Just Another Kid: Each was a child no one could reach – until one amazing teacher embraced them all. Torey Hayden
Читать онлайн книгу.
Zero.” I went faster and faster. Shemona was getting caught up in the process by this time. Some of the numbers were written a bit too high for her to reach, and she had to jump to point to them. This pleased her and she giggled. “Six. Nine. Three. Thirteen. What’s this? Five. What’s this? Seven. What’s this? Two. What’s this? Fifteen.”
On and on and on. Faster and faster and faster. The whole board was covered with my quickly scribbled numbers, and Shemona was panting to keep up with me. She was smiling and giggling loudly enough that I could hear sound.
“What’s this? Four. What’s this? Ten. What’s this? Eight. What’s this?”
Silence.
The next answer was six, and Shemona knew it. She’d already leaped up to point in that direction, waiting for me to say six. When I didn’t, she fell back abruptly, her arm still raised. She was panting. An expectant smile was still on her lips, and I was reminded of my Labrador dog and the same enthusiastic, expectant expression he had, when I paused, midgame, with the ball in my hand.
“What number is this?” I asked, pointing to the six.
She looked at it. The smile faded and she regarded the number a long moment, as if it were written in a foreign script.
“What number is it?” I tapped the board.
She continued to gaze at it.
“What number is this?” I knew the impetus was gone. I knew I had failed. If I hadn’t caught her in the excitement of the moment, I knew I wasn’t going to now. I smiled in an effort to keep the good feelings between us. “It’s a six, isn’t it?” She gave a halfhearted little jump to point to the six, wanting to keep the happiness in the situation as obviously as I did.
I handed her the box of colored chalk. “You did that really well, didn’t you? You know all your numbers. Here. You may use these until recess time.”
Carolyn and I had worked up a system whereby we alternated playground duty at recess. Because of her aide, Carolyn wouldn’t have needed to stay down on the playground during the fifteen-minute recess period. I did, as there was no one else to look after my children. However, Carolyn, understanding the pressures of this sort of job when there was no break, had offered to alternate with me, watching my kids as well as hers. So every day I had a fifteen-minute break, either in the morning or the afternoon.
Usually, I used the period to catch up on miscellaneous tasks, such as running off the children’s worksheets on the mimeograph or setting up art projects. Some days I did no more than collapse in the teachers’ lounge. On this particular morning, I’d gone to get the keys from Bill, the janitor, to open his cleaning closet on my floor so that I could wash out the mucky gray from our easel. I had the tap running, and dirty water was gurgling noisily down the drain, so when Leslie appeared in the doorway of the closet, I jumped with surprise.
My first reaction was to glance at my watch, because I was suddenly alarmed to think I’d lost track of the time and my children were back in the room. But there were still five minutes remaining of the break.
“What are you doing here, sweetheart?”
Leslie was red cheeked from exertion and looking a whole lot more alert than usual.
“What do you need?”
She turned her head and looked down the hallway.
“What is it?” I stuck my head out of the closet and glanced in the direction she was looking.
Back and forth between me and the stairwell Leslie glanced. Her body was taut with excitement.
“You shouldn’t be up here, you know,” I said. “You’re supposed to be down on the playground with Miss Berry and Joyce. Do they know you’ve come up here?”
She raised one hand and pointed down the hall, then she grunted. It was the first intentional sound I’d ever heard Leslie make.
Again, I looked around the corner of the closet door. “What is it?”
“Crying,” she said hoarsely.
“Crying? Who’s crying? Can you show me?”
Leslie took off. I followed her down the hallway, down the stairs, through the fire doors. As we came out of the stairwell, I was accosted by noise. A general hubbub filtered up from the area around the main office.
Carolyn was just inside the office door when I reached it. She had hold of Dirkie by the collar of his shirt and Shemona by her coat. Dirkie was crying angrily. Shemona was hysterical. She twisted and turned, all the while screeching at the top of her lungs.
“Oh, thank God,” Carolyn said when she saw me. “I thought you’d gotten lost.”
“What’s happened?”
“She tried to kill me!” Dirkie shouted. “That girl, that girl with the long yellow hair, she tried to kill me!”
“Dirkie was just being Dirkie,” Carolyn said. Letting go of him, she reached over the top of the barrier to grab a handful of tissues. She held them out to Dirkie. “You were being a bit annoying, weren’t you, Dirkie? You kept wanting to touch Shemona’s hair. I asked you several times to leave her alone.”
“She tried to kill me!” He displayed a scratched cheek.
“I was about to kill you myself,” Carolyn replied. “How many times did I ask you to leave her alone? Five? Ten? It’s not surprising she got fed up.”
Shemona persisted with ear-splitting screams, making it nearly impossible to continue the conversation. Moreover, the other children were milling around inquisitively.
I looked over at Carolyn. “Do you suppose you could spare Joyce to watch my gang for a moment? There’s an art project all laid out up there. Maybe to be on the safe side, you could take Dirkie down with you. But I’d like a private moment to deal with Short Stuff, here.”
Carolyn nodded. Getting a good grip on Shemona’s jacket, I dragged her, still kicking and screaming, off in the direction of the teachers’ lounge. Once there, I shut the door firmly behind us, then pulled her across the room to the sofa and sat down.
“Do you want to sit here beside me?” I asked.
She simply continued to scream.
“Would you like to sit in my lap?”
“No!”
“Oh, all right. Very well. The thing is, however, I can’t let go of you. I need to hold on so that you don’t hurt yourself in here. Or hurt anything else. When you look like you’re more in control, I’ll let go of your wrist.”
This brought a new spurt of anger, and she struggled savagely, clawing at my arm with the fierceness of a tiger cub. Grabbing her free hand with mine, I hung on and said no more.
Shemona screamed. And screamed. Tiredness eventually crept into her voice, but she still managed to carry on shrieking in monotonous, syncopated bursts. Then exhaustion finally overtook her, and her screams faded to squawks and then grunts. At last she was hoarse. Genuine tears filled her eyes at that point, and when she looked at me briefly, I saw the anguish. Sinking down first to her knees and then all the way down, she sat on the rug at my feet. I let go of her wrists.
I smiled. “That was hard work, wasn’t it?”
She gave no response.
“I’m tired now. Are you?”
She fingered the red marks left on her wrists by my grip, then she snuffled and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her blouse.
“This must have been a hard day for you. It must be scary, having to come to school without Geraldine. You must miss her.”
Very slightly, Shemona nodded.
“Geraldine takes good care of you, doesn’t she?”
Tears came back to