Somebody Else's Kids (25 page)

I recognized her. At least I thought I did. Seeing her brought up a nagging recognition, like one has during waking hours when one comes across something remembered from a dream. Her hair was dark and short in a Dutch bob, the way children in my mother’s childhood wore their hair. Thin-rimmed, round glasses gave her an owlish look and all about her was the aura of another time.

Coming clear across the room to my desk without speaking, she halted at the corner of it and gave me a thorough looking over. “My name’s Libby. I’m Lori’s sister.”

They were identical twins. Or so the charts said. I am not certain I would have placed her as Lori’s sister, much less her identical twin. This child, so solemn behind her thick, round glasses, had none of the effervescence that meant Lori to me. She looked as if she shouldered the entire world.

“What can I do for you, Libby.”

“I come to get my sister’s homework.”

“Oh.” We regarded one another. “How is your sister?”

“She ain’t coming back.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Ever.”

“Oh?” I said.

Libby nodded.

“Whose decision is that?”

“Hers.”

“I see.”

“But my dad told me to pick up her homework anyway.” She tilted her head and the bangs and dark, straight hair fell sideways. “You’re not so pretty,” she said. “My sister said you were.”

On Thursday, after Lori had been absent three days, Mr. Sjokheim came to school. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with her,” he told me as we waited for Edna and Dan. “I honestly don’t. She won’t even look at the work Libby brings home for her. She makes herself sick with worry about coming back. I know it isn’t right to let her stay home, but what am I going to do?”

The meeting was grim. Early into it Dan suggested that Lori might need serious psychiatric intervention, most likely an inpatient evaluation. Heavy-duty stuff. There were no facilities of that kind in our community. The nearest were at the university where Lori had been taken for her neurological workup. After this suggestion Mr. Sjokheim kept trying to come up with alternatives. “Couldn’t we do this instead? Couldn’t we try that?” A dozen suggestions, many of them ludicrous, the ideas of a man who had no way to turn.

When we came to talk of Lori’s behavior in school before the breakdown, Edna seemed obsessed with pointing out all Lori’s little quirks: Her inability to do the work, her disruptiveness, her hyperactivity, her million other failures. Edna made Lori sound far worse than I had ever perceived her as being. It all painted a very bleak picture.

I did not know what to say. The things Edna spoke of were not altogether untrue. Lori did not get along well in the classroom. Undeniably her behavior in many ways was that of a disturbed child. It had been on other occasions; it certainly was now. She needed help. But that wasn’t the real issue. Who the hell did we think we were fooling here? Had we really convinced ourselves that what had happened to Lori was her fault? Were we that blind?

It was not Lori. It was us. Dan, me, Edna, the entire stupid school system. We were responsible, not Lori. Was it maladjustment to give up? When you are physically incapable of doing something and have tried for three years to do it anyhow, are you crazy because you cannot take the pressure anymore? If Lori had been blind or deaf or without arms we would be brutes for bludgeoning her into a breakdown, but because she had a disability no one could see, we were able to put the blame on her. And we could sit here guiltlessly and do what professionals are so good at doing: playing God.

I felt physically ill. Perhaps the ethics of the matter would not have bothered me so much if the child had been someone besides Lori – Lori, my carer, who had already achieved the authentic goal of any form of learning: humaneness.

I am not an especially courageous person in many ways. I wish that I were. I was in a business sorely needing courage. I wish I could have said right then and there what I was thinking. At least I wish I had had the courage to get up and leave and no longer be a party to the proceedings. But my mouth would not open; my feet would not move. There would have to be another time for me to act. Thus, in the meeting while Dan and Edna talked, I sat mute and died a coward’s death.

Mr. Sjokheim was also silent while they spoke. His eyes were clear and gentle, a soft hazel color. After each one of Edna’s recitations he would nod. Never once did he offer any defense, any comment at all. Then Edna said she thought Lori was too deeply disturbed a child for the regular classroom. She needed some other kind of placement.

Mr. Sjokheim dropped his head and brought a hand to his face. I knew immediately that he was going to cry, and I was overcome by that horrid discomfort that always comes with seeing an adult cry. I rose to grab the tissue box from the window ledge.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he kept apologizing for his tears. “It’s just that I don’t know what to do.”

“That’s all right,” Dan said. “I know this must be hard to discuss.”

We sat in silence and felt Mr. Sjokheim’s humiliation. Desperately, I tried to unglue my recreant tongue. It would not loosen. Finally, as Mr. Sjokheim regained control and sat with a shredded tissue in his hands, Dan wound up the meeting, saying that regardless of the alternatives we decided on for Lori, it was imperative that she get back into school immediately. Otherwise we courted adding school phobia to her other problems.

I asked Mr. Sjokheim to stay when the others had gone. All I had in the cupboard was instant hot chocolate. So I warmed water with an immersion coil in an empty mayonnaise jar, and we sat together drinking lumpy cocoa from Styrofoam cups.

We did not talk much. I had wanted to ask him how Lori was; I had wanted to know if he had found out from her what really had gone on in Edna’s room that morning; I wanted to reassure him that I did not believe Lori was as unsalvageable as we had made her sound. However, the words could not be found. So we just passed small things back and forth between us. He was still on the verge of tears; I could hear them in his voice. The desire to touch him was almost overwhelming. I did not always realize how much I depended on touch to communicate. But social propriety kept me from it. And since I could not start to communicate with him in that manner, I never managed to start at all.

“Listen,” I said at last, “it’s all going to work out. We’ll get things straightened around.”

“Will we?”

“I think so.”

He shrugged and stared into the empty white cup.

“But Dan was right about one thing. We have to get her back in school. No one can help her when she isn’t here. And every day she stays home will only make it harder to come back.”

“I don’t know if I can do it,” he said.

“We have to.”

He nodded. “Okay. I’ll try.”

But of course Friday came and Lori was not in school.

L
ibby arrived as usual on Monday afternoon to pick up Lori’s homework. It did not matter that I had told her the first night that Lori did not have any from this room. She came every night anyway.

A week had passed since the incident had taken place. My afternoon class was nearly back to normal despite Lori’s absence. Routine was taking over.

Opening the door, Libby marched across the classroom to where I worked at the table. She was later than usual. It was almost quarter to four. I had assumed she had finally gotten the message and was not coming. Apparently, however, she had just gone home to change clothes because now she wore overalls and a shirt and I had only seen her in dresses before.

“I come to pick up my sister’s homework.”

I smiled. “Still don’t have any for her.”

Libby gazed at me intently. She had her short hair parted on the side and a red bow tied in it. More than ever she looked like an escapee from the Depression era. Giving a swipe at her bangs and pushing up her glasses, she watched me.

“How is Lori?” I asked.

“Okay.”

“We miss her. Is she coming back to school tomorrow?”

“Nope.”

“No?”

“Told you once. She ain’t never coming back.”

We regarded one another. “Never? That’s a long time to wait for her.”

Libby did not reply. She was the strangest child. I felt unnatural in her presence. She continued to inspect me the way she always did. Her ability to maintain eye contact was uncanny.

She made no effort to leave, so finally I pushed out a chair with my foot for her to sit down. She did.

“Tell me, Libby, what kinds of things do you like to do?” I asked, desperate to break the silence.

“Play.”

“Oh? Play what sorts of things?”

“Dolls.”

“Mmm. Sounds fun. Do you have a special doll?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your doll’s name?”

“No name.”

“Just call her ‘baby,’ I suppose? I used to do that.”

“I don’t call it anything. It’s just a doll.”

“Oh.”

Great conversation. If I had not heard her before, I would not have guessed she had a multisyllable vocabulary. I raised my eyes from my work to see her studying me. As always. The damn kid was driving me mad. So silent, so self-possessed, so very different from Lori.

Libby watched me as I worked on my children’s charts. She seemed content just to sit there staring, not the least ill at ease. After that futile period of small talk, I decided to go ahead and work without talking. I sort of hoped she would leave.

She did not.

I looked up. Again the exchange of long, appraising stares. Shutting the logbook, I sat back. “Libby,” I said, “I need to know something. Maybe you can help me.”

That steady gaze.

“Do you know what happened to Lori in Mrs. Thorsen’s room last week?”

“She ain’t coming back to school.”

“Yes, I know. But do you know why?”

“Yes.”

A little silence. She shifted in her chair and the large red bow bounced.

“Will you tell me?”

No reply.

“I really need to know, Libby. I can’t help Lori without knowing what happened to her, and she just hasn’t told anyone.”

“Lori never tells people secret stuff. Me, I don’t either.”

“But she told you.”

“That’s different. We’re twins. We tell each other everything that happens to us.”

“Lib, Lori needs more help than just you can give her. She needs some grown-ups in on this too.”

“Me and Lori, we’re the only real family we got. Even our dad, he’s adopted.”

I smiled. “Yes, I know. I know a lot of things already. But I need to know more.”

For the first time Libby hesitated and looked away. She studied the bulletin board. “You know what I done once?” she said softly.

“What’s that?”

“I spit at her.”

“At whom? Lori?”

“At that old lady. I spit at her. Then at recess I told her I was going to the bathroom and then I went in her room instead and spit on her desk.”

“What old lady is that?”

“Mrs. Thorsen.”

“Mmm.”

A long pause.

Libby leaned forward intently, folding her arms on the table. “I’ll tell you what she done to Lori.” Her small face was close to mine and for the first time I could see the resemblance to her sister in her eyes.

“She was making her read. She told Lori to stand up in front of the whole reading group. You know, all the Ravens. Even Robby Johnson was watching and he can read better than practically anybody in the whole first grade. Even me. And she told Lori to read. She gave her big books with the hard backs on them like I got and I’m in the very best reading group. Well, Lori can’t read them. And everybody laughed. They didn’t never used to laugh at Lori but now they do. So that old lady kept giving her babier and babier books and kept telling her what was the matter that she couldn’t read them. And even when she got right down to the book Lori sort of can read, Lori was too scared to do it right. Everybody just laughed at her and she was crying. But Mrs. Thorsen wouldn’t let her sit down. She said she was gonna teach Lori good. So Lori threw up. She made Lori throw up in front of the whole class and she didn’t even say she was sorry.”

“Is that what really happened?” I asked.

“Cross my heart and hope to die! You can ask anybody. Ask Nancy Shannon or Mary Ann Marks or anybody. Ask Robby Johnson even. He’s a Cub Scout and he never lies to anybody. You just ask him and he’ll tell you!”

Libby’s eyes were ablaze. Her small mouth was set. “I hate her. And someday I’m going to spit right in her face. I mean it, I will.”

Ah, here was a good hater, if I had ever seen one. The disgust was vivid in her dark eyes.

“Lori isn’t stupid,” she said. “She’s just as smart as anybody. She just can’t read ’cause she got hurt once.”

I nodded. “I know.”

Libby sat back and the intensity of the conversation relaxed a little. “Lori isn’t ever coming back. I don’t think she should have to.”