A Safe Place for Joey

Joey dragged himself up to my office at a quarter to six the Tuesday after school started. He stood in the middle of the floor and raised his arms and then let them drop. “The bad news is, I got Madden. The next bad news is, I’m still not in a group – there’s the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Orioles, and me. The next bad news is, she made me miss gym and stay after school, too! I’m never going to make it through second, Mary!”

“Sit down, Joey. I’m glad to see you. Pay yourself forty. That’s a lot of bad news.”

I’d been thinking about Mrs. Madden ever since our phone call. I had silently hoped against hope that somehow she and Joey would communicate even though she and I hadn’t been able to. Evidently that hadn’t happened.

I looked at Joey. “Okay. I hear you. So you got a tough teacher. You’re a tough kid. You can figure out how to get through second grade.”

Joey rolled slowly to one side and then silently toppled from his chair to the floor. He sprawled across the grey carpet – eyes closed, body limp as a rag doll. I sat watching. After a full minute had passed, Joey opened one eye and squinted up at me. I looked benignly back, waiting for the full show. There was no question that Joey knew how to put on a wonderful act.

Sure now that I was watching, Joey rolled his eyes up into his head so that white, pupil-less eyes stared out at me, and his legs and arms flailed up and down. The kids in school must have loved it.

“Okay now, Joey. That’s enough.” I reached down and hoisted him back up beside me. “We’ve only got forty-five minutes. We don’t have time for any of that stuff. Besides, I don’t like it. The next time you hit the floor it costs you one hundred.”

“One hundred!” Joey howled. “Cripes! You wouldn’t do that!” He put his hand protectively over the red plastic dish that held his chips.

“You know I would. But I’ll tell you what. This first month of school, every day of September that you make it through with Mrs. Madden I’ll pay you a hundred.”

“What do you mean, like … like if I don’t have to stay after school?”

“Right. And don’t get sent to the principal or have to miss gym. Things like that. You’re going to have to be so good, Joe. Not just a little good, but one hundred percent good every day. Never mind about the Red Sox – I know you can read and you’ll learn to read better. But you have to hand in whatever work Mrs. Madden gives you. Always remember your homework, keep your desk clean, keep yourself in your seat, raise your hand before you say anything, stay in line and a whole lot more.”

“I don’t know. It sounds like a pretty terrible life.”

“Well, Joey, consider the alternatives.”

“What’s alternatives?”

“Other choices. Like failing second and having to stay back and have Mrs. Madden all over again.”

“Oh, boy.”

During the fourth week of school I decided to drop in on Mrs. Madden. If my phone calls didn’t work, I had to find some other way to discover what was going on in school.

At ten after three I walked down the hall to second grade, nodding to the janitor. I’d been in the school many times to talk to other children’s teachers, but I’d never encountered Mrs. Madden before.

She was seated at her desk going over papers when I tapped on the window. Her grey hair was neatly and tightly curled against her head. The bow of her blouse hung in two perfect loops between the lapels of a maroon suit. Mrs. Madden got up and walked slowly across the room.

She opened the door and stood without smiling.

“Mrs. Madden? I’m Mary MacCracken,” I said.

“Yes. I thought as much.” She made no move to invite me inside.

“May I talk to you for ten minutes?” I knew all teachers were expected to stay until three thirty.

She looked at the clock over the door. “Three twelve. All right. Come in.”

I followed her to the front of the room, and she motioned me to a chair beside her desk. I sat facing Mrs. Madden, aware that the room was much more pleasant than I had expected. The large, sunny windows to my left were filled with leafy green plants of all sizes. A fish tank hummed on the window sill. The blackboard had the day’s homework assignment printed neatly in the left-hand corner, and five short sentences about a trip to the police station were lettered in the middle. Had Mrs. Madden actually taken her class to the police station?

I held two of Joey’s folders on my lap. One contained the written report of the testing I had done (I had asked the Stones’ permission to bring it), the other some of his recent work. But I didn’t open either. I was there to try to find out how Mrs. Madden and Joey were getting on. Did she realize the potential he had? Was he working? Was he learning?

“May I ask how Joey is doing?”

Mrs. Madden reached for her grade book. “You have the parents’ permission, I assume.” I nodded, and she read from the book: “Arithmetic: 68, 75, 90, incomplete, incomplete, 80. Reading workbook: 55, 72, incomplete, incomplete, incomplete, 84, incomplete, incomplete. Spelling: 45, 25, 60, 50. There are no incompletes in spelling because everyone takes the test on Friday, ready or not. Phonics: 60, 50, incomplete, incomplete, incomplete, incomplete, 60.”

Mrs. Madden snapped her grade book shut. “You will have to consult with the specials about gym, art, library, and remedial.”

“Thank you,” I said, putting my notebook back in my purse. “There seem to be a lot of incompletes.”

“Yes. Joseph often doesn’t complete his work. This is partly due to his not paying attention, so he doesn’t understand what to do. He always wants me to go over it again with him. I do not believe in this. He must learn to listen.

“The other reason he gets behind is that he’s out of the room so much,” Mrs. Madden continued. “Out with the reading teacher, out for some program or other. Out for this. Out for that. No wonder he gets behind in his class work.”

I got the strong impression that Mrs. Madden didn’t believe in remedial help any more than she did in tutors. Well, at least she didn’t seem overly anxious to get Joey out of her room, and that was a positive sign.

The clock ticked its way toward three twenty-five, and I stood up, to reassure Mrs. Madden that I would not linger.

“One last question. Would it be possible to borrow an extra copy of any of Joey’s books? Spelling, arithmetic, phonics?”

Mrs. Madden shrugged, stood up, smoothed out her unwrinkled maroon skirt. “Call Mr. Templar, our principal. That’s up to him.”

“Thank you,” I said as I walked toward the door. “I appreciate your time and your interest in Joe.”

Mrs. Madden accepted my appreciation with a nod as she eased me out the door. “I will tell you one thing,” Mrs. Madden said magnanimously. “It doesn’t show in the grade book, but that boy is a lot smarter than those Child Study Team tests show. A lot smarter!”

I stared at Mrs. Madden, restraining a nearly overwhelming impulse to hug her. “I agree,” I almost shouted. “But how did you find out? Did you give Joey some tests of your own?”

Mrs. Madden turned back to her classroom. Like a queen in her kingdom she pronounced, “After thirty years, I don’t need tests.”

Joey dragged the heavy plastic bag across my office floor. “Mr. Templar said to bring you these.” He dumped the contents onto the carpet beside the desk and moaned out loud as his reading, math, spelling, and phonics books fell out. “Oh, no. It’s horrible to have to do them in school. It’ll be even horribler to have to do them all over again here.”

We didn’t, of course, “do” the books, but Joey could show me where he was and what he didn’t understand. It was much easier for him than trying to explain it. Also, since Mrs. Madden proceeded page by page, chapter by chapter, I could look ahead and see what was coming up next, and let Joey become a little familiar with it before Mrs. Madden introduced it in class.

Mrs. Madden was still curt, but she was doing her part. She now answered my phone calls if I timed them right and sent Joey’s test papers in a sealed envelope on Fridays. She hadn’t complained or called the Stones in, except for the scheduled fall conference. All she told them then was that Joey still needed a lot of work, but that he was making progress. The main thing was what she didn’t say. There had been no mention of a special class.

My phone rang around noon one day in February. It was snowing hard and I had gone down to pick up the mail, so it took me five or six rings to get back to the phone.

“Mrs. MacCracken? This is Mrs. Madden. I almost hung up. I thought you must be out.” Disapproval edged her voice.

“Sorry.” I was so glad she’d initiated the call that it was worth sounding penitent.

“Yes. Well. Joseph is getting further and further behind in his B book. Phonics book, that is. He always has to go out when it’s time for phonics. Now he’s twenty pages behind – hasn’t even touched the magic e rule. I’d like him to do pages ninety-eight, one hundred one, one hundred five, and one hundred seven with you. That will give him an idea of what the others have covered. Don’t do the work for him. I want to see his own work. Send it in so I can check it. I’d have the specials do it with him, but they say they have too much work of their own.”

“All right,” I said, writing on the telephone book. “Page ninety-eight … could you give me those other pages again?”

I knew how the specials felt. This would take time that I would much rather spend on other things, but what mattered was that Mrs. Madden was becoming a member of our team. And that was a top priority.

There was no doubt about it. In spite of missed pages in the B book, Joey was flourishing. He added, he subtracted, he even multiplied a little. His facts still weren’t totally automatic and he sometimes got mixed up during subtraction and regrouping (another word for borrowing and carrying), but he understood what he was doing and he was one of the best in the class at problem solving.