City Kid. Mary MacCracken

there was surprise in his voice.

      “Mm-hm. Remember how you drew the lions yesterday?”

      Good! He can’t resist. Luke opened the cover, then turned the book sideways to study the lions. Then he looked at me. “I can make better lions,” he said. “Do you want me to make better ones?”

      “I like these,” I said. “But you can make more if you want.” Will he look at the story? Can he read more than his name?

      Luke turned the book back and easily, as easily as anything, he read, “‘The lions. There were four lions …’” When he’d finished he said, “You forgot to say they were lying down.” He said it softly, without accusation.

      “Yes,” I answered. “I thought that was all right because anybody who looked at the picture could see they were lying down.”

      Luke turned the book around again and studied the picture.

      “I guess,” he said. “But next time put in about how they’re lying down.”

      Next time! There was going to be a next time. Luke might set fires and lie and cheat and steal, but there was no doubt that he could be reached.

      Now I was the one who leaned back and stared out across the room, wanting the moment to last a little longer. Where was the arsonist and thief of the file folder? Where was the rebellious truant? It didn’t make sense.

      Luke squirmed beside me and rubbed his nose, leaving new smears of red paint across his face.

      There was a sink in the back of the room and I nodded toward it and smiled at Luke.

      “How about washing up? You’ve got red paint from here to here.” I touched my own face to show him.

      I turned the faucets back and forth – hot, cold, a little more hot. Making it the right warmth, as I had for my own children.

      “Okay,” I said. “Here’s a piece of soap.” I wanted to mix the soap between his hands, wash his face, but I knew better. I moved back and sat on the table, watching him from across the room.

      Luke rewarded me with a question.

      “Know how I got so much paint?”

      “Unh-unh. How?”

      “From the kangaroo. I made him all red.”

      “The kangaroo you made during art?”

      “Yup. I could tell a story about it, but you write it down so you don’t forget stuff this time. It’s called ‘The Kangaroo.’”

      There was a long pause. Then Luke said, “How’ll I start?”

      “Lots of good stories begin ‘once upon a time.’” If pretending made it easier for him to talk, it was okay with me.

      “Okay. Once upon a time there was a kangaroo, and he hopped very high. He was funny and he was a boxing kangaroo. One day he hopped into a bucket of red paint. That was bad. The kangaroo was sad. A zoo keeper put a fence around him. But then he remembered how high he could hop and he hopped right over the fence.”

      Luke stopped. “Do you think a kangaroo could hop that high?”

      I nodded, still writing. “A good young boxing kangaroo could definitely hop that high,” I said.

      Luke nodded. “Write ‘The End by Luke Brauer.’”

      Friday night Cal and I drove up to the country. The snow was gone, but there had evidently been a heavy windstorm and broken branches lay across the road and path into the house.

      Before breakfast the next morning, Cal was out prowling around, inspecting the damage.

      “There’ll be a lot of clean-up work to do in the spring. A couple of big trees are down in the meadow. Must have had a wet snow before the wind.”

      I poured our coffee and Cal talked to me as I cooked the eggs.

      “You know, my father used to tell a story about President Roosevelt. After he had finished his first term in office, he went to register to vote. In those days you had to write down your occupation. You know what he wrote? ‘Tree Grower.’ I was thinking about that this morning. When I’m here in this place, I think if I couldn’t describe myself as engineer or inventor, I’d say ‘grower of trees.’ Not very good trees, maybe, but certainly lots of them.”

      I put our eggs on the table and climbed in on the bench next to the stone wall. “Yes,” I said. “I can see that. You are a grower.”

      “And you,” Cal asked. “If you couldn’t say teacher or writer, what would you say?”

      I watched the sun glimmering through the small window panes, highlighting a pale brown spider who was beginning to spin a web in the far corner of the room. Cal was one of the few people who knew about the journals I kept and the occasional poems and articles I’d published. He teased me sometimes about my diaries, but it was an old habit. From the time I was a little girl, things stayed brighter, clearer for me if I wrote them down. After I began to teach, I kept a small black and white notebook for each child I taught. My version of a lesson plan, I suppose.

      A montage of the children I’d known imposed itself upon the spiderweb and I smiled at Cal.

      “I know what I would think, but I’m not sure I could tell other people.”

      “What?”

      “A lover of children.”

      This time Cal smiled at me as he got up to pour us more coffee. “That sounds very nice. You should get used to saying it.”

Chapter 6

      We no longer had our meetings at the clinic on Mondays. Now that we were with the children at School 23, it didn’t seem natural to meet in any other environment. We had unanimously agreed that our meetings would be at the school.

      Each week we discussed one child in depth and shared opinions, ideas, and suggestions about things we should eliminate, continue, or increase. We altered discussions of children and this time it was Luke’s turn.

      I was eager to talk about Luke with Shirley and Hud. Luke was so different from the seriously emotionally disturbed children I had known. I thought perhaps at the day care center or camp they might have had other children similar to Luke.

      Most of all, I wanted to talk to Jerry. He had promised to check the records at the clinic for background information about Luke. He had also asked me to copy Luke’s subtest scores from the WISC test and to give Luke two other tests: the Bender Gestalt, in which a child copied designs to test visual perception, motor and memory abilities; and the House-Tree-Person, in which drawings often revealed to a trained examiner how a child felt about himself and his world. Luke had enjoyed copying the nine design cards of the Bender and doing the drawings. I also had asked Luke to draw a picture of his family, and now I spread his tests and stories and my notes on the table for Shirley and Hud to inspect and Jerry to score and interpret.

      “Well, he’s not dumb, that’s for sure,” Jerry commented as he examined the WISC. “His scores in information and vocabulary are low, but look at this sixteen in Block Design and a fourteen in Picture Arrangement. This kid knows how to plan, organize, and then carry out his thoughts, and he’s socially aware and alert to detail. Whatever the reason for his acting-out behavior and poor school performance, it is not because of lack of intelligence.”

      Shirley commented in her soft voice as she leafed through Luke’s book, “His stories seem to be mainly about animals. Does he talk about other things?”

      I shook my head. “No, not much, although he didn’t object when I asked him to draw the House-Tree-Person – or even to drawing his family. I really feel he’s trusting me an awful lot when he talks at all. Do you think I should ask him more?”

      “Not