As soon as Harold was out of the room Mrs. Snowburn immediately began to busy herself with the task of cleaning the room. She made all of the unoccupied beds and picked up all of the crayons and papers that had been strewn about the floor and placed them in neat piles in the corner. The four books Tim had found sat next them, upright with their spines visible, as though they were on a shelf. I couldn’t see from here, but if I had to guess, they were in some sort of order, whether it was by author’s name or book title. She even checked the space heater to make sure it was fine.
It was when she picked up and started sorting the playing cards that I had to speak up. “You know, it’s more difficult to shuffle them if their in some sort of order, or at least a very obvious order.” Mrs. Snowburn stopped and stared at the cards in her hand. “You know you’ll burn yourself out if you keep going at that pace.”
Mrs. Snowburn let her body relax and let out a long sigh. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be worried about the cards or the papers. I should be worried about you and Dan.” She stood up and started to readjust Dan’s blankets; she checked his forehead for a temperature and made sure he had unfrozen water.
When she stepped towards me I had to argue. “Whoa! I’m fine. If you come close to me I’m going to make you stop. You’re going to kill yourself.” Little did I know that was an accurate prediction.
Mrs. Snowburn did stop at that point. She stopped and sat on the foot of my bed and placed a hand on my toe. “I’m sorry. It’s just, Harold.” I nodded, unsure what she wanted to do. If she wanted to vent I was here for her to vent to, if she wanted my input however I had none. “Has anyone told you anything about Harold?”
I shook my head. “No, the most anyone’s mentioned about any of them was Johnny.” I glanced over to Dan to make sure he wasn’t awake to hear what I had to say. It was fine if Johnny told Dan what he’d told me, and it was fine with me if I told him. It, however, was not okay with me to tell Dan anything about Johnny unless I got Johnny’s permission. If Dan was as bad as Johnny said he was then even saying a mild insult could prove to be a problem. When I was satisfied that Dan wasn’t awake enough to be listening to our conversation I turned back to Mrs. Snowburn. “He said that Dan’s a jerk. He said that Dan is basically a bully, but with-“
“-Without the bully mentality. Yes, I’ve heard that said before.” Mrs. Snowburn stood up and walked over to Dan to tuck him back in again. I could see that his bangs hung low over his face and she brushed them aside. She was thinking about something, she was debating with herself what course of action to take. “That thing you did with Jessica before. Why did you do it?” She turned around and looked down at me.
“Look, I said I was sorry for teaching her anything. I just didn’t know how to go on from there. It’s not like I’m trained to deal with children. I’ve already been bitched out by both you and Claire. I don’t need anymore lectures. If she asks I’m going to start talking about meat.” I shifted under her gaze, it was uncomfortable and I wanted it to go away.
Unfortunately or fortunately I misinterpreted the gaze and the conversation I thought she was referring to turned out to be the wrong one. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that one. Though, changing the subject to something completely random won’t help when the time comes. Just so you’re aware.” Once again she sat on my bed, which made me feel like she wasn’t standing over me. This time she sat closer towards the middle which was also better, though my feet wanted her warm palm back. “I meant when she was yelling for her parents. Why did you think of telling her a secret?”
“Oh, that.” I could feel the blood rushing to my face as I blushed. “That was a desperate attempt at getting her to stop screaming bloody murder.”
Mrs. Snowburn smiled. “Well, yes. That was very clear, but why a secret? How did you know it was going to work?”
I shrugged under the blankets. I didn’t honestly know it was going to work, it was just something that popped into my head as a last ditch effort to make her quiet. “I guess the reason I came up with it is ‘cause, where I grew up, there were a lot of girls on my street. Sure, there were guys too and I played with them more often than not, soccer on the block and tag and stuff like that. The thing that I remember about the girls, though, was the fact that they told secrets. Sure we had the rhyme to try and keep them from saying secrets, you know: ‘secrets secrets are no fun. Secrets are for everyone.” That seemed to only provoke them.
“Actually, anything that made it seem like we were at all interested in their secrets provoked them. They’d tell a secret while I was watching; I’d ask what they were saying and they’d just giggle and tell another one. It seemed that if any of us boys were interested in any particular secret there were suddenly four new ones. Which, of course, made us more interested because on of those five was the one we wanted to know in the first place. After that the secrets simply grew until we got bored and went onto other things. I guess, in my mind, to little girls secrets are a type of power and I was hoping that Jessica would have wanted that power over everyone else.” I shrugged at Mrs. Snowburn. “I guess it didn’t actually matter since Dan pushed her over. She hasn’t asked me what the secret was.”
Mrs. Snowburn nodded, thought I would shortly find out that it was in approval of what I’d done, though she would question the short sightedness of my plan. “You’ve mentioned that you aren’t trained for children. What exactly are you trained for?”
“Middle school and high school mostly. My specialty is English, though I won’t shy away from the political sciences, I just don’t expect there to be a great deal of demand for them in high school.”
Mrs. Snowburn sighed. “You are, unfortunately, probably right in that assertion. But it isn’t those points that I’m interested in. You yourself saw how I was unable to calm Jessica down when she demanded her parents. Though Coach Z has a way about him that the children seem to like, which encourages good behavior, he has been known to be swamped by the children when they become too rowdy. Honestly, the only person in this school that possibly could have calmed Jessica down is Sean. At least, that’s what I thought.” I was about to scoff at that comment, but she cut me short. “Despite what you may think about Sean you have only seen his actions while he’s been stuck in the school. While I can’t say they’ve been…exemplary this is also a difficult situation. Under normal circumstances he enthralls the children with a charisma that I have yet to see in anyone else. He is wonderful with the children, but he is still human.
“You see, Sean and I work together closely. He ensures that the children are kept in line and the school itself runs smoothly. My main job is to keep an eye on and help the children who has the largest learning deficits, I am the head of the Special Education department. We attempt to keep the special children as involved with the rest of the school as we can. If they aren’t in my classroom they are with one of my associates in their regular classroom. It works well and it allows me to place eyes and ears in all of the classrooms of the school. If there is a potential problem and Sean wants to make sure it either truly exists or that it is simply rumor he will come to me. If I notice that a child is consistently breaking the rules or something similar I will go to him. In a sense I find the problems and Sean fixes them.
“While we’ve been here that relationship simply does not work. I have found that, what Sean can do with children, he has limited ability with adults. He is somewhat of a push-over when it comes to ensuring the parents take the proper actions to ensure their improved education as well the other students’. Here Johnny and Dan’s parents are present and, since Jessica seems to be mostly in control of herself, Sean has decide there is nothing he can do. This causes a slight break in the line of communication, Coach Z and myself are more used to approaching Sean about issues and gauging what course of action to take from his reactions. Because of my relationship with Sean I can continue to work without him around, though I’ve found that Coach Z can’t handle things as well I have been able to pick up the slack. Still, when Jessica went off about wanting her parents there was nothing I could do to calm her down. I was at a loss of what to do, Coach z certainly didn’t know what to do, and it isn’t the place of anyone else to calm her down. You broke that unwritten rule as soon as you said you had a secret, and in doing so you found the way to calm her down. I wouldn’t go so far as to say you have a gift, even you stated you had no idea where you were going to go with this ‘secret’ if it came to that point, but you have a quick enough wit that I’m impressed.”
“Okay, so what’s the point? Are you going to suggest that I change my career goals and work with children?” It was a thought that hadn’t crossed my mind until that point and I almost immediately placed it as far into the back of my mind as I could, I didn’t want to work with children and I’d already been yelled at twice for not knowing how to teach them. Why would I suddenly want a career change to that?
Mrs. Snowburn shook her head. “No, I was just explaining to you what I thought about your interactions with Jessica. It is through this explanation that I will attempt to explain Harold and Dan and what you just saw happen.” I was relieved that she wasn’t going to convince me that I should work with grade school kids. It wasn’t what I wanted. So I placed it into the back of my mind and forgot about the idea. Unfortunately I would find that, like Tim’s desire to make sure Jessica was really his granddaughter, the idea would begin to grow on me and I would eventually return to school to get a certificate to teach younger children and, ultimately find myself in the same seat Mrs. Snowburn had filled. I guess unfortunately is the wrong word, I love the job I have and there are very few things that I could see being better than working with special needs children.
***
Mrs. Snowburn seemed as cautious about telling me Dan’s history while Dan was sleeping in the room as I was to hear it. We both knew that one of us had to stay in the room and it would be unkind to ask someone in the gym to come back and watch him so that we could talk in private. Eventually she decided that she had to tell me. I’d find out later that, like many of the stories I’d heard, it was with the understanding that I wasn’t going to stick around. When I left no one would hear these stories from me because no one could ask me. So a lot of people, it turned out, vented their frustrations and stories to me because I was convenient. I can’t say they were disappointed when I returned time and time again, though each one was scared that I would tell everyone their secret. I guess this is my way of doing just that, though most of what I’ve heard has either been resolved or the people involved have moved on.
“Like I said, I follow the student’s activities through my associates. There is an understanding that, though they don’t have to if they don’t want to, any information on the goings on in the school would be nice. They know that the benefits outweigh the consequences and, I have to admit, that I though I don’t encourage I neither discourage the thought that telling me information will help their salary.
“So, when one of my associates came to me with a story about Dan I kept it in the back of my mind. One story is hardly a problem. But then that associate returned time and again with new and different stories and other teachers and associates began making comments on the inappropriate behavior. So I began keeping track, I kept my eyes on Dan a little more than the other children and I let Sean know about the issue.
“As it turned out, letting Sean know was the straw that broke the camel’s back so to speak. You see, Dan’s teacher had been sending Dan to Sean’s office on a nearly weekly basis, if not more often. He’d disappear for the appropriate time and then return with an apology and information about what he and Sean had talked about. The only problem was that all of Dan’s stories were faked. He came up with some very believable things and, for the most part, was so convincing that the teacher didn’t think twice about it. But, instead of going to Sean’s office, he’d been hiding in the bathroom thinking of the lies, all simply to avoid any kind of punishment.
“He hadn’t actually been doing that for too long, two more times at most and his teacher would have caught onto the game. But I told Sean before that time and he, quite literally, marched into Dan’s classroom and pulled him out. From there they had a long talk, and boy, am I glad that I wasn’t in the room with him at the time. As Dan passed by my classroom on his way back from Sean’s office I could see that his face was pale and that he was shaking. If he had noticed that I was watching I would have gone out there and given him a hug. According to his teacher he spent the rest of the day staring blankly at his desk. She tried to engage him into the activates, but he was too scared or something to really get into it.
“We didn’t hear anything about the incident at first, and whatever Sean had done seemed to work. I heard nothing about bad behavior from anyone, and though the reports weren’t filled with sunshine and smiles, I was content for the time being that Dan wasn’t going to be a problem. That is, until he began hitting.
“About a week after his and Sean’s talk I watched and one of the recess ladies dragged Dan down the hall firmly gripping his arm. I wanted to ask what was going on, but I was busy at the time with some of my own children. So I waited until after school and asked Sean myself. It turned out that, seemingly without provocation, Dan had punched another boy in the face. That was it, a single punch and it was over. Dan was back to doing whatever he’d been doing beforehand and the boy lay in the grass more shocked than really hurt, though there was a small bruise for a long period of time.
“Sean suspended him and came very close to doing a full expulsion if the parents of the other boy thought it appropriate. They were concerned, but were also understanding and were more interested in their son’s health than reprimands. As long as it didn’t happen again. So we brought in Dan’s parents to try and find out why it had happened in the first place. Three people of the faculty were at that meeting and, though we’ve never openly discussed the encounter, we’ve always been a little taken aback at what we learned there.
“Sean, the school’s social worker, and I all sat on one side of the table facing Harold and Diana. We asked questions about Dan’s life at home and his activities. Harold answered with a hesitance that, at first, I thought was indifference. Diana never said a word and, honestly, I believe that she could care less about Dan’s safety. From what records we have I would even venture to say that Dan is not her son, but rather the product of a previous marriage or and extra marital affair. Though I have no proof of any of it, it is a suspicion of mine and it does affect some of the decisions I have made and will make regarding Dan. From what I have seen of Diana’s interactions with Harold and Dan it seems more like, to her, Dan is a distraction that takes Harold’s attention. Any suggestion that I might have approached her with left me with the apprehension that her decision will be determined either through indifference or flat out spite.
“By the time we were done with our discussion of Dan’s behavior we knew that something was up and the Dan needed remedial care. The social worker asked if it would be all right if she takes Dan out of the classroom twice a week to see if she can figure out exactly why he was acting out and, in the long run, try to help Harold and Diana fix it with their son. Harold refused flat out; he would not have his son considered stupid or bad simply because we felt he needed help. We weren’t his parents and so we didn’t know what was best for him. Like I said, normally I step back and let the parents decide even if I don’t agree with their decision, but with Dan, he was hurting other children physically and we need to show that we were putting effort into making the situation cease. Sean mentioned this and the social worker and I confirmed the situation, but Harold would have none of it. He threatened that, if we took Dan out of class for any reason he would take legal action against us for going over his head. This included sending Dan to the Sean’s office or keeping him inside during recess.
“We have methods of dealing with this issue usually, methods that usually didn’t get back to the parents but made sure the other children were safe, but Dan was a little too much for us. What’s worse is that, from what I’ve seen, it looks as if Harold is encouraging the behavior. This isn’t to say that Dan hit other children, no, that brought punishment last time and he didn’t want to be punished for his actions. But after that incident he’d been given free reign to do whatever else he wanted because he knew our hands were mostly tied. He threatened and provoked the other children. He threw rocks at the teachers and the bus driver; he even brought a knife to school one day with the understanding that he would hold it up against a person’s throat just for fun. Thankfully we caught him before he was able to do anything but slowly the word trickled to the parent’s ears and both sides of the argument began to complain and we were stuck.
“Eventually, and I can’t blame whoever chose to take this course of action, one of the parents heard about the knife incident and contacted the police. Dan and his parents were called into the local precinct, though Diana decided she’d had enough by that point and stayed home. Sean, the social worker, and I were also called, but since all three of us couldn’t be out of the building at once I stayed behind. Unfortunately the conversation didn’t please anyone. Dan will be staying with us until the end of the school year with a person at his side at all times. He is taking medications for aggression and ADHD and will never be allowed onto the playground at this school again. Once this school year ends he will be transferred to a different school, though I don’t know where exactly.
“In further conversations with Dan it turns out that Harold had, indeed, been telling him to act out. ‘There is no reason for them to tell you what to do Dan, you are my son. And as such, if someone tells you what to do, do whatever it takes to ensure they don’t’ tell you what to do again in the future.’ I was deeply saddened by this because it will take years for Dan to realize that this is not always the case and that it will be difficult in that tie for Dan to gain any sort of permanent friend.” I sat there for some time listening to Mrs. Snowburn’s story about Dan and wondering what type of father would do that sort of thing at all. I asked Mrs. Snowburn what she thought about that but all she could do was shrug.
“It’s ‘cause he’s a whinny sleazebag and he doesn’t want his son to turn out like him.” Claire and Johnny walked into the room breathing hard and soaking wet. They stripped off their out layerings and placed them next to the space heater. “He pushes his son to take no crap from anyone. You saw how he acted when he tried to take you blankets Justin. He froze and backed off immediately after Mrs. Snowburn told him no. Then we got to the good part.” I could see that she was talking too loudly and that it was waking up Dan. I tried to let her know, but she seemed too preoccupied with telling me and Mrs. Snowburn her thoughts on the matter. “None of you saw it, but when Mrs. Snowburn told him no he turned to Dan and basically demanded that he go get the blankets. That’s when he pushed over poor Jessica.”
“She was in my way!” I jumped along with everyone in the room as Dan yelled out. “She shouldn’t have been standing there! She deserved to be pushed down! Now where’s my dad?”
***
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