Just Another Kid: Each was a child no one could reach – until one amazing teacher embraced them all

“Do you know what they did to me once?” Geraldine said, her voice soft.

“What’s that?” I said, not knowing who or what she was talking about, but, noting the faraway tone of her voice, not wanting to ask.

“They put me in a dustbin.”

She drew nearer to me. I extended my arm to pull her in.

“I was up on the High Street. I wasn’t supposed to be there. Mammy didn’t let us go there by ourselves, but I had some money and I wanted to buy some sweeties at the newsagent’s. But when I saw their school uniforms, I knew I shouldn’t go in there, so I turned around and crossed the street and went down between the houses. But those boys saw me and they started to chase me.”

I looked down at her.

“I was running as hard as I could, but they were bigger than me, and they caught me. This one boy held me down and took my money. Then he and the others picked me up and put me in a dustbin. They sat on it and wouldn’t let me out.”

I pulled her close against me. “None of the children here would do a thing like that, Geraldine.”

She didn’t respond immediately, but Shemona rose to her feet and moved closer to us.

“I don’t know,” Geraldine said softly. “I’ve never gone to school with Prods before.”

On the following Monday, Tom Considyne again brought Leslie to school. Then, in the afternoon when I took the children down to their rides, there was Dr. Taylor’s familiar dark blue Mercedes. She got out of the car when Leslie and I approached, but she remained on the street side of it.

“Hello,” I said, and smiled politely. Bending down, I opened the rear door and helped Leslie in. I fastened her safety belt.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come in again last week,” Dr. Taylor said, as I straightened up and shut the car door.

“That’s all right.”

“I meant to.”

“That’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

There came a small moment’s hesitation. She had her eyes averted. Feeling uncomfortable in the situation, I stepped back and prepared to return to the building.

“’Bye, Leslie,” I said, leaning down to wave to her. “See you tomorrow.” I looked over at her mother. “Good-bye, Dr. Taylor.”

“No, wait,” she said.

Opening the car door, she retrieved something off the seat. “I’m no good at talking about things,” she said in a weary voice. “That’s why I didn’t come in. This is all I could think of.” And she slid a green-covered spiral notebook across the roof of the car toward me. I had to move quickly to keep it from sailing off onto the ground.

She said no more. Getting into the car, she shut the door, started the engine and drove away.

I flipped through the notebook. It was a diary.

Going back upstairs, I returned to the classroom and sat down at the table. The notebook was completely filled in, from one edge of the page to the other, with no margins, each page, front and back. Virtually every line was covered in small, tight, very precise handwriting. The diary spanned a period of several months during the previous year. From glancing at its last page, I assumed it must continue on in another notebook.

Consuela’s gone to her mother’s for the weekend. I make Leslie supper. She throws it on the floor because I forgot to put on her red bib first. While I am trying to scrape it up, Leslie has a b.m. and it gets all over the kitchen chair. Tom comes in and yells at me because I haven’t gotten her to the toilet. He says I should know by now when she is going to go. He gets angry because the creamed corn has gotten all over the new carpet and the cat is licking it up. I say, if you don’t like it, you can help. But he slams the door and goes to the studio. He doesn’t come in for supper, so I have to give Leslie her bath and put her to bed alone. She hates this and does not go to sleep until 12:30 a.m.

“What’s that?”

Startled, I jumped and slammed the notebook shut. Carolyn was standing behind me. I’d been so engrossed, I hadn’t heard her come in.

Carolyn craned her neck, curiosity brightening her expression. “What’s that?”

“Just something someone gave me to read.”

Carolyn grinned wickedly. “Must be interesting.”

I grinned back. “It is.”

“Is it dirty?”

“Not so far.”

“Anybody I know?”

“Couldn’t say.”

She eyed me a moment to see if I’d give in and tell her, but when she realized it was unlikely, she shrugged. “Anyway, I came to find out if you wanted to go to that do over at Jefferson. It’s Madge’s thirty-umpteenth birthday, and the girls in the office got her a cake.”

I shook my head. “No. I’ve got a ton of work to do.”

“Goodness,” Carolyn replied. “That thing must be interesting.”

I reopened the notebook after Carolyn had gone.

The house reeks of urine. There is no way to keep up with all the wet clothes and carpets and furniture. I’m sure the man from the carpet cleaners thinks we’re a bunch of deviants out here, because he’s cleaned so much pee off our things. But Tom keeps insisting it’s wrong to put Leslie in diapers because, he says, she can’t pull the diapers down fast enough and it makes her frustrated. I tell himLeslie’s constant messes frustrate me. I tell him he can clean the shit off things for a while. He tells me if I were more vigilant, I’d get her to the toilet when she needs it. He tells me if I’d been a good mother, we’d never have been in this spot to begin with.

It’s Tom’s turn to take Kirsten and TJ. I don’t know how I am going to put up with Kirsten and TJ, as well as Leslie, for two whole weeks. Kirsten calls Leslie “Queero Baby” all evening. I go in the bathroom and find that Leslie has opened the childproof lock on the cupboard again. This from a kid who can’t master the tapes on disposable diapers. She has spread Kirsten’s moisturizer all over the mirror and then drawn through it with Kirsten’s eyeliner. Everything is in chaos. Kirsten is livid. She is going out with Sam-the-Bam this evening and now maintains Leslie has wrecked her life. I tell Kirsten she can use my makeup. She looks through it and then knocks the whole works on the floor. Oooh, it’s an accident, she says. I get angry and then Tom comes to see what’s going on and gets angry at me. He says I am as bad as the kids, that I am stupid for always letting Kirsten upset me. She is only fifteen, for God’s sake, and I am thirty-two and ought to know better. I start to cry. I don’t mean to, but the bathroom is such a mess and everything is everywhere and half of it is broken and Leslie is covered head to toe and will need her hair washed. And all I wanted was to go to bed early. Kirsten is smiling. I tell Tom he is doing just what Kirsten wants by taking sides against me. Tom says I am doing just what Kirsten wants by getting so upset. The way it seems, we all do just what Kirsten wants. When I finally go to bed, there is a little note folded in between the sheets. It has been written in eyeliner pencil and says, “Cry baby cry/Punch you in the eye/Tie you to the bedpost/Leave you there to die.”

I’ve got the pills. 271. That should be enough. I get a bottle of scotch and sit down with them. I divide them into groups of five. I think I can swallow five at a time. But then I stop and put the bottle back. I get to thinking about something I read once about how a lot of people vomit pills back up if they use alcohol, so I decide to use water. My stomach’s so shot anyway. Some days I throw up just brushing my teeth. Garson comes in. He jumps on the desk and walks over the pills. He wants to be petted and is very insistent. He rubs against my cheek and jumps back up when I put him down. His purr is very loud and urgent. He must be petted. I tell him what a nuisance he is and throw him on the floor. But he keeps getting back up. He keeps purring and trying to get cuddled. I start to cry. I think. What will happen to Garson? Tom’ll have him put to sleep if I am gone, and this makes me hate Garson. I hate him because I love him. It makes me cry harder. I end up getting the bottle of scotch back out. I feel like a real turd. And stupid Garson has knocked the fucking pills everywhere.

I closed the notebook after reading that. It was by no means the last entry. There were pages and pages more. But at that point, I couldn’t read any further. Elbows on the table, chin resting on my clasped hands, I sat and stared at the very ordinary-looking green cover.

When Dr. Taylor came in with Leslie the next morning, I took the notebook down from the shelf and handed it back to her. “Look,” I said, “will you come in and talk with me?”

She lowered her head.

“There are some real problems afoot, aren’t there?”

No response.

“I appreciate your having given this to me,” I said, “because it makes it a lot easier for me to understand, but I can’t do much if we don’t talk.”

She kept her eyes averted. Watching her, I was reminded of one youthful summer in Montana when I’d had a young, partly broken horse. My free time was devoured, trying to catch him. Quiet and reassuring as I always attempted to be, he remained wild-eyed and skittish, his trust in me always failing at the crucial moment. He wanted to come. I had the oats bucket on my arm and I could see the longing in his eyes. Occasionally he found the courage. But more often than not, he would approach, come within a few feet of me and then lose his nerve, rearing back and galloping off; and we’d have to start all over again. Dealing with Dr. Taylor was proving to be an exercise on par with wild-horse catching.

“Why don’t you come in this afternoon, after the school day is done. Say, about 3:45? We’ll just have a chat, okay? Nothing more. Just you and me.”

Still no response.