Lovey
A Very Special Child

by Mary MacCracken
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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, and institutions are
fictitious.
Cover photo posed by a professional model
copyright [*copygg'1976 BY MARY burnham
MACCRACKEN
All rights reserved. For information address J. B.
Lippincott Company, 521 Fifth Avenue,
New York, New York 10017.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:

This is an authorized reprint of a hardcover
edition published by J. B. Lippincott
Company.
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA
A VERY SPECIAL CHILD
MARY maccracken
The true story of an emotionally disturbed child and the
remarkable teacher who freed her from fear and
loneliness... "Touching, moving"
comTHE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
I WAS LETTERING LABELS FOR HANNAH'S
CUBBY WHEN THE YELLING BEGAN. THERE WERE
PIERCING SCREAMS FOLLOWED BY SILENCE.
THEN THE SCREAMS AGAIN, MIXED WITH
DEEP, THROAT-CATCHING SOBS"
Hannah, her body draped in a woman's house-
dress, with filth on her face and gum in her
hair, seemed more like a savage animal than an
eight-year-old girl, using gutteral noises rather
than words, and viciously lashing out at any human
touch.
Mary MacCracken was at first resentful at
havingHannah thrust into her class, and more than a
little afraid of the threat Hannah posed to her
competence.
Both teacher and child had a long way to go. And there was just
one way they could make it:
Together. . . .
LOVEY
"A triumph!"-
Publishers Weekly
"You will remember it long after the last page ... an
inspiring book as well as a delight to read."-
Pittsburgh Press
"A story that will tug at the heart of anyone who
has ever loved a child."
-
Literary Guild Magazine
For my remarkable father, Clifford Wilcox
Burnham, and Anne
LOVEY;
A Very Special Child
"Wait just a minute, Mary. I want to talk
to you." The Director covered the phone and nodded
toward the coffeepot "Pour yourself a cup. I'll be
right with you."
I hesitated, juggling the armload of books and
old magazines I'd brought in. I didn't
want to stop now. This was the first day of school and the children
would be arriving in a few minutes. I wanted to get
down to my room, put away these last things, and
make sure everything was ready.
"Well, now, everything set?" the
Director said as she hung up.
"I think so, except for these books and maybe a
few travel posters that I'll tack up until the
kids get some paintings done." Our children were even more
sensitive than most to the climate of their
surroundings. I wanted no rush, no hurry, no
helter-skelterwhen they first arrived. The Director
understood this as well as I did. Why was she keeping
me here, diddling around and chatting?
"Uh, Mary, I wanted to tell you ... there's
been a change in your class."
"A change? What do you mean? What's wrong?
Has something happened to one of the children?" 1
"No, no. Nothing like that. It's just that I've
rearrangedthings a little."
I was instantly on guard. Euphemisms from the
Director were always a danger sign. "Rearranged
things?"
"Yes. Last night when I went over the class
lists I decided to put Hannah Rosnic in with
you and move Carolyn-was
"Hannah Rosnic!" I interrupted. "How can that
work? Brian and Rufus are almost ready for
regularschool-Brian's twelve; this is his last
year-and even Jamie is able to sit long enough
to do some reading. Carolyn will fit in beautifully,
I know she will. We took her on trips with us last
year. I know she's withdrawn, and her fantasies-was
"I've put Carolyn in Ellen's class," the
Director interrupted in her turn. "I realized
last night that it was asking too much of Ellen to take
on Hannah.ellen's too new. She's right for
her other three and she'll be good with Carolyn. But
Hannahwill be better off with you."
"Listen," I said. "What about the boys? And I
don't even know Hannah-except what I heard
from down the hall last year. I don't have any
rapport with her. How am I going to get anything
going between her and the boys? What makes you think
they'll accept her at all?"
The Director sipped her coffee and lit a
cigaretteeafanning the smoke away from her eyes.
She looked exactly as she always had, cheerful,
dynamiceathe strong sinewy cords in her neck
softened by her feathery white hair. "I've thought about
it. The boys will be good for her, give her a nice
balance." She paused and smiled at me. "And
Hannahll stir them up a little-give your room a
little more excitement."
"Excitement? What do we need with
excitement"...We've all come a long way, but it's
possible that we could lose everything we've gained so
far with Hannah in there."
"Anything's possible," the Director said
coolly. The phone rang. She picked up my
untouched coffee and her half-empty cup and headed
back to her desk, nodding to me and dismissing me at the
same time. "Well, that's set, then. Fine. Ill
send Hannah down when she arrives."
I gathered up my books and magazines and went out
into the hall. What was I going to do? All I knew
about Hannah Rosnic was that she had come to our
school sometime in the middle of last year and had been
in Shirley's class at the end of the hall. I'd
seen her, fat, dumpy, and dirty, on the
playground, and I'd heard her, screaming and howling
from her classroom. But that was all, exceptfor a
few dim memories of discussions at staff
meetings. And now she was going to be one of my four!
A last-minute change like this was unprecedented.ours
was a school for children with severe emotional disturbances.
Each of our childrenwas unique, with such individual
problems as well as strengths that what was planned
to help
one child deal with anger and hurt and isolation would
be useless to another. What I had prepared for
Carolyn would never work for Hannah.
And yet, this was what was going to happen. Once the
Director had made up her mind, she wouldn't
argue and there was no point in trying to discuss it. If
she had decided to move Hannah into my
classroom, Hannah would be there.
I opened the door to my room and immediately my spirits
rose. It was a beautiful room, facing south,
large, sunny, and bright One of the school's
trustees had arranged for us to use this church
building, rent free, while we waited for our new
school to be built. This particular
Sunday-schoolroom had previously been off
limits to us. It was the church's pride and joy,
full of play equipment, rugs, tables, even an
easel for painting. One whole wall was open
to sunlight, with five floor-to-ceiling windows.
Best of all, there was a door opening onto the
driveway outside.there is absolutely nothing
better than a door of your own to the outside world.
Comparedto the cold, barren rooms I'd taught in
befeath was heaven.
Brian was the first to arrive. He came so quietly
that if I hadn't been watching I wouldn't have
known he was there. He came to the hall door and
stood just outside it, his hands hidden in his pockets
so I couldn't tell whether they were tremblingor not.
Each year I think I've outgrown the ridiculous
soaring excitement that I felt the first time I came
to the school and saw the children.
And then each year I find I'm wrong. The same
spine-jolting, rocking delight hits me and spins
me around, and I have to be careful not
to somersaultacross the room when the children come.
"Hey, Brian, I'm glad to see you." I
walked across the room toward him, waiting for his
smile, thin and sweet, to come and warm his pointed little
face.
But Brian didn't smile. He didn't even
come into the room. "Why are we in here?" he asked.
"This isn't our room. This isn't where we were last
year."
It's so hard for our children to handle new situations.the
sense of self is so small, their beings so
fragile, that if their outer surroundings change, they
fear that they themselves will fall apart.
"Listen," I said. "This is the best room we've
ever had. Don't spurn luxury. Look, we've
got a whole coat closet, instead of just
hooks."
Brian took a step or two into the room and peered
at the coat closet. "I liked just the hooks,"
he said.
"And we've got blocks and trucks and a whole
toy kitchen-a stove and a sink and tables-and now,
look here, our own door. How about that? No more
having to go through the office when we want to sneak out before
lunch to ride our bikes."
Brian was all the way in the room now. "Do we still
have the bikes?"
"Sure. We've even got a couple of new
ones." They weren't really new, the church ladies
and
the Junior Leaguers had donated them, but they were
new to us.
Within the next minute Rufus arrived. He looked
tan and healthy and had obviously had a good summer.
"Hey, Mary," he announced, "maybe we're
goingto get a cat. I'm almost not lergic any more
and my mom says as soon as I'm not lergic we can
get one." He turned toward Brian. "And
I'll bring it in here, Brian, so you can see it."
Rufus walked comfortably around the room, commenting on
everything, and I could see Brian loosening
up, his fears diminishing. The children did so much for each
other without realizing it. Rufus's explorations
freed Brian to begin his own, and soon both boys were
settled on the floor takingout the books and papers
and small supplies that I'd put in their
individual cubbies.
Jamie, the last of my three boys, burst through the
classroom door and half rocked, half ran,
across the room.
I sat down fast. Jamie was eight and I'd
only had him for one year. He was still potentially
explosiveeaandthe more body contact he got during
times of stress, the better. A new room plus the
first day of school added up to a lot of pressure.
A huge grin stretched over Jamie's face as
he spotted me and headed straight on. I spread
my legs as wide as I could to make a big lap and
opened my arms. Without caution, without a pause in his
breakneck run, Jamie took a flying leap and
landed squarely in my lap.
"Hey ho, Jamie," I said, wrapping him up in
my arms. "What took you so long?"
Jamie didn't say anything, but then he rarely
did. He just buried his head against my neck while
I rocked him back and forth. Pretty
soon he came up for air and surveyed the room from
his safe station. Then, seeing Brian and Rufus
contentedlysorting the contents of their cubbies and
realizing that he could stay where he was as long as he
wanted, he gradually began to disentangle himself: first
an arm, then another arm, then a foot, then the
other-one quick turn around my chair, back on my
lap, off again, this time to a chair of his own.
By ten o'clock the room began to be ours. The boys had
taken everything out of their cubbies and put it back again
at least a dozen times-touching, feeling, even
smelling everything before they were convinced that it really
belonged to them. Jamie had tried out every chair in the
classroombefore he finally settled on one and
thereafcarried it with him wherever he went.
I'd cleaned out Carolyn's cubby as
unobtrusivelyas possible and was lettering new
labels for Hannah's cubby and hook in the coat
closet when the yelling began. At first it was
muffled;
then the noise became louder, closer. There were
piercing screams followed by silence. Then the screams
began again, mixed with deep, throat-catching sobs.
Was that Hannah? Had she arrived? If so, where was
she? The Director had said she'd send her
down when she came. It was ten thirty. Surely
she must have arrived by now.
A moment later the Director stood in our
doorway. "Good morning, boys." She smiled.
"Isn't this a lovely room? I see you're working
hard already. Mary, may I speak to you for a minute?"
I walked over to where the Director stood by the
hall door. She lowered her voice as she spoke.
"Hannah's down in her old classroom. I
don't seem to be able to get her to leave and join you,
and I wondered if you'd step down there for a minute
or two."
I didn't want to go. Things were just getting started in
our room; tension and anxiety were gradually seeping
out. Fears could return too easilyif the boys were
suddenly left alone. Still, the screaming and sobbing were
clearer now that the door was open-and that couldn't go on.
"Will you cover for me till I get back?" I
asked the Director. She nodded and I went over
and squatted down next to Brian. "Bri, I have
to go down the hall. The Director's going to stay
here while I'm gone. I won't be long, okay?"
I studied his face. He didn't smile, but there
was no sign of panic. He just nodded and turned
back to his book. The Director sat
down beside Jamie near the record player. Everything
seemed to be all right
I closed the door and mentally crossed my fingersbbs
much depended on the first day. If the children began
to feel safe and relaxed in the
room and with each other, a great deal of time could be
saved.
The hall was no longer quiet. It was filled with the
good sounds of school: chairs being pushed across the
floor, record players set at various
volumes, doors opening, closing, teachers speaking
softly, a few children's voices, a little laughter.
Only Hannah's screams sliced through the air,
dividing time into short, painful segments.
I stopped outside the back classroom and looked
through the window. The new teacher, Elleneahad bolted the
door, and for a minute I wished I hadn't come. This
was the room I'd first taught in when I was hired as
a substitute five years before. I stood
outside, remembering how inexperienced I'd been.
My first act had been to unbolt the door, my
second to fall flat on my face as I held
onto a runaway child. But we'd both learned, and the
door had stayed unlocked. Locks and cages were
never meant for children, and I felt both sorrow
and frustration to see the door bolted again.
As I looked through the window I could see that
Hannah had barricaded herself inside the wooden
jungle gym that was wedged into a far corner. She
clung to the bars, alternately screamingand sobbing,
her face contorted with pain or rage or perhaps fear.
The other children stood gaping at her, but if they
ventured near she reached through the wooden rungs and
swiped at them with her hand.
I tapped on the window. Ellen looked up and her
round, sweet face Hooded with relief as she
hurried to the door, unlocked it, and drew me
inside.
"Am I ever glad to see you," she said. "This has
been going on for over an hour. Nothing helps.
Somehow Hannah got away from the Director this
morning and ran in here. I guess she was expecting
to see her teacher from last year, because when she saw me
she went crazy, yelling and tearing at my clothes as
if she thought she'd find her old teacher somewhere
underneath. Finally she gave up and climbed into the
jungle gym, and now she won't let anybody
near her." Ellen lowered her voice. "Listen,
Mary, you've got to get her out of here. She's
scaring the other kids half to death. I've
tried everything I can think of and she just gets worse."
I looked over toward Hannah. She seemed
smaller than I'd remembered, but what Ellen said
was true-she was getting worse. Her sobs and
screams were louder, deeper than ever. How could she
keep it up for so long? In spite of everything, I
felt a surge of admiration. Somewhere inside this child
there must be tremendous strength.
I walked toward the jungle gym, not sure what
to do, only trying to get a feel, a sense, of
Hannah. I hadn't been anxious to have her in my
classroom-Carolyn would have made things much
easier. Still, if she was going to be with us, I had
to get to know her. What must it be like to come
back and find your teacher gone when you thought she'd be
there? What was it like to be eight years old and hurt
and angry and confused? If I were Hannah, what
would I want, what would I need?
As I approached, Hannah began stamping her
feet. It was as if her vocal cords were already
making all the noise they could and now, with a new
danger, she needed another source of sound.
Two sides of the jungle gym were against the walls.
Hannah clung to the third side, shaking it and
stamping her feet. With no plan at all,
I climbed up the fourth side.
Hannah's screaming stopped and I took
advantage of her surprise to reach the top, away
from her clawing fingers. I lay flat on the top
platform, trying to listen with my whole being, not just my
ears. Nothing. There was absolutely no sound from
below. I leaned over the platform and there was Hannah,
bent over, her head pressed against the bars, great
pink wads of gum stuck in the red-gold of her
hair. I talked to the back of her small, grimy
neck.
"Hiya, Hannah."
There wasn't any answer, not a twitch of
response, but somehow I had the feeling that she'd
heard me.
"Listen," I continued. "This isn't your class.
You're supposed to be with us, in the room down the
hall on the other side. We've been waiting for you
down there."
Hannah didn't make a sound, but she-turned her
head just a fraction of an inch. I went on.
"Shirley, your teacher last year, didn't want
to leave. She liked our school and she liked teaching
you. But her husband was studying to be a doctor and he
was sent to a hospital a long way away-
and so she had to stop teaching here to go with him."
The muscles in my neck were getting tired from
dangling my head over the edge of the platform, and I
longed to get down and stand beside her, get a closer
look, maybe even hold onto her square,
solid body and let some of her anger drain out. But
Hannah seemed nowhere near ready. I was going to have
to wait.
Suddenly she turned and twisted her neck and body
to peer up at me. For an instant she hung
outside the wooden bars with her face turned up
toward me and then she was gone, out of the jungle gym,
out of the door that Ellen had left unlocked when she
let me in, and down the hall. I climbed down
quickly and followed. Ellen's door clicked behind me
and the bolt slid back in place.
Hannah ran up and down, back and forth in the
hall, like a fat mouse in a maze. She was
dressed in a woman's cotton housedress that was
tied at the waist with a string. The dress reached to the
tops of her heavy brown shoes and she stumbled around,
banging against the walls, letting out periodic snarling
howls. Once she turned back toward me and I
could see that both her face and
the front of her dress were wet-stained with
tears, or sweat, or maybe both. She opened the
door to our room, more by accident than design. The
boys and the Director stood up simultaneously
as Hannahcrashed in. I was only a step behind and
closed the door behind me. We needed a little space,
a little time to ourselves.
It was hard to tell who was more frightened, Hannah or
the boys. They stared at each other silently until
the Director called out cheerily, "Well,
Hannah, I see you've found your room. Good
enough. Now that we're all set. I'll get back
to work. Phone never stops ringing, a thousand things to do.
Have a good day."
The Director was out the hall door and gone before
any of us moved, but just as the door clicked shut
Hannah ran toward it. Brian and Rufus had
huddled together in front of the outsidedoor. Jamie
whimpered and ran to where I stood by the hall door and
buried his head against my legs. Without previous
planning, we had formed a barricade to the exits.
There was no out for Hannah. Like it or not, she was with
us.
Hannah backtracked and then made one dash for the
hall door, and I captured her as she came by.
"Gotcha. Enough now, okay?"
I said it as much to reassure the boys as to steady
Hannah, but while it may have helped them to hear a
familiar tone in the room it did nothing for her.
She slid out of my arms to the floor, propped herself
on her hands and knees insideher long housedress,
andwitha moaning,

Mary MacCracken
keening noise began rocking back and forth, back and
forth, like a tormented infant in a crib.
The safety we had begun to build was gone.
Trouble, trauma, violence, and fear had invaded our
room. I muttered a silent expletive in the
direction of the departed Director, but it wasn't of
any use. She was gone; Hannah was here. We'd
just have to get through somehow.
I turned to the boys. "Hannah's going to be in
our class this year. She feels badly about missing
her old teacher and some other things. It's going to take
a while for us to get used to each other, but it's going
to be okay. We just need a little time. Now let's
get busy. Rufus, Brian, bring your books
on over here and let's see what we're going to be
working on."
As I spoke there was a dull, heavy thud
and I turned back toward Hannah. She was not
only rocking, she was banging her head, bringing it
down hard against the black tile floor at the end of
each forward thrust. I knew that part of this head
banging was to test us, but part of it was also an attempt
to destroy the torments inside her.
I sat down on the floor next to Hannah and
pushed my leg beneath her head to cushion the blow.
"No. In this room you don't hurt yourself or
anyone else. And no one hurts you. You can rock
if you have to, but no banging."
She brought her head down again, drove it hard into my
thigh-and then, as the noon whistle wailed, suddenly
she was still. We sat without
speaking. I leaned against the wall with Hannah
spread out, drenched in sweat, inert against my leg,
while the three boys watched us silently from the other
side of our room.
Jamie was the last to leave our room that first day.
We were both limp from emotion and heat, and we sat in
a chair by the windows watching for his bus. But as soon
as his driver arrived and he was safely aboard, I
went down to the office, unlocked the file cabinet,
and took out Hannah's folder.
The Director was in the office, a calm
oasis in the midst of confused bus drivers,
anxious motherseaand tired teachers. She was at her best
here, soothing and at the same time encouraging. She had
founded the school fifteen years before and had worked
harder and harder each year, raising money to keep the
doors open, raising standards, coping with the
ever-increasing publicity, the long waiting lists of
children. Finally, with the death of her husband, the school had
become her life. For years it had existed in rented
and borrowedbuildings, but now the dream was almost
reality: Within a few months ground would be broken
for a spacious new school building, built to the
Director's specifications. Nothing escaped

her, and she nodded to me as I took Hannah's
file back to the quiet of my own room.
I spread the folder out on one of the tables before the
open windows. Small air currents stirred through the
room and rimed the edges of the papers. I was eager
to read the reports, hoping to discover what had
happened to make Hannah so angry, so frightened.
She was more like a young animal than a little girl. Why
wouldn't she let anyone near her? Where had the rage
and self-destruction come from?
The folder contained a school form filled out
by Mrs. Rosnic, a health form from the
pediatrician, a report from the principal to the
public school Hannah had attended; there were also
a joint report by a psychologist and a social
worker at a mental health clinic, a final report
by another psychologist from the public school, and a
half-page year-end report written
by Hannah's teacher from last year. From these I
gradually pieced together Hannah's history,
She had been born eight years earlier in a
hospital in New York City. Her life had
been filled with violence from the beginning. She had
cried constantly through her first days and nights, eating
little at first, finally refusing to eat at all. In
desperation, Mrs. Rosnic took her back to the
hospital where she had been born. They discovered
an abdominal obstruction which had caused food
blockage and dehydration. Hannah was operated on
and hospitalized for several weeks.
When she returned home she was able to eat and some of the
screaming stopped, but she rocked back and forth in her
crib, banging her head against the end panel.
Her brother, Carl, three years older, was
resentful of the new baby. One day soon after
Hannah came home from the hospital,
Mrs. Rosnic found Carl by Hannah's crib,
hitting her on the head again and again. In spite of
everything, she grew; she walked at thirteen months
and completed toilet training at age two. However,
Mrs. Rosnic continued to bottle-feed her until
she was three years old, and although no connection was
made, it seemed pertinent to me that Hannah
didn't try to talk until then. Her speech
consisted primarily of grunts and monosyllables that
only Mrs. Rosnic could understand.
When Hannah was four, her family moved to the
run-down industrial city where she still lived. They
occupied a two-family house in a derelict
section of town. Mrs. Rosnic's father lived
downstairs; the Rosnics themselves occupied the
second floor.
Hannah's father had been a strange, brutal
man. He must have been tortured by both emotional and
physical ailments. The records showed that he had
been in and out of mental institutions over the years,
yelling, shouting, beating his children when he was home.
Later he was confined to a wheelchair, from which *he
berated the world and everyone in it. He died in the same
bizarre
manner in which he had lived. Rising suddenly
up out of his wheelchair at his mother's funeral, he was
stricken with a heart attack and died the next day,
two years before Hannah came to our school.
At the time of her husband's death, Mrs. Rosnic
was pregnant with a third child. Still in her early
thirties, a widow with little money and no training, with
an ailing, demanding father, two young children, and another child
soon to be born, she became ill herself, overcome
by a deep depression.
She turned to her church for help; they put her in
touch with a community mental health center. Here she was
interviewed jointly by a psychiatric social worker
and a psychologist, who judged her to be of "bright
normal intellect with fair insight and judgment, but
with a feeling of being unable to cope."
I got up from the table and began to pace as I read.
Who wouldn't feel "unable to cope" under similar
conditions? The report ambled on, bleak and without
compassion. Carl, Hannah's brother, was
summarized and dismissed in two brief sentences as
having "a childhood adjustment problem with the
unusual phobia of fearing the key to an old
clock." Hannah was described as "a
seven-year-old Caucasian female-was
I put the report down, hating the stilted
language. Who could write that? And why? Was it
to impress some invisible audience or was it simply
the way psychologists had been taught to write
reports? Hannah was a sad, solid, gutsy
little girl with blue eyes and red-gold hair. How
could they write "seven-year-old Caucasian
female"? Why did people deal out labels instead of
looking at a child? Never mind. Forget the anger. It
didn't help now.
"comCaucasian female exhibiting restless
behavior, with unintelligible speech consisting
primarily of grunting noises. Judgment and
insight extremely poor. Diagnosis:
Psychosis. Organic brain disease versus
schizophrenia."
It seemed to me a dangerous, presumptuous
diagnosis after one brief interview. I searched
the remaining pages for more concrete information. An
electroencephalogram had been made, and since
it was within normal limits Hannah was put in a
kindergarten class on a trial basis-but this lasted
only a short time. Soon she was put on home
instruction because of her "disruptive behavior." The
dates in the reports were confusing, but it must have been
a hard, bleak period for Mrs. Rosnic,
for the whole family.
I shook my head. No wonder the teachers in our
school rarely complained. Our troubles, whatever they
were, were small compared to the lives of our children and their
families.
The late-afternoon sky was dark and the air was filled with the
musty smell of rain. At least it would be cooler
tomorrow. Tomorrow? Tomorrow
would be here very soon and I still had a great deal to do before
morning. I turned on the overheadlight and skimmed
the remaining pages.
Mrs. Rosnic's pregnancy had gone full
term and Helen had been born, a healthy
eight-pound girl. Hannah had remained on home
instruction until a place was found for her here; then
one last psychologicalwork-up was done in the
public school. It said that Hannah-an
aggressive child with a deep underlying pathology-seemed
to be living completely in a world of her own. "This child
must be regarded as a threat to other children."
Lightning streaked across the sky. No one else was
left at school and I knew I should hurry.
How could a child ever grow in a place where she was
looked upon as a threat? There was only one
positive note in the report: The
psychologist noted that Hannah's drawings showed
"an above-average mentality."
Well, maybe this was how I'd have to reach her, through
her mind, her intelligence. But how could I get
through? She'd fought so many enemies alrin her eight
years, seen more pain and cruelty than most of us do
in a lifetime. Her mind must be sealed behind many
layers-she would have needed to build thick walls in
order to surviveas long as she had.
Outside, the rain pelted hard against the black
macadam. I closed my windows and read the last
remaining page. The report from Hannah's
teacher of last year described Hannah as a
troubled, sad little girl, unable or unwilling to use
eating utensils, given to long crying spells and
temper tantrums, her speech a garble of
unintelligible slurred consonants-and yet her
actions showed an acute awareness of her environment.
She had remained difficult and disruptive throughout the
year, but there had been some improvement and rapport
gradually developed between teacher and child.
It must have been a cruel blow for Hannah to come
back this morning and find her teacher gone, the first
semblance of security disrupted. Whatever tiny
hope had stayed alive inside her must have
crashed into despair.
I put the report on the top shelf of my
closet and left by my own door. I stood on the
stoop just outside and watched the small rivers of
rain swirl past; then I took off my shoes and
raced up the driveway to the parking lot in my bare
feet. But when I reached my car, I stood still for a
minute before getting in. My dress and hair were
already soaked and the rain felt cool and clean against my
face and arms. I wished that it would cool my head and
heart as well. Hannah would bring enough passion into our
room. She would need a teacher who was clear and steady
and strong.
What I needed to do, had to do as soon as possible,
was set up an appointment with Mrs. Rosnic so that
we could talk. There were so many compli-
LOVEY 23
cating factors in Hannah's history: the
operation, the isolation of the hospital, the head blows,
the brutal father, the prolonged bottle feeding. I was
as confused as when I started.
"Good morning, Rufus," I said as we arrived
togetherthe next day. "How's it going?"
But his ebullience of yesterday morning was gone. He
sat down glumly and peered at me through his
horn-rimmed glasses without answeringmy question.
Instead he asked, "Is that girl going back to her
other class?"
"Hannah? Hannah doesn't have another class.
She was only in the other room yesterday
by mistake.this is her regular room."
Rufus looked down at his feet. "I don't like
her. I don't like her in here. She ruins everything,"
I sat down beside Rufus. I knew how he
felt. I'd said almost the same thing to the
Director. "Hannah's had a really tough time
..." I began.
Rufus got up from the table. "I don't want
to talk about her!" he shouted at me. "I hate
her! Don't you understand that? I hate her and I
don't want to talk about her!"
"Okay," I said. "Okay. What do you want
to talk about?"
"Nothing." Rufus kicked the table leg with the toe of
his shoe. "I just want it to be the way it was last
year, without that dummy girl." 24
It wasn't just Hannah. It was always hard for the
kids when a new child came. With only four children in a
class, we were so much a part of each other that what one
did profoundly affected the others. The
children's usual stay at the school was for three years,
although if they were making good progress and had not yet
reached their thirteenthbirthday they were sometimes allowed
to stay for a longer period. This was Rufus's fourth
year, and he had been in my class from the start.
When he had come to our school three years before, he
had looked more like a middle-aged businessman than
an eight-year-old boy. He wore a dark suit
and heavy horned-rimmed glasses, and his hair was
combed flat against his head. He carrieda large brown
briefcase and he'd talked to his briefcase
most of the first weeks, crouching nervouslybehind a
bookcase.
Rufus was scared of the world, the school, and himself. He
was intelligent and he used his intelligenceto
manipulate the world, which only made it more frightening.
Illness was his control. Anythingthat Rufus thought
might prove unpleasant or difficult was met
with a stomachache. Usually this meant that he stayed
home or got special attentioneawh was what he'd
wanted in the first place.
But gradually Rufus had grown stronger and more
independent. Occasionally, under stress, he still talked
to an imaginary companion, and sometimeswhen things went
badly at home he wet his
bed. But Rufus was growing all the time. If there was
a leader in our classroom, it was Rufus.
Now that Rufus had started talking, he kept on.
"She's a dummy girl. She can't even talk and
she's fat and she's dirty."
Any new child is difficult, but a child like
Hannahis a triple threat. She not only
claimed my attentionand destroyed the safety of our
classroom, she also reminded the boys of how
fragile they were themselves. If one child in the room could
shatter, so could they all.
Rufus gave the chair another kick. "Why does
she yell like that? Why don't you make her stop?"
"I'm trying, Ruf. Believe me, I'm trying.
Just give her a little time; give us all a little time.
First days are hard. Remember Jamie last year?
He yelled and kicked and ran away whenever he could.
I know Hannah's hard, but it's only the second
day and maybe today will be better."
By nine thirty my attempt at optimism was
fading.the boys were there but they were tense, and there was no
sign of Hannah at all. Rufus was rubbing his
stomach as if recalling the pains he used to have.
Jamie had the record player turned too high,
his thin, taut little body rocking from one foot
to the other while he kept his hands pressed over his
ears. Brian drew stick figures representing
the stars he'd watched on television panel shows the
night before, keeping up a low barrage of commercials
all the while. He carefully drew a box around
each figure, as though to keep it isolated,
separate from the rest. Television was
Brian's link with people. Encased in the glass box
of the TV screen, they were far enough away so that they
weren't frightening.
When Brian had come to the school four years before, his
speech was incoherent and he refused all food,
both at home and at school, except for milk and
saltines. But there had always been a sweetness about
him as well as curiosity and intelligenceeaand these
qualities had brought him a long way. He too
had been in my class from the beginning. I knew how
threatening Hannah's angermst be.
All this tension and no Hannah, Where was she? It was
almost ten o'clock. Had she gone back to Ellen's
room? Climbed back inside the jungle gym?
Had she or her mother given up after yesterday"...Would that
one day be her only day with us?
Come on, Hannah, I thought. Don't give up
befwe've even started. It was going to be
hard, but she had so much potential. It was all
there-in her records, in her eyes. It just had to be
tapped. Yesterday I'd almost resented her; now I
was impatientfor her.
Just then something caught my eye outside the window.
Hannah? I couldn't believe it. She stood
absolutely still about an inch away from the glass.
Her face was turned sidewise, obscured by her
long, matted, gum-filled hair. I tried
to watch her without moving my own head. I had the
feeling she would bolt if she knew she had been
seen. But she was there, that was what counted. She

Mary MacCracken
had come back, she remembered where our room was,
and she cared enough to watch us through the window.
Then Brian saw her too and one hand fluttered
against his side while he pointed with the other. "Look.
There's the girl. She's looking in the window."
Rufus and Jamie turned and Hannah vanished.
I ran across the room to our door, opened it, and
stepped out, but there was no sign of her. Not in the
bushes, not on the driveway. I came back and
called to the boys, "Maybe Hannah's in the
office. I'll-was
But before I could finish my sentence the hall door
opened and there stood Hannah.
Fat, face and hands dirtier than ever, but
balancing lightly, almost airily, she stood on
her toes in our doorway, clutching a crumpled
paper bag.
"Good morning, Hannah," I said. "Come in."
She stood for one moment more and then, half running,
half dancing across the few feet to the back of the
classroom, she pulled open the closet doors.
She stood once more, absolutely still, and then sank
slowly to the floor. We were all staring at her. She
was an absurd figure with her long dress and
matted hair and yet she had an indefinable grace
that contrasted with her heavy body and bruised eyes.
I spoke a little louder than usual to break
what-ever spell was in the room. "I'm glad you're
here, Hannah."
Hannah sat without speaking, half in, half out
of the closet. I suddenly realized that it was she who
was in total command of the class. This was no way
to begin.
I moved toward the door. "Turn off the record
player, please, Jamie. Okay, Brian,
Hannah. Rufus, get the lights,
please. We're going next door to Patty's
room for Circle."
Hannah, of course, sat without moving, but the boys
moved quickly out the door and down the hall.
I waited one more minute to see if Hannah would
change her mind. Nothing. Only her eyes
flickered, alert, wary, watching me. Her face and
neck were grimy, the pink wads of gum were still in her
hair, but her dress was clean. It was the same
shapeless style, tied at the waist with a string, but
clean. I left Hannah in the closet and walked
down the hall after the boys. A clean dress.
Somebody cared about Hannah.
The coat closet became Hannah's place in
our room. She sat there most of the first two weeks.
She had her own cupboard, her own table and chair,
even her own work folder, but she barely touched them.
In the beginning her grief and angerand confusion were too
large to let her work. The most important thing just
then, more importantthan work or discipline, was to let
her know that we accepted her.
Children can't begin to learn until they feel safe, and
they can't feel safe until they are honestlyand
completely accepted. A child like Han-
nah-hospitalized at six weeks, shut
in closets, locked out of her home, beaten by both
her brother and her father, rejected by the public
school-not only feared other people, she feared herself as
well.
Hannah knew she was different; she knew that parts
of her were frightening, both to herself and others. But she
didn't know how to change. She couldn't cut herself in
pieces, divide herself in two, bring in only the
good part. She needed to know that she was welcome, all
of her, the good and the bad. That was enough for now. Changes
could come later.
Hannah seemed to understand some of this, and gradually she
became more peaceful. Each morning she left her
bus and came through the Director's office, down the
hall, and into our classroom, closing the hall
door behind her. She hung her sweater on the hook
beneath her name and then settled herself in the closet
to watch the boys arrive. She never greeted me, but
she watched Rufus, Jamie, and Brian as they
called to each other or exchanged a hug with me. The
boys invariably left our doors open and
Hannah would get up each time and carefully,
softly, close them again. It was as if she realized
that she was safe in our room.
Although she didn't participate, she watched
us closely. There is no better teacher than
comanother child. As Hannah watched the others, I
knew the time would come when she would begin trying to do herself
what she had seen the boys do.
Hannah was learning although she never opened
her work folder. She began to touch it more often, going
to her cupboard to run her finger across the name I had
printed above it and takingout her folder, her paint
smock, her book and notebook. None of them were
ever used, but still they were hers. She would hold them in
her lap and then put them carefully away and return
to her seat in the coat closet She was learning the
details of our lives.
Details and routine. Outside of school I never
planned ahead, avoiding ruts as much as possible.
In school, however, our routine was the same each
day. In the topsy-turvy world of emotionally
disturbedchildren, routine provides security. The
sameness of each day made it easier for them to cope.
The children arrived at nine o'clock and the first half hour was
one of the most important of the day, although it might not
seem so to an uninformed eye. Crises of the night
before explodedin the classroom, and it was important
for the teacher to be there to comfort or control. Treasures
were brought in, and the teacher had to be there to share
the pleasure of each small discovery.sometimes
problems arose on the way to school, or a child
arrived without breakfast and the teacher needed to go down to the
refrigerator in the furnace room for the milk and
cereal that were always kept there. Although our children were not
primarily underprivileged, often there was so much chaos
in their homes that breakfast was impossible.
By nine thirty most personal crises had been
dealt withand we were ready for the larger world of Circle.
Circle was a kind of morning assembly where the
whole school gathered together. At least we had
until this year. Now we were too many for one room,
and so the Director had dividedus into two groups,
the older children in one, the younger children in the other. During
this time there was singing and dancing and group games. The
purpose was threefold: to help the children relate and
participate in a group, to improve gross motor
coordination, and also to give the teachers the
opportunity to see the other childrenin the school. At
staff meetings on Wednesdayswe discussed everyone,
and it was necessary that we have at least a surface knowledge of
each child.
After Circle, the children went to the bathroom and then
came back to their classrooms. For the rest of the day,
each teacher had a special programfor each
child.
In our room we started with the Best and the Worst. In
searching for ways to help the children learn to communicate,
I had discovered Best and Worst. Most of our children
had grave difficulty with communication. Some couldn't
talk at all;
some were elective mutes, able to talk but refusing
to do so; some, like Rufus, were too verbose; some
articulated clearly but without meaning. Because
communication is so important, I worked hard at
finding ways to involve the children.
"Show and Tell" didn't work. Our children had
little to show and nothing to tell. To get through to them it was
necessary to turn up the volume and intensity of
communication.
A question like "Tell me what you did yesterday"
didn't bring any response; it was too general,
too vague. But when each and every day I asked them
to report on the Best Thing and the Worst Thing that had
happened to them, they not only responded, they began
to savor the opportunity. Like most ideas, this started
small and grew. When I had first asked the question four
years before, answers had been a word or two at the
most. But I insisted they all have a chance, whether they
used it or not, and gradually they all began
to talk a bit and-more amazing still-to listen to each
other.
There were different children then-only Brian still remained
of that first group-but each day we talked a little more
until it became necessary to have limits, so that no one child
could monopolize the time. Then, because the world of
fantasy was so vivid-even more so than to other children, and
therefore less distinct from reality-the Best Thing became
their wishes, the Worst their dreams. This, of course,
was good-so good and so surprising that the school
psychiatrist who visited our class shook his head
in amazement as he heard children labeled
"schizophrenic" or "autistic" talk and listen
to each other.
But it wasn't enough simply to get the children to talk. I
wanted them to understand the difference between reality and
fantasy. It seemed to me
that if they were ever to travel all the way back
to live in the world, they needed to know and be able
to differentiate between the two. So there got to be two
parts to Best and Worst, "real" and "pretend," and the
children sternly reminded each other of this. If a child
began to talk about trucks as though they were people, calling
the headlights "eyes," another child was sure
to remindhim, "First the real, then the
pretend."
So Best and Worst became a part of my teaching
equipment, and today, as usual, we pushed tables
together, directly after Circle, all of us eager
to begin. In order to have time for reading, language
arts, and math, and then to go outside or play before
lunch, each child was only allowed five minutes-but
to me it was one of the most important parts of the day.
After lunch there was a rest period, then art, science,
films, playground, and auditory and visual
motor training. The afternoon went by even more quickly than
the morning. The day was too short; there was never enough time
to do all that I had hoped to do.
During those first two weeks I made no demandson
Hannah, letting her absorb the details and
atmosphere of the school, letting the boys grow used
to her, letting peace and a semblance of tranquillity
return to the class. Her despair no longer
seeped constantly into our room, corroding the warm
safety. As long as I asked nothing of Hannah
she was quiet, sitting half in, half out of
the closet, eating out of her paper bag when she
felt like it, watching us all the time.
But this interlude was almost over. Mrs. Rosnic was
scheduled to come in to see me the third Monday
after school started. I felt that after that I could begin
to ask more of Hannah.
Hannah's mother came heavily, hesitantly,
into our classroom. She was a large woman
dressed in a cotton housedress just like
Hannah's, although hers reached only to her knees and
was covered with a dark cloth coat.
I had telephoned Mrs. Rosnic at the end of
that first day to ask if she could come in for a conference.alth
she was hesitant and it had taken two weeks, she
was here and I was grateful. HelpingHannah was not
going to be easy. She was goingto have to give up old
established ways and learn new ones. There were
difficult weeks ahead, and before I initiated any
major changes at school I wanted to talk
to Hannah's mother and learn what Hannah was like at
home. I needed to fill in the gaps left by the
psychological reports, to find out what sort of
relationship there was between Hannah and her brother and
sister, between Hannahand her mother. Our school day was
only five and a half hours long. There were eighteen
and a half other hours I wanted to know about
I had been sitting at one of the low tables, but as
Mrs. Rosnic hesitated in the doorway I
got up and walked toward her. "Please come
in." 36
But she remained where she was, her eyes
movingrapidly around the room. By now the boys"
papers and drawings covered one wall. We had
begun a large mural on another, but the only
sign of Hannah was her name on her cubby and above
the coat hook in the closet.
"May I take your coat?" I asked.
For the first time Mrs. Rosnic looked directly
at me and it was my turn to stop, startled by the fear in
her eyes.
As gently as I could, I took her coat and hung
it in the closet beside my own light sweater, and then,
impulsively, I moved them both so that they hung
together on Hannah's own hook. I came back and
sat down at the round wooden table. "Thank you for
coming in," I said. "I know how difficult it must be
for you to get away with the three children at home, but I
wanted to talk to you a little bit about Hannah. I'm
happy to have her in my class this year."
Mrs. Rosnic came across the room then, stoppingin
front of me. "You not getting rid of her?"
So that was the fear; it was still there in her chopped,
guttural speech. There were traces of an accent.
I must remember to check and see what
language was spoken in the home. It was possible that
much of Hannah's garbled speech was a poor
imitation of the words she heard exchanged betweenher mother and
grandfather. But that could come later.
Now I had to get through that fear, let Mrs.
Rosnic know that I didn't want to get rid of
Han-
nah. On the contrary, what I wanted was to get
closer, know more. The best way I knew was to say it
simply and straight.
"I won't get rid of Hannah," I
promised. "She'll be here in this class all
year."
Mrs. Rosnic sat down opposite me then, her
eyes never leaving my face. "In other school,
everytime they called me for conference, they warn
Hannah is too bad. They say she have to go."
"Not here. When I call you, it's because I want
to know more, try to figure out how to help more."
Mrs. Rosnic drew in her breath and then let it
out in a long slow sigh, but as her body relaxed, more
of her weariness showed. "Ah, she is so hard, that
one. I don't know what to do with her.
Yellingeascreaming half the time. Most other time she
just sit, dumb, do nothing. Once in while
she play joke. Put mouse in Grandpa's bed and
laugh and laugh when he yell."
I tried to picture the house. I knew Grandpa
lived downstairs, but where would Hannah get a
mouse?
"A real mouse?" I asked.
"Lots of mice around. They're not trouble.
Hannahlike them. The cats are good, get rid of
most of mice. Only if rats come, then the cats
scared."
"Mrs. Rosnic, Hannah doesn't talk to us
here at school. Does she talk at home?"
"She not talk Carl or Grandpa, but sometime she
talk to me. Say yes, no, other words. Grandpa
say she not make sense, but I know what she mean."
It was hard to tell from this whether Hannah spoke more
or whether Mrs. Rosnic's interpretationswere
better.
"Listen," I said. "What's Hannah like in other
ways at home? I know she goes to the bathroom
by herself. Does she also wash, brush her teeth,
dress herself?"
"No." Mrs. Rosnic's sighs were deep now.
"She never wash. She sleep in dress all
night. Won't get out of it. Next
morning Carl or Grandpa hold her and I get
other dress on her."
"Carl. Does Hannah play with him or with her
sister?"
"Play? Nobody play. Just fight, fight,
fight. At each other day and night. Carl tease
her all the time. Now he tell her she going
to retard school and she cry and cry."
I felt like crying myself. Poverty, dirt,
ridicule. I looked away for a minute, trying
to clear my mind, to see what to do next. I turned
back to Mrs. Rosnic. "What about friends? Does
Hannah play with other children on the block?"
Mrs. Rosnic sat up straight, definite now.
"I careful with her. Keep her in back yard so
neighborkids not make fun. Sometime when I fixing
Grandpa's food she get away, but not much.
Mostly I keep her near." A wi/l look
came over Mrs. Rosnic's face. "Sometime I
wish ... I think how good if she could help some.
You know. Like set table. Maybe even dry
dishes."
I reached across the table. If she had been a child I
would have touched her then, but instead
I
touched the water glass of the roses and left my hand
out open on the table.
"I know I wish too much," she continued. "Should be
glad she not worse. Grandpa say she can't be
worse, say she better dead from operation.but I
don't know. It nice, kind of, you know-to have
somebody like me."
My heart ached and angered all at the same time,
even more than when I'd read the reports. No
wonder this good, uneducated woman was close to giving
up. Under the weariness and despair had there once
been laughter and other dreams? It was too late now
to recover those dreams; too late for Grandpa and
maybe for Mrs. Rosnic. But not for Hannah.
Maybe I couldn't do anything about the poverty or the
loneliness, or Carl or baby Helen, but I could
help Hannah. And so could Mrs. Rosnic.
"Listen," I said. "You're not expecting too much
at all. You're exactly right. Hannah should be
learning to help you around the house. She can learn to do
all those things. And more. Much more."
Mrs. Rosnic looked at me and then fished in her
large black pocketbook for a handkerchief. I
got up and brought back a box of Kleenex from the
counter and set it down hard on the table,
"Hannah can learn to wash and dress herself and help
you with the housework. And she can learn to read and write."
This was too much. I had gone too far. Mrs.
Rosnic shook her head at me. "No," she said.
"You don't know. Grandpa say she moron."
"I do know and Grandpa's wrong," I insisted. "I
have known other children as troubled as Hannah.i have read
her records and I have watched her here in the
classroom. I don't believe she's
retarded.i believe she's able to learn and grow and do
a great deal more than she ever has."
Mrs. Rosnic looked at me directly,
challenging. "Why you care? Why you want to do this?"
It was a fair, honest question and I wished that I could
answer. But I had never been able to find words for the
way I felt. I could talk easily about the children,
or to the children, but when it came to describing my own
feelings, I was inarticulate. Perhaps the words
imprisoned in the children spoke to something locked inside
me. I tried to soften my silence with a smile so that
it wouldn't seem a rebuff. "I don't know," I
answered as honestlyas I could. "I wish I could
put it into words. I can't explain, but I hope
you'll trust me."
I went to the coat closet and got Mrs.
Rosnic's coat and my sweater from Hannah's
hook and then held the coat for her. Mrs.
Rosnic stood facingme, still looking at me.
Finally she turned and put one arm into a sleeve.
"Ah, well, never mind. Words come hard. I know.
And anyway, the ones that say them so easy-well,
I hear plenty of words before." She put the second
arm in.
"It's not going to be easy with Hannah," I said.
"That's one thing for sure. It's going to mean a lot
of work for both of us, and it will be harder for
you because you're with her more. Sometimes you're going to have to be
very strong. Hannah's been used to having her own
way, and she's not going to be able to all the time now.
She won't like it, and sometimes she's going to get very
angrywith both of us."
I shrugged on my sweater and then was caught
by surprise as Mrs. Rosnic reached out and
smoothed it across my shoulders. Her fingers were rough and
they snagged on the soft wool, but her hand itself was
strong and warm. "Listen. It okay. I tell
Grandpa. It okay. Hannah, she lucky this
year."
The next morning after Circle I went and sat on
the floor in the closet next to Hannah,
The period of research was over. I had learned all
I could from outside sources. Now it was up to me.
I set my goals for Hannah. They might
change, but I had to have something to aim for.
The first thing I had to do was get Hannah out of the
coat closet. Observation has its values, but it
was time for her to move closer, become part of us.
"Listen," I said. "I want you to come and sit with us
during Best and Worst today. You don't have to talk,
but I want you at the table. You're part of our
class and I want you with us."
Hannah pulled her long dress over her head.
I pulled the dress down and spoke directly
into her face. "If you can come by yourself, fine. If not,
I'll help you."
I wanted her to understand that this was not a question of choice.
She didn't have to decide anything.i had made the
decision. She had sat in the closet for two
weeks. That was long enough.
I hesitated for a minute. The trick was to know when
to ask for more and when to stop. Each step 43
like this was a risk, the line between success and failure
is so small. I had thought carefully about when and where
to begin with Hannah, and now I decided to go ahead.
This was the time, right afCircle. She was
fascinated by Best and Worst. I had seen her
looking, listening, from the closet. And contradictory
though it seems, I knew that the first move is
sometimes easier if someone else insists on it. I
insisted now. I stood up. "Okay, Hannah.
Let's go."
She pulled the dress back over her head.
I reached under the dress, found her hand, and pulled
her to her feet. Caught by surprise, she came
up easily but let out a howl of rage.
"This morning you're going to sit with us. This morning and
every other morning from now on. You're part of our
class."
Standing beside me, Hannah braced her feet like a
balky mule and pulled hard to get away.
The classroom was large, over forty feet long.
The boys had set up the table in the middle of the
room and they sat there now, watching us. We had about
twenty feet to go to reach the table. I was sure I
could manage that. Hannah was husky, but I had a
lot of inches, pounds, and years in my favor and my
will was as strong as her own.
"If you can control yourself, Hannah, great. If not.
I'll help you control yourself."
I started walking toward the table, holding her
hand tightly in my own and propelling her along with
me.
Her howling ceased. She planted both feet close
together again and braked us to a stop and smashed her
foot-CRACK into my ankle. I yelped in
surprise, but I caught her foot in time and
pulled off first one shoe and then the other. She could
kick all she wanted now.
I had been through this many times before. Other children in other
years had kicked and bitteneab they had gentled. We
had all survived, and eventually they had made it
back to public school.
The howling began again, but there was little she could do, and more
in sorrow than in anger Hannah allowed herself to be
pulled to the table.
"Get another chair, please, Bri."
I sat Hannah down next to me and said to the
boys, "Whose turn is it to begin Best and Worst
today?"
My eyes, my attention, were focused on the boys.
I kept a steady grip on Hannah's hand, but that
was all. Except for this hold on her hand, we
ignored her. She alternately cried and yelled
for the half hour. She was loud, but we were louder and
managed to hear each other.
At the end of the half hour, the boys went to get their
work folders from their cupboards. I looked down at
Hannah's tear-stained face. "Thank you, babe,
for being with us." Then I released her hand.
For one brief moment she looked at me and then
raced back to her closet seat. Her scuffed brown
shoes still lay on the floor. I took them to her and
then went back to help the boys with their reading. All
the rest of the morning she sat there watching us, not saying
anything, not yellingeaj sitting there holding her shoes
in her lap.
At the end of the morning I sent the boys out for
recess with another class. The tension in the room
had been hard on them, though none of them had mentioned
it and they had worked well all morning. Still, they
needed to get outside to run, to throw, to yell a little.
At the same time I didn't want to leave
Hannah. It was important that she know that I
wanted to be with her. There is a great difference between
someone arbitrarily imposing demands on you and someone
working through a difficult situation with you. I wanted
Hannah to know that, whatever I asked of her, she
wouldn't have to do it alone.
I needed something more, something to hook her interest,
make her forget herself. I wanted
to capture Hannah, lure her, not force her again.
Suddenly I remembered the doll family.
I had ordered the dolls from the school supply
catalog the year before and stored them in my closet,
waiting for the right time to bring them out. Surely, if there
was a right time, this was it.
The next morning, after Circle, I announced that
we were going to add something new to Best
and Worst. I placed the box in the middle of the
table. In the closet I said to Hannah, "Hey,
come see. I've got a box for you to open."
She peeked out of the closet to see what I was
talking about. The box sat invitingly on the table.
Hannah couldn't resist it. She skirted the table
twice on her own and then suddenly sat down and
peeled off the tape and pulled the box open. She
lifted out the brown crumpled packing paper and sat
staring at the contents. Then, one by one, she lifted out
the members of the miniature family, unwrapping
each one carefully and laying it on the table. Man,
woman, girl, boy, baby.
The dolls were made of a hard, waxlike substanceeaa
kind of molded rubber, pliable, durable, sturdy enough
to take bending and pounding.
We all sat looking at the dolls. No
one seemed sure what to do next. On impulse,
I picked up the woman and girl dolls and put
their arms around each other. "My best thing is that
Elizabeth came home from college for a visit
last night."
I talked for about two minutes, telling how my
daughter and I had gone to a movie and bought some ice
cream. As I talked I was bending the dolls
to sit, pushing them along the table, pretendingthey were
moving in the car.
The children watched, their eyes never moving from the little
figures. When I finished I laid the two
dolls back on the table.
Rufus was sitting next to me, and he picked up
the man doll and in a loud, authoritarian voice
said, "If I'm doing the cooking, I'll do it the
way I want to. So
shut up!"
We all stared at him. None of us had ever heard
Rufus speak like that before. Obviously he was being
someone else.
Now he picked up the woman doll and in a high,
wi/l voice said, "You never listen to me, no
matter what it is. Cooking or anything else."
Maybe not, but we listened to Rufus.
Forgettingtime limits, we sat spellbound as he
acted out a household drama, using first one doll
and then another. When he finished he pushed the dolls
to the middle of the table and leaned back with a tired,
satisfied sigh.
Jamie picked up each doll and inspected it
carefully. He petted the baby and kissed the mother and
then put them back without saying a word.
Brian had his turn and acted out a TV
commercial.
And now, look at Hannah. She picked up the
boy doll and put him under the box. She pushed hard
on the box, which wobbled in an
unsatisfactoryway. She got up from the table,
went to the block wagon, and pulled it back to the
table. What was she doing? She laid out one, two,
three, four blocks in a square and put the boy
doll in the middle. Was he supposed to be her
brother, Carl?
Bang,
she put a block on the top, then another and
another.
LOVEY 49
Hannah looked up at us and smiled. For the first time
in our room she smiled with pure joy, as
she added block after block on top of the boy
doll.
Hannah came to Best and Worst each day, but she
still ate in the closet. She brought her lunch in a
crumpled brown paper bag and tucked it safely
behind her coat every morning. Then, all day, she ate
whenever she was hungry, sitting on the floor in the
closet
She ate like an animal, tearing at the food with her
teeth, no matter how soft it might be. She
aimed for the center of the cupcake, trying for the choicest
morsel, eyes glancing right and left, on the
lookout even while she ate. Once she had made
contact with the food, her fingers rapidly prodded as
much as possible into her mouth. Then, when she couldn't
fit any more in, she clamped her teeth together,
cutting off the rest. The crust, the cheese, the
jelly, the crumbs, fell to her lap or the
floor. But even these she guarded carefully and ate
when she felt hungry again.
It was a sad and terrible way to eat. I'd let it
continue in those beginning weeks because I had to know
Hannah. I watched, listened, learned her
behavior. I couldn't begin to teach until I knew
where to start.
I knew Hannah now, not intimately yet, but

enough to realize that it was worth the long struggle ahead.
The intellect, the curiosity, the potential were there
and so was the motivation. Food was extremely
important to her. In the area of food, I would have
Hannah's complete attention.
I waited one more week; then I stopped
Hannahas she arrived and quickly, before she could
react, took the paper lunch bag out of her hands.
I placed it in full view but high above her head,
on the closet shelf.
As I took her lunch bag away Hannah drew
back, mobilized for action. She raced for the
closet, jumping, leaping, trying to reach the paper
bag that I'd put on the shelf. But this lasted only
a few seconds. Almost immediately she ran back
to get a chair. Inwardly, I exulted at her
reaction, her immediate understanding of the problem, her swift
attempt at a new solution. Outwardly, I
took the chair away and said, "Not today, Hannah.
Tdyou're going to eat with us."
Fury exploded in our room. She understood what
I said and she was not about to let it happen.she ran for
another chair, and another, and another, as I
blocked her attempts. Finally frustrationand anger
caught up and she went down on the floor in the
knee-chest position of the first day. Once again she
drove her head down toward the hard tile floor,
howling all the while.
I sat down beside her. "Hannah. Nobody's
goingto take your lunch. It's yours. I'm going
to keep it for you on the shelf until lunchtime. We
eat
lunch at twelve. Look, see the clock? When
both hands are up at the top, we'll eat."
Again she couldn't resist. The rocking stopped and for a
second she allowed herself one swift look at the
clock above the door. She understood me; she had
receptive language, and she knew what a
clock was,
But the pause was only for an instant. Back to the
rocking. And it was only nine thirty. I couldn't
keep taking chairs away all morning. What to do
for two and a half hours, with three other children to teach?
I sat beside Hannah, thinking, looking around the
room. Finally I spotted a pipe running along
the ceiling inside the closet. There might be Just enough
room to prop her lunch there. It would still be visible,
in plain sight, so she would know it was safe,
but there was no chair in the room high enough to let
Hannah reach it.
I got up and moved the lunch bag. By standing on a
chair I could just reach the pipe, and I wedged
Hannah's lunch behind it. She grabbed a chair and
ran with it to the closet, but the chair was no help this
time; I was a good foot and a half taller than
Hannah. As soon as she realized this, she pushed
the chair over and came after me. Yelling, screaming,
her hands clawed at me.
I put my arms around her and held her from behind.
"Hannah, Hannah. You are so foolish. All
this fuss about your lunch. Nobody will take it, I
promise you. Nobody can get it, except me, and
I'll give it to you at lunchtime. Twelve o'clock,
when both hands are at the top of the clock. You
watch. You'll see." Hannah broke away from
me and ran back to the chairs.
Brian and Rufus were both trying to work, but their
eyes never left Hannah for long. Finally
Rufus took his book and lay in a spot on the
floor just behind the free-standing bookcases. He read
out loud, talking to himself at the end of each
line-"Don't worry, Rufus, that of' dummy
girl will go home soon"-or sometimes just
"It's all right. Don't be scared, Rufus."
It's not surprising that he barely finished a page.
Brian had even more difficulty handling the
situation.he abandoned his book altogether and went back
to his old-time pacing of perimeters. He no longer
ran or croaked out strangled cries, nor did his
arms flap wildly, as they had when he had first come
to school. Now he walked silently around the edges
of our room and only his fingertipstrembled against his
sides.
But Jamie couldn't stand it. His own need for
security was so desperate, his ability to cope with
feelings so minimal, that when Hannah exploded he
replied in kind. As she pushed chairs over in the
back of the room, he pushed them against the side
walls, grabbing one and pounding it up and down.
But as the minutes dragged on Hannah quieted a
little and Jamie calmed too. I crouched down beside
him and gathered him up, holding him close,
murmuring against his neck, "Jamie, Jamie,
I'm sorry. I know it's hard. Now just hang
in,
okay? Just stay with us. It'll get better. This is
the worst. It will be better."
I knew he really didn't understand all I
said, but it didn't matter. Our language
depended more on tones and touch than words. I needed
to know that he wouldn't revert back to the
desperaterunaway of the year before, circling the church
and dashing toward the highway. Jamie needed to know that
the strange noisy girl had not usurped his place.
This was Jamie's second year with me. He had
been at the school for two years and had spent most
of his first year running, with his young, bewilderedteacher
always just a little too far beh.then he'd been
assigned to me. I suspected that Jamie was
retarded, at least to some degree. While the school
was designed for seriously emotionallydisturbed children, it
is often difficult to distinguish between autism and
retardation. When a child doesn't respond, it is
sometimes hard to tell whether this is because he refuses
or is unable.
With Jamie, it was possible that autism and
retardationwere both present or that, as some
professionalsthink, the two are intertwined. In any
event, I asked for what I thought he was capable of
doing and rejoiced in his small successes.
I sighed as I held Jamie, listening to Rufus
mutteringbehind me, watching Brian pause at the
chalkboard and nervously begin to draw the
panel of stars from the telethon of the night bef.so
much time was being lost, time I needed
to keep Jamie steady, let Rufus grow, help
Brian make it to public school. And yet there was
no other way. Hannah had to become part of us, had
to find her own place within the accepted limits of the
class. It was up to me as teacher to somehowget her
there.
I looked at Hannah over the top of Jamie's
head. She was still in the closet, trying to balance one
chair on top of another. At least she was off the
floor working on the problem. I turned back
to Jamie as he wiggled around in my lap and put his
hands across my eyes. Close relationships have their
own rituals, and I knew what to say. "Where are
you, Jamie? Where'd you go? I can't see you any
place." Down came his hands. "Oh, there you are!
Boy, am I glad to see you!" And the fact that he
nuzzled in close announced the success of our old
foolish game.
Within a half hour Hannah had given up hope of
reaching her lunch and had decided to keep watch
instead. She turned one of the small chairs to face
the closet, and for the next hour and a half she sat with
her back to the rest of the room and her eyes
on her lunch, or occasionally on the clock.
With Hannah quiet, some peace returned to the
room. Gradually, the boys drifted back to their
desks or one of the round tables, going from time to time
to check on their work schedules or to get new books
from their cubbies. Each day I made up a new
schedule for each child and taped it to the counter above his
cubby. I tried to list each
task, each separate page that was to be done that day,
so that as they finished a page or particular
assignment they could cross it off and immediatelysee what
to do next. This gave them satisfactionin the
accomplishment and a structured, constructive way
to move around.
By eleven forty-five an amazing amount had been
accomplished, and the boys put their things away and went
to get washed for lunch. Hannah obviously
wasn't going to move. There wasn't a chance that she
would leave that lunch bag. Althher hands and face were
as dirty as ever, washing seemed like a matter of
small importance compared to what lay ahead: I was
going to have to get that paper bag from behind the pipe and then
take it down to Patty's room, the same room
where we had Circle.
I skipped washing myself and sat with Hannah
while the boys were gone. She paid absolutely no
attention to me. I sat beside her in a chair the same
size as hers, but she didn't turn her head a
fraction of an inch. We both silently stared at the
crumpled paper bag, which now seemed enormousin
size. Better tell Hannah what was going
to happen. If she was like me, she would like to be
prepared ahead of time.
"At twelve o'clock I'm going to get down your
lunch and take it to Patty's room so that you can eat
with us today. No more alone in the closet Okay?"
Not a flicker.
I decided to be optimistic. "Okay. Good.
That's all set, then."
I knew what I was going to do. I was going to cut
whatever sandwich there was in the bag into four small
squares and let Hannah eat them one at a time,
while we ate with her.
Ate with her? Eat with her? I sat up straight.
How could I be so stupid? She'd need somebody
to show her how, somebody to eat a sandwich with her. I
didn't have a sandwich. Neither did the boys. Zoe,
our secretary, warmed a donated casserole each
day for the school lunch, and we all ate that together. But
to ask Hannah to give up her lunch and
eat casserole was no fair. I'd promised her
that sandwich.
I glanced at the clock at the same time Hannah
did, and our eyes brushed for a second. Eleven
fifty-five. I got up and walked as quietly
as I could to the door, not wanting to set off any
vibrations. "Be back in Just a minute."
Hannah rose in protest.
"Really. I'll be back by twelve o'clock. Just have
to do something for a second."
Down the hall, into the furnace room. Somewhere in the
refrigerator was a jar of peanut butter that we
kept for emergencies. Okay. Now bread. No
bread.... Oh, there it is, in the vegetable
drawer. Now a knife. Good. Okay. No time
to make a sandwich now.
I trotted back to our room, opened the door
slowly, took a chair, and went straight to the
closet and pried Hannah's lunch from behind the
pipe.
I headed quickly for the door again. "Lunch-time.
Let's go."
I looked at the clock as I went out the door.
Twelve o'clock on the dot.
I was halfway to Patty's room, walking
fast, before Hannah caught up to me. She was mad
and she wanted her lunch. I didn't blame her.
On the other hand, if I gave it to her now, I
knew what would happen. She would turn and run
back to the classroom and gobble her sandwich in the
closet.
Peanut butter under my left armpit, bread and
knife in my left hand, right hand holding
Hannah's lunch bag high above my head, my
walk turned to a trot
"We're going to have a great lunch. All ready in
Just a minute. Whoops."
I almost lost the peanut butter as Hannah wound
her arms around my legs and sat down on my feet.
But we were almost there. I shuffled along with Hannah
on my feet. I could see heads watching from doors
and I felt like a football player going for the last
yard before the touchdown.
Brian had the door open, and once inside I
took advantage of the surprise of new
surroundings. There were four girls in Patty's
class and all of them crowded around and peered down at
Hannah, who was being propelled into the room on my
feet. Wanda Gomez, a dark, heavy girl,
touched Hannah's head before she bit her own
arm. "No legs. Girl's got no legs.
Poor girl."
Hannah loosened her grasp in surprise for one
second and I slid my feet out from under her, raced
for the piano in the back of the room, and dumped the
contents of Hannah's lunch bag on the piano
top. Sandwich in waxed paper and a chocolate
cupcake. I ripped open the wrapper and, with my
silver knife, sliced the jelly sandwich into four
inaccurate rectangles. Next the cupcake.
Then everything back into the paper bag, except one
small square of sandwich.
Patty had already set the table, and I sat down at
one end and put the square inch of sandwich on the paper
plate next to mine. The peanut butterand loaf of
bread I put on my plate. Hannah's bag
between my feet. Ahhh! Made it. I looked up
for Hannah.
She was on the other side of the table, staring at me.
"Come on, lovey," I said. "Time for lunch.
See, this is how we do it here. A little at a time.
Come on now. Sit here with me."
I began working on my own sandwich. Hannah came
slowly now, not pushing, not clawing. She stood beside
me, watching as I spread the cold,
clumpy peanut butter on the bread and put
anotherpiece of bread on top. Deliberately,
I cut my own sandwich into pieces the same size
as hers.
Hannah still hesitated beside me. I pulled out her
chair, silently urging her toward me, and
picked up my own small square of sandwich. I
tipped the sandwich toward her in a friendly gestureand
then put it in my mouth, bit it in half, and put the
other half back on the plate.
Suddenly Hannah sat down, picked up her
quarter of sandwich, and put it in her mouth. She
didn't bite it in half, but who cared?
Refinements could come later. No crusts or jelly
were slobberingdown her chin; she was out of the closet,
sittingat a table, eating with us. I smiled at her
around the cold peanut butter stuck to the roof of my
mouth and served us each another square of sandwich.
It was Brian rather than Rufus who first began
to move toward Hannah. He was fascinated by her
eating, as I should have known he would be.
Brian had had his own eating problems, far more
severe than Hannah's. When he had first come
to school four years before, his entire diet had
consisted of chocolate milk and saltines.
We didn't know why-though his parents suspected
abuse at a child care center-but Brian had not begun
to eat other foods until almost a year after he first
came to school. We tried numerous means and
methods until finally, in the end, we had forced his
first bite and he began to eat. This had proved-to
me, at least-not that it is right to force a child to eat but that
almost anything can becomea learning experience if there
is enough caringinvolved.
Brian now ate normally and well, but Hannah's
struggles must have stirred all kinds of memories,
and his fascination with her eating was understandable. He began
to sit on her other side at lunchtime. He did it
quietly, without comment, simply moving in and occupying
the seat next to her.
Gradually Hannah's fears calmed, and by the end
of the week she knew what to expect. Each day at
noon I lifted down her paper bag and took it
to Patty's room, where I cut her sandwich
into squares and gave them to her. Each day as we
walked to lunch together I continued to carry her paper
lunch bag and my own sandwich. Each day was the
same; each day I did as I had promised.
One day in the middle of the following week, I took
Hannah's sandwich from behind the pipe and my
foil-wrapped sandwich from my purse and gave them
both to Hannah to carry.
Her eyes widened as I handed them to her. She stood
very, very still, looking first at me and then at our
sandwiches.
I waited. I had given her the sandwiches because I
wanted her to know that I trusted her, and trust is
something better explained by actions than words. There's
no sure way to know when to trust, but I thought
Hannah was ready and I wanted to give her the
option: she could run, she could bolt back to the
closet with our sandwiches, or she could walk with me,
carrying our lunch.
She took her paper bag in one hand and my sandwich
in the other and started down the hall. I walked
slowly after her. Then abruptly she
stopped and turned around, heading back the way she'd
come. Had I guessed wrong, acted too soon?
Was she off to the closet?
She stopped when she reached me and stepped in front
of me, forcing me to stop as well. Then, with her head
bent down, never looking at me, she opened the paper
bag and dropped my sandwichin with hers. Still not looking
up, she reached out for my hand with her free one and we
walked down the hall together, while my heart
boomed with such excitement that I could feel it in my
head.
Days pass like minutes in a school like ours where
each child is such a fascinating, intricate
Individual. At lunch a few days later, I
suddenly saw Hannah reach out and grab a handful of
Brian's spaghetti. I grabbed too, covering
her hand with mine, prying open her fingers so that the
spaghetti fell back on his plate and both our
hands were covered with the red, sticky sauce.
"No, Hannah. Not that way. You eat spaghetti
with a fork."
But Brian knew better. Quickly he dumped some
of his own spaghetti onto Hannah's plate and
chopped at it with his fork, trying to cut the spaghetti
into pieces small enough to stay in a spoon.
"Help her, Mary. Help Hannah eat the
spaghetti."
He pushed his spoon toward me and I picked it
up, put it between Hannah's greasy fingers, and
put my own hand over hers, guiding the spoon down
into the food.
Brian began to eat rapidly from his plate with his
fork, so excited that his thin, wiry little body bounced
off his chair after every two or three bites.
I felt Hannah's fingers tense under my hand and
gradually I relaxed my own fingers. She was
holding the spoon by herself now. Then, her eyes on
Brian, she began to eat.
I called Mrs. Rosnic immediately after lunch,
unable to wait till school was over. I told her
what had happened and asked her not to send lunch any
more. From now on Hannah would eat whatever we did.
No longer would she sit in the closet eating her
solitary sandwich; no longer would she have special
food. From now on she would sit at the table with us and
share our meal. She was one of us and we would eat
together.
Those next few weeks, the middle weeks of
Octobereaflew by and Hannah flew with them. She was
out of the closet most of the time now, literallydancing
around our classroom, touching, turning, examining
everything in the room while the rest of us watched and still
tried to do our work. Still not speaking, still in the long
cotton housedress, yet she was entrancing.
Somehow Hannah was getting prettier. She was
cleaner, for one thing. As the layers of grime came
off, it was possible to see her fine creamy skin.
Since Hannah was eating with us now it was fair
to expect her to wash-or perhaps it is more
accurate to say "be washed." Each day before lunch
I filled the bathroom sink with warm water and washed
her hands and face. At first I had washed only her
hands, using a thin washcloth because it wasn't as hard
or slippery or scary as soap and also because I could
gradually move the washcloth to her neck, her
face.
I called Mrs. Rosnic again to report this and
to urge her to try the same thing before supper. She
agreed to try and added that yes, she thought 64
Hannah was doing a little better, but her voice
seemed sad. When I asked if anything was wrong,
she said that the baby had a cold and that she thought
maybe she was getting it.
Two days later when I was washing Hannah's
face, she whimpered and pulled away and I saw that
under her matted, dirty, reddish hair, which I still
hadn't touched, her right ear was covered with a thick
yellow crust.
I took Hannah to the office at once. We
didn't have a doctor at school (or rather, the only
doctor on our staff was the psychiatrist), but
Dianne, one of our teachers, was a registered
nurse and the Director called her down to the office
to look at Hannah. She confirmed what
we had suspected and the Director telephoned
Mrs. Rosnic immediatelyto tell her that Hannah
had a badly infected ear and should be seen by a
doctor. I took Hannahback to our room and
kept her quiet and close to me for the rest of the day.
Hannah was absent for ten days, and when she came
back she acted as though she barely recognizedus.
She headed straight for the closet, not only sitting
there but closing the door except for a tiny crack.
She didn't bring her lunch but now, instead of
eating, she threw her food or pushed it away.
What was wrong? Was this just the aftermath of illness or
had something else happened while she was home? I
talked to Mrs. Rosnic, but she couldn't tell me
anything, except that the doctor's examination and the ear
infection itself had both
been very painful. Did Hannah blame me? In
her mind had the earache somehow risen out of school?
I tried to talk to her a little through the crack in the
closet door, but it seemed doubtful that she heard
me.
The not knowing is one of the most difficult things "about
working with nonverbal children:
not knowing what goes on when they're away from you, not
knowing what goes on in their heads when they're
with you.
Regressions weren't new to me. I had seen them
many times before and worked them through with other children. After every
vacation there was almalways some sort of
back-sliding; after an illnessthere was more. It never was
easy. Each tiny step of progress had been
gained at such high price that. to see it lost, even
temporarily, was difficult. But no learning
experience is a constant upward climb. There are
always peaks, plateaus, and valleys.this wasn't
what bothered me about Hannah.it was the anger.
She would have nothing to do with any of us. Everything anyone
tried to do was wrong. Even the doll family and
Best and Worst failed to bring her out of the closet.
We were back where we started, or worse. Again, if
it was hard for me, it was harder for the boys. They had
been pleased and excited about her progress. There
had been a sunny loveliness to Hannah as she
explored the room. Sometimes she'd had the air of a
clown as she experimented with new materials,
imitating one or another of the boys. This was all
gone now,
and again the added dimension of difficulty for the boys was
that this could happen to them. Their own emotional stability
was still frail. If Hannah could change so
much, it was possible that they could too.
I tried hard all week to regain lost ground with
Hannah and at the same time to reassure the boys.
Nothing worked very well, and by Friday afternoon I was not
only discouraged, I was tired.
Well, there were only a few hours left to the
week. I'd just try to get through the afternoon as painlessly
as possible. I put a record on and got out
paint, paper, brushes. Perhaps painting would give us
a respite or a chance to express some feelings.
The boys were pleased, and in a little while we were all
involved.
Everyone was working on his own thing. Brian was painting
the sides of a refrigerator cartqn to make himself a
telephone booth. Jamie was finger-painting on a
portion of the floor covered with newspaper, happily
moving the wet, bright colors over the slippery
paper and himself as well. Rufus didn't know what
he felt like doing, and he watched first one and then
another. Finally he decided to join me.
I'd taken our pumpkin from the counter, the dried
cornstalks from our outside door, and an old
yellow pitcher from the furnace room and put them
together on a table by the window. There were no oils in
school, but I had orange, red, white,
yellow, and brown poster paints and I mixed new
colors as I needed them. I was no art-
ist, but I loved to sketch and paint. It helped me
to see, made me more aware of line and color and
reality. I was fascinated by perspective, continually
amazed that half of what I saw was supplied bar
by my mind's eye.
Rufus got his own paper and brush, commandeered the
orange paint I'd mixed, and began to paint an
orange pumpkin. "Can I make a face on it?"
he asked. "Even if it doesn't really have a
face?"
I glanced at him. "It's your pumpkin. You can do
anything you want with it, Ruf."
I had looked away for only a minute. But that
minute had been long enough for Hannah to come out of the
closet, pick up the red and yellow paint Jars,
and pour the contents on my paper.
Anger flared inside me and I turned abruptly.
"Cut it out, Hannah. What do you think you're
doing, anyway? Stop it now. That's enough."
My voice was loud and Jamie burst into tears as
Hannah threw the yellow paint Jar at me. It
shattered against the tile floor by my feet, and my
dreams and plans for Hannah seemed
to shatter with it.
But a paint jar is only a paint Jar and never
worth a dream. Besides, a teacher's dream dies
hard and is easily refurbished, and by Monday
morning I had a new plan.
The plan was simply to get out of the
classroom.i'd been trying too hard, pushing
Hannah too much, attempting to recapture
growth, and it didn't work. Hannah herself had put
the final period to a poor week's work when she had
thrown the paint. We needed to leave the
classroomeathe work, the mistakes behind us. We
needed a fresh start.
For me, Indian summer is one of the loveliest
times of year, the best of summer mixed with autumn,
and that's what we had that Monday morning: bright
Yale-blue October sky with sun shimmering,
bouncing off every glossy surface that it struck so that
there seemed to be twice as much sunshine. The world
shone and the temperature was Just right for sweaters and a
picnic.
I waited in the parking lot for the children and gathered them
into my car as they arrived so that they wouldn't have
to relive the incident of Hannah'srage on the
previous Friday. Soon everyone 69
was settled in the car-the three boys in the back,
Hannah in the front seat beside me.
There had been a slight delay over seat belts,
Hannah at first refusing to fasten hers, but now
everything was snug and we were off to Thunder Mountain.
Sandwiches, lemonade, apples, and cookies were
packed in the trunk along with blanketsand
storybooks.
My own spirits began to rise as we left suburbia
behind and drove into farm and orchard country with the mountains
just beyond. We sang as we drove. We always sang
in the car, and today Rufus began:
"She'll be comin" round the mountain
when she comes were
giddy-ap-whoa!),
Shell be comin' round the mountain
when she comes..."
At least the boys and I sang. Hannah sat
silently beside me.
Once Brian leaned forward and said
to Hannahea"...Why don't you sing, Hannah? Why
don't you talk? Please talk. Just say your
name."
Rufus chimed in. "Yeah, Hannah. It's
better when you talk. Then we can fix you up
better. See? Look at me. I talked, and
Mary made a new man out of me."
"Whatever you did, you did yourself, Ruf," I
interrupted. "How about a" game? Alphabet?
Ghost?" I didn't want the boys to begin pushing
Hannah, but Rufus was hard to sidetrack.
Resent-
ful of Hannah in the beginning, then indifferent,
Bufus was now like the rest of us, unable to resist her
as she began to grow. He persisted now.
"Listen, Hannah, I know you can talk. I just have
this feeling. And if you talk and tell us what the
matter is, then we'll fix it. See, I used
to be scared all the time, but not any more, and it'll be the
same for you. See-your biggest problem is not
talking-and if you talk, that'll fix the problem."
Rufus smiled, pleased with his logic, but Hannah
put her hands over her ears.
To distract Rufus I said, "Hey, Ruf, what
did the big firecracker say to the little
firecracker?"
"Don't know," said Rufus. "What?"
"My pop's bigger than yours."
And now Hannah's smiling. Good. We're going
to be all right. I sang again.
"She'll be drivin' six white horses
when she comes
(clippety-clop),
Shell be drivin' six white horses
when she comes
(clippety-clop) . . his
We arrived at the tollbooth of Beardsley
State Park. Thunder Mountain was only our
nickname. Brian handed the toll keeper our two
dollars and he waved us through. "Nice day to get out
of the house with the kids."
I waved and called back, "Beats scrubbing
floors." The kids dissolved in laughter. They
loved having us mistaken for a family.
We drove past the old wooden lodge and

Mary MacCracken
empty parking lot, down to the lake. During the
summer it was possible to rent rowboats and canoes,
but now the place was deserted, except for two green
boats bobbing beside the dock.
As soon as I parked the car, the boys were out,
running for the dock. We had been here several times in
May and June of the year before, and they headed now for
one of their favorite spots:
out onto the dock and then flat on their stomachs, their
faces pressed against the boards, their eyes peering
down into the shadowy water world be-low, searching for
fish. All children are intrigued by animals, but for my
children, whose coordination was often awkward and difficult,
the easy, effortless movements of fish were
all-absorbing.
I walked toward the dock, stopping halfway between the
boys and Hannah. She was still in the car, but she had
the door open, her seat belt unfastened, and her
feet over the edge. She was on the verge of getting
out, so I walked onto the dock to give her a little
more room.
The boys were calling to each other, their voices
hollow echoes in the empty space beneath the dock.
"Look at that fish. Boy, is he big." That was
Rufus.
"He big," echoed Jamie.
"No. That's no fish. A rock, that is a
rock," pro-claimed accurate Brian.
"It is too a fish. Hey, Mary, look-isn't
that too a fish?"
I laughed at Rufus. "You figure it out.
You've
got better eyes than I have." I had
learned not to get trapped into taking sides in a.
minor argument.
Hannah was out of the car and all the way down to the
beginning of the dock. She put one foot
tentatively on the wooden boards, then slowly,
carefully, the other. Just then Rufus jumped up and the
dock swayed under his sudden shift of weight.
Startled, Hannah retreated quickly to solid
ground.
It must seem strange and precarious to her-a narrow
wooden floor built out over water. I turned
my back to where Hannah stood on the shore and
pumped up and down a couple of times. The boys
turned, surprised but not alarmed.
"Hey, Mary. What're you doing?"
I raced out toward them, then jumped and landed hard in
a squat beside them. If this old dock could stand my
running and jumping, Hannah would know that it could stand
her cautious weight.
I reached for Jamie and tumbled over on my back,
taking him with me. "Not a bad way to go to school,
eh?"
From flat on my back, I looked down over my
sweatshirt and jeans, and there, framed between my
sneakers, was Hannah. She was back out on
the dock again. This time, though, she had decided on a
safer approach. Not daring to walk yet-height
making the journey more perilous-she was down on all
fours, crawling toward us on hands and knees.
This was no easy task. She crawled inside the
long dress, inching it along with her, stopping every few
feet to look back over her shoulder to see how far
she'd come. As she neared us, we instinctively
rearranged ourselves to make room for her. Finally, she
arrived and lay down between us, panting, her face
sweaty from exertion. But within a minute or two she
had her eyes open and was looking through a crack down
to the water below. The boys immediately began pointing out
things to her.
"See that log, Hannah? That's where big fish,
really big fish, live."
"Over there by the side, where those stones are, there was a
penny there last summer." "Look, Hannah, there,
look at the fish-was "That's not a fish. Doesn't
move. It's a rock." Suddenly I felt, more
than saw, Hannah turn her face toward me.
I turned my own head. One side of my face was
pressed against the warm wooden boards, and while the
fish swam silently beneath us, Hannah and I
looked at each other. We were only inches
apart, our noses almost touching. I could feel her
breath, puffy and warm on my face. We stayed like
this for perhaps one full minute. Hannah's eyes were
wide open, the whites clear, almost translucent.
The irises were layers of blue, lighter on the
surface, then soft deep blue underneath. Bright
sunlight framed Hannah's face as if in a
close-up, and once again I was startled by the beauty
and intelligence that were there.
Gone were the dumpy body and awkward clothes; her
matted hair was only a blurred outlinebbher skin
shone from exercise and the pleasure of success. All
the things Hannah could be were clearly visible, and I
silently promised her, I'll help, Hannah,
trust me. Let's try again, okay?
We could have moved away from each other. It would have
been easy for either of us to turn our head, but we
stayed, silently looking at each other, until
Hannah moved her arm-accidentally, purposely?
It was impossible to tell, but she moved her arm
until it lay against my own.
Finally the boys tired of watching the fish and ran off
to turn over rocks along the water's edge, searching
for snails, the possibility of finding a
bloodsucker heightening their excitement.
I got up slowly and stretched out my hand
to Hannah. She took it and we took a few slow
steps back toward the shore. Then I stopped and
rearrangedher dress, pulling more of it over the string
at her waist so that her legs were free and she could
walk more easily. Soon I'd have to do something about
her clothes and her hair. So much to do, but for now it was
enough Just to feel the sun, walk, be alive.
When we got to the end of the dock, we walked down and
stood beside the boys on the shore. Hannah watched,
and then we followed as they left the water and headed
up the mountain, climbingone of the gently sloping
trails, walking singlefile beneath pine trees,
birches, oaks. Rufus raced ahead, clambering
over fallen logs, some-
times leaving the path to climb a nearby boulder and
shout down to us, exulting in his freedom. Brian
walked slowly, trying to stay near Hannah while
he gathered the golden leaves that had fallen from the
oaks. Jamie and I brought up the rear. For these
children who rarely left their homes and had never seen a
snake or a frog, much less a porcupine
needle, each step was an adventure.
At lunchtime we turned and went back to the lake,
this time choosing the white sandy beach that bordered
the east end, rather than the boat cove. We carried the
food and a blanket from the car and spread the blanket
on the sand. We ate there with the sand creeping over the
edges of the blanket, mixing with the sandwiches, while the
lemonade grew warm in the paper cups. It was
all just right-a real picnic.
After lunch we dug hollows in the warm sun and
dozed and told stories. Our stories were always
make-believe, but make-believe that could be true.
There was no one storyteller; we passed the stories
around. One person began, another did the middle,
and another the end.
"Once there was a cat with the longest tail in the world.
It was so long that when he sat down he could wrap his
tail around him three times. It was a beautiful
tail, but the cat didn't like it because all the other
cats ..."
Here someone would take over the story and continue
until he ran out of ideas or wanted to see what
someone else would say. We liked it be-
cause this kind of storytelling gave us another way
to talk. Some of the things that were too big or too
scary for regular talk could come out in a story.
After a while, we grew quiet again. Rufus
picked up a book and wandered off to read.
Jamie began building a castle, or maybe it was
a mountaineaand Hannah took off her shoes and
socks and began to scrunch her toes back and forth in
the sand. Then, evidently liking the feel of the sand,
she got up and began to walk around us barefoot, in
ever-increasing circles.
Brian stayed still beside me, turning a small stone
over and over in his hand. I sat cross-legged,
tracing letters in the damp sand, trying to listen to what
Brian hadn't found words for yet. He got
another stick, and after carefully patting the sand flat
he drew people inside television sets. People safe in
boxes-far away, not close or real. People were what
troubled Brian. He could cope with letters, numbers,
words, but people were difficult.
Finally he said, "What's school like? Real
school, I mean."
Brian was obviously worrying about next year.
He knew that this was his last year here. Twelve was the
top age limit at the school.
"Well," I said, searching for words that would be
reassuring and still honest, "it depends on what
school you're talking about. I can tell you about the
school where I went." I told him about
the classrooms and the gym, the plays we
put on, and our newspaper.
The newspaper interested him. "You had your own
newspaper? How did you make it?"
I told him that in my first school we typed up
stories and carved a woodcut for the masthead. By high
school we had sports reporters and news
reporters; we pasted up galleys, picked type
for headlines, and finally had the pages printed by a
professional printer.
"If I go," he asked. "I mean when I go
to school,
will they have a paper there?"
"I don't Know," I said, "but if they don't,
maybe you can start one. Just a little one at first, but I
bet you could get one going."
He was quiet, but he seemed satisfied.
"Maybeea"...he said, "maybe that new school won't
be so bad." He paused and looked out toward the
lake and then pointed. "Look at Hannah.
Look at her there. Hannah's ... I think
she's ... Mary, it looks like Hannah's
dancing."
Brian was right. It did look like Hannah was
dancing. She was down by the very edge of the lake, just where
the water touched the sand, holdingup her skirt
in her hands, running along the water's edge. But
though the sun was warm, the water was October cold,
and when she went too close and water accidentally
touched her bare feet, she hopped backwards or
sideways to escape.despite her heavy body,
Hannah had a natural grace, and what might have
seemed like awkward retreats in another child blended
to-
gether in a smooth, natural rhythm. I loved
to watch her. Inside Hannah, deep down beneath the
rage, hurt, and humiliation, there was an
indestructi3enter of joy. She had a true and
natural joyful self.
The phrase stirred a memory, and I suddenly
recalled a day when I was in the hospital for the
birth of my second child. A friend brought me a
bottle of wine and held it up before me. "For a
joyful woman," she said. "This is how I always
think of you." I don't know if it's true, but I
love the quality of joy in other people. It's one thing
that draws me to children. When a child is well and
adequately nourished with food and love,
almalways the joy tumbles out.
But for Hannah to have kept this through the terrors of her
life-the operation, the beatings, the rejection and
neglect-showed a quality of joy and strength that was
awesome. Hannah had a strong sense of self.
She knew who she was. As I watched I again
questioned the psychologist's diagnosis. Autistic
children have no awareness of who they are. I couldn't
believe that Hannah was retarded or psychotic.
A cloud passed across the sun and I looked at my
watch. Almost two o'clock. We had to hurry now
to get back by two thirty, the official ending of our
day. Where had the hours gone? I wanted more. It was
too soon to go back. I needed more time, but then this was
true almost every day.
I rounded up the children and then packed the lunch things.
I dried Hannah's feet with paper

Mary MacCracken
napkins and got her shoes and socks on-and then
urged everyone toward the car. The two-thirty
deadline was no joke. Buses arrived, and these
buses picked up other children at other schools.
All sorts of schedules were thrown off and panic
buttons pushed if the children weren't back on time.
But once in the car, everyone relaxed and all was
well. The children, warm and sleepy from their day in the
sun and fresh air, dozed or day-dreamed.
I drove, happy and content at having them all there
with me in the car.
After a little while, Rufus roused. He began
humming a little and singing to himself. At first it meant
nothing, but then I recognized a currently
popular commercial.
"Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Meyer
Wiener, That is what I'd truly love to be.
"Cause if I were an Oscar Meyer Wiener,
Then everybody'd be in love with me."
Brian opened his eyes and sang with Rufus the
second time. The song was an instant success, and the
boys got wider and wider awake. Jamie shouted
out "me" and something close to "wiener" in almost the right
places, and even Hannah turned her head.
Rufus was in seventh heaven. Everyone's attention was
focused on him and he wasn't about to
lose it. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial
whisper. "Want to hear the dirty version?"
If they were attentive before, they were riveted now.
Rufus sang:
"Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Meyer
Wiener, That is what I'd truly love to be.
'Cause if I were an Oscar Meyer Wiener,
Then everybody'd
pee
all over me."
The boys exploded in laughter and Hannah
giggled. This version was even more successful than the
first, and the children sang it over and over with delight.
I was silent driving down the highway, watchingthe
boys in the rearview mirror, glancing
sidewaysat Hannah. What was happening? I
didn't know, couldn't put my finger on it, but some
kind of excitement was building in the car. Something,
something was about to happen.
When it did I almost didn't recognize it. At
first I didn't even hear it. Not till Brian
said, "Shhh," and Hannah said-
Hannah
said-"I sing song."
I wanted to pull off the highway, get out, stop
traffic. But I knew I couldn't break the
spell.
Hannah's voice was small and quiet, but it was
clear and it filled the car.
"Oh, I wish I were a General Motors seat
belt, That is what I'd truly love to be,
'Cause if I were a General Motors seat
belt, Then everybody'd
shit
all over me!"
The boys and I sat in absolute silence. Where
had these full-blown, coherent sentences come from? For
two months in our classroom Hannah had
uttered nothing but grunts and groans and howls. At
home she evidently used a few words, but not in
school. If Hannah had said "Good" or "Sing"
we would all have been jubilant and vociferouswith our
praise. But to have this, this whole weird song, all
at once was too much and we sat in shocked silence,
until suddenly Brian came to and said,
"Hannah. Sing it again. Please sing it again."
Brian began the song himself and Rufus's voice
joined him and then Hannah's voice began again and
blended with theirs. This spontaneous approvalwas just
what she needed. You never know, I thought. You never
know what shape a miracle will have.
This was hardly approved teaching material. But what
did it matter? What did I care? Hannah was
singing. She had broken through her barricadeof silence,
and as they finished the second round I joined the
cheers.
"Sing it again, lovey," I said. "Go ahead and sing
it again."
Now that Hannah had spoken, it was important
to keep her language flowing. She had, of course,
done much more than utter an isolated word. She had
used a complete sentence. "I sing song." She had
taken Rufus's jingle and adapted it to express
an idea of her own, a crude one, but that was not the
point. What interested me was her ability to use
expressive language.
I had known she had receptive language, that she
could hear, perceive, understand what was spoken to her. Now
she showed that she could use words to express an idea,
if she wished.
With Hannah it was not going to be so much to teach her
new words, although I was sure her vocabularywas
limited. The crucial thing would be to create a
climate in which she would want to talk. Obviously
there were all kinds of words in her head. She even had
a sense of syntax: "I sing song"-subject,
followed by verb, followed by object.but she must have
had these abilities before and Just not used them.
In our school, a language difficulty was not
unique. Over two thirds of our children had grave
problems with verbal communication; it was one of the things that
set them apart from other children.the world takes speech so
for granted that people are shocked, even frightened,
by a child without words.
In our own classroom, Jamie, Brian, and
Hannahhad each had severe language problems
when they came. rufus was different. He had used
bizarrelanguage when he was frightened, sitting behind his
briefcase chanting weird nursery rhymes.
"Little Jack Horner sat in a corner. He
put in a thumb and pulled out-a tooth. Shouldn't
eat pie. Should brush your teeth or you'll get
cavitiesand your teeth will fall out." This wasn't a
language problem. In fact, language helped
becit gave Rufus a way to get some of his fears
from the inside to the outside. But the other three all
had real language problems. Jamie had had no
words at all. He had less than a hundred now,
and he had struggled hard to learn to say each one. But
at least he knew his name, his address, his phone
number and could say and write them all. If he should
run again, if anger or fear exploded inside him
and he ran, at least he could get back home.
Brian had been an elective mute, capable of
speech but refusing to speak or, rather, refusing to speak
coherently. Rather than trust us with his words, he had
taught himself to speak in a weird fumble, like a
speeded-up phonograph record. As he
became more sure of himself, Brian was able to give up
this cover of garbled speech and talk to us in normal
sentences.
All three boys were growing-dealing with their problems,
gradually overcoming them. Now Hannah.cd we
keep Hannah talking to us?
The day after our picnic Hannah sat beside me at
Best and Worst and Rufus said, before all our feet
were even under the table, "Well-the best thing is easy.
The best thing that happened since last time was the
picnic. I sure do like those old
picnics. I could go on a picnic
every
day, every single day, maybe even twice a day."
We all sat looking at him, remembering. I
waited a minute to see if anybody would ask a
question, but the children were silent, so I said, ""What part
did you like best, Ruf? Was there one special part
of the picnic that you liked better than the rest?"
"Sure. I always like the fish the best. Someday I'm
gonna go up there and catch one of those fish. Boy,
would my father ever be surprised if I brought home a
big old fish."
Brian said, "Not me. I liked-was
Rufus stood up. "It's not your turn.
I didn't even do the worst thing yet."
Brian ducked his head, rebuked, too easily
hurt. I had one arm around the back of Hannah's
chair in case she should decide to bolt. With my
free hand I touched Brian's arm. "It's your
turn next, Bri. Okay, Rufus. Go ahead.
Do the worst thing."
Rufus picked up the father from the box in the center of the
table that held the doll family. "The worst thing was
my father yelling last night. I hate it when he
yells."
"Me too," Brian agreed, revitalized. "I
hate it when they yell."
"He yelled and then my mother yelled back. She said
he thought he knew everything. Is that right, do you think?
Does he know everything?"
"Does it seem like he does?" I asked.
Rufus thought. "Not everything. Sometimes he just acts
like he knows. Sometimes it's like
he's scared well find out he doesn't know
everything."
I leaned toward Rufus. "You think it'd be
scary-?"
"Time's up, Mary." Brian pointed to the clock.
"He's had his five minutes. It's my
turn. Right?"
There was never enough time. There were so many thoughts to follow.
It was important to know all about each child, everything,
the details as well as the main currents. But it was
true that everybody had to have a turn. Circle
lasted from nine thirty to ten, by the time the kids got
back from the bathroom it was well after ten, and now it
was already past ten twenty. There were still three more children
to go-and we hadn't even begun reading or math.
"You're right. It's your turn, Bri. But
Rufus, remember, and maybe we can talk after
lunch." Reluctantly, Rufus relinquished the
father doll to Brian.
"Put them all back," Brian said. "Have to put
all the dolls back in the box when your turn's
up." He carefully arranged the dolls so that the
boy doll was close beside the mother. "The worst thing,"
he said, "was that the mother didn't come in to watch
TV with me. Had to watch all alone."
Brian had a large color TV at the foot of
his bed; most nights his mother watched television with him
after dinner, preferring the color TV set to the
small black and white set in the living
room. Many nights she dozed off as she watched- and
slept there until morning.
I had spoken to both Brian and his parents about this
situation and now I said again, "I thought you were going
to move the big TV out to the living room, Brian.
We talked about that before, remember?"
Brian shook his head. "Can't. Can't move it.
Mimmie, Grandma Mimmie, is sleeping in the
dining room now. Daddy says the big set is too
noisy. It will keep Mimmie awake."
"It isn't any noisier than the little one.
Anyway, never mind." I would have to talk to the
family again, make them understand that Brian couldn't
continue to sleep with his mother. If only our
psychiatristhad time to come to some of our parent-teacher
conferences.... "Your mom didn't watch with you last
night?"
"No. Wouldn't watch. Went to a Bingo game with
Mimmie and then went to bed in Daddy's room."
Three cheers for Bingo.
"Hey, Brian, hurry up. You only got one
minute left, you know. You can't have extra time. You
wouldn't let me. You didn't even do the best thing
yet," said Rufus.
"I know," Brian said. He said it so softly that
we all turned to look at him. Forget the TV in
his bedroom-listen to him now. Listen to the
best thing. "I know," he repeated. "I know the best
thing. The picnic."
"That's not fair!" shouted Rufus. "That's my best
thing. That's not fair, Mary, is it?"
"Hush, Ruf. Let him finish. It's his turn."
"The picnic," Brian said again. Then he picked
up the girl doll and turned directly toward
Hannah. "The girl, Hannah, talked at the
picnic. That was the best."
If there are natural lovers anywhere, they must be
children. Even with all his troubles, Brian thought about
Hannah. For him, the best thing of the day was that she
talked.
I reached across the table and hugged him. "Yes, she
did. Hannah talked, and it sure was a best
thing."
Brian put the girl doll back in the doll
family box on the table. Immediately Hannah reached
for it, standing the doll firmly, squarely, on her
feet. Then with her eyes on Brian she declared
strongly, staunchly, "I not talk good picnic.
I sing song. I talk now."
All three boys stared at Hannah. Brian's
eyes never left her face.
Hannah stood up, still holding the girl
doll. "Now I talk good. Say hello.
Hello Jay-me, hello Roofs, hello
Bri-an."
We all looked at Hannah without speaking, almost
as though we were afraid to break the spell.
Then "Rufus said, "Hey, Hannah. You forgot
Mary. Say hello to her too. Say,
"Hello, Mary.""
But Hannah shook her head and my heart sank.
Would I be refused? Would she speak to the others but not
to me? Had past schools made too
many mistakes? Had I, too, already hurt her so
much that she wouldn't speak to me? I lowered my eyes.
What could I do?
Before I could think I felt a hand on my shoulderand
I looked up to find Hannah's eyes only
inches from mine.
"Hello," she said. "Hello, teacher."
Almost every day for the next six weeks, Hannahset
a new milestone. There was no stopping her now. She
was not just learning; she was insistingthat I teach her all
that I could-and she made this clear. The boys always
called me Mary, but Hannah addressed me as
"teacher" as though to remind us both.
I called all the children by their first names and an
affectionate nickname or two. I called
Hannah "Hannah" or sometimes "babe" or
"lovey" as I had my own daughter when she was
small. The terms of affection slipped out easily,
naturally, so easily that I was hardly aware of
using them.
But Hannah was aware. She came to me one
noontime as I sat on the little stoop outside our
door, searching out whatever sunlight I could find
while I watched the children play. The November
sunshine was thin and cool, but still some inner part of me was
warmed by it. Perhaps it was energyean heat, that I sought.
Who knows? Maybe we have some kind of inner solar
collector that stores energy from the sun.
A shadow crossed my face and I looked up

see Hannah peering down at me. "You getting
suntan, teacher?"
"Hey, Hannah, hello. You surprised me.
There's not much sun. What can I do for you?" I
asked.
She stood unsmiling. "Not Hannah. Not call
Hannah. Call me lovey. I like that lovey.
Nobody said that before."
I pulled her down into my lap. "Okay,
now. Lovey, lovey, lovey, lovey. Hullo
there, Hannah lovey."
Hannah's head lay in my lap, her eyes almost
smiling. I brushed her hair back from her foreheadand
hit a cold hard wad of gum.
"Listen," I said. "It's time to get this mess of
gum out of your hair. How did you get it in there
anyway?"
Hannah pushed my hand away, shook her head, and
hunched her shoulders down into my lap. It was
obvious that she didn't want to talk about it, but we
were going to have to get the gum out sooner or later, and
I decided to pursue it a little further now.
"Let's get some scissors and cut it out. I'll
be careful and go slowly and it won't hurt, I
promise."
Hannah sat up. "No," she said. Clearly,
definitely."...ationo cut hair." Hannah wasn't
going to give in easily.
"Okay," I said. "No big thing. We can wait
if you like those lumps of gum so much. A regular
walking gum machine, you are."
The smile was out of Hannah's eyes now.
"Mine," she said, putting her hand over her hair.
"Mine."
"Okay. You're right. It's your hair. I won't
cut the gum out until you want me to."
But I had underestimated Hannah's courage. The
next morning she arrived at school looking like a
victim of brain surgery. Great bald patches
showed through the remaining long, dirty hair, and there were
dark bruises from little sleep beneath her eyes. The
lumps of gum were gone, but so was most of her hair.
She went straight to the coat closet and sat down.
I followed and sat beside her in the dim " warmth and
held her face between my hands. "It's okay,
lovey. It'll grow. You were good to cut the gum out."
She looked straight at me. "Mine. Mine
hair. Me cut."
"I see you did. I understand you wanted to do , it
yourself. You wanted to cut your own hair."
"Fix," she commanded. "Fix hair now, teacher."
Impatience and sorrow mingled in her voice as "
her fingers explored the barren, stubby areas where she
had chopped her hair away.
I looked down at the disaster of Hannah's head.
i What could be done? How did she think that I could
make it right? Did she believe I could somehow
transplant hair?
"It'll be all right, babe," I said again.
"It'll grow. Hair grows fast."
This wasn't good enough for Hannah. She shook her
head and pulled me toward the art
cabinet, tugged open the door, and handed me a child's
pair of scissors.
"Fix," she pleaded.
"You want me to cut it? Is that it? You want me
to make it even?"
She stood still, not understanding, not knowing the word "even," but
trusting, waiting patiently. In three months she
had come a long way. I couldn't let her down now.
Perhaps I could take her to my own hairdresser-to
Vincent-who cut my hair with easy expertise
each month. But then, remembering the white coats,
the rows of hair driers and curious women, I
discarded the idea.
"Okay," I said. "But if I'm going to do it,
I'm going to do it right. Brian, will you go down to the
office and get Zoe's big scissors?"
Brian scampered out the door.
"Now, we need a mirror and a comb."
I got the large table mirror that I had bought
years before to use for speech. I arranged it on the
desk with my comb and draped an old sheet from the
paint cupboard under the chair.
Hannah sat down, staring at herself in the mirror.
Involuntarily her hand moved up-touching her hair,
her face. She turned to look at me, then back
to the mirror, leaning forward to touch her reflection.
"Mine?" she asked.
Suddenly I knew that she had never used a mirror
before, that this was the first time she had ever looked at herself.
Quickly I knelt down
beside her so that my face was reflected in the mirror
beside hers. This teaching is like Pandora's box-once
opened, each small thing leads to still another.
"Yes," I said, touching her face. "That's you."
And then, touching mine, "This is me."
Hannah touched my face, watching all the while in
the mirror.
"You," she said. "Me." Then, patting the mirror,
"It make picture you and me, teacher."
"Yes, it's a mirror and it shows, makes a
picture, of whoever's in front of it. See,
here's Jamie, here's Rufus," I said, nudging
the boys into view. "The picture doesn't last,
though. It's only there when
we are."
Hannah nodded. Then she went back to studyingherf
in the mirror, touching eyes, nose, and
mouth. I must get a bigger mirror so that she can
see all of herself, I thought, so that they can all see
and get to know and understand their bodies. I should have done
this before.
"Tomorrow," I promised, "I'll bring a big
mirroreaa long one so you can see all of yourself at
once."
Brian arrived with the scissors and Hannah
settled into the chair. The three boys lined up
behme.
"You gonna give Hannah a haircut, Mary?"
asked Rufus.
"Mm-hmm."
"Where'd you learn how to do that?"
"Oh, it's easy," I said. "Nothing to it."
But Rufus was right. I hadn't ever cut anyone's
hair before. Snip. I held a long limp strand in
my left hand and cut it with the scissors. The boys
gasped as Hannah's hair fell on the sheet, and
I stopped, feeling as though I had severed some
live, vital part of her.
"Fix. Not so slow. Fix," Hannah commanded,
utterly sure that I could do it.
"Okay. I'm fixing. You can't rush a good hair-


cut.
There was obviously no way out, so I snipped and
cut, trying to remember how Vincent layered my
hair, trying to angle sections of hair so they would
fall over the bald spots.
By the time I finished, I felt as though I had run
twenty miles uphill and I could hear Brian
let out a long sigh of relief, but there reflected
in the mirror was Hannah's round little face framed
with soft uneven hair.
I gave the scissors to Brian to return and
took Hannah to the bathroom and washed her hair with
clear, warm water and then rubbed it almost dry with a
towel. Now that Hannah's hair was shorter and a little
cleaner, it curved around her cheeks and the red-gold
color was more pronounced.
Back in the classroom I put away the mirror
and the sheet and then went to the furnace room to get a
broom and dustpan to sweep up the long strands of
hair still on the floor. I stopped in a corner of the
furnace room and sighed. Weariness mingled with
frustration. Another hour gone, an-
other day almost over, and math still not done. The science
experiment I had planned not even begun.
Tomorrow, tomorrow, I promised myself. Nothing will
interrupt. Tomorrow we'll get caught up on
academics. How did this happen? How did I
get into these things, anyway?
As I came back into our room carrying the broom
and dustpan, I realized that the outside door was
open and Hannah wasn't inside. What now? Where
had she gone?
This was too much. Irritation laced my voice.
"Where s Hannah?" I said to the boys. "Where'd
she go?"
They looked silently back at me and Brian
pointed to the door.
"Obviously," I said. "I can see that she went out
the door, but where is ..."
As I was talking, I walked over to the door. It
was immediately evident why the boys were unableto find
words.
There on the stoop where I had sat the day befwas
Hannah. She had dragged out two small chairs,
arranged them so they faced each other, and had stretched
out on them, her cropped head tipped back, her
eyes closed, her face turned toward the pale
November sun.
"Hannah. What are you doing?" I
asked, althI already knew. I could feel a warm
fullness rising in my throat. I struggled to keep
irritationin my voice, but it had already melted somewhere
and I said only, "Come back in now,
lovey. Your hair's still damp and you'll catch
cold."
Hannah turned her head and smiled at me, her
face radiant beneath the sunlit halo of her hair.
"In minute. I getting suntan, teacher. Like
you."
Hannah's days were always full. She'd never had a
chance to do all the small, ordinary things that children do at
home or in kindergarten. Her anger and disruptive
behavior had made it impossible for her to explore
and learn. But now she colored and drew pictures
on whatever paper I could find: newsprint, waxed
paper, aluminum foil, even sandpaper. She liked
the different feel and look of each piece, and her
fingers grew more and more deft as she colored and
painted. She used chalk and paints and crayons, and
sometimes all three at once.
Occasionally I took one of her paintings home and
ran it through my sewing machine. Without thread, the
needle perforated the paper, and in school the next day
Hannah cut carefully along the lines
to make her own picture puzzle. New
discoveries like this always delighted her, and her high,
sweet voice would sing out over our
classroom."...Oh, boy, teacher. See. See
picture."
Brian and Rufus would stop and smile almost as often
as I did. We were all caught up in her
pleasure and excitement in learning.
Hannah came with us to Circle now. She didn't

talk there;, she Just sat beside me, one hand in my
lap, watching everything that happened. But one day
Patty brought in some of her records and we saw a
new side of Hannah. She danced all over the
room-she did the Twist, the Wiggle, and a dozen
different dances I didn't know the names of. But
Hannah knew what she was doing, and she did it with
style and grace and an odd touch of sophistication.
Back in our classroom, she was a child again. We
had all kinds of letters and numbers stored in painted
or covered coffee cans; sandpaper letters, wooden
letters from old anagram games,
magneticletters-even alphabet macaroni.
Hannah loved them, and she sorted and matched them
hour after hour.
Sometimes we played homemade games of Lotto
or Bingo. At first she just matched the wooden letter to a
letter on the board. Later she learned names and I would
say the name of a lettereaholding it in my hand without letting
her see it, and she would find it on the board.
She played dominoes, matching the dots. She lined
cans. and sticks up according to size. She learned the
meaning of above and below, same and different. She
learned to classify objects by color, use, and
other qualities. She loved drawing pictures of
herself. I brought in a long roll of brown paper, and
Hannah and Jamie each lay down flat on it
while I traced around them. Brian and Rufus were
too old for this sort of thing, but
they helped the other two cut the figures out and
paint them with bright colors.
One day I set up the easel with a large sheet of
lined story paper and put two small chairs in
front of it, one for Hannah and one for me.
"Okay," I said. "Today we're going to write a
story. We'll do it together, but it will really be your
story. I'll just write it down here for you." I
pointed to the large story paper and waggled my
Magic Marker.
Hannah came and sat beside me and stared at
the blank paper.
"There are lots of things we can write about," I
said. "I'll make a list of three things here that I
think of and then I'll make a list of three things you
think of-and then we'll choose one of them."
Hannah looked at me sadly. "Can't think.
Can't think no story."
"It's not your turn yet. Just wait a minute,
okay? It's my turn now. Let's see....
We could write about food-hot food, cold
food, breakfast, lunch-was
"Dessert," Hannah interrupted. "Not write
food. Write dessert."
Carefully I wrote
Food.
"This is my list," I said. "I want food. You
can write dessert on yours if you want."
Hannah was but of her chair watching every letter that I
wrote. I had her. I had her now.
Hannahdidn't know it yet, but today was to be her first
reading lesson.
We had already spent hours during the last
week on what the books call "reading readiness."
Hannah knew the letters of the alphabet. She could
recognize them easily, call them by name,
even write them. The sounds of the letters were much harder for
her, particularly the vowels, and I knew that if
Hannah was ever to learn to read it would have to be much more
with her eyes than her ears. It was not until much
later that I learned the terms visual and auditory
dyslexia, but I did know that Hannah had to have
early success and that this was much more possible for her
visually than any other way.
"So I'll have food and-ah, books and houses for
my three." As long as I had caught her interest
with food, I tried to make the other subjects more
vague and less interesting.
"Dessert," Hannah said. "I like dessert."
"Okay, that's a pretty good opening sentence.
Let's store our other ideas for now and do this one."
I turned to a new piece of paper and across the top
I printed dessert.
"That's our title. Dessert."
Beneath it I printed, "I like dessert," reading it out
loud as I wrote.
Hannah was standing close beside me, her cropped
hair almost touching the paper.
"What kind of dessert do you like?" I asked.
"Cake. I like cake."
Carefully I printed the next line,
saying it. "I like cake."
"And I like pie too," Hannah said.
This child-why had it taken so many years? She was so
easy to teach. I added, "I like pie," sayingit,
writing it, and almost before I was through Hannah said,
"And I love ice cream."
"Okay. Good. That's a great clincher. That'll be
our last line: "And I love ice cream." his
Our paper now read:
dessert
I like dessert.
I like cake.
I like pie.
And I love ice cream.
I put down the Magic Marker and said
to Hannahea"...I'm going to read this story of yours now,
okay?"
She nodded and I put my hand under the title.
"Dessert." My hand moved to the first line as I
read slowly and with as much feeling as I could get into it,
"I-like-cake," my hand underlining each word as I read
it. When I reached the last line I read it with even
more emotion. "And I
love
ice cream.
"Okay, now, Hannah. It's your turn.
We'll start right here with the title." I took her
hand and placed it under the word at the top of the paper.
"Dessert?" she asked, uncertainly, looking at
me.
"Yes, sure. Now look here. See, this is the
word, right? These are the letters that make the word
"dessert": D-E-S-S-E-R-T."
I wasn't concerned with word-attack skills. All
I wanted was for Hannah to get the idea that letters
made up words and that every spoken word had its written
counterpart. I drew her fingers along, beneath the letters.
"Dessert," she said.
"Yes, indeed." I moved her hand to the next line
and placed it under the first word.
"I. I know letter, that I...
E-F-G-H-I."
"Yes. You're right. It's the letter "I" and it's
the word "I." Now look here. What did you say
you like?"
"I like cake." I moved Hannah's hand beneath the
words as she said them.
"Great. Good. Now the next line." I placed her
hand below the third line of printing.
"I... I like pie."
Excitement was catching in her voice as comprehension
crept in. The words were her words. The words on the
paper were the words she had spoken.
"And," she shouted, "I
love ice
cream!"
"Well, what do you know, hotshot. You read the
whole story."
"Do it again, teacher. Read. You read."
Hannah was so excited now she couldn't stand still. She
jumped up and down in little hops beside me as I read
the page again, underlining each word as I said it.
"Me. I. Me.... No. I read story now."
Over and over Hannah read her story, each time more
pleased, until finally I said, "We forgot
something. You wrote the story. It's your story. The
person who writes the story always signs it."
I handed Hannah the felt pen and slowly,
carefullyeashe lettered "Hannah" on the bottom of the
page. Then she turned to me.
"Hang up. Hang up story, teacher."
I taped Hannah's story to the front wall of
our classroom, beside Jamie's pictures and
Rufus and Brian's papers.
Now we had more of Hannah in our room
than just her name beneath her coat hook. Her story
hung on the wall with the others.
I used anything I could think of to keep
Hannahgoing during this first white-hot excitement of
learning. Best and Worst, the doll
family-repetitionof her words to show her that I heard
what she was saying and that I considered it vitally
importanteaimportant enough to write down. I
"wanted to give her all the feedback that I could,
good accurate feedback to show her, without sayingit,
that she was good and was getting even better, as a
yardstick with which to measure herself.
Hannah wrote story after story until finally there
was no more space on the walls of our room. She
loved each story better than the one before and walked
the floor reading them out loud to herself.
We wrote them all in the same manner as we had
the first one, and though the sentences grew a little longer
and the words somewhat more varied,
they were all essentially the same. They were all about
things that were important to Hannah, like colored
chalk, red and yellow marbles, our
housekeepingcorner, blocks, the doll family,
her own family.
From the stories, she copied individual
words onto index cards. She kept these cards in
bundles, bound with rubber bands, inside her cubby.
Everyday she laid her cards out on the floor and
practiced them. Later she brought them to me so that I
could hear her say them.
This type of reading now has the formal name
Language Experience. Whole volumes have been
written about it and the "word banks" (hannah's
index cards in a recipe box) that accompany it and
its effectiveness as a method of teaching
reading-It'sa good way to learn to read. It's
personal, exciting, and highly individualized and
always has been. From the beginning of our written
languagemen have been telling stories, writing them
down, and then reading and rereading them.
There are only a couple of things to check to make
sure this type of reading instruction works. First, the child
should be a visual rather than an auditory learner and
have good visual memory skills. Second, the word
bank should be checked against the Dolch sight words
(200 most commonwords) and then against graded
vocabulary lists, which can be made up from the
vocabulary in the back of any basal reading
series. Most of the words that come naturally from a child's
speech will be duplicated in these lists, but
it's helpful to have the lists to make sure that the child is
moving forward at a steadily increasing level of
difficulty. And last-the only thing that is really
important-it must be fun.
When there was no more room left on the walls, we
began to make books. We wrote Hannah's
storieson blank paper that I lined on one side,
punched with holes across the top, and put betweentwo
shirt cardboards. I laced the pages togetherwith yarn.
Hannah drew with crayons on the cardboard cover
and then drew on the blank side of the paper to make
a picture for the story beneath it. Hannah's books
pleased me almost as much as they did Hannah, and I
took them to the Director and to staff meetings.
I rejoiced in Hannah's talking even more than in the
reading or writing. Her speech was still limitedand she
stuttered slightly; in her eagerness, syntax
remained unfathomable. But if
grammaticalexpression was poor, style and content
were superb.
Happiness bubbled and surfaced at Best and Worst
and enchanted the boys as well as me.
"Best thing today Grandpa." Sparklers light
insideHannah's eyes and tiny firecrackers of
laughtergo off in her throat.
"What about Grandpa?"
"Grandpa live downstairs. Grandpa cross.
Make everybody mind. Make everybody do thing
he
want. Make Mama cook dinner every day five
o'clock. Make Mama shut windows, pull down
shades. Make Mama sit living room
downstairs till he go sleep. Make me stay
kitchen. Boss Mama. Boss Helen. Boss
me. Boss Carl, too."
Hannah stops and shakes her head.
"But Little Caesar no mind him." Her laughter
begins again. She's so pleased with something, she can't
contain it.
"Who's Little Caesar?" Rufus wants to know.
"Little Caesar Grandpa's dog. Grandpa scare
Little Caesar, too. Last night Little Caesar
fix Grandpa."
Hannah looks us over, making sure she has our
full attention before she whips out the climax of the
story.
"Caesar bark go out. Grandpa yell, not let
Caesarout, Caesar pee on Grandpa's light
cord. Light cord broken. Caesar pee.
Whoozz! Fuiei! Arf! Arf!
All fireworks. No lights. Mama say
Caesar he short-circuit Grandpa."
What a story! The boys even let Hannah run
over her allotted five minutes, they were so
enchantedwith her tale.
After we had finished Best and Worst, Hannah
got a pencil and drew the story. The two-family
house. Grandpa's living room, the broken light
cord, and a short, wiry-looking dog with one leg
raised. Then we wrote it down, another story for
her book. It was my favorite, but all her
stories were vivid and complete.
If there was buoyancy and Joy inside Hannah,
there was also seething rage. At least three or four
times a week Hannah's anger exploded in our
classroom, leaving desolation in its wake.
It was impossible to determine the cause of
Hannah's anger. There seemed to be no common
factor to what set the fuse or to the magnitude of
explosion. Sometimes it was as small a thing as a
crayon that broke under too much pressure.
Hannahwd try to put it back together; when this
failed, she would hurl it-and the remaining
crayons-acrossthe room. She grunted, tore
at her hair, and eventually went down
onto the floor on her hands and knees
to alternately rock and bang her head against the
floor.
Sometimes the anger was caused by more than a small
frustration. Sometimes one of the other children, particularly
one of Patty's girls, would steal her lunch,
ridicule her, or tease her beyond endurance.
Occasionally a volunteer aide from another
classroom (we had yet to be assigned an
aide, the Director commenting that we seemed to be
doing fine without one) or a parent, or another teacher
would ask her to do something beyond her capabilities.
Immediately Hannah would burst, and the party or play
would be destroyed.
It wasn't right and I knew it. It wasn't fair
to the other children or to Hannah herself, but I didn't
know how to control it.
Anger was no stranger to me. Fear and lonelinessand
anger were daily enemies. All the chil-
dren came locked within walls built of these
ingredients, and I'd learned to acknowledge and deal with
my own emotions as well as the children's.
It was the extent of Hannah's anger that was so
difficult-that and the self-destruction. When she began
to pound her head against the hard tile floor,
she did it with such intensity that it seemed as though she
wanted to crack it open and rid herself of the demons that
drove her.
I talked to the Director. I talked to the
psychiatrist and the psychologist. Their answers were the
same. "You seem to be on the right track, Mary.
Hannah's doing so well. You can't expect things
to happen too quickly."
But I wasn't on the right track and I knew it
deep in my bones. I was doing it wrong, and I
longed for someone to help us both.
When the anger struck I went to Hannah, wanting
to be near her, to protect her against the ravages of
her own rage. I held her from behind, pinioning her
arms so that she was unable to throw chairs or attack
me. As she slipped toward the floor I stayed with
her, trying to soften the driving head blows. But nothing
seemed to help. Although she was eating, talking and
reading, anger ruled her and poisoned our
classroom.
The boys retreated when Hannah's anger struck.
They were frightened and upset. They hated it when their own
families fought, and now to have this raging emotion in our
classroom almost every day was too much.
After a weekend of almost solid walking
(i walk when I need to think), I decided that
Hannah was manipulating me. Just as she had been
a tyrant in her home and in previous schools on
almost every issue, so she was now using rage in our
room and I was letting her get away with it
There was a gut feeling of truth to this, but I needed
more. What to do? Go back, think back to the beginning.
How did I first meet Hannah? What was my
approach? How did I decide to handle her?
The immediacy of our school is such that it's hard
to find time to remember. Days are filled with the sounds
of children and skyrockets of emotion and there is no time
for the slow, cool pause of reflection.
Coolness. Tranquillity.... That was it.
Reason. I needed to approach Hannah with
reason. Her intelligence: that was my first idea for
approach, deciding to reach Hannah through her
intelligence.
And instead I had been caught up in emotion. She
had trapped me in the heat and intensity of her
feelings, and my emotions had been aiding and abetting
her own.
Hannah had seduced me into joining her. My
support, my attention, had heightened the outbursts
rather than modulating them.
On Monday morning, after Best and Worst, I
said, "There isn't going to be any more yelling,
screaming, throwing, or whatever in this room. I
will give one warning to whoever is doing whateverit is that
I don't like, and then if he or she continues
I'll take away a privilege."
We spent another hour making up the lists of
privileges. Another project went undone.
Never mind, forget the Thanksgiving favors we were
goingto make.
The list-making was a long, cool, logical
process and it was just what we needed. First on the
blackboard, then on chart paper, we listed three
"privileges" for each child. Each list was different,
and all four children helped compile each list.
Hannah's was as follows:
HANNAH'S PRIVILEGES
1. Colored chalk
2. Housekeeping corner
3. Dessert
Simple things, but our lives were made up of
simple things. These were all things that Hannah
liked, but most of all she liked dessert. The new
plan was to work like this: If Hannah threw a book,
I was to say, "Hannah, pick it up.
Get back to work. This is a warning."
All the children felt very strongly about having a warning.
They readily accepted losing privileges for poor
behavior, but only if there was one clear warning first.
If, say, Hannah continued to throw things, I
was to say, "No colored chalk today, Hannah.
You've lost that privilege."
If she stopped, that was all. If she continued, she
was then to lose the privilege of playing in the
housekeeping corner, and if she still continued she would
lose her favorite, her beloved dessert.
There were many weaknesses to the plan. But at least we
had a course of action and we'd worked it out together. It
was to go into effect immediately.
Five minutes after we got up from the
discussioneaHannah grabbed first one record out of
Jamie's hands and then another and lost the
privilegeof colored chalk. Two minutes later
she lost the privilege of playing in the housekeeping
corner.this subdued her, though, and she sat
sullenlyon the stoop as the boys and I played
ball in the driveway before lunch.
The rest of the day was uneventful and it seemed we were
on the right track. No longer was I drawn
into Hannah's anger; no longer did I
feed it, reward it. Instead, I dealt with it
coolly, from across the room.
The rest of the week worked as well. Almost everyday,
or at least every other day, Hannah lost one or
two privileges. Jamie once lost two,
Rufus one, Brian none at all. Instead,
Brian drew his telethon on the blackboard, where
he restored as prizes all the privileges that were
lost.
On Friday, Hannah worked well for the first hour and
then stormed through the second. There went the colored
chalk, followed by the house-
keeping corner. I had to concentrate to keep my
voice cool as she gouged her pencil into Jamie's
clay letters that had taken him half an hour to make,
and I said, "Okay, Hannah. You just blew
dessert."
At first she didn't believe I meant it, but when
everyone was served except her, she threw a
tantrumon the floor beside the lunch table and then
another in the classroom after lunch. There was still no
dessert, however.
Little by little, it dawned on Hannah that I meant
what I said. There was no longer any way to draw the
rest of us into her passion, to control and
manipulate us with her rage. Now anger made her
the loser.
Day after day Hannah blew dessert, and finally she
wept. But softly. The storms of rage subsided
into small rivers of tears.
Hannah's mother arrived unexpectedly after school
one day, and I rose in surprise to greet her.
Although we had had several conferences and many, many phone
calls, she had never come in unannounced, of her own
volition, before.
Now she stood in the doorway, surveying the empty
classroom, looking at me as I walked toward
her. I wanted to show her Hannah's
storieseapictures, books. But she clearly had
no time for anything but what was on her mind.
"What," she demanded, no longer hesitant, no
longer shy, "what is this blue dessert?"
"Well-was I began.
Mrs. Rosnic was obviously agitated and she
interrupted."...What you doing? All afternoon, all
night, she howl about blue dessert, blue
dessert, till it drive us all crazy. I
give her blueberry pie. I try grape soda.
But she yell, "Nol Nol Blue dessert.
Blue dessert." I tell
you-whatever-give to her. Here. I pay for it.
Whatever. Just give to her the blue dessert so she
stop the noise and we got peace."
"Okay," I said. "Okay, come on in, Mrs.
Rosnic. I'll show you what it is."
Her broad, kind face creased in puzzlement as
I got Hannah's chart of privileges down from
the wall.
"Come on in," I said. "Please. This blue
dessert is going to take a while."
II
The first snow of the year fell at night, so softly,
so quietly, that I didn't even know that it had
snowed until I woke the next morning. By then the
sun was out making fractured rainbow patternsof the
icy surface and the world was wrapped in glitter white
like a big Christmas present begging to be opened.
School was a mass of confusion. Buses were late
or nonexistent. The phone rang constantly in the
Director's office. Parents, children, bus
drivers milled around as I pushed through searching for
Henry, our janitor, gardener, and friend. I needed
to find the mission boxes.
The ladies of the church brought their families'
worn-out clothing for the "mission boxes," and
here, with the help of Henry, I stole clothes for the children
whenever I needed them.
During the winter while the flowers lay dormantunder
snow or frozen ground. Henry hibernatedin a
corner of the furnace room. He worked a little during
the middle of the day, making 115
small repairs around the church or polishing the
wooden cabinets in the kitchen. But mornings and
afternoons he spent reading or dozing, dry and warm in
an old chair near the furnace.
Sometimes I took my morning coffee and sat with
him, studying the pictures that he pointed out in his
seed catalogs or telling him about the children. Now I
called to
him
impatiently. "Hey, Henry, where did you put the
mission boxes? I'm going to need some things."
The children had warm clothes of their own, but their parents
often forgot boots or gloves or an extra
sweater in the turmoil of getting ready for school.
Besides, they had no way of knowing that I'd take the
children outside in the snow.
Henry led me upstairs to rows of cartons stacked
on the back of the stage behind dark velvet curtains.
They were full to the brim and we sorted through
them, picking out scarves, warm sweaters, mittens.
"One more hat and I'm all set. Henry. Oh,
goodi"
Henry held up a small red knit cap with a
missing tassel. "Be good for the boy. The little
fellow."
"Jamie. Yes. You've got a good eye.
Henry. It should be just right. Thanks for helping me.
Does it bother you, my taking these clothes from church
boxes?"
Henry continued to poke in the boxes. "They say
they're for the "needy." They never said which needy."
As he was talking I spotted a navy blue
sailor
dress in one of the boxes. I nudged it a little,
considering. Would it fit Hannah? Would it be a good
idea to find her a dress? Would it matter if it was
secondhand?
The dress had a square white collar and a red j
tie. There were gold stars in each corner of the
collar. The stars made up my mind. "Can I
take the sailor dress, too?" I asked. He
lifted it out of the box. It was wrinkled, with a small
tear on the sleeve, but the material itself was soft and
clean. Henry smoothed it out with his rough,
gnarled hands. Working with flowers is not so different from
working with children. "For the girl," he said.
"Yes. I think it'll fit. I can mend it tonight."
I put the dress in a paper bag on the closet
shelf of our room. I gave the caps and mittens
and scarves to the children, and we were dressed and ready and
off to the graveyard across the street before it was time for
Circle. The cemetery was quiet and protected and
made a perfect play yard for the children.
The snow was only a few inches deep, but it changed
the world. Trees were intricate ice sculptures,
glinting in the sun. The pebble paths and brown grass
were gone. It was a monochromatic scene, white and
hushed.
At first the children were cautious, walking carefully,
looking at each separate footprint they made,
silent in a silent world. But I didn't want them
moving with such prudence. I bent and
scooped up a loose handful of snow, packed it
togetherlightly, and tossed it over the top of Brown's
mausoleum, then another over the John-son
monument, one more above the Ewing tombstone.
The children watched in awe, but snow is meant for fun and
within minutes they forgot to be careful and began making
their own snowballs, tossing them in the air,
bombarding each other, laughing, running, hiding behind
tombstones, pushing, tumbling in the snow with each
other.
I stood still watching them. There is nothing in the world like
play. If children can learn to play, they can learn to do
almost anything.
The skirt of Hannah's long dress got wet and
soggy and dirty and I tied it up, remembering with
pleasure the sailor dress on the top shelf of the
closet.
My sewing skills are primitive, but that night
I found some navy blue thread and darned the tear,
opened the seams and let out about two inches, and then
rinsed out the dress and blocked it on a towel in the
bathroom. In the morning befI left for school,
I pressed the dress and folded it in tissue
paper and put it back inside the paper bag.
I waited all morning looking for the right momenteab it
never came. Finally, after lunch, the boys asked if
they could ride their bikes in the driveway where the
snow had already melted and disappeared.
Hannah had never learned to ride a bike. When
she tried, her long dress tangled in the wheel
chains, making it impossible. So now she stayed
inside with me.
I left the outside door open so I could hear the
boys, but my eyes were on Hannah as I lifted
down the paper bag and laid the dress out on a
table. "This is for you," I said to her. "A dress
that's shorter, so that it will be easier for you to run and you
can learn to ride without getting all tangled up."
Hannah came and touched the dress, not lifting it from
the table, just poking it here and there. Then, looking at
me for permission, she picked it up and took it into the
closet, where she inspected all new things. After a
few minutes, she came back and put the dress in
my hands. "No good," she said gravely. "I too
big. Too fat."
"Maybe," I said. "But I don't think so.
Here, let's try."
I moved as gently, as slowly as I could, knowinghow
difficult it would be for her to take off the long
housedress in which she even slept. It must by now be
like a second skin. Without it she would be uncovered,
bare and vulnerable.
Hannah stood absolutely still as I unbuttoned
her dress until it was entirely open and then eased
it off her shoulders, over one arm, over the other.
She was naked now except for cotton underpantsthat
hung on her hips below her bulging
middle. A scar, three inches long, ran across her
stomach.
Suddenly Hannah began to talk, words tumblingout
faster than ever before. She pointed to the scar. "See.
That from operation. That what make me funny. Had
operation when I baby. They give me too much
sleep stuff. Sleep stuff make me retard.
Carl say that why I have to go to retard school."
Tears stood in her eyes, but she continued. "Carl
say that every morning, but Mama say no. She say
I lucky be alive." Hannah gave a long
sigh, nodding her head as though to convince us both.
"Better than dead."
I gathered her up, forgetting to be careful,
caringonly about her fears and the draft from the outside
door.
"Listen, lovey," I said. "You're no retard.
Carl's the one that's dumb if he can't see that.
Look how you're reading, making your own books.
You've always been smart, never dumb. You just
haven't been bothering to learn. Come on now, try
your dress on."
She put it over her head and I pulled it down
over her middle. (it did stick a little and I was
glad I'd let out the seams.)
"Ah," I said. "You're beautiful. You are
absolutelybeautiful. Come see."
I led her to the long mirror I'd brought from home
and watched as she smoothed the soft wool down across
her front. Her exposed legs were round and
pretty. Her blue eyes seemed even bluer.
"Nice," she said. "It really nice, teacher."
"All right, now. Let's go show off. Let's show
the Director and the boys."
But Hannah had her own ideas. "Now go bike
riding."
I got our heavy jackets from the closet and then
we went down to the Director's office, which among
other things served as a garage for our donatedbikes
during the winter.
"Look at you, Hannah! A regular fashion
plate," the Director said, and, to me, "Where'd it
come from?"
I pointed upward, meaning the church.
The Director assumed more, or pretended she
did, and raised her eyebrows. "... in mysterious
ways His wonders to perform...."
Hannah tugged impatiently at my arm.
"Bike. Teach bike riding now."
"Ah, you. Okay. Here we go," and I
began to disentangle a small two-wheeler equipped
with training wheels.
"No," Hannah said. "Not that. That baby bike."
She pointed to the full-sized red bike I usually
rode. "That one. I ride that one. I big. I
smart. You say I smart. I not ride retard
bike."
I helped her on and then ran beside the bike holding
onto the handlebars while she pedaled, pedaled with her
lovely, beautiful, free bare legs.
Henry and Zoe and the Director came and stood in
the driveway and cheered as we passed them, and the
boys, hearing the noise, circled
back to us shouting, "Hey, Hannah!
Look
at Hannah!"'*
Within another week Hannah was riding by herself, and the
boys formed a vanguard for her as she rode up and
down the driveway.
The Board of Directors of the school gave a
cocktail party for the staff the second Saturday of
December. I was less than eager to go, but when I
told the Director that I thought I'd skip it,
she frowned slightly and said, "It's important that
you go, Mary."
This same Board of Directors had spearheaded the
fund drive for the new school. They had done a
magnificent job rounding up wealthy friends and getting
in touch with influential people in foundations and had
contributed generously themselves. The money was in now, the
architect's drawings complete; ground would be broken
in another few months. The Director's dream,
a school of her own, was close to reality. No more
borrowed church buildings or ancient houses. She
would have a new building designed to her
specifications,-plete with kitchen and swimming
pool, built particularly for emotionally disturbed
children. No wonder she wanted us all to be as
supportive and appreciative of the Board as
possible.
But it was more difficult for me than for some of the other
teachers. The Huntingtons" house, 123
where the cocktail party would be held, was a familiar
one to me. Jean Huntington was an old friend. In
fact, it was she who had called me years before, when
I was placement chairman for the Junior League,
to suggest I look into the school for volunteer
placement jobs for the members.larry and I had gone
to their house many times for dinner, as they had come to ours.
I knew that our divorce had been
difficult for her to understand.i knew, too, that the
fact that I taught full time at the school and
lived alone (except when Elizabeth and Rick were
home from collegeggeain a small apartment, seemed
even more strange, more peculiar to her.
I had tried to explain it once, telling her how the
children were all-absorbing to me, how their hurt and rage
and fear seemed magnified versions of what I felt
in all of us, how the desire to understandand do something about
it drove me, makingeach day exciting and worthwhile,
and, finallyeahow working at the school had changed me,
had somehow stripped off my outer layers so I no
longer fitted easily into her world.
I had thought Jean would understand-she was, after all,
our Board Chairman and had worked hard for the school
for many years-but she'd looked at me
uncomprehendingly and said as gently as she could that
yes, of course, she understoodeab that it wasn't necessary
for me to spend my whole life at it.
I had nodded, acknowledging her. There seemed to be
no way to say it, but I knew that it was
necessary, more than necessary. It was the only way that I could
live, at least for now. I had lost too much time.
I was too far behind. I needed to understand, to learn,
to do.
The party was in full swing when I arrived. Jim
Huntington greeted me at the door, saying,
"Mary, how good to see you! You look marvelous.
Come in."
Jean met me as I crossed the broad foyer and
kissed me on the cheek. "How good of you to come.
Put your coat in our bedroom. You know where it
is."
"Yes," I said. "Of course. Thank you."
I could feel formality wrapping around me, covering
me like plastic wrap on leftover roast. I
shook my head. I had forgotten how it was, how
I was.
Patty, the teacher next door to me at school, was
just coming out of the master bedroom, lookingclean and
breezy and young in a peasant blouse and long
skirt. "Boy, am I glad to see you! Something
about this much class makes me nervous.how about
getting out of here as soon as we can and going back
to my place for a beer and some leftover stew?"
"Sounds good," I said. But I resolved to do
betterwhile I was here at the party. After all, this was
a game I'd once played with ease.
Light and easy. Move and smile. Accept the
drink and linger just long enough with this group.
Look up. Catch an eye. Let that group move
closer. Scan the room. Someone's alone. Move
to them. Start a new group. Ah, now the talk's
movingwell here. Get a cigarette, accept the
light. Inquireab the children (not too deeply).
Keep it general. Underline the positive. Bright and
quick. A little laughter, not too much. Accept a
refill. Move to the right. Bend to the left.
I looked around the large, beautifully
proportionedroom: the Oriental rugs, the fine
old mahoganyand cherry pieces, and the
attractive, intelligent faces, all burnished
by the fire that burned brightly in the wide
fireplace. My thoughts flickered like the fire.
I wished I'd known these people better when I had had
the chance. I wish I'd said. Talk to me about what
is important to you. Tell me your dreams, your
hopes, your sorrows. Maybe they're the same as
mine, or, if not, perhaps we can at least understand each
other. Why did I only say, "You look great
tonight. I love that color with your tan," or,
"I'll try six spades," or, "How about being
program chairman for the Cotillion?"
The Director, suddenly beside me, said,
"Regrets?"
I turned to her, startled, but I was pleased that she
looked exactly as she always did, plain and
competent.
"No, not really. None at all about the school.
Thank you again for letting me teach there, for hiring
me... dis**
"No business talk tonight," Jean Huntington said,
moving between us. "Have you been in to
see the tree yet? We put it up early, Just for the
party. It's in the library. Why don't you bring the
children over from school sometime to see it?"
"Thank you," I said, thinking about the childrenearemembering
our tree at school last year, the paper chains, the
popcorn strings. I was suddenlyhomesick.
Patty must have sensed it. She appeared at my
side from across the room. "Getting hungry?" she
asked, as a maid passed a silver tray of
canapes.
"How'd you know?" I answered. "I'll get my
coat."
Jean followed me upstairs. What was it? Was there
something she wanted to tell me? She stood quietly
watching as I extracted my coat from the pile on
the bed. Then she asked, "Are you still taking courses?
The education courses?"
"Yes, three nights a week over at the state
college."
"Oh. Well, then, you've almost got
certification."
"I'm afraid not," I said. "For some reason,
they're incredibly stingy with undergraduate credits,
only two credits for three hours. They did
give me partial credit for my two years at
Wel- lesley, even though that was a long time ago.
You were wise to finish college, Jean."
I smiled at her, remembering how long we'd known
each other.
"Anyway, I need a hundred and twenty credits
to graduate and I have sixty-eight so far. Even
goingthree nights a week, I can only manage
to get
twelve a year, plus summer credits if I
don't open the cabin for Liz and Rick. It's
going to take a while."
Jean frowned. "Well, take as many as you can...."
A covey of women entered the room and there was no more
time to talk. I said thank you and good-bye to Jean and
then hugged her. "Come see me when you can."
"I will," she promised. Something unsaid still hung in
the air, but four other people were
waitingimpatiently to speak to her. I buttoned my
coat and headed downstairs.
I sat at the table in Patty's kitchen watching
her stir the stew, add more basil, and sip her beer.
"Do you like lamb stew?" she asked. I had my
shoes off, my feet on another chair, and a beer of
my own.
"Mm-hmm. Especially the second day. More
flavor."
"Good. Me too. Listen, Mary, is it true you
really lived in a house like that?"
"Sort of," I said, not wanting to talk about it, not
wanting our friendship disturbed by somethingthat had been
over long ago.
"Doesn't seem possible," she said, pushing up the
sleeve of her peasant blouse, amazement
coloringher voice.
"Yes-well, our house wasn't quite that large."
"No," she said. "I don't mean that. Not the
house. Not the money. It's Just that you don't seem
old enough to live that way."
With her quick intuitive clear vision, Patty had
seen through the money, through the elegance, to what was
missing-vitality, excitement She had sensed the
encroachment of boredom.
I tipped my beer bottle toward her. "Thank
you, Patty."
The kitchen door opened and Ted came in carrying
two more six-packs. He was in his late twenties,
medium height, medium build, brown hair,
eyes bright behind steel-rimmed glasses. Patty and
Ted lived together, saying someday, maybe someday, they
might get married, but probably not; they didn't
really believe in marriage. Yet it seemed to me
they lived together with more love and commitment than most
married couples I'd known.
Ted squeezed Patty's bottom as he went by the
stove and sat down at the table inspecting me.
"Fancy duds. How was the party?"
"Okay. Fine. Not as good as here, though."
I realized as I said it that it was true. I loved
the warmth and friendliness of their small kitchen. Ted was
going to journalism school at Columbia and
drove a cab between classes to earn money. He was
warm, intelligent, and suddenly, sharply, I
missed being part of a couple, part of something bigger than
Just one.
Patty, immediately sensitive to a mood, paused as
she put the plates down on the table. "Listen, when
are we going to make this a foursome? This
assistant professor over at college stopped
by the other night. ..."
"No, you don't!" I said. "No matchmaking. This
is a single's part, at least for now."
They both nodded, accepting, not pushing me. I tried
to explain a little more.
"As you two would say, I gotta get my own act
together first."
"Of course we're going to see Santa Claus,"
I said. "Whoever heard of a Christmas without
visitingSanta Claus?"
Friday was trip day, and our last trip before
vacationwas going to be a visit to Santa Claus.
I had scouted the various stores and the Altman's
Santa suited me best, a gentle giant of a
kid, home from college, earning some extra money.
I had watched him through the late afternoon and then talked
to him on his supper break, explainingab our school,
our kids, wanting him to understand that they should be treated
like other children, but that they might startle easily or
react differently. ?"
"Can you bring "em in around twelve o'clock?" he
asked. "Store's pretty empty then, or at
least my floor is. I guess the mothers take the
kids home for lunch."
His red hat, white beard, and wig were stashed on a
chair beside him, his own blond hair tied back in a
ponytail so that it could be stuffed up beneath the Santa
Claus hat. He had taken his hamburger out of the
bun and was cutting it up and eating it with a fork. 131
"A nose like a cherry is one hell of 'an
inconvenienceeaI wanta tell you."
"You do fine," I said. "I'll bring the kids in
on Friday around noon. There'll be eight children, my
class and another. I haven't any idea what
they'll ask for for Christmas, but whatever it is,
act like it's okay. Don't give them any big
reaction."
"Had a kid today, asked for a daddy. His parents had
just gotten divorced."
"Mm. Well, I don't know what these kids will
say. They may not want to sit on your lap, and
that's okay too. It takes a little longer sometimes for
them to get used to being touched."
"Hey," he said. "That doesn't sound like a bad
place to go to school."
We left at ten, taking two cars. Patty had
a stationwagon, a volunteer, and her four kids.
I had my old convertible and my four. "Meet you in
the parking lot," I called to Patty as
we pulled onto the highway.
Altman's was part of a large suburban shopping
center approximately five miles from school.
The lot was crowded with hundreds of cars of all
descriptions. We tend to overbuy in suburbia
to make up for something, I'm not quite sure what.
I wedged my car in beside someone who'd parked crooked
and then helped the kids squeeze out through the narrow
space of the half-open door. I located Patty
and her group and we headed for our first stop, a toy
store. I loved to
take the kids here, and they loved to go. Their eyes
grew round at the sight of so many toys. They would have
stood for hours, had there been time, just watching the
electric train run through the make-believe
village. This time Rufus and Brian actually
took turns holding the train control by themselves-pushing
the button that moved the train forward and backward,
through tunnels and over bridges.
I watched from in front of the doll counter with Jamie
and Hannah. "May I help you?" asked the
clerk. "Oh, sorry," I said. "I was Just
watching those two boys by the train. Aren't they
attractive?"
The young woman peered at Brian and
Rufus. "Look Just like any other kids to me.
Sorry. They belong to you?"
"Well take two of those doll pajama sets,"
I said to reward her. Just like any other kids! I
could have kissed her ordinary face.
Jamie reached for a stuffed kitten, holding it to his
neck, cradling it, murmuring unintelligible words.
Hannah and I surveyed the rows of dolls, I
alwayslooked for the brown-eyed Shirley Temple
doll of my childhood. I remember trying hard
not to show it was my favorite, somehow sure that this was
unfair to old stuffed Rosemary and Nancy Lynn
with the china head. Dolls had been a large part of my
early life, but it was different for Hannah.
Impatiently, she tugged me toward the cage of
gerbils, past them to the hamsters, until we were at
the cage of white mice.
"We got mices," she said. "We got lots
mices home. Nice."
Mice. Rats. Bugs. These were Hannah's
playmates.
"Got cat too. Cougar."
"Who?"
"Cougar. Big cat."
"Oh. I see. Cougar. And then Little
Caesar."
"He Grandpa's dog. Not mine. Cougar Carl's.
Not mine. But mices. They not belong anybody.
They mine."
I think, I always think, my innocence is gone, that
children will no longer wrench my heart-and every day I find
I'm wrong.
The crowd in the store was thinning out. Eleven
forty-five. I signaled Patty and the volunteerand
we rounded up the kids and headed for Altman's and
Santa Claus. Down the red-carpeted
promenade, past the shimmering fountains into the main
floor of Altman's. Tinsel, red velvet
ribboneared gift boxes tied with gold, Christmas
trees of all sizes.
"Keep going," I said to Patty. "Just keep the
kids moving till we get up to the fifth floor."
We headed for the elevator, but it was jammed. There was
no way we could all get on and I didn't want
the kids to get separated. I headed back to the
escalators.
Patty stepped on the escalator holding two
girls, Wanda and Barbara Lasky, by the hand.
Her volunteer followed with the other two girls. I
nudged Brian and Rufus forward. "Come
on, guys. You're old hands at this. Let's go."
I brought up the rear with Hannah and Jamie just in
front of me.
Jamie turned and buried his head against my stomach.
"Turn around, Jamie. Keep your hand on the
rail. That's good. I'm right here behind you." I kept
one hand on his shoulder.
Santa Claus had been right; his section of the fifth
floor was almost deserted. Ordinarily it was the
home-decorating department, but evidently people were doing
their own decorating during Christmas, and the clerks
stood silently or sat in pairs talking to each
other. The boys" department on the far side of the
floor still seemed to have a good crowd, but Santa's
spot was quiet. He sat in a wide chair on
an elevated platform, talking to a tiny
dark-haired girl. Only two or three children
waited behind the velvet rope for their turn to speak.
We took our place in line, Rufus and Brian
hurryingto be first. I stayed near them, Hannah and
Jamie on either side of me. Patty's contingent was
right behind us.
Rufus was very nervous when it was time for his turn, but
he climbed up the three steps to the platform. He
wasn't going to sit on any lap, though.
He surveyed Santa through his hornrimmedglasses
from the edge of the platform.
"What's your name, sonny?"
"It's not sonny."
his
Sorry."
My father says there isn't any Santa Claus,
so I don't believe in you. I'm Jewish
anyway, and we don't believe in Christmas.
We have Hanukkah;
we have candles and twelve days and I don't
believein Santa Claus."
Poor Santa. He was a little taken aback, but
he held his own. He handed Rufus a balloon
full of paper snowflakes and said, "Listen,
fella. Don't worry about it. Lots of people
don't believe in anything at all any more, much
less Christmas. Happy holiday. Who's
next? Okay. Come on up here, fella. What's
your name?"
Brian's hands were beating a rapid tattoo against his
sides. "Brian," he said. "Brian
O':-nell ... rat-a-tat ... boom boom
ba ... our next contestant will be ... what's your
name?"
When Brian was scared or nervous, hundreds of
thoughts and sentences crowded through his head and he couldn't
keep them all inside, although he tried, cutting them
off in midsentence, trying to hold to one line of thought.
"Eh? What'd you say? Er-my name? Er, my name
is Santa Claus. Heh-heh."
Santa was getting a little nervous himself and he glanced
down at me for support. I signaled
A-okay. His wasn't an easy job.
Brian ripped off three commercials and then
finallyasked for an Eldorado, a wardrobe
designed exclusively by Bill Blass, and a
week's vacation at a Club Mediterranee.
"Oh, boy," said Santa Claus, looking at
me.
"You didn't tell me, lady. You didn't half
tell me. How many more we got?"
"Six," I said.
"Six? Kee-rist! Excuse me-sweet Jesus
of Bethlehem.okay, lady, let's go. Let's
get "em up here to see ol" jolly Santa."
Barbara Lasky crowded by and massaged his face and
beard, saying, "Look what you did to your hair.
Oh-h-h, look what you did to your hair." She
didn't ask for anything.
Tina sat on his lap and promised to be a good, good
girl all year and not take her clothes off on the
bus and then requested a new neon sign to play with
Vacuum Cleaner. Wanda Gomez was the best of
all and asked for a new doll and a necklace just like
her teacher's, and she didn't bite her arm at
all. Beautiful Jane refused to go up on the
platform, laughing silently beside the volunteer.
"Only two more now," I said encouragingly.
Hannah went up slowly, standing right in front of
Santa Claus.
"Got list," she said.
"Got lost?" asked Santa hopefully.
"No," said Hannah clearly. "List.
Christmas list. Read now. Okay, Santa
Claus?"
"Yeah, sure. You bet. Anything you say,
sweetheart.go ahead."
Hannah, standing straight before him in her blue
sailor dress, took a crumpled piece of
paper out of her pocket and read, "Christmas List
for
Santa Claus, by Hannah. New
stove-Mama. Gun --CarLike New
lamp-Grandpa. Ball-Baby Helen.
Cheese-Mices."
"Okay, everybody. Hold it Just where you are." A
photographer had suddenly materialized out of
nowhere. "We'll get a lovely picture for your
folks, little girl. You'll treasure it forever," the
man said, looking at me.
"No," I said. "Don't do that!" But before I could
stop him he held up a camera: flash-click!
Chaos.
Hannah burst into tears and Jamie leaped like a
thunderbolt, away under the red velvet rope and across
the store. I was after him immediately, walking casually but
fast, out through the decoratingdepartment, on by the
escalator over to the other side of the store, into the
boys' department
Jamie was wearing his bright blue Jacket with white
lettering and his blue baseball cap, so I could pick
him out easily. There weren't many kids his size in
the store anyway, school was still in session, and the ones
that were there sure weren't wearing baseball caps in
midwinter.
Jamie stopped by the glove counter and looked back
to see what was happening. I made a quick move behind
a Christmas tree, but either it was too small or
I was too slow. Anyway, he spotted
me. To his delight.
The clerk at the glove counter said, "Can I help
you, little boy?"
Jamie ducked and headed away from
the
LOVEY
139 counter. I followed as closely and
discreetly as I could. I couldn't leave him here
alone, but I knew Jamie from his early runaway
days at the school and I also knew I couldn't
chase him. There is nothing a runaway likes more
than having someonechase him. Then he's the one in
control.
Casually I walked among the lady shoppers,
turning a glove, touching a scarf. I was getting a
little closer now. Maybe everything would be all right.
I stopped by the hat table, a large wooden
rectangle set up in the middle of the floor. I
turned a Norwegian knit cap over and then
glanced up. Jamie was directly opposite me
on the other side.
"Hey there, Jamie," I mouthed more than spoke and
took one step to my left.
Jamie immediately took one step to his left as
well, keeping the same exact distance between
us. His eyes were dazed. I wasn't at all sure
he recognizedme. I took four more small quick
steps, which brought me around the corner of my side to the
end of the table.
Jamie took four equally quick steps, which brought him
to his end of the table. We were exactlyopposite
each other again, and we were beginningto have a lot of
clear space in which to move. The shoppers,
well-dressed suburbanite mothers and matrons, were
drawing back, moving away. They sensed something was
going on and paused to observe.
Jamie and I were alone at the table-except for
perhaps thirty or forty women who lined the sidelines
two feet away. I moved. He moved.
"Hullo, Jamie. Hey there, now."
No answer. His eyes were the bright staring eyes of a
trapped animal.
For one second I thought. What am I doing here in
this crazy silent ballet in front of these women?
How come I'm not just there watching too?
In that one second, a man dressed in a dark
blue suit managed to get beside me. "Do you have a
little problem?" he inquired unctuously.
"No, I have a little boy," I replied
furiously. "Go away." I knew
Jamie would get more upset if there was a stranger
there.
"I'm sorry, madam. What goes on in
this
department is my responsibility. I cannot go
away. I'm the department manager. What's the
matter with your little boy? Is he tired and hungry?
We have lots of tired, hungry children these days.
Mothers should know better. Ha-ha. Take them home
earlier."
I thought I might hit him, but I needn't have
bothered. Jamie thought of it first.
A fur-lined hat sailed across the table and struck the
department manager on the arm. A gasp went up from
the watching ladies.
"Oh, my, now, young fellow. You shouldn't have done
that. Well, madam, I'm sorry, but I'm just
going to have to step in and take charge...."
"I wouldn't do that," I began, but the manager
was in full tilt now, chasing Jamie around the table.
Jamie kept the same distance between them with no trouble
at all, chucking hats all the time he moved.
"Stop that now." Anger and impatience mounted in the
manager's voice. "Just you stop that, you bad boy."
I had to do something. The store was a mess,
the table a heap of confusion; hats were all over the
floor. Jamie was capable of much more. I had seen
him sink his teeth deep into a teacher's arm two
years before.
The manager turned to the crowd. "All right," he
whined angrily. "Call the guards. Get them up
here right away."
I wasn't sure what I was doing, but I had to do
something and it wasn't going to be at the hat table.
Jamie had already staked out that territory.
I walked as slowly as I could toward the
escalator. I took long, slow, loud,
definite steps. I never looked back. Finally
I said, low but clear, with absolute certainty,
"Lunchtime, Jamie. Let's get back
to school."
I kept walking. I didn't turn my head. I
reached the top of the escalator and I stopped. There
was nowhere else to go. I could see Patty and the
volunteer with the other children at the bottom. Hannah
was in the front of the group, peering worriedly up the
moving steps. The store was completely silent. I
stood still, thinking once again, What am I doing here?
Who do I think I am?
Then I felt a small hand touch my right
hand. small and hot and wet. I looked down and there
was Jamie, standing quiet, standing close, his
hand in mine.
"Hey there, Jamie," I said and I knew what
I w
as
doing there. I knew who I was.
I finished my last exam at eight o'clock the night
of December twenty-third, picked up the
Christmas turkey and an extra box of lights
for the tree, and made it home just ten minutes
befElizabeth and Rick arrived. They were full of
news of their colleges, interested in my education
courses, and we talked almost nonstop for two days.
The day after Christmas we flew to Florida, the
plane fare my major Christmas present to them.
We stayed with good, longtime friends. The weather was warm
and full of sunshine and the rest of the days and nights
blurred together and were over far too soon.
Elizabeth and Rick flew directly back
to school from Florida. I arrived home late the
night of Januaryfirst and tumbled into bed without
bothering to unpack or do more than glance at the mail.
The alarm jangled me awake the next morning, just
in time for school. The luxury of vacation and
slow awakenings was over, but by the time I was in the car and
on my way to school, I was wide awake and eager
to see the kids again.
But later on I wasn't so sure. The morning had
been a disaster. The first day back after any
vaca-143
* his
caret @.
i his
if T
"comence
tion is usually difficult, but today had been even
worse than usual. Circle had been chaotic.
Patty's class had jabbered senselessly while
Hannah refusedto talk or sing at all.
Back in our room, at the end of Best and Worst,
Hannah burst into tears and told her story. No
Best. Only Worst
She had gotten cheese for her mice for
Christmas-Santaforgot. She had named
the
mice Wynken, Blynken, and Nod and made a
house for them from a box and scraps of cloth. But
Christmasnight Cougar had killed them. Carl had
deliberatelyput Cougar in Hannah's
room after she was asleep, and during the night Cougar
killed Wynken and Blynken and ate Nod, leaving
only his head.
No wonder Hannah was upset. It was too much.
She had tried to salvage some joy from her meager
life-having no friends, she had tried to make the
mice her companions and even these had been killed
by her brother's cat. Where was the sunshine now? Where
was Hannah's share? Who deals out life,
anyway? How come some people get such crummy cards
each time?
I rocked Hannah after we had finished Best and
Worst. This was no day for reading.
At lunch Patty said, "What did you think of the
letter from the Board?"
I put down my coffee cup. "What letter?"
"Nothing special. Just the form letter they enclosedin their
Christmas card. It had a little sketch of the new
school and a few paragraphs
describing the kitchen, the central swimming pool,
the staff of certified teachers, all made
possi2y state funding. I just wondered if it
affectedyou." Patty's tone was unconcerned.
"I don't know," I said. "I don't think so.
Nobody'ssd anything."
That afternoon things were almost as bad as in the morning, and every
teacher in the school, includingme, was eager for the day
to end.
Jamie, the last to leave, was just getting on his bus
when Zoe, our secretary, came in from the office.
"You've got a visitor. Want me to say you've
gone?"
"Who is it?"
"Mrs. Rosnic."
"Mrs. Rosnic? Hannah just left. What's
she doinghere? Who's going to take care of
Hannah?"
"Don't ask me. She was halfway to- your
room when I stopped her and took her back to the
office."
I followed Zoe out of my room.
Mrs. Rosnic stood by the office door looking
dumpy and pale and scared in her worn black
coat, turning the handle of her large black purse
nervously between her hands.
"Hello," I said, touching her arm. "Let's go
down to my room."
Zoe's intentions were good, I was anxious to get
home, but still it was essential for Mrs. Rosnic,
for all the parents, to have easy access to my
room. I rarely made what the Director
called "house vis-
its,"
those unexpected stops to the children's homes. Many
teachers did and the Director encouraged it, but I
had tried once and found a mother with a swollen lip and
bruised eye and a sinkful of dishes. She had
apologized, mumbling something about her husband having
tied one on the night before, and her embarrassment and
humiliation were so deep that she couldn't talk about her
child. The Director pointed out that I had learned quite
a bit, but to me it was prying and I wanted no part of
it. So I encouraged the parents to come to school without
making appointments. They all came often, and it was
important that they feel welcome during their
visits.
Now Mrs. Rosnic began to talk before we even
got back to the room, saying Grandpa was taking care
of the children, telling about Carl, Hannah, the mice, the
cat. Telling how Hannah had refused to wash or
change her clothes all vacation, throwing tantrums,
kicking at the thin walls, yelling, screaming, two
or three times a day.
The neighbors had complained to the police. Grandpa
wanted Hannah put away. Mrs.
Rosnic was at the end of her rope.
I walked around the room, trying to think, trying
to get perspective, to see it from Mrs.
Rosnic's point of view. Hannah's stories
hung on every wall I passed-she could read now, she
could write, she was willing to talk. I was so proud
of her. And yet, what good was this if she couldn't
live in her own home? What did any of it
matter if her behavior was so bad, so
uncontrolled, that it
drove her out of her house into an institution? While
Hannah had learned to control her behaviorin
school, she still used tantrums to get her own way
at home. Mrs. Rosnic and I had discussedthis
before, particularly during the days disof blue dessert,
but evidently I hadn't been specific enough.
I went back to Mrs. Rosnic. "Let's sit
down."
Mrs. Rosnic kept on talking. "What she
care about mice for? Plenty more where they come from."
On Mrs. Rosnic's block mice and poverty
were part of life. No one had mice for pets but
Hannah.everyone considered them problems and struggled
to cope with them. But no one had a child like Hannah.
Her tantrums, her screams and shouted
gibberish, were evidence to the neighbors that here was a
"queer kid," some kind of "loony"-a "retard."
This was what was unbearableto Mrs. Rosnic. This was
what was important to her.
"Now she say she no go to school. Never. She not
care what I say. This morning I yell and yell
at her, tell her hurry, bus almost here. Carl
laugh,. tell her she be late for Circle at
retard school. Hannah scream, hit him. Then
Grandpa come up, get her, hold her, and I get
dress on-and finally we get her on bus."
Who could blame Hannah, hurt and angry over the
loss of her cherished mice, lonely in the midst of
despair? Who could blame Grandpa and Mrs.
Rosnic, humiliated, ostracized by the neighbors
because of Hannah's behavior, longing for a few hours
of peace and quiet, willing to buy it at any cost?
How could you even blame Carl, taking out his own
anger on his sister? Never mind blame. What
counted was not losing Hannah. She was doing well in
school; she could do even better. But I needed more
time.
"Listen," I said to Mrs. Rosnic. "You're
going to have to let her yell for a couple of days.
Talk to your neighbors. Explain that it will
be hard for a day or two, but then it will be better."
"Yell? She already yell. What do you mean
yell?"
"I mean that right now Hannah gets whatevershe
wants, or doesn't want, by yelling and throwing a
tantrum. You and Grandpa hate to have her yell, so
you give in or else have a big scene and force her,
which pleases her almost as much. Hannah wants your
attention, needs it badly, but she shouldn't be getting
it by yelling."
"She yell, all right," Mrs. Rosnic said,
nodding, not seeming to comprehend what I was saying,
though she was listening closely. "What I do? What
you say for me to do when she yell?"
"Let her yell some more."
I could see dread and understanding beginning to come in Mrs.
Rosnic's eyes.
"For instance, when she yells about not coming to school,
don't pay any attention to her. If she misses
the bus, let her miss it."
There was silence in our room. Then Mrs. Ros-
nic said, "Let her stay home all day? Not
make her go to school? All day let her yell if
she want?"
"That's right. It won't hurt her. She
has to learn that yelling doesn't change anything."
Mrs. Rosnic was mute.
I could see her not wanting to relinquish those six
hours of relative peace when Hannah was away.
But she was a strong woman and I was counting on her
strength and the fact that she loved Hannah and that
underneath it all Hannah really did love school.
"Lay out Hannah's school clothes," I said.
"Wake her up forty-five minutes before the bus is
due. Tell her to get up, get washed, get
dressed. Then leave her alone and don't go back
no matter what, not if she stays in bed, not if she
screams her head off.
"Go on to the kitchen and make breakfast. Make
something that Hannah likes to eat and that you enjoy
making. But choose something easy and cheap, so that you can
throw it out if she doesn't eat it. When there's
fifteen minutes left before the bus comes, call
Hannah for breakfast.if she's ready, praise
her! Feed her! But if she isn't, don't go to her
room. Let her bus come and go. Throw out the
breakfast. Let her stay home.
"Hannah is eight years old, Mrs.
Rosnic. She should have been dressing herself, getting
ready for school, doing all these things on
her own for years now."
I knew I sounded tough, but I had to. It was
going to be hard for Mrs. Rosnic to stand up
to Hannah, but it was the only way that Hannah would
be able to remain at home, away from the institution.
I am no Skinnerian, thinking that people can be trained
to dance like pigeons for birdseed or a few M and
More's. It's a mechanical view that denies the
creative, loving soul of man-but still, we all
thrive on approval, and if we can't get the
approvaleawe'll settle for attention. A child like
Hannahcan become a tyrant, making the lives
around her miserable and her own life impossible. The
only thing to do when this happens is to get rid of the
bad behavior, gradually but surely.
Sometimes there's an even more vicious cycle. A
parent will vaguely realize that he's being
manipulated.he resolves not to pay attention; the
child then tunes up his bad behavior and screams
louder or does something even worse until his parent
decides that
this
is too much, he can't let
this
go on, so he no longer ignores and the child
again has the attention. As time goes on, the child's
behavior becomes increasingly worse and the parent
increasingly frustrated. The only way out of this double
bind is totally and completely to ignore the bad and
praise the tiniest good.
Mrs. Rosnic sighed and stood up. "Grandpa,
he won't like it."
"Hannah's going to like it even less," I said.
"Call me if I can help."
I read the letter from the Board when I got
home. Patty was right; that was what it said. The
Board was proud to announce the fall opening of the new
building, complete with ten classrooms, carpeting,
bathrooms adjacent to each classroom, a large,
fully equipped kitchen and lunchroom, a central
heated swimming pool-and a fully certifiedstaff.
Fully certified. It would be several years before I
had certification. I thought about it in the shower and during
dinner and before I fell asleep. All night long
I dreamed of swimming pools and mice and
certifications. Cougar ate Hannah by mistake,
leaving only her head, while I chased a
spider-legged, black, framed certificate down
a snowy road.
I took the Board's letter to school the
next morning and pointed to the words "fully
certified" as I asked the Director, "Does that
include me, do you think? Or will they give me
provisional certificationfor my experience and the
courses I'm taking?"
The Director was busy and vague. "It's hard
to tell what the Board means. Why they put so much
stock in those courses, I don't know. Well, I
suppose it's the state laws. I just don't know
what's going to happen. It's up to the Board....
"Mary, I'm due at a meeting in Milton. The
neighbors have signed a petition against the new
school. They say they're afraid to have "crazy
children'on their block. Even at this late date,
there's
a chance they can still stop us. I just don't have time
to talk to you now."
The phone rang. It was Mrs. Gomez: Wanda's
bus driver hadn't come yet, was over thirty
minutes late. Then Henry came in to say the
furnacewas out. I went on down to my
classroom as confused as when I'd arrived.
Hannah didn't come in at all that day. She was
absent the next day as well, with no word from Mrs.
Rosnic. I waited, or tried to wait,
reminding myself that teachers often forget how well mothersand
fathers know their children. Teachers forgetthe hours parents
spend holding, feeding, touching, playing, bathing, caring
for the child when he's sick, knowing sounds and smells and
intricacies that a teacher can never know.
By Thursday afternoon I wasn't able to think about anything
but Hannah. "If she's not in by tomorrow morning, I'm
going to have to call," I told the Director after
school.
"Do you want me to call now?" the Director
asked.
"No," I said. "Mrs. Rosnic has my
number at home, as well as this one. I'm sure
she'd call if something was wrong."
But would she? Who did I think I was, anyway,
telling her what to do? Hannah had survived for
eight years without my advice. Maybe I'd
made things worse instead of better.
Friday morning was raw and cold, and it seemed to me
that this had been the longest week
in history. I arrived early, so did the boys, but
none of us mentioned Hannah. Jamie started the
record player and with one foot in front of the other
began rocking back and forth, back and forth.
I went to divert him, and just then Hannah
walked in, and we all yelled together, "Hannah!
Hello!"
Hannah ignored us completely and went straight
to the closet. Oh, dear God, I thought. Please
not that again. Please let's not have to beginall over from the
coat closet.
But Hannah stayed there only a minute, Just long
enough to hang up her coat. From there she went
directly to her cubby and began taking
inventoryealaying the crayons, pencils, books on
the floor, ignoring us completely. The boys and I
watched, mesmerized.
Finally Brian couldn't stand it any longer and went and
squatted beside her in front of her cubby.
"Hey, Hannah, where you been? We missed ...
boom-boom ... we didn't know ... what
happenedto you?"
Hannah arranged her books neatly in the
cupboardeataking her time, choosing her minute,
makingit plain that she was her own woman. No
matter what had happened, Hannah was going to tell
it her way and make it stick.
At last she looked at Brian and then said
coolly and with great dignity, "Nothing happen. I just
decide take little extra vacation."
And that was all she ever said about those three
days.
Now, to my delight Mrs. Rosnic began to come
to the Wednesday mothers" groups. She, who had never
had time before, came to the meetings now. She, who
couldn't drive in traffic, drove now. She, who
had never been able to be separated from baby Helen,
left her without a qualm with the other younger brothers and
sisters in the nursery while she, Mrs. Rosnic,
no longer inarticulate, no longer shy, told how
she had trained Hannah to be ready on time each
day for the bus driver, told how she had outlasted
Hannah's tantrums. The other mothers listened,
impressed, and then asked questions, and Mrs. Rosnic
answered and told them how.
"Who knows what a play is?" I asked.
"Play is have fun," Hannah answered
immediately."...Play ball, like that."
"Okay. That's good. That's one meaning of play.
Anybody know another? Suppose I said we're
going to see a play? What would that mean?"
"Like on television," Brian said. "They have
plays on television ... interrupted by only four
commercials. Boom boom. "This original
screenplayis brought to you by Hallmark.""
"Yeah. Right. No commercials now, though."
"Is it a movie, Mary?" Rufus asked. "Like
somethingin New York? On my mother's birthday last
year they went to a play in New York."
"Yup. There are lots of plays in New York.
And it's like a movie, only better. The people are
real- just like us-walking around, talking, acting out a
story. And what do you think? We're going to go to a
play ourselves. You, and you, and you, and you. And me.
We're all going to see a play a week from today.
Not in New York, but right here-over at Wilson
Memorial School."
Every year the Children's Theater group of the 155
Junior League put on a play for children. It was
a high-quality production, representing many hours
of work and much talent. The Junior Leaguers made
up the costume committee, the scenery committee, the
program committee, and the publicitycommittee,
as well as the cast. They spent many long hours of
rehearsal directed by a professionaldirector
hired and brought out from New York. Rehearsals
ran from September through the fall and early winter;
then, from late January to March, they trouped the
play to a dozen elementary schools throughout the area,
bringing live theater to children without charge. This
year's play was
Pinocchio
and I had gotten permission for us to go see it at the
local school.
Each day after lunch I read the story of
Pinocchioto the children, so that they would be familiarwith that,
and Gepetto, the beautiful Blue Fairy,
Pinocchio and his nose that grew longer with each lie,
and Lampwick, the bad boy. I was sure the play
would be different from the book, but still I thought the children would
follow it better if they had a general idea of the
characters.
The Director and the kids" parents had both given
permission for the trip. The principal of Wilson
Memorial School was more difficult. I had
encountered the same kind of evasiveness before. We were
not what you would call a popular group. Other kinds
of schools, other groups of children, are welcome at
all sorts of places and on all kinds of tours.
But emotionally disturbed childrenare not welcome anywhere.
In the beginning
we could slip in and out without notice, but now as our
school became more well known in public as well as
professional circles and was highlighted in
newspaper articles, it was more difficult.
What were they so afraid of, I wondered? If the
worst should happen and one of the kids should blow his
cool, it wouldn't be the end of the world. However, there was
no way of convincing public officials of this, so
mainly I just agreed to whatever promises they
exacted and then dealt with problems as they came
along.
This principal had said the only empty seats for the
performance were in the front row. If he thought this would
scare us off, he was wrong. I agreed immediately, so
then he decided that actuallythe only available seats
were in the last row, but I allowed as how we'd stick
with the first row. Then he wanted to be sure we could
make ourvssmall enough so that the other children could see over
us. Absolutely. If he'd asked if we could
make ourselves invisible, I would have assuredhim of that
as well.
Actually, when we arrived there were plenty of empty
seats, as I expected. We sat front row
centereab there was a full empty row behind us plus more
at the sides.
We got there early; the stage curtain was still
closed. I sat between Jamie and Hannah, with
Rufus on one end and Brian on the other. They were
all quiet, awed by the va/s of the
auditorium-theroom was more than four times the size
of any at our school. I could feel Hannah's
arm trembling against my own. As the children marched in in
single file, Brian leaned across to ask if this was
what "regular" school was like.
Then the heavy draperies were pulled across the high
screened windows, the lights went out, and the curtain
went up.
It was marvelous. We all-old, young, teacher,
student, regular and emotionally disturbed-gasped together
to see Pinocchio there, looking just as he did in the
book, stiff and wooden with painted cheeks and a
pointed cap. And there was Gepetto, too, old and
fat in a leather apron, kind, doing everything for
Pinocchio, who obviously was a very naughty boy and
didn't appreciate Gepetto's kindness at
all.
I looked away from the stage at my four childreneaall
on the edges of their seats, leaning forwardeaforgetting
to make themselves small. And I didn't remind
them-they had been small long enough.
Now here came the Blue Fairy. She didn't have
blue hair as she did in the book, but she was
dressed in a short frothy blue tulle ballet
costume with a jeweled tiara and a sparkling
wand. She glittered and twirled, pirouetted and
performed her magic.
Beside me Hannah sighed. "Is beautiful."
When the play was over we cheered and clapped with the rest
of the children as the cast took its curtain calls, and then
sat silently as the principal belatedly welcomed
us.
On the way back to school, Rufus and Brian
chattered like magpies. How had Pinocchio turned
into a real boy? How had he made his nose grow?
I smiled, happy with the success of the trip.
"So you liked the play," I said.
"Yeah," Rufus answered. "Listen, Mary.
Listen, you kids. You know what? I bet we could
make a play. All you have to do is write down
words for people to say. I could do that, I bet. And get
some things to wear. You could do that, Mary. See, we
could do a play just like that Pinocchio-and have the other
kids at school come see it."
Brian loved the idea. "And we can have
commercials-was
Rufus said before I could, "Naah, Brian. We
don't need any dumb commercials. But see, I
can be Pinocchio. You can be Lampwick. Ah,
Gepetto-was
Hannah said quickly, "I be Gepetto."
"Yeah," Rufus said. "That'd be good. You're
sort of-was
But Gepetto was old and fat and homely. That's not
the way I wanted Hannah to see herf.i knew
who she had thought was beautiful.
"What about Jamie?" I asked. "He'd be good as
Gepetto."
But Rufus said, "Mary, Gepetto talks a
lot. He says more than anybody."
Rufus was right. That wouldn't work. I'd have to try
another tack.
"Well, listen then. Let Jamie be
Lampwick. Lampwick doesn't talk much."
"Well," said Rufus. "Maybe...."
"Will you make costumes, Mary?" Brian wanted
to know.
"We'll all help with the costumes. We can do it in
the afternoons." There went another science project, but
I didn't care. They could learn about magnets
next year.
Come on. Come on, I thought. Who's going to mention
the Blue Fairy? Hurry up, Rufus.
Brian, help him. Come on now. You volunteer
to be Ge-petto-let Hannah be the
Blue Fairy. Make it your idea.
"Well, all right," said slow, deliberate
Rufus. "But if Jamie's Lampwick, who's
gonna be the fairy? You need a girl for the
fairy...."
Brian's sweet, reedy voice piped up.
"Hannah. She's a girl. She can be the Blue
Fairy."
Good, Brian.
"Yeah, well, but she's ..." Rufus
hesitated, not wanting to be unkind. Our children were
rarely unkind to each other if they weren't angry.
"That'd be great," I confirmed. "What do you say,
lovey? Rufus will be Pinocchio and Jamie,
Lampwick; you let Brian be Gepetto and you be
the Blue Fairy."
Hannah sat absolutely still, looking straight
ahead. She closed her eyes as if to visualize
that dancing, shimmering, shining image of loveliness.
She opened her eyes again and still didn't speak. Then
finally she took a big breath. "Okay," she
said. "I let you be Gepetto, Bri-an. I be
Blue Fairy."
We wrote our play; it was twenty pages long and
I typed it up carefully and read it back
to the children. Then I typed out scripts for everybody,
but nobody except Brian could learn his part and they
got more mixed up trying to read them. So finallywe
threw the scripts away and concentrated on the
costumes and the scenery, and everyone said what came
into his head at the time.
We practiced every afternoon for two weeks and finally on
a Wednesday morning, the first week of February,
we were ready.
There was an unused room next to Patty's,
separatedfrom hers by a wooden folding door. It
was used, on occasion, by the church as a small
chapel. For our play, we pushed back the door and
Henry, gaunt, never smiling, but gentle,
carefulwith his hands, helped us put up the painted
cardboard for scenery and arrange the chairs for the rest
of the school.
The play opened with Brian as Gepetto
teachingRufus how to walk, helping him to move his
stiff wooden legs. Gepetto sold his coat
to buy Pinocchio a spelling book, so he could go
to school. Brian loved this part and kept patting his
leather apron and sneaking in commercials. On the way
to school Pinocchio met up with Lamp-
wick-Jamie rocked across the stage in
excitement, grabbed Pinocchio, and led him to the Land
of Pleasure without having to say a word.
Then Pinocchio told his first lie and then anotherand
another and his nose (an empty toilet paper
roll with a paper cone inside) grew longer and our
whole school clapped and cheered-and my kids got so
excited that they all ran off the stage and Henry had
to herd them back on. It was time for the Blue Fairy
to appear and help Pinocchio.
Hannah had stayed hidden behind one of the window
curtains, but now, as Henry whispered to her, she
ran out onto the stage. Mrs. Rosnic had made
her a beautiful costume out of old sheets. It was
longer than that of the Junior League's Blue
Fairy, but it was dyed a soft deep blue so that
Hannah's own eyes seemed even bluer.
Her wand was the end of an old fishing rod with an
aluminum star at the end. Her tiara
balancedprecariously on her short, gleaming hair.
She looked better than I had ever seen her, but,
she wasn't doing anything. Even Jamie had
managedto run out on the stage and grab Rufus
to lead him to the Land of Pleasure. But Hannah
did nothing, and the awkward pause grew longer and
longer as Rufus shifted from foot to foot,
waiting for the Blue Fairy to touch his long nose with
her wand and make it short again. (rufus was
supposed to poke the cone of paper back insidethe
toilet paper roll as he reached up in delightto
touch his shortened nose.)
This was to have been the high point of the show-and now
Hannah stood doing nothing while Rufus glowered
at her and Brian whispered,
"Go on, Hannah. Touch his nose with the star. You can
do it."
But Hannah didn't budge.
Rufus was getting angrier and angrier. "Hurry
up," he hissed. "Hurry up, dummy."
That did it. Hannah wasn't going to be called
dummy by anybody, any more. She moved
immediatelyacross the stage, up to the impatient
Pinocchio. She forgot about being the Blue Fairy,
forgot Pinocchio, forgot the play and the audience.
Whack!
Down came the wand on Rufus's paper
nose-hard, as hard as Hannah could bring it down.
"Not dummy," shouted the Blue Fairy. "I not
dummy any more. Not call me that"
Pinocchio's nose rolled across the stage.
Rufus*ness own nose had barely
escaped the blow, and now it looked small and
vulnerable in his painted face. Our play was a
shambles, or I thought it was, but the children didn't.
They'd never seen a play befeanever heard of
Pinocchio, and they loved the action and excitement of
what was going on.
I picked up Pinocchio's nose so it wouldn't be
stepped on and handed it to Gepetto, who was the
closest.
Brian took the nose, his hands flapping just a little
with excitement, and with inspiration he went center stage.
"Good beautiful Blue Fairy. You have saved
Pinocchio. You got rid of his horrible nose and
gave him the wonderful nose of a real boy. We
thank you. The End. Brought to you
by General Electric, the Wonderful comHouse of
Magic."
We all stood and cheered. Rufus and Hannah
forgot to be mad and cheered too. Even Jamie
clapped his hands. Our play was a hit, a four-star
hit.
Who says you need a script?
"Oh, boy, teacher," Hannah said. "You not even
know it Valentine's Day. Oh, boy."
"I'm sorry. I forgot all about it."
"That okay. Not matter. I got two presents."
"Two presents?"
Hannah nodded vigorously. "Two. One from me.
One from Mama."
"For me?" I asked. "Two for me? Oh,
Hannah. I don't have any."
"That okay, teacher. We got two. Here. Open."
In Hannah's mind it didn't matter who got the
presents or who gave them as long as there were the
same number of presents as people.
"The world has got a lot to learn from you, lovey."
She cocked her head at me quizzically, not
understandingean really caring, too excited about her
presents.
"Here," she said, handing me a brown paper bag.
"Open. From Mama."
I reached into the bag and took out a foil-wrapped
package. I folded back the edges of the foil and
found a loaf of bread on a paper plate with a
note.
"You teach her good. Happy Valentines Day-
Mrs. Rosnic.
The loaf was brown and crisp and round.
"That's beautiful bread!" I said. "Your mom is
a good cook. Thank you, Hannah. It's
really beautiful."
"That not mine. This mine. Look."
"You're right," I said. "I'll write your mother
tonight."
Hannah handed me an even bigger paper bag with a
long roll of paper sticking out the top of the bag.
"Open," Hannah urged.
I slit the tape that held the roll together and spread
the paper out on the table while Hannah said, "I
paint that, teacher."
It was a lovely, happy picture with a strong
blue sky and a large yellow sun. Below the sun was
a figure dancing. It wore a skirt and-could those
be sneakers?
"Sneakers?" I asked.
Hannah nodded and confirmed, "Sneakers. That how you
look sometimes. And see, here your heart."
My heart? Could Hannah see my heart? Had
anybody ever seen my heart? I could hear it
now-boom
boom boom.
Had anybody ever even wanted to see my heart
before? But there it was on Hannah's picture, a
big red blob on the outside.
"That's nice, Hannah," I said.
"That's a nice heart."
"It big, teacher. It a big heart."
I put my hands under her armpits and lifted her
plump, sturdy little body up onto the table so that
her eyes were level with mine, and put my arms around
her, hugging her hard.
"Not half as big as yours, lovey. Not half."
"All right, Mary. I'll stick my neck out and
make it definite. There'll be a sure spot for
Brian at P.s. 24 next fall; I'll
see to it. You've done a good job with him." Bernie
Sorrino, Regional Director of Special
Services, turned suddenly to me and said, "Who'm
I kidding? You've done a lot more than that. It's
some kind of a miracle, what's happened to that kid.
I remember him when we sent him to you, weirdest
kid I ever saw, didn't eat, didn't talk,
flapped and squawked around like some crazy kinda
bird."
"Thanks, Bernie. You won't be sorry.
He'll do you proud," I said.
"Yeah. Well, we'll see. I've promised
to take him, and I won't go back on my word. But
by God, Mary, you better toughen him up between now and
then or those city kids will eat him
alive."
The Director of Special Services was right and
I knew it. Bernie was a tough, smart, honest
man who had worked his way up out of the slums of the city
himself. He'd scrounged and scratched, won or
wangled one scholarship after another, untilhe'd
finally gotten his doctorate in education. 168
He had started in surburban schools; when I first
knew him he was in charge of special services for the
whole northwestern section of our state, an area that
is affluent, sophisticated, and relatively
serene. Five years ago he had been asked
to take over special services in the teeming,
run-down, industrial city where both he and Brian
had been born, more than forty years apart. In
fact, he was there before he was asked, applying for the
job that wasn't even open yet.
Our Director had disapproved of his move. "I
thought Bernie had a good head on his shoulders. He
was moving right along, but if he goes back to the city
now, he'll never get out again. He won't get those
kind of breaks twice."
Bernie came up to our school three or four times
a year to check on Brian, the only child we'd ever
had from the city. The Superintendent of
Schools had told our Director tersely,
"We take care of our own." But they couldn't take
care of Brian. They had tried him in their public
schools, in their retarded classes, on home
instruction. Eventually, on Brian's father's
plea, they had grudgingly sent him to us four years
ago, when he was eight years old. I could understand
some of their reluctance; they had no school bus for
special education and yet state law said they must
provide transportation. So Brian traveled the
twenty miles back and forth to our school in a taxi
every day, not an easy thing to explain to the city
taxpayers.
I'd liked Bernie Sorrino from the beginning.

Mary MacCracken
When he came to visit he really came into the
classroom; no hanging on the edges or peeping in
the windows for Bernie. If we were at Circle,
he opened the door, dragged over one of the small
chairs, and plopped himself down next to one of the
kids, his bulk extending beyond the small chair seat,
his short, strong legs sticking out into the circle.
He was far from inconspicuous, but there was something
natural, easy, and ebullient about him,
so that his visits were always welcome. He sang
whatever we were singing in an unself-conscious,
off-key voice, and the kids accepted him far more
easily than they did the timid visi-tors who
tiptoed around the room, trying to make themselves
inconspicuous. Bernie never peered purposefully
at Brian or took "little notes-just to refresh my
mind," as many of the administrators or social
workers or psychologists did. But when he'd been
there about an hour he'd signal with his head and I'd
follow him into the hall.
On his first visit to the school he lit a cigar as
soon as we hit the hall, puffed on it for a
minute, staring into space, then turned back to me.
"Oh, sorry-forgot. You want one?" Proffering a
big fat cigar.
"No, thanks." I was waiting. I couldn't tell
yet. Was he joking? Was he testing?"
"That kid," he continued. "That kid I'm here
to see, Brian O'Connell-how's he doing?"
"Okay. He's come a long way; he's got a
long way to go."
"All right, Mary." He knew my name;
obviously
he knew far more than he let on. "I
want him reading by the next time I come. Got that?"
His eyes, black and prominent behind the cigar
smoke, crackled.
"Absolutely," I said, straight-faced but
feeling good. "The whole encyclopedia, right?"
Bernie Sorrino glared back, clapping me on the
shoulder with a strong, warm hand.
"And
the World Book. Don't forget the World Book, for
Christ's sake."
That had been four years ago. We'd liked each
other then. We liked each other even better now.
I'd been on a couple of panels on childhood
schizophreniaand autism with him. Once he'd
worn his wife's name tag by mistake all through a
public session-and he thought it as funny as the
audience did when I pointed it out to him.
But I took Bernie seriously now. He knew
Brian, and he knew the city. If he said to toughen
him up, it was something that had to be done.
I walked with Bernie out to the car, the kids
following, then passing us on their bikes. "Can you
give me some more specifics?" I asked. "How
am I going to toughen him up?"
"Teach him to lie, cheat, steal, roll
dice, play poker, drink, deal drugs, use a
knife, indulge in a little rape, and keep his skin
intact. For Christ's sake, now you got him singing
about Noah and his arkie-ark and Puff the Magic
Dragon. Jesus, Mary, what good's that gonna
do him in the city?"
This was legitimate criticism. The atmosphere

Mary MacCracken
of our school was warm, protective, loving. We
dealt with reality, but a reality of our own. We
faced wide ranges of emotion and behavior with
equanimity. We replaced fantasy and
escapism with immediacy. Our purpose was
to build, en-courage, promote trust and openness
among the children and the staff so that warm interpersonal
relationships could (and did) develop.
Brian was a good product of our school; he was
open, without guile, tender, trusting-but vulner-able,
an easy target. The reality of our classroom was
far different from that of P.s. 24. As I thought about
it more, it became clear that we were innocent and
protective in a way that would be detrimental
to Brian.
But if the problem was clear, the solution
wasn't. Who was going to teach him? Not Jamie,
Hannah, or Rufus-and I didn't know much more.
I brought a deck of cards and some poker chips
to school the next day. I slit the cellophane
on the poker chips and said to the kids, "Okay, we
got a new game here. It's called five-card
stud." I had to start somewhere, and I knew a little more
about cards than the other items that Bernie had
mentioned. I said to Brian, "This is mainly for you.
They'll be playing cards at your school next
year."
Brian smiled. "Like Concentration? I like
Concentration."
"No, Bri. Not like that. Not like that at all." It
was true that Brian loved Concentration, both the card
game and the television show. He had a
fantasticvisual memory; he knew all the
states and capitals, baseball players and
batting averages. He could remember card
sequences and positions with no effort at all. He
would be able to learn poker without any trouble. But that
wasn't the point. I had to try to set him up. I
wasn't going to teach him to cheat, but I was going to try
to show him what to do when somebody else did.
Brian caught on to poker quickly;
Rufus perseveredbbJamie and Hannah soon lost
interest.
Three-handed poker isn't the best game in the world,
but Rufus, Brian, and I played every day after
lunch. We expanded to five-card draw, seven-card
stud, dealer's choice, even deuces wild.
Brian and Rufus learned the words: straight,
flush, four of a kind, ante, and raise.
Brian loved the game (better than Concentrationggand
played enthusiastically. At first he cheerfully named
all the cards in his hand out loud, talking to the nice
queens, telling them he'd find another. But he
soon learned to play without a word, silently,
competently, remembering everythingeashowing no trace of
emotion, winning consistentlyeahis pile of chips
three times as high as Rufus's and mine.
I figured he was ready. When I was dealer I
stacked my hand with aces, dealt off the bottom,
slipped cards from the middle. Brian's pile of
chips dwindled; mine rose. Rufus's pile was as

Mary MacCracken
small as ever, but he continued to play with dogged
determination.
This was taking too long. When was Brian
go-+ to catch on? I blatantly slid an ace
into my hand to replace another card and Rufus
yelled, "Hey, Mary, you can't do that!"
"Do what?" I arranged my hand.
"You took another card. I saw you."
I looked at Rufus coolly. "Who says so?"
"I do!" yelled Rufus. "Didn't she,
Brian? Didn't she steal another card?"
Brian's hands began to flap. "Doesn't
matter. Nice queens. Doesn't matter,
Rufus. Let's just play."
We played and my aces won easily over
Brian's queens.
I pulled in the chips and dealt another hand,
"Deuces wild," I said, spotting a two of
spades that I could sneak from the deck.
"She did it again!" Rufus yelled. "Brian, you
had to see her that time."
Brian lowered his head. "Doesn't matter. Just
Play."
I put down the cards. "It does matter, Bri.
It matters a lot. That's called cheating, and any
time you see it happen get out of the game. Don't
yell, that's no good, Ruf. But don't 'Just
play" either."
Brian was very sad. "I like to play. Why do I have
to get out of the game? Doesn't matter if I
win."
Sometimes it seemed to me that the kids I
taught, or was supposed to be teaching, saw the world more
clearly than anyone else. Sometimes I thought if
they could all just live together somewhere they would have a kind
of Utopia, where there were lots of presents, but it
didn't matter who gave or got, and lots of
games, but it wasn't important who won or
lost.
Brian had known all along that I was cheating, but
what did he care? If he didn't care about
winning. I could make a fool of myself all day long
while he still got what he wanted: the fun of
playing.
"Okay, Bri," I said, "Never mind. Let's
forget this poker-playing lesson. Just do me a
favor, all right? If you're playing for money
next year-real money, not chips-and you see somebody
cheating, fold up your cards when it's your turn
to bet, like you do when you have a bad hand, and pass.
All right?"
Brian looked at me quizzically, "Yeah,
sure, Mary. Nobody'd want to lose
real money."
He probably would have known what to do all along, but
I kept on, trying to anticipate, to alert him
to the ways of the city.
"Do you know what drugs are?" I asked him one
day.
"Yes. Anacin, Bayer Aspirin,
Bufferin-"stops acidity while it stops the
pain." I saw it-was
"Yeah, Bri. Okay, I know. You saw it on
television." How to even begin to tell him about
marijuana, grass, pot, dope, amphetamines,
speed,
cocaine, uppers, downers? Maybe television was
as good a way as any. "Try to keep it that way,"
I said. "If you've seen the drug advertised on
TV, it's okay to use. If you haven't, don't
touch it."
I shook my head at myself. I, who had decried
commercials, claiming they whetted appetites with
false promises, now was advocating them. You never
know.
On the subject of money: "Take as little to school
as possible. Just enough for lunch. And if you can, get
lunch tickets instead."
Sex. We'd been over masturbation many times. It
was a large part of our reality, and on this, at least,
we were probably more savvy than P.s. 24. The
code here was-do it when you're alone. Not in
public. I didn't attempt the topic of
intercourseeahomosexuality, sodomy, rape.
Brian would probably be exposed to all of these and
more, but somehow it seemed too much for our crash
course. I'd answer whatever questions came up and
make sure he knew how to find Bernie
Sorrino.
Weapons. Don't fight back if somebody has
a knife, a gun, a razor blade, a broken
bottle. They're not thinking straight. Keep
quiet and give them whatever you can. Try not to walk
alone.
Alone. That was going to be the hardest thing. Brian
would be alone. Most of our kids were alwaysalone
outside of school. It was not that they were true
loners; they would have loved to play with the neighborhood
kids, but no matter how
they improved they were still a little "different," and the
neighborhood kids, in good, all-American
style, shunned what was different.
It was time to go down to the school now,
to P.s. 24. I'd given out my tiny store of
advice. I'd cheated and demanded that Brian catch
me at it. I'd served him helpings that were too
small, gypped him out of his turn, and made him
insist on his rights. I had conned him, deceived him,
challenged him-and he'd survived. Now I'd
better go and see the school itself.
The March winds whipped scraps of trash and
newspaper across the streets as I drove in early
in the morning. The city was bigger than I had
imagined it, most of it old, some of it beautiful.
Delicately proportioned church spires rose
unexpectedlybeside dirty tenements and tacky
departmentstores.
The junior high school was on the far side of the
business district in a flat, open area,
opposite an empty warehouse. I parked my car
in the be warehouse lot and picked my way across the
street over beer cans and broken bottles. The
school looked as if it had been decorated for a
holiday with bright cloth at every window. But as I
approached I realized that this was no decorationea^the were
live kids hanging out of the windowseawhistling and
hooting, analyzing each inch of my anatomy and
commenting on every step I took. I looked
up, waved at them, and the hoots
died down a little. Suddenly a long, loud,
insistentbell rang and immediately the bodies
withdreweawindows slammed shut, and there was absolute
silence as I walked up the chipped concretesteps.
There was a sign by the front door: visitors
MUST REPORT DIRECTLY TO THE OFFICE.
PASSES ARE REQUIRED FOR ENTRANCE.
Depression crept around my heart and curdled in
my stomach. This was a school? It seemed more like a
prison.
In the office a dry, acid-looking woman
refused to speak to me, pointing to a pad and paper.
I filled out the form. She read it reluctantly,
checked by phone, and issued me a pass for Room
342.
There were guards at the head and foot of each
stairway. The halls were windowless and the doors to the
rooms were tightly shut. Boy, I thought, you got
a long way to go yourself, Bernie.
This was unfair. I couldn't hold Bernie
Sorrino accountable for the whole city school system;
his job was special education. The class I had come
to visit was labeled SGI, a term I had never
heard before. It translated to Special
Grade Instruction.
"What it means is," Bernie had told me, "that
these kids don't fit anyplace else. But they
don't fit together either, so there's no name for "em.
Can't put 'em in a retarded class, can't put
'em in a regular transient class, going from
room to room
for different subjects, so we put 'em together, teach
'em everything in one room, and hope they survive.
What's the matter, sweetheart? You don't like it?
It's one helluva lot better than anything else
we got to offer."
Bernie's words went round in my head as I
hesitatedoutside Room 342 while the stairway
guard eyed me suspiciously. I couldn't retreat
now. I took a deep breath and pulled open the
heavy door, prepared for the worst. I couldn't have
been more surprised.
The room was filled with sunshine and perhaps a dozen
kids. Some desks were pushed together, others not. The
kids were all crowded in the back of the room in
front of a makeshift grocery store. They barely
glanced at me, busily making out orderseaccsulting
shopping lists, compiling items, wrapping, paying,
giving, getting money.
A young woman with a wide smile and round glasses
sat on the back windowsill refereeing. "Come on
in. You must be Mary MacCracken. Bernie
told me you were coming. I'm Katie Moresco.
Think you can stand the noise?"
I could have stood anything, I felt so good about having
her in the room. I stayed all morning, impressed
by the way she handled the kidsea"her warmth and her
competence. The books and teaching materials were worn
and shabby, but at least this meant they were used, and there was
a lot more variety than we had. The kids themselves were
twelve to fourteen years old;
MacCracken
about half were black. Some of their young faces
reflected anger and almost a bone weariness; their
clothes were torn and their hands grimy, but there was no
look of retardation-and on that morning, anyway, no
bizarre acting out.
At lunchtime the kids lined up at the door and then
filed out to the lunchroom.
I turned to Katie Moresco. "Brian's
lucky. This will be good for him."
She barely heard me. "The mortality rate is
high in that lunchroom. Good thing you came in the
morning; in the afternoon we have the walking wounded.
Somebody always comes back bleeding: bloody nose,
cut lip, broken arm. And you know whose fault they
say it is? My kids!
"They blame everything on the 'specials"-not just the
kids, the teachers too. Sometimes I could kill them,
I really could. If they're not blaming it on my
kids, they're looking the other way while the rest
of the school beats up on them. Last year I got
so mad I ate with them every day down there. This year I
figure they got to learn to live in a jungle
sometime."
She took her own sandwich from her desk drawer.
"Come on down to the teachers' room and have a cup of
coffee with your lunch."
I hadn't brought lunch, hadn't even thought about it,
I was so used to eating franks and beans with the kids.
But I liked Katie Moresco and wanted to keep
talking. "Can I buy you a ham-burger?"
Katie dropped her sandwich in the wastebasket
without hesitation. "Fantastic. Let's go."
Relish, mustard, ketchup, Katie poured them
all on top of her hamburger and grinned at me
over the bun. "Thanks. That school has all the
charm of the Tombs. I love the kids, but the rest
of the place gives me the creeps," she
said. "Listen, what's this Brian like? Think he'll
fit in okay?"
I described our school and Brian as thoroughly
as I could. Katie listened carefully, interrupting
from time to time to ask a question or explore a point more
explicitly.
"Well," she said finally. "From what you say, it should
work out. Sounds like he's about on the same reading
level as Joe; math he can do with Trixie;
socially-well, we'll just have to see."
I dropped Katie back at school when we'd
finishedlunch. "Thanks again. I'll bring Brian
down to visit in another few weeks, if that's all
right with you. You'll be back next fall?" I
wanted the assurance, realizing how important she
would be in a successful transition for Brian.
Katie ducked her head so she could look in the car
window. "Yeah. Sure. Unless I get lucky and
start growing a kid. But don't hold your breath.
I've been trying to get pregnant five years
steady, so it's not likely to happen this summer.
See you."
She straightened, hesitated, then bent back down.
"Listen, about this social thing. I mean about
Brian's getting along with the other kids.
I was
thinking maybe I could arrange something.... Where
does he live, which section? I mean, which bus will
he be riding?"
Her question felt like a clout. Bus? I forced my
voice out. "Pine Street. One-eighty-seven
Pine. I don't know, I'm not sure about the
section."
The school bell jangled and Katie backed up
waving as I stepped on the accelerator. I had
to get back.
Brian. My God, of course, he'd be riding
buses. No more the isolated splendor of the taxi.
Brian would have to learn to ride a bus.
The next day the four kids and I sat in the small
three-sided bus shelter in the middle of our town.
We took up the rear bench and the children sat silently,
looking at the wide expanse of grass and trees
in the park across from us. I knew they'd much rather be over
there, away from the curious, sometimes hostile eyes that
stared at us. For that matter, so would I.
"Now look," I said, as quietly as I could.
"There's nothing to this. We've been all over it at
school. We've drawn it on the blackboard and
talked about it. We get on here, take the
bus to Glendale, get off, walk around the town,
take the bus back.
"I'm going to pay for Hannah, Jamie,
Rufus, and myself. Brian, you've got your money;
you'll buy your own ticket."
Brian nodded and the silence continued. Rufus
was the only one who'd ever been on a bus. That was
over a year ago and his sister had been carsick.
I looked at my watch. The bus was five
minutes late and the station was beginning to get crowded.
The tension got to Jamie and he stood up in front
of the bench and planted one foot befthe other and began
to rock back and forth. A dozen pairs of adult
eyes stared at him. I stood up, not so much
to block his rocking as to give
"com
him some protection from the curious stares.
be But as the bus pulled in the people forgot Jamie and
rushed outside, trying to be first on line, alththe
bus was almost empty. I shepherded Rufus,
Hannah, and Jamie in front of me-Brian I
was so close behind that he stepped on me twice. I
paid our fares and moved down the aisle; Brian
panicked and kept following.
"Here, Mary, you pay, you pay." He
thrust the quarter into my hand.
The driver yelled, "Get back here, sonny. I
saw you sneak by."
I turned Brian around and walked back with him,
thankful at least that I'd given him the exactfare.
"Give the man the money, Bri." Gingerly
Brian dropped the quarter into the driver's
outstretched hand, careful not to let his fingers touch.
The driver glared at me. "What's the matter,
lady? Can't you handle your kids? They get worse
every year. You gotta watch 'em all the time,
otherwisethey steal you blind."
There wasn't time to answer. Jamie was rocking up
and down the aisle. Hannah had twisted her
cropped hair into little clumps as she waited for the
bus, and now she pulled at them and moaned as she
knelt on one of the seats, head buried against the
cushion. Rufus sat loyally, miserably, beside
her.
I ushered Brian and Jamie in front of me,
gathered up Rufus and Hannah on the way, and
finally got us all seated. Two women moved away
and we sat like pariahs in the rear of the bus.
The ride itself was uneventful but joyless. Even the
walk down Glendale's streets was
glum. Ordinarilyeathe children loved to window-shop, but
now they stared blankly at the displays. There
wasn't any point in buying the ice cream cones
I'd planned.
We walked down one side of the main street, back
the other, and took the next bus back. It had
taken the whole afternoon, that one miserable bus ride.
In some ways it didn't really seem worth it.
But we rode the bus twice the next week. Things
were getting better. The driver and some of the passengers
began to recognize us-and sometimes even smile.
The next week I gave Brian a dollar. When
he waited for his change, the driver said, "Atta
boy. Better count it. Make sure I didn't
cheat you. Ha-ha."
Brian, of course, counted the change right then and
there; fifty, seventy-five, eighty-five,
ninety, one dollar. Both the driver and the
passengers behindhim waited patiently while he
did it.
The first sunny day in April I put Brian on
the bus alone. We all drove to the station, we all
waited for the bus, but only Brian would ride.
My heart sank when the bus pulled in and I saw
an unfamiliar driver.
"I don't want to go, Mary," Brian said. "Not
today. Maybe tomorrow."
"Hurry up," I said. "There's not much time."
Brian paid his quarter and sat down next to the
window, pressing his sad, pointed face as close
to us as he could. Rufus, Hannah, and Jamie
all waved cheerfully, they were so glad not to be there
themselves.
As soon as the bus left, I got the other three
children into the car and drove to Glendale, hurryingso
we'd be there when the bus drove in. We arrived in
plenty of time to see Brian get off with tears
running down his cheeks.
"What's the matter, Brian?"
"She was scary. That lady next to me was mean and
scary-and she had a black umbrella. It isn't
even raining. That could have been a broom. A
folded-up broom."
"That's ridiculous, Brian. If she's scary,
ignore her or move. You're doing fine." And the
next day I put him back on the bus.

Mary MacCracken
At night, before I slept, his pale, worried
face peered at me from the window of the bus,
and I'd think, I want him back, riding in the car
with us, safe and happy. But the next day I'd
drive
him
to the bus station and pick him up at the other end. At
least we were getting speedier; if we ate lunch
fast, we could get down and back with almost no study
time lost
The next week Rufus wanted to ride with
Brian. Why not? Brian even paid Rufus's
fare. They sat together, smiling, as the bus pulled
out.
The following week Hannah wanted to go too. I
was less sure about this. Rufus was hardly a
sophisticate, but he had ten times more social
know-how than Hannah did. But Brian was
en-thusiastic, and after all, that was what the whole thing
was about, getting Brian to like bus riding. I finally
agreed and the two boys and Hannah planned their
trip carefully, setting it up for the coming Friday.
This time we really would celebrate. We wouldn't just
have cones. We'd sit down in the store and have real
ice cream sodas.
All three dressed up that Friday. Brian
wore his blue plaid shirt and sweater,
Rufus had on his oxford-cloth button-down
shirt, and Hannah wore her sailor dress and
shiny black shoes and carried a large black
purse, just like her mother's. Evidently traveling
meant pocketbooks in the Rosnic household.
Jamie and I watched them board and find seats
together in the back and then we went back tothe car,
feeling a little lonesome. "Never mindeaJamie,
we'll go out by the dump and you can drive the car,
okay?"
The dump was actually a deserted marsh with an
unpaved road running around the edge. When we got
there I lifted Jamie onto my lap and let him
hold the wheel and honk the horn while we drove
twice around.
The bus arrived at the Glendale stop just as we
did. Obviously, something was wrong. The driver
turned off the motor, put on his red blinkers, and
climbed down out of the bus. Hannah, Brian, and
Rufus followed. Hannah's face was
tear-stained;
Brian was hopping around, hands flapping against his
sides; Rufus was grinning.
The bus driver was our familiar one, and he came
up to me without ado. "Well, missus, you
can be real proud of this young fella here," he pointed
at Brian. "Captured a criminal, that's
what."
"A criminal?" I said. Maybe I was getting a
little punchy myself.
"Yes, ma'am, a thief. We got him on the
bus now, got two fellas watching him for me.
Would've taken him straight to the police station, but
I knew you'd be waiting and I didn't want you
worried. But we're going there right now, turn him
over to the law."
The story was taking too long for Rufus. "He
got Hannah's purse-was
"That's right," the driver continued. "These here children of
yours were just sitting there, ridinglike regular ladies
and gentlemen. Then I pulled in to make my first
stop back there on South Road. You know the
spot?"
"That's when he grabbed Hannah's purse!" shouted
Rufus. "And then Brian-was
"Yup. Then this young fella"-the driver's big hand
came down on Brian's shoulder-"was up like a
streak and down the aisle ahead of the hoodlum.
Blocked him right off there by my stationuntil-was
"And Brian shoved too, Mary, and he
yelled," Rufus went on. "Brian yelled at
the guy, 'Give it back," and then the guy tried
to get by Brian, but Brian didn't let him. I
mean he really gave it to that guy. Brian stuck out
his foot and tripped him and the guy fell down and the
driver got up and grabbed him."
Hannah smiled around her tears, holding up the
black pocketbook. "Driver hold him and then
Bri-an grab my purse. Get it back for me.
Had real money."
When I looked at the cold facts I could see that
all that Brian had actually done was to chase the
purse-snatcher down the aisle, trip him, and then
reclaim Hannah's purse after the bus driver
had pinned the thief. Still, this would have been an
achievement for any twelve-year-old boy, and for
Brian it was a four-star event. The marvelous thing
was that the other kids knew it. They built
Brian up, exaggerated his courage, and, most of
all, recognized what it had meant to him.
Brian stood quietly now, his hands in his
pockets. He didn't say anything. He
didn't have to. He had the confidence of a hero.
On Saturday morning, along with the bills, a letter
arrived from the Board. I propped it against
the bowl of daffodils and studied it while I drank
my orange juice. I was getting less and less
eager to read these missives from the Board.
I finally opened it with my second cup of coffee.
It was typed, impersonal, addressed to "All
membersof the staff," signed by Jean Huntington,
Board President.
The letter was only two paragraphs long. The first
paragraph asked each teaching member of the staff
to send two photostatic copies of his teaching
certificate and undergraduate and masterdegrees.
The second paragraph stated that it was necessary to file
one copy with the state; the Board would keep the other.
Jean Huntington thanked each of us for our
cooperation.
I had no degree, undergraduate or otherwise,
and no teaching certificate. I did have a list of the
credits I'd gotten during my two years at
Wel-lesley years before, and another list of the
journalismand psychology courses I'd taken
later, although not for credit. And I had my twelve

education credits. I typed these up carefully and i
mailed them to the Board, A week later I received
a two-paragraph letter stating that they found it
"regrettable" but my present credentials were
"inadequate." The final paragraph asked me
to advise them of my plans.
What plans? The phrase seemed ominous, and again
I took the letter to the Director.
She read it quickly. The thought crossed my mind that of
course she must have seen it before. It was sent from the
Board, and she was on the Board.
"What should I do?" I asked. She had hired me,
taught me, had me train other teachers. She had
been in the field over fourteen years. I was
certain she'd know how to handle it.
She lit a cigarette and studied me over the
smoke. "There doesn't seem to be an awful lot
you can do, Mary. This state aid is going to be a
godsendeab I'm afraid it's going to mean we're
goingto lose some of our best teachers."
Lose. What was she talking about? I had no
intentionof being lost. I was a teacher, an
experiencedeaqualified teacher. She knew it. I
knew it. I intended to keep on teaching; the only
question was how.
"Now, look," I said. "What I'm trying
to say, to find out, is how to get the papers that will
satisfy the Board. I'm taking the
courses as fast as I can, but I need some sort of
dispensation or whatever, until I get my
degree."
The Director stood up, obviously dismissing
me.
*.-
"Well, good luck," she said. "I hope it works
out for you." Vaguely she waved the cigarette as she
picked up the phone.
I got the message, finally. The Director
wasn't going to help. She might like me, might
think I was a good teacher, but she wasn't about to stick
her neck out. Her dream, her "impossible dream"
of her own school, was too close. She wouldn't
risk fouling it up for one teacher. Good teachers came
and went during the lifetime of a woman like the
Director, but there was only one school. I
didn't blame her. The school was her life. She
had put all her strength, all her money, all her
energy into keeping that school alive over the years.
Now it- and she-were almost safe. My problems must
seem very small.
"How'd it go?" Patty asked as I came in
late for Circle.
I shook my head. "Not so good. I'll have
to think of something else. Maybe I'll go see
Bernie Sorrino after school."
It was hot in Bernie's office and he had an
electricfan going.
"Sit down," he said. "What's June gonna be
like if it's hot as hell in May? What can I do
for you, sweetheart?"
I showed him the correspondence from the Board. He
studied it carefully and then handed it back.
"What's the old lady say, that Director of
yours?"
"She wishes me good luck." "Yeah. Well, that
figures. You're going to need more than luck, I'm
afraid. If she was willing to stick her neck out and
cover for you, you might get away with it. It's still a
private school and they got a lot more leeway
than we do. I'd hire you in a minute if I
could, you know that. Still with that new school and state
support, she's gonna be looked at pretty
close. Probably doesn't want to take the
chance."
"Listen, Bernie. This doesn't make any
sense. I'm taking the courses, not learning much, but
taking the courses and getting A's. I've been in
our school six years alt-teaching full
time with salary for five. I like it; I want to keep
on teaching. The state must want experienced
teacherswho want to teach. Am I wrong?"
"That's right, you're wrong. The state doesn't
give a damn, unless it looks good on paper."
Frustration was mounting inside me. "Okay, then.
I'll get the paper. Where do I go? What do I
do?"
Bernie wiped his forehead. "You can't get a
paper.not without a degree of some kind. If you
had a degree in paperhanging, even, you might get
provisional certification while you finish your education
courses. Without it you haven't got a chance."
I stood up. "Thank you, Bern. I
appreciate your taking time to talk to me. I know
how busy you are. But you're wrong about one thing.
There's alwaysa chance."

Mary MacCracken
Bernie stood up with me, shaking his head, lighting a
cigar at the same time. "Don't break your heart,
sweetheart. It's not worth it. You remind me of
that filly at the racetrack, headlong, smart, but
you're gonna run smack into the wall if you don't
watch out. Listen, why don't you get
married?"
I stopped by the office door. "Proposing?"
"Jesus," he said. "Bigamy. That's what you're
trying to involve me in. Ruin my saintly
reputation. Listen now," he said, his face serious.
"Keep me informed. Let me know what happens."
"Yes," I said. "I will. Thanks again."
"Open your mouth, babe. Let me take a
look." Hannah obediently opened her mouth wide
and I peered inside. Her front teeth looked
deceptively good, but the back and side teeth were
discoloredbroken or rotten. "Does that hurt?"
Hannah shook her head, talking around my finger,
"Uh-uh." Then, forcing my finger out with her tongue,
she said, "I no go dentist doctor." "Boy,
that's about the silliest thing you've ever said. Your teeth
need to be fixed and the dentist can fix them."
Hannah shook her head at me again. "Dentist
Doctor bad. Hurt Carl. No let Mama
sit chair with me. Bite dentist doctor. Hate
him." "For Pete's sake, what kind of sense
does that make? How can the dentist fix your teeth
if your mother's in the chair? How can he fix anything
if you bite him?" I shook my own head at her.
Mrs. Rosnic had called the school and
left word that it was urgent that I call her back as
soon as possible. When I did she explained that
Hannah 195
refused to go to the dentist and wanted me to look at
Hannah's teeth.
Mrs. Rosnic was right. It was urgent. I had
never seen such bad teeth. I sighed, wishing I'd
looked before, wishing again that we had some sort of
school doctor, or at least someone to do
occasionalroutine checkups.
There was always so much to be done, never enough time to do it.
I shook my head, feeling a little weary but knowing part
of my weariness was because my reply to the Board was still
hangingfire. More than a week now and I still hadn't
come up with anything. Well, anyway, what counted
now were Hannah's teeth, and I called Mrs.
Rosnic after school to tell her I agreed that
Hannah should see a dentist immediately.
It turned out that what Mrs. Rosnic actually
wanted was for me to find a new dentist for her.
Hannah hadn't been kidding; she had bitten the
other man and he refused to see her again. I
promised to discuss it with the Director and see what
I could find out.
There was a formality between the Director and
myself that hadn't been there previously. It was almost as
though she feared I would reopen the subject of the letter
from the Board of Directorsand was purposely
insulating herself from discussion with me. She never spoke
to me now without a cigarette in her hand, the smoke
forminganother screen between us.
However, she was always courteous, and now
she suggested I call the mother of a child who had just
undergone extensive dental work. I thanked her and
then sat without saying anything for a minute or two,
watching the thin gray smoke curl before my eyes.
I thought she might want to talk, but she, too,
sat silently and then turned to the phone, excusing
herself.
Both the child's teacher and the mother highly recommended
Dr. Sullivan, a dentist who specializedin
treating children. I reported back to Mrs. Rosnic
and the Director and then called Dr. Sullivan.
His schedule was crowded, his secretary said, but there was
a cancellation for Thursday, May 14, at ten
thirty.
I made the appointment for Hannah and called
Mrs. Rosnic, but then it turned out that she hadn't
realized it was so far and she didn't like to drive on
highways and she didn't see how she could
leave Grandpa and Helen, and-well, really what she
was hoping was that I'd take Hannah.
More conferences with the Director, arrangementsfor the
boys to join other classes while I was gone.
Finally everything was set. And then on May 14
Hannah didn't come to school!
I called the Rosnics" house and Mrs.
Rosnic said she was sorry but Hannah was up to her
old tricks again-wouldn't get on the bus, wouldn't
come to school.
It was nine forty-five. There was no way we could
make the ten-thirty appointment All those
arrangements for nothing. Dr. Sullivan's time
wasted-Just because Hannah had managed to have her own
way.
"Mrs. Rosnic," I said. "I'D call Dr.
Sullivan and apologize-and somehow or other get
another appointment.tell Hannah that, and tell
her that we're going to keep this one."
"Maybe if we don't tell her ... was Mrs.
Rosnic suggested hopefully.
"We'll tell her. She trusts us and it's no
fair takingadvantage. Tell her I'll see
her in school tmmorning."
Hannah dragged into school the next
morning, glared at me, and went into the coat
closet. I ignoredher and after a while she couldn't
stand it any longer and came out.
"Not going to dentist doctor," she stated
unequivocally.
"That's right, lovey. Not today. Next week."
"You mean! Hate you! Why I have to go? You not go!"
"I'm going," I said. "I'm going with you. Besides,
I go see my own dentist twice a year."
"Two times every year?"
"Mm-hmm. He cleans my teeth and fixes
anythingthat needs fixing."
Hannah came over close to me, staring hard at
my mouth. Then she put out her hand and I opened my
mouth while she explored my teeth with her finger.
"What call that?" she asked, running her finger over
the top of my lower teeth.
"Teeth."
"No. Not teeth. Inside teeth."
"Silver. Silver fillings."
"Silver," she repeated. "All white and silver.
Is nice."
"Thank you."
"Two times every year?"
"Mm-hmm."
"That lot of times. You go hundred times already."
"Hey, come on. I'm not that old."
Hannah removed her finger from my mouth. "You sit
in chair, okay? I sit on you."
"Nope. The dentist, his name is Dr.
Sullivan, can't fix your teeth that way. But
I'll be with you. We'll drive down together in the car
and go into the office together. The dentist has two
rooms, at least my dentist does, and you'll be in
one room and I'll be in the other. It will probably
take about a half hour, and then we'll drive
back together."
"Maybe I not come. Maybe stay home."
"We stood Dr. Sullivan up once. We're
not goingto do it again. This time our appointment is for
eleven. If you don't show up at school, I'll
be over to pick you up at home."
The morning of the fourteenth was sunny and hot and
Hannah sat close beside me in the car, her arm
pressed against my side. I knew she was scared and
I didn't blame her, but she rode
quietlyealooking straight ahead.
We found Dr. Sullivan's office on a
quiet side street and Hannah sat beside the
secretary's desk and gave the required
information by herself, spelling her last name carefully,
giving her addresseaphone number, even her birth
date.
For another child this would be good, showing composure and
intelligence; for Hannah it was spectacular.
Nine months ago she had lain on the floor howling
and screaming. Now, immediately before going in to see the
dentist, she could sit and quietly give her
personal data.
Dr. Sullivan came into the waiting room and
greeted us in a slow, kind voice and then invited us
both into the examining room. He was a slight man,
with a thin face, thin hair, and tired eyes that peered
out from behind his glasses. I was surprisedto be asked
into the examining room, but I followed along and
waited in the doorway.
His touch was sure and skillful as he helped
Hannah into the dental chair, gave her a ride
up and down, and asked if he could look into her mouth.
There was something special about the way he asked: a
gentleness, a courtesy. I was pleased and touched by the
respect with which this small thin man treated
Hannah.
After a few minutes he came over to the
doorwaywhere I stood. "We'll need
X rays. But even without them I can tell you there's
going to be a lot of work. It will be extremely
painful; we'll have to pull at least two teeth and
maybe more. She'll need anesthesia."
"Is there any alternative?" I asked. "She's
had some bad experiences before, and though she seems
calm, it's taking a lot of effort. She's very
frightened."
"The work has to be done, even on the baby teeth.
Otherwise it will just get worse and the infections will
drain into her whole system. Will she take gas?
How about finances? Can the family afford it?"
"I think Hannah will be all right, especially if
you continue as you did today. And the finances we can work out.
Does the money have to be paid all at once?"
"No, of course not. Let me take the X rays
and then I can tell you how much it will run. Why
don't you go on out to the waiting room now?"
I walked over to where Hannah sat. She seemed
so tiny in contrast to the big chair, and her courage was
even more apparent. I told her I'd be in the
waiting room and that there would be no hurt today, only
pictures to see what needed to be done.
In fifteen minutes Hannah and Dr.
Sullivan were back. While Hannah
picked out a gold ring set with an imitation ruby from
a velvet tray. Dr. Sullivan spoke
quietly to me. "I couldn't have asked for a better
patient. I'll start with the teeth that can be saved,
get those filled so they won't get worse. But
I'm still going to have to pull two." Anger tinged his
voice. "Why didn't you bring her in earlier?"
I knew how he felt. I often felt this way at
school. Why had it been so long? It would have been so
much easier earlier. "I just got her this year."
"Okay. Okay. She should have been in years ago.
Sorry. Didn't mean to jump on you." "I
know," I said. "How much will it run?" "Family
pretty hard up?" "V."
"Let's keep it to a hundred dollars. Is that
all right?"
"That's fine. Now, what's going to happen next
time? I think it will be easier if she knows what
to expect."
Dr. Sullivan took off his glasses and rubbed
his eyes. "You know, you're only the second person
who's ever asked me that Usually they leave it all
up to me."
Anger flashed in his eyes for a short minute.
"Maybe I'm judging too harshly, but
I can't help noticing that parents seem to have
abdicated. They just bring the child; that's all they seem
to figure is required of them. Get the child here on
any excuse, lie to him, often as not-then they wonder
why kids don't trust dentists."
He sighed, the anger gone, and put his glasses
back on carefully, almost delicately, tucking the
wire sidepieces behind his ears. "Hard to know the
best way to approach a child like Hannah. I think
I'll use gas even for the fillings. I could use
novocaine, but that big needle's pretty scary for
any kid and she's probably had more than her share
of fright. Tell her ... wait. Come on back in
for a minute. I'll show her; that's better than
tryingto tell her."
The waiting room was filled now with mothers and children, two
of whom were crying. Hannah sat on a leather
chair, hands in her lap, examining her new ring, and
I felt another surge of pride in her
composure.
"Hannah, we're all through for today. Dr.
Sullivansays you were a great patient, one of the
best he's ever had. If you want to, we can go
back in for a minute and see something he wants to show
you, so you'll know what's going to happen
next time."
Hannah slid off the leather chair and put her hand
in mine and I could feel the new ring slidingon her
finger. Back in the examining room, we both looked
at the mask that Dr. Sullivan held in his hands.
"Sleep stuff?" Hannah asked. Was it possible
memories of that infant operation were stirring in her
head?
"Not really sleep. Dreams. Do you ever dream?"
Hannah nodded. "All time. Dream mouses.
Dream Blue Fairy. Dream all time."
Dr. Sullivan put the mask over his own head.
He looked ridiculous because he had left on his
glasses and now he peered at us with an odd
wall-eyed look. But I wanted to put my arms
around him. He cared more about Hannah than
himself, or how he looked. Who would ever expectto
find a true lover in the dentist's office?
"Now you figure out the best dream you can have,
Hannah, and next week, while I'm fixing your
teeth, we'll see if we can find it for you."
All the way home in the car, Hannah turned the
ruby ring against her finger. Finally she said, "He
nice, that dentist doctor. Not bite him."
The next two visits were harder, but each
time when Hannah and Dr. Sullivan returned
to where I sat in the waiting room he had his arm around
her.
Finally he said to me, "Well, that's it for repair.
Next time I'll pull those two teeth." He
lowered his voice. "It may be a little rough. One of
those teeth is so far gone, I'm going to have trouble
gettinga grip on it. Ill do my best."
I nodded. If Hannah had to go through this I was
glad she was in kind, competent hands.
"I talked to Mrs. Rosnic about the money," I
said. "Will it be all right if she sends you two
dollarsa week?"
He hesitated and I said quickly, "If you'd rather,
I can give you a check now and she can send the money
to the school."
His voice was hot. "Don't be foolish. It's not
that. It's just ... having to mail two dollars every
week. Life's so hard for some people. Seems like there
ought to be an easier way to live."
Hannah had been in the dental room for forty-seven
minutes. I had turned endless pages of
magazines and now I walked to the window of the crowded
office, hardly hearing the noises of the other children and
their mothers. It shouldn't be taking so long-two
teeth! How long can you pull on a tooth?
Dr. Sullivan put his hand on the middle of my
back and I turned, startled, from the window.
"She's all right," he said immediately. "But still
groggy. I had to give her a pretty heavy dose
of anesthetic, but I finally got everything out. Here."
He handed me a bottle filled with clear liquid
and two teeth, or rather one tooth and pieces of
another.
"Have her rinse her mouth every couple of hours with warm
salt water. If she's in a lot of pain, grind
up one of these tablets and mix it with a little sugar and
water. Call me if there's any troublebbotherwise
I'll see her once more, just to check everything out.
Come on in now."
We walked together into the examining room and over to the
big dental chair where Hannah lay, her eyes still
closed.
"I'm sorry about her dress," Dr. Sullivan
said, touching the splotches of dark red blood.
At his touch Hannah opened her eyes.
"Hannah," he said, "you were very brave. It's all
over now and I won't do this to you again. Do you want
to get a new ring?"
Hannah shook her head. One was enough for
her. She wore her ruby ring each day, her finger
turning steadily greener underneath it.
"I have her mouth packed so she isn't able to speak
much. Take it out in about an hour and let her
rinse."
I put out my hand to Hannah and she took it and
followed me to the door. Then I turned back and
put out my other hand to Dr. Sullivan.
"Thank you."
"Yes. Well, be sure you bring her regularly
now." He touched Hannah's shoulder. "You really
were a good girl. The best girl ever."
Hannah dozed beside me all the way back, her
head on my shoulder. I drove as carefully as I
could, while in my head the words went round:
"The best girl, the best girl, the best girl
ever...."
We were almost back to school when I changed my
mind. I turned the car around and, with Hannah still
asleep, I drove to my apartment
She followed me groggily out of the car and leaned against
me as I unlocked the apartment door. Up the
yellow-carpeted stairs to the couch in the living room.
I sat down and put my feet up on the coffee
table and Hannah cuddled down beside me.
My heart was pounding. I knew I shouldn't be doing
this. The school and Mrs. Rosnic both thought we were
at the dentist's. I had no permission to bring
Hannah to my home. But I wanted her there so
badly. I wanted just to keep her a little longer,
keep her safe.
Hannah opened her eyes briefly and stared around the
room. "Is nice," she said.
I slipped off her dress, washed out the stains in
cold water and hung the dress on the back porch
to dry. Then I sat down again beside Hannah while
she slept. I waited till her sleep was deep
enough so that I could move without disturbing her, and then I
got up and went to my writing desk.
I had to try again. I couldn't leave Hannah. Not
yet. She was still too vulnerable, still on the verge of
becoming. There was still too much to do.
Dear Mrs. Huntington,
I am writing to ask if you and the Board of
Directors will reconsider your decision of last
week. I know that on paper my credits are
lacking, but Tm sure if I could talk to you and the
Board about my position, I could explain ...
When I had finished the letter I woke Hannah, led
her to the bathroom, and took out the cotton
packing as gently as I could. She rinsed her mouth,
put her dress on, and then, feeling better, ate
a dish of raspberry sherbet.
All the way back to school she held the small
glass vial of teeth. When we arrived she
removed Henry's flowers from my table and set the little
bottle there instead.
"Keep tooths there," she said as
the
boys watched in awe.
I kept them there for the rest of
the
year and I have them still, wrapped in tissue in a
small white box inside my bureau drawer.
Jean Huntington called me during lunchtime at the
school.
"I'm speaking officially, Mary, as Board
President.i'm only the spokesman for the
Board. I hope you understand that. It's not going to be
possible for you to appear at a Board meeting. I'm
sorry, but it's against all previous precedent There
is an appointed spokesman for teachers, your
Director. She is the official member of the
Board who represents all teachers. Whatever
business you have should be presented through her."
"I see. All right."
"Mary. Please wait a minute. Speaking now as
a friend, not Board President, whatever I can do-
well, I know how much the school means to you."
"Thank you, Jean. I'll write something up and
give it to the Director. When's the Board
meeting?"
"Actually-uh, tomorrow night. Things are Just
incredibly busy.... You wouldn't believe-was
"I know," I said, remembering the phrases. "This
time of year ..."
"Exactly. Well, I knew you'd understand. And
I will do whatever-was
"Right. Thanks again."
The floor by the telephone in the Director's
office seemed like quicksand, and I felt as if I were
sinking, going under. I replaced the phone and hurried
back to my classroom.
If Jean's days were hectic, ours were chaotic.
We were in the midst of a crisis and there was no time
to think about anything except the immediatemoment.
One of the younger children had come down with measles. Her
teacher was three months' pregnantand decided the
risk of exposure was too great so she was out and the
Director had taken over her class.
Yesterday two more mothers called reporting measles.
Worse than that, Patty had caught the measles
too and was very ill. I talked to Ted on the phone
each night. He was staying home, but the doctor
thought they might have to move Patty to the hospital.
With Patty out, her class became bedlam. Tina
undressed not only on the bus but all day long.
Wanda Gomez bit her arm and slapped her face.
At lunch Barbara Lasky massaged franks and
beans into her hair as if they were shampoo, and
Janie laughed hysterically all day and then gouged a
hunk out of the Director's arm on her way to the
bus.
In one way, it underlined Patty's excellence.
When she was there her room was quiet and
peaceful. The girls studied, read, worked
diligently in their workbooks; in the afternoon they did
various arts and crafts projects. Patty had
taught both Wanda and Tina to knit, and I loved
to walk into their room and find Patty and the girls
sitting around a table like a Wednesday ladies'
sewing circle. But without Patty the room fell
apart. The girls could not sustain what she had taught
them; their security was based in Patty and they
seemed able to function only in the
atmosphere that she provided.
There was no crisis teacher in our school, though other
schools like ours use one at times like this. A
crisis teacher is a regular part of the school but
doesn't have a class of her own. Instead she goes
wherever she is needed, coping with the most difficult
problems, taking over in emergencies.
If we had had such a teacher, perhaps she could have handled
Patty's class during the measles epidemic with a
minimum of disruption. As it was, we all rocked
in chaos during the day and dropped into bed exhausted
at night.
The Director hired one substitute after another
to handle Patty's class during the morning hours;
not one lasted more than a day. We struggled through lunch
alone, the eight children and myself. In the afternoon, the
Director divided the girls up, parceling them out
to different classrooms.
My children, because they were closer to Patty's class,
joining them for Circle and for
lunch, were more affected by Patty's absence than the
rest of the school. I tried to be kinder, strongeream
patient, knowing how difficult it was for them. But I
was in a turmoil as well. I couldn't help but
wonder if my presence was as crucial
to my children as Patty's was to her class. If so,
what would happen next year if the worst should occur
and I couldn't come back?
I began to look at my four even more closely.
Brian was going to be all right, I was sure of that.
Ever since he had rescued Hannah's purse on
the bus ride, he had grown steadier, bolder, more
competent. He would be going to P.s. 24 in the
fall and he was going to make it. He had dealt with the
outside world now, and just the dealing with it had reduced his
terror.
Rufus was almost ready. Square, solid, loving
Rufus, his plumpness almost gone, never absent any
more. No pseudo-illnesses, no sitting under the table
talking to himself, able now to handle both academics and
social situations. I called his parents and
suggested they explore and also urge our
psychologist to investigate the possibilities of a
Neurologically Impaired class for him. The
nystagmus in his eyes, his awkward gait, the many
reversals were all indications, soft signs, of some
sort of neurological involvement. One more year,
particularly in the spacious new school building with
its own swimming pool, would have helped, would have
solidified all he had gained, but
Rufus would be okay either way, I thought
Jamie, little Jamie. I held him as often as I
could and praised him when he wrote and said, "My name
is Jamie Walker." He had written that first a
year ago; the only other things he had writtensince
were his address and his phone number. Jamie was never
going to be "all right," but he had a large, warm,
supportive family, a mother and father and four older
brothers who took him with them when they went fishing or
even to the movies. Whatever happened at school,
Jamie would be all right at home.
Hannah. She was almost pretty now. Rufus had
instigated what he called (to my great pleasure)
Wait Watchers. Under his direction we all got
weighed each Monday and Thursday morning. I had
brought in scales, and twice a week we all
took off our shoes and Rufus weighed us while
Brian recorded the results on a chart on the
wall. We had all lost a little weight, but
Hannah lost twenty pounds.
Now, too, she had five new dresses. A
woman had called me one day at school and
identified herself only as Hannah's godmother. She
said she was visiting the Rosnics and couldn't get
over the changes in Hannah. She was
excited and pleased and wanted to know if it would be all
right to buy Hannah some new clothes. All right?
It was marvelous. So now Hannah had a new
dress for each day, and Mrs. Rosnic kept them
crisp and clean. Hannah's hair had almost grown
back and it was soft and silky and bright and her eyes
re-
mained blue and clear and beautiful. She had come so
far, and now I poured every extra bit of energy I
could find into teaching her all that I could. But even so,
she remained vulnerable.
While Patty was absent, the Director sent
Janie and Barbara Lasky to our room in the afternoon.
Barbara was no problem; she sat in the sun
contentedly,-bing her hair with pieces from the erector
set, and I let her sit. But Janie could not be
left alone. By herself, she wound her hands around her
throat and pressed her thumbs against her larynx.
Her hands were amazingly strong, and after she had wrung
her neck hard enough to leave deep red welts and make
herself vomit, I kept her beside me.
There was never time in the morning now for math, so in the
afternoon we all gathered at the two round tables and worked
on math problems. Brian and Rufus were doing a
unit on measurementin their workbooks; I
tried to make it more meaningful by having them measure the
room, the windows, their pencils and books. They
did pretty well, helping each other with the rulers
and yardsticks.
The rest of us added and subtracted, joined and
separated sets of beads, bottle caps, and
buttons.jamie sorted marbles into the muffin tin.
Sorting is the beginning of arithmetic.
The afternoon of the phone call from Jean Huntington, I
went back to my class and took over from the
Director, who was looking more tired
than I'd ever seen her. I explained about the call
and said I'd bring in a letter the next day.
She nodded and said she'd do what she could, but the way
she said it did little to raise my hopes.
I sat back down with the girls, Hannah and
Janie on either side of me. I had brought in my
grandmother's button box. As a child, this same
painted-tin button box had been a source of
enchantment.it was kept for special times, when I
was sick or when there had been a long, long period
of rain. During difficult days, when hours passed
slowly, my mother brought out the button box. Now I
laid out three round mother-of-pearl buttons and two
made of black jet. Just the
physicalfeel of the cool stones was a pleasure.
"How many altogether?" I asked.
Without warning, Janie swept the pearl and jet
buttons off the table and cradled them in her hands.
I had no idea what she would do with them: throw them,
eat them, run away?
Instead she turned and pulled one of my hands toward
her, opening my palm. "One, two, three, four,
five."
I was amazed. Tired as I was, I could feel a
physical jolt of pleasure. "Good for you," I
said. "Good for you, lovey. That's exactly right"
Crash.
The whole button box was on the floor and
Hannah was on her feet, shouting at me. "You not
call her that! She not lovey. I lovey. You not
even know her!"
"Hannah, Hannah," I said, weariness blurring
my eyes. "You're right. I'm sorry. But come
on, now, there's room for lots of "loveys" in
the world."
Not in Hannah's world.
That night when I wrote the letter to the Board for their
meeting the following evening, I tried to combine
professional knowledge with my urgent desire
to teach. But fatigue took over and what came out
seemed like a stilted plea.
I turned in the letter the next morning and then called
Ted to check on Patty.
She was better; her fever was down and the black
splitting headaches had eased. I told Ted about
Janie, knowing Patty would be pleased-and then added that
I had written my letter of appeal.
Ted didn't approve. "You should strike, damn
it. The other teachers would support you-and rumors must
be filtering out because a couple of mothers have called here,
trying to sound Patty out on what to do. They'd
organize. Look, Patty isn't up to it, but
I can help you get started. First thing is to get a
petition-was
I interrupted. "Ted, I can't do that. This place
is a shambles now with Patty out and so many kids
sick or just coming back. The Director is
doingfour jobs at once. It's already the beginning of
June, almost the end of the year. I can't tear up the
school even more, with the move to the new school planned
for fall. Besides," I said honestly, "it's not my
style. I wouldn't even know how to begin to strike."
"Yeah," Ted grunted. "That's the worst of it.
You're right. It's not your style. Listen,
I gotta go. Keep in touch, okay?"
I always read to the children in the afternoon. After lunch I'd
get down on the rug or mats where they rested and
read aloud to them. At first I read them short
stories from various storybooks, but this year, as I
became more and more aware of their intelligence and
potential, I began to read whole books. My
children ranged in age from eight to twelve, but because they were
reading below grade level, the stories in their reading
books were always about younger children. They needed to hear about
children their own age, what these children were like, what kind of
problemsthey encountered and dealt with.
I discussed it at staff meeting. Our
psychiatrist was skeptical about the children's ability
to maintainan interest over the extended period it
took to read a book a chapter or two at a time.
The Director and the psychologist doubted whether they
would be able to remember what was happeningfrom day
to day. But psychiatrist, psychologisteaand
Director were wrong-and they were the first to admit it and
be pleased by the rapt attention of the children as I read
to them each day after lunch.
Brian, Rufus, and Hannah (jamie just
cuddled close) not only remembered the facts, they
related to the children in the book and made
*,
comf
Judgments and interpretations. I was finding out what
I had suspected all along. We need to teach
emotionally disturbed children more rather than less. Because of their
fears, their inhibitions, their bizarre traits, we
tend to underestimate them. But learning is
therapeutic; the ability to handle knowledge is comforting,
particularly for children who have such difficulty in dealing
with emotion.
We had finished
The Secret Garden,
which they had all loved. Now we were reading a book
called
Peter and His Horse.
It was about a boy, ten years old, who lived
close to a gentleman who raised Thoroughbred
horses. Peter began to help train a colt named
Star-and became more effective with him than any of the
adult trainers. Peter loved Star, racing to see
him as soon as his chores were done. Star responded
and could sense when Peter was on his way and whinnied and
trotted to the gate to wait for him.
Brian, Rufus, and Hannah were fascinated by this.
Each longed for some sort of pet of his own,
so they understood how Peter felt and they were delighted
that Star also loved Peter.
Peter trained Star carefully each day, readying him
for the County Horse Show. Everyone was excited.
Surely Star would win, he was so beautiful and
Peter had trained him to perform so well. Then, just the
day before the show, Peter fell on his way to Star and
broke his leg. He had to go to the hospital and have a
cast put on his leg. Peter wouldn't be able to go to the
horse show.
Hannah and Brian both moaned.
"Read. Hurry up, Mary. Find out what
happensea"...sd Rufus, unable to stand the suspense.
The man who owned Star took him to the show. Everyone
agreed that that's what Peter would want. Star should have
his chance to win the blue ribbon.
Star's owner groomed him carefully, but when Star
entered the ring he forgot all his training.
"Oh, boy," said Hannah. "Oh, boy."
Instead of doing what he was supposed to do, Star
trotted faster and faster around the ring, tossing his head
from side to side, searching for Peter.
The judges dismissed him, and his owner took Star
back home in disgrace.
Peter came home from the hospital a
few days later, but the man who owned Star wouldn't
let Peter even see the horse. He was angry with
Peterbbhe told Peter he had made Star too
dependenton him and done Star more harm than good.
When I finished the chapter we sat silently. This
was unexpected. The thought that you could hurt a pet
by too much or the wrong kind of lovingwas a new
idea, one that we had never talked about.
Hannah broke the silence. "That Star, him bad.
He just like kids in Patty's class. He good if
Peter there. They good when Patty there. They not good
when she gone. That both their trouble."
I was amazed at her reaction. I knew she was
both intelligent and aware, but I hadn't realized
how far she was able to go.
Brian said, "Peter didn't mean to be bad
to Star, Mary, did he? He didn't want
to hurt him. I think it was like that man said. Star just
got-what was that word, Mary?"
"Dependent," said Rufus, before I had a chance.
"Yeah. Star got dependent on Peter."
Brian and Hannah and Rufus solemnly nodded
their heads in agreement.
"And Patty's class?" I asked. "You think
they're like Star? They're too dependent
on Patty?"
"Yup," said Hannah. "That just like them. They too
de-pen-dent. Patty got to fix them up. Make
them ..." She stopped. She had no word for what she
meant.
"Independent," I said softly.
But the children had already left the table-and it didn't
matter. Knowing the word was not important; understanding the
feeling was what counted.
I put the marker in the book and closed it for the day.
The sun still shone outside. Everything was still in its
accustomed place in our classroom, but I felt
as though some miracle had occurred there.
These children- these marvelous, fascinating, wonderful
children-had not only understood and followed what was
happening in the book we were reading, they had taken the
ideas out of the
LOVEY

book, generalized, and applied the concepts to what was
happening in their own lives. Nowhere, nowhere in the
world, are there any miracles that can come close to those
of children.
"A teacher's aide?" I said.
I stood in the Director's office after
lunch the next day as she handed me back the letter I
had given her for the Board.
"Yes," she said, pushing back her white hair, a
pulse beating just below the strong cords in her neck.
"That's the compromise the Board came up with last
night. You don't have the credentials to qualify as
a teacher. On the other hand, we all know how
devoted you are to the school and that you're good with the children."
I barely heard her. A teacher's aide.
"What-what would I do as a teacher's aide?"
This annoyed the Director and she snapped, "Just
what it says. Be an aide to a teacher. Look,
Mary, I know that this may be hard for you to swallow.
You've been treated as though you actuallywere a teacher
for so long. But the facts are, you're not. You're not
even a college graduate, to be absolutely
frank. There is no way the state could accept you as
part of the staff. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it
is."
I turned toward the door, with no thought but to get out
of the room, back to the children. 222
"Mary"-the Director's voice softened-"I'm
sorry.i didn't mean to speak so strongly.
We'll try to work something out. Maybe you could work in
a classroom with a sliding door,
adjacent to a real teacher."
"A real teacher. Ah-have. Yes, of course."
I was grateful to her for that phrase. Anger fired
in my stomach and blazed its way to my head, burning
away wisps of sadness and self-pity. To hell with
her. And the Board. And the school.
But it wasn't easy. The school meant the children.
I walked back to my room. In the hall, from the
other classrooms, and now here in my own room, the
sounds of children swirled around me.
I sat down by the window and Hannah said, "You gone
long time, teacher. Now read."
She brought me the book and as I took it from her I
couldn't help but think. At least I'd still be here with
you, lovey. If I stayed as a teacher's aide, this
learning could keep going on....
"Mary," said Rufus. "You're not reading. Are you
okay?"
"Oh," I said, my mind coming back. "Yeah,
sure. Well, actually, not tip-top, but pretty
good. Now let's see, where are we?"
"Star didn't win anything at the horse show. The
man is mad at Peter "cause Star got
de-pendentea"...sd Brian.
"Right. Okay, now look. We're almost
done. Only two more chapters."
The children settled in close to me on the rug and I
read. "The days went very slowly now that Peter was no
longer allowed to see Star...."
It was a short chapter and a sad one. This was even
harder to understand than the previous chapter.
Punishments in our room never lasted longer than a
day. Whatever had occurred was over by nightfall and you
started the next day clean. But now, in this book, more
than a week had passed. The man was still angry.
Peter was still not allowed to see Star. I said, "What
do you think will happen next?" Usually Rufus or
Hannah would jump to the question, knowing exactly what
they thought would happen. Right or wrong, they were willing
to project, to commit themselves to how they thought it would all
turn out. Brian took a little more time, but usually
he too was willing to hazarda guess.
But not now. They looked at me silently, sadly.
I asked, "How could it have been different?" It was
Brian who answered first this time. Not answering the question
directly, going around a bit, but still thinking and trying
to communicate his thoughts.
"It wasn't Peter's fault. He didn't mean
to.... If that horse had had more control he would of
been all right."
Rufus disagreed. "But Peter shouldn't let him
get so dependent. He should of made him have control.
'Member, Mary? You used to say.
If
you can't control yourself, I'll help you." First you
had
to do it, but then you made us do it. "Member that?
Boy, you grabbed Jamie hard when he kept
running away and you said to him, 'If you can't control
yourself. I'll help you," and then when he kicked you
took off his shoes and just held on till he could
control himself."
I looked at Jamie for affirmation, but Jamie
never paid attention to words. He Just sat quietly,
leaning against my arm, turning one of the buttonsin his
hand.
Brian said, "If that Star got control, then he
wouldn't've kept looking for Peter. He wouldn't
need him any more."
Hannah burst out, "No. That not right. Star
always
need Peter. He love him. He just not need him
all
time."
Maybe that's it, I thought. We all need
each other, but if we have some inner controls, we
don't need each other quite so desperately. Not
all
time.
"How long will it take?" I said to the
curriculumadviser out at college.
He looked at me quizzically. "You mean right
now?"
"No, altogether. Sorry, I don't mean to rush you."
"You've asked that before."
"I know. But now I need it in black and white.
How long if I take night courses? And how
long if I become a regular day student?"
"But I thought you said you couldn't-was
"Please. Look, let's just write it down."
"All right." Efficiency took over and the dry little
man who was in charge of curriculum credits got
out ruled paper and pencil and lined them up
precisely in front of him. He placed my
transcript to his left and the college catalog
to his right. "Now. You have sixty-eight credits at
the present time. You'll have six more, if you pass your
exam, heh-heh. Uh, sorry. So that will be
seventy-four. You need one hundred and twenty-four
to graduate, all in the proper departmentsand
correct courses, naturally. Not much leeway
there. Hmm. But-never mind. Let's not 226
LOVEY

worry about that now. Let's say you take another
three evening courses in the fall-that's six more
credits-and another three courses in the spring term
for six additional credits. That'll give you
twelve more credits or eighty-six altogether."
I felt as if I were going out of my head. I
wanted to shout at the poor little man. Hurry up,
j ust tell me what I asked, the difference between the
two ways. How could I be so unhurried with the children and
so impatient now? I knew how:
because this had absolutely nothing to do with education or
learning, the children's or my own. That's how!
"Now let's figure that out here. Seventy-four from
one hundred and twenty-four leaves fifty." He
smiled at me. "Comes out even. A nice round
figure. Fifty. That's, let's see, a little
over four years. Of course, there's summer
school...."
I controlled my voice, knowing I couldn't hurry
him. "Let's forget summer school for now. We can
do that later. Now suppose I came
full time in the fall."
"Well, you'd still have the same seventy-four
credits, so we'll begin there. This, of course, is
assumingyou pass the entrance exams. Heh-heh.
Now the regular semester load is fifteen
credits. That odd credit is one for gym.
Heh-heh-heh- hell ."
I thought I might bop his shiny little head. Take
all his semester credits and ... No, no.
Listeneanow. He's finished with gym.
"So-fifteen credits a term, that would be thirty a
year. Now how many did we say you needed?"
"Fifty."
"Ah, yes. Have it right here. Fifty, a nice
round number. So thirty from fifty leaves twenty.
About a year and a half, if you push a little. Of
course, when we figure in summer school...."
Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll let you know."
Four years of classes at night, but I could stay
on at our school, keep on with the children, keep
Hannah going, earn my small but adequate
salary.
Or a year and a half, maybe less, going full
time, to get my teaching credentials, the magical
union papers that would automatically make
me a "real teacher." But there would be no children, no
Hannah-and no salary, although I did have enough saved
to manage on.
I still didn't know what I was going to do, but at least
the alternatives were getting clearer.
It was so hot that beads of perspiration were forming on the
children's foreheads by nine thirty in the morning.
Circle was quiet. No games, just a few
songs. The latest substitute for Patty's
class had lasted three days now and Patty herself was
due back tomorrow, so the worst was over.
Still, it would be a long, hot day. The air was heavy,
and as we finished Best and Worst, Rufus wiped
first his forehead and then his glasses. "Can't we just
finish the book now, Mary? I don't feel like
doing my reading. It's too hot and we've only
got a little left."
I considered and concluded that Rufus was right. We
might as well stay at the table and finishthe last
chapter. I opened the doors to stir whatever air
currents there were and began to read.
It was a happy chapter, and gradually the childrenforgot the
heat and their discomfort as the world of Peter and Star again
became real.
Star's owner finally relented and let Peter
see 229

Mary MacCracken
Star again. Both the boy and the horse were over-joyed and
Peter resolved not to make the mistake he had
made before. Instead of jealously keeping Star to himself,
he urged the other men in the stable to work with Star and also
helped with some of the other horses. Star gradually
became used to other people and this time was ready for the state
horse show.
The day before the show, Peter groomed Star until his
coat glistened and his mane was tawny and smooth. But
Peter's leg wasn't quite healed and one of the other
trainers took Star into the ring. Peter watched from the
sidelines, holding his breath, but Star performed
perfectly, trotting around the ring, holding his head
high and still. On the final page Star won the blue
ribbon-and the owner gave it to Peter, telling him he
deserved it as much as Star.
Hannah, Brian, and Rufus all sighed in
happiness.
"Is good book, teacher."
"Read that last page, that part where Star wins the blue
ribbon, again, Mary."
I knew how they felt-it was good, too good
to end. Besides, when I stopped reading, my own
problems and pending decisions came crowding in. I
read the last page again.
This time when we finished Rufus said, "Star's okay
now. At that last show he could control his head. He
didn't need to keep looking for Peter. I don't
think he even thought about controlling it.
It's just on his inside now and he doesn't need
to think."
"And Peter, he's all right," said Brian.
"He's not hurting Star any more."
"Him not mean hurt Star. Him let Star go now.
Like mices," sighed Hannah.
Like children. Like any kind of loving.
"It's not easy," I said, "to learn all that."
Jamie nuzzled his head against my arm and then, sensing
that no one was quite ready to start work yet, he climbed
into my lap.
"It takes a long time to learn. A really long
time. I was scared like that, like Star, for a long time."
Rufus turned to me. "Do you remember how scared
I was when I first came?"
"I remember, Ruf. I remember Just the way you
were. You wore a dark blue suit-was
"And I had that giant brown briefcase.
Rememberthat briefcase? And look, this is how
I walked...."
Rufus got up and walked to the door, looking like the
Rufus we knew, but when he turned around this
Rufus was gone and in his place was a stiff,
frightened, almost mechanical boy. He moved his
legs rigidly as he walked toward us.
"I walked in the room like this and then I put my
briefcase in front so nobody would see me.
Anyway, I pretended nobody could see me. I
was so scared. I tried to throw up. I thought you'd
send me home if I threw up. Do you remember
the pain in my stomach?"
"I do, Rufus." There was so much I remembered.
It seemed such a short time ago. Why did I have
this big lump in my throat?
Brian said, "And me. I've been here longest.
Nobody else was here then. Only you, Mary. This
is how I came in...."
Brian edged his way to the door and then turned
swiftly, running, flapping, squawking out a
struggled "awk-awk."
"That's the way I came. And listen to this:
"Horyutdy. Mgldeseyu." That's how I
used to talk."
Hannah said, "Why you talk funny like that,
Bri-an? That dumb."
Brian paused and looked at Hannah. "I
don't know," he said. "I don't know why. I was
different then."
Hannah considered. "That okay. I dumb once
too. Carl, Grandpa say I retard."
The boys looked at her. I looked at her. I
wished there were some sort of recorder or another
person in the room. It was hard for me to believe that
this was actually happening-that these children knew, had known
all along, what they had been like, who they were-and,
more than that, recognized who they had become.
Hannah had to do it. I knew she had to do it. I
wished she wouldn't, but if the boys had acted out their
beginnings, Hannah would too.
She crouched on her hands and knees and began rocking
back and forth, back and forth,
building the momentum to a crescendo-and then she brought
her head down toward the floor.
"Hannah!" I cried, not able to stand any more.
"Don't. Don't do that!"
But her head had barely touched the floor. She had
stopped the downward thrust just in time so that her forehead
barely grazed
the
tiles. Now she was up, heading for the closet. She
went inside, pulling the doors closed behind her.
The boys and I sat staring at the tightly shut
doors. Then a crack appeared, then a larger one,
then Hannah's head came round the door. "See,
Bri-an. I not dumb now. Not retard." She
opened the door, stepped all the way out, and said with
absolute assurance, "I lovey now."
The emotion in the room was so high I wonderedhow we
could stay there the rest of the day. Whatever we did would
be anticlimactic. I gave Jamie a little
extra hug, then got up and began to rearrange the
tables and chairs. Maybe we could go outside, find
Henry-
But Hannah wasn't done. She tugged my arm,
tugged hard, and said, loud enough so the boys could hear,
"What you like, teacher? Nobody know you when you come
here."
Did she mean what had I been like in the
beginning"...Did she think that I could do what they had
done and act out my beginnings? Well, I couldn't.
I couldn't talk about how I felt, how I had
been....
"It was a long, long time ago," I said.

Mary MacCracken
Hannah nodded.
"I mean a really long time ago. Six years."
I looked at her. "You were only two."
Hannah nodded again. Somehow I found my-self
moving to the door.
"I didn't know anything about teaching-and not very much about
myself." I reached the door and turned around.
Almost against my will I could feel my steps be- coming
hesitant, my shoulders curving slightly
downward, my voice lower, less sure.
"I only knew I wanted to learn, to begin
to understand, to teach here...."
Suddenly I realized that the children were staring at me.
"Well," I said, straightening. "That was quite a while
ago."
But Hannah understood it and she put it into the words
I couldn't End. "You shrimpy," she said. "You
shrimpy teacher when you come here."
She pointed to the picture that hung on the front
wall by our blackboard. It was the painting she had
given me for a Valentine present. There the sun
shone and the teacher sailed across the grass in her
sneakers, with her skirt spread wide as
though the world could be crossed in a minute, and all the
time the big red blob that was her heart rested
comfortably on the outside of her shirt
"That teacher," she said, "not shrimpy any more."
LOVET-FROM

It was clear now. Hannah had made it clear
to me. I couldn't be a teacher's aide again. I
couldn't go back. There was no way I could
deliberately choose to be shrimpy again.
The sounds of children ran through my head day and night,
blurring thoughts, drowning sleep. Their words, their
stories, their songs, their shouts, whoops, yells,
cries of happiness and pain mixed with my own
heartbeats. When I spoke my voice seemed
strange to me, muted, distant, layered betweenthe
noises of the children.
"Are you sure?" Ted asked on the night before the
last day. We were having a picnic at school the
next day, and I was at Patty's house,
packingsupplies in her Volkswagen bus. Ted
spoke quickly while Patty was in the house getting
anothercarton. "Somehow," he continued, "it
doesn't seem right that you won't have a chance to teach
at the new school, have a few decent
facilitiesfor a change.... Listen, Patty
won't ask you, she says it's an insult, but
she'd love to have you teach with her, you know that. And the
teacher's aide thing-that would be in name only."
"I know," I said. "Thank you. Patty, too.
There's nobody I'd rather work with, but I've been
thinking that someday I may want to work in a public
school, and if I do I'll have to have 236
certification. Now seems like the best time to do it."
Was that really my voice, so cool and calm? My
reasoned argument?
Who was I kidding? What was I doing? How could I
last two days, much less two years?
But the hardest part was over-or anyway, that's what
I told myself. I'd made the decision, filled out
the application blanks for college, even paid the first
installment on tuition. I'd written the Board,
spoken to the Director; everything was set. Almost
everything. I would tell the children as casually as I could
just before they left for the summer.
The morning of June nineteenth dawned bright and
beautiful. It was the last school day of the year, but more
important than that, it was Hannah'sbirthday.
She was nine years old today. Nine years old and this
was going to be her first party. There had never
been anyone to invite before.
As I ate breakfast I listened carefully to the
weather report: 80 percent chance of rain and
thunderstorms by afternoon. But now, at eight in the morning,
there wasn't a cloud in the sky. It seemed like a
good omen; the sun should shine on Hannah's
birthday.
She might never have had a party before, but this one was going
to make up for it, in size anyway.the whole
school was coming. A picnic on the last day was a
tradition at the school, and

Mary MacCracken
now fate conspired to have Hannah's birthday fall
on that same day. All I had to do was help it
along a little.
We had three cakes baked, all saying happy
birthday, hannah in pink letters. We had candles,
balloons, paper tablecloths, party hats, and
presents. Patty and I had bought out
Woolworth's, and now we had a stack of brightly
wrapped presents two feet high: bubble bath,
crayons, pencils, paper, a coloring book, a
jump rope, a pair of socks, a new shirt.
I had been tempted by the goldfish and the
gerbils but, remembering Cougar, I'd passed them
up in favor of a small gold heart on a thin
gold chain set with a red stone to match Hannah's
ring from the dentist.
The rest of the presents could wait till lunch, but
I handed her the little package with the necklace as
soon as she came to school.
"Happy, happy birthday, Hannah," I said,
hugging her and then fastening the chain around her neck.
"Is beautiful, teacher. Just like dentist doctor
ring."
"Just like your heart," I said. "Only yours is
bigger."
But Hannah couldn't bear to get a present and not
give one. She searched the room for some-thing to give
me-until she spotted the little bottle of teeth that
still sat on my table. Happily she trotted to get
them and brought them back to me.
"Here. My tooths from dentist doctor. You
keep." Her smile lighted the whole corner of the
room. "Forever," she said.
Everyone gathered in the parking lot at eleven o'clock.
There were thirty or forty of us: children, teachers,
volunteers, the Director, even some of the mothers and
younger brothers and sisters. Henry was there with a
bunch of his prettiest roses. Mrs. Rosnic was
meeting us at the park with Helen and the ice cream.
"Boy," I whispered to Hannah. "What a party
you're going to have!"
Hannah was radiant, her cheeks flushed with
excitement, her eyes bluer than ever, matching her
new dress. The boys were almost as excited as
Hannah.
"Did you bring the cake, Mary? Did you?"
"Shh, it's a surprise. Of course."
"And the candles? Did you get nine candles?"
"Yes. Even more. Stop worrying, Bri. We've
got everything."
And it truly seemed as if we did. When we got
to the little state park, the children tumbled out of the cars and
ran across the grassy fields down to the lake.
Wild ducks had made the lake their own reservation
and now they squawked in surpriseat the arrival of the
children. But we had brought bags of bread crusts and the
birds quietedas the children fed them.
Mothers and teachers took turns watching the children and
unpacking the food. Brian, Rufus, and I sat
on one of the picnic tables blowing up
balloons, handing them out to whoever wanted one.
I loved to see the children running free, some
down by the lake, some across the fields, some just carrying
food from the car. The green fields were splashed with the
colors of the children's clothes and the bright blue sky was
dotted with balloons. I blinked my eyes
to focus, to snap the shutter of my mind; it was a
picture I would like to keep forever.
At lunch we ate our sandwiches. Hannah ate,
too-daintily, almost elegantly. We toasted
Hannah with our lemonade and then carried in the
birthday cakes-all three, each with ten candles.
Nine for each year and one to grow on.
Ah, Hannah. One to grow on.
Hannah blew out the candles, one cake at a time,
and Mrs. Rosnic stood beside her dishing ice cream
into paper bowls. It was hard to tell which one looked
happier. I suddenly realized that in all the times
I had seen Mrs. Rosnic, I had never seen
her smile before. Now, wreathed in happiness, their
faces were amazingly alike, and I went and stood
beside them.
Hannah's hair was soft and clean and shone like a
polished penny. The skin on her arms, neck, and
face was smooth and creamy and just now her cheeks were
pink with excitement. Her eyes were the same startling
combination of blues-a light cornflower
blue on the surface, then darker layers underneath,
down to a vivid deep blue. Hannah had always
had an easy, airy grace, but
now her new slenderness and new clothes added a
delicacy and charm. Hannah seemed prettier
to me than any Blue Fairy could ever be.
Mrs. Rosnic touched my arm, still smiling, and
gestured toward Hannah, whispering, "Who could have
thought! Is so pretty!"
I smiled too-who could help it?-and whispered
back, "Yes, she is, and so are you."
After lunch we rode back to the school packed between
balloons, remnants of potato chips, papereaand
ribbon. Hannah had folded each piece of paper
and ribbon, refusing to give up even the tiniest
scrap.
Mrs. Rosnic left for home directly from the
picnic.i had said to Hannah, "You can leave now
too, lovey. You don't need to come all the way
back to school."
But Hannah shook her head and climbed into her
usual spot in the front seat, with Rufus,
Brian, and Jamie in the back. She had parted with
her presents and the remains of the cake; Mrs.
Rosnic had these carefully stored in her
car. Hannah evidently wanted one last ride
with the boys before the year ended-and so did I. This was the
last time I would ride surrounded by the children, and I
drove as slowly as I could, savoring each
second.
We were late. The buses and cars and even
Brian's taxi were already lining up in the
drivewaywhen we got back to school.
There was a distant rumble of thunder as we ran down
to our room. The Director was calling,
"Hurry up, now, children. It's time to go. Your
buses are waiting."
I piled the children's arms with the paintings and papers they
had done during the year. Hannahhad so many, she
had to make two trips. Then they gathered on the little
stoop outside our classroom and I kissed each
one, each special one.
"Listen, now," I said. "You have a good summer and a
good year. I'm probably going to be going to school
myself in the fall, so I won't be seeing you for a
while. But I'll be thinking about you and I know you'll
be doing just fine."
The thunder was louder; the drivers were honkingbbfall was a
long way off. The news that I wouldn't be back
scarcely seemed important.
"Go on now," I said. "Hurry, before the rain
comes."
The children ran for their buses, arms overflowingwith
papers, still calling good-byes.
The bus drivers were jockeying for position in line,
eager to have the children board, anxious to leave before the
storm broke.
Rufus was in the first bus, waving happily with
Jamie beside him. Brian was in a taxi just a little
farther on, his sweet, intelligent face pressed
tight against the window.
I took a step out from the door. "Good luck,
Bri. Good luck in school."
He nodded, pressing his face tighter against the
rolled-up window, almost managing a smile. And then
he too was gone.
Hannah? Where was she? There were only two
buses left and they were starting to move now, the other
children still calling their good-byes through half-open windows.
I stood on the stoop, searching for Hannah, for one
last glimpse of her. And then suddenly I saw
her.
She was kneeling on a seat by the window. As she
passed our door, she called out. Her voice
mingled with the other children's as they shouted their
farewells: "Good-bye, Patty. Good-bye,
Mary. Good-bye, Ellen. "Bye, teacher...."
But I heard, or thought I did, one high sweet
call above the rest, "Good-bye, now. Good-bye
now, lovey."
Epilogue
I have never gone back to the school-it would have been
too painful for me and unfair to the children-but I've
kept track of them, and now they are almost grown.
Brian has finished
high
school and has a job on a small newspaper.
His memory for batting averageseanames, and records
is put to good use in the sports department.
Rufus is almost six feet tall. He is in his
third year in high school and is getting good
grades. During the summer he works as a junior
counselor at a camp for handicapped children.
Jamie is living at home and going to a
prevoca-tional training program preparing for a
sheltered workshop.
Hannah has moved south. Grandpa died and Mrs.
Rosnic sold the house and headed for Florida with the
three children to join her longtimefriend, Hannah's
godmother. Hannah entereda day school with a
good reputation for helping children with emotional problems.
At first she was put in a class headed by a male
teacher, but Hannah grew silent and withdrawn. She
was transferred, and under the tutelage of a young, 244
capable woman, Hannah once again began to grow.
At last report, her progress was good. She
has developed a talent for working with the younger children and
often assists in the primary grades, particularly
the dance classes.
I finished college with a bachelor's degree in
education and then a master's in learning disabilities.
I continue to work with children, primarily those with emotional
or learning problems, in both public school and
private practice.
About the Author
Mary MacCracken is a certified special
educationteacher who holds a masters degree in
learning disabilities. She has taught emotionally
disturbed children in both public and private schools.
In addition, the author is the mother of three children.
Ms. MacCracken has also written the
celebrated NAL publication A CIRCLE OF
CHILDREN.