Читать книгу Beautiful Child: The story of a child trapped in silence and the teacher who refused to give up on her - Torey Hayden, Torey Hayden - Страница 6

As I ran my finger down the class list, I came to one I knew well. Billy Gomez. Aged nine, he was a small boy of Latino origin with an unruly thatch of black hair, a fondness for brightly colored shirts, and the grubbiest fingernails I’d ever seen on a kid. But while Billy was small, he was not puny. He had the sleek, sturdy musculature of a weasel and a fierce aggressiveness to match. Ruled by an explosive temper and a very bad mouth, he’d gotten kicked out of two previous schools. I’d worked extensively both with him and his teacher the year before, but I hadn’t been particularly successful. Billy still ranted, raved, and fought.

The other three boys I did not know. The fifth child, as Julie predicted, was Venus.

When I arrived the next morning, Venus was again up on her wall.

“Hello, Venus,” I said as I passed.

No response. She didn’t even turn her head in my direction.

I stopped and looked up. “Venus?”

There was not even the faintest muscle twitch to indicate she was aware of being spoken to.

“I’m your new teacher. Would you like to walk into the building with me?”

Her failure to respond was so complete that the first thing I thought was she must have a hearing loss. I made a mental note to check on what tests she had had. Waiting a few minutes longer, I finally gave up and went on into the school alone.

The first student to come into class was Billy. “Oh no! Not you!” he cried and smacked the center of his forehead with his palm. Hard. He almost fell backward with the blow. “Oh no. No, no, no. I don’t want to be in here. I don’t want you.”

“Hi, Billy. I’m glad to see you too,” I said. “And guess what? You’re the first person here. So you get your pick of any table.”

“Then I pick the table in the cafeteria,” he said quickly and bolted for the door.

“Hey ho!” I snagged him by the collar. “Not literally any table. One in here.”

Billy slammed his things down on the nearest one. “I don’t want any of these tables,” he said gloomily. “I just want to get the fuck out of here.”

I put a finger to my lips. “Not in here, okay? You’re the oldest in here, so I need you to set a good example of how to talk. Do you think you can watch your tongue for me?”

Billy put his fingers into his mouth and grabbed hold of his tongue. “I’ll try,” he garbled around his fingers, “but I don’t think I can pull it out far enough for me to watch.”

“Billy, not literally.”

Billy laughed hysterically. So much so, in fact, he fell off his chair.

Just then Bob appeared, shepherding in two little boys with the most startlingly red hair I’d ever seen. It was red. Bright, copper penny red, worn in a floppy style over small, pointed faces that were generously splattered with raindrop-size freckles.

“This is Shane,” Bob said, putting a hand a little more firmly on the boy to his right. “And this is Zane.”

Shane and Zane? God, why did parents do this to their kids?

They were identical twins, dressed in what I can only describe as ventriloquist’s dummy style: polyester pants, striped shirts, and, quite incredibly, bow ties.

Billy was as amazed by their appearance as I was. “Are they Dalmatians?” he asked incredulously.

Before I could respond a heavyset African – American woman wearing a bright, flowery dress appeared and pushed forward a slender, almost lanky-looking boy. “This here’s Jesse,” she said, keeping both hands on the boy’s thin shoulders. “This here’s Jesse’s classroom?”

Bob stepped aside, and the woman propelled the boy into the room. “You be good for Grandma. You be special for this here lady and Grandma’ll hear all the good things you done today.” She kissed him soundly on the side of the head. The boy flinched. Then she departed out the door.

“Here,” I said. “Do you want to take a chair here?”

The boy tossed his belongings down with an angry-sounding thud.

“Oh no, you don’t. Not here. You’re not sitting here,” Billy cried. “No ugly black kid’s going to sit here, because I’m sitting here. Teacher, you put him someplace else.”

“You want to fight about it?” Jesse replied, making a fist.

The boys lunged at each other right over the tabletop and went crashing to the floor. I leaped in, grabbing Billy by the collar and pushing Jesse aside.

Bob grinned with rather evil relish. “I see you have everything in hand, so I’ll leave you to it,” he said and vanished out the door.

“I’m not sitting with him. He’s crazy,” Billy said and grabbed his stuff from the table. “I’d rather sit with the Dalmatians. Come here, you guys. This here’s our table. That ugly kid can sit alone.”

I grabbed Billy’s shoulder again. “For now I think everyone’s going to sit alone. One person per table. You sit here. Zane? Are you Zane? You sit here. Jesse, there. Shane, over here. Okay, these are your tables. And your chairs. So remember where they are, because I want your bottoms glued to those chairs unless you have permission to be somewhere else.”

“Glued on?” cried Billy and leaped up. “Where’s the glue?” He was over to the bookshelves already, rummaging through a basket. “Got to glue my bottom to that chair.”

“Billy, sit down.”

“But you said ‘glued on.’ I’m just doing what you said.”

“Sit down.”

With a cheerful smile, he sat. “We got whole tables to ourselves?” he said. “These are our tables?”

“Yes, those are your tables.”

“Wow,” he said and smoothed his hand over the wood surface. “Cool. My own table. Wonder where I’m going to put it when I get home.”

“Billy!”

“Is there only going to be four of us in this here class?” Jesse asked.

Suddenly I remembered Venus. The bell had rung, and she wasn’t in the classroom.

I crossed to the window. Venus was still on the wall, but below her was Wanda, arms reaching up. Gently she lifted Venus down. I saw them approach the school building.

Wanda came all the way up to the classroom door with her sister. She was a big, ungainly girl, at least thirty pounds overweight, with bad acne and straggly hair. Her clothes were wrinkled, ill-fitting, and noticeably smelly.

“Hello,” I said.

“Her come inside now,” Wanda said in a cheerful manner. “Come on, beautiful child. Time to go to school.”

Venus looked up at me with a full, open gaze, making unabashed eye contact. I smiled at her. She didn’t smile back; she just stared.

“Here.” I offered my hand. “Shall I show you to your table?”

“Her no talk,” Wanda said.

“Thank you for your thoughts,” I replied, “but now it’s time for Venus to be in school.” I kept my hand outstretched to Venus. “Time to get started.”

“Her no come to school.”

“I don’t think you go to school, do you, Wanda? But Venus does. Come on, sweetheart. Time to find your seat.”

“Go on, beautiful child,” Wanda whispered and put her hands on Venus’s back. She pushed the child gently into the room.

“Good-bye, Wanda,” I said. “Thanks for bringing her. Do you want to say good-bye to Wanda, Venus? Shall we say, ‘See you after school, Wanda’?”

“Bye-bye, beautiful child,” Wanda said. Then she turned and ambled off.

“Beautiful child” was not the epithet I would have given Venus, now that I had a chance to look at her up close. She was neither clean nor well cared for. There was the dusky cast of worn-in dirt to her dark skin, and her long hair hung in matted tendrils, as if someone had tried to make dreadlocks out of them and failed. Her clothes were too big and had food stains down the front. And like her sister, she smelled.

“Okay, sweetheart, you can sit in this chair.”

“How come you’re sitting her at the Dalmatian’s table?” Billy asked. “How come you don’t make her sit with that ugly black kid. You should put all the black kids together.”

“Actually, Billy, we don’t sort people by color in here, so I would prefer it if you stopped going on about it,” I replied. “I’d also prefer it if you’d stop saying ‘Dalmatian.’ He’s not a dog. He’s a boy and his name is Zane.”

“My name’s Shane,” the boy said in an annoyed tone. “And you shut up, stupid kid.”

“I’ll tell you who’s stupid!” Billy shouted angrily. “You want me to punch your lights out?”

Before I knew what was happening, Billy lunged at Shane.

But no quailing from Shane. He lunged back. “Yeah! I wanna beat your head in!” he shouted. “I’m gonna pound you to a bloody little zit on the sidewalk and then step on you!”

“Yeah!” Zane chimed in. “Me too!”

And I was thinking, Gosh, this is going to be a fun year.

I was pathetically glad to see Julie when she showed up at one o’clock. The morning had been nothing but one long fistfight. Shane and Zane, who were six, had arrived in the classroom with a diagnosis of FAS – fetal alcohol syndrome – which is a condition that occurs in the unborn child when alcohol is overused in pregnancy. As a result, they both had the distinctive elflike physical features that characterize fetal alcohol syndrome, a borderline IQ, and serious behavioral problems, in particular, hyperactivity and attention deficit. Even this glum picture, however, was a rather inadequate description of these pint-size guerrillas. With their manic behavior, identical Howdy Doody faces, and weird, out-of-date clothes, they were like characters from some horror film come to life to terrorize the classroom.

Jesse, who was eight, had Tourette’s syndrome, which caused him to have several tics including spells of rapid eye blinking, head twitching, and sniffing, as if he had a runny nose, although he didn’t. In addition, he obsessively straightened things. He was particularly concerned about having his pencils and erasers laid out just so on his table, which was not a promising road to happiness in this class. The moment the others realized it mattered to him, they were intent on knocking his carefully aligned items around just to wind him up. Also not a good idea, I discovered quickly. His obsessiveness gave Jesse the initial impression of being a rather finicky, fastidious child. However, beneath this veneer was a kid with the mind-set of Darth Vader. Things had to be done his way. Death to anyone who refused.

Compared to these three, Billy seemed rather tame. He was just plain aggressive, a cocky live wire who was willing to take on anyone and everyone, whether it made sense or not; a kid whose mouth was permanently in gear before his brain. Permanently in gear, period.

I’d been forced to more or less ignore Venus over the course of the morning because I was too busy breaking up fights among the boys. She didn’t appear to mind this inattention. Indeed, she didn’t actually appear to be alive most of the time. Plopped down in her chair at the table, she just sat, staring ahead of her. I’d offered some papers and crayons at one point. I’d offered a storybook. I’d offered a jigsaw puzzle. Admittedly, all this was done on the run, while chasing after one of the boys, and I’d had no time to sit down with her, but even so … Venus picked up whatever it was I’d given her and manipulated it back and forth in a sluggish, detached manner for a few moments without using it appropriately. Then, as soon as I turned away, she let it drop and resumed sitting motionlessly.

Once Julie arrived, I gave her the task of refereeing the boys and then took Venus aside. I wanted to get the measure of Venus’s silence immediately. I wasn’t sure yet if it was an elective behavior that she could control or whether it was some more serious physical problem that prevented her from speaking, but I knew from experience that if it was psychological, I needed to intervene before we developed a relationship based on silence.

“Come with me,” I said, moving to the far end of the room away from Julie and the boys.

Venus watched me in an open, direct way. She had good eye contact, which I took as a positive sign. This made it less likely that autism was at the base of her silence.

“Here, come here. I want you to do something with me.”

Venus continued to watch me but didn’t move.

I returned to her table. “Come with me, please. We’re going to work together.” Putting a hand under her elbow, I brought her to her feet. Hand on her shoulder, I directed her to the far end of the room. “You sit there.” I indicated a chair.

Venus stood.

I put a hand on her head and pressed down. She sat. Pulling out the chair across the table from her, I sat down and lifted over a tub of crayons and a piece of paper.

“I’m going to tell you something very special,” I said. “A secret. Do you like secrets?”

She stared at me blankly.

I put on my most “special secret” voice and leaned toward her. “I wasn’t always a teacher. Know what I did? I worked with children who had a hard time speaking at school. Just like you!” Admittedly, this wasn’t such an exciting secret, but I tried to make it sound like something very special. “My job was to help them be able to talk again anytime they wanted.” I grinned. “What do you think about that? Would you like to start talking again?”

Venus kept her eyes on my face, her gaze never wavering, but it was a remarkably hooded gaze. I had no clue whatsoever as to what she might be thinking. Or even if she was thinking.

“It’s very important to speak in our room. Talking is the way we let others know how we are feeling. Talking is how we let other people know what we are thinking, because they can’t see inside our heads to find out. They won’t know otherwise. We have to tell them. That’s how people understand each other. It’s how we resolve problems and get help when we need it and that makes us feel happier. So it’s important to learn how to use words.”

Venus never took her eyes from mine. She almost didn’t blink.

“I know it’s hard to start talking when you’ve been used to being silent. It feels different. It feels scary. That’s okay. It’s okay to feel scared in here. It’s okay to feel uncertain.”

If she was uncertain, Venus didn’t let on. She stared uninhibitedly into my face.

I lifted up a piece of paper. “I’d like you to make a picture for me. Draw me a house.”

No movement.

We sat, staring at each other.

“Here, shall I get you started? I’ll draw the ground.” I took up a green crayon and drew a line across the bottom of the paper, then I turned the paper back in her direction and pushed the tub of crayons over. “There. Now, can you draw a house?”

Venus didn’t look down. Gently I reached across and reoriented her head so that she would have to look at the paper. I pointed to it.

Nothing.

Surely she did know what a house was. She was seven. She had sat through kindergarten twice. But maybe she was developmentally delayed, like her sister. Maybe expecting her to draw a house was expecting too much.

“Here. Take a crayon in your hand.” I had to rise up, come around the table, grab hold of her arm, bring her hand up, insert the crayon, and lay it on the table. She kept hold of the crayon, but her hand flopped back down on the table like a lifeless fish.

Picking up a different crayon, I made a mark on the paper. “Can you make a line like that?” I asked. “There. Right beside where I drew my line.”

I regarded her. Maybe she wasn’t right-handed. I’d not seen her pick up anything, so I’d just assumed. But maybe she was left-handed. I reached over and put the crayon in the other hand. She didn’t grip it very well, so I got up, came around the table, took her left hand, repositioned it better and lay it back on the table. I returned to my seat. Trying to sound terribly jolly, I said, “I’m left handed,” in the excited tone of voice one would normally reserve for comments like “I’m a millionaire.”

No. She wasn’t going to cooperate. She just sat, staring at me again, her dark eyes hooded and unreadable.

“Well, this isn’t working, is it?” I said cheerfully and whipped the piece of paper away. “Let’s try something else.”

I went and got a children’s book. Putting my chair alongside hers, I sat down and opened the book. “Let’s have a look at this.”

She stared at me.

It was a picture dictionary and the page I opened to was full of colorful illustrations of small animals driving cars and doing different sorts of jobs. “Let’s look at these pictures. See? They’re all in a bus. And what are they? What kind of animals are they? Mice, aren’t they? And there’s a police car, and look, one of the policemen is a lion. What kind of animal is the other policeman?”

She stared up at me.

“Here, look down here.” I physically tipped her head so that she’d look at the page. “What’s this other animal? What kind of animal is he?”

No response.

“What is he?”

No response.

“What is he?”

No response. Absolutely nothing. She just sat, motionless.

“Right here.” I tapped the picture. “What kind of animal is that?”

I persisted for several minutes longer, rapidly rephrasing the question but keeping at it, not letting enough silence leak in to make it seem like silence, taking up the rhythm of both sides of the conversation myself, all with just one question: what animal is that?

Bang! I brought my hand down flat on the table to make a loud, sudden noise. It was a crude technique but often a very effective one. I hoped it would startle her over the initial hurdle, as it did with many children, but in Venus’s case, I was also interested just to see if it got any reaction out of her. I hoped to see her jump or, at the very least, blink.

Venus simply raised her head and looked at me.

“Can you hear that?” I asked. “When I bang my hand like that on the table,” I said and banged it suddenly on the tabletop again, “can you hear it?”

“I sure can!” Billy shouted from the other side of the classroom. “You trying to scare the shit out of us over here?”

Venus just sat, unblinking.

Leaning forward, I pulled the book back in front of me and started to page through it. “Yes, well, let’s try something else. Let’s see if we can find a story. Shall I read a story to you?”

Eyes on my face, she just stared. No nod. No shake of the head. Nothing. There was very little to denote the kid was anything more than a waxwork accidentally abandoned in the classroom.

“Yes, well, I have an even better idea. What about recess?”

She didn’t react to that either.