Beautiful Child (34 page)

I watched without speaking, without moving.

There was maybe seven or eight feet between where Venus stood and where her wheelchair was. I could tell by her expression that she was trying to gauge if she could make it. Putting a hand out to steady herself on the bookshelf, she took a faltering step. She stopped, teetered briefly but remained upright. She then looked around and saw me watching her.

“Do you want help?” I asked.

She didn’t answer immediately. For a moment it was the old, closed, unresponsive Venus looking at me. Then she nodded faintly.

I crossed the room to her and put one hand under her elbow, the other on her shoulder to steady her.

She didn’t move and I could sense she’d expected me to pick her up and put her back in the wheelchair.

“Just go slowly. I’ll keep hold of you. You won’t fall.”

“You ought to send her to Mr. Christianson’s,” Billy shouted from across the room. “You ought to punish her! She tried to kill me and Jesse. Just like in the old days.”

I looked at him. The temptation was to tell him to shut up, already. Blather, blather, blather. That was our Billy.

Instead, I started to sing. “High hopes, I’ve got high hopes. I’ve got high, apple pie in the sky hopes. All problems are just a toy balloon. They’ll be bursted soon. They’re just bound to go pop! Oops there goes another problem kerplop!”

It was ludicrous. One of those absolutely, dazzlingly
absurd moments, standing there, balancing Venus and singing “High Hopes” to Billy while Jesse bled, the twins ran maniacally around, and Alice talked to her hand. But it worked. Venus managed to hobble slowly back to her wheelchair. Jesse, a huge wad of tissue held to his nose, joined the singing because he loved the kerplop part of this song. So did Billy. He made a loud, juicy sound by rubbing his hand, wrist, and arm practically up to his elbow under his nose. Then he begrudgingly started to sing. We started the song over at the beginning and did actions for the ant and the ram in the song, and this caught Shane and Zane, who wanted to be ants and rams too. Only Alice was left. I approached her and encouraged her to wave her arms in conducting motions. She looked imploringly at Mimi and Mimi must have said yes. Alice joined in too.

It took us two full rounds of “High Hopes,” plus half a dozen choruses before everyone looked in a halfway reasonable mood. I stopped the song. “Okay. Recess is well and truly over, because look at the clock. It’s ten to. Places, please.”

“Aren’t you even going to send her to the quiet chair?” Billy muttered.

“You
get to work. If you’re the innocent party here, I don’t need to talk to you, do I? So you show me I have no reason to think you are a troublemaker.”

Billy made a face and took his seat.

When the boys had their work out, I went over to Venus at her table and pulled out a chair.

“I can’t allow people to hurt one another in here,” I said quietly. “That’s a class rule.”

Venus stared at me.

“Can you explain why you got so upset?”

“He tooked my She-Ra sword,” she murmured. She still had the cardboard sword clutched in her lap.

“I didn’t either!” Jesse shouted from his table. “I didn’t take her stupid sword. I was just straightening up. I just was moving it to put stuff away.”

“Thanks, Jesse, but I’ll take care of it. You take care of your work.”

When I looked back at Venus, she was tearful.

“Your She-Ra sword is very important, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

“Jesse wasn’t going to hurt it. He was just cleaning, just helping me get ready for the end of the year.”

“He said ‘I’m going to throw it away,’” she murmured.

I smiled at her and reached over to touch her cheek. “No, he wouldn’t throw it away. I wouldn’t let him. He was just talking. Your sword’s safe.”

A pause.

“And you know what?” I said.

“What?” she asked.

“I saw your sword doing magic.”

Venus looked up at me.

“It made you walk.” I smiled. “I saw that. Your magic sword made you able to walk.”

A
nd then it was the last day.

On this occasion the last day wasn’t even a whole day. It was just a half day. In years gone by I’d planned a picnic or other outing for the last day, but with so little time, this wasn’t possible. Nonetheless, I wanted some last way to celebrate our year together, so I suggested to the children’s families that instead of picking them up at lunchtime, that they come into the school and join us for a pizza party. This idea was met with general enthusiasm. The twins’ mother and Billy’s and Alice’s mothers were coming, as was Jesse’s grandmother. Venus’s foster mother was coming too.

After Venus’s and my discussion on the day of the birthday party, I had alerted Social Services and her foster parents to how much Venus missed her brothers and sisters.
Efforts had been made to let her see her brothers, who did not live too far away, but she had yet to see Wanda again, largely because Wanda was now living in a sheltered group home about thirty miles away.

I felt strongly about bringing Wanda and Venus together again. If Wanda was Venus’s biological mother, Venus knew nothing about it, as she always referred to Wanda as her sister. However, there was no denying there was a special bond between the two of them. Regardless of their blood relationship, my suspicion was that it had been Wanda, inept as she might have seemed to others, who had managed to keep Venus alive during the horrific period of abuse. It seemed grossly unfair now to keep the two apart. As a consequence, I suggested that it would be very nice if Wanda could also join us for the pizza party at lunchtime.

Arranging this proved to be a logistical nightmare. I must have made at least ten calls to Social Services to clear everything and then another half dozen to the staff of the group home and to Venus’s foster family to organize picking up Wanda and getting her to the school on time. Venus’s foster mother agreed to drive Wanda back to her group home in the afternoon. Indeed, Mrs. Kivie said she had to stop out at the mall after lunch and if Wanda wanted, she could come shopping with them first. But we couldn’t get anyone to bring Wanda. Absolutely no one at the group home or from Social Services was willing to travel the sixty-mile round-trip to pick Wanda up and bring her to us. In the end, Rosa volunteered to do it.

The children and I spent the morning finishing up all the last-minute details. There were things to pass out, bits of bureaucracy to be completed, the finally taking down, handing out, and putting together. Everyone had brought big paper grocery bags to put their things in.

When all was completed, I took out their work folders.

“Oh, no!” Billy cried. “Work? You’re gonna make us work on the last day of school?”

“Oh no! Oh no!” echoed the twins and then Jesse and finally Alice. Even Venus groaned.

“No, this is going to be different. Do these look different to you?” I said, holding up the folders.

“
No
,” Billy retorted.

“Look closely. What’s different?”

All the children craned to study the folder I was holding in my hand.

“Nothing,” Billy said. “It’s our work folders. That one’s Shane’s.”

“Anybody else?” I asked.

“I don’t see nothing,” Zane said.

“It’s thick,” said Shane.

“That’s right. See all the papers in the folders? You know why? Because these are
all
the papers you did. All year long.”

“Wow,” Jesse said. “All of ’em?”

“Yep. And I’m going to hand them out to you. You can take them home now. They’re for you to keep. But before you stick them in your bags, let’s look through them. Let’s see how far everybody has come since last September.”

The children accepted their folders as I gave them out. Only Alice’s and Venus’s were thin, Alice’s because she’d only arrived at the beginning of May, and Venus’s because she hadn’t started doing any real paperwork until about the same time.

“Wow, look at this,” Jesse said. “I was doing single-digit adding when I first came. I can do multiplication now.”

“Well, I wasn’t reading. Look at this. It’s first-grade stuff, practically,” Billy said.

“I was
coloring
!” Shane said.

“Who’d think I’d go to AP class,” Billy said as he thumbed through his papers.

“I remember this. Remember this, guys?” Zane said, holding up a Halloween poem.

The boys were well occupied, paging through their folders, so I went over to Alice and Venus’s table. I hunkered down beside Venus’s wheelchair.

“You know what I was thinking?” I said. “Wanda is coming at lunchtime and I was thinking maybe you would like to give her a surprise.”

Venus looked at me expectantly but didn’t speak.

“I don’t think Wanda knows you are in the wheelchair and I’m thinking that this might frighten Wanda a little.”

Venus’s eyes narrowed as she listened to me.

“So, while the boys and I are going through their folders, I was thinking maybe you would like to practice standing. Like you did the other day when you got your She-Ra sword. Maybe you could practice taking a few steps. Then,
when Wanda comes, you could show her how well you are doing. Then she wouldn’t be frightened by the wheelchair because she’d know you were getting better.”

Venus didn’t speak.

“What do you think?”

Pulling her lower lip in under her teeth, Venus just regarded me.

“I could help,” Alice volunteered. “I could hold your hand so you didn’t fall.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” I said. “What do you think? Do you want to try?”

There was a long moment’s hesitation. Venus studied my face, dropped her eyes, then glanced briefly at Alice. Finally she nodded. “I’ll try.”

And she did. I stayed a few moments, helping her stand in front of the wheelchair, steadying her while she took a few faltering steps. Then Alice took over. Holding onto Venus’s hands, she carefully guided Venus’s steps. Venus didn’t last long on her feet. Less than ten minutes of trying and she was too tired to try any longer, but she had managed it. She had gotten to her feet and walked with Alice’s help. More importantly, she had wanted to.

And then the last fifteen minutes. Everything was taken down, sealed up, put away. The children sat at bare tables in a bare classroom.

I passed out lined school paper. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do in the time left. Everybody got a pencil? Okay.
Now, I want you to think back over the whole school year, over everything we did, over all the things that happened, and I want you to write down what you liked best. You tell me what your favorite thing this year was. If you need help spelling, just ask and I’ll write the word on the board. But you write down your favorite part of the whole school year. And when you’re done, fold it up and put it in this box up here. I’m going to save these until I get home and then I’m going to read them and I’ll be able to remember all the fun things we did together.”

All six children bent studiously over their papers and wrote. Billy was first done. He folded his paper and put it in the box.

“If you want to go down to the front door, you can watch for parents coming and tell them how to get up here,” I said.

Then Jesse and Alice finished.

“If you want to go down to the cafeteria, you’ll find the paper plates and things we’ll need for our party. You can lay them out on the tables. There’s going to be fifteen people. You can set fifteen places.”

Zane and Shane and Venus completed their papers. Zane took Venus’s too and put them all in the box.

“Zane and Shane, you want to go down and help Billy meet people and show them into the cafeteria? Venus, you come with me. We’ll go phone to make sure the pizza man is coming with our delivery.”

We were in the main office when I saw Rosa coming up the school drive with Wanda. Wanda hadn’t changed a
bit. She looked a little cleaner perhaps, but not a bit tidier. And she hadn’t lost any weight. She waddled along behind Rosa.

“Look,” I said to Venus. “Look who’s coming.”

We were behind the big counter in the office and Venus couldn’t see over it. I leaned down to pick her up so that she could see, but she stood up from the wheelchair before I could get there. Hanging on to the counter, she pulled herself up to see Wanda coming into the office.

“Beautiful child!” Wanda shrieked when she saw her. “Beautiful child!”

Clinging to the counter, Venus pulled herself around it and fell into Wanda’s voluptuous hug.

“Beautiful child,” Wanda said again and held her tight.

Eyes closed, head back, Venus smiled broadly, happily, uninhibitedly.

And then it was the end. The pizza was eaten. Everyone was chatting excitedly about their summer plans. Zane and Shane were getting impatient to get theirs started. They raced around the cafeteria, empty except for us, until their mother decided it was time to take them home. This brought our lunch party to a close.

I hugged them, one by one.

Billy started to cry. “I’m not coming back. I miss you already. I don’t want to go. This was the best class in the whole world and I’m not coming back. They are. All those guys are, but I’m not!” he wailed. “It’s not fair!”

“I’ll miss you too. But we’ll see each other next year.”

“And me too!” Jesse said. “I’ll be gone, but not gone. You’ll see me too.”

“Bye. Bye.”

“Bye.”

And they left, one by one.

“And I’ll see you,” I said to Venus. I leaned over her wheelchair and kissed her forehead. “Have a good summer.”

“Bye,” she said.

“Bye-bye. And good-bye to you, Wanda. I’ll see you too next year, I’m sure.”

And they were all gone.

I was left with Rosa in the emptiness of the cafeteria. We cleared up the mess of pizza boxes and paper plates, cups, and napkins. Then I wished Rosa a good summer and climbed the stairs up to the room to get the last things and lock the door.

Picking up the box where the children had put their papers, I unfolded them one by one.

Shane’s said:
I like them trips to afika
, meaning, I assumed, the many imaginary journeys we had taken, like our first one into the woods.

Jesse’s was next. He wrote:
I liked the party
.
The party was at 2:40 and we had choclit cake like a train and Kool-Aid and pretzels and cake and ice ceram and the ice ceram was Butter Brikle and a hole bunch of candy on the cake. I love you. XOXOXOXOXOXOX.

I picked up Billy’s.
I like the way you always laughe with us, Miss Hayden. You like us. You make us smile. You sing with us. I wish you would all ways be my taecher forever. I love you vary much. I hope you have a nice summer. I will miss you. Love, Guillermo Manuel Gomez Jr. (Billy).

Zane’s said:
I like you when you help us.

Alice wrote:
You’ev helped us when we’ve had, a very bad problme. And you made us lauph a long time, well, that’s all I have to say now good-by thank you for the ordeal.
I laughed when I read that. “Thank you for the ordeal” summed up the year quite well.

And last of all I took out Venus’s and unfolded it, laying it flat on the table. It said:
I am happy
.