didn’t know, sweetheart. No one’s taught you this.”
“I wanted to show you I could do them without help.”
“Sheil, it’s nothing to get upset about. You did nicely. You tried. That’s the important part. Next time you’ll get them right.”
Nothing I said comforted her and she sat for a few moments with her hands over her face. Then slowly her hands slid away and she uncrumpled the paper, pressing it smooth on the tabletop. “I bet if I could have done math problems good, my mama, she wouldn’t leave me on no highway, like she done. If I could have done fifth-grade math problems, she’d be proud of me.”
“I don’t think math problems have anything to do with it, Sheila.”
“She left because she don’t love me no more. You don’t go leaving kids you love on the highway, like she done me. And I cut my leg, see?” For the hundredth time the small white scar was displayed. “If I’d been a gooder girl, she wouldn’t have done that.”
“Sheil, we just don’t know what happened, but I suspect your mama had her own problems to straighten out.”
“But she copeded with Jimmie. How come she copeded with Jimmie and left me?”
“I don’t know, love.”
Sheila looked across the table to me, that haunted, hurt expression in her eyes. “Why did it happen, Torey? Why did she tooked him and leaved me behind? What made me such a bad girl?” Her eyes filled with tears, but as always, they never fell.
“Oh, lovey, it wasn’t you. Believe me. It wasn’t your fault. She didn’t leave you because you were bad. She just had too many of her own problems. It wasn’t your fault.”
“My pa, he says so. He says if I be a gooder girl she’d a never done that.”
My heart sank. There was so much to fight, so little to fight with.
The issue colored everything: her work, her behavior, her attitude toward other children and toward adults. As the weeks passed and particularly as we spent so much of the after-school hours in close contact, I knew very well what was being encouraged to happen. I was the first stable, nurturing adult female Sheila had occasion to spend much time with and she grasped at the relationship with greedy desperation.
Was it right to let her? This question was never far from my mind. My training, both in education and in psychology, cautioned rigorously against getting too personally involved with children, and I strove to keep the proper balance. On the other hand, I had always rebelled against the idea of not becoming involved at all. The cornerstone of my personal philosophy was commitment. I felt it was the unequivocal commitment of one individual to another, of me to the child I was working with, that evoked positive change. How could there be genuine commitment without involvement? That was a contradiction in terms.
On a gut level I felt Sheila had to have this relationship and without it she could never go forward. She needed the esteem that comes only from knowing others care for you, others value you sufficiently to commit themselves to you. She needed to know that while her mother might not have been able to provide this kind of commitment, this did not mean that Sheila was unworthy of it. Yet on an intellectual level I knew I was treading a dangerous path.
Just how dangerous came home to me in February, after Sheila had been with us about seven weeks. I had to attend an out-of-state conference, which meant I would be gone from class for two days. Having ample warning, I endeavored to prepare my class for my absence and the anticipated substitute teacher. Sheila reacted with rage.
“I ain’t never, never gonna like you again! I ain’t never gonna do anything you ask. It ain’t fair you go leave me! You ain’t supposed to do that, don’t you know? That be what my mama done and that ain’t a good thing to do to little kids. They put you in jail for leaving little kids. My pa, he says.”
Tirade after tirade and nothing I said, no effort I made to explain I would be gone only for two days abated Sheila’s anger. In my absence she reverted to all the worst of her old behaviors. She fought with the other children, bloodying noses and cracking shins. The record player was destroyed and the small window in the door was cracked. Despite Anton’s efforts to keep her in check, Sheila devastated the classroom and the substitute ended her days in tears.
I had expected better from Sheila and my anger, when she proved so uncooperative, was not a whole lot less than hers. She was a bright girl. She knew how long two days were. And I had gone to strenuous efforts to explain where I’d be, what I’d be doing and when precisely I would be back. She knew. Why could I not trust her to keep herself together for two lousy days?
To be more exact about the matter, I felt betrayed. Having known I was following such a dangerous course in allowing her growing dependence on me, I had wanted straightforward evidence that I was doing the right thing, that her dependence was natural and healthy and not too serious. I was, after all, going to have to walk out of her life in, at most, three and a half months’ time, when the school year ended, and in even less time, if the opening in the children’s unit at the state hospital occurred. For my own peace of mind, I needed reassurance I was helping more than hurting and—I suppose if I’m honest—I expected it from her. I had given her so much that, in my heart of hearts, I had trusted her to give this bit back to me. When she hadn’t, I reacted with an anger I didn’t control at all well.
We had, to put it mildly, a bad day, and even after school, when we were alone, the strained silence remained between us. I offered to do the things we’d come to enjoy so much: to read aloud to her, to let her help me correct my papers, to come down with me to the teachers’ lounge and share a soft drink, but she simply shook her head and busied herself in the far corner of the room with some toy cars. The first after-school hour passed. She rose and went to look out the window. When I next glanced up, she was still there but had turned to watch me.
“How come you come back?” she asked softly.
“I just went away to give a speech. I never intended to stay away. This is my job, here with you kids.”
“But how come you come back?”
“Because I said I would. I like it here. I belong here.”
Slowly, she approached the table where I was working. Her guard had dropped. The hurt was so clear in her eyes.
“You didn’t believe I was coming back, did you?”
She shook her head. “No.”
Our falling-out over my absence did not appear to have any lasting effects. Indeed, just the opposite. Sheila developed an intense desire to discuss the incident: I had left her; I had come back. She had gotten angry and destructive; I had gotten angry and, in my own way, destructive. Each small segment she wanted to discuss again and again until it slowly slotted into place for her. The fact that I had come back was, of course, very important to her, but so too was the degree of my anger. Perhaps she felt that now that she had seen me at my worst, she could more fully trust me. I don’t know. Intriguingly, Sheila’s destructiveness virtually disappeared after this incident. She still became angry with great regularity, but never again did she fly into one of her rampaging rages.
Sheila bloomed, like the daffodils, in spite of the harsh winter. Within the limits of her situation, she was now quite clean and, better, she recognized what clean was and endeavored to correct unacceptable levels of dirtiness herself. Increasingly, she interacted with the other children in the class in a friendly and appropriate manner. She had gone home to play with one of the other little girls in the class on a few occasions and they indulged in the usual rituals of little girls’ friendships at school. Academically, Sheila sailed ahead, excited by almost anything I put in front of her. We were still coping with her fear of committing her work to paper, but that too improved through March. It seldom took more than two