One Child Part 2

"I know it."

"You gonna whip me?"

My shoulders dropped in exasperation. "No, Sheila, I don't whip kids. I said that to you once."

She looked at her overalls. "My Pa, he gonna whip me fierce when he sees I do this."

Throughout our exchange I had remained motionless in my spot, fearful of breaking this tenuous relationship. "We'll take care of that, don't worry. We've still got a while before school is over. It'll dry by then."

She rubbed her nose and looked at the puddle and then at me. For the first time since she'd arrived, she seemed uncertain. Very slowly I rose to my feet. She took a step backwards. I extended an arm to her. "Come on, we'll go get something to clean it up. Don't worry about it."

For a long moment she regarded me. Then cautiously she came toward me. She refused my hand but walked back to the cla.s.sroom at my side.

Things had quieted in the room. Anton and the children were singing songs. Whitney was holding Susannah and Mary was rocking Max. The dead fish were all gone. Heads turned toward us but I motioned to Anton to keep them busy. Sheila accepted the rags and bucket from me and we went back to the gym and cleaned the floor without speaking. Then she followed me back to the room.

Surprisingly the remainder of the afternoon went quietly. The children were all subdued, fearful of toppling their frail control again. Sheila retreated to the chair she had occupied all morning, folded herself up in it and sucked her thumb. She did not move for the rest of the afternoon. Yet she continued to watch us. Her eyes were unreadable. I went around to each of the children and cuddled them and talked with them trying to soothe their unworded feelings. Finally I came to Sheila.

Sitting down on the floor beside her chair, I looked up at her. She regarded me seriously, thumb still in her mouth. The toll of the afternoon showed on her. I made no attempt to touch her. Anton was conducting the closing exercises and no one was watching us. I did not want to spook her by being too intimate, but I did want her to know I cared.

"It's been kind of a hard afternoon, hasn't it?" I said. She did not respond other than staring at me. I got the full benefit of her odor from this position. "Tomorrow will be better, I think. First days are always hard." I tried to read her eyes, to glean some understanding of what was going on in her head. The open hostility was gone, momentarily at least. But I could see nothing beyond that. "Are your pants dry?"

She unfolded and stood up, inspecting them. They were pa.s.sably dry, the damp outline barely distinguishable from the other filth. She nodded slightly.

"Is that going to be good enough so you don't get in trouble?"

Again an almost imperceptible nod.

"I hope so. Everybody has accidents. And this wasn't really your fault. You didn't have a chance to use the bathroom." I kept some spare clothes around because this sort of thing happened all too frequently in our room. I hadn't mentioned it, being afraid of frightening her with too much familiarity. But I wanted her to know that such problems were acceptable in here.

The thumb rotated in her mouth and she turned away from me to watch Anton. I remained near her until dismissal.

After the children were gone, Anton and I cleaned up the room in silence. Neither of us mentioned what had happened. Neither of us said much of anything. This certainly had not been one of our better days. When I got home after work, I washed out my pencil wound and put a Band-Aid on it. Then I lay down on my bed and wept.

CHAPTER 4.

LIFE IN MY CLa.s.sROOM WAS A CONSTANT battle whether I wanted to acknowledge it or not. Not only with the children but with myself. To cope with these youngsters from day to day I locked up my own emotions in many ways because I found that when I didn't I became too discouraged, too shocked, too disillusioned to function effectively. My days were a constant shooing of my own fears back into the little corners where they dwelled. The method worked for me but every once in a while a child came along who could really rock my bulwark. Out came tumbling all the uncertainties, the frustrations, and the misgivings I had so carefully tried to ignore and I became overwhelmed with defeat.

Basically, though, I was a dreamer. Beyond the children's incomprehensible behavior and my own vulnerability, beyond the discouragement, the self-doubts, soared a dream which admittedly was seldom realized, a dream that things could change. And being a dreamer, my dream died hard.

This time was no exception. The tears were short-lived and instead, I fell asleep. Later, I settled down with a tuna fish sandwich to watch "Star Trek." I had never watched much television and had never seen "Star Trek" when it had been a prime-time program. But now, years later, it was shown in syndication each evening at six. At the beginning of the school year when our cla.s.sroom adjustment had been slow to come and my disillusionments had been many, I had started watching the program while I ate dinner and it had become a ritual. It divided my day into the work part and the rest part; that hour being the recuperative time when I put away all the problems and frustrations that had occurred at school. Marvelously emotionless Mr. Spock became my after-work martini.

So by the time Chad arrived at seven, I had recovered. Chad and I had been seeing each other regularly over the previous eighteen months. At first it had been the typical courting relationship: the endless rounds of dinner, movies, dances and mindless conversation. However, neither of us was suited for that sort of affair. So we drifted into a warm, comfortable alliance. Chad was a junior partner in a law firm downtown and spent most of his time as a court-appointed attorney for the drifters and ne'er-do-wells who found themselves in jail. Consequently he did not have a good track record of winning cases. So we would spend our evenings together commiserating good-naturedly over my kids and his clients. We had talked once or twice about marriage, but that had been the extent of it. Both of us were sociable loners, satisfied with the status quo.

When Chad came over, bringing a quart of Baskin-Robbins chocolate fudge ice cream, I told him about Sheila as we fixed sundaes. I had met my match, I stated firmly. The kid was a savage and I did not think I was the one to civilize her. The sooner the opening at the hospital came up, the better.

Chad laughed amiably and suggested I call her former teacher. After our ice cream orgy when I was feeling comfortably full and a little more mellow about things, I looked in the telephone book for Mrs. Barthuly.

"Oh my gosh," Mrs. Barthuly said when I told her who I was and why I had called. "I thought they had put her away for good."

I explained that there had been no openings yet at the state hospital and asked her what she had done while Sheila was in her cla.s.s. I could hear her making little clucking sounds, those indescribable little noises of defeat.

"I've never seen such a child. Destructive, oh my gosh, every time I took my eyes off her she destroyed something. Her work, the other children's work, bulletin boards, art displays, anything. One time she took all the other kids' coats and stuffed them down the toilets in the girls' lavatory. Flooded the entire bas.e.m.e.nt." She sighed. "I tried everything to stop her. She always destroyed her work before you could get a look at it. I started laminating the work-sheets so she couldn't tear them up. You know what she did? She shoved them into the cooling system and jammed the air conditioner. We went three days with no ventilation when it was ninety-four degrees."

Mrs. Barthuly went on to describe event after event. Her voice was rapid at first as if she had never had an adequate opportunity to tell about the chaos visited on her the first three months of the school year. But then it began to take on a weary note. Despite everything, she had liked Sheila, drawn by the same enigmatic force that had attracted me. The child seemed so vulnerable and still so brave. She had wanted to do right by Sheila. But nothing she did helped. Sheila refused to speak to her. She refused to be touched, to be helped, to be liked. In the beginning Mrs. Barthuly had tried to be kind. She attempted to show affection to this unlovable child, to include her in special activities, to give her extra attention. The school psychologist had set up behavior-management programs to reward Sheila's good behavior. But Sheila appeared to delight in never doing whatever it was they decided to reward. Mrs. Barthuly was convinced that Sheila purposely set out to ruin the programs, going so far as to stop doing some things she had previously been doing well when those things were included on the program.

Next, Mrs. Barthuly tried controlling her outlandish behavior negatively. She took away privileges, confined her to a time-out corner, and at last ended up sending Sheila to the princ.i.p.al for paddling. Still Sheila continued to terrorize the cla.s.s, attacking other children, destroying things and refusing to work. At last, Mrs. Barthuly gave up. This child took too much time away from the other children. So Sheila was left on her own and the first semblance of peace settled in the room. Allowed to do as she pleased, Sheila spent most of the day wandering around the cla.s.sroom or paging through magazines. If countered, Sheila would scream and tear about in revenge, destroying whatever was in her path. However, left entirely alone, she was tolerable and would ignore the others if they ignored her. She still never spoke, never did any work, nor partic.i.p.ated in any cla.s.sroom activities. Then the event in November occurred and she was removed immediately from school in response to fears expressed by other children's parents.

The voice on the other end of the phone was sad and pessimistic. Mrs. Barthuly regretted that so little had been done. No one knew if Sheila had even the most basic command of letters or numbers. Nothing about the child's learning or feelings was known at all. She was, Mrs. Barthuly admitted, the closest thing to an unteachable child she had ever encountered. Whatever could be done for Sheila was beyond her patience, ability and time. She wished me luck, amending it to say she hoped the state hospital placement came through soon. Then she hung up.

The news filled me with renewed depression "because I did not know what I could do that had not been tried. With my group of children, I did not have much more of a chance to give her one-to-one attention than Mrs. Barthuly. I discussed the matter with Chad and decided there was nothing I could do other than wait and see.

The next morning before school, Anton and I sat down to plan our course of action. Clearly the occurrence which had happened the day before could not be repeated. The other children could not afford to go through that sort of experience. Some disruption was healthy in the cla.s.sroom because it taught them how to respond in a supportive environment when things went wrong; but we could not afford chaos for days on end.

The social worker came in dragging Sheila about fifteen minutes before cla.s.s started. She explained that the only bus they could get to connect with Sheila's home was the high school bus. Therefore, Sheila would be arriving each day a half hour early and would not be able to catch the bus home in the evening until two hours after cla.s.s had finished. I was horrified. First of all, I did not feel Sheila was in any shape to be riding a bus with a bunch of high school kids; I doubted seriously that she could be trusted on any bus. Second, what was I supposed to do with her for two hours after school? The mere thought had frozen my stomach into a cold, iron-heavy lump.

The social worker smiled blankly. We would have to go along with the idea because the school district would not pay for special transportation when existing buses could be used. Arrangements would simply have to be made for her to stay at school. Other buses out to the country came almost as late and other children had to be waiting somewhere in the school. Sheila could wait with them. Transferring Sheila's limp wrist to me, she turned and left.

I looked down at Sheila and felt all my anxiety from the day before flood over me. She was regarding me, her eyes round and guarded, the hostility more hidden than the day before. I smiled weakly. "Good morning, Sheila. I'm glad you're with us again today."

In the few moments we had before the other children all arrived, I brought Sheila over to one of the tables and pulled a chair out for her. She had come with me from the door without protest and sat in the chair. "Listen," I said, sitting down next to her, "let's get an idea about what's going to happen in here today so we won't have another one like yesterday. That wasn't very much fun for me, and I don't suppose it was for you either."

Her brow wrinkled in a questioning expression as if she did not understand what I was doing.

"I don't know how it was for you at your other school, but I want you to know how it's going to be in here. Yesterday, I think we may have scared you a little bit, because you didn't know any of us and it might not have been clear what we expected. So, I'm going to tell you." She began hunching herself up into the chair, drawing her knees up and folding in upon herself again. I noticed that she was still wearing the same worn denim overalls and T-shirt. Neither had been washed since yesterday and she smelled very strongly.

"I'm not going to hurt you. I don't hurt kids in here. Neither does Anton or Whitney or anyone else. You don't have to be frightened of us."

The thumb was in her mouth. She seemed scared of me and looked so little and vulnerable, making it difficult for me to remember her as she had been yesterday. The bravado was gone, at least temporarily. But her gaze remained unflinching as she watched me.

"Would you like to sit in my lap while I talk to you?"

She shook her head almost imperceptibly.

"Okay, well, here's the plan. I want you to join us when we do tilings. All you have to do is sit with us. Anton or Whitney or I will help you find out what is happening until you get used to it." I went ahead to explain the day's schedule. I told her she did not have to partic.i.p.ate if she did not want to, just yet. But she did have to join us and there was no choice on that. Either she came of her own accord or one of us would help her.

"And," I concluded, "sometimes when things get out of control, the place I will have you go is over to the quiet corner." I indicated our chair in the corner. "You go and you sit there until both of us think you have things under control again. You just sit, that's all. Is that clear?"

If it was, she did not let me know. By that point the others were arriving. I rose and patted her on the back before going to greet the other children. She did not pull away from my touch but then she did not acknowledge it either.

When morning discussion came, Sheila was still sitting in the chair. I pointed to the floor beside me. "Sheila, over here, please, so we can start discussion."

She did not move. I repeated myself. Still she remained folded up in the chair. I could feel my stomach tighten in antic.i.p.ation. She regarded me, her thumb in her mouth, her eyes wide. I looked to Anton, who was settling Freddie into place. "Anton, would you help Sheila join us?"

When Anton turned to approach her, Sheila came to life and bolted off the chair. She made a mad dash for the door, falling hard against it when the latch did not respond.

"Torey, make her stop," Peter said worriedly. The other children were watching Anton as he circled to catch her. She had that trapped-animal stare again and was dashing recklessly about trying to avoid capture. But the room was so small it was a futile flight. She attempted to deter him by knocking books off the counters but within a minute Anton had her cornered on the far side of one of the tables. Briefly, they danced back and forth, but Anton unexpectedly shoved the table toward her pinning her against the wall just long enough to reach and catch hold of her arm.

For the first time she made a sound. She let loose with a scream that startled all of us. Susannah began to cry, but the others sat in fearful silence while Anton wrestled Sheila over to the group. I remained sitting and pointed to the spot I had indicated earlier. Taking her by the arm from Anton I pushed her into a sitting position. She continued to scream, a throaty, tearless yell, but she sat without struggling.

"Okay," I said with fake brightness. "Who has a topic?"

"I do," said William, straining to be heard over Sheila's screams. "Is it always going to be like this in here?" His dark eyes were fearful. "Is she always going to be like this?"

The other children were watching me anxiously, and I realized, not for the first time, what a con job my position was, because I was honestly as frightened as they were. We had been together four months and had learned each other's differences and problems. I knew Sheila would have been hard on us even if she had been quiet and cooperative, simply because she was new, testing our tenuous hold on order. But she was in no way easy to accept and she shook us all to our foundation.

So the topic that day was Sheila. I tried to explain as best I could that Sheila was adjusting and like all the rest of us was having a hard time. She simply needed our patience and understanding.

Sheila was not entirely ignoring us as we discussed her. Her screaming had diminished to sporadic squawks, inserted when there was too great a gap in our conversation or when one of us looked at her and she caught us at it. Otherwise, she was quiet. I let the children ask questions and express their fears and unhappiness. And I attempted to answer them honestly. All except Peter had the sensitivity not to be too critical in front of Sheila. Peter did not. Like the day before when he had complained of her smell, he angrily stated that he wanted this girl out of his room. She was ruining everything. I did not attempt to protect Sheila from his comments because I knew he would make them to her later anyway. That was all part of Peter's own problems and I preferred to be present when he talked.

So instead we discussed alternate ways of dealing with the inconveniences put upon us while Sheila adjusted. Tyler suggested sending her to the quiet corner to save our ears. Sarah opted to get freetime every time Sheila started a ruckus. And Guillermo, who seemed to be feeling particularly magnanimous, thought the children might take turns sitting with Sheila and keeping her company while she hollered so she wouldn't get lonely. I suspected he was reflecting more on his own feelings than on Sheila's.

In the end we decided that when Sheila yelled or in other ways demanded Anton's or my attention and disrupted the cla.s.s, the other kids were to get busy at their own work and the more responsible ones were to keep an eye on Max and Freddie and Susannah. I told them that at the end of the week we would have a treat if everyone cooperated. After a short discussion we decided that we would make ice cream on Friday if everything worked out. The children were full of ideas.

"If you get busy with Sheila and Freddie starts crying, I can read him a story," Tyler suggested.

"We could sing a song by ourselves," Guillermo added. "I'll hold Susannah Joy's hand so she won't run and hurt herself."

I smiled. "Everybody's got good ideas. This is going to work out real well, I can tell. So you just think what kind of ice cream topping you want on Friday." I looked down at Sheila, who was still making angry grunts. I continued hanging on to one overall strap, but she was sitting peacefully. "Do you like ice cream?" She narrowed her eyes.

"I expect you'll want some, won't you? Do you like ice cream?" Cautiously she nodded.

Sheila was more cooperative about moving to a chair while we had math. She climbed on one and folded herself up, watching me suspiciously as I went from child to child. The rest of the morning pa.s.sed uneventfully.

I did not dare let lunch follow as it had the previous day, not only because I did not want a replay of the disastrous afternoon, but because the lunch aides had stated that they unequivocally refused to supervise her until she was more predictable. So I took my lunch and ate with the children.

I sat next to Sheila, who inched away from me on the cafeteria bench. Anton came and sat down on the other side of her and she inched back in my direction. She bolted her lunch down in minutes by cramming it into her mouth as fast as she could chew. Her manners were atrocious, but she could maneuver a fork, which was more than some of the others could manage.

After lunch I escorted her back to the room, sat down at one of the tables and graded papers while the children played. Sheila resumed her seat on the chair, put her thumb in her mouth and stared at me.

All afternoon she moved as requested, although when given a choice she always returned to the same chair at the table and hunched up on it. She appeared considerably subdued from the day before, almost depressed, but I made no attempt to question her. She seemed unduly frightened of me, which I did not understand, so I did not want to intensify her concerns by forcing myself upon her. The other children seemed disappointed that nothing happened and Peter came up to me after closing exercises to ask if we would still have ice cream if Sheila never misbehaved again. With a grin I a.s.sured him that if we went all the way to Friday with no problems, there would certainly be ice cream.

After the other children left, we were alone, Sheila, Anton and I. Those two hours after school were normally my preparation time for the next day, but I thought that perhaps for the first few days at least, I might use them to get better acquainted with Sheila. She still sat in her chair, having not even gotten up when the other children put on their snowsuits and prepared to go home.

I came over to the table and sat down across from her. She regarded me, her eyes wary. "You did a nice job today, scout. I really liked that."

She averted her face.

I looked at her. Under the dirt and tangles was a handsome child. Her limbs were straight and well-formed. I longed to hold her, to take her in my lap and hug away some of that pain so obvious in her eyes. But we remained a table apart, which might as well have been a universe. With me so close, she would not even meet my eyes.

"Have I frightened you, Sheila?" I asked softly. "I didn't mean to, if I did. It must be very scary for you, having to come to a new school and be with all of us when you don't know us. I know that's scary. It scares me too."

She put her hand up to the side of her face to block me entirely from view.

"Would you like me to read you a story or something while we wait for your bus?"

She shook her head.

"All right. Well, I'm going to go over to the other table and make plans for tomorrow. If you change your mind, I'll be glad to read to you. Or you play with the toys or whatever you like." I rose from the table.

As soon as I had settled at my work she put her hand down and turned to me, studying me as I wrote. I looked up a few times but there was no response from that steady gaze.

CHAPTER 5.

THE NEXT DAY I DECIDED IT WAS TIME FOR Sheila to partic.i.p.ate. The bus which brought her dropped her off at the high school two blocks away, so Anton had gone to get her and walk her to our school. When they arrived, Sheila pulled off her jacket and went straight to her chair. I came over and sat down, explaining that today she was going to be asked to do some things. I went over the schedule of the day with her and told her I expected her to join us for everything just like the day before, and that I also expected her to work some math problems for me at math time. Also on Wednesday afternoons we always cooked, I said, so I wanted her to help us make chocolate bananas. Those two things she was expected to do.

She watched me as I spoke, her eyes clouded with the same distrust they had shown the day before. I asked if she understood what I wanted. She did not respond.

During morning discussion Sheila joined us when requested after I gave her the evil eye. She sat at my feet and did nothing. Math was a different story. I had planned to do some simple counting exercises using manipulatives. So I got out the blocks and called her to come over to me. She remained sitting in the spot where she had been for morning discussion.

"Sheila, come over here, please." I indicated a chair. It was the one she was so fond of. "Come on."

She did not move. Anton began to move cautiously to catch her if she bolted when I approached. Instantly she perceived our plan and panicked. This child was phobic about being chased. Shrieking wildly, she darted off, knocking children and their work over as she fled. But Anton was too close and snagged her almost immediately. I came and took her from him.

"Honey, we're not going to do anything to you when we come to get you. Don't you know that?" I sat down with her, holding her tightly as she struggled and listening to her breathing, raspy with fear. "Take it easy, kitten."

"Hey, everybody," Peter hollered delightedly, "everybody be good now." Little heads bent eagerly over their work and Tyler rose solicitously to check on Susannah and Max.

Sheila resumed screaming, her face reddening. But she did not cry. Holding her in my lap, I spilled out the counting blocks. I lined them up evenly while waiting for her to calm down. "Here, I want you to count some blocks for me." She yelled louder.

"Here, count three out for me." She struggled to break my hold. "I'll help you." I manipulated a writhing hand toward the blocks. "One, two, three. There. Now you try."

Unexpectedly she grabbed a block and hurled it across the room. Within a split second she had another which hit Tyler squarely in the forehead. Tyler let out a wail. I pinned Sheila's arm to her side and stood up, lugging her over to the quiet corner. "We don't do that in here. n.o.body is hurt in here. I want you to sit in the chair until you quiet down and can come back and work." I motioned Anton over, "Help her stay in the chair if she needs it."

I returned to the other children, rubbed Tyler's sore spot and praised everybody for keeping busy. Putting a check on the board to indicate our approach toward Friday's ice cream, I then settled in next to Freddie to help him stack blocks. Over in the corner all h.e.l.l had broken loose. Sheila shrieked wildly, kicking the wall with her tennis shoes and bouncing the chair. Anton was grimly silent, holding her firmly in place.

Throughout math period Sheila continued the ruckus. By the time free play had started half an hour later, she was tiring of kicking and fighting. I came over.

"Are you ready to come do your math with me?" I asked. She looked up at me and screamed wordlessly in anger. Anton was no longer holding on to her, just to the chair, and I motioned him away to keep an eye on the others. '"When you are ready for math, you may come over. Until then I want you in the chair." Then I turned and left.

Leaving her entirely alone startled her momentarily and she stopped yelling. When she became fully aware that neither Anton nor I was standing over her to keep her in the chair, she stood up.

"Are you ready to do math?" I asked from across the room where I was helping Peter build a highway out of blocks.

Her face blackened with my question. "No! No! No! No!"

"Then sit back down."