Just Another Kid (19 page)

Once I had Leslie in hand and was working easily with her each day, and once Ladbrooke was fully back into the swing of things after her Christmas disruption and able to cope well with the children, I decided it was time to carve out a bit of special time for Geraldine.

The antisocial behavior was far and again the most serious of Geraldine’s problems, but I didn’t know quite how to approach that directly. So I turned my attention to the clinginess. I hated that behavior to the point that it was disrupting my relationship with the child. It brought out the very worst in me, since I lost patience with it so easily. Certainly I had to acknowledge that the problem was as much mine as it was Geraldine’s, because this was just one of those things that personally got right up my nose. My preference was for rowdy, gutsy, aggressive kids, the sort with that desperate bravado against all of the odds—which was lucky, because these kinds of kids made up probably 95 percent of most of my special education classes. I also liked the quiet, troubled, complex ones who stayed in my thoughts after hours, who kept me thinking about them days and weeks and sometimes years after meeting them. But for the clutching, grasping, whining little toadies, I had no affinity whatsoever. This made me feel obligated to work overtime with Geraldine, because I was conscious of needing to compensate for my testy irritation.

So one January day during recess, I brought a rocking chair into the classroom and set it in the long, narrow blackboard arm of the room near Leslie’s desk. And I didn’t have to wait long to try the chair out. Later that same afternoon, the children were all gathered around the table, doing their individual work. Sitting across from Shamie, I was giving him words for his spelling test. Geraldine and Mariana were making scrapbooks in connection with their reading work. Back and forth they went between the table and the back of the classroom to get magazines for pictures. Geraldine kept stopping to put her arms around my neck. She caressed my hair.

“Honey, please don’t,” I said. “You and Mariana have your own work to do. I’m helping Shamie right now.”

“Mariana’s got the glue. I need more glue.”

I slid my chair back to see where Ladbrooke was. Geraldine sat down in my lap. She put her arms around my neck and nuzzled against me. “Go ask Ladbrooke to get you some more glue. I need to finish with Shamie.” I gently pushed her off my lap.

“Noooo,” she whined, still clinging to my neck. She slipped back onto my lap before I could scoot closer to the table.

“Geraldine, please get off. I need to finish with Shamie; he’s waiting. Take your glue pot over to Ladbrooke.”

“Noooo. I want to sit here. With you, Miss.”

I pushed Geraldine off my lap and unhooked her arms from behind my neck, then quickly slid in against the table so she couldn’t reseat herself.

“Geraldine, we’ve talked about this. This isn’t appropriate, and it’s making me cross. I’m working with Shamie right now. If you need something, ask Ladbrooke.”

Shamie, across the table, groaned with annoyance. “Mii-iisss? Next word?”

“No, Geraldine. Don’t put your hands there.
No
. Stop it, please. This isn’t a time for kissing. I don’t
want
to be kissed. I’m working with Shamie.”

It was like fighting off a giggling octopus. As fast as I disentangled her from one part of my body, she reattached to another. Lad materialized behind me and unhooked Geraldine’s arms from my neck. This interference irritated Geraldine, and her laughter turned to a snarl. She elbowed Lad’s stomach.

“Hey,” I said, turning in my chair.

Shamie drummed his pencil impatiently on the table.

Geraldine obviously expected to end up in the quiet chair for that, because she was already halfway there before I’d managed to hand Shamie’s spelling words to Ladbrooke and get up.

“Geraldine, come here, please,” I said. She returned to the table. I put a hand on her shoulder and guided her around the corner of the shelves. I knelt down to look her in the eye.

“How many times have you and I discussed your hanging all over me?”

She averted her eyes.

“How often?”

A shrug.

I waited.

“A lot,” she muttered.

“Yes, a lot. It bothers me. When you climb on me and hang on me and kiss and touch me all the time, I feel angry with you. It’s my body, and I don’t like people using it without my permission.”

Geraldine studied the floor.

“But my telling you how much it upsets me doesn’t seem to be making much of a difference. You still do it. And sometimes I get fed up enough with it to make you sit in the quiet chair, but that doesn’t seem to make much difference either.”

“I don’t know I’m doing it, Miss,” she mumbled.

“You do know, Geraldine. You’re inside your body. You know what it’s doing.”

She shrugged.

“So I’ve decided we need to try something else. You want to touch people and you need to make people touch you, and I’m beginning to think that’s so important to you that the consequences of people getting angry with you don’t matter. So I’m thinking maybe we need to set aside a special time especially for you—for me to hold you and for you to cuddle. What do you think?”

She shrugged.

“Let’s make a deal. Let’s arrange things so that you make an honest try not to hang on me quite so much, and in exchange, we’ll set aside a special time for holding and hugging. See the rocking chair? What we’ll do is sit together in the rocking chair at the end of the day, just you and me. We’ll have a special time just for ourselves.”

I stood up. “Come here. We’ll try it out right now.” I went over, adjusted the position of the rocking chair and sat down. Geraldine, with a disconcerted expression on her face, remained standing by the corner of the shelves.

“Come here, Geraldine.”

“I’m too big, Miss.”

“Too big for what?”

“Too big for sitting in your lap, Miss.”

“You were sitting in my lap a few minutes ago, Geraldine. Right around the corner in the classroom.”

She regarded me.

“Come here, Geraldine.”

She shook her head.

“Would it be better if I brought over one of those chairs from Leslie’s desk, and I could sit in that and you could sit in the rocker? Then we could just sit side by side.”

She shook her head again. “No, Miss, I don’t want to.”

“Why?”

“I’m too big, Miss.” She turned. “I’ll go sit in the quiet chair instead.”

S
hamie’s notes and files arrived from his school in Belfast the final week in January. They confirmed what I had pretty much concluded all along, that Shamie was not much of a scholar. My experience with him in the classroom showed that he was behind in virtually all subjects and would need resource help in math and probably in reading in a normal junior high.

I was hoping to mainstream Shamie part days at a nearby school within a month’s time. He was neither sufficiently disturbed nor sufficiently dysfunctional to merit full-time placement in special education, so I was trying to give him as many experiences close to those of a regular classroom as possible.

One area in which Shamie did excel was history. He was fascinated by the past, and history was the only area in which he could be enticed into doing extra reading. I’d put him on a course of studying medieval Europe and then tried to coordinate as many other activities to the subject as possible. We did tied-in math projects, spelling lists and art activities. We even created a special medieval meal one lunchtime for Shamie to serve to the other children.

One morning, he arrived carrying a book about castles. His assignment had been to read three books of interest relating to the medieval topic, and this one he had located in the public library. It was a beautifully illustrated book, full of incredibly intricate drawings of every possible aspect of castle building.

“Can I read this book for my assignment?” he asked, showing it to me. I paged through it.

Ladbrooke was beside me, and she leaned over my shoulder. “May I see it?” she asked, when I closed it.

I handed it to her. Laying it down, she leaned forward, one hand braced on the edge of the table, and turned the pages slowly. “You know what we could do?” she said, her voice thoughtful.

“What’s that?” Shamie asked.

“We could make a model of this castle.”

“How do you mean, Miss?”

Ladbrooke considered one of the pictures. “We could take some cardboard and a protractor and a compass and then build this. See, like this. You’d measure that bit there and then transfer it, because, see, it says here that these are scale drawings.”

“Could we?” Shamie asked, awed. Then he turned to me. “
Could
we, Miss?”

The classroom suddenly became a depository for every conceivable bit of paper rubbish there was, as Shamie collected together enough material to build his castle. In the beginning, it took form on the end of the table, which was generously large and could accommodate the eight of us with plenty of room to spare. But the castle quickly outgrew these lodgings. Very carefully, Shamie disassembled it, piece by piece, and reassembled it on the floor, back by the sink.

Ladbrooke wasn’t satisfied, however, with the way the castle was taking shape. She arrived one morning with a set of what looked like architect’s tools, including a compass that should have been classed as a lethal weapon. Cutting open one of the cereal boxes, she flattened it out with the unprinted side upward. Taking the castle book down on the floor beside her, she found an explicit picture of a rampart and tower. “See this,” she said to Shamie. “Here’s how we make it.” And she proceeded to show him how to take precise measurements and transfer them exactly to the cardboard.

The castle became an exercise not only in medieval history but in mathematics. Ladbrooke had an eye for detail and a need for precision that led her to long periods on her hands and knees with Shamie, measuring, cutting, measuring again. Ladbrooke didn’t simply go at it with ruler and scissors the way I did. She had to use the protractor and the architect’s curve and the craft knife to get a perfect edge. And Shamie, because he loved Ladbrooke, learned to love these things too. She got after him if he wasn’t precise enough. She made him measure over, cut again, retape, and he did it without protest. He would probably have done it for her regardless, but he was also enough of a perfectionist himself to appreciate Ladbrooke’s need for precision a bit more than I did. The castle became an exact scale model of the one in the book. Although still constructed chiefly of cast-off boxes and bits of Styrofoam packing material, it was no longer a makeshift affair. It became a real, recognizable castle.

Mariana and Geraldine were drawn into the process too. Dirkie wanted to help, but he was relegated to the ignominious tasks, like painting bricks on the cardboard walls, while Shemona watched wistfully from the side-lines. Sometimes Shamie let her paint the cardboard gray before Dirkie drew on the bricks, but for the most part, she was deemed too small and too incompetent. This was a “big-kids’ project,” as Mariana put it. So Shemona and I used “castle time” for doing other things together.

The castle grew. It had inner walls and outer walls, ramparts and turrets. Inside were stable blocks and feasting houses and grain stores. For more than two weeks, its construction dominated our lives. Every spare moment became “castle time.” In fact, it even began to intrude on life after school. I came back from a meeting one evening to find Ladbrooke flat on her stomach on the floor, peering in through the castle entrance, trying to insert a small portcullis made out of floral wire. Up, down, up, down she moved it, trying to get it to lift on its own with the aid of a small piece of dental floss. She was too absorbed to talk to me. I came over and thumped the soles of her jogging shoes as they waved in the air.

“Are you going home?” I asked. “It’s quarter after five.”

“Just a minute. I want to fix this.”

I stood, waiting. I had to lock up, because by this time Bill would have already gone.

Ladbrooke, still on her stomach, slid her hand through the cardboard doors. I knelt to see what was going on.

Up, down, up, down went the portcullis. Ladbrooke’s forehead puckered with concentration.

“This could probably wait until tomorrow,” I said.

“I want to get it done tonight. I told Shamie I would.”

“I’m sure he’ll understand.” I stood up again. Raising my arm, I glanced at my watch.

“I won’t be that much longer,” she said.

I stood, waiting.

Finally, Ladbrooke took her hand out of the castle entranceway and held it up, without taking her attention from the fiddly portcullis she was holding with the other.

“What do you want?” I asked, thinking she needed scissors or something.

“The keys. Just give me your keys. I’ll see you in the morning.”

I left then, not finding out until weeks later that Ladbrooke had stayed until almost ten o’clock at night, making Shamie a cardboard and floral-wire portcullis that could be raised and lowered.

“I had a letter from my mam yesterday,” Shamie said. It was approaching morning recess and we were all sitting around the table together. “She said that they killed a policeman in our street last Saturday. Right out in front of Curran Maris’s house. He was laying on the pavement right by the Marises’ flower bed, where Mrs. Maris grows her gladioli.”

I looked up.

“You know,” he said, “I think it’s wrong. I think it’s wrong for them to keep killing everybody like they’re doing. I don’t care whose side anyone’s on. I don’t think there’s anything worth killing someone over.”

“It was revenge,” Geraldine said, her voice soft. “For Ireland’s sorrow.”

“Aye, revenge. But I still think it’s wrong, Geraldine. That man didn’t do anything except walk down the street.”

“He did. He was a Prod. And a policeman.”

A small silence came. Shamie lifted his left hand and examined the fingers. Thoughtfully, he bit off a hangnail.

“There’s nothing worth killing someone for, Geraldine. I think maybe Uncle Paddy was right. I think he should have told the police about things. There’s got to be some way to stop what’s happening, because pretty soon there won’t be anybody left. They will’ve all killed one another.”

Geraldine’s eyes narrowed. She regarded Shamie intently. “Are you saying our daddy was a tout, Shamie?”

“What I was saying is that I think maybe it wouldn’t have been so wrong if Uncle Paddy did tell them. I think what’s going on is terrible and it has to end.”

“Our daddy was no tout!” Geraldine shouted suddenly. Dirkie, next to me, started violently at the unexpected volume, his pencil flying out of his fingers and across the table.

“Geraldine, I was saying—”

“You take that back! Our daddy was no tout! Our daddy would’ve never told!”

Seeing the need to intervene hastily, I rose and went around the table to Geraldine’s chair. “Okay, everybody. I think it’s nearly recess. Put away your things now and get your coats.” I had my hands on Geraldine’s shoulders.

“He was no tout!”

Geraldine began to cry. I knelt down next to her and put my arm around her, but she didn’t want my comfort. Pushing me away roughly, she escaped out the other side of the chair and then shot off into the safety of the library.

“I didn’t
mean
Uncle Paddy was a tout, Geraldine,” Shamie shouted. “I know he wasn’t. I wasn’t saying that.”

“Bloody, rotten liar! I hope you die. I hope you fall down the stairs and get killed and go to hell!” Geraldine shouted back.

I put an arm around Shamie. “Let’s just leave it. She’s upset, and it’s not a good time to try to reason with her.”

“But I didn’t say—” he protested.

“I know you didn’t. But this isn’t the time to pursue it. Get your things and go on out for your break.”

“I’m sorry, Geraldine,” he hollered.

“I hope you die!”

Ladbrooke took the children out, and I stayed there in the room with Geraldine, who refused to come out of the library. Once everyone was gone, I entered the long, narrow aisle where she was hiding. She was sitting at the far end, huddled against the wall. Her face was awash with tears.

I knelt down near her. “I don’t think Shamie meant to say your father was an informer, sweetheart. I think he was just talking in general terms.”

“He wasn’t. He said our daddy told the police. And Daddy
didn’t!
”

“No, I don’t think that’s what Shamie said. Besides, he wouldn’t know anyway, would he? He wasn’t there.”

She wiped her tears with the sleeve of her blouse. “Go away,” she muttered.

“I know it’s a difficult issue, Geraldine.”

“What do you know about it? You weren’t there either.”

“But I know it’s difficult.”

“You’re a Prod too. Go away. I don’t want to talk to you.”

Rising back to my feet, I stood over her a moment. I pushed my hands into the pockets of my jeans.

Geraldine mopped furiously at her tears.

“Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go out and join the others.”

She bared her teeth. “I said go away. No, go away.”

During the lunch hour, Ladbrooke and I sat together at the table and munched our sandwiches.

“What do you think Shemona thinks about all this?” Ladbrooke asked.

“You mean the Irish issue? Or about what was going on between Shamie and Geraldine?”

Ladbrooke shrugged. “Either.” She studied her sandwich. “I mean, when I was five, I didn’t even know what state I lived in, much less people’s politics.”

“I don’t expect she understands much about all that.”

“No, I don’t either.”

“In fact, I can’t imagine she understands about this business with her father being an informer. Or what he was informing on.”

Ladbrooke put down her sandwich and struggled to open her carton of milk. “I can’t think Geraldine understands that much about all this either. What’s this crap about Ireland’s sorrow? For pity’s sake, the girl is eight years old. Ireland’s sorrow.
She’s
Ireland’s sorrow. She and Shamie and Shemona and the likes of them. They’re Ireland’s
shame
.”

I nodded.

Ladbrooke fell silent for a moment.

“But what about Shemona?” she said at last. “She’s the one I’m always thinking about. I keep wondering how all this must seem to her. She never talks about it, but I know she must be thinking about it.”

I nodded. “Oh, yes, I’m sure she thinks about it.”

By afternoon, Geraldine appeared to have forgotten her earlier upset. The time until recess passed quickly, with all the children hard at work. During our free break that afternoon Lad and I went down to the teachers’ lounge for the fifteen minutes. Lad needed to make a phone call, so she excused herself after ten minutes or so. I stayed on and talked with two of the school psychologists, who were also in the lounge.

“Torey?” Frank stuck his head in through the door.

I looked over.

“I think Ladbrooke wants you. I can hear her calling from the stairwell.”

Baffled, I rose and emptied the dregs of my coffee into the sink before going out. I could hear the commotion then.

“I’m right here, Lad. I’m on my way up,” I called, as I reached the stairs and bounded up them two at a time.

Ladbrooke had Shemona by the back of the neck. As soon as she saw me on the stairs, she shoved Shemona ahead of her back toward the classroom.

“Just wait till you see this,” Ladbrooke said, as I came abreast of her.