Torey Hayden - Somebody Else’s Kids

Boo and I stood frozen. The entire drama was probably measurable in seconds. There had been no time to respond. Now in the deafening silence, I could hear only the muted frantic fluttering of Boo’s hands against his pants. And Lori’s low, heavy weeping.

The class was formed.

Following the incident in Edna’s room, Lori was assigned to me all afternoon, along with Boo. Tim and Brad, my two other afternoon resource students, were transferred to the morning, and now I had Lori and Boo alone for almost three hours. Although officially I was still listed as a resource teacher and these two as simply resource students, all of us knew I had a class.

According to the records, Lori was assigned the extra resource time for “more intensive academic help.” However, Dan Marshall, Edna and I – and probably Lori herself – knew the change had come about because we had come too close to disaster. Perhaps in a different situation Lori could have managed full time in a regular classroom, but here she couldn’t. In Edna’s conservatively structured program, Lori did not have adequate skills to function. To relieve the pressure on both sides, she spent the mornings in her regular class where she would still receive reading and math instruction along with lighter subjects, but in the afternoons when Edna concentrated on the difficult, workbook-oriented reading skills, Lori would be with me.

So there we were, the three of us.

Boo remained such a dream child. As so many autistic-like children I had known, he possessed uncanny physical beauty; he seemed too beautiful to belong to this everyday world. Perhaps he did not. Sometimes I thought that he and others like him were the changelings spoken of in old stories. It was never inconceivable to me that he might truly be a fairy child spirited from the cold, bright beauty of his world, trapped in mine and never quite able to reconcile the two. And I always noticed that when we finally reached through to an autistic or schizophrenic child, if we ever did, that they lost some of that beauty as they took on ordinary interactions, as if we had in some way sullied them. But as for Boo, thus far I had failed to touch him, and his beauty lay upon him with the shining stillness of a dream.

Our days did not vary much. Each afternoon Boo’s mother would bring him. She would open the door and shove Boo through, wave good-bye to him, holler hello to me and leave. Not once could I entice her through that door to talk.

Once inside Boo would stand rigid and mute until he was helped off with his outer clothes. If I did aid him, he would come to life again. If I did not, he would continue standing, staring straight ahead, not moving. One day I left him there in his sweater to see what would happen since I knew from his disrobing episodes that he was capable of getting out of his clothes when inspired. That day he stood motionless until 2:15, nearly two hours, finally, I gave in and took off his sweater for him.

The only definite interest Boo had was for the animals. Benny particularly fascinated him. Once he thawed from his arrival, he would head for the animal corner. The only time Boo gave any concrete sign of attending to his environment or attempting any communication was when he stood in front of Benny’s driftwood and flicked his fingers before the snake’s face and hrooped softly. Otherwise, Boo’s time was spent rocking, flapping, spinning or smelling things. Each day he would move along the walls of the classroom inhaling the scent of the paint and plaster. Then he would lie down and sniff the rug and the floor. Any object he encountered would first be smelled, sometimes tasted, then tested for its ability to spin. To Boo there seemed to be no other way of evaluating his environment.

Working with him was difficult. Smelling me was as entertaining to him as smelling the walls. While I held him he would whiff along my arms and shirt, lick at the cloth, suck at my skin. Yet the only way I could focus his attention even for a moment was to capture him physically and hold him, arms pinned to his sides, while I attempted to manipulate learning materials. Even then Boo would rock, pushing his body back and forth against mine. The simplest solution I found was to rock with him. And every night after school I washed the sticky saliva off my arms and neck and wherever else he had reached.

Boo’s locomotion around the room was generally in an odd, rigid gait. Up on his toes he moved like the mimes I had seen in Central Park. However, on rare occasions, usually in response to some secret conversation with Benny or the finches. Boo would come startlingly to life. He would begin with ape laughter, his eyes would light up and he would look directly at me, the only time that ever occurred. Then off around the room he would run, the stiffness gone, an eerie grace replacing it. Stripping down until he was completely nude, he would run and giggle like a toddler escaped from his bath. Then as suddenly as it started, that moment of freedom would pass.

Aside from the occasional hroops and whirrs, Boo initiated no communication. He echoed incessantly. Sometimes he would echo directly what I had just said. More frequently he echoed commercials, radio and TV shows, weather and news broadcasts and even his parents’ arguments – all things heard long in the past. He was capable of repeating tremendous quantities of material word for word in the exact intonation of the original speaker. A supernatural aura often settled down among us as we worked to the drone of long-forgotten news events or other people’s private conversations.

The first days and even weeks after Lori arrived full time in the afternoons, I was perplexed as to how to handle these two very different children together effectively. I could sometimes give Lori something to do and go work with Boo. However, there was no reverse of that. To accomplish anything at all with Boo, one had to be constantly reorienting his hands, mouth, body and mind. Still there was a certain magic with us. Lori interested Boo. He would steal furtive glances at her while all the rest of him was robot stiff. Occasionally he would turn his head when she mentioned his name in conversation. He would give very, very soft hroops every once in a while when he was sitting near Lori and not near Benny at all. As I watched them that first week that Lori had joined us full time in the afternoon, I was pleased. This would never be an easy way to spend an afternoon, but likewise, it would never be dull. I was glad we had become a class.

One result of Lori’s entrance into my room half-days was meeting her father. We first came face to face in the meeting with Edna and Dan over Lori’s placement. I liked Mr. Sjokheim immediately. He was a big man, perhaps not as tall as wide, although it was a congenial plumpness mostly around the belt area, as if he had enjoyed all his Sunday dinners. He had a deep, soft voice and a ringing laugh that carried far out into the hallway. Even in that early meeting as I listened to him, it became apparent where Lori had acquired much of her caring attitude.

After the first week passed with Lori in my room, I invited Mr. Sjokheim in after school to get acquainted. By profession he was an experimental engineer. He worked in the laboratory of an airplane company and dealt with aspects of environmental impact of airplanes. He derived great pleasure from talking about various programs he had implemented locally to cut down on both air and noise pollution by the company.

Tragedy, however, had marked Sjokheim’s personal life. He and his wife had had an only child, a daughter, several years before. When the girl was four years old, she fell through a plate-glass window. The glass had penetrated her throat and she had nearly bled to death. Quick action by paramedics saved her life, however, she suffered severe brain damage from loss of oxygen and became comatose. Yet the child did not die. For three years after the accident she remained hospitalized and on life-support equipment before finally succumbing. She never regained consciousness in all that time.