A Safe Place for Joey

by Mary MacCracken

  Tears stood in Charlie’s eyes. “You know what one kid told me when I was in second grade in that public school? He said somebody fed me ground-up glass when I was a baby and that was what made me retarded.”

  I pushed the tissues toward Charlie and said, “And you know that’s not true. Right? You remember I showed you your test scores that showed you are smarter than ninety percent of the kids your age.”

  “I remember,” Charlie said, blowing his nose. “And I believed you. Things seemed like they were going to be all right for a while. Like, I was doing pretty good before I went away. But now, I’m still the same.”

  “Yes. You are still the same and that’s good. You’re you and you’re going to stay you always. You don’t want to be somebody different every day, that would be too confusing. You’ll grow, you’ll learn how to do new things, you’ll get bigger and older, but you’ll always be Charlie Hammond. Nobody else can be you.

  “It’s true that it’s harder for you to remember some facts than it is for other kids. That doesn’t mean you can’t learn. You just have to use different techniques, and not get mad at yourself if it takes you a little longer or you forget sometimes. Gradually, it’s going to get easier, believe me, and then the parts that you’re good at will take off – whammo – and you’ll be right on grade level or above.”

  A car honked in the driveway, and Charlie walked to the lookout window. “It’s Mom. Does she know all this stuff about me?”

  “Yes. I’ve told both your mom and dad everything I’ve told you. I’ve told you before, too, Charlie – it’s just hard to remember it all.”

  “You’re telling me,” Charlie said.

  I walked out to the car with Charlie. June Hammond looked rested and tan and pretty.

  “A good vacation?” I asked.

  “The best we’ve ever had.” She smiled.

  “Good. I came out because I wanted to tell you that we didn’t get Charlie’s homework written down in his assignment pad this time. We got talking about why Charlie has trouble remembering things sometimes, and time ran out before we got to the homework. So would you just review the cards in his word bank with him? Divide the words he doesn’t know into piles of five and go over them, a pile at a time. If he forgets, just tell him the word and have him say it, trace it, and use it in a sentence. And if you could get a dollar’s worth of pennies and nickels and let Charlie practice counting by twos and fives, that would be a real help. Thank you. We’ll be back in the groove next time.” I touched Charlie’s shoulder. “See you then.”

  Charlie’s mother called early the next morning. Her voice certainly didn’t match her sunny face of the day before.

  “I know how busy you are,” she said, “but I wondered if I could make an appointment to come in and talk to you sometime this week?”

  “I have time up until eleven thirty today. There isn’t anything open tomorrow, but I have lunch time on Friday.”

  “Would ten this morning be all right?”

  “Yes. Fine. I’ll see you in a little while, then.”

  Mrs. Hammond’s eyes roamed across my desk and then around the room. “Uh … what I wanted to talk to you about … uh. I’m sorry, would you mind terribly if I smoke? I’m trying to give it up, but …” her voice trailed off.

  “I’ll get you an ashtray,” I said. “Just let me bring one up from downstairs.”

  Cigarette smoke was already curling to the ceiling when I got back, and she dropped the used match into the ashtray.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “It’s just that I didn’t sleep much last night. We … uh … had a big scene at the house. Charlie’s father is very upset. He says Charlie is worse now than before he came here. I know that’s not true, but I don’t know what to do about it. He wants Charlie to stop coming.”

  “When you say scene, do you mean argument?”

  Mrs. Hammond nodded. “Yes. Worse. We were all yelling. Charlie was crying. So was I after a while.”

  “How did it begin? What happened?”

  “Well, you know how you said to get the pennies and the nickels. It was too late to go to the bank, I mean the bank was closed and I wanted to get started right away. I do that sometimes. I want to help Charlie so much that I try too hard or go too fast or do too much and just end up making things worse.

  “Anyway, when I got home I began going through my purse, and then we opened Charlie’s piggy bank and we found some nickels and a bunch of pennies, but you had said a dollar’s worth and we still didn’t have enough. When Charlie’s father came home I asked him for his pennies and nickels, and he wanted to know why, and when I told him Charlie was supposed to count them, that’s when it started.”

  I nodded.

  “Jim said that Charlie knew how many pennies made a nickel years ago and that he had been able to count before he ever heard your name, and you were making Charlie worse by having him think he didn’t know things that he already did know.”

  I sighed.

  “I can see why it was confusing, and I really am sorry,” I said. “I should have explained more clearly. The idea was to have a concrete way of helping Charlie with multiplication. He was feeling a little panicked because he couldn’t remember two times seven or five times eight, and he had known them before he went to the shore. Multiplication is really just a quick way of counting, and I thought it would help Charlie if, for example, he could see the eight nickels and count by fives to forty.”

  “I know,” June Hammond said. ‘“Well, I mean I didn’t know, but Charlie did. He really did, and he tried to tell his dad about how you had laid out bottle caps to explain multiplication, but Jim never let him finish. He said the next thing he’d be hearing was that you and Charlie sat around drinking beer and trading bottle caps.

  “Jim doesn’t really mean it when he talks like that. It’s just that he’s upset about Charlie. We both are. He’s all we’ve got now.”

  Tears welled in Mrs. Hammond’s eyes.

  “Charlie’s brother died before Charlie was born. We lived in the city then. I’m sorry.”

  Mrs. Hammond stopped and wiped her eyes.

  “It’s hard for me to talk about it. Jason was four years old, and I was pregnant with Charlie. Jim had called me from the office one afternoon and said he had some good news. He wanted me to call Mrs. Edgars, our baby-sitter, and meet him for dinner at Mario’s. We didn’t have much money, but we’d gotten engaged at Mario’s and we always went back there when we had something to celebrate.

  “I really didn’t want to go. I’m always sick to my stomach when I’m pregnant, and besides, I was almost seven months and it was hard to sit in one place too long.”

  June Hammond stopped and lit another cigarette.

  “I’m sorry I’m taking so long. I don’t know how else to tell you.”

  “We have plenty of time,” I said.

  “Well, anyway, I called Mrs. Edgars. She lived in the next building over. I’d met her when Jason was a baby and I’d be out walking him in his carriage. Jason loved Mrs. Edgars – she was sort of like a grandmother to him, and we’d stop in to see her on our walks. And when Jim and I went out to the movies or someplace, though we didn’t go out often, she’d baby-sit for Jason.

  “Anyway, she said she couldn’t come because she had to go to her church circle meeting, but that her sister was visiting from Rochester and she’d ask her. She, the sister, I mean, had heard Mrs. Edgars talk so much about Jason.

  “So the sister came, and I left Jason with her.” Tears slid down Mrs. Hammond’s face. “He was dead when we got home,” she sobbed.

  “Dead?”

  “Well, not really dead, but as good as. It was boiling hot – Indian summer, I guess; I still get sick every year when it comes. So Mrs. Edgars’s sister opened a window in our apartment. The super had just taken the screens off that day to paint the trim and she didn’t notice, and the phone rang and she went out to the hall to answer it, and Jason must have climbed on a chair. Nobody really k
nows. Anyway, he fell out the window and dropped two stories into the side courtyard.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “She couldn’t find him,” Mrs. Hammond continued. “By the time she came back she thought he was hiding, playing a game, and she kept calling him. ‘Jason. Where are you, Jason?’ And then she heard people yelling, and she looked out into the courtyard and there was this little boy …”

  Mrs. Hammond’s sobs filled my office.

  I couldn’t talk.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I can’t stop now. I have to finish now that I’ve started. I’m sorry. We never talk about it at home.

  “The sister, Mrs. Hale her name was, was so upset she couldn’t find the pad with the phone number I’d left her, so no one knew where to reach us till Mrs. Edgars came home. She knew we usually went to Mario’s.

  “Jason had been in the hospital for two hours before we got there … all the time we’d just been eating, talking about Jim’s raise.

  “Anyway, Jason lived for almost another month. He was home for the last week. Jim wanted him to die at home. He took care of Jason. Jason could only take nourishment through a bottle and most of that he threw up. But Jim never once lost patience. He moved Jason’s old crib into the living room, and he slept there on the couch with Jason next to him in the crib.

  “Charlie was born six weeks early, three days after we buried Jason.”

  Tears were forming in my own eyes. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “So terribly sorry.”

  Mrs. Hammond sighed. “I thought I would die, too. I thought I would die in childbirth. I wanted to. Charlie’s delivery was very difficult. But somehow I didn’t. I was still there, and Charlie was, too. This little, tiny, black-haired baby. In an isolette – like a little glass coffin.

  “You know, I didn’t even want to go see him. I never told Jim, but I didn’t want to go down to the nursery to see Charlie at all. I thought I’d hate him. Since I’d lived I thought maybe it would feel like he’d killed Jason. But Jim made me go the next day, and I don’t know, the minute I saw him, I loved him.” She smiled – a sad, tired smile.

  “Have you and Jim – do you mind?” I asked. “It’s difficult to call him Mr. Hammond now.”

  “Oh, please, and call me June.”

  “Have you and Jim seen someone – a counselor or therapist?”

  June Hammond nodded. “Our minister was wonderful. We still go back into the city to see him. And we also went to a therapist for a while, but Jim didn’t think it was doing any good so we stopped.”

  “What did you think?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s true what they say about time being a great healer. It’s been over eight years now. I know I’ll never forget it, but I try to be grateful for everything else.”

  I stood up. The emotion in the room was so high that it was almost tangible, and we still hadn’t really talked about Charlie. June Hammond lit a cigarette, and I cleared my throat. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  Five minutes later I handed her the steaming mug and asked, “How much does Charlie know?”

  “I’m not really sure. As I said, Jim and I never talk about Jason now. But there are some photographs in the album, and Charlie’s asked questions. So he knows he had a brother and that he died. I think that’s probably all he knows. Why? Do you think that’s part of what’s wrong with Charlie?

  “You see, I couldn’t ask you before because Jim was always with me, and he doesn’t like other people to know about Jason. But please tell me, do you think Jason’s death – I mean, me getting so upset – did something to Charlie before he was born?”

  Slowly, carefully, I repeated once again what I knew about the causal factors of dyslexia and learning disabilities.

  “Nobody knows for sure what causes a child to have a learning disability,” I said as gently as I could. “Most of us who work with dyslexic kids feel that it has something to do with the neural development and how the brain is wired. It’s true that stress or use of drugs during pregnancy can cause changes, but so can lots of other things, such as heredity. In fact, some think now that the human chromosome fifteen may carry genes associated with learning disabilities. And I have always had a suspicion that eventually the neurologists will discover that the corpus callosum, that bundle of tissues that connects the right and left sides of the brain, will turn out to be even more important in the transfer of information and learning than we’ve expected.

  “But look, let’s talk about what we can do to help Charlie now.” I pulled a yellow pad toward me and said, “Maybe it would be clearer if I made a couple of lists. Column A will be Charlie’s strengths, and column B will be his areas of weakness.” I wrote:

  “Now, roughly, the plan is to use Charlie’s strengths to help him compensate for his weaknesses – and he can do it, I know he can; he’s doing it right now.

  “I can understand your worry, maybe even some feelings of guilt and also Jim’s impatience. But you’ve done so wonderfully well. Charlie is one of the nicest boys I’ve known, and he’s learning so much so fast. Really.

  “Try to convince Jim to let me keep working with Charlie. I’d be happy to talk to Jim myself if you think it would help, although I don’t seem to have done very well so far.

  “But now that Charlie’s been promoted, we can’t just let him flounder in fourth grade. And besides, Charlie and I like each other, or at least I like him.”

  “Oh, Charlie loves to come here. I thought he’d hate being tutored, but it’s just the opposite.”

  “All right,” I said. “Then I don’t think it makes sense to switch to another tutor. Ask Jim if he’ll give us half a year and then we can reassess the situation.”

  Charlie plunked his book bag beside the desk and said, “Mom says just to tell you that it’s okay. She says you’ll know what that means.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, what does that mean?”

  “That it’s all right for us to keep on working together.”

  “Well, that’s good. The house has been a mess the last couple of days. Everybody’s yelling. Now Mom’s got all these books out of the library, trying to figure out what’s the matter with me. She said you explained it to her and she understood it while she was here, but when she tried to tell it to Dad she got all mixed up, and he got madder than heck and said if Mom wasn’t paying your bills I certainly wouldn’t be coming here. And then he yelled at Mom, ‘I don’t want to discuss this any further,’ and slammed the door on the way out to work.”

  “I’m sorry, Charlie,” I said, and I really was. And not just for Charlie, but for Mr. Hammond and myself as well. Lack of paternal support made my job much harder.

  “It’s okay,” Charlie said. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t think anybody can really explain. I think I’m just somebody nobody knows.”

  “That sounds pretty lonely,” I said.

  Charlie nodded, his sweet face serious. “It is,” he agreed. Then he smiled, just a little, black eyes lighting up. “But I think maybe it’s going to get better.”

  “I called Mr. Dalwig yesterday,” I told Charlie at his last session before school began, “and he let me talk to your fourth-grade teacher. She sounded nice, but I had to promise not to tell you her name. They don’t want any of the kids to know who they’re getting until the first day of school.”

  “I’m glad it’s a she, anyway,” Charlie said. “At least that rules out old frog-face Hogan.”

  “Just forget I said ‘she,’ okay? Anyway, your teacher said that September will be mostly review in English and math, and that if I go over to the school they’ll lend me copies of the social studies and grammar books. So that sounds good.”

  And it was good. Charlie’s teacher, Mrs. Yager, was intelligent, confident, and creative. There were four fourth grades at Chapel, two with only ten children. Charlie was in one of these, but the work load was still heavy.

  Charlie took all his books home from school every night, whether he had h
omework in the subject or not. This was Charlie’s own idea, because to him the extra weight was worth the lack of worry. One of his problems the year before had been that even if he did remember to write down the assignment, he invariably forgot to bring the right book. We had worked out an alphabetical system of organization for schoolbooks, and I checked his book bag each time.

  “English grammar, math, reading, science, spelling, social studies, vocabulary. Good, Charlie.”

  “Yup,” Charlie said. “E, M, R, three S’s, and a V. Pencils and pens here in the zipper pocket and my assignment pad in the front. Here’s today’s.”

  Charlie had listed his assignments one under the other:

  Scnse – Rd C.2. No Q 1–6

  Sp Bok – Xse 10 11

  Math – qj 20 NM 1–15

  R – C3 nex F

  Enq – pj 10 und nons

  It might look like a foreign language to me, but it made sense to Charlie.

  “I had to write fast, so the spelling isn’t so good. I’ll read it to you. One. Science. Read chapter two. Answer questions one through six. Two. Spelling book. Do exercises ten and eleven. Three. Math. Page twenty. Do numbers one through fifteen. Four. Reading. That’s this.” He held up a paperback, The Riders of the Pony Express. “We have to read up to chapter three by Friday. Five is English. Page ten. Underline the nouns.”

  I was overwhelmed. How was Charlie going to handle all that work? He’d been doing a half hour of homework during the latter part of the summer, but this looked like a lot more than a half hour.

  “Are you going to be able to get all that done?” I asked.

  Charlie nodded. “I think I can. See, I already checked off science. We get to do most of that in class. I’m half done with math – it’s just addition and subtraction.”

  Charlie did a half page of nouns with me, and it was clear that he spotted them with no trouble. “Person, place, thing, or idea. Ideas are the only hard ones.”

  We alternated reading pages of The Riders of the Pony Express. Charlie either skipped the words he didn’t know or made a passing shot based on the shape of the word and the meaning of the sentence. I didn’t correct him. He was able to tell me what was happening in his own words, so I knew he’d understood what he’d read. I also knew he’d never get through the two chapters if he had to stop and figure out every word he didn’t know. I told him to try to write down the words he didn’t get and I’d teach them to him, but I wasn’t going to insist. He had enough to do as it was. We divided the remaining pages of chapters one and two in Pony Express by three (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights) and separated them with paper clips so Charlie would know how much he had to read each night.