October Suite

by Maxine Clair

  “Do you want me to go on?” David asked.

  October smiled, “Go on. You have a strong reading voice.” She folded her hands in her lap and sat back to listen.

  One evening Mako lay stretched on mats, listening to his grandfather’s voice. Overhead, stars shone in the dark sky. From far off came the thunder of the surf on the reef. The old man was speaking of Tupa, the ghost of the lagoon ...

  And David went on with the grandfather’s story of the white-finned monster that lived in the cave of the reef, and that tore into the fishermen’s nets and ate all their fish, the same monster that had overturned Mako’s father’s fishing boat and caused him to perish. The boy in the story made a vow to avenge his father, kill the great white Tupa, and collect the king’s reward for it.

  After a while she told David to stop. “I guess you wouldn’t like these other stories after all,” she told him.

  Then she asked, “Tell me why you didn’t do so well in reading this year.”

  David hunched his shoulders and said he didn’t know.

  “Do you understand the pages you just read to me? Can you tell me what it said in your own words?”

  Sure. He told her the meaning of the story, and she had sense enough to recognize that it was probably a review for him. She asked him about his biggest problem with arithmetic, and he hunched his shoulders like he wouldn’t know why Vergie had said he did poorly.

  “How about fractions? You should have started on them by now,” October said.

  “No, just plus and take-away and times tables,” he said.

  On a tablet, she jotted down several three-digit addition problems, some simple subtraction, and two-digit multiplication.

  David made quick work of them and figured correct answers.

  “Very good—are you sure you haven’t been just goofing off at school?” She made a little chuckle. Again, he hunched his shoulders.

  No real problems that she could see. She cleared the books and phoned Cora. Line up the neighborhood kids. David was waiting. Phoned Donetta and Kenneth, phoned Leon for the swimming pool. “David might as well get started on his Kansas City vacation.”

  She had a freezer full of hamburger patties she had seasoned herself, corn on the cob she had blanched herself, baked chocolate-chip cookies, and a jar full of quarters for popsicles. She had a week to figure out what else.

  The next morning after coffee and newspaper on the porch, she went to wake David. The same brown study in white sheets that she remembered the first Christmas she knew him. This was her house. He could have an extra hour of sleep if he wanted it. Beside him on the bed, his arithmetic book lay facedown, pages splayed. And halfway under his pillow a sheet of paper. A pencil had fallen to the floor.

  She closed the door. Why the book and studying late? He had spent the afternoon playing Ping-Pong with Eddy Junior in Cora’s basement, had gobbled up October’s macaroni and cheese. In the evening he had drawn on his pad of newsprint, and watched Bonanza.

  About an hour later she heard the toilet flush and something bluesy on KPRS coming from David’s room. She drained her cup. When he stepped out the front door, she said, like Vergie, “Good morning.”

  He returned it with no cheer. No meeting her eyes. And he had something in his hand.

  “Anything wrong?”

  “This is for you,” he said, and he handed over a painting like he was surrendering stolen money.

  The watercolor had a flower garden in the middle of a green quad. Instead of the yellow black-eyed Susans, he had painted in pastels.

  “This is really good,” she told him. “When did you do this? Where did you get the paint?”

  Trying to smile, he told her that Cora had let him paint the day before. Why was he so sad? Missing Vergie and Gene already. And was he sorry he was there with her?

  “We can call Vergie and Gene on the telephone this afternoon if you want,” she said.

  He said no—that was okay. And he brightened up when she thanked him for the painting and told him to fix anything he wanted for breakfast.

  After breakfast she sat, excited, at the dining room table with David and flipped open the book she had bought at the bookstore. Rip Van Winkle.

  “You’ll like this.” She put it in front of him.

  David took the book in both hands and looked at the pages the way he would look at hieroglyphics.

  “I don’t feel like reading,” he said softly. He put the book down and slouched in his chair, looked away from her and fingered the joint of her table.

  “This is the time for reading, David. It’s a good story. Just read the first paragraph.”

  She began to read the first paragraph. Then told him, “Now you read starting right here.”

  He began with “the,” but as he stumbled and stammered on, she could see that he skipped too many words.

  “Go back,” she said. “Begin again.”

  “I can’t.” Down went the book again, and he jammed his hands into his underarms, breathing hard.

  “What is it? You can read this. Why won’t you try? This isn’t any harder than your reader. You did fine yesterday.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t.” He flashed a glance at her and his liquid eyes said it better.

  She still didn’t get it. She pulled out his own reader and turned to the ghost story from the day before, turned to the middle pages.

  “Here, read this.”

  “I can’t”

  “Try.”

  He stuttered and stumbled, “Tupa ... then turn ... yet ... Mako ... stand up ... that ...”

  Then she understood. She took the book from him and flipped to the first page of the ghost story. “Read this, David.”

  Without even bothering to lift his head in the direction of the book, he began to recite the story. She watched as his eyes brimmed, but his voice held steady, reciting the story of the fearless boy who would slay a shark.

  She wound her arms around him, kissed his head. “It’s all right, David,” she told him through her own tears. “Reading isn’t everything.”

  If she had only known sooner. In the first grade. If only Vergie had told her something, or let her get close to him, she would have seen it. If Vergie hadn’t been so scared all the time. But then who was she to blame Vergie? She herself was to blame. This was how things complete the circle. Vergie was too scared to ask for help, scared of her.

  Still and all, October hadn’t become a teacher for nothing. No time for pity. The least she could do was to try to pull something—anything—together. Even if it was for only a week. She had to.

  And so on the second day of David’s vacation she decided she would turn his life around, or die trying. Nobody ever got anywhere without being able to read.

  She took only a couple of hours to get her arsenal together. After several hours of work with exercises, she thought she had pinned down the problem.

  She made him read sentences to her. The sentence “We saw a boat in the water” came out of his mouth “We was a dot in the water.”

  She had him write. When she said, “Take the cat outside,” he wrote “Tack the cat otsibe.”

  He wrote confast for confess, remaber for remainder.

  Okay. Either he didn’t know letters or he didn’t know his phonics. Every letter. Short i has the sound of igloo. Long vowels say their name. Words are made up of syllables.

  She began again, showed him the letter b.

  “B,” she said, its name. He said its name, “B.”

  “B, buh.”

  “B, buh.”

  Straight stick and round ball, she drew it. Straight stick and round ball, he drew it—sort of.

  “B, buh, boy.”

  “B, buh, boy.”

  And all the way to “L” without a br
eak. No swimming for a few days. They had work to do. Quick lunch, and while he ate, she sat on the porch and calmed herself by basting a seam in a baby-doll sleeve, got it wrong and tore it out. David had word blindness. She was sure of it.

  After lunch she flashed the cards in alphabetical order. Right. Shuffle them. Mostly right. Words? All wrong. She saw him at the paper mill, pushing a broom. All that day, and day three and four, she didn’t let up. Scrapped the outline and skipped forward to sight words. Say them in one gulp. Long list, but so what. After supper play time, but that was enough. Still, after four afternoons, he remembered only a dozen words.

  Okay; every word, then, would be a sight word. The more he said them, the easier they would be to remember. When he could call words on sight, he could read. How long would that take—the rest of his life?

  On day five, two days before Vergie and Gene would come carrying expectation’s huge cup that she wouldn’t be able to fill—she quit. This was the only visit David had had alone with her in her house. She fed him ribs and chicken and cookies. Watched his short frame zip through the deep end of the swimming pool, loud and happy to be zipping. She rented a bicycle so that he could ride with his new friends. She read to him, kissed him good night, watched him sleep, counted her blessings.

  Patience and work. She needed time to work with him. As far as she could tell, David’s memory was sharp. What he couldn’t figure out he could learn by rote. The sight-word thing hadn’t really failed. Slowly but surely, it could work. If only.

  And then the last day came. Vergie and Gene came driving up with all kinds of hope. They had barely dropped their suitcases on the porch when Vergie asked, “How did it go?”

  “We did all right,” October told her. “You-all come on in and let me fix you something to drink.”

  They went inside and David—mute as a door now—went to the kitchen for the pitcher of iced tea. After drinks all around they came back to sit in the cool of the porch, David squeezing into a chair with Gene. Vergie picked him apart with her eyes.

  “Just a week, and I swear you look taller,” she said.

  “I’ve been swimming almost every day,” David said.

  They tried chitter-chatter, but it didn’t go anywhere.

  “Vergie,” October said, “I think we need to talk.”

  “May as well be now,” Vergie said.

  Vergie came into the house with her like she was being led to the electric chair.

  They went into the dining room. October showed her the stacks of books. The pencils and tablets and flash cards and color-coded rules.

  “David needs help,” October said softly.

  “I know,” Vergie said. She stood staring at October’s arsenal on the table.

  “I think he needs a tutor,” October said,”—somebody to go step by step with him.”

  “I know,” Vergie said.

  “He needs to slow down for a long while,” October said. “Too bad he didn’t start a long time ago.”

  “I know,” Vergie repeated.

  “It’s going to take longer than a few weeks for him to catch up, Verge.”

  Vergie nodded. She knew that, too. Her lips pressed themselves together and her head bobbed: yes, she knew it all. “If I had only known,” October said. Vergie’s head bobbing yes.

  “I would have helped him, Vergie.” October felt the burn starting in her throat.

  “You know now,” Vergie said, and softly, she started to cry.

  Then October understood. Vergie had brought David to her knowing this would happen. Hoping this would happen. She had given October a week to discover that David couldn’t read.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Vergie ...?” October started to cry, too.

  “Help him if you can ...” Vergie tried to say. “The whole summer. Whatever it takes.”

  Into each other’s arms they flew. Sisters. The same height, same skin, same voice, same tears, for all the same reasons.

  They wept, they knew and understood, for Frances and Maude and all that protection. They wept for the old man who had died, for the life they might have had with him. For Carrie, whose life he had erased.

  They wept for Lillian Brown who—with who knew what-all in her way—had done an undoable thing at an undoable time, and for whoever came before her, and those before them, and on back to the ones they had forgotten.

  They wept, they knew, for their own pitiful, wonderful selves, their stupidity and their courage. And for each other, fiercely loving and fearful sisters that they were. They wept because they were who they had in this world.

  They wept because secrets did more damage than truth. Because sooner or later, one way or another, David would have to know the truth. And James Wilson would have to know the truth, with all the frightening possibilities that would bring.

  And they wept for David, loving and trusting them all. For how shattered he would be, how betrayed. They wept because he would have so far to go—alone—before he would come upon the possibility of forgiveness.

  They wept for the wonder of endings. Though they could never shape happy endings, they could go toward them, and marvel at how the pieces come together and fall apart to make new beginnings.

  We stood and held for them.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To my family my friends, the many writers whose works were my lessons, my advocates in the publishing world, all of my teachers in this vast classroom; and specifically to the Guggenheim Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts for funding the time for writing; to my agent, Molly Friedrich, with her infallible instincts, ingenious wit, and complete commitment to the work; to Frances Jalet-Miller and Paul Cirone at Aaron Priest Literary Agency, who were indefatigable in their critique and belief in the early drafts; to Melody Guy and Daniel Menaker, my keenly insightful editors at Random House, who bestowed the gift of clarity on my vision for the book; to Bridey Allsbrook, whose “run-in” was a gem; to my spiritual family at Unity Center of Bowie, and especially “Butch” Mosby for the teachings; to my sisters Linda Smith and Joyce Smith, and my friends Sandra Carpenter and Bettye Wages for the shoring up whenever the waves were pounding; and especially to my children, whose love has a dailiness that will forever sustain me.

  Bless you. Thank you.