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some days the children baffle me to the point i'm just speechless. i don't think any teacher always knows what to do for every kid. those who tell you they do are liars, or worse, idiots who don't know that kids are different from one another. i'll figure it out one day for one kid, then lose it the next, be unable to reach across the chasm that developed between the last time we read a book together and now, when they're tired because it's morning and that's when teenagers are tired. and the last few days i've been lost with the same kid day after day. he doesn't want anything. he's put all that gandhi, dr. king and bartleby show by example into the same pot, stirred it up, and poured out his own version of civil disobedience. "i prefer not to because i don't see why i should, although it's also likely i maybe can't, but i'm not about to admit that to you because you already have too much power and i don't like that, either, so no." this is a child who rolls through the days with a 20% average. that's out of 100. he turns in just about nothing. but i know he's smart. i can hear it sometimes when i ask questions where someone might get to talk about cars in an answer. he knows strange bits of information about military things and about history. but he won't share them unless he wants to. he almost never wants to.

so today, after three or four days of belligerence i would secretly admire if it weren't directed toward me and toward reading, he said something mean or ugly in class and i just had it. in my head i was already having a hissy fit. a conniption. snarling and roaring, my fangs dripping venom. the other children were hunched over their books, reading silently. i stomped back to the empty seat next to my nemesis and sat down. and he smiled. not a big ugly smile, but a little mona lisa hint of smile that says a person is pleased to have accomplished something and can't really hide it but isn't quite ready to admit full on to being happy. but he was happy. i don't think people ask him many questions at home. not nice ones, anyway.

i sit down and turn my angriest face to him and ask what exactly he wants. he doesn't know. i don't know either, but i ask him to write. he puts his name and the date on the page, laughs and insists he's not writing. i have learned to ignore comments like this from children who smile or laugh. they will talk a big game but if you can get paper in front of them and put a pen in a hand, you'll get somewhere. i put the pen in his hand three times. yes. three. the other children are still reading. we have fifteen minutes before reading time is over. i ask him what he hates and he begins to tell me. i point to the page. he writes. he writes about getting up in the morning and coming to school, about sleeping on the bus. then he writes about his teachers. he spares no one. this teacher is an idiot. that one hates him. another is boring. he goes through the whole day. our class is in the middle. he mentions trudging up to the top of the building and says he likes the class. this is not flattery. he has used all the bad words he knows right up in my face and is not being gentle. there are three women in this class who are after him daily to be someone. he likes this. he thinks his own mother doesn't care. i don't know that his thinking is true, but he feels it and he feels like the three women who yell at him here, every day, care. some days caring is exhausting. he says he likes the class but he does nothing. he says he doesn't know why.

i think he knows. i want him to know. if he knows, we can change things. but maybe he doesn't. i don't know. when people admit to something they've done that's not what they should be doing and then they say they don't know why they're doing it that just never seems quite right. how can a person be so halfassed in self-awareness? while he writes i get my own sheet of paper. i sit next to him at his table and we both write. he writes about school, which is what upsets him and i write about him, which is what upsets me. and i am honest because i'd asked him to be honest. i write about how i know he's smarter than he pretends to be and how i worry he'll go out in the world and starve or die because he'll have no skills at all. i use words like sad and scared and then, at the end, i write the word proud in the last sentence. i look over. he's beginning his fourth page. quite a bit of writing for someone who insists he's illiterate. time is nearly up. the kids sitting nearest us are looking over and want to read what i've written, what he's written. he never looks up the whole time he is writing. he doesn't ask now to see what i've written. he hands me his pages.

i'd like to think he wrote for me because i asked him to, or because i finally got through to him, finally convinced him of something. that's probably not true, though. just before we started writing, i told him a secret. i told him i was mad at him, that we'd just recieved a set of scores from some reading tests in this new program, that his scores were highest. not just highest. perfect. 100%. that's out of 100. perfect perfect perfect. i told him it hurt my feelings that he was so selfish with his knowledge and i told him i knew he could read and i wasn't going to help him keep that secret. that's what i wrote about in my paper, that i guessed maybe i might be a little bit proud of him. and he didn't write because he wants me to be happy or feel better. he didn't even write because he wants people to know he's smart. i think he did it because he likes how much power it gives him. even more power than choosing not to. i think he has very little control of his life and he likes that he can control me entirely by writing a few sentences. i think he's power mad. i suppose i ought to be proud of that, too.