One Child (23 page)

But there was none. Wearily, I went over to the pillows behind the animal cages and sank down onto them.

Within seconds Sheila was standing before me, her eyes scrutinizing my face. "You ain't happy," she stated quietly. She had her hands stuffed into the pockets of her overalls. How much she had grown, I thought. There must have been two inches between the overalls and her shoes. Or perhaps there always had been and I hadn't noticed.

"No, I'm not happy."

"How come?"

"Sheila, come over here," Anton called. Sheila remained motionless, her eyes piercing mine, probing my mind. I was wondering if I really had gotten too involved. She was such a beautiful child to me. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would have thought she looked like any of a hundred thousand other children. But she alone was more important to me than all the rest of them together. I loved her, although I certainly hadn't intended to. And loving her had made her so important to me. Now I was " 'sponsible." I could feel the tears in my eyes.

Sheila knelt beside me, the worry rippling across her face. "How come you cry?"

"I'm not very happy."

Anton came over and lifted Sheila to her feet. "Come on, tiger, you come help me put away papers."

"Uh-uh," Sheila twisted out of his grasp, moving out of reach.

I waved a hand at him. "That's okay, Anton. I'm all right." He nodded and left us.

For a long moment Sheila regarded me, her eyes flooded with concern. The tears remained unfallen in my own but I could not make them go away. Nor could I bring myself to look at her. I was embarrassed to show such shaky composure and I was worried about frightening her.

But she stood apart watching me. Then slowly she came over and sat beside me. Touching my hand tentatively, she spoke. "Maybe if I hold your hand, you'll feel better. Sometimes that helps me."

I smiled at her. "You know, kid, I love you. Don't ever forget that. If the time ever comes and you're alone or scared or anything else bad ever happens, don't forget I love you. Because I do. That's really all one person can do for another."

Her brow wrinkled. She did not understand what I was saying. I suppose I knew she wouldn't because she was so young. But I had to say it. I had to know, for my own peace of mind, that I had told her I had done my best.

I rolled over on the bed to look at Chad. We had been watching TV all evening and not talking. I was too preoccupied to concentrate on conversation. At first I had not even told him the particulars of what had happened; but as the evening wore on, my mind was coming out of the first haze of shock and beginning to tick again.

"Chad?"

He looked in my direction.

"Is there a legal way to contest what they plan to do with Sheila?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know. Is there a legal way to fight the commitment? I mean could someone like me do it? Someone who isn't her guardian?"

"You fight it?"

"Someone has to. I think the school district would back me. Maybe."

"I suppose you could try."

I frowned. "My problem is that I can't figure out where to start. To whom do we appeal? The courts committed her and you can't take a court to court, can you? I don't have any idea how to go about this."

"I imagine you'd have to call a hearing with her father and the parents of the little boy she abused and the child protection workers and all that. You could go through due process. You know all that."

I did not know. I had about as much understanding of the judicial system as I did the theory of relativity. But I hated Chad to think so. "Would you take it on, Chad?"

His eyebrows shot up. "Me?"

I nodded.

"I don't know anything about that kind of thing. What you need is someone specializing in that sort of law. Gripes, Tor, my experience is confined to getting the drunks out of jail."

I smiled. "Your experience and my bank account are about equal. I'm supposing that if I advocate, I'll have to pay for it."

Chad rolled his eyes. "Another charity case, huh?" He grinned. "I guess no one ever promised me I'd get rich."

"Oh, someday you will. Just not this year."

When the superintendent of school discovered that I had engaged a lawyer to look into the case, there was a meeting scheduled immediately. For the first time I met Mrs. Barthuly, Sheila's former teacher, face-to-face. She was a petite woman in her early forties with a delicate smile. As all five-foot-nine-inches of me in my Levi's and tennis shoes towered over her, I could well imagine Sheila might have been a trial to her. She wore an Anne Klein scarf and platform shoes and looked like a model for a Chanel No. 5 advertisement on television. Smelly, earthy-minded Sheila must have been hard to contend with.

Ed Somers was also there, as well as Allan, the psychologist, Mr. Collins, Anton, the superintendent and the resource room teacher who had had Sheila in kindergarten the year before. In the beginning it was not a particularly comfortable meeting for me. Not knowing my relationship with Chad, the superintendent felt that I had overstepped my boundaries in consulting a lawyer on this case without going through him. Perhaps he was right. I explained that I had discussed the matter with Ed and he felt there was no way we could touch the case, so I had simply checked into the legal recourse available.

Despite our touchy start, once the meeting got underway, a transition took place. I had brought along examples of Sheila's schoolwork and some videotapes that Anton had made of her in class. Allan reported on the test results. Sheila's former teachers were impressed and said so. Even Mr. Collins, whom I feared would be angry about this next example in a long history of my impulsive acts, commented on the overall improvement in Sheila's behavior. Unexpectedly, I felt a rash of affection toward him as he spoke.

The superintendent was less enthusiastic, saying that this really wasn't our matter because of the abuse incident. Yet he was encouraged by Sheila's progress and by her unusual IQ. He cautiously agreed to stand behind me in stating that the state hospital was not the most appropriate placement for Sheila and that he thought she could be maintained in the public school system without endangering the other students. He asked that Chad come in and see him. Despite the superintendent's attempt to keep the mood of the meeting low-key, I left in jubilant spirits.

The other major person to involve was Sheila's father. Anton went on scouting duty. The next time he saw the man home, Anton called me, and Chad and I came out immediately.

As the time before, Sheila's father had been drinking. He had had a bit more this second time and was a little jollier.

"Sheila doesn't belong in the state hospital," I explained. "She's doing very nice work in school and I think she might even be able to go back to a regular class next fall."

He tipped his head slightly. "Why do you care what they want to do with her?"

The question echoed in my head, a repeat of what Sheila so often asked me. Why did I care? "You've got a special daughter," I replied. "Going to the state hospital would be the wrong move for her. I don't want to see that happen to her because I think she can lead a normal life."

"She's crazy as a loon, that girl is. They told you what she done, didn't they? She damn near burned that little kid to death."

"She doesn't need to be crazy. She's not. Even now, she's not crazy. But she will be if she goes down there. It'd get worse in the long run. You don't want your daughter down in the state hospital."

He heaved a great sigh. He did not understand me. All his life people had been after him. Things had always gone wrong. He'd been in trouble, Sheila had been in trouble. He had learned to trust nobody. And so had his daughter. In their world it was safer that way. Now I came and he could not understand.

We talked far into the night. Chad and Anton drank beer with him while I made notes. Sheila, who was keeping her usual vigil on us from the far corner, fell asleep on the floor while we talked. I did not know if she understood why I was there and what was going on. I had not told her anything specific because I did not want to frighten her needlessly, nor did I want to give her false hopes.

But after that night I suspected she would know. It would be better in the end, I supposed.

Her father agreed with us eventually. At last we convinced him that it was not "charity" or "do-gooding" or a nasty trick. He began to perceive the real reasons, which I had trusted he would if we persisted long enough. I had trusted that he did have some paternal instinct under that crust. In his own way, he loved Sheila and needed as much compassion as she did.

That was a strange evening. All of us were a little tipsy. Chad with his experience of defending the skid-row residents seemed to get along with Sheila's father better than the rest of us. He and her father would slap each other's backs in boozy camaraderie when I tried to get the conversation back onto the track and then they'd ply Anton and me with another can of beer. In a way, I was glad the hospital situation came up. It forced us to recognize each other's places in Sheila's life; that was better for everybody.

The hearing was held on the very last day of March. It was a dark, cold, windy day, promising snow on the eve of April. Not a good day to boost spirits. I had to take the afternoon off from school as did Anton. Mr. Collins came with us too. Surprisingly, in my opinion, he was very supportive of me, coming into my room in the morning and talking in a warm, fatherly way. Of all the people I had encountered, I would have least expected this change in him, because I had nursed a childish one-dimensional picture of him since the incident in Mrs. Holmes' room. At first I was suspicious of him, wondering what prompted this change, if he were simply protecting his own interests. But as I aired out some of the closed portions of my own mind I came to see that he cared in his own way as much for the children as I. Even for Sheila.

It was a closed hearing. Across the room from us were the parents of the little boy and their lawyer. Milling about were a multitude of state and county people. With us were Anton, Allan, Mrs. Barthuly, Ed, and the superintendent. Sheila's father arrived late, but he did come finally and he was sober. My heart ached seeing him. He had on a suit that must have been a reject from Goodwill. The seams were frayed, the jacket stained and worn, the pants mended. His huge belly pulled the jacket tight and made it gape, straining on the buttons. Obviously, though, he had tried to look nice. His face was freshly shaven and he reeked of dime-store after-shave.

Outside the courtroom on a hard oak bench sat Sheila. Chad felt it would be best if she could be there. He thought perhaps he might need her if things did not go smoothly.

Sheila had come dressed in her overalls and T-shirt. I had so wished we could have dressed her nicely, but time had run out. So over the lunch hour I had given her a very thorough bath in the sink and brushed her hair until it was neat and shiny. If nothing else, she was clean. She had to sit alone outside the courtroom so we had brought a number of books to entertain her. However, when the judge found out that the child in question was being left unattended, he sent a court clerk out to sit with her.

The hearing went much differently from what I had expected. I had never been in a court before and all my information came from television. But this was not like TV. The lawyers spoke quietly and each of us presented our material. I had brought along the videotapes to illustrate Sheila's growth in my classroom in the three months she had been with us. Allan reiterated his findings from the tests. Ed spoke of the possible programs for her in the public schools should she continue to need special services after my class.

Then the parents of the little boy were questioned about the incident in November. Sheila's father was asked about how carefully he watched his daughter and if, in his opinion, she had seemed to improve in the last months. It was a very quiet hearing. No one raised a voice. No one even appeared emotionally involved. It was so different from what I had expected.