Somebody Else’s Kids. Torey Hayden
was this strange teacher doing in their room under their table? What about this boy in the green corduroy pants?
“Boo?” I was saying softly, barely more than a whisper. “Time to go to our room now. The other children need this room.”
The kindergarteners watched us intently but would not come closer. I touched Boo gently, ran my hand along the outside of the rug, then inside along his body to accustom him to my touch. Carefully, carefully I pulled the rug from around his head and extracted him. Holding him in my arms, I slid from under the table. Boo was soundless now and rigid as a mannequin. His arms and legs were straight and stiff. I might as well have been carrying a cardboard figure of a boy. However, this time he did not avert his face. Rather, he stared through me as if I were not there, round eyed and unblinking, as a dead man stares.
A small freckle-faced boy ventured closer as I prepared to take Boo from the classroom. He gazed up with blue, searching eyes, his face puckered in that intense manner only young children seem to have. “What was he doing in our room?” he asked.
I smiled. “Looking at the things under your rug.”
Lori stood outside the door of my room when I returned carrying a stiff Boo in my arms. Tim and Brad had already gone and had closed the door and turned off the light when they left. Lori, workbook in hand, looked uncertain about entering the darkened room.
“I didn’t know where you were!” she said emphatically. Then she noticed Boo. “Is that the little kid you told me about? Is he going to be in with me?”
“Yes. This is Boo.” I opened the door clumsily and turned on the light. I set Boo down. Again he remained motionless, while Lori and I went to the worktable at the far side of the room. When it became apparent Boo was not going to budge, I went back to the doorway, picked him up and transported him over to us. He stood between the table and the wall, still rigid as death. No life glimmered in those cloudy eyes.
“Hello, little boy,” Lori said and sat down in a chair near him. She leaned forward, an elbow on the table, eyes bright with interest. “What’s your name? My name’s Lori. Lori Ann Sjokheim. I’m seven. How old are you?”
Boo took no notice of her.
“His name is Boo,” I said. “He’s also seven.”
“That’s a funny name. Boo. But you know what? I know a kid with a funnier name than that. Her name’s Maggie Smellie. I think that’s funny.”
When Boo still did not respond, Lori’s forehead wrinkled. “You’re not mad, are you, ’cause I said that? It’s okay if you got a funny name. I wouldn’t tease you or nothing. I don’t tease Maggie Smellie either.” Lori paused, studied him. “You’re kind of small for seven, huh? I think I’m taller than you. Maybe. But I’m kind of small too. That’s ’cause I’m a twin and sometimes twins are small. Are you a twin too?”
Lori. What a kid Lori was. I could sit and listen to her all day long. In all my years of teaching, Lori was unique. In appearance she was for me an archetypal child, looking the way children in my fantasies always looked. She had long, long hair, almost to her waist. Parted on one side and caught up in a metal clip, it was thick and straight and glossy brown, the exact color of my grandmother’s mahogany sideboard. Her mouth was wide and supple and always quick to smile.
Lori had come to me through evil circumstances. She and her twin sister had been adopted when they were five. The other twin had no school problems whatsoever. But from the very beginning Lori could not manage. She was hyperactive. She did not learn. She could not even copy things written for her. The shattering realization came during her second year in kindergarten, a grade-retention born out of frustration for this child who could not cope.
Lori had been a severely abused child in her natural home. One beating had fractured her skull and pushed a bone fragment into her brain. X-rays revealed lesions. Although the fragment had been removed, the lesions remained. How severe the lasting effects of the brain damage would be no one knew. One result had been epilepsy. Another had been apparent interference with the area of the brain that processes written symbols. She also had many of the problems commonly associated with more minimal types of damage, such as difficulty in concentration, an inability to sit still and distractibility. The bittersweet issue in my mind, however, was the fact that Lori came away from the injury as intact as she did. She lost very little, if any, of her intelligence or her perception or her understanding, and she was a bright child. Nor did she look damaged: For all intents and purposes, Lori was normal. Because of this, I noticed that people, myself included, tended to forget she was not. And sometimes we became angry with her for things over which she had no control.
The prognosis for her recovery was guarded. Brain cells, unlike other cells in the body, do not regenerate. The only hope the doctors had given was that in time her brain might learn other pathways around the injured area and tasks such as reading and writing would become more feasible things for her to accomplish. In the meantime Lori struggled on as best she could.
But there was no kid quite like Lori. Her brain did not always function well, yet there was nothing wrong with Lori’s heart. She was full of an innate belief in the goodness of people. Despite her own experiences, evil did not exist for Lori. She embraced all of us, good and bad alike, with a sort of droll acceptance. And she cared. The welfare of all the world mattered to her. I found it both her most endearing and annoying trait. Nothing was safe from her: she cared about how you felt, what you thought, what your dreams were. She involved herself so intimately in a world so hard on those who care that I often caught my breath with fear for her. Yet Lori remained undaunted. Her love was a little raw at seven, and not yet cloaked by social graces, but the point was, she cared.
Boo was of great concern to Lori.
“Doesn’t he talk?” she asked me in a stage whisper after all her attempts at conversation had been ignored.
I shook my head. “Not too well. That’s one of the things that Boo came here to learn.”
“Ohhh, poor Boo.” She stood up and reached out to pat his arm. “Don’t worry, you’ll learn. I don’t learn so good myself so I know how you feel. But don’t worry. You’re probably a nice boy anyways.”
Boo’s fingers fluttered and the vacant eyes showed just the smallest signs of life. A quick flicker to Lori’s face, then he turned and faced the wall.
I decided to work with Lori and leave Boo to stand. There was no need to hurry. “I’ll be right here, Boo,” I said. He stood motionless, staring at the wall. I turned my chair around to the table.
Lori flipped open her workbook. “It’s dumb old spelling again today. I don’t know.” She scratched her head thoughtfully. “Me and that teacher, we just aren’t doing so good on this. She thinks you oughta teach me better.”
I grinned and pulled the book over to view it. “Did she tell you that?”
“No. But I can tell she thinks it.”
Boo began to move. Hesitantly at first. A step. Two steps. Mincingly, like a geisha girl. Another step. I watched him out of the corner of one eye as I leaned over Lori’s spelling. Boo walked as if someone had starched his underwear. His head never turned; his arms remained tight against his sides. The muscles in his neck stood out. Every once in a while his hands would flap. Was all this tension just to keep control? What was he trying so desperately to hold in?
“Look at him,” Lori whispered. She smiled up at me. “He’s getting himself to home.”
I nodded.
“He’s a little weird, Torey, but that’s okay, isn’t it?” she said. “I act a little weird myself sometimes. People do, you know.”
“Yes, I know. Now concentrate on your spelling, please.”
Boo explored the environs of the classroom. It was a large room, square and sunny from a west wall of windows. The teacher’s desk was shoved into one corner, a repository for all kinds of things I did not know what to do with. The worktable stretched along below the