11. Screaming
11
SCREAMING
Sarah
The screaming was the first thing I heard. When you teach kids, you get a good ear for the different types of screams. Like bird-songs to the trained ear, you can pick them out. This one was a serious cry, with pain involved.
Rushing outside, while the kids ran to press their faces against the window, I saw Hicks pulling Maiden up by his shirt, his face red and wild as he thrashed around trying to get free. Then I saw Kensy go to the floor where Matthew Lockley was bawling. His face a shocked mess of snot, tears, and blood.
Maiden was still flailing as he was dragged away by Hicks, while the other kids looked on as if they were watching a grown-up television show they didn’t fully understand, but couldn’t look away from.
As I got to the scene, Kensy was asking Matthew what happened. Between sobs, he was trying to tell her.
“He… He hit me… In my F… Fff…. Face,” he wailed .
I crouched down next to Kensy, and we shared a concerned look.
“Why Matthew?” I asked him.
“I just said he… He… He… Couldn’t read,” then he looked at me in earnest, “Because he can’t!”
“He can read just fine, Matthew. Why would you say that?” Kensy asked as she mopped up his snotty face with a tissue.
“He didn’t know the… The… The number on the hopscotch… Then he HIT me!”
Back inside, Hicks had Maiden sitting on a chair in the hallway and was telling him, “You can’t just hit people, Maiden. Why did you do it?”
Maiden just stared at the floor, his eyes thick with angry tears.
“We’ll have to tell your dad, you know? What will he think?”
Maiden’s head slumped further forward, and he put it in his big hands.
“Hey, Hicks. Let me talk to him.”
Hicks looked up at me with a cross face, sighed, and then nodded. “Okay. I’ll go and tell Jill what happened.”
I kneeled down and Maiden looked back at me, his face distressed, scared, and confused.
“You know what you did wasn’t okay, don’t you, Maiden?”
He nodded and tried to swipe at the tears running down his face. Trying to be strong, I thought. That had his dad written all over it.
He didn’t seem like a bad kid, though. Obviously, he didn’t want this to be happening, so why was it?
“Hey, come with me. We can chat about it over dinosaurs, okay? ”
It didn’t cheer him up any, but he still nodded, just glad of something other than sitting in a hallway being told he was a bad kid. We sat on two tiny chairs in the playroom, him sniffling and me watching him.
“Maiden. Matthew said you didn’t know the numbers on the floor. Is that true?”
He flashed an even brighter red than before and avoided looking at me.
“It’s okay, you know. Just tell me. Or… How about you tell Marvin?”
I held up the plush toy stegosaurus and he looked at it. Once he realized that Marvin wouldn’t judge him and didn’t care about the stupid numbers either, he took it from me.
“Sometimes they get all jumbled and I don’t like it when people say I’m stupid.”
“The numbers?” I said.
He nodded. “And sometimes the words.”
“Well, what about these?” And I pointed to the colored numbers on the playroom wall.
“They’re okay.”
“So, what was different with the numbers outside?”
“It’s when it’s all in a rush and I can’t think proper.”
“Like when you’re playing a game?”
“Yeah. Or if I have to answer fast in front of the class. It’s different then.”
He looked like the saddest boy in all the world right then. I didn’t even feel that sorry for Matthew Locklear, in all honesty. He was loud and annoying and a bit of a bully, just like his dad, but we couldn’t be sending kids home to their parents their kids with black eyes and split lips.
“I see.”
He started sobbing again, “W… Will my dad have to come and get me? ”
“Oh. Probably. But hey, let’s try and sort this out, okay? Let me talk to the principal and we’ll see.”
Kensy came in to join us while Marissa, the new teaching assistant, took Matthew off to the bathroom to get cleaned up.
“Hey, have you met Kensy yet? She’ll look after you for a minute, while I go see what’s happening, okay? You wait here with Kensy and Marvin.”
Maiden nodded, and I gave Kensy a look that said I feel bad for him, so go easy, and she nodded her understanding back at me. Neither of us were moms, but we probably knew as much, if not more, about kids' behavior than the best of them.
Jill and Hicks were pulling sighing faces as I went into her office.
“Is he contained?” Jill asked.
“Contained? It wasn’t a prison break, Jill. He’s fine. Just in a bit of a mess.”
“I’ve called his father already. He’s on the way,” she told me. “I should have known it was a bad idea.”
“What are you going to do about it?” I asked back.
“We can’t have our children threatened by violence, even if their father is a donor to the school. We have to set an example. He’s been here, what? Four hours?”
“Jill. Look, I don’t think he’s a bad kid. Matthew was teasing him about not being able to read the numbers on the playground. I don’t think anyone’s ever understood or tried to help him. He’s confused and embarrassed.”
“Well, that’s not how he should have reacted,” she said bluntly, and now it was my turn to sigh.
She was right, of course, but how many times had this kid been moved on because no one had helped him learn how to control himself ?
“Jill, don’t get me wrong, what he did was really bad, but I think we could actually help this kid, not just throw him to the next school. Isn’t that a better example to set? We’re meant to be helping these kids learn, but also learn how to deal with life and human interactions.”
“Sarah, I love the idea, but…”
“What about we give him a week? If I can get him and Matthew to make up and be friends, and he stays out of trouble, then we can move on.”
“Sorry, but Matthew’s parents will be all over me on this. They’ll ask for him to be removed.”
I thought of the Locklears for a moment and then realized we had a winning hand. It wasn’t one I really wanted to consider, but at that moment, I was only thinking about the poor boy who needed some help from all these grown-ups who were ready to just brush him under the carpet.
“The Locklears will be okay with it,” I told her.
Jill stared at me like I was mad. “Tom Locklear is not the kind of man to have a reasonable conversation, in case you don’t remember his outbursts at the last teacher-parent evening?”
“I know, I know! But do you remember what he was wearing that evening, Jill?”
She thought for a moment before she recalled, “Oh, a football shirt, wasn’t it?”
“No. Jill, it was a hockey shirt. An Ice-Hawks one at that. If Maiden’s dad wants him to stay, then all he’s gotta do is go apologize to Tom, maybe throw him some game tickets, and he’ll lap it up.”
Hicks had been quiet up until this point but spoke up. “Actually, that’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
Jill considered the scenario for a moment before deciding .
“If, and I mean, if , Tom accepts an apology, then he can stay. But the first sign of trouble after that, then he has no place at Parkford. Sarah, seeing as it’s your idea, you talk to the father when he gets here.”
An image of Hayden throwing another ravaged chicken bone on the table and then belching flashed across my mind.
“Oh! I really think it would come best from the principal, don’t you?”
“I don’t know any of this sports stuff. You seem to know about it. Just tell him what needs to happen.”