Reality Boy

So I got to meet the first caring and nurturing people I ever met, thanks to the least caring and nurturing person I ever met.

SPED class is my mother.

When I get back from gym class, Deirdre tells me I look even sexier sweaty.

“Jesus, Deirdre,” I say. “You’re killing me here.”

She spins her wheelchair around and smiles her crooked smile. “That’s only because you want me and you can’t have me,” she says.

I smile at her. Then I notice that her right foot is off her footrest, and I reach down to put it on for her.

“While you’re down there…” she says as I go to stand.

I turn bright red.

“You made him blush, Deirdre!” Karen says.

“Dude, you’re gonna have to wear baggy clothes from now on,” Kelly boy says. “These chicks are crazy.”

Fletcher says, “Okay, guys. Can we please stop concentrating on Gerald’s deltoids for a minute and get back to linear equations?”

“Linear equations suck,” Kelly boy says.

“Yes,” Mr. Fletcher answers. “Linear equations do suck. However, you have to learn them or you can’t graduate, and you guys want to graduate, don’t you?”

I look around. Jenny is staring out the window. Deirdre and Karen are still giggling about my arms. Kelly is so far from understanding linear equations, I think it would take days on a camel to get him anywhere near it. The rest of the class is similarly distracted. By stuff. Anything. Taylor has ADHD or something like that and she has to rock back and forth to stay focused. That throws off Larry, who hates when she rocks and can’t concentrate. None of them give a shit about linear equations.

“I don’t really care if I graduate,” someone says.

“Me, neither,” Karen says. “Plenty of people who did great things didn’t graduate from stupid high school.”

“I want to,” Deirdre says. “Just so I can make them put a f**kin’ ramp up to the stage and watch me for all five minutes it takes to get up it and back down again. It will probably be the first time they ever realized that I was in the same f**kin’ school as them.” She drools a lot as she says this. Usually long series of sentences do this to her. She takes the back of her hand and wipes off her chin and laughs.

“Language, please,” Fletcher says.

I picture myself in my chief makeup going up on that stage to accept my diploma. I watched Lisi get hers. It was only Dad and me there to watch because Tasha “broke her wrist” a half hour before we had to leave. It wasn’t even swollen. Mom took her to the hospital for X-rays anyway.

Now that I think of it, I can’t figure out if I even care about graduation. I don’t think I do. I don’t think it matters. To me or anyone else. I think all anyone really cares about is that I don’t get locked up. And all I care about is getting out of here. I don’t really think I could go to college anyway.

“Maybe we can finish linear equations tomorrow,” Karen suggests.

“Yeah,” rocking-Taylor agrees. “That would work.”

The room bubbles into a chorus of light chatter. I stay quiet and watch Fletcher. He allows it for about one minute. Then he whistles. A two-finger whistle that hurts my ears.

“Here’s the deal. We learn linear equations by the end of the week. You can all do them.” He points to Larry. “Larry can already do them. He’s been doing them for a whole year.”

Larry nods.

Fletcher looks at me because he knows I’ve been doing linear equations since middle school, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, he says, “So if Larry can do them, so can you. And I’m going to make damn sure you don’t just know them. I’m going to make sure you remember them. Now get up.”

We sit there.

“I said get up,” he says. Then he turns to Deirdre. “Deirdre, steer yourself over there.” He points to the opposite side of the room.

As she does this, we all get up and stand at our desks.

“Let’s shake things up a little,” he says. “You can only sit down once you answer a question right.”

“That’s bullshit!” Karen says.

“Language, please. And no, it’s not bullshit. I guarantee that you will all be sitting inside of ten minutes. Watch.” He turns to me first. “Gerald, if I say that five plus six equals x, then what is the value of x?”

“Eleven,” I say.

“You may sit down.”

He turns to Karen. “If I say that x plus three equals twelve, then what is the value of x?”

“Nine,” she says.

“You may sit down,” he says again.

He turns to Taylor. “Say m equals ten. What would x equal in this equation? Four times m equals x.”

“The x would equal forty.”

“You may sit down.”

As I watch Fletcher, I realize he loves this job. He loves his life. He’s happy in the SPED room teaching all of us SPEDs. I don’t think I know one other adult who’s as happy as he is. Most of them just pretend all the time.

“You may sit down,” he says to whoever just answered.

When the last person sits, he says, “Now—that wasn’t so hard, was it? Tomorrow, we’ll come back and do some more. For now, let’s get you guys ready to go home.”

SPED class takes a while to get ready at the end of the day. Taylor needs to gather up her coat and her book bag and anything else she needs and has to be reminded five times not to forget anything in her desk. Deirdre needs help with her jacket, and her foot has fallen off the footrest again, so Fletcher puts it back on and secures it there, giving it a loving, sturdy wiggle.

Have you ever seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with Jack Nicholson in it? SPED class reminds me of it. We’re not crazy or in some mental ward being psychologically abused by some sadist nurse, but we’re an accidental family, the same way they are. I know from driving past the mental hospital a few miles away that people on the outside look in and just see mental patients. Not people. That’s how people look at SPED, too. But we’re all people. Real people. I’m like Jack Nicholson’s character—once demanding, hard to handle, violent, and scary, but now electroshocked into brain toast by the golden rule of anger management: Have no demands.

13

JACKO WALKS RIGHT up to me when I get to the gym and says, “Okay, mon. I know you can’t fight here, but how about outside here? How about you and me?”