Raising Blaze (5 page)

I ask my mother, “What could possibly have happened in three hours?”

The meeting is held in a little room stuffed with several adults. I’ve had to attend in my black-and-white waitress work clothes because I’ll have to go straight to work from here. Maya is at home with Blaze. Most nights, she is the one who stays with him while I work. One by one, I am introduced to the principal, the speech therapist, the special-education teacher, and the school psychologist, who also doubles as the special-education administrator. The kindergarten teacher, who I have now secretly dubbed “the Ice Princess,” is here as well. These staff members compose the individual education program (IEP) team and
I will be meeting with them from now on, they tell me, to discuss Blaze’s progress. Looking at them from my end of the long conference table, they remind me, vaguely, of a parole board. They have folders bulging with papers and carefully constructed looks of concern pasted onto their faces. Instead of receding, the wave of panic I felt a few hours ago is now a full-scale tsunami that threatens to drown me in adrenaline.

After the introductions, the school psychologist, Dr. Roberts, takes the lead. Blaze, she tells me, is not able to handle a regular kindergarten class and it is “the team’s” recommendation that he be transferred to a special-education class immediately, pending further evaluation.

“We have an excellent special-education program here,” the principal interjects with the cadence of a politician, “and Sally”—he gestures to the special-education teacher—“is one of the best. Her kiddos really do wonderfully in that environment.”

“We think it’s important that Blaze get some special attention at this point,” Dr. Roberts adds.

“What did he do?” I am finally able to ask after clearing the boulder in my throat. “This was only the first day of school.” They are well prepared for this question. Notes are pulled out and observations are shared. Dr. Roberts speaks in the slow, deliberate, well-enunciated sentences that are common to those in the psychiatric profession. I keep waiting for her to ask me, “And how does that make you feel?”

“He doesn’t seem to be able to follow teacher-directed activity,” she says. “When the teacher asked the children to sit in the circle, Blaze wandered around and didn’t want to sit down.”

“But he’s never been in school before,” I say. “He has no idea what he’s supposed to do.”

“He’s never been in preschool?” Dr. Roberts asks, eyebrows raised.

“No, I’ve kept him home with me. I thought that was better for him.” My voice sounds squeaky and tight, betraying my state of mind. Keep control, I tell myself, keep it together.

“And you’re a single mom, is that right?”

“Yes, I’m a single mom.”

“And does Blaze see Dad at all?”

“No, Blaze does not see Dad. There is no Dad.”

Dr. Roberts makes several notes on the paper in front of her. Others shuffle papers of their own. Ice Princess maintains a glacial silence. This meeting is starting to feel less like a parole hearing and more like a trial. I still have no clue what Blaze has done to warrant such attention. Did he hit someone? Start a fire? Threaten the president of the United States? What?

“So we’re here because Blaze didn’t sit in the circle?” I ask.

“Well, no, there’s a little more to it than that,” Dr. Roberts says. “In my observation of him today, he didn’t initiate play with any other children.”

“He’s never been around any other children,” I tell her.

Ice Princess finally chimes in. “Blaze does not seem able to cut with scissors,” she says. “Is that something you’ve noticed at home?”

“No, it isn’t,” I say. “He’s never used a scissors at home. He’s never
had
to.”

But Ice Princess is not finished. “When I asked the children to form a line, Blaze could not take his place. He ran out the door without waiting for the rest of the group.”

“You know, he really doesn’t have any experience in a classroom environment,” I tell them. “He’s really not used to lining up and cutting and all those things. There are really a lot of things that he
can
do.”

“Really?” Dr. Roberts says, smiling. “Why don’t you tell us some of those?”

I’m wondering if it’s her tone that’s making me feel like jumping across the table and throttling her or if I’m just having a psychotic break. Surely, she’s said and done nothing that warrants the fury I’m starting to feel.

“He knows the names of all fifty states,” I say feebly.

“That’s wonderful,” Dr. Roberts says. “Does he have any other special talents?”

Her tone indicates that she doesn’t necessarily think “special talents” are such a good thing, but I answer her anyway, unable to stop myself. I am proud of the things Blaze knows, proud of the fact that he is special. I tell Dr. Roberts that Blaze loves jazz and that he can tell the difference between Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. I mention that I’ve been showing him a big illustrated book of Impressionist painters and he can now identify Degas and Monet. Dr. Roberts continues to take notes. I glance around the room at the impassive faces surrounding me and I want to cry. I must sound like a complete fool. I’m protesting too much. They must think I’m lying or at least exaggerating. Maybe they think I’m deranged. Anger creeps in again. These people probably don’t even know who Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday
are
, I think, especially Ice Princess who is now telling the group that she doesn’t think Blaze is mature enough to follow the rules of a kindergarten classroom. I respond, pointedly, that Blaze knows all his letters and numbers.

“Blaze seems uncomfortable making eye contact,” Dr. Roberts pipes in. “Have you noticed that at home? Does he dislike being touched?”

“No,” I tell her emphatically, “I’ve never noticed that, not ever. Blaze is a sweet, happy kid. He’s really very bright. He’s clean and neat…”

“Really?” Dr. Roberts asks. “Is he very neat? Does he like to have things ordered? Like his toys? Does he line his shoes or building blocks up in a row?”

“No,” I tell her through clenched teeth. I can see where she’s going with this. “He’s neat, he’s not obsessive.”

I tell the group at large that Blaze is a completely contented child, that he’d shown no signs of distress about going to school or leaving
me this morning. I am practically begging them to believe me, and I hate the sound of it. I finish by saying I can’t understand how some confusion over what to do on his first ever day at school justifies being referred to special education.

Dr. Roberts, it seems, has been anticipating this and has saved the best for last.

“Blaze refused to come inside after recess was over,” she says. “The teacher was unable to persuade him and so I went out there. When I tried to coerce him, he became very agitated. He yelled at me to go away and pushed me. He pulled at my nylons when I tried to remove him from the slide.”

I look at her aghast. Pulled her nylons? Who is this child she is describing? A parallel universe version of Blaze? I can’t even fully bring myself to believe her, although after she delivers this proclamation (more like a sucker punch, I’m thinking), I feel like I want to pull her nylons and hit her myself. There isn’t much I can say now to dig Blaze out of the hole that he’s in. There’s no offensive strategy I can come up with. From now on, it’s all going to be about defense.

“Blaze is a very happy child,” I tell Dr. Roberts. “I’ve never seen him hit or push anyone. I really don’t know what could have happened to make him react that way.”

It seems that everybody has suddenly started talking at once. The speech therapist is saying Blaze might not have adequate communicative skills. Sally, the special-education teacher, offers the fact that her class is much smaller than the regular kindergarten class and, therefore, Blaze would be able to receive much more one-on-one attention. Dr. Roberts says that, of course, they’d want to do a thorough evaluation to determine “the best possible placement” for Blaze.

As a final trump card and as if to prove what an utter failure Blaze has been in her classroom, Ice Princess brings out some work samples. The assignment was to draw yourself and your family, she says. The first few she shows are typical kindergarten drawings, some stick figures,
some bodies filled in. Blue skies, yellow suns. Then she brings out Blaze’s drawing, a formless swirl of color.

“He doesn’t like to draw,” I say, almost in a whisper. “I don’t make him draw at home.”

“Coloring is an important prewriting skill,” Dr. Roberts says. “Children need to be able to color appropriately at the kindergarten level to prepare them for first grade. First grade is very challenging academically.”

She assures me, again, that special education is the best placement for Blaze. I can’t help but feel that all of these people are implying, or at the very least trying to make me admit, that there is something wrong with Blaze. Nobody has mentioned what, exactly, but now I certainly am not lacking examples of what a catastrophe his first day has been. Tears start welling in my eyes and I struggle to keep them back. I begin to lose focus on the specifics of what is being said. I feel an unbridgeable chasm opening between how these people see my child and how I do and I am not sure that it is going to close anytime soon. I see nothing wrong with him and they see nothing right.

Dr. Roberts tells me that we will have to decide on a “handicapping condition.” The law requires that, to qualify for special education, a child has to meet certain criteria. Some of my choices here include specific learning disability, deaf/blind, multiple handicaps, autistic, mentally retarded, severely emotionally disturbed, and speech/language impaired. How can I possibly pick from one of these categories? I have gone from having a beautiful, bright child to a handicapped kindergartner in the space of a few minutes. I don’t know how this has happened or why I let it happen at all. It’s the evidence they pulled out, I think. The evidence was damning. Dr. Roberts suggests we go with speech and language impaired since Blaze seems to have trouble processing language and expressing himself. Fine, I tell her, speech and language. At least she hasn’t suggested that he’s mentally retarded. I suppose I should consider myself lucky. I debate protesting some
more, telling them that this is a mistake, that there’s nothing wrong with Blaze, that he’s a special, wonderful kid and part of a special, different family, but I stop myself. The faces in this room show no signs of yielding. They’ve made up their minds. Ultimately, it is the implacable gaze of the Ice Princess that does it for me. I don’t know much about the special-ed class, but I sense that it will be better than what Blaze will get with her. Although I feel foolish for feeling it, in this moment, I hate her completely.

I sign papers to transfer Blaze into the special-education class where he will start tomorrow morning. Sally encourages me to come and see the classroom when I bring Blaze in so we can both feel “comfortable.” Fuck comfortable, I want to tell her. We left comfortable behind as soon as this meeting began. I agree to a full evaluation by the speech therapist, and Dr. Roberts and I make an appointment with the school nurse who will take a full medical history (part of me is convinced that in the course of these evaluations, Blaze’s native intelligence will shine through and they’ll all be able to see what a mistake this has been). Everybody seems happy with the results of the meeting. I am not smiling. I walk away from the building so fast, I am almost running. The tears have started now but I wipe them away. I will have to wait until I finish working to go home and get into bed. I can’t share the pain I am feeling now, it is too close to the bone. I want to be able to cry in private.

It took days for me to come to a full acceptance that Blaze was in a special-education class. Even after the description of his behavior on his first day of school, I still couldn’t figure out what he had done that was so bad. I kept looking at him, searching for clues to what they were talking about and what I could have missed in the five years since his birth. I had never so much as suspected that what I had considered “special” could be regarded as “wrong.” I was forced to sift through all his behaviors (and my own) to see if I could even vaguely reconcile my
version of Blaze with the school’s. The first order of business was to figure out what I had done incorrectly as his mother.

I knew that I’d done everything I
thought
was right for my child. I’d kept him with me throughout his first five years because I thought it would give him a sense of security to know that I was always there. He should get the full benefit of the one parent he did have. Despite the fact that he had lots of attention from a big and loving family, I felt bad that he didn’t have a father and I wanted to make up for it by being both mother
and
father to him. I actually scoffed at mothers who put their kids in child care even when they didn’t have to work. Why have a kid at all, I’d always wondered, if you weren’t going to spend any time with him?

I’d disciplined Blaze but let him develop at his own pace. I wanted him to be whoever he wanted to be. I had never noticed behavior from him that seemed unacceptable to me. I had always assumed that when Blaze started school he would be able to follow the rules, adapt, find his way in the world just as I had. But it was clear from that very first day that Blaze was not going to fit this profile at all. He was operating from his own rule book and it had nothing to do with what the school thought was “normal” or “appropriate.”

Although I agreed to place Blaze in special ed, I didn’t think he would have to stay there. I thought if I just gave him enough time to figure out what was expected of him in school, he would pull it together and go back to the regular kindergarten world where he belonged. I suppose Dr. Roberts and company would have considered this deep denial. I thought he was brilliant and didn’t belong in special ed at all. But aside from this, I had a host of prejudices about special ed based on my own experiences.

Special-ed kids didn’t mix with the general population when I was in school. The remedial kids attended the “stupid class” but the real tough cases went to school in separate institutions far away from public view. These institutions were so removed that I wouldn’t have
known they even existed as a child but for the fact that my father worked briefly in one of them when we lived in upstate New York. It had been an intense and draining experience for him. He became too emotionally attached to the kids, my mother informed me much later, and descended into a deep depression that manifested itself in physical illness.