The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [77]
“You look tired,” she whispered.
Sandra nodded. “Tim has the flu. Of all days. My mother had to come from McKeesport to watch him.”
Before Caroline could answer the door swung open again, and men from the Board of Education began to file in, relaxed, joking with one another, shaking hands. When everyone was settled and the meeting had been called to order, Ron Stone stood and cleared his throat.
“All children deserve an education,” he began, his words familiar. The evidence he presented was clear, specific: steady growth, tasks accomplished. Still, Caroline watched the faces in front of her turn impassive, masked. She thought of Phoebe sitting at the table last night, a pencil gripped in one hand, writing the letters of her name: backwards, all over the page, wavering, but written. The men on the board shuffled papers and cleared their throats. When Ron Stone paused, a young man with dark wavy hair spoke up.
“Your passion is admirable, Mr. Stone. We on the board appreciate everything you say, and we appreciate the commitment and devotion of these parents. But these children are mentally retarded; that’s the bottom line. Their accomplishments, significant though they may be, have taken place within a protected environment, with teachers capable of giving extra, perhaps undivided, attention. That seems a very significant point.”
Caroline met Sandra’s eye. These words were familiar too.
“Mentally retarded is a pejorative term,” Ron Stone replied evenly. “These children are delayed, yes, no one’s questioning that. But they are not stupid. No one in this room knows what they can achieve. The best hope for their growth and development, as for all children, is an educational environment without predetermined limits. We only ask for equity today.”
“Ah. Equity, yes. But we haven’t got the resources,” said another man, thin, with sparse graying hair. “To be equitable, we would have to accept them all, a flood of retarded individuals that would overwhelm the system. Take a look.”
He passed around copies of a report and began doing a cost-benefit analysis. Caroline took a deep breath. It would do no good for her to lose her temper. A fly buzzed, caught between the panes of glass in the old windows. Caroline thought again of Phoebe, such a loving quicksilver child. A finder of lost things, a girl who could count to fifty and dress herself and recite the alphabet, a girl who might struggle to speak but who could read Caroline’s mood in an instant.
Limited, the voices said. Flooding the schools. A drag on resources and on the brighter children.
Caroline felt a rush of despair. They’d never really see Phoebe, these men, they would never see her as more than different, slow to speak and to master new things. How could she show them her beautiful daughter: Phoebe, sitting on the rug in the living room and making a tower of blocks, her soft hair falling around her ears and an expression of absolute concentration on her face? Phoebe, putting a 45 on the little record player Caroline had bought her, enthralled by the music, dancing across the smooth oak floors. Or Phoebe’s soft small hand suddenly on her knee, at a moment when Caroline was pensive or distracted, absorbed by the world and its concerns. You okay, Mom? she would say, or simply, I love you. Phoebe, riding on Al’s shoulders in the evening light, Phoebe hugging everyone she met. Phoebe having tantrums