Somebody Else's Kids (19 page)

I smiled and shook my head. “Okay, Lor. Help me give them out. There aren’t any names on them.”

“Well, of course not,” Lori replied with great exasperation; “I wouldn’t know how to read them.” She rolled her eyes in a show of tremendous patience with me for not thinking of that. “Here. This one is for Tom and this one is Claudia’s. The big one is for Boo and that’s yours.”

They were very personal cards. Claudia’s contained a cutout of a woman holding a baby. I
LOVE YOU
. A
ND YOUR BABBY
, it read in Lori’s sister’s broad first-grade script. For Tomaso there was a magazine picture of a dubious-looking Spanish dancer pasted on the outside of a piece of folded construction paper. Inside was an undecipherable message. Lori had written it herself.

“What’s this say, Lori?” he asked.

“Well, I had to write it myself. If Libby wrote it, she woulda thought you were my boyfriend and you’re not.” She shrugged. “You’re just a friend.”

“So what’s it say?” I asked.

She blushed and would not tell me. I think it said something like I love you. I mentioned that.

“Well, it’s okay to say those things in a Valentine’s Day card,” Lori said quickly. “All Valentine’s Day cards say that. It’s not because he’s my boyfriend, ’cause he isn’t. You know that, don’t you?”

Claudia giggled.

“Yeah, we know it. Lor.”

My card was simply a drawn picture. Because, Lori explained to me, there were no magazine pictures that looked like us in the room. So she had drawn all five of us, arm in arm. I
LOVE YOU
, said a yellow balloon over the head of one of the people in the picture,
YOU MACKE ME HAPPYE
.

Boo’s card was biggest. On several sheets of paper Lori had pasted large, simple cutout pictures of animals, toys and people. “It don’t have any words on it,” she said, “because Boo doesn’t know how to read. Just pictures. Because I watched him look at pictures before and he likes them. So I made him that. A book with lots of good things to look at.”

Immediately Boo glommed onto the homemade book and, sat down on the floor at my feet to look at it.

“That’s for you. Boo,” Lori said to him. “I made it for you ’cause you’re such a nice kid and I like you.” She patted his head.

On the second page of the little book was a large cutout magazine picture of a shaggy dog. Boo lifted the book up close to his nose and scrutinized the picture. And smelled it loudly. “Doggie. Doggie.”

“Hey, Tor! Listen!” Lori cried. I had moved away a short distance to look at Tom’s card. Lori grabbed my arm. “He’s talking! Boo likes my card.”

Boo tapped the picture of the dog. “Doggie.”

Tomaso dived down beside him. “That’s Benji, Boo. Benji. Can you say Benji?”

“Doggie.”

“Yes. But say Benji,” Tomaso said.

“Doggie.”

“Benji.”

“Benji,” Boo repeated. “Doggie. Benji.”

“And what’s this?” Lori pointed to the opposite page.

Boo looked over at the other picture. It was a cat from a Purina Cat Chow advertisement, chow-chow-chowing across the page.

“Doggie,” Boo said.

“No,” Tomaso replied. “That’s no doggie, Boo. That’s a kitty. Say kitty, Boo.”

“Kitty.”

“Now what’s that?” Tom asked.

“Doggie.”

“No.” A note of exasperation.

“Kitty.”

“Yes!” Both Tomaso and Lori erupted with a cheer.

Excitement ran through us like a prairie fire. All four of us were down on our knees pressed around Boo. Tomaso had become the leader. He was turning pages against Boo’s unwilling hands. Boo still wanted to look at the dog and cat. But with a gentle firmness, Tom insisted Boo look at other pictures. In short, direct sentences he elicited the names, corrected Boo if he erred and gave him the right names.

I sat back on my heels. A miracle here. My own small miracle. I smiled as I watched them, the girl who could not read, the boy kicked out of school, the pregnant twelve-year-old, the crazy kid. Not whom you’d ordinarily cast as miracle workers.

“Wow! Wow, listen to you, Boo,” Tomaso was saying. The small knot around Boo opened. “Listen to him, Tor. Just listen to him talk. And not nonsense either. He can really talk.”

They continued. Lori broke away and crawled over onto my lap. She hugged my neck. “Oh, Tor, I’m so happy. I feel like I’m gonna laugh and cry all at the same time. We made Boo talk like a real person.” Her voice dropped to a whisper of awe. “
I
made Boo talk. I did, didn’t I? I made him the card. He talked because of me, huh?”

I nodded. “I think he did, kiddo. You’re just the person responsible for this.”

She was still in my arms. Closing her eyes, she let her head drop back and I thought she was going to melt from sheer joy.

Our reverie was short-lived. Within moments after the initial excitement wore down. Boo reverted to his old, wacky self and began babbling about Chuck Barris and “The Gong Show.” I had known it was coming, but twice in the last month Boo had responded to us. This time had been much better than the first. What had happened was enough magic for me. I had no illusions about Boo. What had happened was a miracle of the first degree in this business.

Understandably, the children did not share my open-mindedness. They had expected magic of the magnitude found only in fairy tales. When Boo forsook us so quickly for his own world, they could not help feeling that everything had been for nothing.

Lori in particular was crushed. “I thought we made him better,” she said, her voice crippled with unshed tears. “He was talking to us. I thought we fixed him. What’s the matter with him anyhow? Doesn’t he want to get better?”

I knelt beside her and put my arm around her shoulders. “Of course he does, Lori. It just isn’t like that. It isn’t because he doesn’t want to talk; he just can’t always. But I’m sure he was very, very happy that you made it possible for him to talk a little.”

“But why did he stop?”

“I don’t know.”

“But how come you let him? How come he isn’t getting better?”

“Oh Lor,” I said, “that isn’t something I can do. I want him to talk just as badly as you do, but those kinds of things just aren’t in my power. Boo has to do his own growing in his own way.”

She lowered her head. With the toe of her tennis shoe she drew an invisible design on the linoleum, around and around. She studied it. “But we been teaching him and teaching him every day and talk to him just like you said and he
still
doesn’t learn. He’s never going to be a regular kid.”

“Yes, it’s discouraging, isn’t it? Sometimes I feel bad too.”

“But it doesn’t do any good, no matter what you do. He’s never going to be regular.”

“We’ll still keep trying though,” I said. “What he’ll be are all someday things. What’s important to remember is that today he talked. That’s all that matters.”

She continued to maneuver her foot along the floor.

“All we care about’s today. You understand that, don’t you? It’s all that matters.”

“Yeah,” she replied half-heartedly, still regarding the floor.

Then she paused and looked at me. She shook her head. “No. Not really. I
don’t
understand. Not really.”

Bringing up my other hand I hugged her to me, pressing her face into the soft cloth of my shirt. Disappointment had left her unwilling for my comfort. As I held Lori I looked beyond her to Boo, who sat alone on the floor. With the fingers of one hand he flicked his eyelashes; the other hand was suspended above, fluttering in the light. His soft baby features were drowned in distrait dreaminess.

But today you talked.

T
omaso’s eleventh birthday was on the twenty-second of February. I gave thought to celebrating it. Should I? Shouldn’t I? How big a deal should we make of it? Tomaso was a funny kid. Very unpredictable. On one hand, he wanted desperately to be the center of attention, to be loved, to be fawned over. On the other hand, he was the big macho man and desired only manly indifference. In the end I decided that I would go ahead and at least bake a cake. The rest we would play by ear.

It was Lori who thought of presents.

Stopping by my room on her way out to recess one morning early in the week of Tom’s birthday, Lori came over to my desk. I still had resource students in there so she tiptoed in very, very quietly and tapped me on the shoulder. I jumped.

“I have to ask you something important”

I raised an eyebrow.

“You know, it’s Tomaso’s birthday on Friday. Can we give him presents?”

“No, I don’t think so. Lor. We’ll just have cake and maybe play some games or something. No presents.”

A pause. She wrinkled up one corner of her lip. “I already boughted him something. I got it at the store last night when Daddy took Libby to get her ballet tights.”

She had on her coat for recess and also a red stocking cap. The cap was pulled way down to her eyebrows giving her a gnomish look.

“I saved my money. I boughted it myself. My dad didn’t even help me.” A long, almost reproachful gaze through dark lashes. “Besides, I spent twenty-nine whole cents on a bow for it.”

“Oh,” I replied, “well, I don’t know, Lor. I guess it’s okay. But none of the rest of us has a gift for him. And nobody else gets to celebrate a birthday in here. Do you think it would be fair?”

An impatient frown. “Oh, Torey, birthdays aren’t supposed to be fair. They’re just supposed to be birthdays. So can I?”

I gave in. “But look, scoot out to recess now before Mrs. Thorsen finds out you’re missing.”

Lori grinned gap toothed and yanked her stocking cap down even further. “That’s okay. I told her you said for me to come in.” A laugh. “And she believed me.” She jumped out of reach when I moved to whomp her.

“So aren’t you even going to tell me what you got Tom?”

“Nope!” A giggle and she shot for the door. “It’s a surprrrrise!” And out she ran.

Friday the twenty-second. Lori and I tied crepe paper all around Tomaso’s chair at the table. Claudia penned a huge
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOMASO
sign to put across the door. We were ending up with a five-star affair.

Tomaso was delighted. “I ain’t never had a party before,” he said as he came in the door. His head swiveled to look at the sign from every side. “You done all this for me? For me?” His eyes were shiny.

He was thoroughly amazed. He walked around and around the room gazing wide-eyed at our feeble attempts at decoration. “For me? I ain’t never had a party before. Not ever. And a cake? You made a cake for me? For me?” I had never seen a kid so incredulous over a sign, a cake, eight balloons and a roll of yellow crepe paper. Tom kept circling the room. Each time he would touch the balloons or the cake, gaze at the sign and ask us over and over again, “For me? For me?” I think at that point more than any other I understood the extent of this boy’s deprivation.

“And guess what?” Lori said to him on his umpteenth circle around the room. “Guess what, Tomaso. I brang you a present.”

His eyes were filled with skepticism.

“I did! Didn’t I, Torey?” She turned in my direction. “Can I give it to him?”

“As much fun as all this is, I think we ought to do our work first. Up until recess we’ll work. Afterward, we’ll have cake and Tom can open your present.”

Protests. Lori finally talked me into letting her show the box to Tomaso. Just show it to him, she promised. Then we would get to work. I folded under pressure.

It was a large box, probably two feet square, glorious by its size alone. Undoubtedly Lori had wrapped it herself, judging from the job. Lively yellow circus animals cavorted across the paper. A huge gold bow crowned it.

“For me?” Tomaso said immediately. “That’s for me?” His eyes widened to the very edges of his face.

Getting Lori to put the box back in the closet and convincing everybody to come to the table was no small task. Tom and Lori continued to exchange excitement over by the cupboard.

“Come on, you two,” I called. “Over here now. First we work, then presents. Come on.”

Claudia had captured Boo and they came to the table. Tomaso remained with Lori, the bright yellow box between them. They could have been lovers, the way they stood, so much going between them without words.

At last the box was stowed and they reluctantly joined us. I gave Tom his work folder. Lori took the sandpaper alphabet. A moment’s silence reigned while everyone considered the work to be done. Then Tomaso glanced sideways at Lori.

“Did you really get that for me?” he whispered. “Did you get it for me?”

Lori nodded without looking up.

“Because you wanted to buy me a present,
sí?
” There was a soft emphasis on the word “wanted.”

As I looked over at them, I smiled. A feeble expression for the deep, bittersweet emotion brought up in me. These terrible small tragedies always hurt my heart. They always did.

The hour and a half until recess was a pocket-size eternity. Lori kept watching the clock, nudging Tomaso or Claudia for the time, since she could not tell it. Tomaso’s glances were no less numerous, although he was less obvious. I even caught Claudia at it. Only Boo was oblivious. As usual.