Beautiful Child: The story of a child trapped in silence and the teacher who refused to give up on her. Torey Hayden

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      “A deer!” Billy positively shouted.

      “You stupid pisser!” Jesse cried. “You keep hollering. You scared the deer away!” And before I knew what was coming, Jesse punched Billy in the mouth.

      This, of course, rather rudely pulled us all out of our imaginary visit to the woods. Not expecting to be hit, Billy burst into tears. Jesse got up and stomped off, twitching and yelping. Zane and Shane were on their feet, shouting, “That’s not fair! They wrecked our time. We weren’t done! They wrecked it! They ought to go in the quiet chair!”

      I felt sorry for Billy, innocent victim of his own enthusiasm, because I knew he hadn’t meant to wreck things. He had simply been enjoying himself and, as ever, had lost control. I gave him a cuddle and rubbed his chin. And while I could hardly condone what Jesse had done, I didn’t want to punish him. He too had simply been caught up in the imaginary journey. So I walked over and put an arm around him afterward, saying I was sorry Billy had disturbed things for him and I understood how it made him feel angry but reminding him for the millionth time that I couldn’t allow hitting and please would he try to remember that?

      Shane and Zane stood forlornly. “Can we do it again? It wasn’t fair. They wrecked it. Please, can we do it again?” Zane asked.

      “Yes, we will. But not just now,” I said. “We’ll do it tomorrow at the same time.”

      “Noooo,” Shane moaned. “I want to do it now. It’s not fair.”

      “I know. You feel disappointed. Tomorrow we’ll do it again.”

      “Pleeeeeeeese?”

      “Tomorrow.”

      “This afternoon. Okay?” Zane begged. “Pleeeeeeeese?”

      “We can’t this afternoon. Julie comes then and we’re getting a new girl, so we need to do other things. Tomorrow after morning recess.”

      The twins stomped off, disgruntled, to their tables.

      I turned to look for Venus. And there she was, still sitting cross-legged on the floor, her eyes still tight shut. I regarded her. Why was she like that? Again, my first instinct was to believe she couldn’t hear us and thus had not realized we’d stopped the activity. But then, if she couldn’t hear, she wouldn’t have known we’d started the activity. Or what we were doing during the activity. So why was she still sitting with her eyes closed? Did some part of her brain not register that we’d stopped? Or not want to register we’d stopped? Or was it just plain resistance?

      Coming over, I squatted down directly in front of her. “Venus?”

      No response.

      I was a little reluctant to touch her, in case she wasn’t expecting it. “Open your eyes, Venus. We’re done with the imaginary journey. We’re doing something else now.”

      Slowly, she opened her eyes.

      I smiled. “You stayed a little longer in the woods than the rest of us, huh?”

      She looked at me.

      I looked back at her.

      Her expression was so enigmatic that she could have been an alien child sitting there.

      That day the part-time students were due to start coming. Up until that point we hadn’t been much of a cohesive group, as chaos had always been too close at hand. However, the arrival of “them other kids,” as the boys chose to call them, brought out the team spirit.

      “They ain’t gonna be Chipmunks, are they?” Shane asked during morning discussion as I prepared them for the arrival of our first new student.

      “No!” Billy cried. “No, Teacher, they can’t be Chipmunks. Okay? Please? ’Cause just us guys get to be Chipmunks.”

      “What do you think about that, Jesse?”

      “Yeah, just us guys who live here.”

      “All right then,” I replied.

      “I think we ought to have a special signal,” Billy said. “You know, something that makes us know we’re Chipmunks.” It was said as if this were some elite society we were speaking of. “Something to help us keep our spirits up when we got all these other geezers in here to put up with.”

      “Let’s go ‘Chip, chip, chip, chip, chip,’” Zane suggested.

      “Don’t you think that might get a little noisy?” I asked.

      Of course, this meant all the boys had to do it.

      “And not too discreet.”

      “What’s discreet mean?” Billy asked.

      “Discreet means when you keep something kind of private and don’t make a big show of it,” I said. “Something like a hand signal might work better.”

      The conversation pursued this vein for several minutes with the boys trying out various movements and gestures that they thought could serve as this special signal. I watched Venus as they talked. She was sitting at her table, as were the boys sitting each at their individual tables, as we’d not yet progressed to the point of being able to sit peaceably next to one another. Given my big, booming voice I had no trouble being heard when the kids were scattered all over the room, and the boys’ personalities were all so loud and expansive that the distance among them still helped more than it hindered. They could jump up, swing their arms around, and be their usual, lively selves without crashing into anyone else. In this respect, the distance was useful for Venus too, as she did not explode unpredictably simply because someone had inadvertently invaded her space. However, it also made it easier for her to isolate herself. I could tell she was completely tuned out of this conversation. Leaning slightly forward, arms crossed on the tabletop, eyes blank and unfocused, she was as motionless as the furniture itself. And, indeed, that’s how the boys responded to her. Venus, for all intents and purposes, was not there.

      “Well, what I think,” Zane said, “is that we should wiggle our feet. Like this.’ Cause we’re the ones who don’t got no shoes on. If you don’t got shoes on, you’re a Chipmunk, huh? And so you can wiggle your toes.”

      “Hey, way cool!” Billy cried, whipping off a grubby sock and sticking his bare foot up on the table with a thud. He wiggled his toes.

      “Billy, remove it,” I said sharply.

      Billy didn’t take his foot down but instead burst into a spontaneous rendition of a children’s ditty, “Stuck my head in a little skunk’s hole! Little skunk said, ‘Well, bless my soul! Take it out! Take it out! Take it out!’” Zane and Shane chimed in with him, “REMOVE IT!”

      One of the children coming to me for extra support was a little girl named Gwen, although everyone called her Gwennie. Gwennie was eight, a very attractive little girl with shiny, straight, bobbed blonde hair and unexpectedly dark eyes. She had originally been diagnosed as having HFA, which stood for high-functioning autism. Like many autistic-type children, Gwennie was a bright child, doing well academically. Her СКАЧАТЬ