Born That Way

or, Substitute Teaching at Ruby Van Meter School

You can always wonder how the kids at Ruby Van Meter School got to be the way they are, but once you know it rarely matters. 

I assume most of them were born that way,

whatever that means. 

I feel satisfied, at first, with my instant compassion for all these broken bodies and dented minds. I am content to teach them as they are, for the most part,

understanding there are more similarities than you would think

with children broken only in the average ways.

Over time, I learn bits, shadows of tragedies, about the victims and heroes who walk in these broken bodies.  I am just their today-teacher; I cannot know their whole stories, but now and then I learn from those who know them, some bits of stories they cannot keep to themselves:

This boy, Jon, with brown hair and pretty blue eyes, had a pool accident at age 13. Didn’t breathe for minutes in a row. Now he sorts objects into buckets, and receives praise for pressing a button. He’s lucky to be alive, they say. 

I try to imagine him as just any student

I might see in one of my high school classes.

I can almost do it.

Rett syndrome – I’ve never heard of it. I hear the story of this child, Cassie, who at 11 months, had walked, then started to crawl, then to roll on the ground and lose all comprehension.

My own sparkling 11-month-old is waiting for me at daycare.

Starting to talk and walk, sings twinkle-star, “reads” books;

I cannot imagine her having come all this way, then

just going backward.

I have no name for grief like that.

I meet the girl, Sarah, who drank bleach as a baby, and hear how it tore her insides and altered her brain.  I look deep into her uncomprehending eyes, and I recall one of my own baby-stories.  I, too, drank bleach–

reached  with my small, plump hand

for the plain plastic cup off the kitchen counter,

sipped it and was observed as I made a  sour face,

was swept off my feet  and sped to the doctor

by my frightened father.

I drank bleach that day. I am told.

I did not know how many ways my father saved me that day.

These are the children who live for today, never tomorrow;

Who walk like ghosts in place of the children they could have been.

They make us wonder at ourselves, if we let them;

Make us wonder at each other,

And all the things that might have been.

©2009 Donna Jo Wallace.