Somebody Else's Kids (17 page)

I think the time I felt these changes most distinctly was when we were playing games. Among the many things I had resorted to in teaching Lori reading was the use of little homemade card games. Anything to make letters go down more palatably. Most of them were simply matching letters, L to L, S to S and so on, even when the letters were of different colors or sizes or styles. She did not have to know the actual letter itself.

At first the games were fun for both of us. The goal was to see who got stuck holding the last card, who could match up her hand first. Being a game of chance we both had an equal opportunity to win, although years of teaching had given me a card-sharp’s ability to cheat so that those times I felt I needed to throw the game, I could.

Lori was delighted with the activity. She kept track of our score in a little chalked-off corner of the blackboard. Every day she would add on who had won what and our scores had accumulated for over a couple of months by this time. The scorekeeping itself became an exercise.

Almost daily we played one or two hands. From time to time I had made new cards to keep the learning aspect of the game alive, but Lori continued to enjoy it. She still clamored for it if I tried to delete the activity, and some days she would come in early from lunch to get in a couple of games. Yet despite her interest, the ambience of the game was changing. For a while I did not notice exactly what it was. Then one afternoon it occurred to me that I was letting her win on purpose. Often. Looking at the score on the chalkboard, I realized “often” had been happening a long time. I felt vaguely afraid of having her lose.

We were in the middle of a game when that occurred to me. Instantly I wondered what had made me realize it. I watched her. Lori was bent over her cards with great concentration. Matching the letters was still a hard task for her. Her eyebrows were pulled down, wrinkling the skin over the bridge of her nose; her eyes were intent.

“I’m going to win,” I said softly, the mocking note of fun clear in my voice.

“No, you’re not.” No mockery in that statement.

“What if I do?”

A little pause. Lori raised her eyes to me and I could see the nameless difference then. Only a flicker of it but I saw it just the same. Then she smiled disarmingly, a regular old Lori-type smile. “You better not.”

I did not win the game. She did. As the game drew to its close I almost did draw the winning card. I knew where it was, I just did not want to think I did. I chickened out. Whatever the change that was taking place, I did not want to know about it.

As the days passed and I continued to play games with her or watch her at other times with the kids, I kept intending to challenge her and bring this nameless thing out where I could get a good look at it. Yet every time I meant to do it, I didn’t. Something always came up that I could use to rationalize losing my nerve. Right down to the final card in our games I would plan on winning. I even stacked the deck before school so that my cheating to lose would be more difficult. Still I would chicken out in the end.

The truth, I think, was that I already knew what was happening, but I did not want to accept that. I kept wanting to believe that things were better for Lori. My hard, dedicated work with her was helping. My having her in the room afternoons was enough to reduce the pressure, just simply my love for her was making the difference. Things were improving. She was feeling better about herself. She was going to make it, even with the reading problem. She was too strong, and I was trying too hard for it to be any other way. I wanted to believe that so desperately, even when I knew deep down it was not true. It was like living with a cancer victim.

“I’m going to win this time,” I said.

“Mmmm-mmm,” she replied not even looking up. All week she had not bothered to tally our score on the board. She had just played. It was like a drug fix for her. She was obsessed with getting in a couple of games.

“I haven’t won in a long time now. Don’t you think I deserve to win?”

“Nope.” Still not looking up. She laid out an M matched with an N. “Your turn.”

“Lor, those don’t match. See? Look at them.”

“Yes, they do.”

I pointed out the problem. Up and down the letters I went with my fingers until I finally convinced her they were not the same letter.

She frowned. “But I don’t got any others that match it.”

“Here.” I handed the cards back to return to her hand. “Hold them until you can match them.”

“Nooo,” she protested. “I don’t got any others to match. I want these to match. Leave them down. They count.”

“No, they don’t. Lor. Take them back.”

She was becoming upset with my insistence. I got a very dirty look. “Leave them down, Torey. I can’t win if you don’t. You got less cards than I do.”

“That’s cheating. It wrecks the point of the game.”

“I don’t care. Leave them down.”

I left them down. And felt angry myself. We played several moments in silence.

Then, there it was. I drew the winning card, an X to match the X I already had. My last card. For a long second or two I held the card just as I had lifted it from the table and stared at it. Now or never.

Lori looked at me then, when I paused so long. I think she knew.

“I got my X,” I said abruptly. I had to, to keep my courage. “Here, see?” I laid down my last pair. “I’m out.”

A totally unreadable expression crossed her face. The silence grew so loud around us that both Tom and Claudia looked up. “What are you guys doing?” Tomaso asked.

Tears were on Lori’s cheeks. Her eyes filled with a great, reproachful hurt. “You’re not supposed to do that, Torey. That’s not fair. I was supposed to win.”

“It was just a game. Lor. We were just playing, remember?”

The pain turned to anger and she swept the cards off the table in one tremendous motion. Whoosh! Cards fluttered everywhere. “How come you’re so mean to me? You’re supposed to let
me
win!” Then she began to sob, her head down, her thin shoulders shaking. “It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair. This is the only place in the whole world I ever win anything and now even you won’t let me. I hate it!” And she kicked the table.

There. I had done it. I sat motionless, speechless. Not much else I could do. Like Pandora I had opened the box. Unlike her, I think I had always known what I would find when I did. And that it had to be opened. What I was going to do now that I had, I did not know.

I invited Claudia’s parents in for an informal meeting. I wanted to let them know what kind of academic program I was following since achievement was such an important matter in that family. In turn I wanted to know what kinds of plans they had for Claudia and her baby so I could follow up that course during the time Claudia was with me.

Of all the parents, Claudia’s were definitely the most uncommunicative. They were not untalkative. Far from it. The father was a bold, overbearing fellow who seemed to enjoy the sound of his own voice. The mother would rush in to fill even the slightest silence that crept unexpectedly into our conversation. However, nothing they said was of any value. That in itself I found thought-provoking.

I was used to dealing with a wide range of individuals concerning the children in my classes. Over the years I had had college presidents, Nobel nominees, and acclaimed artists across the table from me as well as alcoholics, prostitutes and ex-convicts. Yet they had all shared the same problem: disturbed children. Pathology in the families was unnervingly similar despite the differences in education, social standing and money. And truthfully, I think I preferred working with the poor or the ignorant. The problem with the families having better education was that they were more elusive.

So it was with Claudia’s family.

The father was a real stinker. For all his intelligence, he was addlepated when it came to being human. “You know,” he said to me, “Claudia comes home and tells me about this class some days. She tells me that you put her in charge of some of the children.”
Translation
: Can’t you do your own teaching?

“She tells me she has to work with a … a black child.”
Translation
: Now you know what I think of blacks.

I nodded. “Yes, that would be Boo.”

“I understand that he is an autistic child. I’ve been reading on autism. Incurable, isn’t it?”
Translation
: Kid’s nuts.

“She said she had to work with this little black, autistic boy. That you asked her to.”

“Yes, that’s right,” I said. “Does she object to it?”

He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Well, no, not really. Just telling me about it.”
Translation
:
I
object.

“And she was saying there’s another boy in here. A migrant boy. Who actually works in the fields.”
Translation
: Now you know what I think of Chicanos, too.

“Actually,” I explained, “Tomaso doesn’t work in the fields now. He never misses a day of school. He’s one of the best students I’ve had.”

The father nodded thoughtfully and ruminated a moment over the matter. Then he leaned across the table between us, his voice low, almost a whisper. “These children, they’re not dangerous, are they?”

I leaned back toward him. “No,” I whispered indignantly. “My kids aren’t dangerous.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, then, what about their behaviors? They sound pretty bad. Are we in danger of having Claudia learn any of that? I mean, if she’s working with that little colored boy, she isn’t going to learn any of that stuff he does, is she? I mean, we’ve paid plenty of money to keep her in a good school up until now. I’d sure hate to have her pick up anything here.”

I felt I deserved a medal for my civility. The only person who deserved one more was Claudia for living with this guy and still being such a nice girl.

“No,” I explained as nicely as I could. “You need not worry. What the other children have, it isn’t catching.”

“Well, good. I was worried. I’m sure you can understand.”

The mother seemed nice enough, except that she never talked other than to fill pauses. Any silences in our conversation seemed to terrify her and she loaded them with the most inane comments. She smiled a lot and nodded her head as if it were attached by a string to a puppeteer’s stick. She and Claudia together must have been quite a pair.

Although she worked as an instructor in art over at the community college and had held the post for some years, she appeared to me as the stereotype of a dominated, unfulfilled woman absorbed in her children and her home.

Neither parent had given much thought to what Claudia was going to do with the baby. They had provided her with prenatal checkups but would not consider even the suggestion that Claudia might profit from psychological counseling both to cope with the baby and with her other problems. When I suggested it, the father was irate. Nothing wrong with his child! It was all the boy’s fault. Well, didn’t I know that Claudia was practically raped? Maybe she needed some help to deal with that, then, I suggested. He stated flatly that I had been in here with the crazy kids too long if I thought his daughter needed psychological help. And he was not thrilled as it was, to have her in this class. He had a good mind to pull her out of school altogether and hire a tutor. At that I shut up. The last thing Claudia needed was total isolation.

The conference ended on a slightly hostile note. My back was up and I could not bring myself to smooth over our differences completely. The father, in his turn, saw me as meddlesome and overstepping my boundaries as a public school teacher. The matter was spelled out directly for me. I knew I had better be careful in my dealings with him. If he did not withdraw Claudia from my class, I had no doubt that if I irritated him sufficiently, he would find a way to sue me.

“W
hat’s going to happen when the baby comes?”

I asked.

Claudia and I were together after school. She had stayed to help me plan for Boo and then continued afterward to make some photocopies for a project of her own.

It was a snowy afternoon, gray and cloudy, although not dark. Snow clouds always seem to have an uncanny brightness about them. I had gone to stand before the window and watch the large flakes drift down. My back was to Claudia at the table.

“I dunno.”

“Don’t you think about it?” I asked and turned around to look at her.

“Yeah, sometimes.”

“Do you ever talk about it with anyone? Your folks? What do they say?”

“Nothing. We don’t talk about it at home. I’m not supposed to. My father said not to. He doesn’t want Corinna or Melody to get ideas.”

“Your sisters?”

“Yeah. Corinna’s eleven and Melody’s nine. He doesn’t think Caroline knows what’s going on yet. She’s only six. And Rebecca’s just four, so I can talk to her. Rebecca’s my favorite person in the family. I tell her everything.”

“I see. But Claudia, what’s going to happen to the baby when it comes? That’s only five months away. That isn’t as long as it seems.”

She nodded in a way I think was meant to shut me up.

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I said I don’t know. We’ll see when the time comes, that’s what my mom says. I’m going to keep it. Is that what you mean? Of course, I’m going to keep it.”