Just Another Kid (14 page)

Dirkie, Leslie and Mariana all came at the usual time, but the other three did not. We waited for them, because I couldn’t imagine all three were ill at once, but Mariana grew restless and Dirkie grew tiresome, so I finally collected everyone together and we had morning discussion. Just as we were finishing, there was a terrible noise from Leslie’s direction. Worse followed, as diarrhea came out around the cuffs of her disposable diapers and all down her legs. Ladbrooke squawked in surprise and snatched Leslie up to make a run for the girls’ rest room.

In the midst of the excitement that followed, Geraldine, Shemona and Shamie arrived. I was in the back of the room washing off the chair. Dirkie was hooting from under the table. Mariana was pounding on the top of it, using two rulers as drumsticks. Leslie had begun throwing clean disposable diapers out of their box and onto the floor. Ladbrooke was scurrying back and forth, trying to distract Leslie, trying to reorient the others, trying to tell me that Leslie had been just fine before school or else she wouldn’t have let her come.

Geraldine walked up to me. “You know why we’re late, Miss? Our pussy got killed right out in the street, while we were getting into the car. Zoom comes this car. Bang, right on our pussy.”

I glanced quickly over my shoulder in the direction of the others. Shemona was putting her coat away.

“Where’s Shamie?” I asked.

“Over by the door. He won’t come in. He’s crying,” Geraldine replied.

“Shamie?” I called. Drying my hands on my jeans, I went to find him.

He was just inside the door. Hands over his face, he leaned against the wall.

“I’m so sorry, lovey. Geraldine’s just told me.” I put my arms around him and drew him close to me.

“Why did it have to happen?”

Beyond us, I could hear chaos. Mariana was relating Leslie’s accident in loud, graphic detail. Dirkie was hooting and clapping, and from the sound of it, leaping up on the table.

“Why did he have to do that?” Shamie wailed. “Of all the stupid places for him to go. We live practically in the country. He had all that nice field next to the house. Why did he have to go in the road?”

“Torey?” Mariana shouted. “Leslie’s just gone poopy again. It’s all over her dress. Come quick!”

“Poopty-doopty-poop!” Dirkie shouted, careening around the corner of the shelves to where Shamie and I were standing. “Poopy! Poopyface!”

This was hardly the atmosphere for giving comfort to the grieving. I gave Shamie one last hug and let go of him. “Stay here a minute, sweetheart. Let me get things settled.”

Back around the corner, I found Ladbrooke struggling unsuccessfully to bring about order. Leslie had made a horrific mess. Mariana was up on the radiator, dancing in a provocative manner and rubbing her fingers enthusiastically between her legs. Shemona had her hands clamped over her ears. Dirkie swirled around us like a dervish. Only Geraldine, looking stunned, was in her chair.

“Take Shamie out,” I said to Ladbrooke, as I caught hold of Dirkie and shoved him into his seat. “Take him down to the teachers’ lounge until he’s feeling better.”

Ladbrooke looked alarmed.

“He just needs a good cry. And this certainly is no place for him.”

“What’ll I say to him?”

“Anything,” I replied, and put a hand on her shoulder to encourage her in the right direction.

“But what?” There was a note of agitation creeping into her voice. “I’ll stay here, Torey, okay? You go.”

“
I
need to be here. Just take him down to the lounge. No big deal.”

She did not move from my side.

I was beginning to feel a bit frantic myself. The noise level was deafening. The smell in the room was overpowering. We couldn’t stand here talking as if it were Sunday afternoon.

“Look, Lad, don’t worry about this so much. Just do it. He’s too concerned with how much he hurts to listen to your actual words. Little, kind, caring noises will be enough. Just duck.”

“I can’t.”

“You
can
.”

“I can’t.”

I dug into my pocket for a couple of quarters. “Here. Buy him a Coke.”

“What?”

“Buy him a bloody Coke. Take him down there and buy him a Coke and don’t worry about saying anything to him. Just get him out of this bedlam.” Taking her hand, I slapped the quarters into it and left before she could protest further.

Shamie and Ladbrooke managed. By the time they returned, about twenty minutes later, I had the class more or less sorted out, and everyone was at the table working. Shamie was fairly composed. He’d had the Coke, which had pleased him, and he’d had Ladbrooke’s undivided attention, which, as I’d assumed, had pleased him even more.

Unfortunately, it was just one of those days. Things refused to stay quiet for any length of time. Shemona, too, was upset by their cat’s demise and spent much of the day hiding from us. The remaining time, she covered bits of paper with harsh, heavy crayon strokes. Any effort on my part to comfort her was met with angry snarling. Of the three children, only Geraldine seemed unfazed by the cat’s death. I’ve seen people dead, she told me, why should seeing a dead cat bother me?

At lunchtime Dirkie got into a fight with one of the lunch aides and was sent back to the room to finish his meal with Ladbrooke and me, which ruined ours. In the early afternoon, Mariana tipped two jars of mixed tempera paints over Geraldine in what Mariana maintained was a simple accident. At afternoon recess, Shemona fell off the swing and cut her lip. And there was a slip waiting in my box in the office saying that the garage had phoned about my car. I rang back to discover it needed repairs that I could ill afford.

My mood deteriorated progressively as the day went on, and I was feeling absolutely grim by 3:30. On top of everything else, I had a particularly boring meeting coming up at a nearby school. After taking the children down to their rides, I had to return to the room for my belongings and then hightail it over to the other school on foot.

Upstairs, I found Ladbrooke hard at work, stapling dittoed worksheets into packets. “I’ve got to leave right away,” I said. “It’s going to take me that long to walk over to Millington. Can you lock up all right?”

“Could I give you a ride?”

“No, it’s okay. The walk’ll probably do me good.”

Ladbrooke went back to her stapling. I noticed her hands were shaking, and it was making getting the papers together evenly a harder task.

I had seen Ladbrooke’s hands shake on other occasions. True to her word, she had been sober with us every day, but I had no idea how much drinking she was doing otherwise. Feeling as out-of-sorts as I did just then, the thought that she was not controlling the problem irritated me.

“You ought to get help with that,” I said. She looked around, not sure what I was talking about. “It’s not working out, is it? You really should see a doctor or something.”

Realization dawned on her, and she jerked her hands back out of sight. “Look,” she said, “I’m coping. You don’t want me to drink in here, I’m not drinking, am I? Okay? Don’t get on me about it. I’m coping.”

There was sudden silence. Momentarily overcome with the relief of making someone else as miserable as I was feeling, I turned away to get my things.

“Look, Torey,” she said, “I’m
coping
.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, not bothering to look over. When I didn’t turn to acknowledge her, she flung down the stapler noisily against the table. Storming past me, she left the room. Bang went the door. Bang went my moment of wicked relief. Bang went my sense of self-righteous superiority.

Realizing that I had no alternative but to apologize, I went to find Ladbrooke. She was in the girls’ rest room, standing in front of one of the sinks, wiping tears off her face with a paper towel.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was stupid back there.”

She bristled. I had no intention of coming closer; I knew better. But she moved a step away from me, just to make certain.

“It’s been a lousy day. I know that doesn’t really excuse me, but it’s been bloody atrocious, and I’ve ended up taking it out on you. I’m really sorry.”

“Well, you’re right. I can’t do this. I’m not coping.”

“Oh, you’re coping just fine. I wasn’t even thinking, when I said that. I was just being stupid, that’s all.”

She lowered her head. Her hair, which had been braided back into one long plait, was working loose, and long strands fell forward to obscure much of her face from me. “I can’t do this job. It isn’t working out,” she said softly.

“Don’t talk like that, Lad. I’ve been rude, and you’re justifiably upset. It has nothing to do with your work.”

“I can’t do what you expect of me. I can’t get in there and do what you do. What do I know about telling some kid his cat’s gone to heaven? I couldn’t even put my arm around him.”

“I was probably wrong to force you into that situation,” I said. “I just needed help badly at that moment and didn’t know what else to do.”

“
You
can do it!” she cried angrily. “You just go up to him, to any of them, and hug them. Christ almighty, you can even hug me. I sat there for ten fucking minutes trying to make my arm go around him. It was like it wasn’t even part of my own body, like it had a mind of its own. I couldn’t do it. Here’s this poor little boy, sobbing his heart out, and I just sat there, having an argument with my fucking arm.” She whipped another paper towel from the dispenser and pressed it to her face. And she began to cry. She’d been teary all along, but now she cried in earnest, head down, one hand up to her face. Like Shemona, she made almost no noise.

I stood, two sinks away, and studied my rather grubby hands.

“Why do you make me cry so much?” she muttered bitterly, and took down another towel to wipe her face. “I’ve cried more since I’ve known you than I’ve cried in all the rest of my life put together. I just look at you and I cry.”

I smiled in spite of myself.

“It’s not funny.”

“I’m not laughing at you, Lad. But that’s a heck of a comment on my character.”

“It’s not funny. I hate crying. It makes me feel so helpless.”

“Yes, me too.”

Silence.

“Do you really feel like you want to quit?” I asked.

“No,” she said quietly. “Yes. No.”

I smiled slightly. “Not quite sure?”

She shrugged.

“I think you’ve been doing really well. Maybe I haven’t said it as much as I should have. I just assumed you knew, because it’s so obvious. Considering that you’ve never done anything like this before, you’re really quite remarkable. I’d be unhappy if you left us now.”

Silence again. Ladbrooke, looking down, discovered a hair caught in the band of her watch. She pulled it out, straightened it to its fall length and stared at it, appearing momentarily mesmerized. Then she dropped it and watched it fall into the sink.

“I haven’t had a drink since I started in here,” she said softly. “I don’t want to go to AA. All that spilling your guts to a room full of strangers, that’s not my thing. So I thought I’d just prove to everybody that I can stop.”

I studied her profile. “Has it been hard?”

She nodded.

A pregnant pause came.

“I’m not being quite truthful,” she said then, her voice low. “I haven’t had a drink during the week since I started in here, but I haven’t quite completely stopped. I’ve been trying, but I did have a drink over the weekend. I didn’t get drunk, but I did have a little drink. I managed to stop it before it got worse. I went over and poured the whole rest of the bottle down the sink to stop myself. But it was a hard weekend. I needed a drink.”

Raising her head, Ladbrooke looked at her reflection in the mirror above the sink. She studied it a long time. “When it gets hard, like it did then, I think about the kids. I think about what Shemona and Geraldine have gone through. Or Dirkie and all those terrible things that were done to him when he was little.” Ladbrooke continued to regard her image. “I want to be like them. Strong.”

I smiled gently. “You already are. But I think you’re just expecting a little too much of yourself too soon.”

Lowering her head, she shook it.

“You’re expecting to be me, Ladbrooke. You’re expecting to have naturally what it’s taken me about ten years to acquire. You’re expecting this to be easy, when no one ever said it would be.”

Silence returned.

Ladbrooke opened both taps on the sink and washed her hands. She splashed cold water on her face.

“I’ve got a headache,” I said. “You want to go get something to eat with me?”

“You’re going to be horribly late to that meeting.”

“I’m going to miss that meeting. Or rather, I won’t miss it—believe me.” I smiled. “Why don’t we go get a sandwich? Maybe at that place over on Second Avenue. Then afterward, you can drop me off at the Fiat garage.”

Thoughtful a moment, Ladbrooke looked back at her reflection in the mirror; then her lips slowly quirked up in the hint of a smile. She looked over and nodded. “Okay.”

A
little unvarnished nepotism was at work in creating the Nativity play. By Friday, Shamie and Geraldine had finished the script and had automatically assigned the best parts, those of Joseph and Mary, to themselves. Shemona was a little harder to accommodate. They clearly wanted her to be Angel of the Lord, but because she wouldn’t speak, the part had to go to Mariana. Shemona, they decided, would be a shepherd. Dirkie was cast in two parts, as the innkeeper and a Wise Man. This latter assignment even tickled Ladbrooke, and she had to put a hand up to smother a giggle. Leslie got to be the zoo, playing a sheep in the fields with Shemona and a cow in the stable with Joseph and Mary.

Friday afternoon was devoted to the first rehearsal. Shamie had carefully written out all the parts on little slips of paper and gave them out to each child with much fanfare. We shoved the table back as best we could to make the center of the room into a stage. Geraldine and Shamie were obviously old hands at this business, because they knew precisely what props were needed and where to put them. Shemona, too, was involved serving as a gofer to the other two. In her usual telepathic manner, she responded to her sister and cousin, finding and fetching various things they needed to set the stage. One of the art boxes was emptied and set in the middle to become a manger. A chair served as the location of the inn. The pillows at the back of the room became the Judean hills.

Geraldine went to the toy cupboard and took out a well-played-with, unclothed doll and wrapped it up in a rather grubby receiving blanket. She laid it carefully in the cardboard box. “This is going to be Baby Jesus,” she said to us. “And this is His manger. On the day we give the play, I think we ought to make it look nicer. We can maybe get some real straw.”

Shemona went over and snatched the doll out.

“Shemona?” Geraldine said, not too good-naturedly. “That’s Baby Jesus. Put Him back.”

Shemona didn’t. Instead, she unwrapped the doll and chucked it back into the toy cupboard.

“Shemona? What are you doing? Now I said that was going to be Baby Jesus.” Geraldine went around her sister and took the doll back out.

Shemona grabbed the doll’s legs.

There was a sudden, silent confrontation between them, eerie to watch, because neither said a word, neither moved. They just stood, eyes locked.

“No, you can’t,” Geraldine said finally. “We’re going to do it this way.”

Grimly, Shemona hung on to the doll’s legs.

“
No
. This is me and Shamie’s play. And I want to use this for Baby Jesus.”

Baring her teeth, Shemona refused to let go.

“Miss, tell Shemona to stop it. She won’t let me put this doll in for Baby Jesus. She’s holding everything up.”

I rose to my feet. But before I could intervene, Geraldine let fly with a clout of her hand, thunking Shemona soundly on the side of her head. Shemona screamed.

“Hey, you two, we’ll have none of that.” I grabbed Geraldine’s shoulder. “Over in the quiet chair, please.”

And so the first rehearsal ended.

That evening, Carolyn and I met at the spa. I’d arrived a bit before Carolyn and had already done my mile’s worth of laps. I was waiting for her to finish hers so we could go into the sauna, but she’d grown sick of it and hauled herself out of the water to sit on the edge with me and catch her breath. We got to discussing the Nativity play. Originally, we’d had no plans for any special Christmas program, but now, with the play, I needed to get definite arrangements made. We discussed having Carolyn’s class in the audience, inviting parents, and staging.

“You could use the auditorium,” Carolyn suggested. “It’s not very big, but it does have a stage with curtains and lights and all that.”

I knew the building had one, but since the conversion to administration offices, it hadn’t been used. “What condition’s it in? Does everything work?”

“Don’t know. I assume so.”

“We’d have to scrub it out,” I said, with ghastly visions of cobwebs and hard labor.

“There’s not that much junk in there now. It’d be nice for your kids. They could do their little play right. You’ve got to give them credit, Torey. That’s a sweet idea, wanting to put on a play for everybody.”

I kicked at the water. “I suppose I could send Ladbrooke down to have a look at it. Maybe she and Shamie could shift some of the things.”

There was a small pause.

“How’s your protégé doing?” Carolyn asked.

“You mean Lad? She’s okay.”

Carolyn didn’t reply.

“It’s been so much easier having someone to do all those gruesome little tasks.”

Carolyn reached down and ran her fingers through the water. “Ladbrooke was out at the Blue Willow over the weekend. She was drinking.”

“Who’s telling you this?”

“Me. I was there.”

I shrugged. “Well, I suppose it’s her choice.”

“She was with some man, and he certainly wasn’t Tom Considyne.” Carolyn leaned down to dabble in the water a moment. Then she sighed. “
I’d
be satisfied with Tom Considyne.” She straightened up. “But she’s
with
all these other men. All the time. It’s no secret.”

I nodded.

“I think it’s a bit much,” Carolyn said. “I mean, she is a married woman with a child.”

“Yes.”

Carolyn looked over. “Doesn’t it bother you? I mean, she’s not changing.”

“I don’t think it’s my business, really. She’s a consenting adult. It’s not the way I’d run my life, but I don’t see where that gives me the right to condemn what she does with hers.”

Carolyn eased herself back down into the pool. “Be careful that what you think of as tolerance doesn’t become lack of judgment.”

The next morning was cold and wintry, and all the children arrived bundled up. I was busy sorting out some papers when I noticed that, although Shamie, Geraldine and Shemona had been in the room for some time, Shemona was not taking off her outer clothes.

“Do you need some help with your clothes?” I asked, as she was particularly well wrapped against the frosty weather outside.

At this, Geraldine flounced over and solicitously began unwinding Shemona’s muffler. Shemona jerked away.

“She doesn’t want any help, Miss. Shemona’s being awkward today. Auntie Bet says she got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.”

“Well, Shemona, whatever the problem, you need to get busy taking off your jacket. It’s almost time to start discussion.”

I then picked up the papers I’d been working with and went around the corner into an aisle of the library where I’d cleared one top shelf to store prepared work. As I was standing in the narrow aisle between the two tall shelving units, Shemona, still fully wrapped, came sidling up.

“
Do
you want help, honey?”

She began to take off her mittens. Then came her muffler and hat. Her long hair tumbled out in disarray. She attempted to undo the zipper of her jacket. Being such a young child, she was still often clumsy with zippers, and it was a slow, concentrated process. Finally, she managed to get a good grip and carefully unzipped the jacket. Inside, against her blouse was tucked a small, stuffed monkey. Very gently, she removed the toy. She lifted it up to me.

“This is Curious George,” she said in a gravelly whisper.

“Oh, he’s a fine one, isn’t he? I remember you bringing him to school with you that very first day you came here.”

She nodded. “He’s a boy. A girl doll shouldn’t be Baby Jesus. Here, Miss. This is to be Baby Jesus.”

I knelt down and accepted the monkey. It was a small, cheap toy, wearing a sewn-on cap and shirt, emblazoned with “Curious George.” The fur on the feet and hands had been loved off.

“Yes, this is a much better idea, Shemona. Jesus wasn’t a girl, was He?”

Shemona had the same kind of quirky half-smile on her face I had seen so often on Ladbrooke’s. “I sleep with him. My mammy gave him to me when I was a baby. He’s bare there, on his hands, but we could wrap him up. It wouldn’t show.”

“That’s very kind of you to share Curious George with us.”

At just that moment Geraldine materialized at the head of the narrow aisle. “Oh, there you are,” she said brightly, and began to come down toward us. Then abruptly, she froze, her gaze riveted on the toy.

“What have you been doing, Shemona?” she asked, her voice growing loud.

“Shemona’s brought in her Curious George to be Baby Jesus in the play.”

An angry flush came to Geraldine’s face. She shoved her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose in a rough gesture. Her eyes narrowed. “Gimme that,” she said.

Shemona edged closer to me.

“Gimme that, Shemona!”

I still had the toy in my hands, and before I could react, Geraldine rushed at me, ripping at the monkey from me. “You little bleeding traitor!” she screamed at Shemona, who had taken refuge behind me. “You little bleeding traitor!” And she attempted to scale me in an effort to get at her sister.

I was still kneeling, when Geraldine attacked, and was hard put to avoid being kicked and punched as I attempted to quell her. Ladbrooke appeared and grabbed Geraldine from behind, but in the confused space, it was hard to restrain her. Magazines flew. The shelving units shuddered as the three of us thrashed against them. As we struggled, the monkey fell to the floor and Shemona snatched it up. Running to the far end of the aisle, she pushed out stacks of journals and slid to safety by squeezing through the shelves.

Geraldine just would not give up. She was all arms and legs. Her glasses came off, and I kicked them to safety under one of the shelves because I didn’t dare take a hand off her to pick them up. She socked Ladbrooke in the mouth, and blood went everywhere. It made Geraldine’s skin slippery and harder to hold.

Slowly, we maneuvered her out of the library and around the corner into the classroom. Dragging her across the room, I snagged the quiet chair with my foot and dropped her into it. Ladbrooke pinned one of Geraldine’s arms behind her in a wrestler’s hold. I let go.

Geraldine was still furious, still crying, still raging wordlessly against us. But she didn’t make any effort go get out of the chair. I gestured to Ladbrooke, who slowly released her grip.

“You stay sitting in that chair until you’ve calmed down, Geraldine,” I said. “I don’t want you out of it until you’ve stopped crying entirely and are ready to come work.”

She simply shrieked at me.

Geraldine sat the better part of the whole morning in the quiet chair. Ladbrooke had to remain in at recess with her because she was still not ready to join the other children. And even when she did, she was still angry. Taking her work folder, she sat down at the table and glared over at her sister.

“You just wait till we get home, Shemona,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “When you’re not watching, I’m going to take the scissors and rip your Curious George to bits.”