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

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “I can appreciate how you feel. You like your candy and you want to keep it. But it also isn’t fair to give a piece just to Geraldine. Geraldine was right to be concerned about her sister, although perhaps she needn’t have snatched the candy in quite that way.”

      Mariana begrudgingly handed out a Life Saver to Dirkie and then returned to her seat to count how many were left. She squirreled the rest of them away in the pocket of her jumper. “What are you gonna give me now?” she asked Geraldine.

      Geraldine shrugged. “Haven’t anything.”

      Glumly, Mariana kicked the leg of the table. “Some best friend you’ve turned out to be.”

      Dirkie was mesmerized by the two girls. He spent much of the morning simply watching them. Then after lunch he took to circling the table, and it occurred to me what was so fascinating to him: It was Shemona’s hair. Leslie’s hair was longer and even Mariana’s hair was quite long, and as I had never noticed Dirkie showing interest in either of them, I had assumed he was only preoccupied with adult hair. So I was a bit surprised and certainly dismayed to discover he was attracted to Shemona’s. The only thing I could reckon was that Shemona, like me, was blond, while both Mariana and Leslie were dark. This lent a new dimension to Dirkie’s obsession. Whatever was behind it, he could not leave Shemona’s hair alone. Around and around and around the table he went, his body slightly crouched, his muscles tense with excitement. When he would get in back of her, he’d pause, quivering. If either Shemona or Geraldine turned to look at him, he would jump and then begin circling again. “Hoo-hoo-hoo,” he was whispering under his breath.

      “Dirkie, sit down,” I said. I was holding Leslie on my lap and trying to work with her, so it was inconvenient to have to keep getting up to reseat him. And his circling was nerve-racking.

      Dirkie moved off, but within moments he was back, once again circling like a hyena with its quarry.

      “Miss,” Geraldine said, “Shemona doesn’t like this. This boy is bothering her.” “Miss” was the only thing Geraldine would call me.

      “Dirkie,” I said, “sit down. Now sit. You’ve got plenty of work in your folder, so please come here, sit down and get busy.”

      I pulled his folder closer to where I was sitting, and when he came over, I sat him next to me. Geraldine, farther down and across the table from us, raised her head to watch us.

      “You’re a girl,” Dirkie said to her, his voice low.

      “So?”

      “She’s a girl too,” he said, indicating Shemona.

      Geraldine rolled her eyes in an expression of incredulity and went back to her work.

      “And she’s a girl and she’s a girl,” Dirkie continued, pointing to Mariana and Leslie. “And you’re a girl!” he said to me. “You know what that means?”

      “Girls’ pussies,” Mariana supplied. She giggled.

      Geraldine looked scandalized.

      “Girls, girls, girls!” Dirkie said excitedly.

      “Dirkie, time to settle down. Here, let’s get on with your work.” I took a paper from his folder.

      He studied Shemona, bent over her work. “And that girl,” he said pointedly, “that girl there, that girl with the yellow hair, with the long yellow hair, she’s a girl. She’s got a girl’s pisser, that girl with the long yellow hair.”

      “Dirkie, I mean it, settle down.”

      The excitement proved too much for him, and Dirkie was up once more, mincing around the table to Shemona.

      “Mii-iissss!” squealed Geraldine in exasperation. “We’re trying to work. Make that boy stop.”

      Putting Leslie off my lap, I rose and went to catch Dirkie. Taking him by the shoulder, I physically returned him to his chair and pushed him into it.

      “That girl has long yellow hair. You have long hair. You have long yellow hair too. Are you going to cut your long yellow hair?”

      “No, Dirkie.”

      “That girl, is she going to cut her hair? Is that girl going to cut her long yellow hair?”

      “She might,” Geraldine said waspishly.

      “No, Dirkie, she isn’t going to cut her hair either. Now come on. Here’s today’s math. Let’s see if you can get it finished before recess. I’ll help you get started.”

      But he couldn’t reorient. “Hey, girl,” he said, “girl with the long yellow hair, do you have a cat?”

      Geraldine came over to me toward the end of the afternoon. “Shemona doesn’t like that boy, Miss.”

      “Yes, he can be annoying, that’s for certain. But if Shemona doesn’t like him, all she needs to do is tell him to go away. And he will. He doesn’t mean any harm.”

      Geraldine frowned.

      “What about you? I asked. “What do you think of him?”

      “Shemona thinks he’s silly. So do I.”

      I was grateful to see that particular day done. While nothing major happened, it had been hard work. I’d been nervous about these two girls with all their tragic fame, and it had left me on edge. The others were unsettled by the change. Dirkie, especially, had remained impossible all day long, and I was ready to skewer him by the last hour. In an effort to hasten the end, I agreed to let everyone out on the playground five minutes early to wait for their rides. It was a clear, sharp September day, and I knew the tensions would evaporate more quickly in the brisk air.

      Mariana’s and Dirkie’s buses came. Then Shemona and Geraldine’s aunt arrived to collect them. That left just Leslie, holding my hand.

      “Where’s your mama?” I asked. “It’s not like her to be late.” I scanned the length of the street for Dr. Taylor’s dark blue Mercedes. Normally, she was extremely punctual, waiting at the wheel of the car when I brought the children down. She even occasionally came up to the classroom to get Leslie, if I ran a minute or two late.

      We waited for a few moments longer, and then I took Leslie around the corner of the building to the playground and pushed her on the swing. She adored swinging. It was the single activity to evoke any kind of genuine response from her. She would close her eyes and let her head fall back, her long, dark hair fanning out behind her. While swinging, Leslie came the closest I had seen her come to smiling.

      No doubt Leslie would have been happy to stay on the swing until dark, but I had a special ed. meeting at 4:45 in a nearby school, so my time wasn’t totally my own. Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes slipped by, and still no Dr. Taylor. By four o’clock, I decided things had gone on long enough. I let the swing come to a stop and took Leslie inside to the office, where I telephoned the Considynes’ home.

      No answer. I wasn’t sure what to do. Could I leave Leslie down here? Should I take her to her house myself and trust someone would be there by then? Or should I just keep waiting? I dialed the Considynes’ number once more and let СКАЧАТЬ