Just Another Kid (20 page)

The room was a catastrophe. Things had been knocked off the table, off the shelves, off the windowsill. More pointedly, Shamie’s castle had been totally destroyed. It had been systematically walked on, all its careful details ruined beyond recognition. Most disgustingly, a generous amount of dog feces had been smeared over the remains of the castle’s cardboard walls and along the radiator.

“I came up to get money to make the phone call,” Ladbrooke said, “and I found Shemona in here.”

“Alone?”

Lad nodded.

I looked down at the child. She had begun to cry, her face covered with her hands. I glanced around the room again. What puzzled me was how she had gotten back into the building unnoticed, particularly as she had to be transporting a fair amount of dog shit. This wasn’t consistent with my experience of typical five-year-old wiles. Moreover, I was amazed by the extent of the damage. Shemona was given to frequent tantrums and occasionally destroyed things in a fit of rage, but they’d always been small, impulsive acts. This was calculated.

“Did you do all this?” I asked Shemona.

Hands still over her face, she just cried.

I knelt and pulled her hands down. “Shemona, did you do all this by yourself?”

She kept her eyes tightly shut and her chin down against her chest. The tears dripped down onto her blouse, making dark spots on the material.

“This was a very, very unkind thing to do. Everyone has worked hard on that castle, even you. It belonged to all of us. Everyone is going to feel very badly when they see what’s happened to it.”

Just then, the other children burst through the door. “Pooey!” Mariana cried from the doorway. “Leslie’s gone poopy in her pants. It stinks in here.” Then she rounded the corner of the shelves. An audible gasp escaped her. “Oh, Shamie, don’t come in,” she warned.

The moment he saw the castle, Shamie burst into tears. If hurting him had been the intention, as I supposed it had, it was successful. He let out a long, low wail and went running over. Down on his hands and knees, he began picking up the pieces and pressing them to him, oblivious of the dog shit. He sobbed wordlessly.

Geraldine appeared beside Ladbrooke. “Shemona!” she cried in an indignant voice. “You naughty girl! Look at what you’ve done. You naughty, naughty girl. Miss will be very cross with you now. Look how you’ve upset Shamie.” Geraldine looked over at me. “Shemona’s like this, Miss. She does these things. Our Auntie Bet says, must be the Devil gets in her.”

I cast a long, sideways glance at Geraldine.

“You’re a very, very naughty girl, Shemona.” And Geraldine bounced on by and over to her place at the table.

I pulled Shemona around the corner of the shelves for a little privacy. She was crying so hard at that point that her body shuddered with sobs. Tears and snot and saliva were running everywhere. I’d intended for Ladbrooke to keep order with the others, but her initial anger dissipated, she seemed concerned for the child’s distress. Bringing over the box of tissues, Ladbrooke knelt and very gently wiped Shemona’s nose and mouth.

“You want to take her in the rocking chair and give her a little cuddle?”

Finishing with the tissue, Ladbrooke rose. “No. Go ahead. I’ll get the others settled.”

Lifting Shemona up, I carried her to the rocker and sat down. She remained tense in my arms, never relaxing against me. I began to rock. Several minutes passed with Shemona perched on my knee.

I rocked and rocked. Slowly, the tears subsided, leaving the child quivery. With a handful of tissues, I helped her clean up.

“I’m having a hard time believing you did that,” I said as I wiped her face. “That doesn’t seem like something you’d do.”

She lowered her head.

“Did you really do it?”

She nodded.

“I see.”

I rocked a few more moments.

“We’re going to have to do something about it, aren’t we?” I said.

Head still down, she nodded again.

“If you did it, I think you’re going to have to clean it up. Does that seem fair?”

Another nod.

I leaned forward in the rocking chair. “Ladbrooke?”

Lad appeared around the corner of the shelves.

“Would you please take Shemona down to Bill’s closet to get a bucket and some rags? I want her to wash the mess off the radiator and straighten things back up as best she can.”

“Okay.” Ladbrooke held out her hand for Shemona. Slipping off my lap, Shemona accepted Lad’s hand and they headed for the door.

Geraldine appeared at my side when I returned to the other children in the main part of the classroom. “I got my project,” she said cheerfully, and put her arm around me. She held up a small bag of yarn with the other hand. We’d been given a very small loom meant for weaving hot pads and the like, and Geraldine was desperate to try it. “You said you were going to show me how to do it this afternoon, remember?”

I regarded her. There was a long moment’s silence between us, as we sized one another up. I was almost positive she was behind this whole episode. Even if she had not actually come up to the classroom to do it with Shemona, I still reckoned she had orchestrated the destruction. But I knew if I confronted her, she would only deny it, and I had no cold, hard proof.

I think Geraldine knew I knew. Our whole five months’ relationship could be summed up in this one moment’s exchange of glances.

“I’m afraid I can’t work on your project with you today, Geraldine. Ladbrooke has gone to help Shemona get things to clean up this mess that’s been caused, and without Ladbrooke, I’m afraid I haven’t got the time to help you with your project.”

Geraldine’s forehead wrinkled as she eyed me.

“That’s really too bad, isn’t it? This was such a thoughtless, unkind thing to have happened. And it’s not only gotten back at Shamie. It’s ruined the time you and I meant to spend together as well.”

Geraldine turned and, without saying anything more, threw down the bag of yarn and disappeared around the corner of the shelves into the blackboard area. When I stuck my head around, I saw she had gotten into the rocking chair by herself and was rocking quietly. I felt it was best to leave her as she was.

Not until I was putting things away after school in preparation to go home myself did I notice words etched into the pine seat of the rocker. I came closer and leaned down to see them.

“I hope you die, Prod bitch,” they said.

T
he episode over the castle left me deeply troubled. I was having to face the fact that, as with Leslie, my initial assessment of Shemona and Geraldine was way off the mark. These two girls’ relationship with one another was radically different than I had first perceived it. This was no simple matter of symbiosis, where a strong-willed elective mute controlled her weaker, more ineffective sister by manipulative silence. Despite her apparent cool self-possession, Shemona was not in control at all. Geraldine was the real mastermind. With what bordered on sociopathic detachment, she used Shemona to express her own hatreds, while staying clear and clean and cool herself. I’d seen this happen on previous occasions to a lesser extent and with the same result; however, it was this incident that drove home the seriousness of the matter. The other incident had been minor; this was not. Most chilling was the fact that Geraldine showed absolutely no concern that her sister, as well as being set up, was going to bear the punishment for something not her fault.

Shemona herself didn’t help matters much. Her silence and her persistent dislike of physical closeness kept her isolated from the rest of us. It slowly dawned on me that Shemona probably didn’t actually know what was going on most of the time. She was a pawn and nothing more. This shouldn’t have surprised me so much, I suppose, since she was, after all, only a five-year-old child; but her silent self-possession had made it easy to project onto her knowledge and understanding that she probably never had.

Considering these things threw Shemona’s mutism into a very different light. Elective mutism involving a symbiotic relationship had been very common in my research of the problem. The vast majority of children displaying such behavior used their silence as a method of manipulating a weaker personality, usually a parent, although I had experienced several cases involving sibling relationships. So it had been easy for me to assume that I knew what was going on. Ruefully, I realized that it was probably precisely the amount of expertise I had in the area that tripped me up. Less experienced, I might have accepted what I saw rather than reading into it what I didn’t see.

Reassessing the matter, I realized there wasn’t a symbiotic relationship at all. I was becoming increasingly convinced that it was Geraldine, not Shemona, who kept Shemona from talking, I felt there must have been some sort of mental thuggery being carried out, and I wondered what kinds of things Geraldine might be telling Shemona when they were alone. I worried about how she kept control.

As I drew these conclusions, I was confronted with the need to radically alter my approach. Ideally, I would have liked to separate the two sisters into different classrooms. But where? Both of them clearly needed a specialized environment. Shemona, with no speech, few academic skills and nonexistent social behavior, would drown in the hubbub of a normal classroom. She’d already proven that with her kindergarten experience at the beginning of the year. Geraldine, whom I was starting to suspect could, like a rat, survive anywhere, needed the confinement of my kind of room. She was the one showing the genuinely pathological behavior, and I didn’t think it would have been to anyone’s benefit to ignore that. Unfortunately, in this small, rural district there just weren’t two classes available for the girls to go into. This left me with the need to create something within our own environment.

“You know, I’ve finally had an idea regarding Shemona,” I said. Ladbrooke and I were together at the table after school. We’d finished the next day’s plans, and I was correcting papers. Ladbrooke had a mimeograph stencil in front of her and was transferring a math game onto it.

“Oh? What’s that?” she asked, not looking up from her work.

“I want you to work with Shemona.”

“What do you mean?” She was still involved in what she was doing and wasn’t paying complete attention to me.

“I want you to get her to talk.”

This did make Lad look up. “What do you mean?” she asked again, her expression perplexed.

“I’ve been thinking and thinking over this business with her and Geraldine, and I just can’t figure out what else to do. I’ve got to separate them. If I can’t do it physically, then I’m going to have to do it psychologically. And this is what I’ve come up with. I want you to work with her, individually, like I do with Leslie.”

“Doing what?” There was a disconcerted look in her eyes.

“I want to get her into a good, solid relationship with an adult. We need to do that if we’re ever going to drive a wedge into Geraldine’s control.”

“You want
me
to do that? I’m not sure I know how to do that sort of thing, Torey, I don’t know how to get her to talk. Why me? Why not you?”

“Because I think you’ve got a better relationship with her than I do.”

“Me?” Ladbrooke’s eyes widened.
“You’re
her teacher.”

“That doesn’t give me exclusive privileges. You’re the special one. She always chooses you when she has the chance. I think it’d be advantageous to use that.”

This all seemed novel to Ladbrooke. Her expression was still one of disconcerted perplexity. She looked away for several seconds, staring into space, then she looked back. “What would I do with her?”

“I’m thinking of just having you take her aside individually for a set period, like I do with Leslie. I’m not too fussy about what goes on. She doesn’t really need academic help. It’s the relationship I’m interested in. I just want you to form a good relationship with her.”

Ladbrooke’s expression remained wary. “I’m not sure I know how to form that kind of relationship.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll help.”

Ladbrooke remained remarkably nervous about the arrangement. Despite my having developed a tightly structured, easy-to-follow program for the first couple of sessions, Lad didn’t relax. She couldn’t eat her lunch the first day, and I think without much effort, she could have talked herself into being sick. I went over and over the material with her in an effort to reassure her, and in spite of her nerves, I was increasingly convinced that this was the right idea. She did have a better relationship than I had with Shemona; Ladbrooke wasn’t going to fail in that respect. And she had something I couldn’t offer: a keen understanding of the economics of loneliness.

Geraldine, as might be expected, was intensely curious about what was going on around the corner of the shelves when Ladbrooke first took Shemona.

“Miss, what’s Shemona doing over there?”

“She’s working with Ladbrooke. They’re going to be working together every day at this time.”

“But what’s she doing? Why’s it taking so long?”

“They’re just doing some schoolwork. Like her papers in her folder,” I replied.

“How come she can’t do them out here with us?”

“Because I want her to do them in there with Ladbrooke.”

“Has she been naughty?”

“No.”

“Is it because she made mistakes on her worksheets yesterday? Does she have to have extra help?”

“No, Geraldine. It’s just something they’re doing together.”

“Why? When’s Shemona coming back?”

“In about twenty minutes. Now get busy with your own things, please. You haven’t even started your notebook yet.”

“But why’s Shemona in there? Does she need help? I could help her.”

“Ladbrooke’s helping her, Geraldine. Now, please, do your own work.”

“But why? Shemona isn’t going to like it, Miss. She’s not going to want to be in there by herself.”

“She’s not by herself. Ladbrooke is with her.”

“But what if she needs something, Miss? Shemona’s not going to want to do this. She’ll get angry. She’ll have a tantrum.”

“Shemona’ll be just fine. She’ll be back at a quarter of two. In the meantime, please, just do your own work.”

Geraldine frowned and looked down at her pencil. “Shemona isn’t going to like this.”

As I had anticipated, Ladbrooke and Shemona got on with no problems at all. The time went quickly for them, and there were still plenty of things they hadn’t gotten to when I came around the corner of the shelves to tell them it was 1:45.

By the end of the week, both Ladbrooke and Shemona were openly anticipating the sessions together. Ladbrooke continued to need help in preparation and a generous amount of feedback. After school, she needed to recount every moment of the thirty-minute session in minutest detail. Was this okay? Did she do right with that issue? Did I mind if she did this? We often took more time discussing them than the sessions themselves took, but she spoke eagerly of them. She wanted to make her own plans, writing them out in careful detail on a yellow legal pad in much the same format as I used in my plan book.

And Ladbrooke’s involvement paid off. She was an astute observer, and within days she was describing nuances in Shemona’s behavior that had eluded us in the hurly-burly of the classroom.

“She’s tense,” Ladbrooke said one afternoon after school. “I notice that she always hangs on to the edge of the desk when we’re working. I can see the ends of her fingers going white. I was watching her at the table after recess, and she does it then too. Have you noticed?”

I hadn’t really.

“It’s like she’s holding on. To keep control.”

Ladbrooke was pensive. “I was thinking …” Her voice trailed off. “I mean, if my aim is to get her to talk, to get her comfortable with me, I need to … well, relax her.”

“What did you have in mind?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Say, for instance, she
is
holding on to the table to keep control. I mean, what if that’s literally true? What if she has to stay really tense and tight to keep from talking, to keep from doing the things Geraldine wouldn’t want her to do?”

I regarded her.

“Well, then my job would be to make her let go of the table, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, that’s supposing I’m right.”

I nodded.

She thought a moment. “I was thinking maybe … well, maybe if I borrowed your colored chalk … we could draw with it on the board. She could move around.”

I nodded again. “That sounds good.”

Ladbrooke regarded me. “But am I right?”

“I don’t know. But it’s worth a try.”

On Friday of the second week, when Ladbrooke and Shemona had been working together for about ten days, I had my first real surprise. It had been a rather raucous day, and no one was being particularly quiet. Shamie was working with a little electronic learning toy that beeped and whistled and chattered back to him in a tinny computer voice. Mariana and Geraldine were listening to cassette tapes, and although they had earphones on, the mutter of the tapes was still audible. I was with Dirkie and Leslie, doing number work with little colored cubes, but Dirkie was having one of his days and kept masturbating against the edge of his chair.

It was at that point that I heard the laughter. I paused and turned to look in the direction of the blackboard area. Even with the open shelving, the view was obscured by stacks of journals.

Shamie, distracted from his toy, turned his head. “What’re they doing over there, Miss?” he asked, a half smile on his face.

“I’m not sure.”

Fits of giggles.

Shamie and I exchanged bemused looks. “They sound like they’re having fun,” he said.

I nodded. Curiosity was getting the better of me. I didn’t want to disturb them by going around the corner, but I wondered if I could see through the shelves. When I got up, Shamie got up too.

“I know where you can look through,” he said. “Over here. This is our special spy place.” He grinned at me. “That you don’t know about!”

“I do now.”

He laughed. Going to the edge of the long shelving unit, he pointed through the stacks of journals. “See. Here.”

Shemona and Ladbrooke were sitting together with their backs toward us, Shemona in Ladbrooke’s lap. Ladbrooke had her handbag open on the small desk and a tiny makeup mirror propped against it. The clips holding her own long hair back had been taken out and were now in Shemona’s hair. Ladbrooke wielded a wide-toothed comb, pulling Shemona’s hair up on top of her head and clipping it with one of the large barrettes. She lifted up the mirror for Shemona to see, and Shemona dissolved into giggles, her laughter tinkly, like small shards of glass falling on tiles. Moving off Ladbrooke’s lap for a moment, she climbed back on, facing Lad. Running her fingers through the hair on either side of Ladbrooke’s head, she pulled what she could catch up into a bunch and held it. Neither of them was saying a word, but again, Shemona laughed and then so did Ladbrooke.

Enchanted, I watched them. In all these months I had never heard Shemona laugh.

Then quietly, I withdrew. “Come on, Shamie. Let’s get back to work.”

“Are they supposed to be doing that?” he asked.

I nodded.

“But they’re just playing.”

“They’re supposed to be playing.”

“Lucky them.”