Somebody Else's Kids (37 page)

“Look here,” Lori exclaimed. “Look what happens. Her feet fell out of the boots. Ooooooh, she’s gonna step in the water.” A twist around to see me and Lori grinned. “Her daddy’s gonna be mad at her for that, huh?”

“I’ll bet,” I agreed. “See, here’s what Sally says. She’s surprised and she says, ‘Oh, oh, oh.’ See, that word’s ‘oh.’ Can you read it?”

“Oh, oh, oh.”

“Good, there you go. Now let’s see what happens when we turn the page.” Last page of the story. Dick sees his little sister in this terrible dilemma and wheels his red wagon up behind her. Sally falls into it. The day is saved. Underneath, the text reads “Oh, oh. Oh, look.” Not Nobel literature material, but Lori was delighted. She clapped her hands.

“All right, scout, now let’s read it straight through from the beginning. You and me together.” I turned back to the title page. “Look,” we said in unison.

Turn page. “Look, look.” Other side. “Oh, oh, oh.”

Turn page. “Oh, oh. Oh, look.” End of story.

“Now,” I said, “I want you to try it on your own. See, look at the words carefully. The long one is look. The short one is ‘oh.’ Ready?”

Lori nodded and held the book up close. Deep breath. Another deep breath. “Look,” she said hoarsely.

“Super! Next page.”

“Look, look.” When she got to the next page she hesitated.

“Look at Sally, Lor. What happened to her? What does she say?”

“Oh?”

“You bet! And how many times?”

“Oh, oh, oh.”

“Terrific!” I turned over to the last page for her.

“Oh, oh,” Lori said immediately. “Oh …” Long pause.

“What was that other word?”

“Look. Oh, oh. Oh, look.”

I took hold of her chin and turned her face to look at me. “Do you know what you just did, Lori Sjokheim?”

Her eyes widened.

“You read that story, didn’t you?”

A tremendous, face-splitting smile.

“You read that story all by yourself. You just picked that old book up and read it like anybody would. No fooling you.”

“I read it,” she whispered incredulously. She snapped around and snatched it up again. “I’m gonna do it again. Watch me, Tor. I’m gonna read it right through with no mistakes. Watch me.”

She flipped back to the first page. A long wait while she took breaths in preparation. “Look,” she announced and turned around to grin. Then flipped the page. “Look, look. Oh, oh, oh.” Over to the next page. “Oh, oh. Oh, look.” Back to me. “I
did
it! I DID IT!”

Before I could stop her she had bounded off my lap. “Hey, you guys. Hey Tomaso! Claudia! Listen! I can read! Listen to me. Come here and watch me. I can
read!”
Grabbing the book up she ran over to them. The story was read. And read and read and read.

From my chair I watched her. It was not really reading, I suppose. Not really. By this time she had memorized the story. Only two words, not much of a feat. And I had little doubt that if I took them out of the context of that Dick and Jane story she would not be able to recognize them any more than she recognized any other symbol. But that was not important. Not now. What was important was a scrawny seven-year-old kid waving a twenty-five-year-old pre-primer at me from across the room, squealing delightedly, reading out the text to Boo and Benny and the finches. Come what might in her future, I knew I had given her the best I had. Never again could anyone say she could not read. She now could prove that false. Lori Sjokheim was not anybody to be messed with. Lori Sjokheim
could
read.

W
hat a crazy week we had! Lori was intoxicated by her success. She never put the book down. She had to take it home to read to her father and Libby. She had to read it to each and every one of the morning resource kids. She even had to read it to Edna. For Tomaso, Claudia, Boo and me, it soon got to be a bit much. Tom would come up behind me in the room some days when I was absorbed in doing something else and whisper in my ear, “Look, look. Oh, oh, oh.” He could make it sound obscene. That never failed to provoke a lot of good-natured yelling on my part and some fierce threats about bamboo under the fingernails of students who drove their teacher batty.

In the back of my mind the entire time was the specter of Lori’s retention. I refused to let it dampen our high spirits but nonetheless I anxiously searched her face each day to see if her father had told her. I only hoped that when he did, the glory of Dick and Jane would be enough to sustain her.

My birthday was on Friday of that week and I told the children I would bring a cake. We planned a sort of Happy Birthday/Reading-celebration party.

On Thursday, new excitement. Tomaso came galloping in, whooping at the top of his lungs.

“Guess what’s going to happen to me!”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I’m gonna move!” Roaring across the room to me, he bounced up on the worktable where I was grading papers. He slid across the table on his seat and knocked papers into my lap.

“You are?”

“Yup, my uncle’s coming to get me and take me back to Texas.”

The others gathered around.

“Is this the same uncle you lived with before?” I asked skeptically, thinking of child slavery, abuse and abandonment.

“No siree! This here’s my Uncle Iago. My mama’s brother. He’s gonna take me to live with him. I’m going to have me a real family! Yessiree! No more foster homes for me.” Tom’s excitement burst out of him and he whooped up onto his feet atop the table.

“Tom, that’s really super.”

“Are you happy for me?”

“You bet I am.”

Lori socked his leg. “Well, I’m not.”

“Lori!”
I said in surprise. “This is a wonderful thing to have happen to Tom.”

“But I don’t want him to go.” Her lower lip shoved out. “I want you to stay here, Tomaso.”

Tomaso was too high to care what she wanted. Still standing on top of the table, he threw pencils into the air and tried to catch them. “Now we’re going to have a Happy-Birthday-Reading-Celebration-Going-Away-Party tomorrow, huh? And the going-away part’s for meeeee!”

Streamers from the ceiling, balloons, hats for everyone made it a party with all the trappings. My cake was on the table. Mr. Sjokheim had sent a plate of brownies, which Lori proudly announced she had helped bake. Orange juice had come courtesy of Mrs. Franklin, who also sent a box of crocheted animal finger puppets to be used as party favors. Claudia turned the record player on; rock music blared out. We were having an all-afternoon party that I hoped would make up for never having had a school program and any other injustices visited on us because of our status as a class.

Not until about halfway through the cake and orange juice did I notice anything amiss. I looked around the room. Tomaso was not there.

“Where’s Tom?” I asked Claudia. She was in a chair next to the record player. The music was so loud I had to shout.

“I don’t know. He was here a minute ago.”

“Hey, Lor.” She and Boo were out in the middle of the floor dancing to the music. Or so they fancied. “Do you know where Tomaso is?”

“Yeah,” she shouted over the music. “He’s in the closet.”

“Huh? What? In what closet? What are you talking about?”

She stopped dancing. “In the closet. Over there. But you better oughtn’t bother him. He’s crying.”

I stared at her. Boo was pawing at her to make her dance again. “Why’s he crying, Lor?”

“He’s lonesome for us already.”

I went over to the coat closet. What a class of kids I had this year for hiding. The closet was small, perhaps less than three feet deep, meant only for the teacher’s coat and boots. I cracked the door open cautiously. Tomaso sat huddled up on the floor, his face hidden against his knees. I bent down and put my face to the opening. “Tommy, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing, leave me alone.”

I watched him.

“Go away.”

“All right.” I stood up.

“Well sheesh,” he muttered and looked up. “I didn’t mean really go away.”

“Oh. Okay.” I knelt back down. The door was still only open a little way. Light illuminated part of his face, but most of the closet was black. “You sort of wish you didn’t have to go?”

He nodded.

“It’s scary, isn’t it, having to go new places.”

“I don’t wanna go. I wanna stay right here.”

“You feel that way now; that’s natural.”

“I never wanted to go. My social worker, she said I had to. She says he’s kin and he’s got a claim on me. But I don’t want to go. I don’t even know him. I never seen him since I was a baby. I want to stay with my foster mom and dad here and come to this class. I’m tired of moving.”

“Well, changes are hard to get used to.”

“I don’t wanna go! I wanna stay right here. But us kids, we don’t got no rights. We just got to go where they tell us, those stinking bastards. When I grow up, I’m going to shoot them all in the head.”

I reached a hand in to him and he took it.

Tomaso began to cry again with loud blubbery noises. He had my hand pressed to his wet cheek. My knees were getting sore so I adjusted myself around to a sitting position with only my arm in the closet. I watched the other kids as they played.

“I don’t see why I should ever have bothered to do anything,” Tomaso muttered through the opening. “I don’t see why I ever bothered to be good, if they’re going to make me go away. It doesn’t matter now, everything I did.”

I turned to look at him. “Of course it matters, Tomaso. It matters to me. To all of us. We all care that you tried to be good in here. We’ll always care.”

“I don’t see why people bother to care about anything. All it does is hurt you in the end. All you did was make me like you and now I wish I never did because I don’t want to miss you. I spend my whole fucking life missing people. I’m never going to like anybody again.”

“You’re right there. It does hurt. Loving people always does hurt. It’s part of the deal, I think.”

“It hurts too much. It isn’t worth it. I’m never going to like anybody again. Then I don’t have to worry.”

I watched him huddled on the floor of the closet. “Yes, Tom, you’re right about that too. If you never love anybody, you’ll never have a broken heart. But Tom, that’s not what hearts were made for.”

He dissolved into tears again. I was asking too much in wanting him to understand. Quietly I closed the closet door and rose to my feet to go join the other children.

We went ahead with the rest of the party, with recess and games. Tomaso remained in the closet. Later I noticed Lori over there. She was squatting before a small crack in the door and talking to him. A few minutes later she came to me.

“Tomaso wants you to tell everybody he hasn’t been crying,” she said.

“What?”

She wrinkled her nose at my denseness. “Come here.” She pulled me down to her height to whisper in my ear. “I think he’s
embarrassed
. He wants you to tell everyone he hasn’t really been crying.”

And so I did.

Tomaso emerged from the closet red eyed and snuffly. “Did you guys save me any cake? I wanted some cake. You guys didn’t eat it all, did you?”

“No, we didn’t. There’s some on the back counter.”

He headed off, then paused and turned around and looked at me. “Torey?”

“Yes?”

“Happy Birthday.”

The day ended in a round of handshakes and back pats for Tomaso as he cleaned things out of his cubby. All of us were suddenly too shy to put our arms around him, even Lori. The unusual reserve lasted until after the others had gone home and I walked Tomaso out to his bus.

“My father’s coming to get me,” he said.

I looked at him.

“He’s back from Spain. And he’s coming to get me tonight. He’s gonna take me off to live with him.”

I nodded. Together we stood on the corner near the front of the school and waited for the bus. A spring storm was stirring up in the west. Anvil-shaped clouds soared high into the sky. The smell of rain was borne in on the wind.

“We’re going to live in Spain together, him and me. He’s got a house and everything. And I’ll have my own room. And he’s gonna teach me to be a bullfighter. This is probably the last school I’ll ever go to. It’s what I always wanted, to live with my father. Now I’ll get to.”

He gazed at me. His dark eyes were soft and wistful. “I’m really happy.” There was no happiness anywhere.

“I know you are, Tommy,” I said and ruffled his hair with my fingers.

“I’m going to live with my father.”

I watched the clouds pile higher above us and wondered if we would get wet before the bus arrived. In my chest I could feel my heart thudding as if I had run a long distance.

“Torey?” He tugged at my arm. “I’m going to live with my father.”

I turned and looked at him. A long, loaded pause.

“No, I’m not,” he whispered. “I know that. I’m going to live with Uncle Iago. I’ll never live with my father.” His belongings clattered to the cement and he grabbed me around the waist.