“Sweetheart, we’re going to leave that up to your teacher. She’s the one who knows what’s best for you. It’s not fair to send you to fourth grade if you’re not ready.”
“But I am ready. I’ll be as ready as everyone else in my class.”
“Fourth grade requires a lot of reading.”
“But I might get better.” My stomach aches. Father’s right—I can’t read.
“That’s what we’re hoping for. Now that you have a special teacher, it may make a difference.”
I see fat Mrs. Ellen sitting in the closet. How will she help me get to fourth grade?
“Maddie, honey, your father and I want to do what’s best for you. We love you, and we want you to be successful. If your teacher thinks you need another year before fourth grade, then we’ll need to seriously consider this.”
I think of Darren, how other kids tease him, and then about how I will be in the same grade as Jack. Will he still be my younger brother? I sit up and almost shout, No! That’s not what I need.
“Well, we’re not going to decide for a while.” Mom stands, and I stare up at her. How can she let this happen? “Besides, even if you do third grade again, it’s not the end of the world. You’ll make new friends and have your old friends, and you’ll probably be the best one in math and science and a few other areas.”
“But I don’t want to be the best in math or science after flunking a grade.” I turn over, burying my head in my pillow. Mom doesn’t understand. She’s just like Mrs. Zinc. My stomach feels sick, and I want to be alone. I feel her hand patting my back, and it only makes it worse.
Her soft voice returns as she says, “Maddie, sweetie, just remember, we love you.”
~CHAPTER 23~
2005
I HOLD MYSELF BACK from slamming my office door. If only I could lock it. Damn. How did a simple observation turn into a train wreck?
The morning had been filled with promise. I’d imagined myself proclaiming to Irene that I was back to normal—the steady, well-grounded school psychologist had returned. Now I can’t believe what I said to Wilma. I slump into my desk chair and stare at the darkened computer screen.
All at once, I recall the session with Irene that became so uncomfortable I had to leave early.
“It’s interesting how your childhood coat reappears, and shortly thereafter, you experience the mercurial monster,” Irene had said.
“I doubt there’s a connection,” I said. “But maybe. For sure I’m ashamed at how nasty I’ve been with some of the teachers. It really isn’t me.”
“Something about the way these teachers describe students with learning challenges seems to trigger an unrecognized part of yourself.”
“Hmm. I guess you could say that.”
“I wonder if that unruly part of you is the child who wore the black coat.”
I rolled my eyes.
She rocked contentedly in her chair. I shifted anxiously on the couch.
“That little girl who was so misunderstood would identify with these children. Yes?” she added.
I looked up. “I suppose so. But who knows? It was so long ago.”
She smiled. The smile was almost flirtatious, like she knew I wasn’t being honest on purpose, but I thought I was. And yet, “so long ago” fails to describe Maddie’s place in history. Time somehow collapsed with the reappearance of my coat. And these days, I’m vigilant each time I step into a classroom, never knowing if what I have dubbed the mercurial monster will show up and take command. This is nothing I can articulate to Irene.
“Unlike you,” Irene said, “she doesn’t have a PhD or the professional communication skills to express herself.”
I nodded vigorously because I was glad Irene remembers that I have a PhD, even though I know I come across as . . . as who I used to be. “This is crazy talk,” I said. “She was me, and I’m done with that part of my life. I’ve gotten over it and have moved on.” I almost got up at that moment. But that very week, I had recalled a dream where I was in third grade.
“It’s clear to me you’ve moved on.” She gave me a reassuring smile, and I was startled to realize I was angry with her. I like Irene, but this nonsense about nine-year-old Maddie inserting herself into my life now was a little much.
“And yet,” Irene continued, “in the process of moving forward, you’ve abandoned a part of yourself.”
I shook my head ever so slightly.
“With the reappearance of her coat, Maddie has found an opening to make her presence known.”
That’s when I looked at my watch and said I had to leave early.
Now what? Writing reports seems impossible. I need a break. With my briefcase slung over my shoulder, I march down the hall toward the main school office as if I’m late to an important meeting.
“Hi, Dr. Meyers!” a child’s shrill voice calls out. Kaylee, at the end of the line as her class moves the opposite direction from me toward PE, is waving enthusiastically. Several classmates turn to see who she’s calling out to. Jan stops and faces the line with her finger on her lips as a reminder. Jan’s svelte form, and her hair pulled back tight, reminds me of a teacher from my past, and reflexively I imagine clasping my hands obediently on my desk and sitting up tall and straight. I wave back at Kaylee.
“When you have a minute . . . ,” Matt calls out as I pass the office, three steps from the school entrance. I stop and turn toward him. “I thought we could touch base on a couple of cases,” he says.
“Oh, sure,” I say. “How about between two fifteen and two forty? Your office.”
He steps closer to me and adds, “Are you feeling okay?”
“I will be. I’m slipping out for a short walk.”
“Impressive. Dr. Mary taking a break. Don’t make it too short.” He flashes me a grin and heads back into the office.
I toss my briefcase into the trunk of my Mazda and begin to walk south on Jackson toward Java Love Espresso. Within a block, the high-pitched yells of children chasing, being tagged, and blissfully swinging upside down on bars fade. My gait gains an extra bounce. Two more blocks, and I’m surrounded by the belching of city buses and thumping bass tones from passing cars with windows rolled half down, and it occurs to me that, quite possibly, the sound of a school bell would be drowned out. Despite the increased density of buildings, cars, and people, I experience a welcome thinning of the air.
Four lanky-legged unisex teens who should be in school pass by me. They look to be fifteen or sixteen, puffing on cigarettes, boisterously exchanging verbal rap. Tenth grade was the year I discovered my vocation. I had been hanging out with a group of kids who were into skipping class and smoking cigarettes, and I thought I belonged. And then, in tenth grade, my psychology class took a field trip to an institution for children who supposedly were mentally retarded. My fifteen-year-old hand had slipped into that of a chubby nine-year-old who walked funny with uneven legs and spoke like a four-year-old. She was my tour guide. I had wondered if she would eventually learn to read.
I flash on the early part of last week’s therapy session—not Irene’s crazy notion about my nine-year-old self, but when we talked about how I knew I wanted to be a special education teacher after that tenth-grade field trip. I had observed teachers—called special education teachers—talking to children in a way that made it clear the children were incapable of learning anything meaningful. I knew each child desperately wanted to learn. With a conflicted memory of shame and anticipation, I vaguely recalled being ushered out of my third-grade classroom and into a closet. I too had been viewed as retarded.
In tenth grade I had proudly labored through Les Miserables, which continues to be my favorite piece of literature. On the way home from the field trip, I told my classmates that now I knew what I wanted to do with my life—I had a name for it. I wanted to be a special education teacher. I knew I would be a different kind of special education teacher, a teacher who could help all children learn to read.
Java Love has pricy, guilt-free
coffee. It’s fair-trade, organically shade-grown, and served in a quintessential laid-back atmosphere. A large framed photo of Jerry Garcia looms behind the espresso machine. The young man working the counter has straggly dishwater-blond hair pulled into a ponytail that falls below his shoulders. Growing up in rural Minnesota, I missed out on the hippie revolution, and places like Java Love help make up for the loss. I order a cappuccino and surprise myself by taking a seat instead of stiffly striding back to Milton Elementary.
There was more I’d wanted to share with Irene, but I hadn’t found the words. It had to do with feeling like an outsider from a very young age. And even now. I had touched my pocket, felt the acorn, and experienced an ache in the upper part of my chest, a blend of dull pain and longing. I’d wanted to say that I’d known my vocation before that field trip. The trip only sharpened an already steeled determination to mend the wings of small birds unable to fly.
I had felt the same urgency when I shifted over from special education to school psychology. And yet, I’m still wrapped in an incompleteness, a strange yearning to be or do . . . something different.
The wide-mouthed ceramic cup nestled between my palms delivers a dose of comfort. I lift the mug to my lips, breathing in a tang of hot milky espresso before sipping a swath of foam. The image of Chase scrabbling through his desk to find a pencil so as to copy a sentence he could not read hurls itself toward me, and I feel myself descend into a state of remorse.
If he had landed across the hall with Marcia, a teacher who understands that kids unfold with different timelines, that one size doesn’t fit all, would he be having an entirely different second-grade experience?
If I hadn’t blown up, could I possibly have altered Wilma’s perspective? Maybe. My chest presses against a heaviness. The laid-back atmosphere and empty chatter that drew me into the café has now become an irritation. I squirm, not ready to leave but no longer relaxed.
Wilma’s mind was made up long before I set foot in her class. There was little that Chase could do to escape the brutality of her expectations. I want to rewind events, take back my obnoxious response to her, swoop in, and deliver Chase to a teacher who could see beyond his struggle to read. A teacher who would share a story that would inspire him to tackle letters and turn them into words. I stare at my half-full cup of tepid coffee and hear the distant call of a recess bell.
~CHAPTER 24~
1967
“MADELYN,” Paulette whispers in her “I have a secret to share” voice. She aims her nose toward my paper. “Why did you write,” she says, and she cups her hands together and leans into my ear, “peed?”
“What?”
She points to the letters I have just copied off the board. “Don’t you know p-e-e-d spells,” she says, her voice dropping to barely a whisper, “peed?” She then says, much too loudly, “The word on the board starts with a d and ends with a p.” I erase so hard I tear a hole in the page. Once again, she’s right.
“So, guess what?”
“What?”
“I know the next book Mrs. Zinc’s going to read because I almost checked it out myself. Remember when she read Little House on the Prairie at the beginning of the year?” I nod; it was boring compared to The Fairy Angel’s Gift. “Well, I walked by her desk before the bell rang and saw On the Banks of Plum Creek. That’s the next book in the series.”
“Oh.”
“I think you’ll like it because it has pictures.” I nod and squirm in my seat, wondering if The Fairy Angel’s Gift is still somewhere in a heap next to Mrs. Zinc’s desk.
“I can hardly wait,” I mumble.
She leans into me. “I know something else that might interest you.” She gives her knowing smile and continues whispering, “I also happened to see on Mrs. Zinc’s desk that Bobby got an F on the math test. Since he gives you such a hard time, I thought you might like to know.”
“Thanks.” I don’t believe her. It was an easy test, and Bobby’s smart. I scoot way over toward the windows, pretending to look in my desk so Paulette doesn’t get suspicious, and sure enough, sandwiched between piles of papers stacked on the floor next to Mrs. Zinc’s desk is The Fairy Angel’s Gift.
I now wonder if Mrs. Zinc even knows it’s there. If it were my book, I’d give it a special place, a shelf of its own so that it could be propped up with the front cover showing. I bet Mrs. Zinc wouldn’t even notice if it disappeared. And once this thought slithers into my mind, my body stiffens, my heart pounds, and I feel as if I am about to race across the prairie on a wild stallion.
“Madelyn, why aren’t you eating?” Paulette is squished next to me on the lunch bench where I sit squeezed in with the girls from our class. My plan had been for Mrs. Zinc to leave the classroom during morning recess so I could slip back in and rescue The Fairy Angel’s Gift. Mrs. Zinc also had plans; she stayed in the classroom busily writing words on the chalkboard. When noon came and we all marched out together to the lunch line, I needed to figure out another plan. I look down at the mound of white plopped on my lunch tray—an ice-cream scoop covered in a thick brown topping. Eating is the last thing on my mind.
“I’m not hungry. Besides, it’s Gravy Train.” That’s what we call the mashed potatoes with brown gravy because it tastes as bad as what we imagine dog food to taste like.
“Can I have your chocolate pudding?” Paulette asks.
“Sure.”
With only one recess left, I need a backup plan—maybe pulling the fire alarm, forcing everyone out, and while they’re running for the door, I can grab the book. This is risky. Moments before the last recess of the day, Mrs. Zinc makes an announcement.
“Everyone needs to go out for recess this afternoon. I have playground duty.” There’s no waiting around. Mrs. Zinc shoos us all out the door.
I race out in front, like usual, pretending I’m a stallion.
“Madelyn!”
It’s Paulette. She’ll ruin my plans if I turn toward her. I pretend to not hear and run out of earshot to upper field. Recess is only fifteen minutes, so I hurry back down, circling around to the school and keeping an eye out for Paulette.
I spy her walking past the jungle gym alongside Mrs. Zinc, who has her recess whistle to her lips. As soon as they move toward the jump rope area, I race down and scoot inside the building. I keep myself from running down the hall, and then turn a corner, and there in front of me are Lynn and Carol with Cheryl, who’s whimpering and limping. Lynn turns and sees me.
“Madelyn, Cheryl fell and scraped her knee. Can you let Mrs. Zinc know we’re taking her to the nurse’s office?”
“Sure, I just need to do something first, real quick, and then I’ll go let her know.” Cheryl whines a little louder, pulling Lynn and Carol’s attention away from me. Whew, that’s not a lie. I duck into the girls’ restroom, peek back out, and see that the three of them are inside the office and moving toward the nurse’s room.
I pad down the hall, trying not to think about what I’ll say if I run into anyone else. I only think of Yram and Ethan and holding the book. The classroom door is cracked open, which is weird. Mrs. Zinc usually shuts the door when we leave. This causes my heart to speed up. I slip inside, and freeze. Someone else is in the room; someone else must have also seen the book tossed aside. As I peek around the coat closet, my heart goes crazy in my chest. It’s Bobby Wallace!
In my most quiet Indian moccasin steps, I tippy-toe behind the coats and peek again. He’s looking in Mrs. Zinc’s desk. If he discovers me, he’ll call me a spy and figure out what I’m after. I hold my breath. A moment later, Bobby walks right past, missing me snugged up against the hooks of the closet, and shuts the door behind him. I scurry to the messy stack of papers and see the red cover gleaming at me. I slip The Fairy Angel’s Gift inside my coat, shifting it over so that my lower left arm crossing my stomach can make a shelf, holding the book snug against my chest. I reach for the door, but it opens before I turn the knob. Bobby stares at me, his face white like a ghost.
&n
bsp; “What are you doing here?” he asks. He also has a coat on, his right hand in his pocket.
“I . . . I had to get something.” This isn’t a lie. I had to save Yram from getting lost in the pile of worksheets. Bobby stands still, and then he shifts his weight from one side to the other, looking at me, and then into the classroom and back. I don’t move a muscle, especially my left arm.
“Me too,” he finally says. He turns, and I follow him down the hall and out the door. My legs are shaky; maybe he had spied on me just like I had on him. Once outside, he keeps walking and doesn’t turn to see where I go.
The recess bell rings, and I remember to tell Mrs. Zinc where Cheryl, Lynn, and Carol are. She doesn’t notice my left arm pinned across my stomach.
Back at my desk with The Fairy Angel’s Gift cradled in my lap, I no longer care that Mrs. Zinc will be reading a new story. Repeating third grade no longer seems real. With Yram tucked under my coat, I imagine my dream catcher catching the dream I want most.
~CHAPTER 25~
1967
I BARELY MAKE IT off the bus without falling flat on my face. My legs are weak and wobbly, as if I really have been riding a wild stallion. My left arm is snug up against Yram, and my right holds my book bag. I did manage to make it down three giant bus steps. Mother, may I take three giant steps down? Yes, you may.
“Why won’t you race?” Jack demands.
“My stomach hurts.” Which is true. He looks at me, with my left arm stretched across my coat, and I can tell he believes me.
“Come on, Danny. I’ll give you a head start.” Off they run.
I walk alongside Rob.
“Maddie, what are you carrying under your coat?”
“What do you mean?”
Once Upon a Time a Sparrow Page 12
