Beautiful Child: The story of a child trapped in silence and the teacher who refused to give up on her. Torey Hayden
Читать онлайн книгу.
“Okay. Good. Pine trees and the kind of trees that have flat leaves. The kind that lose their leaves. We call them ‘deciduous trees.’ So, look at your trees carefully. What kinds of trees are in your woods?”
“I see trees with leaves and pine trees,” Jesse said. “My forest has got them both.”
“Yeah, me too,” Billy said, not wanting his imaginary woods to be without something someone else saw.
“Are they tall trees?” I asked. “Have they got thick trunks? Look around? Do you see any young trees there too?”
“Mine are big!” Billy cried.
“Can you put your arm around one of them, Billy? Everybody. Go up to one of your trees and try to reach around it. Feel the bark. Feel it with your fingers. But put your face against the tree too. You’re trying to stretch your arms all the way around. Feel what it feels like.”
I opened my eyes again slightly to see the boys, all of them with their hands stretched out in the air, reaching to feel imaginary trees. I peeked over at Venus. She too had her eyes shut tight. She didn’t have her hands up in the air like the boys did, but her fingers were splayed out on her knees and twitching slightly, as if possibly she was feeling for an imaginary tree of her own.
“Mine’s got knobbly bark!” Billy cried with unexpected loudness.
“Quietly, Billy,” I said. “You’ll scare away the animals.”
“Knobbly bark,” he whispered.
“Yeah, mine too. I can feel it on my cheek,” Jesse said.
“What about you, Zane? What does your tree feel like?”
“It’s a pine tree. It’s rough.”
“Can you smell it?”
He nodded and smiled slightly, his eyes still closed. “Yeah.”
“I can smell mine!” cried Billy, still a little loud.
“Shut up, Billy, you’ll scare the animals away,” Jesse said.
“Oh look,” I said. “Something’s moving through the trees over there. What is it? Look carefully. Over there in the distance. Going through the trees. Do you see it too?”
“A deer!” Billy positively shouted.
“You stupid pisser!” Jesse cried. “You keep hollering. You scared the deer away!” And before I knew what was coming, Jesse punched Billy in the mouth.
This, of course, rather rudely pulled us all out of our imaginary visit to the woods. Not expecting to be hit, Billy burst into tears. Jesse got up and stomped off, twitching and yelping. Zane and Shane were on their feet, shouting, “That’s not fair! They wrecked our time. We weren’t done! They wrecked it! They ought to go in the quiet chair!”
I felt sorry for Billy, innocent victim of his own enthusiasm, because I knew he hadn’t meant to wreck things. He had simply been enjoying himself and, as ever, had lost control. I gave him a cuddle and rubbed his chin. And while I could hardly condone what Jesse had done, I didn’t want to punish him. He too had simply been caught up in the imaginary journey. So I walked over and put an arm around him afterward, saying I was sorry Billy had disturbed things for him and I understood how it made him feel angry but reminding him for the millionth time that I couldn’t allow hitting and please would he try to remember that?
Shane and Zane stood forlornly. “Can we do it again? It wasn’t fair. They wrecked it. Please, can we do it again?” Zane asked.
“Yes, we will. But not just now,” I said. “We’ll do it tomorrow at the same time.”
“Noooo,” Shane moaned. “I want to do it now. It’s not fair.”
“I know. You feel disappointed. Tomorrow we’ll do it again.”
“Pleeeeeeeese?”
“Tomorrow.”
“This afternoon. Okay?” Zane begged. “Pleeeeeeeese?”
“We can’t this afternoon. Julie comes then and we’re getting a new girl, so we need to do other things. Tomorrow after morning recess.”
The twins stomped off, disgruntled, to their tables.
I turned to look for Venus. And there she was, still sitting cross-legged on the floor, her eyes still tight shut. I regarded her. Why was she like that? Again, my first instinct was to believe she couldn’t hear us and thus had not realized we’d stopped the activity. But then, if she couldn’t hear, she wouldn’t have known we’d started the activity. Or what we were doing during the activity. So why was she still sitting with her eyes closed? Did some part of her brain not register that we’d stopped? Or not want to register we’d stopped? Or was it just plain resistance?
Coming over, I squatted down directly in front of her. “Venus?”
No response.
I was a little reluctant to touch her, in case she wasn’t expecting it. “Open your eyes, Venus. We’re done with the imaginary journey. We’re doing something else now.”
Slowly, she opened her eyes.
I smiled. “You stayed a little longer in the woods than the rest of us, huh?”
She looked at me.
I looked back at her.
Her expression was so enigmatic that she could have been an alien child sitting there.
That day the part-time students were due to start coming. Up until that point we hadn’t been much of a cohesive group, as chaos had always been too close at hand. However, the arrival of “them other kids,” as the boys chose to call them, brought out the team spirit.
“They ain’t gonna be Chipmunks, are they?” Shane asked during morning discussion as I prepared them for the arrival of our first new student.
“No!” Billy cried. “No, Teacher, they can’t be Chipmunks. Okay? Please? ’Cause just us guys get to be Chipmunks.”
“What do you think about that, Jesse?”
“Yeah, just us guys who live here.”
“All right then,” I replied.
“I think we ought to have a special signal,” Billy said. “You know, something that makes us know we’re Chipmunks.” It was said as if this were some elite society we were speaking of. “Something to help us keep our spirits up when we got all these other geezers in here to put up with.”
“Let’s go ‘Chip, chip, chip, chip, chip,’” Zane suggested.
“Don’t you think that might get a little noisy?” I asked.
Of course, this meant all the boys had to do it.
“And not too discreet.”
“What’s discreet mean?” Billy asked.
“Discreet means when you keep something kind of private and don’t make a big show of it,” I said. “Something like a hand signal might work better.”
The conversation pursued this vein for several minutes with the boys trying out various movements and gestures that they thought could serve as this special signal. I watched Venus as they talked. She was sitting at her table, as were the boys sitting each at their individual tables, as we’d not yet progressed to the point of being able to sit peaceably next to one another. Given my big, booming voice I had no trouble being heard when the kids were scattered all over the room, and the boys’ personalities were all so loud and expansive that the distance among them still helped more than it hindered. They could jump up, swing their arms around, and be their usual, lively selves without crashing into anyone else. In this respect, the distance was useful for Venus too, as she did not explode unpredictably