Torey Hayden - Just Another Kid - Each was a child no one could reach – until one amazing teacher embraced them all

Silence followed. I didn’t have a clue as to who these two were.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” I said. “Mrs. Adams, who was supposed to be teaching this class, has gone very unexpectedly into hospital. I’m her replacement, and I just took this job a few days ago. I’ve got to admit—”

“We can’t get her out of the car,” the woman blurted.

“Oh.”

The man was glancing around, as if not paying particular attention. The woman regarded me intently. While her expression was not precisely hostile, neither was it very friendly. She studied me with the kind of unabashed scrutiny not usually tolerated among adults.

“Let’s just leave it for today,” the man said, still gazing off. Languidly, he looked down at me. “Perhaps she’ll feel more like it tomorrow.”

Without any warning, the woman’s eyes filled with tears. She blushed brilliantly, and all the muscles tightened along her jaw. “ No ,” she said through gritted teeth. Then she turned abruptly and bolted out of the office.

The man shifted his feet uneasily, and I half expected him to take off too, but he didn’t. “My wife’s a bit upset about this,” he said softly.

“So I see.”

A pause. The man looked down at me. He had blue, watery eyes. “I think we should just leave it.”

“Why don’t I come down and help? I’m quite used to this sort of thing. It’s pretty normal. New teacher, new room, all that.”

He shook his head. “No, let’s just leave it. I’ll bring her in tomorrow.” And he turned and left before I could say more.

I gazed in stunned disbelief at the empty doorway. Turning, I saw the three secretaries watching me. We all burst out laughing, for lack of a better reaction.

“Can you believe that?” I asked. “I don’t even know who they were.”

“The Considynes,” replied one of the secretaries. “They’re our answer to Dallas .”

My second student arrived shortly after I returned to the room. Mariana Gilchrist. With her was her mother, a young woman who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. Her hair was cut short and greased into thin, wet-looking spikes that stood up all over her head. Her eye makeup, a combination of heavy liner and pearly shadow, made her look like Cleopatra. By contrast, Mariana, in a red tartan jumper over a frilly white blouse, seemed sweetly old-fashioned.

“Am I the first kid here?” she asked. “Oh, goody. I get everything first. I get to pick everything I want first.” She pulled away from her mother.

“You behave yourself in here,” Mrs. Gilchrist said. “You got to behave. This here lady’ll make you. You can’t go effing around in here like in that other class.”

“Where’s my place?” Mariana was asking. She was at the far end of the room already. “Where’s my place going to be?”

“I’m going now,” her mother said.

“Are these toys for us kids?” Mariana had opened the cupboard under the sink and was hauling everything out.

“Good-bye. I’m going now. I’m leaving you in this here place.”

The girl never looked up.

Mariana was eight and came with the kind of profile that was almost a cliché in this sort of classroom: borderline IQ, short attention span, overaggressive. She also had a history of precocious sexual behavior. Her entire short career at school had been spent in one special setting or another, and she had achieved virtually nothing. After three years, she could neither read nor write and could understand only the most basic math.

“Where’s the other kids at?” Mariana asked suddenly. She rose, leaving a litter of puzzles, games and art materials behind her on the floor. “Who else is going to be in here? Will there be any girls?”

“Yes, one. There’re only going to be three of you in here to start with, although I expect we will have others join us as we go along.”

“What’s the other girl’s name? Is she eight too?”

“She’s seven, and her name is Leslie.”

“How soon’s she going to be eight? When’s her birthday?”

“Next spring.”

“Well, we’ll probably be best friends anyway, even if she is a bit young for me.” Mariana took up a pencil and tried to drill a little hole into the Formica tabletop.

The door banged, and my third student entered.

I was well prepared for Dirkie. They had all told me about Dirkie. He was eleven and had spent virtually all his life in institutions. He had had an early childhood history too horrible to bear thinking about, a litany of abandonments, abuse and bizarre family acts. Then had come a long spell in the state mental hospital. Eighteen months earlier, a husband-and-wife team of psychologists had met Dirkie while they were working at the state hospital. They had fallen in love with him, with his curiously lovable ways, and had decided to become his foster parents in an attempt to give him some chance at a normal family life. Dirkie’s problems, however, were rather more than love alone could conquer. He was diagnosed as having childhood schizophrenia and had a very poor prognosis for improvement. As a consequence of his truly amazing assortment of peculiar behaviors, he had not managed to survive the previous school year in a regular classroom and had ended up being taught at home.

Both Dirkie’s foster parents came with him that morning, dragging Dirkie between them. He struggled and screamed. “No! No! No! Don’t make me go in there! No! Help!” he yelled, nonstop.

I held the door open. Once inside, he broke free and bolted across the room. “Hoo-hoo-hoo!” he squealed with sudden glee, and leaped up on top of the table. Mariana’s eyes grew wide with surprise.

“Come down from there, please, Dirkie,” his foster mother said in a soft, patient tone. “Tables aren’t for standing on, remember. Come down now.”

“Hoo-hoo-hoo!” He was down from the table and under it.

I smiled at his foster parents. I felt an instant empathetic fondness for them. “I think we’ll be all right.”

The woman smiled back, and I saw her relief. I couldn’t tell if it came from my confidence that we really would be all right or if it was the prospect of being free of Dirkie for six hours.

After his parents left, Dirkie remained under the table and hooted like a demented monkey.

“That kid’s crazy,” Mariana said seriously. “Did you know that? Did you know that kid was going to be crazy?”

I nodded.

“The other one’s not going to be crazy too, is she? The girl, I mean. The girl’s not going to be crazy too? She’s going to be my best friend.”

“I haven’t met her yet, so I don’t know. But she’s not going to have Dirkie’s problems, if that’s what you mean. Everyone’s different.”

“Dirkie? Dirkie? Gad, what a stupid name. No wonder he’s crazy. Hey, Turkey-Dirkie, how you doing under there?”

“Mariana …”

“Dirkie-Turkey. Dirkie-Turkey.” Then suddenly she stopped short. She dropped down on her hands and knees to see Dirkie better through the tangle of chairs. “Gad. Look what he’s doing. Teacher. He’s rubbing hisself. Look, he’s humping. He’s humping that chair leg.” She leaped to her feet.

I moved forward to take the chairs away and then reached down for Dirkie. “Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!” he squealed with excitement.

“Come on, Dirkie. Come out from under there. Here, take my hand. Let’s sit up in a chair. I’ve got some interesting things in store for us today.”

Rising, I dragged Dirkie out.

“Mariana!” I cried in surprise. “What are you doing?”

She had her jumper hiked up around her waist and was removing her underpants.

“Put everything back on this instant and pull your dress down. Now! ”