The Girl Who Couldn't Smile (20 page)

The community centre where Little Scamps was based was like an ice block when we arrived, so Lonnie and I busied ourselves about the building, getting the heating going, putting something warming on the stove for breakfast and making the place as pleasant as possible. I had no idea how many children would arrive, but we had a responsibility to be open: many of our parents would have jobs that required them to work regardless of unpleasant weather conditions.

As it happened, only Gus and Tammy showed up. We had a high-spirited breakfast of porridge, buttered toast and hot chocolate, and Gus regaled us with stories of his Christmas bounty. Tammy, as usual, was silent throughout, but seemed to enjoy herself. Gus had arrived loaded with toys, but Tammy was characteristically empty handed.

‘Did Santa come to see you, Tam?’ I asked, as she sat beside me at the table, her legs dangling.

She nodded.

‘Want to tell me what you got?’ I enquired hopefully.

She shook her head and returned to her bowl of porridge.

There was no point in pushing things any further.

Neither was there any point in putting much of a shape on the day. With just two children in our group, Lonnie and I initiated a fairly easy routine, consisting mostly of free play. At around eleven thirty Gus asked if he and Tammy might hear about Samuel Whiskers and Tom Kitten again and I happily obliged. We sang some songs and then had lunch, and in the early afternoon we did some arts and crafts.

Lonnie could do amazing things with paper. His long, deft fingers would twist and fold a small sheet into a bird, a stag, a fox or a butterfly in just one or two rapid movements. Tammy, of all the children, loved this. She would gaze at him, eyes wide, as he placed each new creation in a little line, as if all the animals were going on parade just for her.

He was doing this during the afternoon’s art session, and I was on the other side of the table trying to make either head or tail of a letter that had arrived that morning from the HSE. It was written in the kind of official language only an organization as befuddled and autocratic as the health services can use and believe is effective.

‘They seem to be saying there are new guidelines for the running of early-years services coming on stream, but in the same sentence they’re telling me we don’t have to observe them if we don’t want to,’ I said, feeling a headache coming on.

‘Want me to turn the letter into a snowflake?’ Lonnie asked.

‘G – U – S! That spells “Gus”!’ Gus said.

He had a sheet of white paper in front of him, and a blue crayon in his hand. He was writing his name in big, confident capitals again and again on the page.

‘Hey, that’s great, Gus,’ I said. ‘You learned to write your name in capital letters over the holiday.’

‘No, I din’t,’ Gus said. ‘See dis crayon?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Dis is my
magic
crayon,’ he said. ‘’Member? I showed you afore.’

I did remember, but it had been so long ago it had never occurred to me that he would still have it. It was about half the size it had been when last he had declared its mystical properties, and looked as if it had spent some time under a bed or couch – a lot of fluff and dust was stuck to it – and a person or dog had chewed one end and left toothmarks. Gus seemed not one bit concerned about its sorry appearance.

‘Wit dis magic crayon, I can write my name any time I wants to. See: G – U – S – that spells “Gus”! I writed that.’

Tammy was watching him. Lonnie was deep in concentration, fashioning another paper member of his menagerie.

‘That is a really, really cool crayon, Augustus,’ I said. ‘Can you write anything else?’

‘Just axe me. Just axe me to write anything, and I bet I can do it.’

I thought about his challenge. ‘Can you write the letter … A?’

Gus ruffled his hair and puffed out his cheeks as if this was a huge request. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘“A” is one of the hardest letters to write. Everyone knows that.’

‘Do you think the crayon can manage it?’

‘Well, we better see. Here I go. The letter “A”.’

He drew a slightly wobbly, but quite legible representation of the letter on his page, sitting back as if exhausted by the effort. ‘There – I done it. It wadn’ easy, let me tell ya.’

I clapped. ‘Well done, Gus,’ I said. ‘That’s some crayon you’ve got there.’

‘It’s very magic, you know.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yeah. It is. I think it used to be the crayon of a wizard or something.’

I nodded. ‘That’s probably it.’

‘I have the power now.’

‘You sure do.’

Something occurred to me. ‘Do you think,’ I asked Gus, ‘that crayon might work for someone else?’

‘It might,’ he said, not sure at all.

‘I mean, if you were to loan it to Tammy for a second, d’you reckon she might be able to write her name – or anything else?’

Gus pondered that. He looked at the grubby crayon. Tossed it up and down on the palm of his hand. Wiped his nose on his sleeve. ‘Tell ya what,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll give it a try. I can’t
promise
my crayon will work for everyone, but maybe if we thinks really hard about it, it might.’

Gus handed me the crayon and I reached over and put it in front of Tammy. She looked at it as if it might give her a nasty infection. ‘Why don’t you see if you can use the magic?’ I asked. ‘I bet it’ll work for you.’ I pushed a sheet of paper across the table so it was within easy reach. Tammy curled her lip, then reached her tiny hand and dragged the paper to her. Giving me a really evil look, she picked up the blue wax crayon.

‘Could you write your name, Tammy?’ I asked.

Tammy looked at the page and scratched at it for a few seconds.

‘She
is
writin’ her name,’ Gus said in wonder. ‘The magic
is
workin’.’

After only a second or two, Tammy stopped and rolled the crayon back across the table. Then she hopped off her chair and went to her haven in the book corner.

‘Did you write your name, Tam?’ I asked, getting up and walking around to where she had been sitting.

There, in big blue letters, was a single word: ‘NO.’

‘Think she’s trying to tell you something?’ Lonnie asked, as he set a paper crane down at the end of his line.

When the thaw came it settled in slowly. The roads were clear by the third week in January, but there were still chunks of grimy grey snow clumped by the verges. Tiny particles of ice danced in the air in the early mornings where dew had frozen as it fell earthwards.

All the children came back to Little Scamps and life returned to some semblance of normality – well, almost normal.

The main change was in Milandra. I had expected her to come back in a raging fury, having unlearned everything we had gone to such lengths to teach her before Christmas. This, however, did not occur. In fact she was, if anything, even better behaved: more thoughtful, gentler and generally much more pleasant to be around.

She offered to help Gilbert get his coat on at home-time, wanted to set out the plates and jam-jars at breakfast, and was the first to share toys and books. We still had outbursts – she hadn’t turned into a saint – but the overall effect was quite surprising.

‘Do you think we’re dealing with an “invasion of the bodysnatchers” type of thing?’ Susan asked, as we watched Milandra helping Mitzi – over Christmas she’d put back
maybe three-quarters of the weight she’d lost – on to her chair.

‘I did wonder,’ I said. ‘But I’m actually just glad. That little girl should be in school. I’m going to ask Tristan to find out if we can’t get her assessed by an educational psychologist, see if the local primary school might take her next September.’

‘Have you talked to her parents about it?’

I sighed.

‘No. But I will. I reckon it might not be a bad thing to have Tammy there checked out, too. I believe that child is hiding an awful lot.’

I did the bus run that evening and spoke to Felicity (Tony, thankfully, was nowhere to be seen), who was delighted for Milandra to be assessed if we could arrange it. When I arrived at Tammy’s house I found Dale, her dad, in the garden, bundled up in a parka and woollen hat, an old racing bicycle turned upside down on the path. Tammy stood back, as if she was waiting to see what might happen.

‘Dale,’ I said, holding out my gloved hand. ‘Good to see you again.’

He nodded and continued trying to get the rusty chain back on to its mechanism.

‘How’s the car runnin’?’ he asked, then: ‘Go on in the house, Tamarra.’

The child went in through the open front door.

‘Yeah, it’s doing great,’ I said, smiling. ‘Haven’t had any trouble with it since. But listen, I’m here to ask you something.’

‘What?’

‘Dale, I believe that Tammy is gifted and I want to have her assessed by a psychologist. I’d like to have your permission to do so.’

The man swore and rattled about in a tool-box for a different wrench. ‘Is it going to cost me anything?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Then do what you fucking like,’ he said.

It was obvious there was to be no more discussion. I went back to the bus.

When I called Tristan about setting up the assessments, he told me there was a waiting list of at least twelve months. I pointed out that we did not have that long – while there was no great rush for Tammy, who was only three, Milandra would have to take up her place in eight months, and would need time to prepare for such a monumental move.

‘It’s always a pressure cooker with you, isn’t it?’ He sighed.

‘Things change fast around here,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to be able to roll with the punches.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said. ‘I might be able to call in some favours.’

A week later I had a call from Helena McQueen, a psychologist from the National Educational Psychological Services.

The assessment for Milandra was really just a formality. Helena, a bookish, quietly spoken woman in her early forties, spent an hour or so observing her at play with the other children, then took her into the office and did a series of IQ tests, looking at her capacity to understand numbers, words and some other concepts she would need to function within a classroom setting. She also looked at some of the work Milandra had done at Little Scamps – her art, some of the notes she had placed in the KB, and listened to us describing the changes we had seen in her over the time she had been with us.

‘Usually I would go away and consider the evidence,’ Helena said, ‘but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Milandra is quite ready for school. In fact, I would
strongly recommend she go directly into senior infants, with children of her own age group.’

‘Skip a year?’ Tush said. ‘Wouldn’t that overwhelm her?’

‘I don’t think she’ll notice,’ Helena said. ‘She’ll be starting in a new place, anyway, and she’s more than ready for the academics.’

Tammy was a more difficult proposition. She was hugely suspicious of Helena, and initially refused to acknowledge her presence. But the psychologist was well used to uncooperative children, and won her over within an hour or two of dogged perseverance (and some white chocolate buttons – never underestimate the power of bribery).

I had no idea how she was going to assess a child who was determinedly non-verbal, but Helena assured me it was quite possible. ‘There are many tests that require neither words nor the capacity to use sign language. I can already tell from observing Tammy and communicating with her that she has at least a normal grasp of language for her age. Leave her with me and we’ll see what else we can learn.’

Helena and Tammy went off into the office together, and I could see them through the glass, both obviously deep in concentration. An hour later they emerged, and Tammy ran off to join her friends, who were playing skittles in the entrance hallway, which, long and thin, was perfect for the game.

‘That is a very bright child,’ Helena said, unable to hide a smile. ‘I would say she’s operating at a good three or four years beyond her age range, and I haven’t even been able to assess her verbal reasoning properly. I can tell you this, though – she can read, and read well.’

‘We suspected as much,’ I said, ‘but she’s always blocked any attempt we made to prove it.’

‘One of the ways we test non-verbal children is to give
them visual problems to solve,’ Helena explained. ‘We do things like showing them a series of shapes, all different colours, and ask them to pick out the red circle. Or we show them a picture of a field of sheep with one cow in it, and ask them to choose the odd one out. That sort of thing.’

‘I would imagine she sailed through it,’ I said.

‘She did. So I went up a notch. She’s, what, three?’

‘She’ll be four in a month and a half.’

‘Children of her age should be just about able to put things in sequence along one set of characteristics. So, if I ask her to put all the red blocks in a row out of a pile, she should be able to do it, but I would expect her to have trouble with all the
triangular
red bricks. Not Tammy. I tried a different sort of sequencing test. I showed her a series of cards with the days of the week written on them. Except they were running the wrong way around. Instead of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and so on, these went Sunday, Saturday, Friday.’

‘So you showed her a series of
words
?’ I said.

‘The trick to solving series problems is working out the rule,’ Helena said. ‘But with this one, she had to be able to read the words to be able to work it out. But she did. Paused for all of ten seconds before arranging them into the correct order.’

I wanted to leap about like Tom Cruise on
The Oprah Winfrey Show
, but held back.

‘The days of the week are on every calendar in every room in the world,’ I said. ‘Look, we have them on the timetable over there. Isn’t it possible she saw them as
shapes
, symbols she recognized, and had memorized the order?’

Helena grinned. ‘I gather you’ve studied child psychology.’

‘Little bit. But, really, isn’t that possible?’

‘It is, but I’m a little more thorough than that. I then showed her the words “red”, “blue”, “yellow”, “black” and
“sweet”, and asked her which was the odd one out. She chose “sweet” without hesitation.’

I sat back, suddenly a little light headed. ‘Shit,’ I said.

‘My thoughts exactly,’ Helena said. ‘You have a gifted child on your hands.’