Just Another Kid (38 page)

She studied my face a moment. A slight smile touched her lips. “You’re not any good, are you, about not being in control.”

Sadly, the episode over Geraldine’s hand did not prove to be the catalyst or change that I had hoped it might be. Despite its bringing about much-needed psychiatric intervention and also acutely focusing my attention on my own lack of communication with Geraldine, nothing altered. She returned to school during the first week of May, her hand still in a large bandage, and went on much the way she always had.

My children all went down to the gymnasium over the lunch period and ate with Carolyn’s children, where they were supervised by two aides specifically hired for the lunch hour. This period was considered sacrosanct by Carolyn, Joyce, Ladbrooke and me. Unless all hell broke loose, the children were the responsibility of these two lunch aides. The two women employed in this position were big, burly and experienced and could handle most crises that came their way, so we generally enjoyed a trauma-free forty-five minutes to ourselves. But the ultimate punishment for any of the children was first to be reported to us by one of these lunchtime Brunhildes and, if that didn’t improve things, to be sent up to the classroom. Dirkie was our worst culprit in this regard and had been sent up to spend the rest of his lunch hour with Ladbrooke and me on a handful of occasions.

On Thursday of the week Geraldine returned to class, Lad and I were eating our lunches as usual. Ladbrooke was trying to wrestle open one of the incorrigible milk cartons that the dairy supplied us with and, in the process, spilled most of the contents across the table. She left the room to go get paper towels from the girls’ rest room and returned with a dismayed expression.

“Something’s going on down there,” she said, and set the paper towels on the table.

“Where? In the lunch room?”

She nodded. “Somebody’s screaming blue murder.”

“One of ours?”

“Sounds like it.” She bent to wipe up the milk.

Within moments noise approached our door. I put down my sandwich and went to see what was going on. One of the aides had Geraldine by the collar of her dress. In her other hand was Geraldine’s lunch box.

I held open the door to let them in. “What’s going on here?”

Geraldine wasn’t crying, just hollering. “I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!”

The aide shoved Geraldine in ahead of her and around the corner of the shelves to the table, where Lad and I had been eating. She pushed Geraldine into a chair. “Look at this,” she replied, flicking open the latch on the lunch box. Out fell a large collection of cookies, candy bars, cupcakes and the like. The box had been crammed completely full of them.

“Where did all this come from?” I asked.

“She’s stealing them off Miss Berry’s children again. She’s got a regular little racket going. We’ve gotten after her and after her for doing this kind of thing, and I’m fed up with it. I told her if I caught her doing it one more time, she was going to have you to answer to.”

I looked at all the things.

“She traps the other kids. Outside in the hall and in the bathroom, mostly. She makes them give her these things out of their lunches or she beats on them. Regular little mini-Mafia going here.”

“I didn’t do it!” Geraldine screamed, and she lunged across the table. Picking up Ladbrooke’s milk carton, she pitched it viciously in the direction of the aide. It missed and milk went splashing across the floor.

Dragging Geraldine over, I yanked out the quiet chair and shoved her into it. “You sit there until you’ve settled down. Then we’ll discuss all this.” After seeing the aide out, I returned to my half-eaten lunch and sat down. Ladbrooke was on the floor, mopping up what had been left of her milk. She rolled her eyes when I looked over.

Geraldine fumed and fussed, determined to disrupt our lunch as much as possible. I didn’t like having to sit there and eat, because I was providing a ready-made audience for her antics. Disgruntled, I wrapped up the other half of my sandwich and stuffed it into my lunch bag. Ladbrooke, also trying to avoid encouraging Geraldine’s behavior, stood around the corner, leaning against the filing cabinet and cramming the remains of her salad into her mouth. I nudged her aside and opened the top drawer to put away my lunch.

“Come here,” I said to Geraldine, as I came back around the divider. She rose from the quiet chair and approached me at the table. “So what is this?” I asked, “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“No, not ‘nothing.’ Mrs. Anderson found all these things in your lunch box and they don’t belong to you. I want to know why you took them and what we’re going to do about it.”

Geraldine shrugged.

I waited.

“Shamie took my two cookies away from me. Last weekend. When we were sitting outside having our snack, he took my two away from me and ate them.”

“You’re saying you’ve taken, what, let’s count them—nine, ten, twelve, fourteen things away from Miss Berry’s children because Shamie took two cookies away from you last weekend?”

“It wasn’t fair he took them. They were my cookies. Auntie Bet gave them to me.”

“Do you think it’s these children’s fault that Shamie took your cookies?”

“No.”

“So that reasoning doesn’t quite make sense to me.”

“They’re retarded, those kids.”

“Which means they need our special help, doesn’t it? Rather than our taking advantage of them.”

“But they’re stupid.”

“That’s really immaterial, Geraldine. The fact we need to examine is that you were doing something wrong. You’re bullying people who are weaker than you are. You’re using fear and force to take things that don’t belong to you. And this isn’t the first time, is it? You’ve been caught doing this kind of thing again and again.”

“But they’re stupid.”

“That’s
not
a reason to take advantage of people. How would it make you feel if someone did that to you? If a bigger child stopped you in the hallway and demanded that you give her a nice piece of your lunch every day?”

“There aren’t any bigger kids here.”

“No, I know there aren’t. But I want you to use your imagination. Imagine how you’d feel if someone forced you to give up your cookies and cupcakes every day. Would you like it?”

“Well, like I already said, Miss, Shamie took my cookies off me last weekend.”

“So how did it make you feel?”

“I hated him. It was unfair.”

“And how do you suppose it makes those children feel when you take their sweets away from them? Don’t you suppose they think it’s unfair too?”

“They’re just retarded.”

“Geraldine, they’re people. They feel just like you and I do. And how do you think they felt?”

She looked me straight in the eye. “I don’t care, really.”

Disgruntled, I sighed and looked away. Expelling a long breath, I shoved my hair back from my face and rubbed my eyes. Then I looked back at her. “Can you see that there was something wrong with what you did?”

She shrugged.

“Is that yes? Or no?”

She shrugged again, the gesture more defiant.

I sighed again. “Well, Geraldine, the fact of the matter is that it
was
wrong. If you can’t tell that, then you’re just going to have to take my word for it. And I can’t let you keep doing it. I can’t allow you to hurt other people. You know that already.”

“You’re just taking their side. You always do. You take everybody’s side but mine.”

I regarded her. She sat, slouched down in the chair, arms wrapped tight around herself, eyes averted. I hated this kind of interaction with a child, where there was no communication whatsoever.

“I’m going to have to take a more serious course of action, Geraldine. I don’t know how many times you and I have talked about taking things that don’t belong to you, but it’s been too often. In the beginning, I assumed maybe you just didn’t know how wrong it is, but now I can’t believe that anymore. You
do
know. You’re choosing to keep doing it.”

“Okay, so I’ll sit in the stupid quiet chair,” she said with glum annoyance.

“No, I don’t think the quiet chair is going to do the trick this time. I think first you and I need to go back downstairs so that you can give each child back his or her sweets. And then, I think you need to give them something of yours. If you take from them, it’s only fair to have to give them something in retribution.”

Concern colored her features.

“You brought in that packet of My Little Pony stickers this morning. I think we ought to take those down and give one to each of the children you’ve stolen from.”

She was aghast. “Those are mine! Auntie Bet bought those for
me
, to go in my sticker album. That’s not fair!”

“I think it is. You took things that didn’t belong to you, that other people wanted to keep. This is a fair way of making up for it.”

Geraldine began to cry.

Rising from my chair, I put a hand on her shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go get the stickers.”

Geraldine wept all the way down to the lunchroom and all the way through the process of returning the sweets and passing out the stickers. At the start, she was simply angry and raged noisily against her helplessness in the situation, but after a while, I think the tears fed upon themselves. She got going and she couldn’t stop. As we headed back to the classroom, she was still crying and sullenly attempted to pull away from me when I tried to put my arm around her shoulders. But she didn’t quite. She reached the extent of my fingertips and went no farther.

We’d come to the end of the corridor and started up the stairs to the second floor. I paused on the landing. “Shall we sit down a minute?” I asked.

“Where?”

“Here.” I indicated the steps.

“What for?”

I shrugged slightly. “Just to have a few minutes.”

She nodded.

And so we sat, side by side, on the first step leading up from the landing. Geraldine had a huge wad of tissues in her hands, and she kept folding and refolding them, searching for dry places. I reached my arm over and put it around her shoulders, but a small space remained between us as we sat.

My intention had been to give her a few minutes to compose herself before we launched into the rigors of the afternoon. I also wanted the opportunity to talk to her. Ladbrooke never meant to be intrusive, but there were moments when I felt a desperate need to be totally alone with a child, and this was one of them. I wanted to reassure Geraldine of my regard for her. I needed to clarify my actions, to insure she understood that I hadn’t done what I did simply in order to dominate or humiliate her, but rather that it was my responsibility to see she followed certain rules. This had been one of our problems all along. Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, Geraldine never seemed able to accept that any rules applied to her. Nor could she understand that my predictable response to rule breaking was anything other than acutely personal attack. So I wanted a few moments of privacy to sort everything out between us.

However, once I had the privacy, I suddenly found myself with nothing to say. We sat in silence perhaps five minutes or more.

Then, when I didn’t say anything, Geraldine turned her head and looked up at me. It was a slow, deliberate movement. She didn’t speak; she just looked up at me, her eyes searching my face. Then she lowered her head. The tears, which had ceased, began again with an abrupt sob. Without a word, she leaned against me and buried her face in my lap.

Gently, I touched her hair.

Where had all our chances gone? Things had never been perfect between the two of us, but they had been no worse than with so many other children. What had happened to us? When had we ceased working together and become opponents? When had I lost her? Because hard as it was for me to acknowledge, I knew I had.

L
adbrooke went into a period of remarkable stability. We no longer met over the weekends; we hadn’t since Easter, but she now handled them as a matter of course. In the classroom she was providing mature, reliable assistance with the children. She would go down to the teachers’ lounge on her own occasionally, and while not friendly, her silence was acceptably neutral. She had developed a fairly pleasant relationship with Carolyn and now joined us regularly at the spa for a swim. Even in conversation, she was more at ease. She still clutched, sputtered and lost her words occasionally, but it interfered with her fluency less. Most important, however, she had made it three months without a single drink.

Despite this progress, or perhaps because of it, Ladbrooke’s and my own relationship went on the skids. The difficulty materialized virtually out of nowhere in the early days of May and overshadowed a fair proportion of the otherwise pleasant springtime activities taking place. Ladbrooke’s suddenly announced plans for her future appeared to be the first herald of this change. I was genuinely caught off guard, and this seemed to intrigue Ladbrooke. Throughout our time together, Lad had found entertainment value in catching me unaware. She liked proving that I wasn’t as unshakable as I appeared and she preferred staying a little unpredictable herself. This’d always lent some tension to the relationship and on occasion had created a faintly competitive edge, as we attempted to determine who could outwit whom; however, I’d never been particularly concerned about it. To me, it was simply one of the many normal forces ebbing and flowing subtly in a dynamic relationship. Then in May, Ladbrooke’s behavior changed abruptly. She grew positively enthusiastic about keeping me unsettled. What had hitherto been subtle became trenchant.

Lad’s favorite tactic was to confront me with my own emotions. “You’re upset now.” “You wanted it your way.” “I’ve disappointed/angered/irritated you.” And so on. These became bywords to our conversations and were all the more annoying because she was almost always right. Moreover, the emotions she remarked on were generally ones I was not thrilled to have exposed. She also enjoyed playing devil’s advocate. This was a totally new behavior, and I fell very hard for it the first few times by getting quite upset. The topics she chose were invariably sensitive and controversial, such as my feelings over Northern Ireland or similar political issues, or ones which brought into question my authority, such as my choice of discipline in the classroom. Whatever stance I took, she chose the dead opposite and would debate with me in a very serious fashion indeed. I was surprised by how hurt I could feel when I believed she actually meant what she was saying. Then, once I was wound up, she’d shrug or laugh and say she hadn’t meant any of it at all, not really; she just wanted to see how I defended myself on the issue. Then I’d feel even worse than when I’d thought she was serious.

Ladbrooke was generally not sadistic in these attacks. While she obviously intended to push things as far as they would go, she didn’t like me to get genuinely upset. If I did, she’d immediately back down and apologize profusely. In my saner moments, this gave me hope that she wasn’t out to hurt me personally and this was just one of those irritating stages, but the verbal jousting was persistent and the comfortable acceptance which had been a part of our relationship for so long was momentarily eclipsed.

Understandably, when not under siege, I devoted a considerable amount of time to thinking about this change. Despite its negative appearance, I suspected it augured growth. The time, I think, had finally come when Ladbrooke was unwilling to let me stay in charge of things. I’d carried her long enough, and she was now wanting to take her own weight. Doing this necessitated shaking up both our roles. To put herself on equal footing with me, she had to knock me down to size first.

From an intellectual point of view, I could appreciate such a theory. Considering all the factors, it made sense, and it matched my previous experience. Moreover, it was a necessary stage of growth. The problem was, it was miserable to be on the receiving end of such behavior. The other times I had encountered something similar had been in my work with older adolescents, and it had been no picnic with them. But with Ladbrooke, it was pure hell. She was experienced and intelligent, giving her a fully equipped armory with which to work; she knew me well enough to be able to really get under my skin; and she’d had Tom all these years to sharpen rapiers with. Worst, there was no escaping her. For the first time, I could see real sense in the traditional client/therapist setup. An hour a day, once or twice a week, I could probably have handled with aplomb. All day, day in, day out was killing me.

In the end, I decided the best solution would be to give both of us more space.

I’d had a hectic morning before coming to school one day and hadn’t managed to make myself much of a lunch. It ended up being no more than a plain peanut butter sandwich and a bruised banana. Sitting at the table at lunch-time, I regarded it with dismay.

“Let’s go to Enrico’s for lunch tomorrow,” I said.

Ladbrooke lifted an eyebrow.

“This is rotten. Look at this. I can’t eat half this banana. I’m in the mood for something decent.”

“Here. You want some of this?” She held out her container of salad. “Give me the plastic wrap from your sandwich. I’ll put some on there.”

“No, that’s okay. I’m just saying I’m ready for a change.”

Ladbrooke wrinkled her nose.

“I love Mexican food,” I said, “and I’m really sick of sandwiches. I never have time in the mornings to make anything better.”

“I do mine the night before. Do you want me to do yours as well? I wouldn’t mind. It wouldn’t be any trouble.”

“No, I’d rather go to Enrico’s.”

Lad came too, that next day. I had assumed she would. Despite her still clumsy social skills, she liked company. She wouldn’t have been happy staying in the room on her own, and since her relationship with most of the rest of the staff had improved steadily throughout the year, I trusted Enrico’s would not prove to be the anguishing experience it had been in November.

The first lunch hour passed flawlessly. Only six people from the school went to Enrico’s that day because there was a meeting Frank and some of the special-services staff needed to attend instead. That meant we could all sit together at one table. Conversation flowed without interruption. Lad talked mainly with Carolyn and Katy from the office. I caught up on the latest gossip about upcoming school-board elections from two of the secretaries. Returning to school afterward, I felt more refreshed than I had in ages.

There was less concern the next day. Lad sat next to me, as she had the day before, but I paid no attention to what she was doing. Neither of us knew most of the people sitting at our table. There were the men from driver’s education and someone from career services. Carolyn came late, so she sat at a different table. But Frank was with us and all three of us got into a conversation about Mrs. Samuelson.

It wasn’t until the third day that we ran into trouble. Mariana had a dental appointment, and her mother was late picking her up, so Lad and I didn’t get to Enrico’s until almost 12:30. Virtually everyone else was there already, as were a considerable number of other people. As a consequence, there was no room for us to sit together at the same table. So Ladbrooke joined Carolyn and the office girls, while I joined Frank and the people from speech therapy. I didn’t think too much about it at the time; I was too concerned with snagging a waitress to take my order, as we didn’t have a lot of time to spare.

Afterward, when I was in the rest room, Carolyn stopped me. “You better go rescue Lad,” she said. “She’s gone cold as a fish again.”

I groaned.

Back out in the restaurant, I took my soda water, which was all I had remaining from my meal, and came over to the table where Lad and Carolyn were sitting. I pulled a chair over from an adjacent table and sat down near Ladbrooke. She was encased in grim, bristly silence. Her food was virtually untouched.

For a few moments I chatted with one of the secretaries and finished my drink, waiting to see if Ladbrooke could pull herself together on her own. When it became obvious that she wasn’t going to manage it before we needed to leave, I thought I’d better give her an out.

“You want to walk back? It’s such a nice day. Seems a shame to ride.”

She nodded. Putting her napkin on the table, she rose and made preparations to leave.

Outside, the sun was warm and very bright in contrast to the darkened interior of the restaurant. I squinted as I reached the doorway, but smiled because the day was simply glorious. I paused to take in deep breaths of apple blossom-scented air. But Ladbrooke was having none of it. She started down the steps and off across the parking lot without looking back.

We walked for a few minutes without talking. Ladbrooke was setting the pace. She had a long stride and was walking in a no-nonsense manner that was going to get us back to the school sooner than if we’d accepted a ride with someone. I had to work to keep up with her.

“Carolyn told me you were having problems,” I said.

Ladbrooke scowled. “What did she say that for?”

“Because I think she thought you were.”

Ladbrooke quickened her pace. In a few moments I wasn’t going to be able to talk if I wanted to, because I was going to need all my breath just to keep up with her. I was almost having to run.

“If there’re problems, Lad, there’re problems. No big deal. But there’s no point in pretending they’re not there if they are.”

“There weren’t any problems. I’ve already said that.”

We’d come into the schoolyard.

“I just don’t want to go there, that’s all,” she said. “I’d rather eat in the classroom.” She mounted the steps to the door and pulled it open. I followed her in. Within moments, we were back in the room.

“Well, I’d rather not,” I said. “It’s a good break, getting away from the school for a while. I feel better for it.”

She shrugged, “So you eat there. I’ll eat here.”

“Lad, don’t be impossible.”

“You’re getting as bad as Tom. I think I’m going to be glad to be away from you too. You treat me like a child. I don’t need you to do everything for me. I’m quite capable of eating a lunch on my own.”

The temptation at that moment was to point out that if she was intending on taking off for the East Coast in a few weeks’ time, it would probably be profitable to learn how to make casual conversation with acquaintances in a restaurant. But I didn’t say it, realizing I would be talking more from my own frustration than from a need to make a point. Instead, I turned away and started to take the children’s afternoon work out.

“See, now you’re angry with me,” Ladbrooke said.

“I’m not angry, but I’ll tell you what. I
am
getting frustrated. Do you know what you’ve been behaving like lately? I can’t do anything right by you. I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”

She regarded me, her expression unreadable.

“Do what you bloody well please, Ladbrooke. If you want to sit here on your own and eat your lunch, be my guest. If you want to go down there and sit like Grim Death, then do that. If it’s no problem for you, then God knows, it’s certainly no problem for me. Do whatever you want. Just lay off me.”

She gazed at me for several seconds. “See,” she said quietly. “You
are
angry.”

I nodded. “Yes, I am.”

At recess, Ladbrooke approached me on the playground as I leaned against the brick wall and watched the children.

“Look, I’m sorry about earlier,” she said.

“That’s okay.”

She pulled her hair around over one shoulder and then leaned back against the wall beside me. “I did panic a bit at lunch. I don’t know why. It just came over me as I was sitting there.”

“Well, don’t worry about it.”

We watched Shamie and Mariana playing a makeshift game of baseball. Shemona was running back and forth to fetch the ball for them, as they took turns hitting at it.

“I felt dumb,” Ladbrooke said quietly. “I felt worse because I knew Carolyn knew. I could feel her watching me, I wanted to scream at her after a while.”

“You probably should have. She needs to mind her own business sometimes.”

“I wanted to sort it out on my own. I didn’t want her to tell you. God, that was the last thing I wanted, you two gossiping in the ladies’ room.”

“We weren’t gossiping, Lad.”

“Well, you know what I mean.”

I scanned the playground, counting heads to make sure all the children were still there. Carolyn had gotten a new boy, and he kept wandering off. I spotted him at the far end. Standing against the wall was very hot, so I pushed myself off to let the air circulate. Lad looked over at me.

“I’m still going back,” I said. “To Enrico’s, I mean. I really do feel I need that break in my day.”

Ladbrooke looked down at her hands.

“You’re welcome to come. You know that. But I’m not going back to sandwiches in the classroom.”

“You’re still upset, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not. I just think the time’s come for me to have a change of scenery.”

Ladbrooke frowned and didn’t say anything further.

The next morning I arrived as usual at 7:30, got my cup of coffee, sat down at the table and started to organize myself for the day. Within a few moments, the classroom door opened and someone came in. This surprised me. I was one of the few people to come so early, which was why I did it. It usually guaranteed me an uninterrupted half hour to myself.