Finding a Voice (4 page)

I
had hoped that Francie’s arrangement with the school psychologist had been forgotten. Francie hadn’t mentioned any time that I was supposed to meet the psychologist, and she hadn’t rung over the weekend. Maybe it wouldn’t happen?

But it did. During second period Monday I was fetched from class by one of the administrative staff and delivered straight to a small, almost empty room.

‘Dr Sharon is on her way. She’s hit a bit of traffic, but we expect her any minute now,’ the secretary said and then left me to sit in one of three chairs.

It seemed like hours before the doctor –
was a psychologist a doctor?
– arrived. I had almost memorised every word on the three posters on the wall by that time.

Finally the door opened and Dr Sharon came in, looking every bit the doctor or professional type. Her hair was held back in a bun and she wore a navy skirt and matching jacket. Despite being apparently very late she walked in calmly and took her time taking her jacket off. Only when she had methodically arranged a notepad and pen on the
table did she fully look at me.

‘So,’ she started. ‘Francie thinks it would be a good idea for us to spend some time together. What do you think of that idea?’

This caught me a bit by surprise.

‘Um, well, what do I have to do?’

‘Nothing – or everything,’ she said. ‘It depends what you want from our time.’

‘I don’t know why Francie wants me to come here. I think I’m okay.’

And then it hit me. Was this about separating me from Mom? Was this the beginning of assessments and preparing me for that? I felt the blood drain from my face and I suddenly felt dizzy.

‘Did I not do it right? I called the crisis team! She’s been well, she’s taken care of me. Really, really! I’m okay. I just made a mistake going over to a girl’s house without asking and my mom got worried and then the worry turned bad. But I’m okay and she’ll be okay!’ The words tumbled out, pleading, begging, hoping that a corner hadn’t been turned that could not be retraced.

‘Jo,’ the doctor stopped me and then waited a minute before continuing slowly. ‘This isn’t about evaluating you, or your mom, or your home situation. I have nothing to do with social services I promise you. This isn’t even about your mom. It’s about you.’

I didn’t know it at the time, but I would come to learn that this was the most talking that Dr Sharon would ever do without asking a single question.

‘So, again, what do you want from our time? What can I help you with right now?’

I thought about the question. I didn’t know that anyone could help me with anything. My life wasn’t a made-for-TV movie. There wasn’t a beginning, middle or an end to the reasons why I was scared and lonely much of the time. It was just – life. Until a few days ago I wouldn’t have even felt so awful, even with Mom needing the hospital.

I thought about the last three weeks. Classes weren’t so bad, but lunch hours had been miserable so far. Eating my sandwich in the hallway by my locker – alone – while everyone else sat in groups. Walking the halls, trying to look like I was on my way to meet someone. Passing kids I’d gone to elementary school with whispering to kids who had come from other schools, and just knowing they were whispering about me.

But maybe I would have gotten used to that.

It was the dangled carrot of friendship that had ruined everything. Someone who might actually like me and possibly even understand me. Maybe. And now it was worse because for once in my life I could imagine a life I had only ever hoped for. Yet I wasn’t sure I could have a friend
and
my mom.

What was I going to do about Sarah? After our meeting on Thursday, she probably thought I was weird. Which, if I wanted to focus on Mom, was a good thing. So why didn’t it feel that good?

‘I hate lunch hour,’ I blurted.

Dr Sharon said, ‘Well, let me see what I can do about that.’

And she didn’t even ask me why.

I had expected that it would be at least a week or two before I would see Dr Sharon again – if I did. I was pretty used to meeting with this or that professional, who usually got moved to some other job before I could even remember their name.

So I was completely shocked when a second message came to me during last period on the same day.

This time she was behind the table waiting for me.

‘So – lunch hour,’ she stated simply. I waited, but no more was offered. After an age she went on to say, ‘Tell me about that.’

‘I … it’s complicated.’ It wasn’t really, but how could I say
I want to avoid seeing someone who might actually want to talk to me
without sounding ridiculous.

‘In which way?’

I thought of answering. Maybe it would help. But I didn’t know where to start, and if I did, would I know where to
stop? Instead I just shook my head.

‘Right. Well, you’re in luck if lunch hour is what you want changed. Is it?’

‘Yes.’ Finally an easy question.

‘Someone needs your help. I’ll let him speak for himself, but I can arrange for the help he needs to be during lunch hour.’ She handed me a leaflet. ‘Take this. Think it over. If it appeals to you, apply with me as a reference. If it doesn’t, we can talk about it in a week when I see you next.’

I was far too curious to head back to class without reading what the doctor had handed me. The leaflet was handmade with pasted-on photos and bits of typing in between. The front simply said
Hi, I’m Chris
, and there was a picture of someone in a wheelchair. Not your politically-correct picture of the good-looking guy shooting a basket from a super-slick looking wheelchair either. Even though the boy in the picture was dressed in a suit that could only be for a wedding, and even though he was smiling, there was no disguising the fact that he was obviously not your average kid, only just in a wheelchair. Both his arms were out to the side and in the air and one of his hands was bent inward, with his wrist at an impossible angle and witch-like fingers held stiffly out. His mouth was distorted, despite the smile. But the telling thing was his hair. No self-respecting guy slicked his hair back like it was. Even I, as clueless as I was about fashion or anything cool, knew that.

I opened the pamphlet up.
You might not know me, but I go to your school. I like art and listening to music
. Then there was a photo of an abstract painting and a photo of the boy, with earphones on, same lopsided smile.

On the opposite page,
I’d like to meet new friends who could help me do teenage stuff. Maybe you’d like to contribute something to your community. Maybe you would like some experience and a reference for pursuing a career in special education or social care. Whatever your reasons, any time spent with Chris is most welcome!
This page just had a rainbow of different coloured hands clasped as illustration.

Then on the back:

The Special Ed Department is looking for:

Lunch hour assistants and monitors

‘Buddies’ to assist in integrated classes (must maintain a B average in assisted class)

In exchange, you get:

Valuable life experience

Getting to know new kids

An opportunity to share your interests/skills

If this interests you talk to Mr Jenkins – Special Education Resource Teacher

I wasn’t sure. I didn’t have any experience with special ed kids and I had enough of my own weirdness baggage to carry around, without giving everyone another reason to think I was odd. Still, it would give me a place to be every lunch and time to decide what to do about Sarah. What did I have to lose?

I
was nervous walking into the special education wing. Somewhere here I was meeting Mr Jenkins. Was it the rec room? Or the break room? I wasn’t sure where exactly.

No one ever came into this wing – the kids here only ever came
out
. The kids from special education were kind of an entity that everyone tried to pretend they didn’t see. They were in the occasional class, sitting with their adult assistant in the corner. And whole groups of them came to assemblies, all right. That was when they were most visible. A few of the ignorant kids might mimic some of the special ed kids then, or someone would nervously giggle when a screech was heard in a quiet moment. Mostly though, they were politely ignored. Kind of like me – only they at least had each other and I’d always had to face that on my own.

I didn’t even know what Mr Jenkins looked like and how would he know what I looked like? I had only talked to him briefly this morning. I had gone to the office twenty minutes before class had started, clutching my now very creased
pamphlet.

‘What can I do for you, dear?’ the secretary had asked.

‘I’d like to speak to Mr Jenkins, but I don’t know where I find him.’ I had handed the pamphlet to her as if it would explain everything.

‘I’ll see if he’s in his room now.’ The secretary had dialled the phone and then handed it to me.

‘My name is Jo, and I’m interested in the pamphlet – about Chris.’

‘Fantastic!’ His response had been almost too enthusiastic. ‘We’d hoped you’d join us. How ‘bout today? Chris isn’t in today, but I could give you a little orientation. If you came the class before lunch, and stayed through lunch, that would give us enough time.’

And that had been it. I had thought there must be some long application or something, checking references, interviews, but no, just – come on down. It had been relatively easy.

I looked into the first two rooms I came to, but didn’t see anyone. The rooms were small, with big mats and weird exercise equipment in one and a big mechanical thing with straps hanging down in another. Doubt started to creep in. Was I
sure
this was going to be any easier than just finding a quiet bathroom to hide out in every lunch hour until the end of the year? At least I was familiar with ridicule. In this unfamiliar territory I didn’t know what might happen. It
occurred to me that these quiet hallways leading to rooms with who knows what in them were more like what I had expected in the hospital wing my mom was in.

I was just about to turn around and walk back out the heavy double doors to normality when a man strode toward me from the other end of the hall.

‘Jo!’ the man whom I assumed was Mr Jenkins said, sticking out his hand for a handshake. ‘Come with me. I’m rushing from one thing to another as usual. Sorry about that, meant to meet you at the door. That’s okay though, you found your way and now I’ll give you a bit of a tour.’

He talked quickly and seemed to move even faster. I had to speed walk to keep up with him as he led me back down the hall and around a corner.

‘So there are twelve students who make this wing their base,’ he explained as we walked. ‘The goal is to get them all out of here and in classes with the rest of you, but we don’t have the resources to make that happen as quickly as we’d like, so most of them are only in a few typical classes.’

I nodded as if I knew what he was talking about. There wasn’t time to think about it though because he was still speed walking, stopping briefly to pick up some papers from an office.

‘Notices to hand out,’ he said. ‘I’ll kill two birds with one stone while I show you around.’ And he was off again.

‘Most of our kids have some challenges that you don’t see
in regular classes. It could be that they use sign language. It could be that they can’t understand everything other kids say. Or that they get overwhelmed by too much talking at all. The ways they cope may not always be – what you’d expect from your peers.’

I thought of the way I had run away from Sarah days before, how bizarre I’m sure it had looked. I think I understood what he meant.

‘You mean they might act a little strange sometimes when they don’t know what else to do?’

‘That’s exactly what I mean.’ He beamed like I had answered a quiz question correctly. ‘I just want you to know it’s okay to feel a little out of place here at first. But remember that all the kids you meet today are like you under it all. They want to have fun. They want people to like them. They want friends.’

I nodded, not quite as afraid as I had been.

‘Okay, let’s go meet some kids.’ He opened the door to one of the small rooms. This one looked pretty regular – a table, a whiteboard. A boy, who looked pretty ordinary, except maybe that he was a bit small, was sitting at the table with a teacher or assistant beside him.

‘This is Josh. He won’t say hello yet, but he’ll be asking John, who’s one of our aides, all about you when we leave.’ Josh had put his head in his hands, but the adult with him gave a wave and a smile. I smiled back and gave Josh a little
wave when he took a peek at me as we left to go to the room next door.

‘This is Lilly.’ Lilly was the opposite of Josh. She was up, out of her seat and standing nose to nose with me in a second.

‘Who are you? How old are you?’ She asked me, staring into my eyes. She made me a little nervous, but Mr Jenkins stepped in to help me out.

‘Shall we give the poor girl a bit of space, Lilly?’ he said, taking her arm and then introducing me.

‘Show Jo the new app on your tablet,’ her aide prompted. I spent the next ten minutes having a lesson from Lilly about her app to show people how she was feeling. Her fingers flew over the screen as she explained how it worked.

‘It’s because I don’t always know how to say I’m mad,’ she said. ‘This helps me say it.’

‘That’s cool, Lilly,’ I said, thinking that I could use something similar most of the time.

I continued to follow Mr Jenkins through a maze of small rooms, where he introduced me to kids and teachers and assistants at each stop, giving me a story for each that we met. I felt like some kind of visiting VIP being shown around.

It wasn’t like school at all. There were still classes, but with only a few kids in each, or sometimes only one. Some of the rooms were for therapy, like learning to speak better, or exercises for the kids who had physical disabilities.

Despite meeting some pretty strange kids, I felt my muscles
relaxing. Everyone had something they wanted to show me. Everyone seemed genuinely happy to see me. I was talking to more people here than I had talked to all year.

Then there was lunch, which was a little chaotic. Wheelchairs were jostled into places around two big tables. Some kids had hot lunches to be heated up. Things were spilled – and then cleaned up. Josh had to be led out when he started covering his ears and screaming. But there was lots of laughing too. I mostly just sat and watched it while I ate my sandwich. It was the first lunch hour I could remember when I didn’t feel like everyone was watching
me
.

In fact at the end of lunch it took me a couple of tries to get Mr Jenkins’s attention to lead me back through the maze to get out.

‘Sure, sure,’ he said, leaving a conversation he was having with someone, while also helping a student pack her lunch away.

Again I ran to catch up with him as we wound our way toward the entrance. Halfway there he stopped. This was the first time I had seen him stand still.

‘Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have Art in block H would you?’

‘No, that’s Science for me. Why?’ I asked, wondering what this had to do with anything.

‘Oh, nothing,’ he dismissed. ‘Just a crazy idea I had. Chris is in an art class that period and I’d love to get him some peer
support instead of him having to drag his aide along with him all of the time.’

Thinking about Science, I remembered that between staying home on Friday and meeting Dr Sharon on Monday I had now missed two classes. Two classes of avoiding Sarah. All through the tour of the Special Education wing I had thought of her, though, wondering if she would find it as interesting as I did. Maybe I’d even tell her about it tomorrow. If it wasn’t too late, and she was still talking to me.

‘So, what do you think?’ Mr Jenkins interrupted my thoughts. ‘Are you up for meeting Chris still?’

‘Sure, I guess so.’

‘Great. We’ll start on Monday then.’

That left me with three more lunch hours to survive in the main school. But then, maybe there was a chance it wouldn’t be so bad. Even if it had to be only at school, maybe there was still hope for me to be friends with Sarah.