Time Out Read online

  Perfect strangers. Nothing about this situation is perfect.

  I can’t stop feeling guilty about it. I do know on some kind of intellectual level that it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t have known that Donny was going to lose it to such an extreme, and that his mom would do the same. At the moment, I am completely incapable of predicting anything in my classroom. Moods seem to shift with lightning speed. Tension fills the room, but no one will tell me why.

  I’m sure that some day I’ll know the kids well enough to see it coming. That moment when angry words become violent fists.

  Some day. Not today.

  I know I couldn’t have predicted any of it, but it still feels like my fault on some level.

  “So…what do you need me to do?” Sean’s voice interrupts my guilt trip, and I look at him blankly. What do I need him to do? How about turning time around so that he’s here on Friday instead of today and manages to get to Donny before he loses it on Cory.

  “Um, that’s a great question. Especially since I forgot all about you.” Way to welcome the new staff.

  “Well, I’m ready and willing. Mrs. Callahan filled me in a little about the kids, but I don’t know very much.”

  Welcome to the club. Actually, I have learned a little about Donny and Cory since the first day. Both boys have been living with their mothers, and neither of them has a dad in the picture. Mrs. Callahan was kind enough to share her opinion that the single parent “situation,” as she calls it, likely is a large contributing factor to the problems the boys have. Mrs. Callahan is a firm believer in the detrimental effects of single parenthood. I swear she looks at me every time she talks about it in a staff meeting.

  Cory has an older brother who has been in some trouble with the police. His mother works somewhere downtown. Cory is on medication for ADHD. It’s supposed to calm him down. I’ve spent a fair bit of time perched on a soapbox pleading the evils of drugging children, but I have to admit, I cannot begin to imagine what Cory must be like without his medication. He is ten years old and has gone to nine different schools. From what I can tell so far, he cannot read—at all. No real academic testing has ever been done, because he was never in one school long enough. He kept beating up students and/or staff members to wear out his welcome before anyone could figure out how to teach him.

  Donny is also ten years old, almost eleven. He’s only been in seven schools. He hasn’t assaulted quite as many people, but he’s become somewhat of an expert in the area of property damage. Most of his schools decided he was too expensive to keep around.

  Donny has no siblings. He and his mom live—lived—up in the low-rent projects over in the next town. His mom doesn’t work. There is an unconfirmed suspicion that she occupies her time with drinking and other forms of substance abuse. Donny is also on medication. He doesn’t have a diagnosis on record, but I assume someone decided he has ADHD also. Donny talks about his mother a lot. He seems to think she’s pretty wonderful.

  Cory never talks about his mother or his brother at all.

  Neither boy ever talks about a father.

  I wonder if my daughters do.

  I look up to find Sean looking at me politely, obviously waiting for me to say something. At least one of us has manners. I clear my throat a little and try a little laugh on for size.

  “Oh, well, the boys are a handful, I guess. Behavior issues, emotional issues. They like to swear and hit each other and wreck things.” I seriously need to work on my welcome speeches.

  “Cool. Sounds like my weekend job.”

  “Oh, really?” That sounds promising.

  “Yep. I’m actually not an EA, even though they’re calling me one. I hope that’s not a problem. I just finished school, and I couldn’t find a full-time job, so I’ve been working part-time at a group home for kids with all kinds of problems, and I’ve had some crisis intervention training there. Not a lot, but enough to know what to do if a kid does a freak out. My mom works with a guy from your board office, and he called her and asked if I was available. I think they were supposed to move someone here from another school, but no one was available. So here I am.”

  I look at him with the same level of appreciation I feel for a large chocolate sundae after a long week at work.

  Sounds like someone might have pulled a string or two for me. Since I’m just looking at him and forgetting to talk again, he decides to take another turn.

  “Anyway, I’m no expert or anything, but the boys at the home are pretty intense, so there’s not much I haven’t seen.”

  “That’s…great. I need all the help I can get.”

  “Looks like you’re moving in. Is there more stuff to bring in?” He looks around the sparsely furnished, blank-walled room. The floor is cracked in a dozen places, and the walls are some kind of strange-looking painted brick that make it feel institutionalized somehow. There aren’t any shelves. There are about ten sad-looking desks sitting forlornly in a scatter pattern across the room.

  “Yes. Pretty much everything! Here, I’ll show you where it all is.”

  And that was that. Sean somehow roped our custodian into helping—something I hadn’t even thought of—and the two men had everything moved into my room within about thirty minutes. Sean got to work putting up the few wall decorations we had in our half room, and I tried to find some work for the boys to begin their day with, so that we would have some kind of normalcy to start what is going to be anything but a “normal” day.

  Donny hasn’t arrived by the time the cabs drop off the other two. No one has contacted me about him at all, so I have no idea where he is or when he might be coming back—if ever.

  Cory and Kevin fly out the doors of their respective cabs and run up to me. If I didn’t know better, I might think they’re excited to see me.

  “So, is Donny still in trouble? My mom said you shoulda called the cops on account of my head having a big lump on it. She said I shoulda hit him back, teach him a lesson. Did you call the cops? Is he going to a new school now?” Cory shoots the questions at me in rapid succession.

  He’s bouncing up and down, his eyes practically spinning in their sockets. Kevin is watching him with great interest. He isn’t bouncing up and down, but Baby is. She’s being thrown straight up in the air, spiraling down with the grace of an Olympic diver on every toss.

  Sean is standing a few feet behind me, and Cory stops talking long enough to notice him.

  “What the fuck you staring at? Who the fuck are you anyway?” He steps toward Sean in what I assume he thinks is a menacing manner. He’s only about four feet two and about seventy pounds soaking wet, which doesn’t seem to faze the six-foot-ish Sean at all.

  “I’m Sean. Who are you?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Well, I’m going to be working in your classroom, and it’s probably easier to do that if I know who you are.” His voice is calm and easy. He seems like a natural with them. Cory is still moving constantly, weaving and dodging like a pint-size prize fighter.

  “This the A-hole you told us about?” He turns to glare at me.

  “Well, actually, I said ‘EA’ not ‘A-hole,’ but yes, this is the…person.”

  “It’s a guy.” He sounds so surprised that I have to smile. I had been expecting a woman too, as it seems that most EAs in our area are female. I’m surprised that Cory cares, though.

  “Thanks for noticing, bud,” Sean says with a grin.

  “My name is Cory, A-hole, not bud!”

  “Thanks for telling me. My name is Sean, not A-hole. Cory is a cool name.” Cory stops bouncing for a split second, his eyes telling me that he’s wondering if he’s being made fun of. He looks at Sean as if he’s going to try on his mother’s advice about punching people. Then he relaxes his face and almost smiles.

  “Yeah, it is. This is Kevin. Kevin, this guy is Sea
n. New teacher dude or whatever.” He turns to look at Kevin, who’s still teaching Baby new aerial maneuvers.

  “Dickhead,” says Kevin.

  “This is Baby,” says Cory, apparently now in charge of social introductions.

  Sean watches the whale spiral down into Kevin’s outstretched hands. He looks over at me for a second, eyebrows raised. I shrug my shoulders and grin. He smiles back and then taps the whale gently on the head.

  “Hi, Baby. Nice to meet you.”

  “Hi, Sean,” says Baby, doing a final, death-defying leap up into the stratosphere before we all trudge down to our new room.

  Our day starts out relatively smoothly. Seeing as the ratio is currently one-to-one, this should not be surprising. On the other hand, after about an hour of nonstop, virtually hysterical-level motion from Cory, it finally occurs to me that he might have missed his morning meds. A phone call to his mother at work is not very helpful. She can’t remember if he had them or not because she was “too busy getting ready for work to keep track of his problems.”

  We can’t risk double dosing, so basically Sean has to chase Cory around until noon finally arrives and we can safely give him his “at school” dose.

  After an almost-calm afternoon, punctuated by only a few verbal outbursts from Cory and Baby, the boys go home, and I leave Sean doing a bit of tidying up while I search out a free phone line to call Daniel to see what’s going on with Donny.

  “He’s in a foster home, but it’s about ninety minutes away. We’re trying to figure out how to finance a cab for that distance,” he tells me when I finally get him on the line.

  “He’s going to travel ninety minutes each way? Three hours on the road and six hours here? Does that make sense?”

  “More sense than putting him in a school without resources where he’s sure to fail. Again. Add in the fact that we have no idea how long he’s even going to be in this home, and it seems that his best chance is coming back to you.”

  “Is he likely to go home to his mother ever again?” I can hear the guilt in my voice. Rationally, I know that his home might not be the best place for him, but I still feel like I ripped a family apart.

  “Likely? It depends on a lot. How far the social worker takes the assault-charge threat. Whether the investigation shows any sort of abuse toward Donny. It’s not a quick or easy thing to take a kid away permanently. There’s generally a lot of back and forth before that happens.”

  “And in the meantime, the kid doesn’t know where he belongs anymore.”

  “Well, at least he’ll still be with you at the school, once I get things fixed up. He needs some consistency in his life right now.”

  “I guess. I’ve sure been a lot of help to him so far.” The self-pity is just oozing into the little holes in the phone—probably dripping down all over him.

  “I’ll keep in touch and let you know when he’s coming back. You got your new room and Sean today?”

  “Yes, thank you. He seems like a good kid.”

  “He is. He’s young and not exactly fully trained, but he does have a bit of experience, and I don’t think he’s easily shaken. I think he’ll be good for the boys.”

  “Yeah, well, he still has more training than I do. He might be able to teach me a few things.” I seriously have to stop this. I’m going to drown him.

  “Talk to you soon.” He hangs up before I can say good-bye. Probably going to get a towel.

  I close my eyes, thinking about all the kids like Donny, moving from house to house, family to family, school to school. Never feeling like they’re at home. What kind of life is that for a child? The one thing a child should be able to count on is that there is this place called home that will always be there, filled with unconditional love.

  I’ve been fighting like a she-bear for the right to hold on to the family home in my separation-slash-divorce. I feel like my daughters will feel safer and less like the whole foundation of their lives has shaken loose if the actual foundation they’re used to stays underneath their feet.

  I know that a home is more than four walls and a roof. I know that it’s the people inside that make it a home. I’m sure I read that somewhere on a greeting card.

  I know my girls would feel safe and loved anywhere that they ended up living with me, but I am totally obsessed with needing to stay put. I don’t want the girls to have to pack up their bedrooms that I spent so much time decorating just for them. I can’t face the sight of little pink teddy bears and plastic horses disappearing into cardboard boxes while two pairs of blue eyes look at me tearfully.

  I think it will all be easier for them if we can just stay in our home. More normal. Safer.

  How does a child feel when he suddenly can’t be at home anymore? When everything he’s used to is suddenly gone? When strangers decide he will be safer living somewhere he’s never been before, where the walls and the roof are as different as the people inside it?

  Does he feel safe?

  Or just lost.

  Chapter 9

  Very small victories

  “He does what?”

  “Foams at the mouth when he’s mad. And he’s freakishly strong for his size. Almost impossible to restrain. At least that’s what the other school tells me. I’m sure it will be different here.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why would it be different here?”

  “Well, he will be in a special class now.”

  “Oh. Right.” An instant cure. Obvious to anyone who walks past our classroom and hears the dulcet sounds of young boys swearing.

  A special class. Which isn’t actually a class at all. Which, at the moment, consists of two students, because Donny is still not back. While I’m not surprised that my numbers are going up, pushing us past the one-to-one ratio that I am growing to really like, I did want Donny back in and settled with Sean and the new room before there were any more changes. I tried to explain this to Mrs. Callahan when she arrived in my room first thing this morning to inform me that she has a new student on the hook.

  “Well, I don’t think that’s going to work out for you,” she said, followed by that insincere smile again. “The family is actually waiting in my office. I’ve already explained everything to them.”

  I wonder if she waits until the last minute to tell me so that I don’t have time to protest properly or to get my consultant involved in the process.

  It’s only paranoia if no one is actually out to get you.

  “Explained everything? Explained what?”

  “Oh, lots of things. All about you and Sean and your new room and the new time-out room. How things are different here than in his other schools. Better staff-student ratio, no suspensions for inappropriate behavior—”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Well, I mean that the students’ issues will be dealt with here. At school. Now that you have Sean and the two rooms, there is no reason to be sending them home. More parents will be interested in bringing their children here if they know that.”

  “I think that’s kind of a dangerous promise to make. I mean, these guys are capable of a lot.” Not to mention the little fact that no one talked to me about it first.

  Definitely not paranoia. This is real. I think she hates me.

  It’s not that I’ve ever been a big fan of suspensions…now I’m even less so, after the Donny mess. But at the same time, my students don’t have much in the way of internal boundary systems. There has to be something in place for those times when it’s just too dangerous for them to be here.

  When they’re just too dangerous to be here.

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

  I open my mouth to finish my protest, but we’re already in the office.

  Mrs. Callahan’s office is actually a pretty ni
ce place. It’s air-conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter. It has chairs that are soft, so that parents are lulled into a sense of complacency by the comfort. She has pretty pictures on the wall and pretty candies in a dish. I’m sure the Williams family is under the illusion that my classroom looks just like this.

  Mrs. Callahan introduces us, and both parents smile at me. Their son, Mike, does not.

  “Well, I’m happy to meet you. I can tell you, I’m tired of schools calling me to pick him up just because they can’t deal with him. I’m glad they have a nice place like this one where he’ll actually get to stay at school and learn something.” Mr. Williams nods at me, agreeing with himself. I do my best to smile.

  “Well, we’ll do our best. Hopefully Mike will find this to be a nice place.” The words seem lame. I look over at Mike. He shakes his head slightly, lip curled up into the suggestion of a sneer. Definitely lame.

  He is not foaming at the mouth right now. He’s sizing me up, squinting at me appraisingly through a pair of bright blue eyes set in a round, soft face topped off by a crown of golden blond hair. I would have thought him angelic-looking except for the shrewdly assessing gaze that is currently making me feel a little squirmy. I try to match him, squinting right back, but he’s good. I’m being outmatched by a nine-year-old, and he’s only been here thirty seconds.

  This should be fun.

  I call down and ask Sean to pick up the other guys. Much as I am still hoping that Donny is coming back, I am really praying it isn’t today.

  “Okay, Mike. Follow me, and we’ll get started.” Started at what? I have no file. No information other than that he foams at the mouth.

  “Bye, Mikey!” his mom calls after us. This kid does not look like a Mikey to me. He obviously agrees, because he doesn’t even look at her.