News from the World (15 page)

In the fifties, I found a job tutoring in an institution for neglected and dependent children. I will call it Sleepy Hollow. It was lodged in an old Hudson River estate thirty miles or so north of New York City. The children were black, white, and Puerto Rican. Most had been born into poverty; a few came from middle-class homes that had collapsed as a result of some of the afflictions which can turn ordinary life into a nightmare—loss of jobs, alcoholism, divorce, eruptions into daylight of long-standing incest.

Perhaps half of them had been in trouble with the law, or on the verge of it. A few had spent time in the old Bellevue Hospital in the days when shock treatment was administered nearly as commonly as aspirin. Others had been brought to the institution by a distraught family member who was either too poor to feed one more mouth, or just didn't know what to do with a wild, explosive child. The words
cope
and
handle,
and the mild delusions of grandeur they evoke, had not yet entered popular language and thought.

The children lived in cottages, where they were supposed to be supervised by married couples, mostly in their late fifties, whose main qualifications, with some exceptions, appeared to me to be a combination of stolidity and blandness. They looked as if they'd seen everything and it didn't add up to much.

Quite a few of the children, who ranged in age from eight to seventeen, attended the local elementary and high schools. I was hired to tutor those who were either too fragile or too disruptive to go off the grounds, or who could, but who were falling seriously behind in their school work.

The main house creaked with age and neglect, but from its vast windows, you could stare, if you chose, at the noble Hudson while you waited for your appointment with a worker in the social services department. The air was thickened with the characteristic smell of institutions, a sour and melancholy combination of floor wax and disinfectant. Nearly all the workers had goodwill toward their clients, and a few showed passionate concern. A psychiatrist came once a week for conferences. A minister of no particular denomination held morning services on Sunday in what had been the former owner's private chapel.

Along the banks of the Hudson, above the railroad tracks, among the trees, in spots here and there on the vast, unkempt lawns, the children gathered, living different secret lives. They appeared at meal times, did some of the chores they were supposed to do in their cottage homes, turned up one or two times out of three for their appointments with the social workers, and occasionally drifted into the chapel on Sundays. But theirs was a concealed community within the larger one of Sleepy Hollow. It was said, ruefully, in social services, that the children often did each other more good than their therapists did.

The old-timers threatened the bullies and comforted the wretched in ways that were unequivocal, often physical. They were tough; they didn't waste time or breath on tactful approaches to new members of the community who were terrorists, or else, so miserably afraid they hid under their beds.

One early evening, as I started up the steps of the old gatekeeper's lodge where my classroom was, I saw nearby a small girl weeping. I learned later that she had been brought to Sleepy Hollow that morning. Three children were gathered around her. A boy was making comical faces at her, stooping, because he was so much taller than she was, to try to make her look at him. Another boy had flung his arm around her narrow shoulders. And the third, an older girl, was holding her fingers, apparently counting them. As I drew closer I heard her say—“This little piggy went to market . . .” The little girl sobbed. The tall boy said, “Cut it out! It don't do no good. You'll use up all your water.” The second boy tightened his grip on her and rocked her back and forth. She snuffled. She reached out and touched the intricate cornrows of the girl who held so tightly to the fingers of her other hand. “How do you do that?” she asked between sobs. Suddenly, like a flock of startled birds, they flew off toward a stand of larch trees, holding on to the little girl as though they could physically bear her out of her misery.

Her name was Gloria. That year, she was placed in three foster homes. Each time, she was brought back to Sleepy Hollow. She was eight, skinny and small, but the force of her rage frightened foster parents. She destroyed furniture, china, the clothes she was given, howling at the top of her lungs that she wouldn't. She wouldn't. Her refusal was monumental. She didn't want to leave the other children in the residence. In a black sea of dread, they were a secure island.

One evening, I had supper in her cottage and sat next to her. Everyone except Gloria complained, not unreasonably, about the burnt and acrid-tasting frankfurters. The cottage parents listened placidly and imperturbably. That was their job. Gloria grinned at me and whispered, “I love these hot dogs.” I think she would have eaten charcoal as long as she could stay among the children. Her trust in them since three had taken her to the larch trees and delivered her from the terror she felt, brought out her brightness and humor. She was placed, finally, in a foster home where there were many other children. That time, the placement took.

It was the aim of the administration to place as many children as possible. They didn't have much luck with boys or girls over ten.

My classroom in the gatekeeper's lodge was furnished with a splintery table, my desk, small, scarred desks for the children, a blackboard, and a single shelf holding a few battered texts on chemistry and mathematics. I was to tutor them in reading and composition. In most cases, they were far better at arithmetic than I was.

Sometimes I stayed as much as an hour beyond the prescribed time. We would tell stories then. Unlike the concentration camp children, they were eager to talk about their lives. We would also speak of animals, or ghosts or food, anything at all. They liked the high drama of revolting foods: frogs' legs, for example; sea-slugs, which I told them could be found in Chinese markets; or certain highly prized maguey worms in Mexican cuisine. At that time, rattlesnake meat had a brief, I hope, run as a delicacy in this country. Several of the children found a can of it in a grocery in one of the local towns and brought it to me one night, even remembering to bring a can opener. I failed the test gastronomically, but passed it to their satisfaction when I shrieked and pleaded with them to take the can out of my sight.

They liked to hear about my childhood in Cuba. In return, they told me appalling stories of their own early years, of beatings, of being locked in dark places, of setting fires, of tormenting animals and drunks. It was hard to listen. I soon perceived that the neutrality I had assumed was called for was not what they wanted. They needed it, perhaps, from their therapists, but not from me. I reacted pretty much as I felt. It occurred to me that what they would have liked very much was to have heard Charles Dickens read from
Oliver Twist
. It would have confirmed their sense of reality, of the truth of their own lives. It was what they knew, though it was terrible.

There are two boys I remember especially. One was twelve-year-old, illegitimate Danny, who had broken into a neighboring village liquor store one night. He was found by the police, lying among smashed bottles, dead-drunk. He was brought back to Sleepy Hollow where he lay sick and weak for several days. He was a small, thin boy with delicate Irish features. His history was told to me briefly by his social worker. His mother, an alcoholic, had become a prostitute to earn the money to maintain her drinking habit. When Danny was ten, she pushed him out onto the street and locked the door. He hung around for a week, eating out of garbage cans, sleeping in alleys, until the police picked him up. The other children told me he was “bad” to animals.

One evening he was the first to arrive at the gatehouse. He was in a temper, cursing in a way that would seem quaint in these days—a few
damns
and a
hell
or two. When I asked him what was wrong, he told me the minister had reproached him for throwing earthworms into a can of lye.

“I wanted to see what would happen,” he explained without a touch of slyness. “You knew what would happen,” I retorted. “You don't like what I did, either,” he said. “No, I don't,” I agreed.

Sensing danger, cats and stray dogs fled at Danny's approach. Someone on the staff had an idea. They got him a small donkey. He tried very hard to knock the donkey senseless. But though he punched it and kicked it, the donkey took to him and followed him faithfully. After a few weeks, he began to love it. I often saw the two of them, the donkey cropping grass, or wandering among bushes to scratch his hide, and Danny, his arm around the animal's bobbing neck, talking to it.

During my year at Sleepy Hollow, Danny, who had seemed only a large, insoluble problem, really began to get better at everything, his schoolwork, his relations with other children, and in his treatment of animals. He was witty. One evening he came to the classroom carrying one of the long bamboo poles the children were allowed to take to the banks of the river and fish. On its hook was an expiring daisy, which he had apparently plucked roots and all, from the ground. Yes, it was for me, he said in his dry little voice, adding that he wouldn't touch a flower with a ten-foot pole.

I was a smoker. He used to try to cadge cigarettes from me. Because the children liked to rummage in my handbag, I kept cigarettes in my pocket. But they had seen me smoking after class on my way to my car.

Danny stayed on one night after the children had gone. “How about giving me a couple of cigarettes?” he asked. “It's almost Christmas.” I shook my head. “Just one?” he wheedled. “Not a piece of one,” I replied. “Aw—come on!” he begged. “They won't hurt me!”

My heart quickened; it was as if a remote creature had, after a silence that seemed permanent, suddenly spoken its name. What I heard inside his words was his belief that I was concerned about his well-being. I didn't give him a cigarette, but I got permission to take him for a short drive down to the river. The only thing he said was to observe with slight disdain that I didn't have a car radio. When I dropped him off, I saw the donkey emerge from the shadow of some trees and trot along after him as he went toward his cottage.

One night, there was trouble. Two older boys got into a fight in the narrow hall outside the classroom. They had gotten hold of two long barbecue forks. The phone to the main house where there was a night guard was often out of order, and it was that night. In my first moment of panic, I had tried to use it.

I grabbed the boy I knew best by his shirt collar, and holding on to it for dear life, climbed up on one of the tables. I still recall the anguish I felt. I think I said, or rather, cried out, something like, “Is this what thousands of years of human life is to come to? Is this all we are—snarling, murderous things?” This wild, vague oratory and the tears of frustration that were rolling down my cheeks, caught their attention. The fight stopped abruptly. The children stared at me with wonder and considerable amusement. The brother of the boy whose collar I had grabbed came over to me as I sank into a chair, and patted my head. “That's all right,” he said soothingly, as though
I
were the child. “Don't worry. It's okay now.”

What happened that night remains a mystery to me. Sometimes I've thought the fight stopped because I said
we
instead of
you
. I'll never know.

After I left my job at Sleepy Hollow, I heard that Danny had made friends with an older boy. After lights out, they read
Huckleberry Finn
together with a flashlight. One dark night, they ran away. They made it all the way to Maryland, to the place where the Susquehanna River flows into Chesapeake Bay. They stole a rowboat. They had gotten only a few hundred yards from the shore when the owner of the boat spotted them. They were sent back to Sleepy Hollow. A long time later, when I reread
Huckleberry Finn
, I thought of Danny. I wondered if there was anyone alive who wouldn't have wanted someone to say to him, to her, “Come on up on the raft, Huck, honey. . . .”

Another of my students was Frank, the oldest boy in Sleepy Hollow. He was nearly seventeen, and he attended the local high school. He was tall and thin, quick on his feet and, as he said about himself, made for basketball. But he didn't like sports at all. What he was interested in was outer space.

He had spent most of his life in foster homes. He had a rootless quality; he always seemed at the point of departure. He perched on the edge of his desk and listened tolerantly while I tried to show him what a complete sentence was, but he was thinking of something else.

If someone had told you Frank was a sociopath, which someone had told me, you might have had difficulty attaching that word to Frank. He loved the talking part of those evenings, after the work was done—the stories, the jokes, the drift of spoken memories.

I saw him angry once. That was when the Sleepy Hollow children who went out to schools in the neighborhood were issued special food tickets. It seemed they frequently spent the money they were allotted on candy and cigarettes, instead of lunch. The local kids did, too. Drugs were not available in those days as they are now.

Frank, and the other children, refused to go to their schools until the administration stopped the use of the tickets. It was hard enough for them to be known as institution inmates, but to be so dramatically singled out as they were at that moment when they had to hand over their maroon tickets to the cafeteria cashier was intolerable to them.

They were often bullied and baited by the local children, who exalted themselves and their own circumstances—whatever these might have really been—at the expense of the strangers in their midst, a form of cruelty not restricted to children.

When Frank was seven, he had asked his mother to take him to a movie. She said she couldn't. A friend was driving her to an appointment with a doctor. Frank told her he wished she was dead. She was killed a few hours later in an accident. Frank's father had deserted his family several years earlier. There was no one to take care of Frank and his brother. They began their foster home lives a few weeks after their mother's death.