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The Lost Children: Part 3 of 3
Mary MacCracken
The Lost Children can either be read as a full-length eBook or in 3 serialised eBook-only parts.This is PART 3 of 3 (Chapters 12-25 of 25).You can read Part 3 on release of the full-length eBook and paperback.First published in 1974 as A Circle of Children this is the first of four books from learning disabilities specialist Mary MacCracken.This is a book about children so emotionally disturbed they cannot fit into society; it is also the story of a woman whose involvement with these children changed the shape of their lives forever.When Mary MacCracken joined a school for emotionally disturbed children as a volunteer, she quickly found herself rocked to the core by the strong, loving people who taught there, the hard-pressed and bewildered parents, and the damaged children. On the outside most of the children looked healthy. But the reality was far sadder. Locked away from love and any human contact, these children struggled with life every day.It soon became evident that Mary MacCracken was a natural, gifted teacher. Using her instincts, observations and common sense, Mary was able to establish a rapport with even the most difficult children. Overtime, Mary taught her class to eat and to drink; she decoded their mutterings, and taught them to talk and to read. But most important of all she helped them to take the first steps towards feeling love and trust.There are no miracle-workers in this story, only a remarkable woman who refused to give up. Heartfelt, moving and incredibly inspiring, this is an amazing story about the astonishing human capacity for growth and change, even in those whom society regards as beyond help.
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Contents
Cover (#u6cab5f02-8735-5347-b089-295d14f15c87)
Title Page (#ulink_782e1344-f5de-59de-8186-a3953c61fa44)
Chapter 12 (#ulink_0051901a-1017-5795-a2dd-a27e8eb4c049)
Chapter 13 (#ulink_08eaddb1-913a-5a2e-9b97-8c83b787f28a)
Chapter 14 (#ulink_2130cdeb-03f6-59f4-ac48-5b3f61cb9e0d)
Chapter 15 (#ulink_5827be45-fcbf-5f9f-88c4-934eaf37495a)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Teacher (#litres_trial_promo)
Coming soon … (#litres_trial_promo)
Exclusive sample chapter (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#u9cfbcffe-ed37-5715-bdfe-96ba4667b0ed)
“I don’t know anything at all about team teaching,” I say to Dan.
“You’re an expert.”
“How’s that? How did I get to be an expert?”
“Because it’s just what we’ve been doing the last couple of months, combining our classes, except that next year we’ll be in the same classroom all the time. One big room for eight kids instead of two small ones. See, the thing is this. Doris wants to bring in six more kids – two more for you plus one more teacher and four kids. And if you and I combine in the big room, that will free one of the rooms for the new class.”
“And our room? What will that be like?” I ask, trying to get a picture.
“It’ll be good. Open. The kids can work in small groups; we’ll have two aides each morning, so that will be four of us. We can get a science project going – art, reading, math – and the kids can move back and forth between the groups. Freedom in a structured setting.”
“Where’s the structure?”
“Us. We’re structured. We believe in the same things, the same kind of discipline, responsibility. We let the kids grow at their own pace, provide the materials and help if they need it; let them test themselves with us … For God’s sake, I can’t put it in words … you know what I mean.”
I did. I knew.
“What does Doris think?” I asked.
“She’s all for it. She wants more kids, hopes eventually to have room for forty in the new building. Besides – more kids, more money.”
“Dan. That’s not fair.” This was one of the few things we disagreed about: the Director. Dan was antagonistic toward her, whereas I felt an increasing respect for this woman who had managed to found the school and keep it operating for thirteen years. And her dream was coming closer. There was an architect’s rendering now of the new building. Formal fund-raising was starting. Dan found her stubborn, unwilling to change; he disliked the way she said one thing one day, another the next, agreeing with the psychologist during staff meetings, disagreeing with him after he left.
To me – she survived. And kept us all surviving with her. There was tremendous strength inside her slender body and she used every ounce of it, playing the odds, swaying back and forth, it’s true, like a tree in a storm, this way toward the board of trustees, back to the teachers, leaning toward the professionals, bending to the parents; but this was her secret of survival. The pressures upon her were incredible. She could not remain rigid or she would be felled. She was strange about money, fishing old broken crayons out of the wastebasket, cutting up partly used paper for scraps. But she used the scraps. She sacrificed for her dream – the new school.
Dan was not concerned with some future dream: he was young, he was interested in now. He wanted good conditions, good supplies of materials for his kids right now. Why should they, his boys, suffer for some old woman’s distant dream?
Dan’s other complaint was that Doris did not visit the classrooms enough, was not in close enough touch with the children, the teachers. She was not, he said, aware of what we were doing and trying to do. Consequently, Dan, like a child himself, felt that if she didn’t care enough to find out, he had no obligation to inform her.
But again the fact remained: we did survive, and more than that, we grew. Through all our crises, big and small – in spite of ourselves. Matthew on the mountain, for instance, could have been a tragedy, but wasn’t. Now in some strange way our classes were closer than ever. We had known fear and not been torn apart by it; we had made mistakes and not turned on each other. Matthew was no longer so wild; when we crossed even the small street to the graveyard he came and put his hand into mine, never looking at me – but our hands clasped as we crossed the street.
In any event, for once Dan and Doris both wanted the same thing, though for different reasons. Doris wanted more children; Dan wanted to try the concept of team teaching. Whatever my reservations were, they seemed small in the face of their united decision.
“All right,” I said, “let’s try it.”
The last days of school were hot. We worked hard, conscious of trying to prepare the children for summer, give them as many skills, as much self-reliance, as we could, then staying late in the afternoon, planning for the next year. It was hard to say good-bye. Tired as we all were, we had grown used to each other and were conscious of how much we would miss one another.
We had a final party in place of the usual staff meeting. We held it in Jerry Cramer’s backyard, out on the flagstone terrace, overlooking a long meadow filled with apple trees and bordered by low stone walls. The terrace faced west and the late afternoon sun hung over the low range of mountains that rose at the end of the meadow.
Jerry was our psychiatric social worker; he was also a psychologist. He spent more time at the school than the other professionals, often without pay. He had a long, soft, gray mustache, steel-rimmed glasses, and a gentle manner. Though he had his human failings (always trying to stop smoking, which never lasted more than a day), he loved the children and they knew it. They would often go of their own volition to stand beside him or sit near him at Circle.
Dr. Marino, our psychiatrist, was there too. Reserved, always at a slight distance from all of us, but able, informed; I wished there was some way that he could spend more time at the school.
There was no shop talk that day, only gentle jokes and reminiscences. Zoe drank martinis and sat on the flagstone terrace like a small guru. Only our speech pathologist was absent.
I knew I must go – Rick’s high-school graduation was that night – but the tenderness I had felt all year had risen to the surface, floating on Jerry’s bourbon, and it was difficult for me to leave these people. I kissed Zoe and hugged Doris, surprised at myself; I was not usually a woman hugger.
Then Dan walked me to my car parked in front of the house, opened the door for me and waited while I found the key and put it in the ignition.
“How about working with me this summer, Mair? I’ve already got eight kids signed up for the summer program and there are a lot more prospects. I’ll need help. How about it?”
I wanted to. Rick was driving cross-country with friends before college; Elizabeth had been asked back to camp as a junior counselor. I wanted the work, the children, the closeness – but I had problems to resolve in my marriage; I could not retreat from them into the joy of teaching.
I turn on the ignition, and regret makes my voice formal. “Thank you, Dan, but I can’t. I’ve made other commitments.” And the word stands formal and strange between us.
Dan leans his arms on the edge of the car window and bends his big frame until his eyes are only an inch from mine, and I turn my head away before I say, “Good-bye, Dan. Good luck. Ill see you in the fall.”
He leans there looking at me, not moving, holding the car door, and then finally he straightens, “Take care, Junior. Take care of yourself this summer.”
I left then and drove down the highway in the heat of the late afternoon, but before I have gone a mile I pull to the side of the road and put up the top of my convertible. Even with the heat I put the top up, and put my own polished shell back on as well.
Chapter 13 (#u9cfbcffe-ed37-5715-bdfe-96ba4667b0ed)
I went to the marriage counselor alone. I tried to persuade Larry to come with me, but he said it was ridiculous because there was nothing wrong. I thought perhaps it was true – it might be ridiculous, but for the opposite reason: everything was so wrong it could not be put right.
I sat opposite the tall, distinguished psychiatrist – shy, not knowing what to say, intimidated by the black leather couch on the outer rim of my vision. Will he ask me to lie down?
“Yes …?” he says.
I try to tell him about all the good things and the bad. My voice seems far away. I can hear it while I am talking, and it is almost as though I am speaking about another person. I talk about our children – and Larry’s and my good physical relationship, and the lovely house and tennis – but when I try to tell him about the bad parts, I find I cannot talk about them very well; all the reserve I was taught as a child, the New England sense of privacy, wells up and sorrow fills my throat.
“Humph. Now. So. Do you think you are beautiful?”
Surprise makes me raise my head and look at him. “No,” I say. “No.”
All angular and lean is Dr. McPhearson, but now he smiles at me, a slow, kind smile and I like him suddenly.
“Ahhrph.” This man has his noises, too, not so different from the children. “So. Well, do you feel you are intelligent?”
“A little. Some. I can think better than I can talk.”
It is easier to talk now, and I tell him more. How it will not be as difficult to live with Larry with the children gone next year, Rick to college, Elizabeth to Kent. How we never fight, Larry and myself – how if I could just be content with the things I have, it would probably be all right; but there seems to be so much emptiness. And then, there is all this love, and I don’t know what to do with it. Larry doesn’t really want it. I don’t blame him – it’s too much. It gets too much for me too. I get all filled up with it and I have to let it out. Do you think maybe it’s like too much fat – that it could be slimmed down?
“The school,” he suggests.
“Yes. I am good at that,” I say. “I love teaching there, but, I don’t know – it’s hard to say it – but you see, anyone could do that. I mean either a man or a woman could do that kind of loving and it’s – the school is – good for that part; but there’s this other part of me that loves only like a woman. This part is for a man. I love being a woman …”
He takes off his glasses and smiles again, a small, tired smile.
“Yes,” he says. “Can your husband come with you next time?”
Larry almost came, but then he was detained at his bank in the city and so I go alone again. This time we talk about the laser: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Delicate, intricate, powerful. Energy harnessed from a larger source. Is it possible that love could be like this?
On the fifth visit he says unexpectedly, “What will you do if you leave your husband?”
“I’ll teach.”
“And how will you live? Who will take care of you? Have you ever lived alone?”
It seems amazing to me. I realize I never have. I have never spent a night alone. First my parents – overnights with friends – college, roommates – Larry – my parents when he was in the army – the children.
“No,” I say. “Not really. But I am sure that I can learn.”
Dr. McPhearson called Larry and arranged an appointment, and Larry went first alone and then with me. He explained carefully to Dr. McPhearson how there was nothing wrong, that I tended to be too sensitive, imagine things.
I sat silently, listening, shrinking, getting smaller again.
“Hrrmph. Ah. Mmph.” Dr. McPhearson clears his throat, and the familiar noises cheer me. “Well, Mary. What do you say?”
“I am going” – sounding stubborn, I knew, unreasoning – but it would take so little. It would be so easy to stay.
Dr. McPhearson recommends that I take a trip. Living alone is different from thinking about it, he says. Larry is enthusiastic. Just what she needs, he says – a trip, to get away from it all. He likes the doctor, and I am glad. He will need someone to talk to.
I go for one more visit.
“Ahhh,” he says, even before we begin. “I am sorry. Perhaps if you had come ten years ago …”
I shake his hand before I go. Is that how you say good-bye to a psychiatrist?
“Thank you,” I say, “for all your time.”
“Yahrmph.” A combination of yes and throat-clearing. “Is there anything more? Anything I can do? Where will you be?”
“California, I think. I’ve never been there.”
He stands silently.
“There is one other thing,” I say. “The guilt. I feel a big ball of guilt … Here.” I touch my stomach. “Is there anything I can do about that?”
“Guilt. Why is that? What do you mean, guilt?”
It is so difficult to tell him and I think again how hard it is to communicate through words, and I marvel to myself that we all do as well as we do. We are all interpreters by necessity, even though we are not trained or suited for the profession. Simultaneous interpreters, hearing one language and then speaking another, our own. Ahh, we need more tolerance, more admiration for one another.
“I feel guilty about leaving him alone. Who will make the coffee in the morning or put flowers in the silver bowl? And the animals, will they be all right? How will Larry know how to order the meat or which slipcovers to send to the cleaner’s? He doesn’t know how to work the dryer or where I packed his winter things …” I stop in confusion.
“You are not his mother, Mary?”
And I want to say, I know, I know, and yet, part of me is. Just as I can see separate parts of me, parts that are satisfied working with the children and other parts that are man-oriented, so I also see blended centers of me. Where does the mother end and the lover begin? Which is student, which teacher? Is being a wife supposed to be a separate, isolate thing? I do not think it can be.
But before I can speak again Dr. McPhearson interrupts my thoughts. “It will be all right,” he says. “It is like grief – the guilt – you must just work it through.”
Chapter 14 (#u9cfbcffe-ed37-5715-bdfe-96ba4667b0ed)
Coming in from the hot June air, I notice that the halls of the school are cool and dark, strangely quiet and empty without the children. The Director is there, though, talking on the phone, and she waves as I walk through her office on the way to my classroom.
There are books and papers I want to take with me to California, and I had thought merely to drop by the school and pick them up. I had not realized how strange the school would seem without the children, and now as I kneel in front of the small white bookcase thumbing the speech manual, images of Brian and Matthew superimpose themselves upon the pages and I cannot concentrate.
