Angel doesn’t attend school the first day of the school year. When he enters the room on the second day, students groan in unison. He sits in the only available chair in the corner of the back row. The students around him subtly shift away.
I take advantage of a quiet moment to slip to the back of the room. As I kneel near his desk to explain the assignment, I am taken aback by the stench of urine. I try not to let my face show revulsion.
“Everyone started this assignment yesterday with a partner. Since you weren’t here, I’ll work with you today.” I smile reassuringly at him as I hand him a paper and pencil. His overwhelming smell and his classmates’ grumbling when he walked in the room mean I can’t ask anyone to work with him, not yet.
He stares defiantly at the paper and pencil before him. “I don’t write.”
I pat his shoulder. “Not yet, but you will.” I am wrong. Not only does he not write, he doesn’t read, multiply or do homework. He doesn’t make friends, take turns or share. He has a vocabulary that would shock a sailor and he’s capable of a dark stare when he is angry, which is often.
At parent conference time I look forward to meeting Angel’s mother. I hope she can shed some light on his life, or at least his academic history.
“My mom said to tell you she doesn’t come to conferences,” he says, crumpling up the note I’d sent requesting a meeting.
I count the months until June. It’s not fair to give up on a child, especially after only the first trimester, but it’s so hard to find something likeable in Angel. It’s clear he doesn’t like much about me either.
Leaving school one day, I’m surprised to see Angel waiting near the parking lot with his younger siblings. Students were dismissed two hours earlier and the brothers huddle together in the cold, waiting to be picked up.
I cajole them into the office and try to call their mom. Their phone is disconnected. I sit to wait with the boys and ask Angel to introduce his brothers. Between the four of them, they have three different last names.
Angel tells me he has older brothers and younger sisters, and they live in an apartment with his mom’s “friend.” “This friend is my baby sister’s father, but not my other sister’s father.”
A brother chimes in, “This friend isn’t very nice; he isn’t going to buy us anything for Christmas.” As the boys talk, they paint a picture for me: a crowded apartment, a collection of children, a string of “friends” who come into their lives, make babies and leave. Angel remembers fondly the best years of his life, when his mother was in jail and he lived with his grandparents in Tijuana, when food and attention were plentiful, when he wasn’t afraid of outbursts or drunken arguments.
That afternoon I wait until past 5 p.m., hoping to meet Angel’s mother. She doesn’t come to pick the boys up, sending an older brother instead.
I move Angel to the front of the room the next morning. I steel myself to deal with the smell and pull his desk next to mine.
“Write 5 words,” I whisper. “Do the twos, fives and tens on the multiplication chart first; they’re the easiest,” I coax.
“Read a page, and then I’ll come check on you.”
Over time, he begins to raise his hand to answer questions about history and science, or ask about math problems he doesn’t understand.
One day Angel’s deskmate says to me, “Not to be mean but…” I quickly cut him off. I assume he will comment on Angel’s smell, on the debris that surrounds Angel’s desk, on Angel’s habit of snapping pencils in half or whining when the assignment is too hard. The student begins again, “Not to be mean, but Angel’s smarter than he was last year.
He’s nicer too.”
Angel begins to stay after school for extra help. I quickly realize he has solid math skills, and he tells me with a sheepish grin, “I get the math. I just pretended not to so you would give me attention.” I laugh and tell him we’d better work on reading where he is still years below grade level. He begins to read, slogging through third grade books.
He makes a friend. He smiles sometimes.
I know I haven’t fixed Angel’s life. His nights and weekends are still long and exhausting. The sheer quantity of things I can’t resolve is overwhelming.
From 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. though he is mine, and little by little we are making things better.
Sometimes that’s all a teacher can give.
