Among School Children

by Tracy Kidder

  If she could have, she'd have avoided thinking about Robert now, but she saw him all too clearly. Robert was too big for his desk. He sat in his middle-person spot, lifting his desk up and down on his thighs, black hair in a crew cut, a broad white face, his lips very red under fluorescent light. One morning, at the start of math, Robert piped up in his squeaky voice, "Mrs. Zajac, do you want me to go out in the hall while you read the answers?" Robert meant the answers to last night's homework. This was his way of telling her he hadn't done his. He smirked.

  She was standing in front of the low math group, ready to begin. Her hands went to her hips. "Robert, I don't think this is any kind of a joke. I think it's kind of ludicrous that by now you aren't doing your homework. If you don't care, I'm on the verge of not caring. I'm sick of babying you."

  Robert looked up at her and made a small sound, like a mewling infant. Very bold for Robert.

  "Shut your mouth!" she said.

  Robert bowed his head slightly but started making little gabbing movements with his lips. Then he lifted his eyes to hers and made his eyebrows bob up and down.

  "Out!" she said. The imperious teacher finger pointed toward the door.

  "I'm going to leave him out there 'til he rots," she said to herself.

  On the blue carpet beneath Robert's desk, items accumulated. One day a myriad of expended staples. On another bits of paper torn from a notebook, and the twisted wire binder of the notebook itself, lying there like a busted spring. Always there were candy wrappers and empty junk food bags from snack time. In the pauses between lessons, Chris would gaze at Robert. He would sit at his desk, his pen poised over work that he would not do. A pensive expression would cover his flat, ample face, and for a moment he would look like a well-fed executive in a photograph by Bachrach. This vision of Robert would pass, without any transition, and he would turn back into an oversized boy with ink-spotted jeans, the cuffs rolled up, the waist of his underpants showing. For no apparent reason, his face would flush red. Then it would grow pale. He'd slap his own face a few times. His face would light up again. He'd wave his hand hard. "Ooo! Ooo! Ooo! Mrs. Zajac! Mrs. Zajac!"

  "Yes, Robert?"

  "Can I go bathroom?" Just like a three-year-old.

  Permission granted, he'd rub his hands together. He'd grin maniacally.

  During a health lesson, one of many Chris gave about the perils of drugs, Robert announced, "My mother's old boyfriend had another girlfriend, and she had a baby, and it was addicted to heroin."

  "Oh, Robert, how sad!"

  Robert grinned.

  "Oh, my God," Chris thought. "What a life he's leading."

  She had brought him up to the front table to help him work on a story. He said to her happily, "Mrs. Zajac, I have this friend named Crazy Eddie, and a blood vessel broke in his ankle and there was blood all over his bed."

  "Why do you call him Crazy Eddie?" Crazy Eddie was probably shooting up, she thought.

  "Because he peels in an' outa our parking lot. He's real crazy." Robert's eyes narrowed, and he grinned, not as he might have grinned if he were happy, but with the exaggerated menace of a cartoon character.

  She tried to get him to talk, but it seemed as if his thoughts must veer to the grotesque. The reviews of horror movies that he gave classmates, for example. "I like the part on Jason. Once there was a nail puller. Jason picked it up and slammed it right into some guy's head. Awesome!"

  And he often wrecked her chats with the class.

  "Does anyone know anything about Japan?"

  "Yeah. It's fulla chinks," said Robert.

  "He just does that to see what I'll do," she thought.

  She still hoped to get his mother to take Robert to a psychiatrist. She had seen his mother several times, a towering figure who usually appeared unannounced at the door. Robert always seemed excited when his mother came to school, and for a while afterward would do some work. Chris had told his mother that her visits seemed to help, and his mother had said she would come to the school once a week, but had not returned since.

  Would Robert flunk the Basic Skills Tests next year? Probably, Chris thought. But not because he didn't have a lot of basic academic skills. When, back in the fall, she had administered the California Achievement Tests to the class, Robert hadn't even bothered to read half of the questions. He had simply filled in at random and sloppily the bubbles on the answer sheet. In Robert's case, a standardized test merely measured the child's willingness to take a standardized test. Robert didn't care enough to try much of anything. She guessed he didn't dare. He couldn't fail if he didn't try.

  He wasn't as disruptive as Clarence. He didn't spread his problems around as much. When he felt like hitting someone, he hit himself, and when he started squeaking or singing while the others tried to work, a look would usually silence him.

  She gathered up her books and headed back to the room. She couldn't think of what to do for Robert, except to try to get him psychiatric help.

  Chris knew only one incontrovertibly good reason for Clarence's being sent away: the rest of the class had to benefit. But this first week without him limped along. More and more children who had regularly done the homework simply stopped. On Thursday morning Judith got a 65 on a math paper. It was, for Chris, like going to the bank and finding that she didn't have any money left. She had told herself that the low math group needed the larger share of her time, and that the top group, and especially Judith, could mostly teach themselves. She'd have to distribute herself more equitably.

  That morning passed slowly. The room had a rancorous air. She scolded the low math group, and all three reading groups, too, for not doing their work. After lunch and reading aloud, she went to center stage, in front of her front table, to start a grammar lesson with her homeroom class. It was a sunny day. Out the window on the playground, a small group of sixth graders picked through the contents of the garbage bags—the bags had split and the late March winds had lifted pieces of the trash and distributed them along the far fence. Behind Chris's left shoulder on the front chalkboard, the lists of children who owed her work now overflowed the usual quadrant. Chris planned to teach her lesson and ignore those lists for a while longer. She looked at Courtney, though, and she felt a little angry, both at Courtney and herself. She knew that Courtney hadn't done the language assignment. "Courtney, where's your homework?"

  "You didn't tell me to do it."

  "Courtney! Since when do I say, 'Everyone has to do the homework except for Courtney'?"

  Courtney pouted.

  The rest of the year turned on that pout. Chris folded her arms. "I think it's time we had a little talk," she said. There was acid in her voice. She looked down at her class, from one face to another, and she smiled at them with most of her teeth.

  "What is today's date? What month is it?"

  Many little voices helped her figure out the date.

  "It is not June," she said. She scowled down at them, but they looked so worried, so many faces seemed to say, "I didn't think I was that bad, Mrs. Zajac," that for a moment she felt like laughing. She was losing the edge, she thought. It would have to be all acting now. She felt, really for the first time in weeks, at peace and fully energetic.

  The color had faded from Chris's neck. She cried, "Some of you think school has ended!" Two sets of red-painted nails pressed against her breastbone. "I don't know why!" Her teacher finger lifted high into the air. "Some of you think you don't have to do homework anymore!" Her teacher finger came down hard. "I don't know why!" Her hands flew up and outward. "Some of you think, 'Yeah, I have to do the work, but who cares what it looks like. The old witch'll accept anything.' " Her hands came back to her breastbone. "I haven't changed! I'm not going to accept garbage. Which it looks like I'm getting from some of you people."

  She looked at them. She let it all sink in, and then she said, "Because what do you think the old witch is going to make you do if you hand in lousy work?"

  "Do it over," said several faint voices. />
  "Do it over," said Chris, adding, "Do you think we could possibly do quality work this afternoon?"

  Every head nodded, except Robert's.

  It all sounded like the first day of school, and that was what Chris had in mind.

  The next afternoon, Chris went into her classroom closet and came out with a construction paper Easter bunny. It was ragged and creased from years of folding. She said what she usually did when announcing an informal art lesson. They could make anything they liked, but if they wanted, they could make an Easter bunny. This one of hers might give them some ideas. But they shouldn't make one just like hers. Mrs. Zajac was a terrible artist. They were much better artists than she. Felipe cheered, and then Chris said, "But art is only for the people who don't owe me any work."

  That got Felipe going. He did the math he owed her fast. Maybe the sight of Felipe rushing to the board, mounting a chair, and erasing his name from the delinquency lists inspired the others. Maybe Chris inspired them, striding from desk to desk, telling the delinquents what they owed. Suddenly, the room was full of scholars. Soon a parade of children approached Chris's desk. They carried papers. Some brought them in both hands, as if carrying little trays to her. "Pretty good, Pedro!" "Very good, Jimmy! Now go to the bathroom, and when you get back, we'll work on the second question." "This is not the best work you can do, Arnie. I'll tell you that, buster. But I'll accept it. Okay, Arnie, you can erase your name." As the afternoon wore on, Julio, Ashley, Courtney, brought papers to the shrine. They rushed away to erase their names. Jimmy came back to her desk with an entire social studies paper done. "Very good, Jimmy! Finally, finally, finally, you gave me something of quality. I knew you could do it. You should be proud of yourself, Jimmy!"

  By the time the walkers left, the green chalkboard, drying in streaks, was empty, except for a tiny, dusty patch of names in the upper right-hand corner. Robert's and Claude's stood out, but they'd had more catching up to do than the rest of the class put together, and they'd made some headway. The exercise in housecleaning made her feel that they had confronted the past honestly and had put it behind them. Chris felt pumped up. She couldn't remember when she'd had this much energy, especially on a Friday. The wall above the closet was newly adorned. The witches were gone. A host of Easter bunnies took their place—multicolored, floppy-eared, crazed-looking. Next week new bulletin boards. New campaigns. New everything. She was going to double her planning time starting next week. She had more energy than she knew what to do with. She never would have felt this way, Chris told herself, if Clarence were still in the room, or, to be honest, if she hadn't needed to prove to herself that her room was different without him.

  2

  Chris often muttered in the room, "Patience, Mrs. Zajac. Patience." She felt especially impatient for signs of progress now.

  The next week Chris launched several offensives at once. Too many, perhaps, to fit inside one week. At one moment, she found herself trying to finish up a lesson while outside her door there stood waiting for her: Paul, the vice principal, to talk to her about Courtney; the psychologist, to talk to her about Robert; and Claude's mother, to talk to her, neither for the first nor last time, about Claude.

  She saw them one after the other, hurriedly, then faced her class. "Claude, let me see that bookbag." She had just told Claude's mother that Claude had to get better organized.

  Claude presented his bookbag dutifully. He stood up at the front table next to Mrs. Zajac. He was being helpful, holding the bag open while Chris groped around inside it. She pulled out of Claude's knapsack a great disordered fistful of crumpled construction paper folders and half-finished homework assignments, some dating from the fall.

  "What's all this?" cried Chris. She plunged in her hand for more. Another fistful of papers. Then a bunch of books with papers inserted among the pages and sticking out every which way. She pulled out a store-bought binder of the kind that is marketed as an "organizer." "This is a nice organizer, Claude. Do you know what the word 'organize' means?"

  Claude nodded earnestly.

  Out came the ancient remains of a sandwich, a test on the Revolutionary War, an Advent calendar. "Claude! Look, Claude, let me give you some advice. Every day you have some papers to show Mom and Dad. Don't leave them in your bag. Use your organizer."

  Claude looked at Chris very earnestly and declared, "I got another organizer in my desk, too!"

  "It doesn't organize itself, Claude," Chris said, and immediately regretted it. Several children tittered.

  Chris pursed her lips and looked around her. The important thing at that moment was protecting Claude. Any minute, the rest of the class was going to find this searching of the knapsack all too enjoyable.

  "Okay, Claude. You're going to organize yourself today."

  Chris shoved thè boy's desk across the carpet and out the door. Claude followed, hands fidgeting as if he'd like to help. She instructed him in the use of the organizer, and gave him a heap of new construction paper to make new folders, and left him sitting at his desk just outside the door, out of danger for a while.

  Claude sat in the hall pulling books and papers out of his desk and his bag, heaping them all into a large, chaotic pile. He sang softly as he worked. "Doo doo dee doo."

  Al was prowling the hallways. He stopped in front of Claude's desk and folded his arms, ready to dish out some wrath. The boy must have done something serious to be sent out here with his desk. "What are you doing?" Al asked him.

  "I'm organizing myself," said Claude brightly.

  Al looked taken aback. Then he said sternly, "Can you do it more quietly, please?" and moved on down the hall.

  "Doo doo dee doo," sang Claude as he sorted through most of a year's worth of papers, placing them into various new construction paper folders and into his organizer, though not in any discernible order.

  By that afternoon, Chris felt exhausted. The art and music teachers took over. She went to the sofa in the hall and didn't even try to work. "This week I feel like, the harder I work, the deeper the hole," she thought. Claude's problem was much worse than she'd imagined. "I'm disgusted with myself for letting it go on this long. Maybe I should just give up on Claude." Having imagined surrender, she perked up a little. She'd keep after him. Strategies rarely worked at once, and no strategy worked all the time. Little steps, she told herself. Be patient. Just keep on working on him. She'd get his mother to visit again.

  Chris sent many notes home with Claude. The mother came in.

  "Sometimes," Claude's mother said to Chris, "I want to criminate him."

  She had a thick French-Canadian accent. Chris wasn't sure exactly what Claude's mother meant, but understood the general meaning. Chris smiled and said, "To be honest, so would I sometimes."

  Claude's mother had a harried, worried air. She said to Chris, "I don't know what to do anymore. We do care what happ-ens, but I cannot quit my job."

  Chris liked the woman. They had several pleasant conversations. "You a left paw," Claude's mother noted. She marveled at Chris's patience. "When you go to Fleury Funeral Home, you are going to be an angel."

  Chris blushed. Then she started trying to reorganize Claude's household. Chris got her hands moving like the wheels of industry and laid out a plan for Claude's after-school hours: the old homework-signing deal, the time and the place where Claude should study at home, the hour at which his father should check the work.

  But his father didn't seem to follow instructions. Claude still came in with the wrong homework, or, more often, no homework. One evening Chris called up Claude's father. "He's just got to organize himself better," Chris said into the phone. "So I'll keep on him, and I'll let you know how he's doing. Okay?"

  Claude's father said to Chris, "Claude didn't give you the note, huh?"

  "Note?"

  "Well," said the father, "I was supposed to write a note. I guess I forgot."

  Chris laughed and laughed after she got off the phone. She told Billy, "What's in the cats is in the kittens,
as my mother likes to say."

  For a time, though, her struggle with Claude grew worrisome. One afternoon, she was trying again to tell Claude that he had to start doing his homework. Claude declared that he always did his homework. Then Dick, of all people—kind, quiet Dick—said, "Yeah, sure, Claude."

  Claude said he'd do all his homework from now on.

  Dick bet him a dollar he wouldn't.

  "Okay," said Claude.

  From every part of the room cries erupted: "I'll bet you a dollar, Claude!" "Me, too!" "Yo, Claude! I'll bet you a quarter!"

  Wearing a sickly smile, Claude turned down all other bets. Judith wrote out the terms of Claude's wager with Dick on a piece of red construction paper, which she laid on the counter by the window. But Judith had second thoughts. A few days later Felipe told Claude, "Claude, all you think about is fish. That's all." And Judith spoke up. "So what, Felipe? You're always talking about becoming an astronaut. Why can't the kid talk about fishing?" Now Judith would mutter at classmates who teased Claude, "Leave the kid alone." Once again, Chris thought, "Thank you, Lord, for sending me Judith."

  Chris herself sometimes felt a great desire to glue Claude's glasses to his nose, shake him by the shoulders, and say, "Forget the illnesses, forget the fishing, forget the excuses. Concentrate on what you're doing right now!" She had to keep on him. But she had to do it gently. The boy was enough of an outcast as it was. Chris taped an index card to the top of Claude's desk: DON'T FORGET TO COPY YOUR ASSIGNMENT! Claude was very happy with the card and kept fingering it, but he didn't usually follow its command, at least not yet. Chris kept lecturing him, but she did it quietly and in private. First thing in the morning, she would call Claude to her desk, ask him for the work he owed, and then tell him she was disappointed. He was a smart boy. She couldn't force him to learn. She would help him. But she wouldn't pay any attention to him if he didn't try. Day after day, she issued that threat.