Bony Little Behind

David, the homeliest, skinniest kid I had ever seen. A perfect example of The Three P Syndrome; piss poor protoplasm: eyes set close together, pidgin breasted, legs arms like sticks, huge hands feet to match, a vacuous expression.
David enters Kindergarten: the teacher, yard supervisors register constant, desperate complaints: David won’t share, David won’t listen, David won’t talk, David ignores rules, David fights, David bits, David’s dirty, David smells, David won’t learn. David’s weird. Again and again the principal phones home; permission granted to paddle his bony little behind.
First grade. Worse. David grew in stature, complaints, his unrivaled claim to fame, urinating on the ceiling of the bathroom, (The custodian never figured out how he did it?) David was legendary. He aroused my interest my concerns.
I became David focused. Something perplexing in his demeanor, the uncomfortable manner not knowing how to locate himself in his surroundings. An aged child. Never to age. Dead at twenty-three. A casualty of war.
 

The Before

I knew this child. I knew his family. Eight children, he’s number seven. Not one free from problems: truancies, runaways, thefts, vandalisms, pregnancies, drugs, alcohol, incest, whatever was destructive lived in his home: thrived, spread, radiated, a malignancy.
Yes indeed, did I know this family. Countless home visits, advising: means of controlling the children, getting them to school. Me the white liberal social worker: lots of words, lots of ideas, lots of recommendations, hardly realistic support for a family in another cultural world, the culture of the poor. My middle class values of no use. I was so ignorant, arrogant. Gifts of clothes, food, toys, candy: “False Consciousness,” Marx called it ― and Freud, I suppose would put these efforts down as “False Kindness.”

I found out later that I was referred to, by many of my families, as the nice lady, well intentioned, but a clueless, insufferable do-gooder who thought that she could change everything with words, I had to adjust, realize that I had no experience at living their lives; being in the trenches; not one who had ever manned the oars. David changed all that.
 

Close Encounter

My first encounter with David was at his house. One of the hundreds then thousands built fast and cheap, in this formally ignored valley, until 1955. Short of water, inaccessible, with high temperatures, winds, and nicknamed, the ass hole of the county, more politely arm pit, later the added portrayal; the land of the midnight movers.
This house: It was a bilious green with brown trim. Paint was peeling in green and brown strips from every surface. There was a torn, dirty grey plastic sheet covering the north side of the roof. The dirt yard strewn with debris, plants skeletal brown. Black oil spots of various sizes, shapes and age covered the cracked asphalt driveway. The garage door was propped up on the right with several bent 2 x 4’s.
The left side was left to hang. The garage filled with car parts, tools, broken toys, discarded clothing, baby stuff, whatever was shoved out of the house.
The front door was covered with ugly words cut into the wood.
I rapped a polite knock―knock―knock. No one could hear over the blare of the TV, the screaming, the swearing, sounds bounced like cannon shots off the walls. Knock again ― still louder―bam―bam―bam; better use the heel of my shoe next round.
I moved to the adjoining window, peered through thin, torn, dirty curtains saw figures darting here and there. The glow of a television. Back to the door.
I removed my shoe. I heard the click of the door latch. The door opened, one inch, held by a short chain. Peering into the minute opening, I saw no one, but heard breathing. Looking down, attracted by a flutter of movement, there was a splinter-sized silhouette of a little person, peeking out.
Stooping down, careful not to snag my stockings, eye-ball-to-eye-ball, holding my breath “Is your mother home?” The door clicked shut. I was left kneeling before the scared wooden wall. Back into a more dignified pose I waited. I waited and waited, not about to leave.
Suddenly the door was snatched open. I was facing a half-naked giant who couldn’t see his feet for his belly, those feet bare and dirty with long toenails encrusted with filth. His red face was covered by days of bristling whiskers, bloodshot squinted eyes, and the biggest hands I had ever seen. “Whatcha want?”
I held my ground stammered about the truancy of one of his teenage daughters. A lopsided grin: “Come on in, girlie, close the door behind ya, I’ll get the woman.” He wheeled, took two giant steps, plopped himself down in a huge ragged chair, lifted his opened beer can shouted “Someone here to see ya.” Standing there my back to the open door, I pushed it shut not all the way so to be secured by the latch.

Wiggly Fingers

I looked around: Everything that I had heard and seen from the outside was the same inside. Total chaos. To my right was a light switch. Not so unusual except that on the cover plate was a naked Richard Nixon with the actual switch in the place of his genitalia. On the floor was this small huddled person, face just inches from the screen the sound blasting.
Pathetic little thing, snotty nose, weepy eyes, hair crusted to his head, mouth pursed shut, thin as a famine refugee. He was in a dirty ragged tee shirt dirty yellow stained underpants, dirty bare feet. I saw dirty everything everywhere. This must have been the kid who had peered at me through the crack in the door. He turned his head around, smiled, lifted his hand just inches from the floor to wiggle his fingers towards me. All I could think to do was to smile wiggle my fingers back at him. He turned around disappeared into the television screen.
A disheveled woman a drooling toddler tucked under her left arm, crashed into the room. “Damn it, turn that TV down, I can’t think for not hearing. Whatcha want? Which one of my kids is in trouble again?
Want something to drink, maybe.” I wanted to talk to her about the absences of her children from school, no thank you for the drink. We talk; she assures me that she would get the kids to school. I remind her that her welfare payments are based on school attendance. Thinking, why is she on welfare? Husband is in the home. I kept my mouth shut.
All the while, I could not take my eyes off the child on the floor who kept glancing up at me. “That’s David,” she says, “he don’t talk, just shy.”
 

Same Ol’, Same Ol’

Nothing changed for the family, but the ages of the children. They got older, they were more troublesome in the schools the neighborhood. No matter how many times I visited the home, attempted interventions, offered recommendations, I was defeated. One of their teenage girls ran away. I tracked her down living at the Charles Manson compound. She eventually disappeared as did three other children. There was nothing, no one, no agency that could alleviate their predicament.
For three more years I scurried around the community, doing whatever was possible for the families in my assigned area. I thought of those families that could/would not be helped. Frequently thought of David and his family.
There were successes. I was a success. I loved that job. I was developing a new expanded approach to the old position of truant officer. It came to an end.
Thus, in 1975, David and I entered elementary school together.

 

Shifting Gears

My training for teaching was directed toward the secondary level. I had taught high school and had been an assistant principal. When I applied for work in this school district, it was for a Child Welfare and Attendance counseling position; once known as the Truant Officer.
I had been stationed at a Junior High, assigned to circulate among six feeder elementary schools, identifying families and children in need, by virtue of poor attendance; the best of all indicators.
After three years, my position was eliminated because of budget cuts. The services offered by my position saved the district $250.000 a year in State attendance payments. But so goes the irrationality of the educational system. I was subsequently assigned to a teaching position at an elementary school. Never mind that I was a secondary trained teacher. The decision makers thoroughly disliked my innovations in the position, my aggressiveness, (unsuitable for a woman) my ethnicity, my successes.
I had lost my position but at the very least I wanted to be remembered as a successful teacher. Fortunately, for me the assigned school was one of my six schools. It was the one that David attended.
I was technically qualified. I had not the slightest idea how to conduct a classroom in the primary grades except from my own vague personal memory. I conducted it as I would a high school classroom, my only experience. There was absolute order. All children had to have a three-ring notebook with dividers, a homework pad, an orderly desk. I knew how to teach. I had a lot to learn.
For instance, when a six year old tells you that he has to go, and you respond with “so go!” plan on the custodian mopping up the puddle; or when it’s raining, plan on being trapped with thirty children at recess and lunch. You get the idea.
 

Into Overdrive

After three years of primary grade’s frustrations, I was disheartened. I knew that I needed something more. I needed a substantial challenge. I had tried private tutoring with a few children who were in need of instruction that was more individualized, increased parent involvement, after school classes of no more than five children, home visits after uncovering unusual problems (I was really good at this). Almost everything worked, but too restricted in dimension.
A reading specialist had been assigned to our school, a teacher I had worked with in the past at this school. She and I had the same teaching/learning philosophy: literacy was the key to a child’s success in the entire learning process. Get them as early as possible before they got lost in the automatic grade level elevation system. Stress reading!!
I found that she too was also suffering from the frustration of not having a specific focus for her program.
 

Slaying the Saber-tooth Tiger

We developed a plan. We met with the teaching staff, surreptitiously. We needed their total support, assistance. We got it! The hard line philosophy was that all classrooms had to be heterogeneous. Our plan would run counter to sacred, ancient progressive tenets. We proposed to slay the saber-toothed tiger.
The first grade teachers would identify the children seriously deficient in reading for inclusion in this intense remedial learning program; all placed in one classroom, my classroom, the poorest scoring first in. The reading specialist would concentrate solely on reading; I would handle classroom management with additional reading, printing and arithmetic, nothing else! As soon as pupils scored at grade level, they were transferred out into the regular classroom another child on the waiting list would be transferred in.
Parents had to give permission, agree to a strenuous after school homework program, meet every six weeks for group conferences.

As it turned out, this would be an exciting innovation: parents in groups of six met with us, they discovered they were not alone; that other children, other families had similar problems. We brought in mental health professionals to be of assistance.
The entire faculty was supportive. They would do whatever needed: provide tables, materials, collect discarded, discontinued primary readers from the storage rooms. The custodian was included in our scheme: did he know of any tables hidden away, unused lost from the inventory. He did. He cleared away all of the single desks in my room. He hauled in from all over the campus thirty tables. A two place table for each child. Children need space, privacy, ownership.
The reading specialist teacher had a smaller adjacent room. She set up her listening posts, visual reading machines, picture cards, word recognition stations. Devised a daily schedule. Six children for each forty-five minute time allowance.
 

Battleground

We had a beginning, a middle, next the principal’s consent, a bit after the fact. We knew what his arguments would be. We prepared!
His first issue, what about the support from the other teachers, we had that one covered. He objected to a homogeneous situation. We countered with there would be boys and girls involved all of whom would be a various levels of reading skills; total non-readers to readers with some skills. All would be under grade level.
Then the objection, cost. Where was the money coming from? District certainly wouldn’t shell out money nor would they go for an experimental program. We countered that there was no additional costs, that remedial reading was certainly not experimental. The district wide funding for reading specialists was evidence of this.
He waved his hands in submission. His approval came with the statement that he didn’t want to hear any more, just get on with the program. Moreover, he added, what District doesn’t hear about was the best path for us to pursue. That was fine with us. We were off and running.
 

The Soundless Barrier

The children were identified. Placed in our program. David was one among twenty-nine others well below grade level. After two years of school he was at 0.2 in reading proficiency. His problems on the playground had accelerated, paddling’s accelerated, inattentive in my classroom, not troublesome. Did his work as best he could. He was there but not really there, there.
I noticed that David was just a beat behind the other children in following directions. He looked around watched before initiating a task. I moved him to row one. I began to walk back and forth across the front of the classroom watching his reactions. His eyes followed me no matter where I stood. While I was to his left, he was a bit more responsive, but to his right, not. If I raised my voice when I was next to his desk he looked up, as I moved away he just stared at me.
At times, I would tap his tabletop with my pencil or fingernails, he would respond immediately. I noticed when he was out on the playground and the yard duty lady told him to give up the swing, he kept swinging, when the bell sounded, he did not stop playing. When the children were told to line up, David came late.

I suspected, knew David was seriously hard of hearing. The school nurse did an audio monitor test. David was totally deaf in his right ear and 80% in his left. Parents notified. Doctors involved. Diagnosis, sound blocking growths in his ear canals. They could be surgically removed were. David would hear, have to learn to speak, to read, to socialize, all from scratch. Could it be done? Could he do it?

Catch-up Time

Seven years of silence. Seven years of no social proprieties. Seven years of non-academic learning. David would strive to manage his deficits. Two years in our reading program through third grade, he persevered. By the end of second grade he could read some, print some, handle some math skills. He made friends. Leveled out in playground activities. A stranger to the Principal. He learned words, their sounds, their meanings. David remained in the program through third grade. After two years 2.6 reading proficiency, sufficiency in basic math skills, printing legible. Everything was falling into place. Came to school clean, brushed teeth, combed hair. Stayed after school to help clean up. A kid on cloud nine. Ditto the teacher.
 

The Gift

David, end of third grade, the last day, after all the others had gone, came up to me, put his arms around my waist, his head burrowed into my body, felt for my hand, thrust a balled-up bit of paper, no bigger than a spit-ball, between my fingers scooted out. I carefully smoothed it:
A gift of love from David.

I never saw David after that, heard mention of his average school successes, his graduation, his entry into the military. My time in the elementary school had many rewarding encounters, but none like David. I never forgot David. I wondered. Did he remember me?
 

I Am David

My name is David, was David, is David, I guess. Are you still your same name after you die? Anyway, I was killed in my barracks in Saudi Arabia February 25th 1991, along with twenty-seven of my buddies. An Iraqi SCUD missile made a direct hit. I was in the latrine. They had to scrap me off of the walls. Pieces of me were picked up, shoveled into a bag, tagged along with my belongings and shipped home. There wasn’t much left of me to send home. But at least the army paid for my funeral and a plot in the cemetery. You see, welfare for my family didn’t account for much. After I joined up, I kinda didn’t write to them. I wonder if they’ll remember me.
I’m a private. Well, OK was a private. I guess I’ll always be a private, but that’s OK with me, better than being less than nobody wandering like a bum in the streets, this could have been me. Three of my brothers and two of my sisters disappeared into the streets. Mom never even looked for them, it wasn’t that she didn’t love them, just, you know less mouths to feed and clothes to wash and Dad was no help, coming home then going away before the welfare worker came. He had a job driving a truck but it didn’t help much. Anyway he drank a whole lot and they had terrible fights ― him and mom. But that was where I lived.

What did I know, nothing different, having a roof over my head didn’t make for a home or a very good life. I was OK with what I had. I didn’t know anything else. I found out when the army became my home, barracks, tents were clean, warm and dry, always good chow, blankets, clean clothes, good friends and work. I liked what I did; and no screaming girls to mess everything up, like before. I liked the company of my buddies.
I have lots of memories; lots of bad ones, good ones too you know, sometimes they’re all mixed up together, like special stuff turned into something that counted a lot, like the best time in my short life. I’ll try to say about it to you, I’m not too good with writing, never have been, but my life could have been something really awful, tough. But then there was this great teacher, I think of all her help, kindness, God, I loved her more than anything. I wonder, you think maybe she’d remember me?
I wanted to go to school all my friends went to school ― I got there, it was mostly awful. I was always being sent into the principal’s office. My Kindergarten teacher would grab my hand, open the door point me toward the office. I never knew why, so I just went to the office. Inside the principal’s room it was painted plain light brown, two big windows, one looking out to the front of the school the other out to the grass where the assemblies were held. The principal, Mr.D. had gray hair and a beard that wiggled when his mouth moved ― it moved lots.
There were pictures on one wall, a big desk, with a chair that rocked and moved in circles, the spanking paddles hanging on the wall.
Those paddles were some kinda scary. One was long, thin, brown, like a flat baseball bat, another one was short and looked like a pancake but bigger, you know, with a short handle, and one was a painted black wood one with holes in it, but it was the pancake one that knew me best, my name was on that paddle.
I always got two smacks; it was the second one that really hurt. I was use to getting surprise hits at home, no surprise smacks here, there was a rule: bend over, grab your ankles, don’t move, then whap whap sit down and blow your nose.
I sort of wanted to like school but I couldn’t understand what to do, how and when to do it. Best of all l liked recess, well, most of the time. The playground was covered with asphalt, had four big swings, a jungle Jim, a climbing pole, two-kick ball areas ― there was grass there, three upright wooden walls for big ball handball. I loved the swings best of all. You know every time I tried to play games with the other kids it was awful, they would always start fights with me, boy oh boy, I was a good fighter. It was from the swings that I got my big spankings. I would be pumping away you know, going higher and higher and this mean yard lady would be there waving her arms. She had something on a cord in her mouth and she would grab the chains and yank me off.
What did I do just going higher and higher than everybody? So I got to watching her, jumping off, running just before she grabbed me, I was a fast runner, can’t catch me.
In class, I liked to color, cut out pictures, look at picture book pages, watch movies, hit my buddies, not hard, just hard when they would get into fights with me. Anyway, the teacher never smiled at me just always looked cross. I tried to do what the other kids did, I watched what they did all the time, but I couldn’t get it just right.
First grade the same as Kindergarten only worse. I never knew what to do, when to do it or for what. I was always sent out of the room to stand on the wall, the kids and teachers even the principal laughed when they saw me, it wasn’t funny to me. I thought that second grade would be the same hassle, but it wasn’t, because teacher was different. She smiled, always smiled at me!!!
Her classroom was something else too. When I first went in, Oh man, loads of tables all over the place and all in neat rows and we all had our own table, no one to sit next to me to swipe my stuff, I didn’t have to share my things, my things were my own to keep in my own desk space. There were no stupid things on the walls that I couldn’t figure out. No stuff hanging from the ceiling waving around. Hundreds of all kinds of books were under the counter by the front windows. I could pick my very own, but just if I could read some of it.
The teacher’s desk smack in front with the blackboard behind it, and a terrific electric pencil sharpener on her desk, push in the pencil zip and didn’t break off the points. We lined up to use it in squads of five. We did this first thing in the morning it was better than the old crank model.
Teacher gave us two pencils, an eraser, a pack of crayons, baby scissors, a box of chalk, and our own little chalkboard and we had to have a three-ring notebook with dividers for our work. Every day at the same time we had words on cards to learn by looking fast, teacher held them up for us, at first, I couldn’t do any except for a few that had pictures. I got better and better but not very fast.
First thing, every day we did lines and circles on our printing papers, teacher showed us how on the chalk board, printed letters beginning with big and little A. I could barely do printing except for my name, and easy numbers. No moving around, no wild games, all work, and everything, everyone was in order. It was so clean. Another teacher Mrs. K, she was nice but all business, she was in the other room, had all sorts of machines and picture cards so we visited with her every day at our own special time. We had to learn to tell our time by the clock. Teacher had us make our own cardboard clock with our time drawn on it ― we looked at the clock on the wall and when they matched to our private clock it was our time. I was learning but I just couldn’t get the hang of it all not for a long time that is until…
Teacher moved me to the front row. She’d move first to one side of me then the other, she’d tap her fingers on my table, I could feel that in my hands, and I could hear tiny sounds that came out of her moving lips when she was at my left and not at my right.
I kept moving my head, watched so that I could hear the some of her sounds, just like I did at home. She circled me, moved to one side of me and then the other. She smiled kinda sad like knowing something she always seemed to know something. I loved her. I always kinda thought that I knew her.
Then I remembered this was the same lady who came to our house. She brought clothes, toys, candy for us when I was little and she and mom talked a lot. Wow, she was now my teacher and I liked that, anyway one day she sent me to the nice school nurse for a special hearing test. You know, every year a trailer came to our school the people would test our hearing and I always passed. I watched the testing lady, I could see when I was supposed to answer yes by the way she blinked, tilted her head, or moved her finger. The school nurse called my mother, mother took me to an ear doctor and he found big growths in both of my ears, I had to have surgery. When I woke up I could hear sounds loud, strange, and scary. It took me awhile to get use to it. You know ― it was so great!!!
My super teacher didn’t fail me at the end of second grade, but kept me and a couple of the other kids with her all through third grade. After another year I could read, say lots of new words, not the words I already knew like shit and fuck, but the words in the books on the cards, I could print all the A,B.C’s, I could do my math much better. I felt good. It was great when I could print really print my name so neat. I could open a book and read the story, could hear the other kids, I could hear the playground lady; I could hear the bell, and the reading machine, wow! But most of all I could hear my teacher say my name.
I cried for days when we had to move. I wouldn’t be able to be at the school with my friend, my special teacher. I never got to say goodbye, we moved in the summer. I got through school, graduated, just barely, I got the diploma. What to do now? Why not join up? I liked the discipline just like my old teacher taught me. I liked my uniform, I could follow orders, do my work. I knew that I was not officer stuff but I was making a living, living a life, being somebody, being me. I could read some, write some, do math, but best of all I could hear; all because my best of all teachers. I wonder does she remember me like I remember her.