Zenna Henderson - Holding Wonder.pdf

(338 KB) Pobierz
406300908 UNPDF
HOLDING WONDER
Zenna Henderson
1971
To my rainbow of cherubs who are cherubs before they are rainbow components
THE INDELIBLE KIND
I'VE ALWAYS been a down-to-earth sort of person. On rereading that sentence,
my mouth corners lift. It reads differently now. Anyway, matter-of-fact and
just a trifle skeptical-that's a further description of me. I've
enjoyed-perhaps a little wistfully-other people's ghosts, and breathtaking
coincidences, and flying saucer sightings, and table tiltings and prophetic
dreams, but I've never had any of my own. I suppose it takes a very
determined, or very childlike not childish-person to keep illusion and wonder
alive in a lifetime of teaching. "Lifetime" sounds awfully elderly-making,
doesn't it? But more and more I feel that I fit the role of observer more than
that of participant. Perhaps that explains a little of my unexcitement when I
did participate. It was mostly in the role of spectator. But what a
participation! What a spectacular!
But, back to the schoolroom. Faces and names have a habit of repeating and
repeating in your classes over the years. Once in a while, though, along comes
one of the indelible kind-and they mark you, happily or unhappily beyond
erasing. But, true to my nature; I didn't even have a twinge or premonition.
The new boy came alone. He was small, slight, and had a smooth cap of dark
hair. He had the assurance of a child who had registered many times by
himself, not particularly comfortable or uncomfortable at being in a new
school. He had brought a say-nothing report card, which, I noted in passing,
gave him a low grade in Group Activity Participation and a high one in
Adjustment to Redirective Counseling-by which I gathered that he was a loner
but minded when spoken to, which didn't help much in placing him academically.
"What book were you reading?" I asked, fishing on the shelf behind me for
various readers in case he didn't know a specific name. Sometimes we get those
whose faces overspread with astonishment and they say, "Reading?"
"In which of those series?" he asked. "Look-and-say, ITA, or phonics?" He
frowned a little. "We've moved so much and it seems as though every place we
go is different. It does confuse me sometimes." He caught my surprised eye and
flushed. "I'm really not very good by any method, even if I do know their
names," he admitted. "I'm functioning only on about a second-grade level."
"Your vocabulary certainly isn't second grade," I said, pausing over the
enrollment form.
"No, but my reading is," he admitted. "I'm afraid-"
"According to your age, you should be third grade." I traced over his
birthdate. This carbon wasn't the best in the world.
"Yes, and I suppose that counting everything, I'd average out about third
grade, but my reading is poor."
"Why?" Maybe knowing as much as he did about his academic standing, he'd know
the answer to this question.
 
"I have a block," he said, "I'm afraid-"
"Do you know what your block is?" I pursued, automatically probing for the
point where communication would end.
"I-" his eyes dropped. "I'm not very good in reading," he said. I felt him
folding himself away from me. End of communication.
"Well, here at Rinconcillo, you'll be on a number of levels. We have only one
room and fifteen students, so we all begin our subjects at the level where we
function best-" I looked at him sharply. "And work like mad!"
"Yes, ma'am." We exchanged one understanding glance; then his eyes became
eight-year-old eyes and mine, I knew, teacher eyes. I dismissed him to the
playground and turned to the paper work.
Kroginold, Vincent Lorma, I penciled into my notebook. A lumpy sort of name, I
thought, to match a lumpy sort of student-scholastically speaking.
Let me explain Rinconcillo. Here in the mountainous West, small towns,
exploding into large cities, gulp down all sorts of odd terrain in expanding
their city limits. Here at Winter Wells, city growth has followed the three
intersecting highways for miles out, forming a spidery, six-legged sort of
city. The city limits have followed the growth in swatches about four blocks
wide, which leaves long ridges, and truly ridges-mountainous ones-of non-city
projecting into the city. Consequently, here is Rinconcillo, a one-roomed
school with only 15 students, and only about half a mile from a school system
with eight schools and 4800 students. The only reason this school exists is
the cluster of family units around the MEL (Mathematics Experimental
Laboratory) facilities, and a half dozen fiercely independent ranchers who
stubbornly refuse to be urbanized and cut up into real estate developments or
be city-limited and absorbed into the Winter Wells school system.
As for me-this was my fourth year at Rinconcillo, and I don't know whether
it's being fiercely independent or just stubborn, but I come back each year to
my "little inside corner" tucked quite literally under the curve of a towering
sandstone cliff at the end of a box canyon. The violently pursuing and pursued
traffic, on the two highways sandwiching us, never even suspects we exist.
When I look out into the silence of an early school morning, I still can't
believe that civilization could be anywhere within a hundred miles. Long
shadows under the twisted, ragged oak trees mark the orangy gold of the sand
in the wash that flows dryly mostly, wetly tumultuous seldomly-down the middle
of our canyon. Manzanitas tangle the hillside until the walls become too steep
and sterile to support them. And yet, a twenty-minute drive-ten minutes out of
here and ten minutes into there-parks you right in front of the MONSTER
MERCANTILE, EVERYTHING CHEAPER. I seldom drive that way.
Back to Kroginold, Vincent Lorma-I was used to unusual children at my school.
The lab attracted brilliant and erratic personnel. The majority of the men
there were good, solid citizens and no more eccentric than a like number of
any professionals, but we do get our share of kooks, and their sometimes
twisted children. Besides the size and situation being an ideal set up for
ungraded teaching, the uneven development for some of the children made it
almost mandatory. As, for instance, Vincent, almost nine, reading, so he said,
on second-grade level, averaging out to third grade, which implied above-age
excellence in something. Where to put him? Why, second grade (or maybe first)
and fourth (or maybe fifth) and third-of course! Perhaps a conference with his
mother would throw some light on his "block." Well, difficult. According to
the enrollment blank, both parents worked at MEL.
 
By any method we tried, Vincent was second grade-or less-in reading.
"I'm sorry." He stacked his hands on the middle page of Through Happy Hours,
through which he had stumbled most woefully. "And reading is so basic, isn't
it?"
"It is," I said, fingering his math paper-above age-level. And the vocabulary
check test "If it's just words, I'll define them," he had said. And he had.
Third year of high school worth. "I suppose your math ability comes from your
parents," I suggested.
"Oh, no!" he said, "I have nothing like their gift for math. It's-it's-I like
it. You can always get out. You're never caught-"
Caught?" I frowned.
"Yes-look!" Eagerly he seized a pencil. "See! One plus equals two. Of course
it does, but it doesn't stop there. if you want to, you can back right out.
'Two equals one plus one. And there you are-out! The doors swing both ways!"
"Well, yes," I said, teased by an almost grasping of what he meant. "But math
traps me. One plus one equals two whether I want it to or not. Sometimes I
want it to be one and a half or two and three-fourths and it won't-ever!"
"No, it won't." His face was troubled. "Does it bother you all the time?"
"Heavens, no child!" I laughed. "It hasn't warped my life!"
"No," he said, his eyes widely on mine. "But that's why -" His voice died as
he looked longingly out the window at the recess-roaring playground, and I
released him to go stand against the wall of the school, wistfully watching
our eight other boys manage to be sixteen or even twenty-four in their wild
gyrations.
So that's why? I doodled absently on the workbook cover. I didn't like a big
school system because its one-plus-one was my one and one-half-or two and
three-fourths? Could be-could be. Honestly! What kids don't come up with! I
turned to the work sheet I was preparing for consonant blends for my
this-year's beginners-all both of them-and one for Vincent.
My records on Vincent over the next month or so were an odd patch-work. I
found that he could read some of the articles in the encyclopedia, but
couldn't read Billy Goats Grim. That he could read What Is So Rare As A Day In
June, but couldn't read Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater. It was beginning to look
as though he could read what he wanted to and that was all. I don't mean a
capricious wanting-to, but that he shied away from certain readings and
actually couldn't read them. As yet I could find no pattern to his unreadings;
so I let him choose the things he wanted and he read-oh, how he read! He
gulped down the material so avidly that it worried me. But he did his gulping
silently. Orally, he wore us both out with his stumbling struggles.
He seemed to like school, but seldom mingled. He was shyly pleasant when the
other children invited him to join them, and played quite competently-which
isn't the kind of play you expect from an eight-year-old.
And there matters stood until the day that Kipper-our eighth grade-dragged
Vincent in, bloody and battered.
"This guy's nearly killed Gene," Kipper said. "Ruth's out there trying to
bring him to. First aid says don't move him until we know."
"Wait here," I snapped at Vincent as I headed for the door. "Get tissues for
your face!" And I rushed out after Kipper.
 
We found Gene crumpled in the middle of a horrified group gathered at the base
of the canyon wall. Ruth was crying as she mopped his muddy forehead with a
soggy tissue. I checked him over quickly. No obvious bleeding. I breathed a
little easier as he moaned, moved and opened his eyes. He struggled to a
sitting position and tenderly explored the side of his head.
"Ow! That dang rock!" He blinked tears as I parted his hair to see if he had
any damage besides the egg-sized lump. He hadn't. "He hit me with that big
rock!"
"My!" I giggled, foolish with relief. "He must have addled your brains at the
same time. Look at the size of that rock!" The group separated to let Gene
look, and Pete scrambled down from where he had perched on the rock for a
better look at the excitement.
"Well," Gene rubbed his head tenderly. "Anyway, he did!"
"Come on inside," I said, helping him up. "Do you want Kipper to carry you?"
"Heck no!" Gene pulled away from my hands. "I ain't hurt. G'wan-noseys!" He
turned his back on the staring children.
"You children stay out here." I herded Gene ahead of me. "We have things to
settle inside:"
Vincent was waiting quietly in his seat. He had mopped himself fairly clean,
though he still dabbled with a tissue at a cut over his left eye. Two long
scratches oozed redly down his cheek. I spent the next few minutes rendering
first aid. Vincent was certainly the more damaged of the two, and I could feel
the thrumming leap of his still-racing heart against me as I turned his docile
body around, tucking in his shirt during the final tidying up.
"Now." I sat, sternly teacher, at my desk and surveyed the two before me.
"Gene, you first."
"Well," he ruffed his hair up and paused to finger, half proudly, the knot
under his hair. "He said let my ground squirrel go and I said no. What the
heck! It was mine. And he said let it go and I said no and he took the cage
and busted it and-" Indignation in his eyes faded into defensiveness. "-and I
busted him one and-and- Well, then he hit me with that rock! Gosh, I was
knocked out, wasn't I?"
"You were," I said, grimly. "Vincent?"
"He's right." His voice was husky, his eyes on the tape on the back of one
hand. Then he looked up with a tentative lift of his mouth corners. "Except
that I hit the rock with him:"
"Hit the rock with him?" I asked. "You mean like judo or something? You pushed
him against the rock hard enough to knock him out?"
If you like," he shrugged.
"It's not what I like," I said. "It's-what happened?"
"I hit the rock with him," Vincent repeated.
"And why?" I asked, ignoring his foolish insistence.
 
"We were having a fight. He told you."
"You busted my cage!" Gene gushed indignantly.
"Gene," I reminded. "You had your turn. Vincent?"
"I had to let it go," he said, his eyes hopefully on mine.
"He wouldn't, and it-it wanted to get out-the ground squirrel." His eyes lost
their hopefulness before mine.
"It wasn't yours," I reminded.
"It wasn't his either!" His eyes blazed. "It belonged to itself! He had no
right!"
"I caught it!" Gene blazed back.
"Gene! Be still or I'll send you outside!"
Gene subsided, muttering.
"You didn't object to Ruth's hamster being in a cage."
"Cage" and "math" seemed trying to equate in my mind.
"That's because it was a cage beast," he said, fingering the taped hand again.
"It didn't know any better. It didn't care." His voice tightened. "The ground
squirrel did. It would have killed itself to get out. I-I just had to-"
To my astonishment, I saw tears slide down his cheek as he turned his face
away from me. Wordlessly I handed him a tissue from the box on my desk. He
wiped his face, his fingers trembling.
"Gene?" I turned to him. "Anything more?"
"Well, gollee! It was mine! And I liked it! It-it was mine!"
"I'll trade you," said Vincent. "I'll trade you a white rat in a real neat
aluminum cage. A pregnant one, if you like. It'll have four or five babies in
about a week."
"Gollee! Honest?" Gene's eyes were shining.
"Vincent?" I questioned him.
"We have some at home," he said. "Mr. Wellerk at MEL gave me some when we
came. They were surplus. Mother says I may trade if his mother says okay."
"She won't care!" cried Gene. "Us kids have part of the barn for our pets, and
if we take care of them, she doesn't care what we have. She don't even ever
come out there! Dad checks once in a while to be sure we're doing a decent
job. They won't care:"
"Well, you have your mother write a note saying you may have the rat, and
Vincent, if you're sure you want to trade, bring the rat tomorrow and we'll
consider the affair ended." I reached for my hand bell. "Well, scoot, you two.
Drinks and rest room, if necessary. It's past bell time now."
Gene scooted and I could hear him yelling, "Hey! I getta white rat-"
 

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin