Among School Children (22 page)

"Every hundred and fifty years Pluto moves into Neptune's orbit," Judith said to Alice in a loud voice a few tables away.

This week's scary gloom might not have come entirely from Clarence. In any case, Chris thought it was a warning. Maybe she was getting stale. She'd take her usual countermeasure and make a change. Al had asked her to teach sixth grade next year. That would mean new colleagues and a new curriculum. She'd have to spend a lot of summer vacation working on new lesson plans. But that would be fun. She liked that part of education, she thought. She was glad that she still did.

Chris was sick all weekend, and she slept and slept. She called in sick on Monday. The substitute, a college freshman on spring break, had it easier than Pam, because Clarence was still behaving fairly well.

When Chris walked in on Tuesday morning, her face was pale. At the start of math, Manny bickered with Horace.

"
Just
a minute!"

Chris stood before the low math group with her arms folded on her chest.

"Whether you realize it or not," she said to them, "Mrs. Zajac is
back!
"

They quieted down. In a moment, though, Manny started whispering to Jorge. Mrs. Zajac advanced on Manny. He stopped and lifted his eyes to her.

"Do I look like the sub who was in here yesterday?" she said to Manny.

Manny leered up at her. "No," he said. "She was younger."

Color moved up the nape of Mrs. Zajac's neck. She laid a hand flat on her breastbone and, tilting her head back, let loose her high-pitched, raspy laugh. The members of the top group stopped their work and turned around to see what they had missed.

On the Tuesday she returned, Chris got word that Friday would be Clarence's last day. She would tell him so at the end of school on Wednesday. She'd wait until Friday to tell the class and find a way to explain it to them. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the old Clarence rematerialized. He hadn't done his homework, wouldn't do his penmanship or stop whispering during the spelling lesson, tried to bolt before the other walkers at dismissal, and wouldn't look at Chris when she tried to talk to him after school. At the outer door, Clarence yelled at her, "I hate this school," and ran. But Wednesday morning, Clarence went right to work on penmanship. He had done his homework. He knew he was going to the Alpha class now. She knew that he was trying to prevent it. She would make it through this week somehow.

The clock did not move quickly Friday. When Clarence came in—the new Clarence, the one who went right to work on penmanship—she saw that he was dressed differently. Yesterday she had reminded him that he would visit his new class today, and today, instead of the usual T-shirt, he wore a white oxford shirt with a button-down collar, a little frayed in back. He had buttoned the top button but not the ones to the collar. She imagined Clarence choosing his own best clothes that morning and dressing himself.

And no sooner had he started his penmanship than he turned around to her again and said, "My mother said I was goin' to a special class. Why am I goin'?" She took him to the hall and put her hands on his shoulders, so he couldn't turn around. He did avert his face. "Clarence, as much as you're going to miss this class, we're going to miss you. It was a very hard decision. I had to think what's best for Clarence."

The counselor arrived around this time and made cheerful talk to Clarence about his new class, and Clarence just slowly shook his head. Chris sent Clarence back to the room.

"They're all like that," said the counselor to Chris. "Scared to leave, you know?"

"No," said Chris. "The problem is, I'm a witch, and he likes me. He's used to witches." She added, "He got dressed up today. My heart is breaking."

From her desk, she kept a Clarence watch. He batted his eyelashes. He left his mouth ajar. He knew she was watching him, she thought. But when he thought she wasn't, he tried to trip a classmate. His grin blossomed. Then he saw her and it vanished. The pattern was familiar to her after all these years among little boys. When he knew she was watching him today, he would extract every thrilling tickle of sympathy he could, and she would let him have what he wanted.

After the spelling test—he had studied for it this time—Clarence went away with the counselor, to visit the Alpha class. In the car, the counselor chattered away at Clarence, invoking visions of picnics and roller skating parties at the Alpha class. Clarence sat in the back seat, gazing out at the melting, muddy March landscape as the car ascended through Holyoke, Clarence answering by saying "Yup" over and over again.

At the outer door to his new school, Clarence fingered his collar button. He bent down and smoothed the cuffs of his pants.

The desks in the Alpha room had high partitions on three sides. It was a small class, just ten, all boys. An aide and a counselor hovered in the rear. The teacher was young and she seemed calm. During breaks, she allowed boom boxes, but only one at a time. Rap was the music of choice. "I hate that music," she said, smiling. She had gotten her class to make up their own rap song, on the theme of the multiplication tables. She did a verse for the Kelly School counselor, putting on the emphatic, equally accented syllabication that gives rap music its air of threatening drums: "
Two! Times! Two! Is! I! For! Get!
"

"He is coming into a notorious group of troublemakers," she explained. "We tell them when they go to the cafeteria or out in the halls, 'Don't go out there wearing a sign on your head that says Alpha.' We need to tell them what their reputation is, and we need to get them to work against it." She thought that many had made progress. "Sometimes they'll see mainstream kids running in the halls and say, '
We
don't do that.' " For all of that, the Alpha teacher thought it would be better to leave the children in regular classes and to use people like her and her aides to help the regular teachers cope.

The teacher had chosen an escort for Clarence, a small, wiry white boy with a crew cut just growing out—it had the look of an untended garden. He showed Clarence the behavior chart, pointing at the various symbols. "That's good. That's good. That's not good." There was a classroom store, stocked according to the children's wishes, budget permitting. Accumulated points for good behavior earned an Alpha student treats from the store. Clarence's escort said he had won a plastic figure of the wrestler André the Giant. He hadn't done too well since then. "I had a hundred and sixty-one points? And then I went to zero. Now I got thirty-five points. Say if you get ten points, and you get a check, then you got five points in your bank account."

Clarence nodded. He didn't say much. He fingered objects, such as the passes a student had to get in order to leave the room. "Yup," he said. He followed the white boy around the room. The white boy said, in singsong cadence, "It's
pretty
nice. The teacher gives out crackers and
stuff.
We do a lot of
stuff.
Sometimes we have birthday parties. My birthday's comin'." Then, with adult-looking thoughtfulness, the Alpha veteran said to Clarence, "People don't like us. Because we're special."

"See you Monday, Clarence," said the teacher after the tour.

"Yup," said Clarence.

"I love him already," said the teacher.

There was mud on the playground. Recess was indoors. Returning from lunch, Chris looked at the board. Clarence had written in huge letters:
CLARENCE THE BEST!

"Clarence the best, huh?" said Chris.

Robert had a green stuffed dinosaur in his shirt pocket. He'd carried it there all day.

"Robert, put that on my desk. It's starting to get in the way of your learning."

He must have been waiting for that command. He said about his stuffed animal, "He's learning, too-ooo."

This was Friday afternoon, when she always anticipated missing them a little over the weekend. She said mildly to Robert, "Well, he can learn as well on my desk as in your pocket."

She read aloud a long time. "Awww"s when she closed the book. So she opened it and read some more. Clarence pulled his chair up tight against his desk, against its bulging contents. He had stuffed his desk so tightly with books and old papers and notes he'd never taken home to his mother, it looked as if they'd need a crowbar to empty it. As Chris read, Clarence watched Mariposa industriously copy over her story. The other day during this quiet time, he had cut a piece out of Mariposa's sweatshirt, just trying out the scissors. (He had said he was sorry afterward and had offered to let Mariposa cut off a piece of
his
sweatshirt.) Now, as Mrs. Zajac read, he drew his sleeves over his hands. He watched Mariposa, gazed at the stapler on her desk, reached over and fingered it, turned it sideways. He watched his fingers stroke the cool gray metal. He opened up the stapler, and Mariposa finally made an angry face at him. He grinned. Now he wanted to go to the bathroom, the game of bothering Mariposa forgotten. His elevated hand yearned toward Mrs. Zajac. He wiggled his fingers at her.

"We're going to take our journals out. Yes, Clarence, you can go to the bathroom."

Clarence walked to the door, got outside, and started his stiff-ankled, untied-sneakers run.

"Clarence is leaving the class today," she said to the children when Clarence had jogged off out of earshot. She leaned back against the front table, nails drumming lightly on the cover of the novel. "He's going to another class."

Robert applauded briefly.

Chris glanced at him and went on calmly, fingers drumming on the book. "Not for a punishment, but because that's where I think he'll do better. Clarence isn't all that pleased about going, just like none of us would be. I thought it would be nice if we made a little card for him, just wishing him good luck, and signed our names to it."

Mariposa distributed the journals.

"That might be one of the things you might want to write about in your journals," Chris added. "How you feel about Clarence leaving. And when he's leaving today, I want you to make sure that you do say goodbye to him. I don't want to make a big deal in front of the class, because he isn't that thrilled about it."

"He says it's you that he's leavin'," crowed Robert. He grinned.

"It's me that he's leaving," she repeated flatly.

"No!" piped up Felipe. "He said the reason he's leaving is because you told them to."

"Well, there were a lot of people involved. We all thought it was the best thing for him. So anyways, that might be one thing you'd want to write about in your journals, about him leaving."

She walked among the desks. She stopped at Juanita's and said to the shy girl, "If you want to complain about what a creep Mrs. Zajac is, you can do that."

Juanita smiled up at Mrs. Zajac.

Chris bustled around, talking fast. Clarence would return any moment. She got Judith to find that good, heavy white paper Chris knew was somewhere in the room. She asked Felipe to design the card.

"Clarence, we're writing in our journals."

He walked in slowly, eyeing the room in general.

Chris went to his desk and, bending over him, whispered, "Since this is your last day, you might want to write how you feel about it." She went back to her desk and watched Clarence.

After a while, he said, without turning to her, "I don't know what to write."

"Come here, dear." She leaned across her desk and whispered, "You could write about leaving."

"No."

"Then write about why you don't want to. Write that down."

The remedial reading teacher came to the door to pick up some children. Chris called to her, "Can I keep them for today?" The whole class should be here.

Plan book open, pen in hand, Chris laid the back of that hand across her mouth. She stared at Clarence. He had begun to write. She stared over his head toward the door. Only an hour now and the walkers would line up there. Routine would carry her the rest of the way.

"All right, you can put away your journals."

"Ca ca ca can I keep working in mine?"

"Can you keep working in your journal, Clarence? Yes."

Story rewriting time. "I don't got no more paper," said Kimberly.

Chris lifted her eyebrows, smiled, and made one hand into claws. The children cried "No!" covering their ears and grinning as they cried. Clarence dropped his pen and did likewise.

Clarence went back to his journal. "Mrs. Zajac, how do you spell 'through'?" In a little while, he carried his opened journal to her. He sat down at his desk and watched her read.

I'm not going to that school because I don't like it and I don't think that school is a good place for me And why did you put me in that school it is not a good place for me i now Monday through the whole week am not going to that school i mean it you shouldn't said yes now i am not going to the school I am going to run away?

She took him to the hall. "Give it a chance, Clarence." "Nope."

"The teacher seemed nice, didn't she? Why don't you want to go? What's so bad about that school? Tell me what you don't like about it. I think you'll like it. I really do." He just kept shaking his head.

The children were in story conferences. Felipe said loudly to Irene, "I bet I get a C on this story. You watch. I bet I get an F." That did it. Felipe began to cry. "I'm stupid. I'm stupid in every subject."

Chris watched from her desk. She had no sympathy to spare for Felipe today. Perhaps, she thought, that was the problem.

For science, the last lesson, she showed a film strip on the constellations. That cheered up Felipe. Clarence was already cheered up. He lay on his belly on the floor to watch the story of how the ancients had laid templates on the wild stars. Mrs. Zajac, at the projector, sang, "I see you, Clarence. Don't think you're getting away with anything."

The clock began to move for her again. The day was almost over. Felipe finished up the card. "Goodbye, Clarence. Good luck, Clarence," it read. It was elegantly lettered. "I could've made a better one if I had more time," Felipe said.

Clarence grinned. He was washing the boards, his back to the class. Children gathered around Felipe's desk and signed their names.