I used to have this little girl in both my third and fourth grade class. She was a pretty troubled kid. We'll call her M. Her mom had died suddenly at the end of second grade leaving her dad with 11 children. Needless to say her life was kind of messy, and she was a sad little kid. I got to know her really well over the two years. As I learned her, I also discovered all her quirks and habits. Often she would go to the bathroom and stay there forever until finally I marched to the bathroom myself, pushing the door open quickly calling for her to come HERE RIGHT NOW! There she stood with permanent marker all over her pants and messages scribbled on the walls. M would insist it WASN'T HER that wrote the profanity. I shook my head and told her to go back to class.
Teachers around the school all had their stories about her. One day it was reported that during lunch M had snuck into the kindergarten teacher's room, opened her diet coke, drank 1/3 of it, closed it back up and then took three pieces of gum, lip gloss, and 11.00 in cash. My principal suspended her but she kept showing back up at my door every morning at 8:30. Finally after the secretary got sick of her sitting in the office, I said, "Come on in."
She was way behind in school. She didn't want to learn to read and almost always refused. Except when she wanted to pretend to be a teacher. Sometimes I would catch M in the corner holding up a book reading the words and showing the pictures to a fake audience of children. Every now and then M would even pause and stare at the air and say phrases I so often said to my own students, "Are you listening? This is your education, I have mine...this is yours..so criss cross apple sauce!"
I always made sure not to let her know that I was watching her but it made me love her that much more, watching her like that.
Her writing was horrendous too. Often I had no idea what she was even saying. It made no sense but perfect sense to her. When we would share stories we wrote, she would stand up and rehearse a story, reading it carefully when in reality her notebook was a scribbled mess. Everyone loved her stories too...even if none of us could read them.
M loved math and would do math while I taught writing, reading, science, and social studies. She would stick worksheets under her book and do them as I wrote on the board. Every now and then M would look up and smile as if she were a top A student, that kind of smile, then nod at me and go back to writing. I finally gave up trying to stop her.
Often I sent her down to the nurse because she would come to school unfed or she would fall asleep on her desk for hours. At times her uniform was caked with dirt. I asked M how that happened? She said, "Oh well, we were on our way to school and then me and my brother thought it would be fun to roll down a hill." I thought about how much of a great children's author she could be, that is if she learned to write, with the imagination of those stories. Her stories were so colorful and convincing I began to wonder if she knew if they were just stories. For her they were often real.
One summer I got her enrolled in a summer camp for children who have lost their mothers. I found M a scholarship and faxed everything in. I called dad a hundred times to remind him where the bus would pick her up. I went away to Chicago to visit home. When I came back that fall for school I asked M how camp was!? She said she didn't go. My heart sank as I grew incredibly angry, But why? "Well my dad had to work that day so nobody took me to the bus stop."
That's how it went with M. And God did I love her. She would follow me around my room after school and help me hang things up and tidy up the room. She'd ask me a million questions. Sometimes in class she'd start crying in the middle of nowhere. I'd be reading a book to the class, maybe the book had a mom in it or something so very small and irrelevant. I'd look up and she'd be sobbing her little eyes out. The whole class knew when she got this way to just let her be. We even forgot in those moments about all the times she stole a dollar from my drawer, or took the left over Halloween candy and dumped it all in her backpack. We forgot the profanity and all the things she said to our faces. Because there she was, just trying her best to be okay. When you are 9 years old this should be a natural thing-happiness that is. So when its not, that makes it that much harder to find. I'd plop M in my lap and not before long she'd wipe her eyes dry and start pounding away at math worksheets.
There is this one day I remember though that always makes me laugh. We were outside for recess. It was one of the first days of spring. Just when it starts to stay light out later and you feel this relief. Everyone was running around and then M comes up. "Do you want to watch me hula hoop?!" Then another girl came up next to her. "I'll have a contest with you because I bet I'll beat you!"
I'm thinking to myself, oh goodness, she barley can read or write and I really can't watch her fail at this. I mean its just hula hoop but where I taught hula hoop and jump rope, well, they meant something real to those kids. She looks at the girl and says, "Aight, Lets do it. I'll beat you. I'm awesome at hula hoop."
They put the hula hoops around their waist and OFF they go, spinning, spinning away.
Right before my eyes this new child emerges from M. She whips that hula hoop around her waist and hips so gracefully like we are at the Olympic trials. That confident. That good. She's whipping it around in circles and this huge smile tumbles onto her face as it goes around and around. The breeze is passing through the trees and the sun is hitting her face just so. The other girl finally collapses to the ground in laughter. But M doesn't care. She doesn't even see her. Or me. Its just her and that hula hoop dancing around her. And then shes laughing; she's got this smile like the first time a kid sees snow falling. that amazing look. That's her and God its so rare to see her like that. I sit on the stoop of the school and watch her spinning delicately. Finally the hula hoop falls to the ground and she falls to the concrete floor. Panting and huffing she looks up at me finally.
"I told you Ms. O that I could REALLY hula hoop."
I smile big, really big and say, "Yes you did. You really did."
I moved away after that spring. M moved away to a new school. I think about her often and wonder. But most of all I think back to that spring day and realize the delicate wonder we all are.
