Somebody Else’s Kids: They were problem children no one wanted … until one teacher took them to her heart

I think I hated these stories worst of all. Worse than the ones of brutal abuse, worse than the ones of neglect and suffering. I loathed these stories where there were no answers. Innocent people in innocent circumstances, where little more had happened than the day-to-day agonies of being human, and a child like Boo was produced. My sense of fair play was always badly bruised when I heard such tales, as I did all too frequently. What sense was there to it? Why such suffering given to those I could not see as deserving it? It always left me feeling angry and impotent against a world I did not understand.

“It’s so hard,” Mrs. Franklin said as she stared down at the shiny tabletop. “My sister has a little boy just four months younger than Boothie. She always writes me about what Merlin is doing. He’s in second grade. He got picked to sing in the children’s choir at church.” She looked at me. “And all I want is for Boothe to call me mama.”

Halloween came on a Friday. In the time left to us between the parent conferences and the holiday. Boo, Lori and I made dozens of construction-paper decorations, carved a pumpkin, mulled cider and hung honeycomb-bellied bats that I had purchased at the five-and-dime. Traditionally at our school, children attended regularly scheduled classes in the morning. In the afternoon they returned to school wearing their Halloween costumes and each room had a party. Lori and I had discussed the matter throughout October. She wanted to wear a costume too. I thought perhaps she would have more fun if she stayed in her other classroom for the party rather than with Boo and me. After talking it over with Edna, we agreed Lori would spend the afternoon there.

The other matter of great importance to Lori was her costume. In the two days before Halloween, she considered and discarded dozens of ideas.

“I could be Supergirl. My friend Tammy’s gonna be Supergirl. Do you think I could be Supergirl too?” Suddenly she blushed and a silly smile came over her face. “You know what?”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I could be Wonder Woman. You know why?” She cast a sidelong glance at Boo to see if he was listening, then leaned close to whisper. “’Cause I got on Wonder Woman underwear. Here, see.” She pulled up her dress to show me. “See, I got Wonder Woman underpants, and here, I got a Wonder Woman T-shirt. See, they’re made out of that slippery cloth. Feel it. My daddy says it’s sexy.” She giggled.

“I don’t think you can wear just your underwear to school for Halloween, Lor.”

“No, I guess not. Hmm.” She was thoughtful for a moment.

And so the discussion went on both days. Finally Lori decided to be a witch. Not as exciting as running around in your Wonder Woman underwear I suppose, but I was so thankful that this long, hard decision had been made that I patiently bore through the recital of all the costume parts Halloween morning.

“My daddy helped me make a dress,” she told me while stopping by on her way to recess. “It’s real long and black and I got this shawl thing to wear over it. And long black hair. My daddy dyed a mop last night for me. With Rit dye. That you buy at the supermarket. So I’m going to have long black hair and a big pointed hat. And guess what else?”

“What, pray tell?”

She exploded with giggles. “I’m gonna have warts!”

“You aren’t!”

“I am! I boughted this stuff at the store last night. It makes you fake warts. And I boughted it with my own money, even.” A hand slipped over her mouth as she laughed devilishly. “And guess what else besides that?”

“What?”

“I’m going to scare my sister. I got a better costume than her. She don’t got any warts ’cause she spends all her allowance on candy.”

“Oh Lor, she better watch out, huh?”

Boo and I had our own plans for the afternoon. He still was not toilet trained, but I hated keeping him in diapers all the time because it made training so much more difficult; and on those rare, rare occasions when he did attempt to use the toilet, he had missed a couple times because he could not break the tape on the disposable diapers. Recently, however, my guesses had been off and there had been a lot of puddles. I found intensive work in this area difficult with Lori around. So he and I were headed for some heart-to-heart moments in the rest room. Afterward I was considering taking a trip over to a nearby grocery store with him. Boo had never been to one and I wanted to buy new ingredients to try the ice-cream recipe again someday. That would fill our time together.

It was late afternoon, after recess. Boo and I were still in the girls’ rest room. With a copy of Toilet Training in Less Than a Day face down on a sink, a bottle of orange juice nearby to keep Boo supplied with liquids and the door propped open to warn any unsuspecting visitors we were hard at work, I had Boo on a toilet in one of the stalls while I searched the bottom of a potato chip bag for something to make him more thirsty.

“Torey!” someone wailed from the corridor. “Torey!”

I came to the door of the rest room and looked out. Lori in her witch’s costume was struggling down the hall. “Torey,” she cried when she saw me.

I could see tears coursing down through witch makeup, leaving big black smudges on her cheeks. “What’s wrong, honey?”

“I got scared when I couldn’t find you.” She pressed her face into my jeans.

“What happened? You were going to be in Mrs. Thorsen’s class all afternoon, remember? Even after recess. Did you forget?” I pulled her chin up. A fake wart was left sticking to the waistband of my jeans. Boo came hopping out, his pants around his ankles.

Lori would not look at me even as I held her face. She jerked her head from my hand and leaned back against my side. Finally I bent to pull up Boo’s pants and fasten them. “Do you want to come back with us, babe?” I asked her.

She nodded.

In the room Lori went over to the worktable and flopped into a chair. I was still unsure what had happened to upset her. The black witch’s hair was skewed to one side, the pointed hat was too large and came down almost to her eyebrows. I found the incongruity between her costume and mood pathetic. Coming over, I sat on the tabletop next to her. “What’s wrong? Did it just scare you not finding us here? Was that it?”

She paid me no attention. Another wart loosened by her tears dropped onto the table. Lori smooshed it with a fingernail.

“Did something go wrong in class?”

She nodded.

“Maybe if you told me about it, that would help.”

She shook her head.

“You don’t think so?”

Another shake.

Across the room I saw Boo begin to unbuckle his pants. I rose to see what he was planning to do.

“Stay here with me,” Lori said.

“Okay,” I sat back down and gave Boo the evil eye to leave his clothes on. He flapped his hands at me.

“Mikey Nelson says I’m retarded,” Lori muttered. “He says this is a retard class.”

Her head was still down; she twisted a strand of mop around one finger.

“He said I was the retardest kid in the whole school. He said I couldn’t even read baby books like the kindergarteners have. I’m that retarded.”

“You know that old saying, Lor? That one about sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me?”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t very true, is it? Names do hurt. A lot.”

She nodded.

Another stillness.

“I guess it don’t matter so much,” she said softly. “I guess maybe he’s right. I flunked kindergarten. And I’m probably gonna flunk first grade too.”

Across the room near Benny’s driftwood Boo had sat down on the floor, his legs crossed Indian-style. He looked like an elf. A deep seriousness rested over his features as he watched us.

Lori looked up at me. “Is he right, Torey? Am I a retard kid?”

I put my fingers under her chin and lifted her face to see it more clearly in the gray afternoon light. Such a beautiful child. Why was it all these children looked so beautiful to me? I thought my heart would burst some days, I was so overwhelmed by their beauty. I could never look at them enough. I could never fill my eyes up fully with them the way I wanted. But why was it? Surely they were not all physically attractive. I knew something must happen with my eyes. Yet no matter how I tried to see them right, they seemed so unspeakably beautiful. This kid was. So very many of my kids were. I was troubled because I could not answer that question for myself. Were they that beautiful? Or was it only me?

“Torey?” She touched my knee to bring me back. The question she had asked had gone beyond words and now rested in her eyes.

No answers for my questions. No answers for hers. I looked at her. What could I say to her that would be honest? That would satisfy her? No, she was not retarded. Her brain did not work for a different reason. Mikey Nelson just had the wrong label. I could have told her that. Or perhaps I could have told her it was all a lie. To me it was. Mikey Nelson did not know what he was talking about. But what a laugh. In this world that prizes accomplishments so highly, I would have been the liar then. For Lori there might never be enough teachers, enough therapies; enough effort, even enough love to undo what had happened to her in one night’s anger. And then Mikey Nelson’s word would seem truer than mine.

Gently I pushed back her hair from her face, smoothed the mop strands, straightened the pointed hat. She was so beautiful.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Lori.”

Her eyes were on my face.

“That’s the truth and you believe it. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise. No matter what. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“But I can’t read.”

“Hitler could read.”

“Who’s Hitler?”

“A man who really was retarded.”

Chapter Seven

“Good afternoon, Tomaso,” I said. “My name is Torey. I’ll be your teacher in the afternoons.”

“You leave me the fuck alone, you hear? I sure the hell ain’t staying here. What kind of a place is this anyway?”

We stared at each other. I was between him and the door. His scrawny shoulders were hunched up under a black vinyl jacket. He was tall for his age, but too thin. Lank, greasy, black hair hung over angry eyes. Angry, angry eyes. He was one of the migrant kids, no doubt. His hands were hard and calloused, he had already known the fields by ten.

I had not been prepared for Tomaso. A call in the morning from Birk and here he was. One look at him and his fearless, defiant body and I could guess why he had been brought to me. Not one to fit into the regimen of a school, not Tomaso.

“What kind of shitty place is this anyway?” he repeated a little more loudly.

Lori came around to stand between Tomaso and me. She gave him a long, appraising look. “This is our class.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Lori Ann Sjokheim. Who are you?”

“What have they stuck me in? Some babies’ class?” He looked at me. “Dios mio! I’ve been put in some fucking babies’ class.”

“I’m no baby,” Lori protested.

“Some goddamn, stinking baby class, that’s what this is. And with little girls in it. Go have a tea party, sweetie,” he said to Lori.

Her lower lip went out. “I’m no baby. I’m almost eight. So there!”

“Shit. I’m not staying in here.” Tomaso straightened his shoulders and raised one hand up in a fist. “You get out of my way; I’m going. And I’ll smack you right in the boobies if you try to stop me.”

My stomach cringed involuntarily at the very thought of him doing that. I said nothing. There was not much to say that would not be incendiary at this point. Anger had flared up in his dark eyes like sparks from a green-wood fire.

As we stood there sizing one another up, Mrs. Franklin opened the door behind me and shoved Boo through. Click, the door went shut again.

“Nigger! There’s a nigger in here! Let me out,” Tomaso shouted. “I ain’t staying in no place with a shitty nigger in it.”

Lori was indignant. “He’s no nigger. That’s Boo. And you shouldn’t oughta call him names like that.” She came over to take Boo’s hand.

I turned to latch the hook and eye.

“That ain’t gonna keep me in,” he said. “I can bust that easy. You won’t keep me in here with no locks.”

“It isn’t for you,” I replied. “It’s for him.” I indicated Boo. “He gets lost sometimes and this helps to remind him to stay in the room.”

Tomaso glared. His shoulders pulled up under the black jacket. “You hate me, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t hate you. We don’t even know one another.”

Abruptly Tomaso jerked around and grabbed a chair. Twirling it briefly above his head, he then let loose and sent it flying across the room and into the finches’ cage. The birds fluttered as the cage swayed wildly, but it did not tip over. Lori squealed in surprise. Boo dove under the table.

This reaction seemed to please Tomaso. He set off on a rampage. Tearing from one side of the room to the other before I even had a chance to move from the door, he flung books off the shelves, cleared the top of my desk with a swoop of his arm, ripped Lori’s work folder into quarters and threw it into the air like confetti. Another chair went flying. Luckily it only grazed the west wall of windows and fell harmlessly to the floor. Once he started, I remained against the door and did not move. I was fearful of inciting him further. Or letting him get loose outside the room.

Tomaso stopped and turned back to me. “There. Now you hate me, don’t you?”

“I’m not precisely in love with you for doing that, if that’s what you mean,” I replied. “But I don’t hate you and I don’t like your working so hard to make me do so.”

“But you’re mad, aren’t you? I made you mad, didn’t I?”

Cripes, what did this kid want? I had no idea what to say to him. I was not mad. I did not hate him. Terror was more along the lines of what I was feeling right then, but I was not going to admit that either. My palms had gotten cold and damp and I wiped them on my jeans. Birk did not prepare me at all for this one.

“I bet you think I feel sorry I done that,” he said. “Well, I don’t. Here, let me show you.” He grabbed a potted geranium off the counter and crashed it to the floor. “There.”

Still with my back to the door to keep him contained in the room, I did not move. My mind was going at the speed of light, trying desperately to sort out viable alternatives before the kid wrecked my entire room. Or worse, decided to hurt someone. My inaction was not so much from indecision as it was from fear of consequences if I made the wrong move. I did not reckon this boy gave much opportunity for replay.

“Jesus, what’s wrong with you?” he said. “Cat got your tongue? Why don’t you do something? Why don’t you get mad? Aren’t you normal or something? Are you some fucking kind of crazy teacher?”

“I’m not going to let you make me angry, Tomaso. I don’t want to feel that way.”

“You don’t? You don’t?” he sounded outraged. “What’s the matter with you? Why don’t you go ahead and hate me like everybody else does? What makes you think you’re so special?”

“Tomaso, sit down. Take off your jacket and sit down. It’s time we got started on the afternoon’s work.”

Reaching down for a piece of the broken pot, he lofted it at me. Not a serious throw in my opinion. I imagine if he had meant it, he would have hit me. We were not that far apart, and I doubted that he missed when he aimed.

“What are you going to do about me? Are you going to suspend me? Are you going to get the principal?”

“No. I’m just going to wait until you decide it’s time to work.”

“Hey man, I ain’t never gonna decide that, so you might as well just give up.”

I waited. Sweat was running down along my sides and I pressed my arms tight against my body to stop it.

“At my other school they called the police. They took me to juvie. So you can’t scare me.”

“I’m not trying to scare you, Tomaso.”

“I don’t care what you’re trying to do. I don’t care about anything.”

“I’m just waiting, that’s all.”

“You can send me to the principal, if you want. And he can give me whacks. You think I haven’t had whacks before? I’ve had a million of them. And you think I care?”

I waited without saying anything. My stomach reminded me of the price I was paying for a calm exterior.

“I could bite your titties off.”

My back against the coolness of the glass in the door, I waited.

“Hmmf. Mmmmmph. Pphuh.” Tomaso was full of noises when I would not talk back to him. He was not ready to give in yet. Still too much pride at stake. And God only knows what else.

My gut feeling was that Tomaso did not really want to leave. No single thing I could put a finger on told me that, but I felt it. I studied him carefully.

Sometimes I think I missed my calling. I should have been a swindler. In the end, my best defense always seemed to come down to the good con game I play. My gut told me this boy was hot air. That was enough to go on. I pushed myself off the door and walked by him to the other side of the room. Righting chairs and slinging papers back on my desk, I sat down at the worktable. Reaching under, I pulled Boo out and sat him down in a chair. Then I beckoned Lori over and took her L and O flash cards. My stomach was doing the chacha, a surefire clue to me of the extent of my concern for winning this game of psychological bunco. If he chose to walk out the door I would have no alternative but to go out and physically drag him back in. That would be a really lousy way to start any relationship. All I was operating on was a hunch. A hunch about a kid I did not even know.

Boo was upset by the disruption in our routine. He rocked his chair back and forth and twiddled fingers before his eyes. I reached over to reorient him and he grabbed my arm. With noisy sniffs, he smelled up the length of my exposed skin.

Tomaso approached us. He stood behind my chair as I prepared the flash cards and struggled with Boo. I could hear him but not see him.

“Do you speak Spanish?” he asked.

“No. Not very well.”

“Hmmph. White honky. I don’t want to go to no room with a white honky teacher in it.”

“You wish I spoke Spanish?”

“I could kick you in the ass.”

I swallowed. “Do you speak Spanish?”

“Of course I do. I am Spanish. What’s the matter with you? You blind or something? My father, my real father, his grandpa came from Madrid. In real Spain, not Mexico. My father’s grandpa, he fought bulls.”

“Is that right?”

“It’s true. I ain’t lying. My father’s grandpa fought real live bulls.”

“He must have been brave.”

“He was. He coulda got killed, but he wasn’t. He was real, real brave. Braver than anyone here.” A pause. “Braver than you.”

“Probably so.”

Tomaso was still behind me so that I could not see his face. I was instead looking at Lori and Boo as I talked to Tomaso. Lori watched us, first one and then the other. Boo was again fluttering his fingers in front of his face.

“What’s wrong with that kid?” Tomaso asked. He had come closer. I could sense him just inches off my right shoulder. “How come he does that with his hands?”

“Sometimes he does that when he’s frightened or unsure about things. It makes him feel better or something, I guess. I don’t really know. He doesn’t talk yet so he can’t tell us.”

“It makes him look weird. What kind of freaky place is this anyway? What’s wrong with her?” He indicated Lori.

“Nothing’s wrong with me!” she replied hotly.

“Lor,” I said.

“Well, nothing is.”

“I know it. But Tomaso is new. He doesn’t know us yet and he has questions.”

“Well, he shouldn’t ask them. They aren’t polite.” Anger gave a petulant edge to her voice. “He comes in here and calls us names and then he goes and wrecks our stuff and you don’t do nothing. He called Boo a nigger and that’s nasty, don’t you know? And he tore up my folder and it had all my good work in there to show my dad.”

“Lor,” I said softly but firmly. “Not now. I’ll get to you later on it, but hang on to things for the moment, okay?”

She slapped the tabletop.

A tremendously long silence loomed up. I had no idea where it came from but all of a sudden we were in it looking at one another. My mind was blank. Tomaso came around and sat down in one of the chairs. Boo dropped his head to the table and loudly sniffed at it. I put a hand out to stop him.

“Boo. Here,” I said and tried to distract him with the flash cards.

“Boo?” Tomaso said. “What kind of crappy name is that? No wonder the kid is crazy. He sounds like a goddamn ghost. Shit.”

Lori was angry still. She glared across the table at Tomaso.

“What are you staring at, kid? Jesus, you look at me like I got three heads or something. Didn’t no one tell you it ain’t polite to stare?”

“How come your dad lets you say words like that?” she asked. “My dad would spank me if I talked like that.”

A strange expression changed Tomaso’s features. “I could pound you right into the bloody ground. Smash your dumb-looking little face right in, I could, if you don’t shut up.”

“Don’t your dad care?”

A fragile pause.

“Fuck off, would you? Sheesh, you’re a nosy kid.” He turned his chair so that he would not have to look at her. “She’s wrong, you know,” he said to me. “My father cares. My real father. He’s down in Texas. When he finds out they got me in a foster home up here, and how they stuck me in some fucking baby class, he’ll come take me away.”

I nodded.

“I don’t really belong in a class like this. My real father, he’ll come get me pretty soon. He knows I’m waiting.”

Over the recess period I had two aides take the three children out to the playground while I went down to the office for a quick look at Tomaso’s folder.

Not much of a file. Tomaso was one of the hundreds of migrant children who pass through our part of the state every year. His schooling had been sketchy. No one had made a serious attempt to find out what had happened when he was elsewhere, or for that matter, what had happened here.

The only notable thing in the folder was his family history. Even that was all too similar to the stories of many other children who had worked their way to me. He had been born down south, Texas, it said, although in truth it was probably Mexico. His mother had died when he was an infant. His father had remarried. A million little details clouded my mind as I read, the agonies I had come to know lives like Tomaso’s held. When he was five, his stepmother had fatally shot his father and older brother in a family argument. I stopped. Reread: Fatally shot his father. Tomaso had witnessed the occurrence.

After the father’s death, the stepmother was imprisoned, and Tomaso, the sole surviving member of the family, was placed in the custody of the state. Seven foster homes followed. All this had happened in the Southwest. Then a paternal uncle showed up and took Tomaso off to live with him. Authorities in Washington state found Tomaso at age seven picking strawberries in the fields. He had never been in school. Then child abuse in Colorado, and Tomaso was removed from the uncle’s care. Into foster homes again. Three of them this time. He never stayed very long. “Antisocial personality,” “unable to form attachments” was scrawled over and over again along the way. Back to the uncle’s care after a four-month separation, north to our state. The next time Tomaso was heard from, he had been sold to a couple in Michigan for $500. Finding him unmanageable, the couple tracked down the uncle to get their money back. Unable to get it from him, they contacted authorities. The uncle was arrested. For some reason I could not determine, Tomaso was returned to our state. Back into foster-home placement.

His school career, to say the least, had been erratic. Between the late starts and the frequent moves, Tomaso had never been in any school longer than four months. Nor did anyone seem to know in what grade to place him. In Washington they put him in first grade, second and third in Colorado, second grade here, third in Michigan and fourth here again. An IQ test administered in Colorado gave Tomaso a full-scale IQ of 92. The group test in Michigan gave him an 87. All his academic skills were delayed. In math he was more than a year behind the rest of the children in his class. His reading skills were hardly above that of a first grader.