Somebody Else’s Kids, page 27
There was, unfortunately, no proper placement in the district for Boo. Before the wholesale clean-out at the passage of the mainstreaming law, we had had going a fairly adequate program for autistic children. However, the funding was cut and then mainstreaming came along and the program died. Two of the children in it went into regular settings with extensive help, two had been sent away to private schools, one was in Betsy Kerry’s class and one had moved out of the district.
Boo’s parents were as concerned about his placement as I was. Then mid-month Mrs. Franklin called to tell me that they had located a small private program in a nearby community. When I investigated, I found a good-looking place. We had a large population in the area of one of the lesser-known religious sects. With the changing policies toward special education programs in the public schools, they had decided to open a class in one of their parochial schools for that group of children who were falling between the cracks. After a year of running a class for older disturbed children, they had decided to open a primary program expanded to include autistic-type children. The two teachers were young and eager. The room was bright and big and filled with ample, albeit worn, equipment. Aide positions were filled by the parents.
The Franklins, Birk and I discussed the program. I wanted them to be aware that Boo would receive religious training in a faith not his own and that because the family was not of that faith they were ineligible for tuition scholarships. The Franklins would have to pay the entire costs themselves. Yes, they knew. By cutting corners they felt they could afford the modest tuition. As far as the religious training went, they felt that if Boo learned anybody’s religion that was a positive step.
Lori’s placement had not yet come up. Because she remained on Edna’s roster, I was not responsible for her placement. The matter seemed cut and dried to me so I did not worry much about it. I assumed the next year for Lori would be second grade and a good share of her day still with me. Both second-grade teachers were good, and one, an older woman who had been teaching for years, was superb. I was looking forward to planning out Lori’s program with her.
After school, I was down in the lounge with Billie and Hal Langorhan, a sixth-grade teacher, when Dan came in. He pulled his mug off the shelf, filled it with coffee. Coming over, he pushed my logbook aside and sat down next to me on the couch. We made small talk for a while.
“Say Dan,” I said during a pause in the conversation, “when are we going to meet on Lori Sjokheim’s placement for next year? I’ve been thinking about it. I think Ella Martinson would be ideal, don’t you? And the way my schedule looks right now, I could give Lori about three hours of intensive resource help. Ella could handle her the rest of the time, couldn’t she?”
Dan stared into his coffee mug intently, like a fortune-teller reading tea leaves. He did not respond.
“You don’t think Ella is a good idea? Margery doesn’t seem to have things quite as much together as Ella does, do you think? Her kids always seem in a dither. And I thought Lori might profit from someone as down-to-earth as Ella.”
Dan’s face was reddening.
“But if you don’t want Ella … well, I certainly wouldn’t mind working with Margery. She really is creative. I guess that might be good for Lori too. Real good, I’m sure …”
Dan looked up “We’re retaining Lori Sjokheim.”
“What?”
Dan jerked his head. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
We walked down the hall to my room. I was beyond words. Once inside, Dan shut my door firmly.
“Now what do you mean, you’re retaining Lori? There hasn’t ever been a meeting on her. Has there?”
Dan had sunk into a small kiddie chair. “I’ve been meaning to tell you …”
“But –”
“We have had a meeting. Edna, Lori’s father and I. And we’ve decided to retain her. There isn’t much else we could do with her. She hasn’t completed any first-grade skills yet. There’s no way we could justify sending her on to second grade.”
I was speechless.
Dan put a hand up. “Now before you go and get all upset, think about it. What else could we do?”
“Of all the sneaky tricks! You did this behind my back. You knew I wouldn’t stand for it.”
“Her father has already agreed, Torey. He thinks it’s the right idea too.”
“Dan, we cannot do this,” I said. “We just can’t.”
He would not even look at me.
“She’s seven years old, going to be eight in September. She’s a great big girl already; she’s grown like a weed this year. She’ll be half a head over the first graders.”
“But she has no reading skills, Tor. We can’t lay a burden like that on Ella or Margery.”
“And we can lay it on Lori? We’ve half killed this girl already with our stupid ideas. She’s already failed one grade; how is it going to be failing another? The child has a physical disability. You could keep her in first grade until she is a gray-haired grandmother and she may never learn to read.”
Dan’s head was down. “Torey, don’t make this so difficult on me.”
“I’m not trying to make it difficult. I’m just trying to understand. You’ve got to know deep down in your heart, Dan, how wrong this is. Otherwise you wouldn’t have sneaked around like a bunch of kids behind the barn. You’re punishing the girl simply because she’s different and we can’t teach her. All the other excuses are crap.”
“But she is different.”
“Yes, you’re right about that. But we’re stuck with her, aren’t we? So isn’t it about time we start accommodating her handicap? Look at Ruthann Bye in the fifth grade. She can hardly see. Everything Carolyn gives her has to be magnified on that machine before Ruthann can see it. What’s so different about Lori?”
“But Lori can’t learn. Ruthann does.”
“Lori can learn. The truth is that we haven’t taught her. Why can’t we start taping her reading material? We could quiz her orally. Lori isn’t dumb. She simply has a disability. All the time in the world in first grade isn’t going to change that, unless her teacher moonlights as a brain surgeon.”
My words were so much hot air. The decision had been made. Lori’s big mistake was being left with a handicap that did not deform her. We had not yet learned mercy for things we could not pity.
Dan clasped his hands together and gave a weary shake of his head. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry this upsets you but I will not argue it further. Edna, Mr. Sjokheim and I all talked it over and decided together that repeating first grade would be best for Lori. It was a consensus. Edna’s and his. And mine.”
I stared at him. I wanted to hate him. To hate him the way I had Edna in April. I felt nothing. I was just too tired of fighting.
“Edna sure got the last laugh on this one, didn’t she? All the time you made me think I was doing the right thing not putting Lori through the first-grade curriculum. And all the time you knew Edna had the trump card. Just humoring me.”
“Now come on, Tor. You know better than that.”
“I hope the laugh was worth the price.”
There came between us a great, solid silence. I think Dan thought I would protest further. He sat hunched up in his chair, steeled for the worst. I said no more. The fight had gone out of me. It had just been too hard and too long, and there was something in his eyes that told me I could not win this time. The decision had been made. So I said nothing. Not all of me was satisfied with my silence but that would be a matter I would have to come to terms with in myself.
Turning away I looked past the flower garden on the bulletin board, past the finches, past the art cabinet Lori had hidden under, to the window. My mind was vacant. Then I turned back.
“Does she know?”
Dan shrugged. “I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”
“I certainly hope you don’t expect me to tell her. I won’t. The dirt belongs to you.”
I went home in a state of weary depression. After all the trouble earlier, I just could not rouse myself to fight one more time. It seemed too futile. I was not a born fighter and one needed to be for this job.
For the first time since he had left, I sorely missed Joe. The need to lean on someone, to be physically close was so great I was in tears. I was sick to death of being “strong.” I had not cried about Joe’s absence since the night he left. Now I folded my arms on the kitchen table, lay my head down and wept.
Later, I heated up a glass of milk and laced it with molasses, an old trick I had learned years before for insomnia. Then I sat staring at it, waiting for it to cool. My head hurt. I sat in the dimly lit kitchen and thought of other times. My childhood, growing up in the mountains of Montana. My college years. All the times of my life when I had not been teaching. The innocent times. I was tired of teaching.
The hardest time was the next day when I saw Lori. She did not know. As I watched her gaily going about her tasks, I tried to think of some way to salve the future for her.
By afternoon I had a plan.
“Lori, come here,” I said. The other children were at work on their tasks. Lori had been with Tomaso but rose and came across to the worktable. She pulled a chair out and sat down. “We’re going to do something different today, you and me.”
“What’s that?” She was wiggly. I could not tell if it was anticipation or normal Lori-squirminess.
I lay a book on the table. “We’re going to read.”
Her eyes grew wide and dark. Immediately tears formed and ran down her cheeks. “I don’t want to.”
“Lor, Lor, Lor, now don’t,” I said and reached across the table to catch her face in my hands.
“I can’t do it.”
“Hey, now stop crying. I won’t make you do anything you can’t do.”
She snuffled noisily.
“There are two of us here. Lor, you and me. I’ll set the limits. And because I set them. I’ll never make you do what you can’t do. When we come to things you can’t do, we’ll do them together. There won’t ever be a time in here that I let you in for something that you and I can’t handle together.”
My hands remained on either side of her face. The tears still ran. I could feel her trembling beneath my fingers. “Don’t cry. Lor.”
“But I’m scared. I’ll goof up. I know I will.”
“No you won’t. I’ve already told you I won’t let you. Just like when you learn to ride a bike and someone holds on until you can pedal by yourself. I’ll be holding on too, and just like I said, if we can’t do it together, we won’t do it.”
“But, Torey, I can’t read.”
I smiled. “Well, I can.”
The book was Dick and Jane. Good old dull Dick and Jane from 1956. Just the kind of book I needed. Few words and a story carried along in pictures. For all the faults of these old books, I liked them. In their extreme simplicity, they worked for me and my school-weary kids.
I put the book on the table. Just a little book, paperback, as all pre-primers seem to be. Lori looked at it askance.
I explained to her about the kids in the stories, Dick, Jane and Baby Sally. Lori was not ready to trust me. Her eyes were huge and dilated, still bright with unfallen tears. She would chance brief peeks at the cover of the book but she would not touch it.
“You haven’t ever read this book. It’s called We Look and See.” I picked it up and opened the cover. “Come over here on my side and well read it together.”
Lori rose and came to me. I pushed the chair back and took her on my lap. Holding the book in front of us, I showed her the title page of the first story. On it was Sally taking off her white baby oxfords and pulling on her father’s big black galoshes. Underneath the picture was printed the word “look.” I pointed to it. “That says ‘Look.’”
“Look,” Lori whispered tentatively.
I turned the page. Sally and Dick outside. Dick has the hose on. Sally is stomping through the puddles in her father’s galoshes. “Look, look,” the text reads. Obviously it is what Sally is saying to her brother. “See, here is the very same word as on the other page. Do you remember what it was?”
“Look,” Lori said.
“That’s right. See, it says it two times. ‘Look, look.’ Sally wants her brother to see her walking in her daddy’s overshoes.”
“Look here,” Lori exclaimed. “Look what happens. Her feet fell out of the boots. Ooooooh, she’s gonna step in the water.” A twist around to see me and Lori grinned. “Her daddy’s gonna be mad at her for that, huh?”
“I’ll bet,” I agreed. “See, here’s what Sally says. She’s surprised and she says, ‘Oh, oh, oh.’ See, that word’s ‘oh.’ Can you read it?”
“Oh, oh, oh.”
“Good, there you go. Now let’s see what happens when we turn the page.” Last page of the story. Dick sees his little sister in this terrible dilemma and wheels his red wagon up behind her. Sally falls into it. The day is saved. Underneath, the text reads “Oh, oh. Oh, look.” Not Nobel literature material, but Lori was delighted. She clapped her hands.
“All right, scout, now let’s read it straight through from the beginning. You and me together.” I turned back to the title page. “Look,” we said in unison.
Turn page. “Look, look.” Other side. “Oh, oh, oh.”
Turn page. “Oh, oh. Oh, look.” End of story.
“Now,” I said, “I want you to try it on your own. See, look at the words carefully. The long one is look. The short one is ‘oh.’ Ready?”
Lori nodded and held the book up close. Deep breath. Another deep breath. “Look,” she said hoarsely.
“Super! Next page.”
“Look, look.” When she got to the next page she hesitated.
“Look at Sally, Lor. What happened to her? What does she say?”
“Oh?”
“You bet! And how many times?”
“Oh, oh, oh.”
“Terrific!” I turned over to the last page for her.
“Oh, oh,” Lori said immediately. “Oh …” Long pause.
“What was that other word?”
“Look. Oh, oh. Oh, look.”
I took hold of her chin and turned her face to look at me. “Do you know what you just did, Lori Sjokheim?”
Her eyes widened.
“You read that story, didn’t you?”
A tremendous, face-splitting smile.
“You read that story all by yourself. You just picked that old book up and read it like anybody would. No fooling you.”
“I read it,” she whispered incredulously. She snapped around and snatched it up again. “I’m gonna do it again. Watch me, Tor. I’m gonna read it right through with no mistakes. Watch me.”
She flipped back to the first page. A long wait while she took breaths in preparation. “Look,” she announced and turned around to grin. Then flipped the page. “Look, look. Oh, oh, oh.” Over to the next page. “Oh, oh. Oh, look.” Back to me. “I did it! I DID IT!”
Before I could stop her she had bounded off my lap. “Hey, you guys. Hey Tomaso! Claudia! Listen! I can read! Listen to me. Come here and watch me. I can read!” Grabbing the book up she ran over to them. The story was read. And read and read and read.
From my chair I watched her. It was not really reading, I suppose. Not really. By this time she had memorized the story. Only two words, not much of a feat. And I had little doubt that if I took them out of the context of that Dick and Jane story she would not be able to recognize them any more than she recognized any other symbol. But that was not important. Not now. What was important was a scrawny seven-year-old kid waving a twenty-five-year-old pre-primer at me from across the room, squealing delightedly, reading out the text to Boo and Benny and the finches. Come what might in her future, I knew I had given her the best I had. Never again could anyone say she could not read. She now could prove that false. Lori Sjokheim was not anybody to be messed with. Lori Sjokheim could read.
Chapter Thirty-Three
What a crazy week we had! Lori was intoxicated by her success. She never put the book down. She had to take it home to read to her father and Libby. She had to read it to each and every one of the morning resource kids. She even had to read it to Edna. For Tomaso, Claudia, Boo and me, it soon got to be a bit much. Tom would come up behind me in the room some days when I was absorbed in doing something else and whisper in my ear, “Look, look. Oh, oh, oh.” He could make it sound obscene. That never failed to provoke a lot of good-natured yelling on my part and some fierce threats about bamboo under the fingernails of students who drove their teacher batty.
In the back of my mind the entire time was the specter of Lori’s retention. I refused to let it dampen our high spirits but nonetheless I anxiously searched her face each day to see if her father had told her. I only hoped that when he did, the glory of Dick and Jane would be enough to sustain her.
My birthday was on Friday of that week and I told the children I would bring a cake. We planned a sort of Happy Birthday/Reading-celebration party.
On Thursday, new excitement. Tomaso came galloping in, whooping at the top of his lungs.
“Guess what’s going to happen to me!”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I’m gonna move!” Roaring across the room to me, he bounced up on the worktable where I was grading papers. He slid across the table on his seat and knocked papers into my lap.
“You are?”
“Yup, my uncle’s coming to get me and take me back to Texas.”
The others gathered around.
“Is this the same uncle you lived with before?” I asked skeptically, thinking of child slavery, abuse and abandonment.
“No siree! This here’s my Uncle Iago. My mama’s brother. He’s gonna take me to live with him. I’m going to have me a real family! Yessiree! No more foster homes for me.” Tom’s excitement burst out of him and he whooped up onto his feet atop the table.
“Tom, that’s really super.”
