“The school for kids … “
by Katherine Cooper
The school for kids with special needs was two or three miles east off the main route in town. It was on a long stretch of grass surrounded by the county TB clinic and the juvenile detention center for girls. It sort of felt as though the town’s bleakest figures had been shooed away, only to converge later, in the corner of 
some abandoned field. The buildings were nearly identical from the outside—low masses of grey concrete—indistinguishable intuitions.
But inside, the school was different. It was lovely and colorful, brimming with a kind of warmth and energy that one would never suspect from its desolate surroundings. The walls were cluttered with collages and photographs, enormous signs with doilies and glitter and thick bold lettering. Students were awarded for everything, all the time: Most Helpful, Most Friendly, Most Smiley. Their faces taped onto glossy laminated frames.
Their disabilities ranged from mild to severe and affected all the different realms—emotional, physical, and cognitive. There were kids in wheelchairs with twisted limbs and tangles of tubes linking different parts of their bodies, but also those who ran freely in the yard with the ease and recklessness of most five year olds. I worked in Daniel’s classroom for a few semesters over the course of two years.
Daniel, by this point ten years old, had borne a diagnosis of autism for many years. Daniel was a big kid, heavy and ungainly, with a gentle face and a thick head of dark, curly hair. He wore baggy corduroy paints and white sneakers with Velcro straps. He had no verbal skills but used a range of different sounds and noises to articulate his needs and frustrations; I could never tell how he really felt about me—sometimes he’d smirk at me in this way that made me think that he loved fucking with me, that he was capable of so much more than he was letting on but wanted to see me fight for his attention. Other times he’d give me a look that indicated something like complicity, like we were working for the same team.
The other five or six kids in the class fit in at various place along the autism spectrum, some a lot more high-functioning than Daniel. The teacher was this amazing reservoir of patience and energy, though I don’t know what kind of progress they made—or even really how to measure such a thing. But they sang songs and learned how to hold pencils and trace letters and cut shapes from cardboard. She spoke in short, choppy phrases, telling the kids everything they would do as they did it. She guided them carefully through the routine of the day, always eased them slowly into change.
Daniel seemed to have a constant swell of energy trapped in his body. He was always tapping his feet and playing with this plastic, spongy lizard—shaking it violently between two of his fingers. Sometimes we held hands and jumped on the trampoline together, his legs flinging wildly behind him. Other times he’d purposely knock paint onto the floor or groan and clench his fingers when we’d try to write his name or make a mother’s day card.
Toward the end of our time together, Daniel was going through puberty. It was a really tough time, and seemed almost impossible for the teacher or her aids to help navigate him through it. The teacher was constantly reminding him to stop touching himself—there was a familiar chorus that rang throughout the semester: “Hands out of pants, Daniel. Hands out of pants.” She used the same sing-songy voice as always.
In May, the teacher told Daniel that I would be leaving, that I was moving away and wouldn’t be coming back to class. I hoped that in some small way, Daniel had appreciated our time together. I wasn’t sure it had amounted to much but he had enriched my life in some elusive way that I couldn’t quite understand. Maybe it was that we were connecting on some really basic, human level, one uncluttered by conventional language. Daniel looked at me blankly for a moment and then he stuck his hands down his pants. I turned away, but even from the corner of my eye I saw it—his hands moving around, in front and then in back. Then he took one hand out and he slapped me, a quick and ugly sting across my lips. He smiled, grunted twice, and then skipped away.
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