Somebody Else’s Kids (29 page)

She braced her head with one hand. The silence came again. This time, however, it was diseased. I did not want it there but I could not make it go away. Claudia was self-absorbed, looking somewhere within herself and not at me.

Finally she looked back at me. “You think I’m dirty, don’t you? Because of what I’ve done.”

“No.”

That silence again. “I do,” she said slowly. “Sometimes I take three showers a day and still I feel dirty.”

T
he day following my discussion with Claudia, I renewed attempts to get her parents to find psychological help for her. It was not so much what Claudia had done but why she did it and how she felt about it that made me feel help was essential. I wanted her family to understand that the kind of help Claudia needed could not be provided for her in the schoolroom. I was a teacher and my jurisdiction was only over those things that happened during the time the child was with me. Claudia’s problems were much more far-reaching, and they needed intervention if we were not to end up confronting more serious problems down the line. The mother was willing to agree to my face that Claudia needed help but she would not carry through with it. The father was much less tactful. And because Claudia was presenting no problems at all in my classroom, my hands were tied when it came to initiating any action myself.

I had decided to eat lunch in my room so I could catch up on some paperwork that Lori’s troubles had caused me to put off. In addition, report cards were due soon and as always I was behind on that.

The door opened. Mrs. Franklin stood there hesitantly, her head in, the rest of her out. “Am I bothering you?”

“Come on in.”

A joyful smile broke over her face. She pulled Boo in behind her and shut the door. “I came to show you … Boothie had …” She halted just in front of the table. “Well, Boothie … I think, I think maybe he’s getting better.”

She hoisted Boo up on the table and took off his shoes and socks. Boo dissolved into a fit of giggles over all this attention. Putting away the last of my lunch and brushing off the crumbs, I moved my chair over for a better view.

“Now look,” she said. “Here, Boothie, here.” She began to wiggle his bare toes. “One little piggy? What’s this, honey? One little piggy went to market?”

Boo leaned forward to see his feet. Excitedly, he flapped his hands out to the sides. Again Mrs. Franklin wiggled his big toe with her fingers. Boo was definitely interested.

“Come on, Boothe Birney, show your teacher what you can do. Come on, be good for Mama. One little piggy …”

By this time I was curious too. We all bent over Boo’s bare foot.

Then very slowly he stopped the fluttering. Reaching forward he grabbed a toe. “One little piggy go to market,” he said. “One little piggy stay home. One little piggy oi-oi-oi-oi all the way home!” Boo let out a squeal of pleasure.

Mrs. Franklin’s face was bright. “See? See? That’s just the way he used to say it before –” she paused. “Well, before he got older. Just like when he was a baby. Do it again, Boothie, do it for Mama.”

“One little piggy go to market. One little piggy stay home. One little piggy oi-oi-oi-oi all the way home! Oi-oi-oi-oi all the way home!” He shrieked, lifted his toes high in the air and clasped them. “Oi-oi-oi-oi all the way home!”

You would have thought he had just discovered a cure for cancer from the response he got from us for that accomplishment.

Mrs. Franklin was at least as excited as Boo. Over and over she caressed him, hugged his curly head to her coat, demanded the rhyme be repeated. “It’s just the way he used to say it,” she kept telling me, “Boothe Birney was too little to say it right when Charles would dry his feet and do it with him. Boothie always said oi-oi-oi. This is just like before he changed. It’s the first time he’s talked to us.”

Her words touched me. If love could have cured this boy, I had no doubt he would have been well. The hopes and fears of so many years rested in her words. Yet I think both of us knew love was not going to do it. We were like relatives of a terminally ill patient savoring this present moment of health, however illusory. We both knew that there would probably be no future, save dreams.

Boo capered off the table and out across the room, leaving a trail of jacket, gloves and hat. Mrs. Franklin looked at me. “He’s getting better, isn’t he?” The hope in her voice made it quiver. “He is getting better. This is a good sign, isn’t it?”

“Every little thing matters,” I replied.

“We might get him to say mama,” she said softly. “Just once. Don’t you think?”

I nodded.

And Tomaso was blooming. Of all the children, he was making the most noticeable progress. Most of his annoying little habits were entirely gone. Even the swearing had decreased to a more acceptable level. Most important, we were at last getting a handle on his explosions. They still happened but were much shorter and more easily controlled. I no longer had to hold him. Telling him to go sit down until he had things under control was enough. With the single exception of his birthday party, he no longer exhibited violent, destructive behavior.

A major contributor to his improvement was his relationship with Lori. Appointing him her reader had been an unexpected bonus for both of them. Tomaso took the responsibility with the utmost seriousness, and whether the change was caused by the boost to his self-esteem or by being tangibly so important to someone, I did not know. Perhaps he was just too busy to get mad. But from that mid-March appointment on, he became much calmer and more even-tempered.

Tom, himself, recognized his new status in the room. “I have to watch myself,” he told me one afternoon. “She depends on me to get things done. I can’t get mad so much anymore because I always have to stick around to make sure she’s all right.” He had grinned at me. “I’m what you’d have to call a real good friend, huh?” I had to agree to that.

The only problem of Tomaso’s that continued to trouble me was his reliance on his dead father. I think he did know his father was dead and had been dead more than half Tom’s life. Yet every day there was a comment or two spoken as if the man were still alive and very active in Tomaso’s existence. My own conclusion was that Tomaso was living a fantasy much of the time in which his father played a major part. I did not especially object to the fantasy itself. Undoubtedly it served a necessary purpose in Tomaso’s unstable life. Still, I had a hard time when he persistently tried to coerce us in the outer world to be a part of it. And the realism of some comments unsettled me.

I did not know how to treat the problem. For a while I simply ignored the situation and hoped it would go away. It did not. And sometimes I worried that perhaps he really could not always tell the difference between what was true and what he wished were. Worse, the kids on the bus he rode had begun to tease him about “superdad.” The time had come to confront the issue.

Tomaso provided the opportunity himself. One afternoon late in the month he came in carrying a large plaster statue of a bullfighter. I had seen similar statues in the windows of stores which cater to people who do crafts. By the looks of the thing, it was something he had colored himself. The paint job was bright to the point of being garish, put on with eleven-year-old expertise.

“Lookie here,” he called, lugging the statue over to the worktable. Lori and Boo swarmed up to check the item out. Claudia had not yet arrived. “It’s a bullfighter. Just like my father’s grandpa used to be. Just like him.”

“Wow,” Lori said appreciatively. “It’s big.”

“Ain’t it pretty?”

“Yeah!”

Tomaso puffed out his chest. “Guess what.”

“What?”

“My father made this for me. My real father.”

I gave him a suspicious look. “Oh?”

“Yup. He made it for me. Just for me. See, first he sculptured it and then he baked it in this real hot oven to make it hard. Then he painted it.”

“Wow,” Lori said again. “You mean he just took a lump of clay and made a bullfighter out of it? Wow.”

“Yup, that’s what he did.”

“He sure is a good artist,” Lori said. “I wish my dad could make something like that for me. You’re lucky. My dad can’t even color and stay in the lines.”

“Well, my father’s special. He can do lots of things. He can make you anything you ask him to. Why, if I see a toy at the store, I just ask my father to make it for me and he does. He’s made me probably five hundred toys. And they always turn out better than anything in the store.”

“Would he make me something?” Lori asked.

Claudia came in at that point. When she saw us all around the table, she walked over. “What’s this?”

“It’s a bullfighter.” Lori said. “Tomaso’s father sculptured it himself just for Tomaso.”

Disbelief broke over Claudia’s face and she leaned forward to examine it. “Oh come on, Tomaso, you lie. Your father didn’t make this. This is one of those things from the ceramic shop. You pour it in a mold.”

“He did so make it, Claudia. He just saw one of those things in the ceramic shop and made one that looks just like it.”

“Oh hah, Tomaso. You probably did it yourself. Look at it. No grown-up would paint it like that. You lie and you know it.”

Tomaso’s face reddened. “What do you know? How come you think you’re so smart anyway? My father did so make this.”

“Okay, you two, enough,” I interjected, intent on heading off a battle. “It’s time you got started on school work anyway. Tom, put your statue up on the window ledge.”

“She’s calling me a liar. Why don’t you do something to her?”

“Tom, calm down. Put your statue over there now. We’ll deal with the issue when I don’t hear upset voices.”

“No! You’re on her side. You always take her side.”

“Tomaso.” My no-nonsense voice.

“Shut up! Just shut up. What does everybody pick on me for? Just shut up. I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I know you feel I’m being unfair but getting angry won’t help. Sit down.”

The other children began moving out of range. They too knew Tom was reaching the boiling point. I signaled them to get busy. Lori grabbed hold of Boo. Claudia loitered a moment longer. She and Tomaso had a maddeningly siblinglike rivalry on occasion, and Claudia seemed to love seeing him get into trouble. “Shoo,” I said to her with a flick of my hand. She took up her work folder and went to her desk.

Tomaso glared in my direction and continued to stand. I took the statue over to the windowsill. Then I pointed to a chair. His eyes narrowed. I pointed again. After a long, face-saving delay, he sat.

“Okay, let’s talk,” I said.

“I don’t wanna. You always take her side. You take everybody’s side but mine.”

“Suppose you explain your side of it.”

“You heard. Are you deaf or something? She called me a liar. She made fun of my statue and you didn’t even say anything. Some teacher you are.”

“She said your father didn’t make it.”

“He did! He made it for me. He knew I liked Spain stuff and he made it for me.”

What to say next? His dark eyes blazed, no denial in them.

“Tom?” Not a question really, my voice quiet.

Silence from him.

“Sometimes life isn’t exactly the way we wish, is it?”

He shook his head. His displeasure made the motion more of a jerk than a shake. He looked down at his hands in his lap.

“And sometimes we sort of need to tell ourselves small stories. They aren’t always very true but they make us feel better. That’s an okay thing, Tom, to an extent. It’s all right to pretend things as long as we know they aren’t the truth. But it isn’t right when we start trying to make other people believe them. They’re just stories for ourselves.”

“
It isn’t a story,
” he muttered at his fingers.

“Tom.”

“It
isn’t!”
His head remained down.

I did not reply. The silence grew long and cold around us. And it was brittle.

At last he brought a hand up and braced his forehead. “I wish he did make it for me.” His voice was so small I almost could not hear.

“Yes, I can understand that.”

Dark eyes met mine. There was such sorrow in them. “I miss him. Why did he have to go away for?” Tom folded his arms on the table and lay his head down. He was not crying; there was not even the trace of tears behind his voice. Only desolation. I reached my hand out and pushed my fingers through his hair.

Tomaso turned his head to look at me. His eyes fixed on some invisible point between us. “He’s dead. You knew that, didn’t you. My father is dead.”

“I knew.”

“I tried not to hear them. I kept my hands over my ears,” he said. “But they were yelling too much. I tried not to hear them but you couldn’t help it, they were so loud. And me and César, we were on the couch.”

“César?”

“My brother. Him and me, we slept on the couch. But she had this gun. I don’t know where she got it from; I never seen it before. But she had it. And when César saw it, he got off the couch. She told him not to, but he got off anyway. He was crying. And she says, ‘You better get back on that couch or I’ll beat you with the lamp cord but good.’ And my father, he yells at her. He yells at her … he yells …”