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