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.
Hannah came to Best and Worst each day, but she still ate in the closet. She brought her lunch in a crumpled brown paper bag and tucked it safely behind her coat every morning. Then, all day, she ate whenever she was hungry, sitting on the floor in the closet.
She ate like an animal, tearing at the food with her teeth, no matter how soft it might be. She aimed for the centre of the cupcake, trying for the choicest morsel, eyes glancing right and left, on the lookout even while she ate. Once she had made contact with the food, her fingers rapidly prodded as much as possible into her mouth. Then, when she couldn’t fit any more in, she clamped her teeth together, cutting off the rest. The crust, the cheese, the jelly, the crumbs, fell to her lap or the floor. But even these she guarded carefully and ate when she felt hungry again.
It was a sad and terrible way to eat. I’d let it continue in those beginning weeks because I had to get to know Hannah. I watched, listened, learned her behaviour. I couldn’t begin to teach until I knew where to start.
I knew Hannah now, not intimately yet, but enough to realise that it was worth the long struggle ahead. The intellect, the curiosity, the potential were there and so was the motivation. Food was extremely important to her. In the area of food, I would have Hannah’s complete attention.
I waited one more week; then I stopped Hannah as she arrived and quickly, before she could react, took the paper lunch bag out of her hands. I placed it in full view but high above her head, on the closet shelf.
As I took her lunch bag away Hannah drew back, mobilised for action. She raced for the closet, jumping, leaping, trying to reach the paper bag that I’d put on the shelf. But this lasted only a few seconds. Almost immediately she ran back to get a chair. Inwardly, I exulted at her reaction, her immediate understanding of the problem, her swift attempt at a new solution. Outwardly, I took the chair away and said, ‘Not today, Hannah. Today you’re going to eat with us.’
Fury exploded in our room. She understood what I said and she was not about to let it happen. She ran for another chair, and another, and another, and another, as I blocked her attempt. Finally frustration and anger caught up and she went down on the floor in the knee-chest position of the first day. Once again she drove her head down towards the hard tile floor, howling all the while.
I sat down beside her. ‘Hannah. Nobody’s going to take your lunch. It’s yours. I’m going to keep it for you on the shelf until lunchtime. We eat lunch at twelve. Look, see the clock? When both hands are up at the top, we’ll eat.’
Again she couldn’t resist. The rocking stopped and for a second she allowed herself one swift look at the clock above the door. She understood me; she had receptive language, and she knew what a clock was!
But the pause was only for an instant. Back to the rocking. And it was only nine thirty. I couldn’t keep taking chairs away all morning. What to do for two and a half hours, with three other children to teach?
I sat beside Hannah, thinking, looking around the room. Finally I spotted a pipe running along the ceiling inside the closet. There might be just enough room to prop her lunch there. It would still be visible, in plain sight, so she would know it was safe, but there was no chair in the room high enough to let Hannah reach it.
I got up and moved the lunch bag. By standing on a chair I could just reach the pipe, and I wedged Hannah’s lunch behind it. She grabbed a chair and ran with it to the closet, but the chair was no help this time; I was a good foot and a half taller than Hannah. As soon as she realised this, she pushed the chair over and came after me. Yelling, screaming, her hands clawed at me.
I put my arms around her and held her from behind. ‘Hannah, Hannah. You are so foolish. All this fuss about your lunch. Nobody will take it, I promise you. Nobody can get it, except me, and I’ll give it to you at lunchtime. Twelve o’clock, when both hands are at the top of the clock. You watch. You’ll see.’ Hannah broke away from me and ran back to the chairs.
Brian and Rufus were both trying to work, but their eyes never left Hannah for long. Finally Rufus took his book and lay it in a spot on the floor just behind the free-standing bookcases.
He read out loud, talking to himself at the end of each line. ‘Don’t worry, Rufus, that ol’ dummy girl will go home soon’ – or sometimes just ‘It’s all right. Don’t be scared, Rufus.’ It’s not surprising that he barely finished a page.
Brian had even more difficulty handling the situation. He abandoned his book altogether and went back to his old-time pacing of perimeters. He no longer ran or croaked out strangled cries, nor did his arms flap wildly, as they had when he had first come to school. Now he walked silently around the edges of our room and only his fingertips trembled against his sides.
But Jamie couldn’t stand it. His own need for security was so desperate, his ability to cope with feelings so minimal, that when Hannah exploded he replied in kind. As she pushed chairs over in the back of the room, he pushed them against