Susan Beckhorn - Sarey By Lantern Light

One

SARAH HARRIS, THATS DISGUSTING!

Twenty-nine pairs of eyes turned to look. Sareys face burned with embarrassment. She had only been crossing her eyes. That wasnt disgusting. Mikey Greenbaum showing his double-jointed thumbs was disgusting. Well, she was bored. Ma and Pa had read her all the A. A. Milne books long ago. She would always love them, but didnt her teacher know that Winnie-the-Pooh was way too baby a book for her class?

Do you think you could do a better job of reading, Sarah? Mrs. Carver led Sarey to the front of the room and put the book into her hands. Two paragraphs, if you please, starting here, her teacher said in a cold voice.

Something like dead fish soaked in sour milk rose up in Sareys stomach. Mrs. Carver knew exactly how hard it was for her to read. Sarey clutched the book to keep herself from falling. The words were jiggling, wavering, flickering. She felt all those eyes on her, could actually feel the sensation on her skin of everyone looking. She tried to see the words, to say them, to make them stand still. A hoarse, shaky sound was all that would come out of her mouth. Inside, her voice was painfully clear, screaming, I CANT! PLEASE DONT MAKE ME! But she couldnt scream it out loud, even to save herself.

Suddenly, Sarey dropped the book and found she was running. She didnt stop when Mrs. Carver called down the corridor after her. She didnt stop for her coat, or anything. Sarey ran out of school and across intersections with cars honking at her all the ten blocks home to the apartment on Mill Street. She would never, even if she lived to be a hundred and thirty-seven, read again.

After the principal called her at work, Ma found Sarey. She was in the yard hugging their big dog, Oakley, still sobbing.

I wont read, Ma.

Sarey, you can do it. Ma found a packet of tissues in her purse, pulled out three or four, and handed them to her.

Sarey blew her nose. It was hard to get the words out. Im in the lowest reading group still and I hate extra reading class with Mr. Plaisted and Ma, Mrs. Carver dragged me up in front of the whole class and tried to make me read out loud today. I can do it slow with Mr. Plaisted, but not in front of everybody! Theyll think Im stupid. I get sick feeling like Im going to fall down. I cant see the words straight.

Ma pulled Sareys head onto her shoulder and didnt say anything. Oakley leaned against Sarey and licked her wet face anxiously.

Im just dumb.

No, Sarey, you are not dumb.

Im not ever going to read again, she said, and she meant it.

For as long as she could remember, Sarey and her parents had wanted to move away from Buffalo. Once in a while, Ma made a picnic lunch, Pa let Oakley off his chain, and they drove out to the country, away from the city and the bad-smelling air that poured from the factories beside the big lake. In the city, the bare ground between the cracked pavement was hard. In the woods and fields, Sarey could take her shoes off and feel the ground springy and alive under her feet. Even the sky was wide and alive instead of closed and gray.

Im a country boy, Pa would tell her, but when Gramma and Grampa lost the farm, we came to Buffalo. Been here ever since. I get lonely for the woods, hungry for them, like Oak on his chain. Someday Pa sat up and his eyes sparkled like sun on water. Someday, well get some money saved, Sarey. Ill find a teaching job in the country and well build a house.

And Ill have my own room.

Youll have your own room.

Sarey closed her eyes and let the dream make a bright picture in her mind. She saw her own room with sunlight streaming in at the window and pink curtains stirring in the breeze. There would be lots of shelves for her things. She would put her best drawings on the walls, ones of horses maybe.

And we can have a garden, Ma had added wistfully, and walk in the woods whenever we want. Ma was a country person, too. She had grown up outside of Boston, but had spent childhood summers in New Hampshire.

And you can go to a school thats not overcrowded, one where everybody knows your name. And Oakley can live like a dog ought to live.

Oakley was part collie and part malamute. His fur was long and golden with black tips. The house Sarey and her parents were living in was cut up into four apartments and looked like all the others on their street, and on all the other streets in their part of the city, but there was a scrap of yard with a maple tree. They could keep a dog. That was something. At night Oakley came inside, but during the day he paced a hard, bare circle on the end of his chain around his doghouse in the yard. The collie in him loved people, but his malamute blood ran hot and wild. In Buffalo, he never carried his tail up over his back or pranced the way he did when he was in the woods.

The night after Sarey ran away from school, she overheard Ma and Pa talking in the kitchen. She was not eavesdropping. It was just that she could hear when they talked in the kitchen because her room was really the living room. They thought she was asleep.

What kind of English teacher cant teach his own daughter to read? Pas voice sounded twisted up tight, like a wet towel. I wish I understood dyslexia better. They didnt really teach us much about it in school. I guess they figured that high school English teachers dont have to deal with it, that it mostly gets ironed out by the reading teachers in the primary grades. I just wish those so-called reading experts could come up with some better solutions. There must be a key to this.

Mas voice was calm. You know there is no magic treatment, Dan, but there are strategies she can use, and there are ways of compensating. Sarey has to accept that and be willing to do the work. Her listening skills are good. We should be grateful for that. Some kids dont even process spoken words well. Right now, its like shes growing underground. We dont see anything on the surface, but weve got to believe that, inside, shes listening and learning.

Well, plants need spaceearth, sunlight, air! Some kids do fine in a big city school, but Sareys not like that. She needs a place where she doesnt have to talk loudly to be heard, a place where she can be herself but still be a part of things. This is it, Ellen. None of us are happy here. Were getting out of Buffalo.

Sareys eyes opened wide in the dark. Getting out of Buffalo! She pulled the covers up around her neck carefully so her feet wouldnt poke out at the bottom. Her bed was really the living room couch during the day. Ma had to make it up for her every night, which wasnt so easy, even when they sort of rolled the sheets and blankets up together in a bundle to save time. It never was as smooth and comfortable as a real bed. Something was always bunching up or sliding off. Sareys clothes were in a dresser in the hall. She didnt even have a shelf for her toys and special stuff. They had to be kept in a box in the closet. What she wanted, almost as much as she didnt want to ever read again, was her very own, nobody-can-walk-in-anytime room.

I could quit the job at the library and get something full time, Sarey heard Ma say. Then, maybe in a year or two we would be in a better position

Ellie, I dont want you to do that, Pa interrupted her. I think theres more to Sareys reading problems than just seeing letters backward and mixing up right and left. Shes a really special kid, but not in a bad wayin a good way. I just think shes in the wrong environment. Or maybe her problems come from being stuck with a set of parents who hate where they live.