Language Arts (12 page)

“All right, class. In preparation for today's penmanship lesson, I will require three helpers.”

Instantly, the hands of three Smarties shot up: Astrida and two back-row girls.

“Thank you. Will you please go to the supply closet, locate the rulers, and pass out one ruler to each student?”

While the class helpers executed their orders, Mrs. Braxton went to the blackboard, erased the morning's social studies lesson (Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders), and began transcribing the quote of the day:

Corresponding on paper lets you elevate a simple pleasure into an art form. —Margaret Shepherd, calligrapher

“What should we do now, Mrs. Braxton?” Astrida asked.

“Please come back to the front of the classroom.”

After retrieving a cardboard box from beneath her desk, Mrs. Braxton began moving through the room, reaching into the box, pulling out long strips of plain white fabric, and depositing them on her students' desks, three per customer.

“Leave these items alone for the time being,” Mrs. Braxton instructed, needlessly, as she continued her rounds. Everyone knew better than to touch anything without further commands—everyone but Dana, of course, who immediately tied the fabric strips to his ruler and then began waving it around, a battle-shredded miniature Fourth of July flag.

“Dana McGucken!” Mrs. Braxton said, passing him on her way back to the front of the classroom. “Leave it!”

Dana lowered his banner but not before making his opinion known with a crisply executed toot: a single musket shot aimed at the battlement of Mrs. Braxton's backside.

No one laughed. They were too anxious about Mrs. Braxton's plans for those fabric strips. Maybe this was the day she'd start expecting the class to execute perfect push-pulls while blindfolded. It didn't seem out of the realm of possibility.

“Today we are going to focus on a very crucial aspect of Palmer penmanship, that of learning to use the forearm, wrist, and hand as one solid unit. In order to do this,” she continued, “we are going to bind our arms to our rulers.”

The collective unspoken subtext in response to this proclamation couldn't have been clearer:
We're going to
what?

“Astrida,” Mrs. Braxton said, wielding one of the rulers and a clutch of fabric strips, “may I demonstrate using you as our model?”

Astrida froze, wide-eyed and mouth-breathing, and said, faintly, “May I please be excused to the girls' room?”

“Yes, but hurry back.”

Astrida scuttled away. Mrs. Braxton surveyed the room in search of another assistant.

It was at that moment that the weather system of eraser dust—a massive bank of thunderheads that had been drifting in a slow but steady southwesterly direction—arrived at Charles's desk, and he began to cough uncontrollably.

“Charles,” Mrs. Braxton said. “You may go to the sink and get a drink of water. Then join us for the demonstration.”

The course of personal destiny is determined by such small moments.

“All right, children,” Mrs. Braxton continued. “You may stand at your desks so that you can better see the presentation. You will work in pairs with the people sitting closest to you. I will assist as needed. Now, pay attention . . . Charles?”

Mrs. Braxton instructed Charles to sit at Astrida's desk, roll up his sleeve, and extend his arm, palm up—a position suggesting an imminent vaccination. She held the ruler so that it bridged from just below the bend of his elbow to his hand.

“The cloths are to be wrapped and then tied in three locations . . .”

Throughout this demonstration, Dana yawned, swayed, and gazed contentedly at the ceiling. Although he occasionally expressed a quality of engagement during math and science, penmanship was a subject for which he had neither interest nor innate ability.

“. . . first, around the palm of the hand like this, between the thumb and forefinger, so that there is no impediment to the correct pencil grasp . . .”

It's possible that Dana didn't even know how to
say
his ABCs much less
write
them in any recognizable form.

“. . . then, at the wrist, to prevent bending at that joint . . .”

So, during the extensive periods Mrs. Braxton set aside each day for penmanship practice—what she called
writing a good hand
—Dana was usually allowed to freely indulge in any of his habitual nondisruptive behaviors, including napping.

“. . . and finally, at the forearm just below the elbow . . .”

However, for some incomprehensible reason, it was
this
lesson among all others that Mrs. Braxton chose as the one in which Dana's participation was mandatory.

“Questions? All right, then, you may begin. Please keep talking to a minimum.”

What could she have been thinking?

Astrida returned and, seeing that her desk was occupied, glared with indignation. Mrs. Braxton—who had gone to work binding Dana's forearm to his ruler—gestured brusquely toward Charles's vacated fourth-row desk, indicating that Astrida should take a seat there. Incredulous, her face bloomed beet red; her eyes filled with the tears of one wrongly accused.

With Mrs. Braxton occupied with Dana, and Bradley and Mitchell paired off, Charles was the odd man out, with nothing to do but look on.

Dana was clearly puzzled, but passive. At least Mrs. Braxton hadn't required him to remove his suit coat. She worked efficiently and quickly; Brax the Ax would have made an excellent triage nurse. Once Dana's arm was firmly secured to his ruler, she leaned close, spoke a few quiet words into his ear, and then began moving through the room helping other children.

Immediately, Dana started experimenting with his splinted arm, making sweeping arcs in all directions, tapping it against his desk.

All was well until Mrs. Braxton resumed her place at the front of the room.

“All right, children. Please sit up straight, position yourselves properly, take up your pencils, and begin your two-minute timed loop practice . . .
now.
”

Mrs. Braxton swooped behind Dana with surprising speed and agility and wrapped her arms around him; the impression was of a huge, powerful bird descending from on high and capturing its prey within a pair of massive wings. After pinning Dana's left arm to his desk, she forced a pencil into his right hand, laid the length of her right forearm atop his, and began trying to guide his first loop-practice efforts.

Dana let go of the pencil immediately. It rolled to the floor. He began grunting and shaking his head, then bucking in his desk chair, then screeching as if in pain.

“Dana,” Mrs. Braxton said, undeterred, her voice steady. “You can do this. Come on now . . .” She produced another pencil, placed it in his hand, and clasped her own hand over it.

Dana's panic exploded into rage, and he began to thrash against Mrs. Braxton's substantial bulwark of a body so forcefully that she almost toppled. Unbelievably, she persisted throughout the eternity of those two minutes, keeping one eye on the clock even as she tried to wrestle Dana into submission.

“. . . five, four, three, two,
one!
”

By now, Dana was screaming. The rest of the class sat, stunned into silence by the force of his resistance and Mrs. Braxton's inability to contain him.

“Dana!” she kept shouting. “Dana McGucken! That's enough! Calm down!”

Take it off,
Charles thought as Dana continued to flail and cry, his primal fear endangering both student and teacher.
Take it
off
him.

Mrs. Braxton struggled with Dana well beyond that two-minute mark. Finally, she stopped trying to combat or control Dana's thrashing and began moving in sync with him, so that eventually the two of them were rocking, side to side, at Dana's usual tempo. His screams diminished to wails, then whimpers, and finally to a kind of subdued keening.

“I'm sorry, Dana,” Mrs. Braxton said gently, breathlessly, as she began removing the strips. “I'm very sorry. It's all right. You won't have to do that again.”

When she turned around, her expression was frankly startled, as if she'd forgotten that there were other children in the room. A few of them gasped when they saw her face.

“Mrs. Braxton,” Charles said quietly. “Your nose is bleeding.”

She darted her eyes at him, then nodded. A series of self-composing gestures followed: she pressed her handkerchief to her face, replaced Dana's fabric strips in the box, slid his ruler into a desk drawer, smoothed her hair, and looked up at the clock.

“Let us continue,” she said nasally, still occluding one side of her nose with her hankie. “Please begin your two-minute timed bedspring-oval practice . . .
now.
”

Dana remained mute and downcast, and on that day he exhibited a new behavior: using the thumb of his right hand, he aggressively massaged the triangular web of skin and muscle between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. He looked down and watched himself do this with a bleak desperation, as if administering a last-resort drug that might not take effect in time to save the patient's life. (Years later, in the process of researching Cody's condition, Charles learned from a medical dictionary that this area of the hand is known as
the anatomical snuffbox,
and that Dana's massaging habit is often seen in people with fragile X syndrome.)

Mrs. Braxton's last instruction to the class as they left that day was to return the rulers to the supply closet and the fabric strips to the box on her desk. Charles was almost out the door when she spoke to him.

“Charles. You did exceptionally well today during penmanship practice. You seemed to have no trouble with the immobilizing technique.”

“It's like wearing a cast,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“I broke my arm when I was seven and had to wear a cast. Being tied to the ruler today, it . . . Well, it felt like that.”

Mrs. Braxton nodded. “That is an excellent insight, Charles. Would you be willing to share that with the class on Monday?”

“Sure. I guess.”

Charles should have been cheered and flattered by this exchange, but it only served to remind him of his missing friend—the games of tic-tac-toe they'd played on his cast, the cartoons they'd drawn.

He wondered if, way up there in the Land of Sky-Blue Waters, Donnie Bothwell was also learning the Palmer Method and, if so, whether his experiences were proving to be as dramatic.

Rain or shine, Tuesdays and Thursdays at precisely 9:15 a.m., a few select residents of Madonna's Home are led outside; some walk unassisted, others use canes or aluminum walkers or wheelchairs. All are closely supervised. It is a slow procession.

They are guided into a small bus, helped to their places, secured with safety belts.

The caregivers take their seats.

The journey begins.

The bus driver, like most of us, maintains run-of-the-mill notions involving time and space. He takes his work seriously. A heavy rainstorm has started moving through the city, and he's worried about getting his passengers to their appointment on time.

A complex series of maneuverings over surface streets and freeways will eventually bring them to a Catholic church on Capitol Hill. The bus driver checks his watch. So far, they're making good time. They usually do, going this direction on weekdays, midmorning. It's the trip back, after lunch, that's the wildcard. It could be a breeze; it could take an hour.

The Madonna's Home residents pay no attention to traffic conditions. They are free of travel-related anxieties. They don't consult clocks. They abide by internalized and highly individuated global positioning systems. Each one tells a different story as to what is happening; each one has his or her own ideas about the destination.

Giorgia D'Amati—a newcomer among these pilgrims; she has made this trip only two other times—sits immediately behind the bus driver.

She perches on the edge of her seat, bright-eyed, smiling. Occasionally she pats her hair, tugs at the hem of her dress, and mimes the actions of applying lipstick, her small, olive-skinned hands fleet as swallow's wings.

Only she knows the truth.

They are going to Italy.

•♦•

It is 1943, a midday in spring, and Giorgia is in a chapel in the Tuscan countryside having her photograph taken.

She is in the company of three soldiers.
“Come sono distinti!”
she says.
“Come sono belli!”

Giorgia stands on the steps leading to the dais, her back to the altar. Next to her is a tall, gangly boy wearing a U.S. Army uniform: wool, filbert brown.

Standing at the base of the steps is the best man; next to him is the other groomsman, the one who is taking the picture.

She sees herself from the photographer's point of view: dowdy and plain-featured, the opposite of voluptuous—Giorgia D'Amati is built like a deck of playing cards.

But today, the silhouette of her body is indented slightly at the presumed location of her waist; skipping breakfast made it possible for her to cinch the thin belt of her homemade dress one notch beyond comfort.

Giorgia is an excellent seamstress, but fancy styles and colorful fabrics are forbidden, even on such an occasion as this.

From where the photographer stands, at a distance of several feet, the yard goods used for Giorgia's short-sleeved shirtwaist appear to be a mottled black and gray, the result perhaps of a laundry accident. But a closer look reveals a faint, all-over pattern of dainty flowers bound together by swirling ribbons: clouds of blurry-edged bouquets floating in a night sky lit by a weary moon and overlaid with mist, everything in gradated shades of gray.

Giorgia has taken special care with her hair; her head is covered with marcel finger curls that she learned to make from an American magazine. According to the magazine, a homely face and an unremarkable figure can always be offset with attention to hygiene and style. Only in America do women think like this.