Beautiful Child Read online

  “In this room we do not hurt others. We don’t hurt ourselves. That’s a class rule.”

  “That’s two rules,” Billy piped up from his table.

  “That’s one rule, Billy,” I said fiercely. “The rule is: we do not hurt. Anything.”

  “Not even flies?” Billy asked. “We’re not allowed to hurt flies in here?”

  Julie, recognizing a flash-point situation when she saw one, quickly intervened, ushering Billy over to join the other boys, who were working with clay.

  I turned back to Venus, who remained sitting in the time-out chair. She was watching me carefully, her heavy, hooded eyes so unreadable as to be virtually vacant.

  “I’ll set the timer for five minutes,” I said. “When it rings, you may get up and rejoin us.”

  Putting the ticking timer on the shelf in front of the chair, I backed off carefully, half expecting her to make a bolt for the door when my back was turned.

  Not so. Venus didn’t move.

  The timer rang. Venus still did not move.

  “You may get up now,” I said from the table where I was working with Jesse.

  No response.

  I excused myself from Jesse and went over to her. “This is the quiet chair. It’s for when you get out of control and need a quiet moment to get yourself back together again. But once you’ve calmed down, you don’t have to sit in the quiet chair anymore. Come on. Let’s get you started on the clay. We’re making pinch pots. Have you done that before?”

  Venus gazed at me. From her look of total incomprehension, I might as well have been speaking Hindi to her.

  I put a hand under her elbow and encouraged her to rise from the chair, which she did. I guided her over to where we were all working with the clay. “Here. Sit here.”

  She just stood.

  Gently, I pressed her shoulder with one hand to get her to sit in the chair. I pulled out the adjacent chair and sat down. Picking up a ball of clay, I showed it to her.

  “Look, what’s this? Clay. And see? See how Jesse’s doing it? You just push your thumbs into the ball of clay....”

  Her eyes didn’t even move to the clay. They stayed on my face, as if she hadn’t even heard me.

  Did she hear? It seemed hard to believe. I’d come across a lot of kids with speech and language problems in my time but none so unresponsive as this. Was this ABR test really accurate? Could there be some kind of failure between the brain and the ears that they hadn’t noticed?

  I rose up. “Come here, Venus,” I said. Which, of course, she didn’t. I had to go through the whole rigamarole again of getting her up out of one chair and over to another part of the classroom. Guiding her to the housekeeping corner, I sat down on the floor and looked through the toys. My sign language was rusty and what little I did remember seemed primarily to be signs for abstract concepts like “family” or “sister,” but here was a concrete word I knew. “Doll,” I signed and held up a baby doll. “Doll.”

  Venus watched me, her brow faintly furrowed, as if she thought I was doing something really odd.

  I signed again. “Doll.” I made the sign very, very slowly.

  Reaching over, I lifted her hand. Putting it on the doll, I made her fingers run over the plastic features of the toy. Then I endeavored to make the sign with her fingers. I held the doll up. I signed again myself. “Doll.”

  The last twenty minutes of the school day passed thus. Venus never responded once.

  At last the end-of-day bell rang. Julie escorted those who went by bus down to their rides while I saw out the ones who walked home. Then I retreated to the file cabinets in the main office to have a better look at the children’s files. I pulled out Venus’s and sat down.

  Julie came in, carrying mugs of coffee for us both. She took out a chair on the other side of the table and sat down.

  “Well, that was an experience,” she said.

  “I’d like to think this is first-day jitters and everything will settle down.” I looked over. “Has that happened with Venus before, do you know? Have you seen her attack kids before?”

  A pause, a hesitancy almost, and then Julie nodded. “Yes. Truth is, I think that’s more why she’s in this class than because of her speech. Last year they ended up having to keep her in during recesses because she does nothing but pick fights.”

  “Oh great. Five kids, all with a mission to kill.”

  “Kind of like being in the OK Corral in your room, isn’t it?” Julie said rather cheerfully.

  I looked up.

  “Didn’t you notice all the cowboy names? Billy—Billy the Kid. Jesse—Jesse James. And Shane. And Zane. And everything’s shoot ’em up.” She laughed.

  “I don’t remember any cowboys named Venus.”

  “Well, not cowboys,” Julie said. She considered a moment.

  “Her name doesn’t fit,” I said.

  Julie gave a slight shrug. “Neither does the kid.”

  Venus’s file made depressing reading. She was the youngest of nine children fathered by three different men. The man who fathered the four eldest children, including Wanda, had been committed to the penitentiary for grievous bodily harm, had been released, had robbed a bank, had been jailed again, released again, and finally died three years later while in detention on drug-dealing charges. The second man, who fathered the next two children, had beaten Venus’s mother so severely when she was pregnant that the baby was stillborn. He was convicted of abuse toward three of the children, released, then later charged on animal cruelty for throwing a puppy onto a freeway from a bridge. The third man fathered the remaining three children, including Venus. He had a string of burglary convictions and other crimes related to drug and alcohol problems, but had also been charged with pedophile activity. He was currently out of prison and living elsewhere, as he’d been banned from having any contact with the children.

  Venus’s mother had a long history of prostitution and had been in and out of detox centers for drug and alcohol abuse. She now lived with seven of her nine children, three of whom had been officially labeled as mentally defective, and all of whom had been in one form of special education or another. The eldest, a son a year older than Wanda, was now in prison. A fifteen-year-old son was in a juvenile detention center. The next eldest daughter, who was seventeen, had suffered a seizure while in police custody the previous year and was now brain damaged. Two other children, boys aged nine and twelve, were mentioned as having serious communication problems and were receiving speech therapy.

  There was actually very little in the file that was specific to Venus herself. I think the general opinion was that by including her family history, Venus’s problems were self-evident. There were no notes on pregnancy or birth complications, nothing to denote whether or not her early development was normal. She had first come to the attention of the authorities when she reached age five and was registered for kindergarten. It was noted at this time that she was almost totally silent and, in general, very unresponsive. Except on the playground. Except when challenged or threatened. Then Venus seemed to call on an inner strength of almost comic book proportions. She screamed. She shouted. Some people even thought she swore. The idea would have seemed almost laughable—silent, unprepossessing seven-year-old girl metamorphoses into vicious little killing machine—if I hadn’t witnessed it for myself.

  I flipped the file shut.

  Chapter

  4

  When I arrived the next morning, Billy was already there, sitting in the classroom.

  “What’s this?” I asked in surprise. “It’s only eight-ten.”

  “I gotta come early. My god-damned bus don’t come no later.”

  I put a finger to my lips.

  “My god-darned bus don’t come no later.”

  “How about just ‘darned.’ Darned bus doesn’t come any later?”

  He curled his lip up in an irritable snarl.

  “So why aren’t you out on the playground?” I asked. “The bell doesn’t ring until eight-thir
ty-five.”

  “Fucking girl’s out there.”

  I put a finger to my lips again. “We’ve got to remember. You’re oldest in here. I’m depending on you to set a good example for the others.”

  “I don’t care. Fucking girl’s out there and I’m not gonna take my chances. Ain’t no teacher out there guarding us poor kids. Fucking girl’s gonna knock the shit out of me again.”

  “Did she say that to you?”

  Billy didn’t answer.

  “Did she tell you she was going to beat you up?” I asked again.

  Head down, he just shrugged. “She’s just got a crazy look in her eyes. Girl’s a fucking psychopath or something. That’s what she is. Like in one of them movies. Like maybe she’s Freddy’s little sister from Elm Street or something.”

  “Well, just for this morning you can stay in. But not every morning, Billy. The school rules say that everyone must be outside until the bell rings.”

  “You’re not outside.”

  “All the children stay outside. You know what I meant. We’ll sort something out so that you don’t feel threatened.”

  Billy flopped dramatically across his table and sighed in a world-weary way. “I hate this school. I hate being here so much. Why did I have to come here anyway? Why couldn’t I stay at my other school? My brother’s there. My brother’d never let me get beat up by some psycho girl. This is the worst thing in the whole world that could have happened to me. I’m so unlucky. I’m the unluckiest kid in the world.”

  “If you work hard in here, Billy, and get your mouth and your temper under control, then maybe you can go back to your old school.”

  “Really? Is that all I got to do?” He said this with friendly surprise, as if no one had ever mentioned his behavior to him before. “Well, I can do that. I’m gonna be good as gold.”

  “That’d be super. I’d be very proud of you. For now, however, I’d be satisfied if you just got off that table. Please take your seat.”

  Cheerfully Billy leaped up and grabbed his chair, swinging it gleefully over his head. “Take my seat? Okay, sure, anything you say, Teach. Here it is. Where you want me to take it?”

  The next to arrive in our doorway was Jesse, accompanied by a woman I recognized as one of the school bus drivers. She had him by the collar. She pushed him ahead of her into the room.

  “This kid isn’t going to last long,” she said testily.

  “What happened?”

  “Well, on my bus you’ve got to take your seat, stay seated, and keep your hands to yourself. Those are about the only three things he didn’t do.”

  “He was sticking his head out the window and swearing at people,” Billy added.

  “You weren’t there, Billy, so please don’t interrupt.”

  “He was doing that,” the bus driver said. “And he wouldn’t stay in his seat. That kid can’t keep something you tell him in his head for more than three seconds. I told him. I told him to sit down and shut up and quit bothering everybody. He tripped one of the first graders when she got on and then when she tried to get up, he pushed her down again. I said, ‘Keep that up, mister, and you’re going to walk,’ and what he said back, I’m not going to repeat. So I told him when I get him here, his life wasn’t going to be worth living.”

  I nodded. “Okay, sit down over there, Jesse.”

  In burst Shane and Zane.

  “Oh fuck, here come the damned Dalmatians again,” Billy cried.

  Shane didn’t even pause to put down his things. He shot across the room and bashed into Billy, thunking him soundly over the head with his lunch box. The crack was audible and Billy let out a howl.

  “You girl,” Jesse sneered, as if that was the worst possible insult.

  Zane joined the fray, kicking hard at Billy. Jesse leaped from his seat to join in. Recognizing discretion to be the better part of valor, the bus driver stopped her complaining and left immediately.

  All four boys were in a tangle of flailing arms and legs by the time I reached them and the noise level in the room was absolutely deafening. I was shouting as loudly as anyone else.

  Throwing myself in among them, I grabbed one of the twins by his leg and pulled him out. I ripped off his shoes, because shoeless he couldn’t hurt so much when he kicked, and I slammed him into a chair. “Stay there.”

  Billy was next. He was screaming, half in pain, half in rage. I flung him into another chair. “Take your shoes off.”

  He howled.

  “Take them off !” I demanded.

  Then I grabbed the other twin by the waistband of his pants and lifted him right off the floor. Wrenching his shoes off, I tossed them, one after the other, out of reach. I pushed him into a chair.

  Last was Jesse, who was just so angry that there seemed no way to control him other than pin him to the floor until he calmed down. Once he’d stopped thrashing, I took his shoes off too.

  “Okay, the four of you,” I said and stood up. Three of the boys were in chairs in a ragged semicircle. Jesse was still sitting on the floor. “From now on, wearing shoes in this room is a privilege, not a right.”

  “What do you mean?” Billy asked.

  “I mean, I’m not going to be kicked black and blue. Shoes aren’t for kicking. Until everyone knows how to behave when they are wearing shoes, no shoes.”

  “You’ve got shoes on,” Billy said.

  “Yes, that’s right. Because I’m not going to kick anyone with mine. But until you earn that privilege by showing me you aren’t going to kick anyone, shoes will go off at the door when you come into the room and shoes will not go back on until you leave.”

  “You can’t do that,” Jesse said. His facial tic had started—blink, blink, blink, squint, jerk of the head—and it made it hard for him to speak clearly at the same time.

  “Watch me,” I said. Picking up a large plastic box, I crossed the room and collected up all the shoes I’d thrown over there.

  “I’ll tell my mom!” Zane shouted. “I’ll tell her you’re taking our shoes away and she’ll make you give them back!”

  “I intend to give them back when you go home. But in here, they’re off and they’re going to stay off. They’ll be right here in this box.” I put the box up on top of a tall cupboard.

  “She’ll make you give ’em back,” Zane cried. “They’re my shoes. My mom bought them for me!”

  “They’re still your shoes. And your mom will know I’m doing the right thing.”

  Zane rose from his seat.

  “No, Zane, you sit,” I said. “You too, Jesse. Get up off the floor and get in that chair.”

  Zane paused a long moment, clearly weighing the odds that I’d do something unpleasant if he didn’t obey. My look must have been enough, because he plopped back down in the chair. Jesse rose and took the chair I’d indicated, but his body posture, his movements, even the air around him was heavy with barely controlled anger.

  Pulling out a chair from the adjacent table, I sat down. We all sat, the boys fuming quietly or not so quietly, in a straggly semicircle.

  A minute passed. Another minute, then another.

  “How long we got to sit here?” Shane asked.

  “Until everyone is calmed down.”

  “I’m already calmed down,” he said. “We going to have to sit here all day?”

  “I was never upset,” Billy added. “It’s him over there. Jerky Face. He caused all the trouble. If you’re going to punish someone, you punish that ugly black kid.”

  “I never hit you!” Jesse retorted. “It’s him that started it,” he said and pointed at Shane.

  “You’re all fuckers,” Billy muttered angrily. “I wish I wasn’t in this fucking class. I wish I hadn’t even heard of it.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Jesse said.

  “Me too,” said Shane.

  “And me,” Zane added.

  “Well, at least everyone agrees on one thing,” I said.

  “No sir,” said Billy, “’cause you don’t agree and you
’re part of everyone.”

  “Truth be known, Billy, I’m not very keen on this class at the moment either. I kind of wish I’d never heard of it,” I said.

  Billy’s eyebrows rose, and an expression of genuine astonishment crossed his face. “But you gotta be in this class. It’s your class.”

  “Yes. And it’s yours too.”

  “But you’re the teacher.”

  “But it isn’t much fun this way, is it?” I said. “I don’t like the way things are at the moment any better than you do. So what are we going to do about it?”

  This seemed to puzzle the boys. Shane and Zane exchanged quizzical glances, but Billy, ever the class spokesman, offered his take on the matter. “Maybe you’ve gone nuts.”

  “What about that girl?” Jesse asked.

  And that was the first moment I remembered Venus. She wasn’t in the classroom. The bell had rung while we were having our group fight—which had been almost fifteen minutes earlier.

  Rising so that I was still facing the boys, I edged carefully toward the window and glanced out. Sure enough, there was Venus on her wall.

  “Don’t you think we got enough problems already?” Billy said to Jesse.

  I knew I couldn’t go get Venus. I didn’t dare turn my back on the boys, much less go out of the room. I had to just hope someone in the front office would notice her and get her off her wall, because it was more important that I get things settled down in here in the classroom first. I came back to the circle and sat down.

  “So,” I said, “what are we going to do about things in here to make it better?”

  “What about that girl?” Jesse asked.

  “That girl’s out there and you’re in here. I’m talking to you. And you and you and you. I don’t want every day to be one long fight. I don’t want it to be like now, where I’m making everyone sit in chairs until they calm down. Billy’s right. This is definitely no fun. Nobody would want to be in a class like this, not even the teacher. So how are we going to change it?”