shoulders. Her fingers were rough and they snagged on the soft wool, but her hand itself was strong and warm. ‘Listen. It okay. I tell Grandpa. It okay. Hannah, she lucky this year.’
The next morning after Circle I went and sat on the floor in the closet next to Hannah. The period of research was over. I had learned all I could from outside sources. Now it was up to me. I set my goals for Hannah. They might change, but I had to have something to aim for.
The first thing I had to do was get Hannah out of the coat closet. Observation has its values, but it was time for her to move closer, become part of us. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I want you to come and sit with us during Best and Worst today. You don’t have to talk, but I want you at the table. You’re part of our class and I want you with us.’
Hannah pulled her long dress over her head.
I pulled the dress down and spoke directly into her face. ‘If you can come by yourself, fine. If not, I’ll help you.’
I wanted her to understand that this was not a question of choice. She didn’t have to decide anything. I had made the decision. She had sat in the closet for two weeks. That was long enough.
I hesitated for a minute. The trick was to know when to ask for more and when to stop. Each step like this was a risk, the line between success and failure is so small. I had thought carefully about when and where to begin with Hannah, and now I decided to go ahead. This was the time, right after Circle. She was fascinated by Best and Worst. I had seen her looking, listening, from the closet. And contradictory though it seems, I knew that the first move is sometimes easier if someone else insists on it. I insisted now. I stood up. ‘Okay, Hannah, let’s go.’
She pulled the dress back over her head.
I reached under the dress, found her hand, and pulled her to her feet. Caught by surprise, she came up easily but let out a howl of rage.
‘This morning you’re going to sit with us. This morning and every other morning from now on. You’re part of our class.’
Standing beside me, Hannah braced her feet like a baulky mule and pulled hard to get away.
The classroom was large, over forty feet long. The boys had set up the table in the middle of the room and they sat there now, watching us. We had about twenty feet to go to reach the table. I was sure I could manage that. Hannah was husky, but I had a lot of inches, pounds, and years in my favour and my will was as strong as her own.
‘If you can control yourself, Hannah, great. If not, I’ll help you control yourself.’
I started walking towards the table, holding her hand tightly in my own and propelling her along with me.
Her howling ceased. She planted both feet close together again and braked us to a stop and smashed her foot – crack! – into my ankle. I yelped in surprise, but I caught her foot in time and pulled off first one shoe and then the other. She could kick all she wanted now.
I had been through this many times before. Other children in other years had kicked and bitten, but they had become more gentle. We had all survived, and eventually they had made it back to mainstream school.
The howling began again, but there was little she could do, and more in sorrow than in anger Hannah allowed herself to be pulled to the table.
‘Get another chair, please, Bri.’
I sat Hannah down next to me and said to the boys, ‘Whose turn is it to begin Best and Worst today?’
My eyes, my attention, were focused on the boys. I kept a steady grip on Hannah’s hand, but that was all. Except for this hold on her hand, we ignored her. She alternately cried and yelled for the half hour. She was loud, but we were louder and managed to hear each other.
At the end of the half hour, the boys went to get their work folders from their cupboards. I looked down at Hannah’s tear-stained face, ‘Thank you, babe, for being with us.’ Then I released her hand.
For one brief moment she looked at me and then raced back to her closet seat. Her scuffed brown shoes still lay on the floor. I took them to her and then went back to help the boys with their reading. All the rest of the morning she sat merely watching us, not saying anything, not yelling, just sitting there holding her shoes in her lap.
At the end of the morning I sent the boys out for recess with another class. The tension in the room had been hard on them, though none of them had mentioned it and they had worked well all morning. Still, they needed to get outside to run, to throw, to yell a little. At the same time I didn’t want to leave Hannah. It was important that she knew that I wanted to be with her. There is a great difference between someone arbitrarily imposing demands on you and someone working through a difficult situation with you. I wanted Hannah to know that, whatever I asked of her, she wouldn’t have to do it alone.
I needed something more, something to hook her interest, make her forget herself. I wanted to capture Hannah, lure her, not force her again. Suddenly I remembered the doll family.
I had ordered the dolls from the school supply catalogue the year before and stored them in my closet, waiting for the right time to bring them out. Surely, if there was a right time, this was it.
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
