the wagon. He walks
backward, slowly, slowly, talking to her the whole
time, and Jenny unfolds her hands and grips the
sides of the wagon-but she stays in and lets Brian
pull her.
And now, now, he pulls her in the hall. We go
to collect the mail in the office, Brian,
Jenny, and myself-Brianpulling Jenny down the
hall at a rapid clip.
There is a large carton for us. Books. More
books, and I am as excited as the children. We get
the cartoninto the wagon and Brian hops up and
down with excitement. "Sit on the box. Jenny.
Sit up high on the box in the wagon."
And Jenny does. Now back down the hall.
Jenny teetering in the wagon, excited by the ride,
the prospectof the package. Brian goes still
faster, I trot to keep up-and suddenly Jenny
laughs out loud. Not a small laugh, a large,
loud, huge laugh. And Brian stops dead and
stares.
Then he drops the handle and covers his ears. I
take my cue from Brian and cover my ears too.
Jenny looks at us in delight and laughs even
louder. She is in control now. There it is, as
clear as a bell. Jenny is making us do something rather
than the other way around. And she loves it. What
to do? How to make this work?
Ahhh. I keep my own hands over my ears and
say to Brian, "It's a good thing Jenny doesn't
laugh much. Too much noise."
Brian? Does he know? Will he help?
He nods his own head, ears still covered. "Too much
noise. Right, Mary. She makes too much
noise."
Jenny, of course, laughs even louder all the way
back to the classroom.
Alice doesn't like the noise at all and goes
to the board to draw her ice cream breasts,
vanilla-ha, choc-olate-ha, jumping up and down
as she draws; but at least she doesn't spit or
throw the chair.
Stuart watches Jenny benignly, hand inside his
pants. "What a baby girl," he says. "She
could really mess up in here if she knew how to swear
instead of just laugh."
"SHIT!" shouts Jenny. "GODDAMN SHIT!"
And I could almost hug Stuart. But Dan and I
merely unpack the carton and study the new books.
The kids are doing the teaching now. Stuart has
helped Jenny move from a noise to words; what words
they are does not matter just now. I hope that she will
move to other words in time; I hope also that Stuart will
one day no longer put his hand insidehis pants.
But even if he does, that is not what's
important. These children of ours will always have their
problems; very few make it all the way back.
What is important is for them to make it to the
publicschool so that they are able to live with their
families.
Jenny swore for two days-loud enough to bring the
Director down the hall from her office. Jenny
yelled swear words from the moment she arrived in the
morning, through flag salute, through
academics, through lunch, art, basketball, and
swimming.
We were all sick of it, Alice's breasts covered
the walls now as Dan taped up the ones she painted
on the newsprint paper. Yellow, blue, and
black laughingbreasts. We were all sick of it
except Stuart. He followed Jenny, teaching her
new words, whispering
to her, while Jenny shouted, "fuck! bullshit!
crap!" and the Director said merely, "I hope the
nuns don't come today."
I waited. Boredom would come soon. Swearing is
not that interesting by itself.
By the third day there was a lag, and I merely
followedStuart's lead by saying, "I don't mind the
swearing or the laughing-I can tune those out-b God
help us if Jenny ever reads out loud his
I knew it was obvious. So did Jenny. But the
thing was, it let her save face.
She looked at me. She looked at Dan. Then
she took her reading book from her own cubbyhole and
screamed at us the title of her book: "A HEN
IN A FOX'S DEN."
She went to her red wagon, folded her legs
tailor-fashion beneath her and screamed the first
lines of the first page: "Rag was Jim's pet.
Kit was Dot's pet cat."
Not until our Christmas party ten days later did
she talk to us in a quiet voice. In fact, it
wasn't even to us. Jenny spoke to Brian. Standing
upright, handinghim three cookies she had made as
presents, she said softly, "Merry Christmas."
Brian's hands flapped against his sides. It was
too much. The excitement was too much and he couldn't
keep them still. But even so he took the cookies,
let them flutter, too. "To you, too," he said,
"Merry Christmas to you, too. Jenny
Woodriff."
From then on Jenny spoke to all of us, not
screamingnow. There was no need-that had only been the
key she used to open the door of speech for herself.
Christmas arrives and, though I know all the things that
are wrong with it-commercialism, endlessbuying to make
up for lack of love, pushing crowds and all the
rest-still I love it and I am excitedwhen we go
to buy our tree.
We are going to have a party at school, and the biggest
tree that we can find. Our room is a double room
and it can hold a big, big tree. The other teachers
already have their trees, small and neat on their
windowsills, pretty and almost real, trimmed with
tiny blinking lights and tinsel. But we will have none of
this; we must have a huge green tree that reaches from
floor to ceiling with strings of colored lights and
paper chains and ropes of cranberries and
popcorn.
We go together, the whole class, ten of us, to the parking
lot behind the y and survey the field of Christmas
trees. We all go in different directions,
calling to each other: "Look at this one ... How
about this one? ... Oh Dan, look, this one is
perfect."
Finally we narrow the choice to two, the tree man
holding first one and then the other, stamping them in the
snow, shaking them to loosen the branches to show how
fresh they are. We debate, we examine them,
comparing height and symmetry, and finally the agonizing
choice is made. Ah, we have been right; it is
obviously the best tree in the whole place. 208
A circle OF children
The tree man offers to carry it to the car; but no, we
must do it ourselves, each of us holding a tip, a
branch, a piece of the trunk, marching down the
driveway. Our tree. Suddenly Dan leaves the
tree to us and sprints ahead, getting out his
camera-always Dan has his camera in the black
case across his shoulderseacalling back to us to stop,
to wait a minute while he snaps a picture.
We must have been a funny-looking group: tiny
Jenny standing upright now, but hands still cramped and
tight; sullen, golden-haired Alice; the six
boys hopping up and down with excitement, with an
occasionalflap or twirl. The tree man watches
Dan take the picture and then calls to him with
wonder in his voice: "Hey, Mac, are they all
yours? Boy, you and the missus sure must have your hands
full."
"What? ... all ours?" It takes Dan a
minute to grasp the full meaning.
"Oh-ours.
Yeah. Sure, they sure are. They're all
ours."
The children hear. They know. Our lonely, funny children
who have never been part of anything, who have lived for so
long behind the walls, the locked doors, of their
homes. Now a stranger looks at them and thinks that
they are part of a family and Dan does not deny it.
His loveliest Christmas present to them.
"Did you hear what that guy said? How about that?"
Dan exults, delighted, laughing,
sprinting back to me, whispering, "He must think
you're some sexy broad, having all those kids.
Hmmm." Dan rolls his eyes in what is
supposed to be an obscene leer.
"Everybody knows that," I whisper back. "Older
women desire more." I roll my own eyes.
We stand laughing together, thinking we're funny,
until I feel Jenny shiver and recognize the
cold, and we trot the rest of the way to the VW and
Dan ties our tree on top of the bus.
We make a mess in the classroom, pine
needles all over. At least eight inches have to be
cut off the tree;
we overestimated, or maybe it's under. Anyway,
there has to be room for our star at the top, and we
all argue and push and crowd Dan, telling him how
much till he gets impatient and shouts, "Give
me room!" But finally it's up and Clan wires
an extra branch in a place that doesn't seem
to have one, and we all declare it beautiful.
The rest of the week we trimmed our tree. We
popped popcorn on a hot plate and did our
arithmeticcounting out the snowy corn. We had white
strings of popcorn and ruby-red streamers of
cranberries-asmuch on the floor as on the
tree but somehow it didn't matter. We made a
wreath for our door out of pine branches and red
velvet ribbon, and a centerpiece for our table from
pine cones. Morningswere for academics. I was the
taskmaster here, insisting that we continue with our reading,
the number line, the tens and ones columns. We had
come too far to let the learning slip.
Happiness filled the classroom, though we were all
a little high from overwork and anticipation of the coming
vacation. Dan was flying down to Florida to see
Burmeister about the school for next year. I
alrhad my ticket for Mexico and would leave
three days after Christmas to complete the final
formalities of the divorce on January second.
But for now there was Christmas, and we planned our
party with care.
We didn't get much done the morning of the party; the
great pile of wrapped packages under the tree was
too much to ignore. Each of us squeezed and pinched
and poked whenever we could, trying to discover secrets,
until finally it was time and we
A circle OF children
sat in a circle around our huge, beautiful tree
while Dan distributed the presents.
Brian, a red snap-on bow tie beneath his
chin, sits beside Jenny Woodriff, talking softly
to her. She has already given him the three Christmas
cookies she made, and every once in a while she
speaks to me now, too, in a normal voice.
Leaning across Bri, she calls, "Merry
Christmas, Mary," as if she likes the sound of the
words.
Ivan sits quietly in his socks, whirling his
shoes in front of him. His shoes whirl, but he
controls the rest of himself, at least during the hour of
our party.
Tom leaves his spot and goes to stand beside Dan.
"Okay, Tom. Help me deliver. Here, this one
is for Stuart from you."
"For Stuart," says Tom, and then on his own, with his
turtleneck turned down, he adds, "Merry
ChristmaseaStuart."
Stuart is fascinated by the tree, the lights, the
glitterand shine, but he moves his eyes away from the
tree and accepts the package from Tom. "Thanks,
buddy," he says, his voice as much like Dan's as
he can make it.
Alice sits close to me, her shoulder touching my
own. I had tied red bands of ribbon in the girls'
hair before the party and Alice touches hers
now and says, "It's pretty, Mary, isn't it?"
"Yes," I say and hug her. "It's pretty and
so are you."
And she was. (but Alice wasn't one of the ones
who made it the next year. Though she was observedat
our school in the spring and accepted for a public
school program, I heard secondhand that she
lasted only three days before she spat in the teacher's
face and threw an eraser across the room. She was
put back on home instruction. I felt then and
I still feel sorrow and frustration for not having done a
A circle OF children
better job. All that teaching, all that growing, but she
wasn't able to make a transfer. Yet a teacher of
emotionally disturbed children must be able to acceptfailure
and still feel that each minute step these children make is as
valid as a leap for someone else. Perhaps somewhere,
someone has managed to reach Alice.)
On the other side of me sits Rufus, wearing his
best blue suit and a sober expression.
"What's the matter, Ruf?" I whisper.
"I'm Jewish," he says worriedly- "Jewish
people don't believe in Christmas. Do you think it's
all right for me to be here?"
"Of course it's all right. It's our
party. It's for all of us. We'll have another one for
Hanukkah. Okay?"
A smile breaks through. "You mean it? You won't
forget? We'll celebrate Hanukkah?"
"Absolutely," I say. "We've got lots
to celebrate."
And we did. We were all there, we had all
survivedccthe hardest part, the first half of the year, was
over, and our room was no longer bedlam. We were able
to sit quietly around a Christmas tree, sharing.
The children were all speaking and eating now- though to varying
degrees-all beginning to learn to read and write and
communicate with each other. Of course I knew,
Dan and I both knew, that the children weren't
cured-that
they would always be different, more isolated or more
violent; still there was hope that they would be able to live in
their own homes, their own communities. Actually, it
was not so much that they were different from other childrenbbr, in these
children the anger, the lonelinesseathe frustration and the confusion
that are part of all of us were magnified, amplified.
Perhaps in this magnification, this amplification, we can
find some of the causes of loneliness and anger; and if
we
can find the causes, perhaps we can find a
few of the answers for all of us.
Across Rufus's head I smile at Dan.
We had stayed late the afternoon before, counting to make
sure that the presents for the children would come out even, that no
one would be disappointed.and they weren't. There was a
surprise for each child from us, and from each other.
Everything had to be made or cost less than a
dollar. There were the usual orange-juice cans
painted to look like pencil holders-looking instead like
painted orange-juice cans-endless packs of
cigarettes for Dan and bath powder for me; and for the
children, balls, crayons, pictures, candy. Nothing
was special; everythingwas.
At the end of the day, after the children had gone and we had
cleaned the classroom, put it back in order for
vacation, and donated our tree to the Sunday school,
Dan and I sat in our classroom drinking a last
cup of coffee.
I had given Dan a scarf for Christmas, put it
underthe tree with the other presents. I had found blue
yarn and knitted a long blue scarf for him the same
color as his eyes. He wore it now as we sat
on the desks drinking coffee.
Suddenly he gets up and goes to the closet in the
back of the room and takes a flat brown
package from the top shelf and comes back and lays it
across my knees.
"I gotta run. Junior; my plane leaves in
a couple of hours. Well, anyway. Here. This
is for you."
But he still stands in front of me, the blue wool
scarf incongruous with his shirtsleeves but exactly
the color of his eyes. Then he reaches out, one big
hand cupping my face, turning it up to his.
"Merry Christmas, Mary. Take care this
vacation. I'll see you in January."
caret caret
"* i

He closes the door quietly and I stay on the
desk with the flat package on my knees, listening
to his Volkswagen turn over, then catch and
drive away. I open the package carefully,
lifting each piece of Scotch tape without tearing the
paper.
Inside are lines
from
one of every. every. cummings's poems, scribbled in
black ink on framed parchment paper.
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere i go you
go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your
doing....
I get up then and walk around the room, carrying the
poem with me, touching the blackboard, the books, the
chairs and tables, the coat hooks with our names
labeled over them. I trace each letter of his name.
Cummings had said it for us. In our teaching we had
become a part of each other. Wherever, whenevereaI
taught from now on, Dan would be a part of that teacher.
There is a strong urge, a compulsion almost, to define
that teacher; the teacher I hoped to become.
I reach for paper, pencil, and write my title,
"Teacher," across the page.
It was dark when I finished, and much of what I felt
was still unsaid, but I tacked my poem to the bulletin
board just inside the door to give to Dan his first day
back.
In Juarez, Mexico, the sadness of divorce
proceedingsbelied the gaudy veneer of punchbowls and
bright signs lettered WELCOME TO FREEDOM.
There was something frantic and false in the
celebratingeaand I headed for the shower each time I
returnedto my hotel room.
It was hard to imagine that one day I would be
able to recall Larry with only a neutral kind of
tenderness.now the divorce brought back memories,
and thinking of Larry was like touching a bruise, tender and
aching at the edges, more so at the center of its
blue-black heart. The hurt was less when I
didn't touch it, but time and again my mind moved back
to go over it, like a tongue on a sore tooth.
In any event, it was done. Last year's tax
purposes were served and now I was eager to be done with
Mexico and mourning.
Our plane circled New York before landing, and the
city shone like a Christmas jewel that night, clear
and bright and beautiful-full of promises for the New
Year.
I arrived at school the next morning breathless from
the cold and the prospect of seeing Dan and the children. But
Doris cornered me as I went through the office on
the way to our room.
"Oh, good morning, Mary. Happy New Year.
Did you have a good vacation? Looks like a cold day
tdeadoesn't it? My. Well, as long as it
doesn't snow. There's always enough trouble the first day
back without bad weather as well. Oh, incidentally,
I wanted to tell you: Dan's been detained."
"Detained? What do you mean, detained?"
"Well, an emergency. In Florida. Some
man, Bur-mestman, or something like that, died. So
Clan had to stay on for a while; said he'd tried
to call you but there was no answer at your apartment;
wanted me to give you the message."
"A while?" I say. "How long is that?"
"Well, actually, probably quite a while. A
few weeks, months ... well, one never knows,
does one?"
Does one?
A skinny youth appears beside Doris; he impinges
on the periphery of my vision. A new student:
No, too old for that; and my thoughts go back
to Dan. What could have happened? Burmeister died?
Ah, that would be hard. Especially if it happened
while Dan was there; if there was no one else to take
over ... I can understand that, but why . . . his 216
"Mary? Excuse me, I don't think you heard
me. I said this is Claude, the new teacher in your
room."
I couldn't believe it. This skinny boy a teacher?
Could Doris already have replaced Dan? Already hired
someone to take his place?
I put out my hand and smile as best I can. It is
not his fault; whatever has happened, it
certainly is not his fault, and it must be difficult
for him. Had the sinking of my heart shown in my
face?
"Hello, Claude," I say. "I'm glad
to meet you."
Claude blushes and smiles and nods, too
filled with embarrassment to speak.
I follow Doris back to her desk. "Is Dan
coming back? And if he is, why have you already hired
someoneto take his place?"
Doris smiles, skirting the issue in familiar
style. "Oh, well, you never can tell what will
happen. I had this feeling that Dan was getting a little
too big for his britches-you know what I mean. It
won't hurt him to know he's expendable.
Claude's a good teacher; you can call him a
substitute, if you like. I thought it would be a little
hard for you to handle eight children alone, Mary."
Again, there is no one to blame. Dan in Florida
when Burmeister died. ... There would have been
pressure on him to take over-and he loves it
there. And it will be good for him. He will have his chance, his
opportunity, to build and run his own school Right,
Mary? And Doris-how can you blame her? Dan and
she weren't getting along well. It must have
been a relief to her that Dan has been
"detained."
And Claude? Not his fault. He had only said
yes when asked. Nothing to blame in that.
But oh. God, how can I teach without Dan?
A circle OF children
How will I live through each day without Dan? What will
I tell the children? How can this Claude handle Ivan
and Tom and Tony and little Jenny?
I walk to the office window and press my head against
the cold glass, trying to focus on the immediateday, on
an approach to the problems ahead. I am not sure
I have the strength. And I am tempted for a moment
to walk out too. To put my coat and gloves back
on and leave again-leave the problems to Doris,
to Claude, the substitute.
Substitute. The word rings a familiar bell, and
I remember the day when I first came as a
substitute. It was just this time of year. Winter
cold. Snow close behind the gray clouds. Everyone
busy, involved, with no time to tell me about the children
or show me what to do.
Can I now do this to Claude?
Suddenly I remember Helga-Dan-the
Director, too-my teachers, and all that
they taught me.
Now it's my turn.
I bend and tie the laces of my sneakers a little
tighter and then walk over to where Claude stands
self-consciously by the office door.
"All set?" I say. "Did you get some
coffee? Okay then. Good. Let's go on down
to our room and I'll tell you about the kids on the
way."
Down the long, dim hall, through the door of our
classroom, past the bulletin board, the coat
hooks labeledwith our names, MARY-DAN. Past the
blackboardto the bookcases beneath the window.
"See," I say. "Here are our books. And the
workbooks ..."
I look away to steady my voice a little. I
look out the window of our classroom and see
Brian's bus arrive.he clambers out, his
small, bright, pointed face
pale and vulnerable in the morning light, his hands
flapping gently against his sides.
He looks up and sees me at the window. The
flapping slows and he raises his hand and waves-and
then moves quickly, surely, to the door.
Teacher
I will know you.
I will touch you and hold you
And smell and taste and listen
To the noises that you make-and the words, if any.
I will know you.
Each atom of your small, lonely
Aching, raging, hurting being
Will be known to me
Before I try to teach you.
Before I try to teach
I must first reach you.
And then, when I have come to know you, intimately,
I will insist, gently, gradually, but insist
That you know me.
And later, that you trust me
And then yourself.
Now, knowing each other, we will begin to know the world- The
seasons, the trees, animals, food, the other
children, The printed word, books, The knowledge of what has
gone before and been recorded.
Then as surely as I moved toward you
I will move away.
As I once insisted on being close to you,
Demanding entrance to your half wild world
Of fear and fantasy, refusing you
aloneness,
So now, I move away.
As your words come and your walk quickens,
As you laugh out loud
Or read clearly and with understanding,
I stand behind you-no longer close-
Available, but no longer vital to you.
And you-you grow! You are! You will become!
And I, the teacher,
I turn, with pride in you,
Toward my next child.
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