One Child (12 page)

"We're going to do this math worksheet today, Sheila. All I want is this one sheet and it's got easy problems on it."

She looked at me distrustfully. "I don't wanna do that."

"Well, it isn't your choice today." I tapped the paper on the table agitatedly with one finger. "Come on, let's get started."

She sat staring at me. I could tell she was leery of the situation. I had never forced her in such a direct confrontation and she did not seem to be able to tell what to expect from me. Inside myself my own irritation was clenching my organs. My stomach was tight and knotted, my heart beating rapidly. For a split second I wanted to retreat, but my anger over all these weeks of refusal overwhelmed me.

"Do it." I could hear my voice louder and sharper in my ears than I wanted it to be. I reached over and grabbed a pencil, shoving it into her hand. "I said do the paper. Now do it, Sheila."

She wadded up the first paper. I carefully straightened it out and taped it down to the table. Sheila gouged it out with the pencil. Grimly we struggled, me putting out new copies, Sheila ripping at them. Math period passed and the litter of destroyed dittos deepened around our chairs. The others rose for freetime. Sheila glanced around in concern. Freetime was her favorite period and already she noticed Tyler was getting out the little toy people she liked to play with.

"Finish this paper and you can go," I stated, taping a new one down. I had swallowed my anger but a subdued sort of frenzy remained, causing my pulse to continue to run faster.

Sheila was losing patience with me. Angry little grunts were coming out with her heavy breaths. We went through another half-dozen copies of the worksheet. Moving my chair close to hers I pinned her in her chair against the table. Then I taped down a new sheet. Holding down her free hand, I took her other in mine. "I'll help you, Sheila, if you can't do it by yourself," I said doggedly. I could feel perspiration soaking my shirt.

Sheila began to scream, cutting loose with an earsplitting yell. Thankfully she was left-handed as I was, so I could move her hand. I asked her the answer to the first problem. At first she refused to say but then angrily shouted it out. I pushed her hand along the paper, writing a 3. Sheila struggled violently, trying to knock loose my hold of her chair, trying to bite me. Second problem now. Again I dragged the answer out of her and forced her to write it.

We struggled the rest of freetime and finished the paper with her screaming protests and me forcing her hand. The second I let go, she scrabbled the paper up from the tape and shredded it before I could catch her hands. Angrily she threw the paper in my face and broke away from my hold, knocking over the chair. Running to the other side of the classroom she turned to glower at me.

"I HATE YOU!" she screamed as loudly as possible. The other children were finishing their snacks and getting ready for recess, but they paused, watching us. "I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!" Then her frustration with me overpowered her and she stood shrieking wordlessly from her corner behind the animal cages.

Anton cleared the other kids out to recess, but I remained sitting at the table. Expecting her to go off into one of her destructive rages, I was poised to catch her. But she didn't. After a few moments she regained her composure and stopped screaming. However, she remained across the room, staring at me reproachfully. She seemed on the verge of tears, her mouth turned down, her chin quivering. I was beginning to feel like a first-class heel. Her disappointment in me for behaving so antagonistically was bright in her eyes. As I watched her, I knew I had done the wrong thing. I had been desperate, my teacher's instinct to get work accomplished on paper having overcome my better sense. But I shouldn't have let that happen. It had been wrong. I hated myself for allowing such an unimportant thing rule me.

I regarded her. Bad feelings rippled through me, recriminations, self-doubt. Had I destroyed our relationship? We had been doing so well in the three weeks since she had come. Had I screwed it all up in one morning? She watched me. For long, eternal moments we looked at each other in silence.

Slowly Sheila came toward me. Her eyes were still on me all the time, big, wary, accusing eyes. She came over to the far edge of the table. Tracing an invisible design on the smooth top, she studied it before looking back up at me. "You not be very nice to me." Her voice was heavy with feeling.

"No, I guess I wasn't, was I?" I felt the silence again. "I'm sorry, Sheila. I shouldn't have done that."

"You shouldn't oughta be mean to me. I be one of your kids."

"I'm sorry. I just got upset because you never do papers. I just wanted you to do papers like everyone else does. It makes me mad that you won't ever do them because it is important to me that you do. I got angry."

She studied me carefully. Her lower lip was shoved out and her eyes were hurt-looking, but she sidled closer. "Do you still like me?"

"Of course I still like you."

"But you be mad at me and yell."

"Sometimes people get mad. Even at people they like a lot. It doesn't mean they stop liking them. They're just mad. And after a while the anger goes away and they still like each other. I like you as much as ever."

She pressed her lips together. "I don't really hate you."

"I know that. You were just angry like I was."

"You yell at me. I don't like you to yell at me like that. It hurts my ears."

"Look, kitten, I was wrong. I'm sorry. But I can't make it not happen because it already did. I'm sorry. For right now we won't worry about paperwork. We'll do it some other time when you feel like it."

"I ain't never going to feel like it."

My shoulders sagged with discouragement. "Well, then maybe we'll never do any."

She looked at me quizzically. "There gotta be paperwork."

I sighed tiredly. "Not really, I suppose. There are things more important. Besides, maybe someday you will feel like it. We'll do it then."

And so I gave up the paperwork war. Or at least the battle.

I can never understand what it is about being human that allows one to become fixed on small matters and think the world will collapse if things don't go just the way one wants them. Once I got that struggle out of my system, I could never understand why it had been so important to me. But for those first few weeks, it had.

The second problem Sheila presented was much more serious and much less easily resolved. She had a keenly developed sense of revenge that knew no limits. When crossed or taken advantage of, Sheila retaliated with devastating force. Her intelligence made it all the more frightening because she could perceive quickly what was valuable to a person and that was what she abused to get back for being wronged. When Sarah kicked snow on her at recess, Sheila systematically destroyed all of Sarah's artwork around the room. For art-loving Sarah this was crushing. Anton got angry with Sheila running in the halls to lunch one day and she returned afterwards and throttled all the baby gerbils Anton had brought to school that morning on loan from his son. Her cold, clear-eyed appraisal of everyone's sensitivities left me chilled.

But it went beyond destroying papers or even baby gerbils. It was calculated and long-abiding, and often over events which were not intentional. Sheila had to be watched every second. Even when we did think we were watching her carefully, she managed to get away from us.

Lunch hour was the most dangerous time of day. Neither Anton nor I wanted to give up our only break to police Sheila constantly. The lunch aides were clearly still frightened of her, although they did supervise her once more.

One day while Anton and I were in the teachers' lounge finishing up our sandwiches, one of the aides came shrieking in to us, Sheila's name spilling out incoherently. Having nightmares of a repeat of the first day, we dashed out after her as she left.

Sheila had gotten into one of the other teachers' rooms. In a short period of time, only ten or fifteen minutes, she destroyed the room completely. All the student desks were awry or knocked over, personal belongings strewn about. The window blinds were pulled down, books were out of the bookcase, the screen of one of the teaching machines was shattered. I could not have dreamed of further destruction in such a short time.

I yanked open the door. "Sheila!" She whirled around, her eyes dark and forbidding. A pointer was clutched in one hand. "Drop that!"

She stared at me for a long moment but let the pointer drop. She had been with us three weeks. By now she knew when I meant business. If I could get her to drop what she was doing and come over to me, I could take her out calmly. I knew better than to spook her so that she would flee. She would do more damage if she bolted and would become so frightened that she could not be reasoned with. She already had that wild-animal, frenzied look in her eye and I realized how tenuous her hold on control was.

However, as I looked around the room at the disaster, I could not imagine what we were going to do. I was flooded with discouragement at the fact that she would do this kind of thing, that I had let it happen. Sitting in the quiet corner hardly seemed adequate to cover hundreds of dollars' damage. This was also not my room. It was somebody else's. So I knew the matter was out of my hands.

By the time I had coaxed Sheila over to the door, Mr. Collins and the teacher, Mrs. Holmes, whose room this was, were behind me. When I finally got hold of Sheila's hand, Mr. Collins began to roar.

I suppose he roared with very good reason. But I knew what his solution to the problem was going to include. Mr. Collins was of the old school where most infractions were cured, or at least helped, by the paddle. He took hold of Sheila's arm. I already had her by the overall strap and did not let go.

We eyed each other, neither of us speaking. Sheila was stretched out between us.

I could not let him take her. Not after all this time of reassuring her that she could never be hurt here. There had been too many spankings in her past already. And too many people who had broken their promises. I could not let this happen.

Still the principal and I did not speak. However, that did not diminish the strength of the challenge. Under my fingers on her shoulder, I could feel the tenseness of Sheila's muscles.

When he finally did speak, Mr. Collins' voice came out in a hoarse whisper pushed between gritted teeth. He made it clear that not only was Sheila going down to the office for a paddling but I was coming along as witness.

Oh cripes, I was thinking. All I wanted to do was argue with him while Sheila was strung out between us, like two dogs fighting over a bone. But there wasn't much choice. I could not agree with him. Certainly I did not want Sheila to think I did.

We were hissing back and forth, one- or two-word responses mostly. He was losing patience with me.

"So help me God, Miss Hayden, you come with me right now or you're not going to have a job by the time this day is out. I don't care what I have to do. Is that clear?"

I stared at him. All sorts of things came into my head then. I had tenure. I belonged to the union. He had no power to fire me. Those things all came to me, but on a very academic level. What came at gut level was fear. What would happen to me if I got fired? Could I ever find another teaching job in town? Who would take care of my class? I had a history of rash and impulsive actions. Was this going to be one more? And what for? A kid bound for the state hospital? Here I was about to lose my job over a kid I'd barely known three weeks, who sooner or later would be elsewhere anyway, and who by all accounts wasn't very important to anybody anyhow. What would everyone think if I lost my job? Would Chad still want me? How would I explain it to my mom? What would people think? For the worst excuse of all, I let go of that overall strap.

Mr. Collins turned and took Sheila down the hall. I followed at a distance and felt like Benedict Arnold. Yet maybe they were right. I had lost control in a major way twice in three weeks with this kid. Maybe she did need a state hospital placement. I did not know. This had gotten to be more than I could manage.

I flopped into a chair in Mr. Collins' office. Sheila was calm. Far calmer than I. She came in beside Mr. Collins and stood complacently, not looking at me and not making any sound. Mr. Collins shut the door. From his desk drawer he took out a long paddle. Sheila did not flinch as he sized it up next to her.