Copyright

This book recounts the essence of my experience and in that sense is a true story. However, it is not intended as a literal account and it is not to be taken as a portrayal of any living person. All names of individuals, places or institutions are fictitious.

HarperElement

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and HarperElement are trademarks of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

First published in Great Britain by Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1977

This updated edition published by HarperElement 2014

Copyright © 1976, 2014 by Mary Burnham MacCracken

Mary MacCracken asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014

Cover photographs © Diane Kerpan/arcangel-images.com

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007555147

Ebook Edition © March 2014 ISBN: 9780007555154

Version 2016-10-24

Also by Mary MacCracken

The Lost Children

City Kid

Turnabout Children

Dedication

For my remarkable father,

Clifford Wilcox Burnham, and Ann

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Also by Mary MacCracken

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Epilogue

Coming soon …

Exclusive sample chapter

Moving Memories eNewsletter

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

‘Wait just a minute, Mary. I want to talk to you.’ The Director covered the phone and nodded towards the coffeepot. ‘Pour yourself a cup. I’ll be right with you.’

I hesitated, juggling the armload of books and old magazines I’d brought in. I didn’t want to stop now. This was the first day of school and the children would be arriving in a few minutes. I wanted to get down to my room, put away these last things, and make sure everything was ready.

‘Well, now, everything set?’ the Director said as she hung up.

‘I think so, except for these books and maybe a few travel posters that I’ll tack up until the kids get some paintings done.’ Our children were even more sensitive than most to the climate of their surroundings. I wanted no rush, no hurry, no helter-skelter when they first arrived. The Director understood this as well as I did. Why was she keeping me here, diddling around and chatting?

‘Uh, Mary, I wanted to tell you … there’s been a change in your class.’

‘A change? What do you mean? What’s wrong? Has something happened to one of my children?’

‘No, no. Nothing like that. It’s just that I’ve rearranged things a little.’

I was instantly on guard. Euphemisms from the Director were always a danger sign. ‘Rearranged things?’

‘Yes. Last night when I went over the class lists I decided to put Hannah Rosnic in with you and move Carolyn –’

‘Hannah Rosnic!’ I interrupted. ‘How can that work? Brian and Rufus are almost ready for regular school – Brian’s twelve; this is his last year – and even Jamie is able to sit long enough to do some reading. Carolyn will fit in beautifully, I know she will. We took her on trips with us last year. I know she’s withdrawn, and her fantasies –’

‘I’ve put Carolyn in Ellen’s class,’ the Director interrupted in her turn. ‘I realised last night that it was asking too much of Ellen to take on Hannah. Ellen’s too new. She’s right for her other three and she’ll be good with Carolyn. But Hannah will be better off with you.’

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘what about the boys? And I don’t even know Hannah – except what I heard from down the hall last year. I don’t have any rapport with her. How am I going to get anything going between her and the boys? What makes you think they’ll accept her at all?’

The Director sipped her coffee and lit a cigarette, fanning the smoke away from her eyes. She looked exactly as she always had, cheerful, dynamic, the strong sinewy cords in her neck softened by her feathery white hair. ‘I’ve thought about it. The boys will be good for her, give her a nice balance.’ She paused and smiled at me. ‘And Hannah’ll stir them up a little – give your room a little more excitement.’

‘Excitement? What do we need with excitement? We’ve all come a long way, but it’s possible that we could lose everything we’ve gained so far with Hannah in there.’

‘Anything’s possible,’ the Director said coolly. The phone rang. She picked up my untouched coffee and her half-empty cup and headed back to her desk, nodding to me and dismissing me at the same time. ‘Well, that’s set, then. Fine, I’ll send Hannah down when she arrives.’

I gathered up my books and magazines and went out into the hall. What was I going to do? All I knew about Hannah Rosnic was that she had come to our school sometime in the middle of last year and had been in Shirley’s class at the end of the hall. I’d seen her, fat, dumpy, and dirty, on the playground, and I’d heard her, screaming and howling from her classroom. But that was all, except for a few dim memories of discussions at staff meetings. And now she was going to be one of my four!

A last-minute change like this was unprecedented. Ours was a school for children with severe emotional disturbances. Each of our children was unique, with such individual problems as well as strengths that what was planned to help one child deal with anger and hurt and isolation would be useless to another. What I had prepared for Carolyn would never work for Hannah.

And yet, this was what was going to happen. Once the Director had made up her mind, she wouldn’t argue and there was no point in trying to discuss it. If she had decided to move Hannah into my classroom, Hannah would be there.

I opened the door to my room and immediately my spirits rose. It was a beautiful room, facing south, large, sunny, and bright. One of the school’s trustees had arranged for us to use this church building, rent free, while we waited for our new school to be built. This particular Sunday-school room had previously been off limits to us. It was the church’s pride and joy, full of play equipment, rugs, tables, even an easel for painting. One whole wall was open to sunlight, with five floor-to-ceiling windows. Best of all, there was a door opening on to the driveway outside. There is absolutely nothing better than a door of your own to the outside world. Compared to the cold, barren rooms I’d taught in before, this was heaven.

Brian was the first to arrive. He came so quietly that if I hadn’t been watching I wouldn’t have known he was there. He came to the hall door and stood just outside it, his hands hidden in his pockets so I couldn’t tell whether they were trembling or not. Each year I think I’ve outgrown the ridiculous soaring excitement that I felt the first time I came to the school and saw the children. And then each year I find I’m wrong. The same spine-jolting, rocking delight hits me and spins me around, and I have to be careful not to somersault across the room when the children come.

‘Hey, Brian, I’m glad to see you.’ I walked across the room towards him, waiting for his smile, thin and sweet, to come and warm his pointed little face.

But Brian didn’t smile. He didn’t even come into the room.

‘Why are we in here?’ he asked. ‘This isn’t our room. This isn’t where we were last year.’

It’s so hard for our children to handle new situations. Their sense of self is so small, their beings so fragile, that if their outer surroundings change, they fear that they themselves will fall apart.

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘this is the best room we’ve ever had. Don’t spurn luxury. Look, we’ve got a whole coat closet, instead of just hooks.’

Brian took a step or two into the room and peered at the coat closet. ‘I liked just the hooks,’ he said.

‘And we’ve got blocks and trucks and a whole toy kitchen – a stove and a sink and tables – and now, look here, our own door. How about that? No more having to go through the office when we want to sneak out before lunch to ride our bikes.’

Brian was all the way in the room now. ‘Do we still have the bikes?’

‘Sure. We’ve even got a couple of new ones.’ They weren’t really new – the church ladies and the Junior Leaguers had donated them – but they were new to us.

Within the next minute Rufus arrived. He looked tanned and healthy and had obviously had a good summer.

‘Hey, Mary,’ he announced, ‘maybe we’re going to get a cat I’m almost not ’lergic anymore and my mom says as soon as I’m not ’lergic we can get one.’ He turned towards Brian. ‘And I’ll bring it in here, Brian, so you can see it.’

Rufus walked comfortably around the room, commenting on everything, and I could see Brian loosening up, his fears diminishing. The children did so much for each other without realising it. Rufus’s explorations freed Brian to begin his own, and soon both boys were settled on the floor taking out the books and papers and small supplies that I’d put in their individual cubbies.

Jamie, the last of my three boys, burst through the classroom door and half rocked, half ran, across the room.

I sat down fast. Jamie was eight and I’d only had him for one year. He was still potentially explosive, and the more body contact he got during times of stress, the better. A new room plus the first day of school added up to a lot of pressure.

A huge grin stretched over Jamie’s face as he spotted me and headed straight on. I spread my legs as wide as I could to make a big lap and opened my arms. Without caution, without a pause in his breakneck run, Jamie took a flying leap and landed squarely in my lap.

‘Hey ho, Jamie,’ I said, wrapping him up in my arms. ‘What took you so long?’

Jamie didn’t say anything, but then he rarely did. He just buried his head against my neck while I rocked him back and forth. Pretty soon he came up for air and surveyed the room from his safe station. Then, seeing Brian and Rufus contentedly sorting the contents of their cubbies and realising that he could stay where he was as long as he wanted, he gradually began to disentangle himself: first an arm, then another arm, then a foot, then the other – one quick turn around my chair, back on my lap, off again, this time to a chair of his own.

By ten o’clock the room began to be ours. The boys had taken everything out of their cubbies and put it back again at least a dozen times – touching, feeling, even smelling everything before they were convinced that it really belonged to them. Jamie had tried out every chair in the classroom before he finally settled on one and thereafter carried it with him wherever he went.

I’d cleaned out Carolyn’s cubby as unobtrusively as possible and was lettering new labels for Hannah’s cubby and hook in the coat closet when the yelling began. At first it was muffled; then the noise became louder, closer. There were piercing screams followed by silence. Then the screams began again, mixed with deep, throat-catching sobs.

Was that Hannah? Had she arrived? If so, where was she? The Director had said she’d send her down when she came. It was ten-thirty. Surely she must have arrived by now.

A moment later the Director stood in our doorway. ‘Good morning, boys.’ She smiled. ‘Isn’t this a lovely room? I see you’re working hard already. Mary, may I speak to you for a minute?’

I walked over to where the Director stood by the hall door. She lowered her voice as she spoke.

‘Hannah’s down in her old classroom. I can’t seem to be able to get her to leave and join you, and I wondered if you’d step down there for a minute or two.’

I didn’t want to go. Things were just getting started in our room; tension and anxiety were gradually seeping out. Fears could return too easily if the boys were suddenly left alone. Still, the screaming and sobbing were clearer now that the door was open – and that couldn’t go on.

‘Will you cover for me till I get back?’ I asked the Director. She nodded and I went over and squatted down next to Brian. ‘Bri, I have to go down the hall. The Director’s going to stay here while I’m gone. I won’t be long, okay?’

I studied his face. He didn’t smile, but there was no sign of panic. He just nodded and turned back to his book. The Director sat down beside Jamie near the record player. Everything seemed to be all right.

I closed the door and mentally crossed my fingers; so much depended on the first day. If the children began to feel safe and relaxed in the room and with each other, a great deal of time could be saved.

The hall was no longer quiet. It was filled with the good sounds of school: chairs being pushed across the floor, record players set at various volumes, doors opening, closing, teachers speaking softly, a few children’s voices, a little laughter. Only Hannah’s screams sliced through the air, dividing time into short, painful segments.

I stopped outside the back classroom and looked through the window. The new teacher, Ellen, had bolted the door, and for a minute I wished I hadn’t come. This was the room I’d first taught in when I was hired as a substitute five years before. I stood outside, remembering how inexperienced I’d been. My first act had been to unbolt the door, my second to fall flat on my face as I held on to a runaway child. But we’d both learned, and the door had stayed unlocked. Locks and cages were never meant for children, and I felt both sorrow and frustration to see the door bolted again.

As I looked through the window I could see that Hannah had barricaded herself inside the wooden jungle gym that was wedged into a far corner. She clung to the bars, alternately screaming and sobbing, her face contorted with pain or rage or perhaps fear. The other children stood gaping at her, but if they ventured near she reached through the wooden rungs and swiped at them with her hand.

I tapped on the window. Ellen looked up and her round, sweet face flooded with relief as she hurried to the door, unlocked it, and drew me inside.

‘Am I ever glad to see you,’ she said. ‘This has been going on for over an hour. Nothing helps. Somehow Hannah got away from the Director this morning and ran in here. I guess she was expecting to see her teacher from last year, because when she saw me she went crazy, yelling and tearing at my clothes as if she thought she’d find her old teacher somewhere underneath. Finally she gave up and climbed into the jungle gym, and now she won’t let anybody near her.’ Ellen lowered her voice. ‘Listen, Mary, you’ve got to get her out of here. She’s scaring the other kids half to death. I’ve tried everything I can think of and she just gets worse.’

I looked over towards Hannah. She seemed smaller than I’d remembered, but what Ellen said was true – she was getting worse. Her sobs and screams were louder, deeper than ever. How could she keep it up for so long? In spite of everything, I felt a surge of admiration. Somewhere inside this child there must be tremendous strength.

I walked towards the jungle gym, not sure what to do, only trying to get a feel, a sense, of Hannah. I had been anxious to have her in my classroom – Carolyn would have made things much easier. Still, if she was going to be with us, I had to get to know her. What must it be like to come back and find your teacher gone when you thought she’d be there? What was it like to be eight years old and hurt and angry and confused? If I were Hannah, what would I want, what would I need?

As I approached, Hannah began stamping her feet. It was as if her vocal cords were already making all the noise they could and now, with a new danger, she needed another source of sound.

Two sides of the jungle gym were against the walls. Hannah clung to the third side, shaking it and stamping her feet. With no plan at all, I climbed up the fourth side.

Hannah’s screaming stopped and I took advantage of her surprise to reach the top, away from her clawing fingers. I lay flat on the top platform, trying to listen with my whole being, not just my ears. Nothing. There was absolutely no sound from below. I leaned over the platform and there was Hannah, bent over, her head pressed against the bars, great pink wads of gum stuck in the red-gold of her hair, I talked to the back of her small, grimy neck.

‘Hiya, Hannah.’

There wasn’t any answer, not a twitch of response, but somehow I had the feeling that she’d heard me.

‘Listen,’ I continued, ‘this isn’t your class. You’re supposed to be with us, in the room down the hall on the other side. We’ve been waiting for you down there.’

Hannah didn’t make a sound, but she turned her head just a fraction of an inch. I went on.

‘Shirley, your teacher last year, didn’t want to leave. She liked our school and she liked teaching you. But her husband was studying to be a doctor and he was sent to a hospital a long way away – and so she had to stop teaching here to go with him.’

The muscles in my neck were getting tired from dangling my head over the edge of the platform, and I longed to get down and stand beside her, get a closer look, maybe even hold onto her square, solid body and let some of her anger drain out. But Hannah seemed nowhere near ready. I was going to have to wait.

Suddenly she turned and twisted her neck and body to peer up at me. For an instant she hung outside the wooden bars with her face turned up towards me and then she was gone, out of the jungle gym, out of the door that Ellen had left unlocked when she let me in, and down the hall. I climbed down quickly and followed, Ellen’s door clicked behind me and the bolt slid back in place.

Hannah ran up and down, back and forth in the hall, like a fat mouse in a maze. She was dressed in a woman’s cotton housedress that was tied at the waist with a string. The dress reached to the tops of her heavy brown shoes and she stumbled around, banging against the walls, letting out periodic snarling howls. Once she turned back towards me and I could see that both her face and the front of her dress were wet – stained with tears, or sweat, or maybe both. She opened the door to our room, more by accident than design. The boys and the Director stood up simultaneously as Hannah crashed in. I was only a step behind and closed the door behind me. We needed a little space, a little time to ourselves.

It was hard to tell who was more frightened, Hannah or the boys. They stared at each other silently until the Director called out cheerily, ‘Well, Hannah, I see you’ve found your room. Good enough. Now that we’re all set, I’ll get back to work. Phone never stops ringing, a thousand things to do. Have a good day.’

The Director was out the hall door and gone before any of us moved, but just as the door clicked shut Hannah ran towards it. Brian and Rufus had huddled together in front of the outside door. Jamie whimpered and ran to where I stood by the hall door and buried his head against my legs. Without previous planning, we had formed a barricade to the exits. There was no way out for Hannah. Like it or not, she was with us.

Hannah backtracked and then made one dash for the hall door, and I captured her as she came by. ‘Gotcha. Enough now, okay?’

I said it as much to reassure the boys as to steady Hannah, but while it may have helped them to hear a familiar tone in the room it did nothing for her. She slid out of my arms to the floor, propped herself on her hands and knees inside her long housedress, and with a moaning, keening noise began rocking back and forth, back and forth, like a tormented infant in a crib.

The safety we had begun to build was gone. Trouble, trauma, violence and fear had invaded our room. I muttered a silent expletive in the direction of the departed Director, but it wasn’t of any use. She was gone; Hannah was here. We’d just have to get through somehow.

I turned to the boys. ‘Hannah’s going to be in our class this year. She feels badly about missing her old teacher and some other things. It’s going to take a while for us to get used to each other, but it’s going to be okay. We just need a little time. Now let’s get busy. Rufus, Brian, bring your books on over here and let’s see what we’re going to be working on.’

As I spoke there was a dull, heavy thud and I turned back towards Hannah. She was not only rocking, she was banging her head, bringing it down hard against the black tile floor at the end of each forward thrust. I knew that part of this head hanging was to test us, but part of it was also an attempt to destroy the torments inside her.

I sat down on the floor next to Hannah and pushed my leg beneath her head to cushion the blow. ‘No. In this room you don’t hurt yourself or anyone else. And no one hurts you. You can rock if you have to, but no banging.’

She brought her head down again, drove it hard into my thigh – and then, as the noon whistle wailed, suddenly she was still. We sat without speaking. I leaned against the wall with Hannah spread out, drenched in sweat, inert against my leg, while the three boys watched us silently from the other side of our room.

Chapter 2

Jamie was the last to leave our room that first day. We were both limp from emotion and heat, and we sat in a chair by the windows watching for his bus. But as soon as his driver arrived and he was safely aboard, I went down to the office, unlocked the file cabinet, and took out Hannah’s folder.

The Director was in the office, a calm oasis in the midst of confused bus drivers, anxious mothers and tired teachers. She was at her best here, soothing and at the same time encouraging. She had founded the school fifteen years before and had worked harder and harder each year, raising money to keep the doors open, raising standards, coping with the ever-increasing publicity, the long waiting lists of children. Finally, with the death of her husband, the school had become her life. For years it had existed in rented and borrowed buildings, but now the dream was almost reality: within a few months ground would be broken for a spacious new school building, built to the Director’s specifications. Nothing escaped her, and she nodded to me as I took Hannah’s file back to the quiet of my own room.

I spread the folder out on one of the tables before the open windows. Small air currents stirred through the room and riffled the edges of the papers. I was eager to read the reports, hoping to discover what had happened to make Hannah so angry, so frightened. She was more like a young animal than a little girl. Why wouldn’t she let anyone near her? Where had the rage and self-destruction come from?

The folder contained a school form filled out by Mrs Rosnic, a health form from the paediatrician, a report from the principal of the public school Hannah had attended; there were also a joint report by a psychologist and a social worker at a mental health clinic, a final report by another psychologist from the public school, and a half-page year-end report written by Hannah’s teacher from last year. From these I gradually pieced together Hannah’s history.

She had been born eight years earlier in a hospital in New York City. Her life had been filled with violence from the beginning. She had cried constantly through her first days and nights, eating little at first, finally refusing to eat at all. In desperation, Mrs Rosnic took her back to the hospital where she had been born. They discovered an abdominal obstruction which had caused food blockage and dehydration. Hannah was operated on and hospitalised for several weeks.

When she returned home she was able to eat and some of the screaming stopped, but she rocked back and forth in her crib, banging her head against the end panel.

Her brother, Carl, three years older, was resentful of the new baby. One day soon after Hannah came home from the hospital, Mrs Rosnic found Carl by Hannah’s crib, hitting her on the head again and again. In spite of everything, she grew; she walked at thirteen months and completed toilet training at age two. However, Mrs Rosnic continued to bottle-feed her until she was three years old, and although no connection was made, it seemed pertinent to me that Hannah didn’t try to talk until then. Her speech consisted primarily of grunts and monosyllables that only Mrs Rosnic could understand.

When Hannah was four, her family moved to the run-down industrial city where she still lived. They occupied a two-family house in a derelict section of town. Mrs Rosnic’s father lived downstairs; the Rosnics themselves occupied the second floor.

Hannah’s father had been a strange, brutal man. He must have been tortured by both emotional and physical ailments. The records showed that he had been in and out of mental institutions over the years, yelling, shouting, beating his children when he was home. Later he was confined to a wheelchair, from which he berated the world and everyone in it. He died in the same bizarre manner in which he had lived. Rising suddenly up out of his wheelchair at his mother’s funeral, he was stricken with a heart attack and died the next day, two years before Hannah came to our school.

At the time of her husband’s death, Mrs Rosnic was pregnant with a third child. Still in her early thirties, a widow with little money and no training, with an ailing, demanding father, two young children, and another child soon to be born, she became ill herself, overcome by a deep depression.

She turned to her church for help; they put her in touch with a community mental health centre. Here she was interviewed jointly by a psychiatric social worker and a psychologist, who judged her to be of ‘bright normal intellect with a fair insight and judgement, but with a feeling of being unable to cope’.

I got up from the table and began to pace as I read. Who wouldn’t feel ‘unable to cope’ under similar conditions? The report ambled on, bleak and without compassion. Carl, Hannah’s brother, was summarised and dismissed in two brief sentences as having ‘a childhood adjustment problem with the unusual phobia of fearing the key to an old clock’. Hannah was described as ‘a seven-year-old Caucasian female –’

I put the report down, hating the stilted language. Who could write that? And why? Was it to impress some invisible audience or was it simply the way psychologists had been taught to write reports? Hannah was a sad, solid, gutsy little girl with blue eyes and red-gold hair. How could they write ‘seven-year-old Caucasian female’? Why did people deal out labels instead of looking at a child? Never mind. Forget the anger. It didn’t help now.

‘– Caucasian female exhibiting restless behaviour, with unintelligible speech consisting primarily of grunting noises. Judgement and insight extremely poor. Diagnosis: Psychosis. Organic brain disease versus schizophrenia.’

It seemed to me a dangerous, presumptuous diagnosis after one brief interview. I searched the remaining pages for more concrete information. An electroencephalogram had been made, and since it was within normal limits Hannah was put in a kindergarten class on a trial basis – but this lasted only a short time. Soon she was put on home instruction because of her ‘disruptive behaviour’. The dates in the reports were confusing, but it must have been a hard, bleak period for Mrs Rosnic, for the whole family.

I shook my head. No wonder the teachers in our school rarely complained. Our troubles, whatever they were, were small compared to the lives of our children and their families.

The late-afternoon sky was dark and the air was filled with the musty smell of rain. At least it would be cooler tomorrow. Tomorrow? Tomorrow would be here very soon and I still had a great deal to do before morning. I turned on the overhead light and skimmed the remaining pages.

Mrs Rosnic’s pregnancy had gone full term and Hannah had been born, a healthy eight-pound girl. Hannah had remained on home instruction until a place was found for her here; then one last psychological work-up was done in the public school. It said that Hannah – an aggressive child with a deep underlying pathology – seemed to be living completely in a world of her own. ‘This child must be regarded as a threat to other children.’

Lightning streaked across the sky. No one else was left at school and I knew I should hurry.

How could a child ever grow in a place where she was looked upon as a threat? There was only one positive note in the report: The psychologist noted that Hannah’s drawings showed ‘an above-average mentality’.

Well, maybe this was how I’d have to reach her, through her mind, her intelligence. But how could I get through? She’d fought so many enemies already in her eight years, seen more pain and cruelty than most of us do in a lifetime. Her mind must be sealed behind many layers – she would have needed to build thick walls in order to survive as long as she had.

Outside, the rain pelted hard against the black macadam. I closed my windows and read the last remaining page. The report from Hannah’s teacher of last year described Hannah as a troubled, sad little girl, unable or unwilling to use eating utensils, given to long crying spells and temper tantrums, her speech a garble of unintelligible slurred consonants – and yet her actions showed an acute awareness of her environment. She had remained difficult and disruptive throughout the year, but there had been some improvement and rapport gradually developed between teacher and child.

It must have been a cruel blow for Hannah to come back this morning and find her teacher gone, the first semblance of security disrupted. Whatever tiny hope had stayed alive inside her must have crashed into despair.

I put the report on the top shelf of my closet and left by my own door. I stood on the step just outside and watched the small rivers of rain swirl past; then I took off my shoes and raced up the driveway to the car park in my bare feet. But when I reached my car, I stood still for a minute before getting in. My dress and hair were already soaked and the rain felt cool and clean against my face and arms. I wished that it would cool my head and heart as well. Hannah would bring enough passion into our room. She would need a teacher who was clear and steady and strong.

What I needed to do, had to do as soon as possible, was set up an appointment with Mrs Rosnic so that we could talk. There were so many complicated factors in Hannah’s history: the operation, the isolation of the hospital, the head blows, the brutal father, the prolonged bottle feeding. I was as confused as when I started.

Chapter 3

‘Good morning, Rufus,’ I said as we arrived together the next day. ‘How’s it going?’

But his ebullience of yesterday morning was gone. He sat down glumly and peered at me through his horn-rimmed glasses without answering my question. Instead he asked, ‘Is that girl going back to her other class?’

‘Hannah? Hannah doesn’t have another class. She was only in the other room yesterday by mistake. This is her regular room.’

Rufus looked down at his feet. ‘I don’t like her. I don’t like her in here. She ruins everything.’

I sat down beside Rufus. I knew how he felt. I’d said almost the same thing to the Director. ‘Hannah’s had a really rough time …’ I began.

Rufus got up from the table. ‘I don’t want to talk about her!’ he shouted at me. ‘I hate her! Don’t you understand that? I hate her and I don’t want to talk about her!’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay. What do you want to talk about?’

‘Nothing.’ Rufus kicked the table leg with the toe of his shoe. ‘I just want it to be the way it was last year, without that dummy girl.’

It wasn’t just Hannah. It was always hard for the kids when a new child came. With only four children in a class, we were so much a part of each other that what one did profoundly affected the others. The children’s usual stay at the school was for three years, although if they were making good progress and had not yet reached their thirteenth birthday they were sometimes allowed to stay for a longer period. This was Rufus’s fourth year, and he had been in my class from the start.

When he had come to our school three years before, he had looked more like a middle-aged businessman man than an eight-year-old boy. He wore a dark suit and heavy horn-rimmed glasses, and his hair was combed flat against his head. He carried a large brown briefcase and he’d talked to his briefcase most of the first weeks, crouching nervously behind a bookcase.

Rufus was scared of the world, the school, and himself. He was intelligent and he used his intelligence to manipulate the world, which only made it more frightening. Illness was his control. Anything that Rufus thought might prove unpleasant or difficult was met with a stomach ache. Usually this meant that he stayed home or got special attention, which was what he’d wanted in the first place.

But gradually Rufus had grown stronger and more independent. Occasionally, under stress, he still talked to an imaginary companion, and sometimes when things went badly at home he wet the bed. But Rufus was growing all the time. If there was a leader in our classroom, it was Rufus.

Now that Rufus had started talking, he kept on. ‘She’s a dummy girl. She can’t even talk and she’s fat and she’s dirty.’

Any new child is difficult, but a child like Hannah is a triple threat. She not only claimed my attention and destroyed the safety of our classroom, she also reminded the boys of how fragile they were themselves. If one child in the room could shatter, so could they all.

Rufus gave the chair another kick. ‘Why does she yell like that? Why don’t you make her stop?’

‘I’m trying, Ruf. Believe me, I’m trying. Just give her a little time; give us all a little time. First days are hard. Remember Jamie last year? He yelled and kicked and ran away whenever he could. I know Hannah’s hard, but it’s only the second day and maybe today will be better.’

By nine-thirty my attempt at optimism was fading. The boys were there but they were tense, and there was no sign of Hannah at all. Rufus was rubbing his stomach as if recalling the pains he used to have. Jamie had the record player turned too high, his thin, taut little body rocking from one foot to the other while he kept his hands pressed over his ears. Brian drew stick fingers representing the stars he’d watched on television panel shows the night before, keeping up a low barrage of commercials all the while. He carefully drew a box around each figure, as though to keep it isolated, separate from the rest. Television was Brian’s link with people. Encased in the glass box of the TV screen, they were far enough away so that they weren’t frightening.

When Brian had come to the school four years before, his speech was incoherent and he refused all food – both at home and at school – except for milk and saltines. But there had always been a sweetness about him as well as curiosity and intelligence, and these qualities had brought him a long way. He too had been in my class from the beginning. I knew how threatening Hannah’s anger must be.

All this tension and no Hannah. Where was she? It was almost ten o’clock. Had she gone back to Ellen’s room? Climbed back inside the jungle gym? Had she or her mother given up after yesterday? Would that one day be her only day with us?

Come on, Hannah, I thought. Don’t give up before we’ve even started. It was going to be hard, but she had so much potential. It was all there – in her records, in her eyes – it just had to be tapped. Yesterday I’d almost resented her; now I was impatient for her.

Just then something caught my eye outside the window. Hannah? I couldn’t believe it. She stood absolutely still about an inch away from the glass. Her face was turned sidewise, obscured by her long, matted, gum-filled hair. I tried to watch her without moving my own head. I had the feeling she would bolt if she knew she had been seen. But she was there, that was what counted. She had come back, she remembered where our room was, and she cared enough to watch us through the window.

Then Brian saw her too and one hand fluttered against his side while he pointed with the other. ‘Look. There’s the girl. She’s looking in the window.’

Rufus and Jamie turned and Hannah vanished. I ran across the room to our door, opened it, and stepped out, but there was no sign of her. Not in the bushes, not on the driveway. I came back and called to the boys, ‘Maybe Hannah’s in the office. I’ll –’

But before I could finish my sentence the hall door opened and there stood Hannah.

Fat face and hands dirtier than ever, but balancing lightly, almost airily, she stood on her toes in our doorway, clutching a crumpled paper bag.

‘Good morning, Hannah,’ I said. ‘Come in.’

She stood for one moment more and then, half turning, half dancing across the few feet to the back of the classroom, she pulled open the closet doors. She stood once more, absolutely still, and then sank slowly to the floor. We were all staring at her. She was an absurd figure with her long dress and matted hair and yet she had an indefinable grace that contrasted with her heavy body and bruised eyes.

I spoke a little louder than usual to break whatever spell was in the room. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Hannah.’

Hannah sat without speaking, half in, half out of the closet. I suddenly realised that it was she who was in total command of the class. This was no way to begin.

I moved towards the door. ‘Turn off the record player, please, Jamie. Okay, Brian, Hannah. Rufus, get the lights, please. We’re going next door to Patty’s room for Circle.’

Hannah, of course, sat without moving, but the boys moved quickly out the door and down the hall.

I waited one more minute to see if Hannah would change her mind. Nothing. Only her eyes flickered, alert, wary, watching me. Her face and neck were grimy, the pink wads of gum were still in her hair, but her dress was clean. It was the same shapeless style, tied at the waist with a string, but clean. I left Hannah in the closet and walked down the hall after the boys. A clean dress. Somebody cared about Hannah.

The coat closet became Hannah’s place in our room. She sat there most of the first two weeks. She had her own cupboard, her own table and chair, even her own work folder, but she barely touched them. In the beginning her grief and anger and confusion were too large to let her work. The most important thing just then, more important than work or discipline, was to let her know that we accepted her.

Children can’t begin to learn until they feel safe, and they can’t feel safe until they are honestly and completely accepted. A child like Hannah – hospitalised at six weeks, shut in closets, locked out of her home, beaten by both her brother and her father, rejected by the public school – not only feared other people, she feared herself as well.

Hannah knew she was different; she knew that parts of her were frightening, both to herself and others. But she didn’t know how to change. She couldn’t cut herself in pieces, divide herself in two, bring in only the good part. She needed to know that she was welcome, all of her, the good and the bad. That was enough for now. Changes could come later.

Hannah seemed to understand some of this, and gradually she became more peaceful. Each morning she left her bus and came through the Director’s office, down the hall, and into our classroom, closing the hall door behind her. She hung her sweater on the hook beneath her name and then settled herself in the closet to watch the boys arrive. She never greeted me, but she watched Rufus, Jamie, and Brian as they called to each other or exchanged a hug with me. The boys invariably left our door open and Hannah would get up each time and carefully, softly, close them again. It was as if she realised that she was safe in our room.

Although she didn’t participate, she watched us closely. There is no better teacher than another child. As Hannah watched the others, I knew the time would come when she would begin trying to do herself what she had seen the boys do.

Hannah was learning although she never opened her work folder. She began to touch it more often, going to her cupboard to run her finger across the name I had printed above it and taking out her folder, her paint smock, her book and notebook. None of them were ever used, but still they were hers. She would hold them in her lap and then put them carefully away and return to her seat in the coat closet. She was learning the details of our lives.

Details and routine. Outside of school I never planned ahead, avoiding ruts as much as possible. In school, however, our routine was the same each day. In the topsy-turvy world of emotionally disturbed children, routine provides security. The sameness of each day made it easier for them to cope.

The children arrived at nine o’clock and the first half hour was one of the most important of the day, although it might not seem so to an uninformed eye. Crises of the night before exploded in the classroom, and it was important for the teacher to be there to comfort or control. Treasures were brought in, and the teacher had to be there to share the pleasure of each small discovery. Sometimes problems arose on the way to school, or a child arrived without breakfast and the teacher needed to go down to the refrigerator in the furnace room for the milk and cereal that were always kept there. Although our children were not primarily underprivileged, often there was so much chaos in their homes that breakfast was impossible.

By nine thirty most personal crises had been dealt with and we were ready for the larger world of Circle. Circle was a kind of morning assembly where the whole school gathered together. At least we had until this year. Now we were too many for one room, and so the Director had divided us into two groups, the older children in one, the younger children in the other. During this time there was singing and dancing and group games. The purpose was threefold: to help the children relate and participate in a group, to improve gross motor coordination, and also to give the teachers the opportunity to see the other children in the school. At staff meetings on Wednesdays we discussed everyone, and it was necessary that we had at least a surface knowledge of each child.

After Circle, the children went to the bathroom and then came back to their classrooms. For the rest of the day, each teacher had a special programme for each child.

In our room we started with the Best and the Worst. In searching for ways to help the children learn to communicate, I had discovered Best and Worst. Most of our children had grave difficulty with communication. Some couldn’t talk at all; some were elective mutes, able to talk but refusing to do so; some, like Rufus, were too verbose; some articulated clearly but without meaning. Because communication is so important, I worked hard at finding ways to involve the children.

‘Show and Tell’ didn’t work. Our children had little to show and nothing to tell. To get through to them it was necessary to turn up the volume and intensity of communication.

A question like ‘Tell me what you did yesterday’ didn’t bring any response; it was too general, too vague. But when each and every day I asked them to report on the Best Thing and the Worst Thing that had happened to them, they not only responded, they began to savour the opportunity. Like most ideas, this started small and grew. When I had first asked the question four years before, answers had been a word or two at the most. But I insisted they all have a chance, whether they used it or not, and gradually they all began to talk a bit and – more amazing still – to listen to each other.

There were different children then – only Brian still remained of that first group – but each day we talked a little more until it became necessary to have limits, so that no one child could monopolise the time. Then, because the world of fantasy was so vivid – even more so than to other children, and therefore less distinct from reality – the Best Thing became their wishes, the Worst their dreams. This, of course, was good – so good and so surprising that the school psychiatrist who visited our class shook his head in amazement as he heard children labelled ‘schizophrenic’ or ‘autistic’ talk and listen to each other.

But it wasn’t enough simply to get the children to talk. I wanted them to understand the difference between reality and fantasy. It seemed to me that if they were ever to travel all the way back to live in the world, they needed to know and be able to differentiate between the two. So there got to be two parts to Best and Worst, ‘real’ and ‘pretend’, and the children sternly reminded each other of this. If a child began to talk about trucks as though they were people, calling the headlights ‘eyes’, another child was sure to remind him, ‘First the real, then the pretend.’

So Best and Worst became a part of my teaching equipment, and today, as usual, we pushed tables together, directly after Circle, all of us eager to begin. In order to have time for reading, language, arts, and maths, and then to go outside or play before lunch, each child was only allowed five minutes – but to me it was one of the most important parts of the day.

After lunch there was a rest period, then art, science, films, playground and auditory and visual motor training. The afternoon went by even more quickly than the morning. The day was too short; there was never enough time to do all that I had hoped to do.

During those first two weeks I made no demands on Hannah, letting her absorb the details and atmosphere of the school, letting the boys grow used to her, letting peace and a semblance of tranquility return to the class. Her despair no longer seeped constantly into our room, corroding the warm safety. As long as I asked nothing of Hannah she was quiet, sitting half in, half out of the closet, eating out of her paper bag when she felt like it, watching us all the time.

But this interlude was almost over; Mrs Rosnic was scheduled to come in to see me the third Monday after school started. I felt that after that I could begin to ask more of Hannah.

Chapter 4

Hannah’s mother came heavily, hesitantly, into our classroom. She was a large woman dressed in a cotton housedress just like Hannah’s, although hers reached only to her knees and was covered with a dark cloth coat.

I had telephoned Mrs Rosnic at the end of that first day to ask if she could come in for a conference. Although she was hesitant and it had taken two weeks, she was here and I was grateful. Helping Hannah was not going to be easy. She was going to have to give up old established ways and learn new ones. There were difficult weeks ahead, and before I initiated any major changes at school I wanted to talk to Hannah’s mother and learn what Hannah was like at home. I needed to fill in the gaps left by the psychological reports, to find out what sort of relationship there was between Hannah and her brother and sister, between Hannah and her mother. Our school day was only five and a half hours long. There were eighteen and a half other hours I wanted to know about.

I had been sitting at one of the low tables, but as Mrs Rosnic hesitated in the doorway I got up and walked towards her. ‘Please come in.’

But she remained where she was, her eyes moving rapidly around the room. By now the boys’ papers and drawings covered one wall. We had begun a large mural on another, but the only sign of Hannah was her name on her cubby and above the coat hook in the closet.

‘May I take your coat?’ I asked.

For the first time Mrs Rosnic looked directly at me and it was my turn to stop, startled by the fear in her eyes.

As gently as I could, I took her coat and hung it in the closet beside my own light sweater, and then, impulsively, I moved them both so that they hung together on Hannah’s own hook. I came back and sat down at the round wooden table. ‘Thank you for coming in,’ I said. ‘I know how difficult it must be for you to get away with the three children at home, but I wanted to talk to you a little bit about Hannah. I’m happy to have her in my class this year.’

Mrs Rosnic came across the room then, stopping in front of me. ‘You not getting rid of her?’

So that was the fear; it was still there in her chopped, guttural speech. There were traces of an accent. I must remember to check and see what language was spoken in the home. It was possible that much of Hannah’s garbled speech was a poor imitation of the words she heard exchanged between her mother and grandfather. But that could come later.

Now I had to get through that fear, let Mrs Rosnic know that I didn’t want to get rid of Hannah. On the contrary, what I wanted was to get closer, know more. The best way I knew was to say it simply and straight.

‘I won’t get rid of Hannah,’ I promised. ‘She’ll be here in this class all year.’

Mrs Rosnic sat down opposite me then, her eyes never leaving my face. ‘In other school, every time they call me for conference, they warn Hannah is too bad. They say she have to go.’

‘Not here. When I call you, it’s because I want to know more, try to figure out how to help more.’

Mrs Rosnic drew in her breath and then let it out in a long, slow sigh, but as her body relaxed, more of her weariness showed. ‘Ah, she is so hard, that one. I don’t know what to do with her. Yelling, screaming half the time. Most other time she just sits, dumb, do nothing. Once in while she play joke. Put mouse in Grandpa’s bed and laugh and laugh when he yell.’

I tried to picture the house. I knew Grandpa lived downstairs, but where would Hannah get a mouse?

‘A real mouse?’ I asked.

‘Lots of mice around. They’re not trouble. Hannah like them. The cats are good, get rid of most of mice. Only if rats come, then the cats scared.’

‘Mrs Rosnic, Hannah doesn’t talk to us here at school. Does she talk at home?’

‘She not talk Carl or Grandpa, but sometime she talk to me. Say yes, no, other words. Grandpa say she not make sense, but I know what she mean.’

It was hard to tell from this whether Hannah spoke more or whether Mrs Rosnic’s interpretations were better.

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘what’s Hannah like in other ways at home? I know she goes to the bathroom by herself. Does she wash, brush her teeth and dress herself?’

‘No.’ Mrs Rosnic’s sighs were deep now. ‘She never wash. She sleep in dress all night. Won’t get out of it. Next morning Carl or Grandpa hold her and I get other dress on her.’

‘Carl. Does Hannah play with him or with her sister?’

‘Play? Nobody play. Just fight, fight, fight. At each other day and night. Carl tease her all the time. Now he tell her she going to retard school and she cry and cry.’

I felt like crying myself. Poverty, dirt, ridicule. I looked away for a minute, trying to clear my mind, to see what to do next. I turned back to Mrs Rosnic. ‘What about friends? Does Hannah play with other children on the block?’

Mrs Rosnic sat up straight, definite now. ‘I careful with her. Keep her in back yard so neighbour kids not make fun. Sometime when I fixing Grandpa’s food she get away, but not much. Mostly I keep her near.’ A wistful look came over Mrs Rosnic’s face. ‘Sometime I wish … I think how good if she could help some. You know. Like set table. Maybe even dry dishes.’

I reached across the table. If she had been a child I would have touched her then, but instead I touched the water glass of the roses and left my hand out open on the table.

‘I know I wish too much,’ she continued. ‘Should be glad she not worse. Grandpa say she can’t be worse, say she better dead from operation. But I don’t know. It nice, kind of, you know – to have somebody like me.’

My heart ached and angered all at the same time, even more than when I’d read the reports. No wonder this good, uneducated woman was close to giving up. Under the weariness and despair had once been mere laughter and other dreams? It was too late now to recover those dreams; too late for Grandpa and maybe for Mrs Rosnic. But not for Hannah. Maybe I couldn’t do anything about the poverty or the loneliness, or Carl or baby Helen, but I could help Hannah. And so could Mrs Rosnic.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘You’re not expecting too much at all. You’re exactly right. Hannah should be learning to help you around the house. She can learn to do all those things. And more. Much more.’

Mrs Rosnic looked at me and then fished in her large black pocketbook for a handkerchief. I got up and brought back a box of Kleenex from the counter and set it down hard on the table.

‘Hannah can learn to wash and dress herself and help you with the housework. And she can learn to read and write.’

This was too much. I had gone too far. Mrs Rosnic shook her head at me. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You don’t know. Grandpa say she moron.’

‘I do know and Grandpa’s wrong,’ I insisted. ‘I have known other children as troubled as Hannah. I have read her records and I have watched her here in the classroom. I don’t believe she’s retarded. I believe she’s able to learn and grow and do a great deal more than she ever has.’

Mrs Rosnic looked at me directly, challenging. ‘Why you care? Why you want to do this?’

It was a fair, honest question and I wished that I could answer. But I had never been able to find words for the way I felt. I could talk easily about the children, or to the children, but when it came to describing my own feelings, I was inarticulate. Perhaps the words imprisoned in the children spoke to something locked inside me. I tried to soften my silence with a smile so that it wouldn’t seem a rebuff. ‘I don’t know,’ I answered as honestly as I could. ‘I wish I could put it into words. I can’t explain, but I hope you’ll trust me.’

I went to the coat closet and got Mrs Rosnic’s coat and my sweater from Hannah’s hook and then held the coat for her. Mrs Rosnic stood facing me, still looking at me. Finally she turned and put one arm into a sleeve. ‘Ah, well, never mind. Words come hard. I know. And anyway, the ones that say them so easy – well, I hear plenty words before.’ She put the second arm in.

‘It’s not going to be easy with Hannah,’ I said. ‘That’s one thing for sure. It’s going to mean a lot of work for both of us, and it will be harder for you because you’re with her more. Sometimes you’re going to have to be very strong. Hannah’s been used to having her own way, and she’s not going to be able to all the time now. She won’t like it, and sometimes she’s going to get very angry with both of us.’

I shrugged on my sweater and then was caught by surprise as Mrs Rosnic reached out and smoothed it across my shoulders. Her fingers were rough and they snagged on the soft wool, but her hand itself was strong and warm. ‘Listen. It okay. I tell Grandpa. It okay. Hannah, she lucky this year.’

Chapter 5

The next morning after Circle I went and sat on the floor in the closet next to Hannah. The period of research was over. I had learned all I could from outside sources. Now it was up to me. I set my goals for Hannah. They might change, but I had to have something to aim for.

The first thing I had to do was get Hannah out of the coat closet. Observation has its values, but it was time for her to move closer, become part of us. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I want you to come and sit with us during Best and Worst today. You don’t have to talk, but I want you at the table. You’re part of our class and I want you with us.’

Hannah pulled her long dress over her head.

I pulled the dress down and spoke directly into her face. ‘If you can come by yourself, fine. If not, I’ll help you.’

I wanted her to understand that this was not a question of choice. She didn’t have to decide anything. I had made the decision. She had sat in the closet for two weeks. That was long enough.

I hesitated for a minute. The trick was to know when to ask for more and when to stop. Each step like this was a risk, the line between success and failure is so small. I had thought carefully about when and where to begin with Hannah, and now I decided to go ahead. This was the time, right after Circle. She was fascinated by Best and Worst. I had seen her looking, listening, from the closet. And contradictory though it seems, I knew that the first move is sometimes easier if someone else insists on it. I insisted now. I stood up. ‘Okay, Hannah, let’s go.’

She pulled the dress back over her head.

I reached under the dress, found her hand, and pulled her to her feet. Caught by surprise, she came up easily but let out a howl of rage.

‘This morning you’re going to sit with us. This morning and every other morning from now on. You’re part of our class.’

Standing beside me, Hannah braced her feet like a baulky mule and pulled hard to get away.

The classroom was large, over forty feet long. The boys had set up the table in the middle of the room and they sat there now, watching us. We had about twenty feet to go to reach the table. I was sure I could manage that. Hannah was husky, but I had a lot of inches, pounds, and years in my favour and my will was as strong as her own.

‘If you can control yourself, Hannah, great. If not, I’ll help you control yourself.’

I started walking towards the table, holding her hand tightly in my own and propelling her along with me.

Her howling ceased. She planted both feet close together again and braked us to a stop and smashed her foot – crack! – into my ankle. I yelped in surprise, but I caught her foot in time and pulled off first one shoe and then the other. She could kick all she wanted now.

I had been through this many times before. Other children in other years had kicked and bitten, but they had become more gentle. We had all survived, and eventually they had made it back to mainstream school.

The howling began again, but there was little she could do, and more in sorrow than in anger Hannah allowed herself to be pulled to the table.

‘Get another chair, please, Bri.’

I sat Hannah down next to me and said to the boys, ‘Whose turn is it to begin Best and Worst today?’

My eyes, my attention, were focused on the boys. I kept a steady grip on Hannah’s hand, but that was all. Except for this hold on her hand, we ignored her. She alternately cried and yelled for the half hour. She was loud, but we were louder and managed to hear each other.

At the end of the half hour, the boys went to get their work folders from their cupboards. I looked down at Hannah’s tear-stained face, ‘Thank you, babe, for being with us.’ Then I released her hand.

For one brief moment she looked at me and then raced back to her closet seat. Her scuffed brown shoes still lay on the floor. I took them to her and then went back to help the boys with their reading. All the rest of the morning she sat merely watching us, not saying anything, not yelling, just sitting there holding her shoes in her lap.

At the end of the morning I sent the boys out for recess with another class. The tension in the room had been hard on them, though none of them had mentioned it and they had worked well all morning. Still, they needed to get outside to run, to throw, to yell a little. At the same time I didn’t want to leave Hannah. It was important that she knew that I wanted to be with her. There is a great difference between someone arbitrarily imposing demands on you and someone working through a difficult situation with you. I wanted Hannah to know that, whatever I asked of her, she wouldn’t have to do it alone.

I needed something more, something to hook her interest, make her forget herself. I wanted to capture Hannah, lure her, not force her again. Suddenly I remembered the doll family.

I had ordered the dolls from the school supply catalogue the year before and stored them in my closet, waiting for the right time to bring them out. Surely, if there was a right time, this was it.

The next morning, after Circle, I announced that we were going to add something new to Best and Worst. I placed the box in the middle of the table. In the closet I said to Hannah, ‘Hey, come see. I’ve got a box for you to open.’

She peeked out of the closet to see what I was talking about. The box sat invitingly on the table. Hannah couldn’t resist it. She skirted the table twice on her own and then suddenly sat down and peeled off the tape and pulled the box open. She lifted out the brown crumpled packing paper and sat staring at the contents. Then, one by one, she lifted out the members of the miniature family, unwrapping each one carefully and laying it on the table. Man, woman, girl, boy, baby.

The dolls were made of a hard, wax-like substance, a kind of moulded rubber, pliable, durable, sturdy enough to take bending and pounding.

We all sat looking at the dolls. No one seemed sure what to do next. On impulse, I picked up the woman and girl dolls and put their arms around each other. ‘My best thing is that Elizabeth, my daughter, came home from college for a visit last night.’

I talked for about two minutes, telling how my daughter and I had gone to a movie and bought some ice cream. As I talked I was bending the dolls to sit, pushing them along the table, pretending they were moving in the car.

The children watched, their eyes never moving from the little figures. When I finished I laid the two dolls back on the table.

Rufus was sitting next to me, and he picked up the man doll and in a loud, authoritarian voice said, ‘If I’m doing the cooking, I’ll do it the way I want to. So shut up!’

We all stared at him. None of us had ever heard Rufus speak like that before. Obviously he was being someone else.

Now he picked up the woman doll and in a high, wistful voice said, ‘You never listen to me, no matter what it is. Cooking or anything else.’

Maybe not, but we listened to Rufus. Forgetting time limits, we sat spellbound as he acted out a household drama, using first one doll and then another. When he finished he pushed the dolls to the middle of the table and leaned back with a tired, satisfied sigh.

Jamie picked up each doll and inspected it carefully. He petted the baby and kissed the mother and then put them back without saying a word.

Brian had his turn and acted out a TV commercial.

And now, look at Hannah. She picked up the boy doll and put him under the box. She pushed hard on the box, which wobbled in an unsatisfactory way. She got up from the table, went to the block wagon, and pulled it back to the table. What was she doing? She laid out one, two, three, four blocks in a square and put the boy doll in the middle. Was he supposed to be her brother, Carl? Bang, she put a block on the top, then another and another.

Hannah looked up at us and smiled. For the first time in our room she smiled with pure joy, as she added block after block on top of the boy doll.

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