Beautiful Child Read online

  Later, however, as I became more experienced and better educated, I could see flaws in such a system and now seldom used behavioral techniques in their stricter forms. However, I still knew them to be effective tools when used judiciously, and I was never someone to throw away something useful.

  When Julie came in that afternoon, I had her supervise the boys while I sat down with Venus. This involved the whole cumbersome process of moving Venus to the table, putting her into a chair, and pushing it in. She did none of it herself.

  I took the chair across the table from her. Lifting up the bag of M&Ms, I waggled it in front of her. “Know what these are?”

  “I know what they are, Teacher!” Billy shouted from clear over on the other side of the classroom. This made all the other boys look up.

  “Yes, and if you get your work done, you can have some afterward, just like Venus,” I said. “If you get your work in your folder done. But for now I need private time with Venus, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t interrupt.”

  Julie endeavored to reorient the boys. I reached across the table and moved Venus’s face so that she was looking at me. I shook the bag in front of her again. “Do you know what this is?” I had hoped for a spark of recognition in her eyes, but there was nothing. She stared through me. “Candy. Do you like candy?”

  Nothing.

  I opened the bag and spilled several colorful M&Ms across the tabletop.

  No response. She continued to stare at my face.

  Picking up one of the candies, I reached over and pushed it between her lips. I did it cautiously because I didn’t want to set her off and I feared that if she felt threatened by my movement, it might. The M&M just sat there, hanging half in, half out of her mouth.

  “Hooo!” Billy cried gleefully. “Look at psycho! She doesn’t even know what to do with it. It’s candy, stupid! You’re supposed to eat it. Here, Teacher, give me some. I’ll show her.” And before I could respond, Billy was galloping across the room toward me.

  “Me too! Me too!” Shane and Zane cried, almost in one voice. They too bolted from their chairs.

  Only Jesse remained behind. “I’m not supposed to eat candy,” he said prissily. “It makes me hyperactive.”

  Billy lunged forward, grabbing up the M&Ms on the table between Venus and me. “I love these,” he said cheerily and popped a handful in his mouth. “Here, girlie, see? You eat ’em. Crunch, crunch, crunch, like this.” He made a big, open-mouthed show of masticating.

  Billy hadn’t touched Venus. He hadn’t even bent close, but something in his behavior must have seemed threatening because Venus suddenly erupted. She let out a loud, ululating shriek and leaped up from the chair. Grabbing hold of Billy by the throat, she crashed to the floor on top of him. Bits of half-eaten M&Ms flew everywhere. Billy fought loose, got up, and tore off in terror. Venus leaped to her feet and took after him, all the while screaming her singular, high-pitched scream.

  Julie and I took after both of them. Chairs fell. Tables screeched as they were pushed aside. The twins, manic with excitement, joined in the chase, screaming and yelling too. Convulsing with tics, Jesse leaped up on top of the bookshelf.

  “She’s gonna kill me! She’s gonna kill me!” Billy shrieked.

  “Billy, stop running. Come here. Don’t keep running; you’re making it worse.”

  “No way I’m gonna stop!”

  “Zane, sit down! Shane!”

  The noise level in the room would have drowned out a jet engine. At just that moment I was extremely glad we were not down near the office where we could be heard.

  At last Julie caught hold of Billy. Venus flung herself against them, and I grabbed her, pulled her back in a bear hug.

  Venus reacted violently to this. She fought against my grip, rocking back and forth rapidly, knocking her head repeatedly against my chest. She kicked viciously back at my legs. In an effort to force her into a sitting position so that she couldn’t hurt me, I sank down to my knees. Even though I was much taller and heavier, I had a hard time bringing her into a sitting position.

  “Julie, help me,” I said.

  Leaving the frightened boys over by the windows, Julie crossed to where Venus and I were struggling on the floor.

  “I need to stop her legs. Take hold of them.”

  Tentatively, Julie reached forward.

  “You’re going to need to be more forceful than that,” I grunted through the effort of keeping hold of Venus.

  “Just grab them and push down until they’re against the floor.”

  Again, Julie reached down hesitantly.

  “Help me. I’m going to lose my grip in a minute. Just grab her legs. Sit on them, if you must. I need to stop her kicking.”

  Julie managed to catch hold of Venus’s legs. She leaned forward, pinning them to the floor.

  This made things worse. Venus screamed louder and struggled harder.

  “Calm down,” I whispered in her ear.

  She shrieked.

  “Calm down, Venus. When you stop screaming, I’ll let go. Until then, I need to hold you.”

  Louder still she went, so loud, in fact, that I could feel my eardrums vibrating.

  “No. You need to stop screaming. When you stop, I’ll let go.”

  Still she hollered painfully loudly.

  “Calm down. Quietly, quietly.”

  “I can’t do this,” Julie moaned.

  I couldn’t tell what she meant, but assumed she had chosen a wrong position and didn’t have a good grip on Venus’s legs. “Just hang on. It’ll be okay in a moment.”

  “I’m hurting her.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re fine. Just keep her legs against the floor.”

  “I’m really uncomfortable with this, Torey.”

  “Just hang on. Please. Just a little longer.”

  Throughout this exchange, Venus screamed nonstop.

  “Come on, sweetheart,” I said, bending close to Venus’s ear. “Come on, now. Calm down. Quietly, quietly. Then I’ll let go.”

  But as it turned out, the decision wasn’t mine to make. “Torey, I just can’t do this,” Julie said. “I know I’m hurting her and it just feels wrong.” And she let go, rising up and backing away.

  That was all Venus needed. The small shift in balance was enough for her to break free of my grip. In an instant she was to her feet, to the door, through it, gone.

  For a long, stunned moment I just stared after her. Then I glanced around quickly at the boys and Julie. “Look after them,” I said. Then I took off out the door myself.

  Chapter

  6

  Feeling panicky at losing Venus when she was so upset, I trotted through the school hallways, listening carefully for sounds of her. After the loud shrieking so close to my ears, I was finding it hard to hear properly. As I tried, all I could distinguish were the normal noises of a school in session: muffled voices, chairs moving, occasional coughs, teachers speaking. I ran down the stairs, down, down, down until I reached the ground floor. There was no sign of anything unusual. I opened the door out onto the playground.

  There was Venus up on top of her wall. She was not in her normal relaxed glamor-queen pose but perched warily, poised to spring. Below her stood Wanda.

  I approached very cautiously, fearful that Venus might bolt off if she saw me coming too close. The most notable thing to my mind—indeed, the most intriguing thing—was her wariness. Venus had not clocked out this time. She was watching me intently, not unusual in itself, but this was no vacant stare. The other interesting thing was that she did not appear upset. She had made a remarkable recovery from the incident in the classroom.

  “Hello, Wanda,” I said.

  Wanda had a plastic baby doll in her arms. She smiled brightly. “Beautiful child.”

  I didn’t know if she was referring to the doll or to Venus, who was definitely not being very beautiful at the moment. There was something atavistic about Venus’s pose. She remained crouched, hands and feet on the wall, as i
f she’d spring off at me any time. With her wild hair and intent, rather fierce gaze, she reminded me of a drawing I’d seen once of a Neanderthal child, hunched over a kill.

  “Venus’s upset,” I said to Wanda. “Do you suppose she will come down from the wall if you ask her?”

  Wanda turned her head and looked up at her sister. “Her no come to school.”

  “She came today. She’s upset now because we had a disagreement, but that happens sometimes, doesn’t it? Sometimes we disagree. But no one is angry. And I’d like Venus to come back to the classroom.”

  Wanda turned her attention back to her doll. She hugged it, nestling it against her breast.

  “Venus?” I asked. “Will you come down, please?”

  Venus remained just as she was, tense, alert, and silent.

  “I’m sorry if I upset you.”

  She watched me.

  “Let’s go back to the classroom.”

  “Her no go to school,” Wanda interjected.

  I looked at the older girl only to realize that she was talking about the doll. At least I think she was. Lifting the doll up, she squeezed it tightly, then she turned it over clumsily. The doll slipped out of its blanket and dropped headfirst onto the ground.

  “Oh dear,” Wanda said.

  Without thinking, I bent down to pick up the doll. When I stood up again, Venus had disappeared off the other side of the wall.

  “Oh dear,” I said to Wanda. “She’s gone.”

  “Beautiful child go home,” Wanda replied and smiled blandly.

  It seemed pointless to pursue Venus. The school day was only about fifteen minutes from being over; Venus was keyed up, and no doubt any attempt on my part to bring her back would only make things worse. So, I left Wanda to follow her home and went back inside.

  Julie’s efforts to calm down the boys, who’d clearly been distressed by the brouhaha, had been largely unsuccessful, so I returned to the classroom to find them running around chaotically. Feeling frustrated at having lost Venus in the manner I did and annoyed with Julie for her part in it, I was too irritable to deal calmly with them myself. So, in the end I decided we might as well do something to release all this pent-up emotion everyone was feeling.

  “Let’s have music,” I said and went to lift down the box with cymbals, triangles, and tambourines in it, as I, for one, felt like bashing something.

  The rest of the day passed effortlessly, although it had that walking-on-eggshells feel to it. The boys were remarkably well behaved for them, not even becoming overly boisterous when I gave them the chance to clash along to the music. Instead, they sat listening intently for the right places to play their instruments and so performed the song—an inane ditty about an amorous Mexican tomcat named Señor Gatos—with the seriousness of a Bach mass.

  After the bell rang and the boys were seen off, I returned to the classroom, where Julie had remained to clean up. She was reshelving books when I came in.

  “Look, I’m really, really sorry,” she said before I could speak.

  “Yes, we had a bit of a problem, didn’t we?”

  “I just found it really hard to hold Venus like that, Torey. She was so upset.”

  “I know it looked alarming,” I said. “I know it looked like I was being too forceful with her, but I wasn’t. She was seriously out of control. As the adults around her, our job is to bring order out of chaos. And that was chaos.”

  Julie regarded me.

  I didn’t want to get defensive over this, but I could see it wouldn’t be hard. The problem with what I was doing with Venus was that it was gut-level stuff. I’d felt secure in my actions while I was doing them. Despite how it appeared, my sense was that this was a power issue. Venus appeared out of control, and on a cognitive level, she probably was. I doubt she had been knowingly thinking, “I want to impose my will on this woman and take control of this situation.” However, on a deeper level, I sensed Venus was using her unresponsiveness and violent behavior to control her environment. For whatever reasons they might be occurring, the fact remained that they were inappropriate, inefficient ways to cope, and my responsibility was to help her change them into something more beneficial. Unfortunately, to do that, I had to begin by imposing my will over hers.

  But it looked awful. And unaccountable. Because how did I explain “Well, this is what I sense about the situation,” when “sense” could in no way be proven?

  Julie lowered her head. “I’m really sorry, Torey. I know I let you down. But I was so scared we were hurting her. She was struggling so hard.”

  “It was forceful, but we weren’t hurting her. It was physical, but we—you and I—were in control of what we were doing, so we weren’t going to hurt her. That’s the difference between what we were doing and what Venus was doing. At no time was I going to cross the line and hurt her, but she didn’t have the same controls. That’s why I needed you to hold her legs. Because I didn’t want her to hurt herself. Or one of us.”

  Julie didn’t respond immediately. She kept her head down, but I could see a frown playing itself out across her features.

  “I know you’re not going to want me to say this,” she said when she finally did look up, “but I don’t think what you’re doing is right. I’m still really uncomfortable with this, because I just don’t agree it’s the way to do it.”

  “What do you think we should do?”

  “I don’t know. Just not that. We’re scaring her so much,” Julie said. “It’s hard for me to see that’s right.”

  “Yes, I think we are scaring her. To be honest, it scares me. But … sometimes we need to get in and do hard things. I have to have control in here, Julie. I have to be the one who sets the boundaries, not any of the children. Up until now Venus has been using these behaviors to control her world, and they haven’t led to a happy life for her. It’s my task to help her find other ways of doing things. But I can’t do that until I’ve gained control of the situation. And to do that, I’m going to have to get down and dirty.”

  “Why can’t you just wait? Just give her time to adjust to being in your class? Golly, we’re only in the second week of school here, Torey. Can’t you give her time? I mean, most of these kids come out of violent homes already. How can you justify using violence against them in the classroom?”

  “I don’t think it was violence. I was restraining her. It was controlled. I was simply setting the limits.”

  Julie nodded in a faint, unconvinced way.

  A pause.

  Julie let out a long, heavy sigh. “Okay, yeah. You’re the one who’s trained in all this. You’ve got the experience. I’m nobody really. Just an aide....” Another sigh. “But I still feel really uncomfortable with this ‘means justifying the ends’ kind of approach. Know what I mean?” She looked up at me. “I’m not kidding, Torey. This girl comes out of a nightmare home situation. I know, because I’ve been at this school for a while and I’ve seen what she and her siblings live like. I can’t believe it’s right for us to be horrible to her too. Ever.”

  “I don’t think it did fall under being ‘horrible to her,’” I said, “but I take your point.” There was a pause. “I guess the only thing left to say is that in the future, it’d probably be better if you told me ahead of time when you don’t want to do something rather than give up halfway through it. That way I’d cope better.”

  “Yeah, I’m just really sorry, Torey. It’s a principles issue. I hope you understand.”

  The awful thing was that I did understand. And in my heart of hearts I agreed with Julie. In an ideal world people in my position should never have to force their will on children like Venus. But then in an ideal world there would be no children like Venus. In this pathetic, ignoble, real world we were stuck in, however, I could see no other way to bring order out of chaos. Before anything could be done to help Venus—or the boys either, for that matter—limits had to be set to achieve the secure environment necessary for growth. These were unhappy, out-of-control children, which wa
s why they’d been placed in this room to begin with. They had to be certain I was more powerful than any of their worst urges or most horrible feelings, that I would not cave in, give up, or in any other way abandon them to those things in themselves they could not control. Only with that security could they then risk change.

  The academic necessity of doing this, however, and the gritty reality of putting it into action were quite different things. Moreover, there was always the agonizingly fine line between the right amount of force and too much. And the fact that each child was different. And each circumstance. There was never a formula.

  In my heart of hearts I dearly wanted to be the kind of person Julie believed in, the kind who could change the world simply by being loving enough. I felt it was crucial to keep such ideals alive, to keep believing that good would triumph over evil, that love could conquer anything, that no one was hopeless, because while the world might, in reality, not be that way, its only chance of changing was if we believed it could.

  Consequently, I ended the day on a low note, going home more bothered by my encounter with Julie than by my encounter with Venus. This was such a hard position for me to defend. The truth was, I was on Julie’s side, not mine.

  Chapter

  7

  The next morning Venus did not come to school.

  At recess time I went down to the main office to phone her house.

  “Hullo?” answered a thick, sleepy sounding voice.

  I said who I was and why I was phoning. Was Venus there?

  “Huh? What? Dunno,” the voice at the other end replied. Then the line went dead.

  I dialed again. Again, the same sluggish, sleepy voice. I couldn’t actually tell if it was male or female. Female, I guessed, but not Wanda.