Somebody Else's Kids (12 page)

Boo flailed wildly, bringing his hands up to grab the doctor’s arm and smell it.

“Here now! Stop that. What are you doing? There, put your hand down. And tell me what your name is? What’s your name?”

Boo squirmed and spewed out another mouthful of blood.

“Can’t you tell me your name? A big boy like you? It doesn’t hurt that bad, now does it?”

“He doesn’t talk,” I said, since it appeared I was the only person left to speak for Boo.

“Are you his mother?” the physician asked.

“No. I’m his teacher.”

“What’s wrong with him?” The doctor tapped his forehead. “I mean, mentally.”

“He’s just scared. Here, Boo. Here, it’s me. See? Now lie down. You’re all right. Let the doctor look at you. Here, hold my hand.”

“What is he? Psychotic?”

I shrugged. “Autistic, I guess. We don’t know.”

“Shame, isn’t it?” the doctor replied. “And such a good-looking boy. Do you notice, they all seem to be. Such a waste.”

Mrs. Franklin came in then. She took over my position at the head of the table and soothed Boo. Slowly, the doctor managed to pry Boo’s mouth open.

The doctor said something about having to suture the cut on Boo’s tongue. A nurse came in with restraints and tied Boo to the table. I could understand that. Mrs. Franklin’s hands were unsteady. A slip one way or the other could be dangerous. And Boo was so frightened by this point that his erratic movements made work in his mouth impossible. No, the restraints I could easily accept. It was the physician I was having trouble comprehending. I saw him take the needle out. Thread it. I saw him bend over Boo while the nurse adjusted the head restraint.

Boo screamed.

I had been standing far back in the room. I came closer. Still, I was confused.

“Aren’t they going to give him any anesthetic?” I whispered to Mrs. Franklin.

Poor scared rabbit of a woman, she knew what was happening. She hid her head and began to cry.

Boo shrieked.

I remained bewildered. Boo was screaming so loudly I couldn’t hear myself think anymore. I came closer still, close enough to have touched the doctor’s starched white coat, if I had wanted.

“Excuse me.” I was hesitant to say anything because I couldn’t figure out what was going on, and after all, it wasn’t really my business. But my confusion was too great. “Excuse me, sir,” I said again, and I did touch his coat then, “but aren’t you going to give him any sort of anesthetic? A local or something?”

The doctor turned to me. He had the sort of expression on his face that told me he thought I really should understand, so why didn’t I? He said, “You know he doesn’t really feel it. These people, they have no true feelings. Only what they imagine. No point in wasting good medicine on them.”

And Boo’s shrieks broke in his throat, gurgled and reduced to a hoarse cry before he caught his breath enough to scream again.

I was stunned. This was a situation I was totally unprepared for. I had no repertoire of responses to cover something as grotesque as what was occurring. In truth, I did not even have emotions at first. I only stared in disbelief.

Then came the anger. It roared up so white hot that my mind erupted into a thousand cries at once, all of them hate-words. He couldn’t do it, this Mephistopheles in white, this graduate of Auschwitz; he couldn’t get away with it. If I had to take him limb from limb myself, he wouldn’t get away with it. I screamed at him, momentarily topping Boo’s screams. Emotion spewed up that I never knew I owned. If I had to take him limb from limb myself …

I would hurt him. For the first time in my life I seriously wanted to injure another person physically. It was not even a conscious thought; I had gone beyond thinking.

A man in white, whom I had not seen come in, removed me from the room. I was put outside in the hall and told to go away.

My anger remained with me. Mrs. Franklin had been expelled from the room too and she whimpered all the way down the corridor. I wanted to slap her for her stupid, sheeplike docility. Dan was sitting in the waiting room, a cigarette still in his hands. With one finger he was trying to scrape blood off his tie. I wanted to kick him for running out on us.

The adrenaline in my blood made me shake and I could not sit with them. Instead, I rose and paced in the hallway to calm myself. Dan remained all scrunched down in a lounge chair and smoked one cigarette after another, always watching the ash burn down. Mrs. Franklin perched on the edge of a chair and dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. I only paced.

The incident ate at me like a maggot. That devil had willingly tortured a defenseless boy and all I could do in retaliation was to fill out a complaint in triplicate.

This little moment, scarcely ten minutes long, was in so many ways the summation of my career.

Back in school with twenty minutes until dismissal, I talked with Tomaso and Lori to quell their fears. Boo was going to be all right. He had gone home with his mother but he would be back the next day, if things went okay. When I passed out papers, I noticed that my hands were still shaking. The children, if they were aware of my distress, did not comment on it. For that I was thankful. I could not have shared it with them. It was still too raw. I could not have shared it with anyone.

“You know,” Lori said to me later as she was pulling on her overshoes to go home, “I didn’t mean to fuss like I did on the playground. I didn’t mean to cry.”

“That’s okay. Lor. It scared me too.”

Rising, she shrugged. A half shrug really, just one shoulder. “Nah, it wasn’t that. I don’t know how to say it good. I wasn’t scared really. It was just that … well, it was Boo. I didn’t want him to be hurt.”

She drew her upper lip between her teeth and considered some thought carefully before looking back to me. “I just wish I could explain it good. It’s that sometimes I kind of wish it was me that got hurt. Then at least I’d know how bad it was and I could do something to make it better. But when somebody else gets hurt, there’s nothing you can do to take the hurt away from them. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“That’s sort of what made me cry. I hate that. I hate for other people to hurt.”

I smiled at her. She turned away and went to get her coat. I continued smiling, an inadequate expression for what she made me feel. And I sent up a small prayer of thanks to whomever it might be by whose grace I worked here and not twelve blocks away at the hospital.

T
he saddest part of being human is the depth of our ignorance.

In dealing with children it is so easy to believe one is omniscient. Unfortunately, it is not so. I tried hard to remember that fact as I worked with the kids. I tried to stay alert to the comforting but often meaningless lullings of theories. I tried to fill my mind not only with the ponderous offerings of textbooks and university classes but also with the day-to-day ambiguity of life. It was not easy. I kept wanting answers. Intellectually I could accept that for many of my questions there never would be answers. Emotionally I do not think I ever did.

Tomaso continued to be a challenge to me. Just when I thought I had caught up with him and come to terms in my mind with what I needed to do, he would take off in some new direction. With him more than almost any other child I had had, it was too simple to fall back on my adult omniscience. He is acting this way because of thus-and-so. He is doing that because of such-and-such. I was turning out theories on mental illness at a rate worthy of a young Freud, just, I think, because I did not know what was going on with him and was frightened by my lack of understanding. I had fallen back on the old educator’s and psychologist’s trick – indeed, the old shaman’s charm – of naming a thing to obtain power over it. Then, like the sorcerer’s apprentice, I, in my ignorance, touched upon the truth.

There was a sale on hyacinth bulbs at the drug store. A big wooden box of them was sitting by the door, a huge garishly colored sign above proclaiming them to be direct from Holland: Get them now for spring!
ALL COLORS!
3 for $1. I smiled as I passed the box. I loved hyacinths. They brought back memories of my college days in Washington state where huge masses of the flowers bloomed outside the public library where I used to study. But here in our colder, drier climate they did not do well. These little bulbs would probably never see a spring.

I paused, half in the door, half out, which undoubtedly endeared me to the fuel company. Could we grow bulbs in our classroom? Could we force them to bloom early during the long, snowy days of January and February? Lori would like that. Boo would too, I thought. I did not know about Tomaso. Backing up, I let the outside door close while I felt in my pants pockets to see how much money I had. $3.28. I bought us nine bulbs in three colors.

What a glorious mess! Pots and dirt and newspapers and spoons were scattered about on the floor. A book with pictures was propped up in front of us. I had read to the kids about bulbs, about hyacinths, then about potting, growing and forcing things. I explained that we had to put the plants into flowerpots and then stick them into the refrigerator for six weeks while the bulb grew roots.

Lori listened raptly to all I had to say. She had a bulb in her fingers, rolling it around and around as she studied the pictures in the book intently. “I’m gonna do this at home,” she said. “I’m gonna ask my daddy to buy me and Libby some of these, so I better listen close.” She turned to Boo beside her. “Here, Boo, you look too. See these flowers? No, no, don’t look over there. Look here. See? We’re gonna do that.”

Boo, with his poor swollen tongue, permitted Lori to turn his head with her hand.

“I want to do four,” Tomaso said.

“We’re doing them together, Tom,” I explained. “We only have two pots.”

“I want to do my own. I don’t like to put my flowers in some shitty pots like those. I want to make my own pots.”

“That’s a really good idea, Tomaso, about making pots and maybe we can do it soon, but for right now let’s just plant them in these pots. They’re all I have. Besides, it doesn’t really matter what they are in just to sit in the fridge.”

“I want to do two. I want them in my own pots.” He picked up a spoon and waved it threateningly at me. “I want one pot for me and one for me to give my father.”

“We’re just planting them for the room, Tom. To put on our windowsill in January.” I still never knew quite how to handle the issue of his murdered father. “No one is taking them home.”

“No!” An explosion of limbs and cursing and he was on his feet. He threw the spoon at me. I ducked and it flew by my left shoulder. “No! No! No! I want my own flowers, you fucking bitch. Can’t you hear me? I want one for myself!”

“Tomaso,” Lori said, “you can have mine.”

“Go to hell!” With a mighty kick he sent the clay pots across the room and into a hundred pieces. “I hate you!”

“Hey, hey, hey.” I was on my feet and had him around the chest. Clutching him to me, I held on while he fought. For a long minute or two we struggled, as we had struggled so very many times before. He tromped my tennis shoes and I gritted my teeth to register no response. Lori and Boo sat wide-eyed and watched us. If they were afraid, as I suppose they must have been every time Tomaso and I had one of our savage little dances, neither of them showed it much. However, their eyes were on us and Lori was poised to run in case she would have to move herself and Boo out of the way.

It was while we were locked in mortal combat that my mind went tiptoeing through theories. Why was he doing this? What bogey from his past loomed up so impossibly when denied hyacinths? What complex, what unfulfilled desire kept that dead man living in this young boy’s head? Whence came the immense anger? I was a shaman pleading with unseen gods. That my gods were named Freud and Maslow and Skinner in no way decreased their perceived godliness at that moment. And like all good agnostics, now in the time of need, I was a much more willing believer.
Come on, somebody, explain this kid to me. Don’t let him scare me so
.

Then, as always, I felt Tomaso’s anger fade. His muscles relaxed; he sighed; his body became heavy. I loosened my hold slightly and we sat down, me on the chair, him between my legs, not quite on my lap, not quite off it.

“I think I could fix that pot,” Lori said softly into the great stillness about us and pointed at the pieces.

I shook my head.

“My dad, I think he’s got a couple pots out in the garage at home. I could bring them,” she said.

“No, Lor, it’s okay. Don’t worry. We’ll get milk cartons from the kindergarten. We’ll plant our hyacinths in those. That’ll be better anyway.”

I had let go of Tomaso and he had slid off the chair to sit at my feet. He turned to look at me. “Can I take one to my father?” His voice was nearly inaudible. “When we’re done with them maybe?”

What could I say to him? What should I? Tiredly I shrugged. “I guess so, Tom. If you want to then, I guess you can have one.”

“Okay.”

I sent Lori down to get the milk cartons while Tomaso, Boo and I picked up the shards of clay pots and put them in the garbage. Within a short time we were busy again, spoons in hand, putting bulbs into dirt. Tomaso remained subdued.

“Lor, be careful not to bury them too deep. Here, like this,” I said.