Chapter 10: Registration

The Form

The kindergarten packet came in a manila envelope with the Baltimore County seal stamped in the corner, and Bea carried it to the kitchen table the way she might have carried a summons. It held everything she had expected: immunization records to be copied, an emergency contact sheet with room for four names, a questionnaire about allergies, another about dismissal, and near the bottom of the last page a single line she read three times before she understood why her stomach had tightened. The undersigned affirms that the enrolling child is fully toilet independent and able to manage personal care without adult assistance.

She set down her pen. Through the window over the sink she could see the Doyles’ back door, and after a minute it opened, as it did most afternoons at this hour, and Étaín crossed the strip of grass between the two houses with a laundry basket on her hip and no intention whatever of doing laundry at Bea’s.

“You’ve got the look,” Étaín said, setting the basket on a chair. “Kindergarten forms?”

“Come read the last page.”

Étaín read it standing, one hand still resting on the basket, and when she reached the bottom she let a long breath out through her nose. “Ah. Well now. That’s not a line written for our girl.”

“It’s not a line written for anyone who’s been through what she has.” Bea pulled out a chair and waited until Étaín sat. “If I sign it, I’ve told the district something that isn’t true. If I don’t sign it, I have no idea what happens to the rest of the packet. And if I scribble a note in the margin, some clerk decides whether that note ever reaches a human being.”

From the living room came the small clatter of blocks being stacked, and both women turned toward the sound without needing to discuss it. Cissy sat cross-legged on the rug with a tower rising in front of her, her movements slow and careful, one palm pressed low against her shirt the way it went whenever the scar was complaining. Liam sat across from her, sliding each block into her reach a moment before she wanted it. He had not glanced toward the kitchen once, and yet when Bea’s voice had gone tight on the word true, his shoulders had shifted almost imperceptibly and he had moved his knee until it touched hers.

“He heard that,” Bea said quietly.

“He felt it, which isn’t quite the same, though I suppose the result is.” Étaín rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Ring the school. Don’t sign, don’t write in any margins. Ring somebody who’ll answer a telephone and tell them plainly.”

Bea dialed the number printed at the top of the packet, set the phone on speaker, and laid it between them on the table. It rang four times before a woman picked up, with the warm and slightly worn voice of someone who had been fielding parents since seven that morning.

“Enrollment office, this is Donna.”

“Donna, my name is Beatrice Roberts, and I’m calling about my daughter’s kindergarten registration. Before I sign anything, I need to ask about the toilet independence statement on the last page.”

“Oh, honey.” The register of the woman’s voice changed at once, from warm to careful. “I get a lot of calls about that one. Is she having some trouble?”

“She finished treatment for stage four neuroblastoma this year. Chemotherapy, surgery, a stem cell transplant, radiation, immunotherapy, the whole road. The radiation left her bladder unreliable, and it may stay that way a good while. She has accidents. She isn’t behind, and she isn’t being careless. It’s a documented medical result.”

The line went quiet for so long that Bea glanced at the screen to make sure the call had not dropped.

“Ms. Roberts,” Donna said finally, “I’m so sorry. Let me tell you what I can and can’t do from this desk. The form is the form, and I can’t change the wording. What I can do is flag your file for a registration meeting with the principal, the school nurse, and the district’s special services coordinator. Bring every piece of paper you have from her doctors. Bring more than you think you need.”

“There’s something else. The little boy next door, Liam, has been beside her for all of it. We’d like him to serve as her peer helper at school, to carry things and walk with her and stay close.”

“Peer helpers are allowed for ordinary things,” Donna said slowly. “Backpacks, doors, walking a classmate down to the office. I’m not aware of anything in the state rules that stops one child from helping another. The line gets drawn at anything medical. Children aren’t permitted to handle a classmate’s medical information, and I’ll be honest with you, that’s where these requests tend to get tangled.”

Across the table, Étaín mouthed a single word at Bea, tangled, and Bea gave a grim little nod.

The Meeting

The conference room at Larkspur Elementary smelled of floor wax and old coffee, and it had been furnished, as far as Bea could tell, by someone who believed adults should feel uncomfortable there. The chairs were adult-sized but hard, the table was scarred with decades of pencil marks, and a laminated poster of the food pyramid, long out of date, curled at one corner above the door. They had brought the children because there had been no one to leave them with, and the two of them now sat in the far corner with a shared coloring book, Cissy working a purple crayon in slow strokes and Liam holding the box of colors open on his knee.

Around the table sat Principal Roland Tibbs, a tall, courteous man with reading glasses pushed up into his thinning hair; the school nurse, Mrs. Carrington, who had already introduced herself to Cissy with a gentleness that Bea noted and appreciated; Mrs. Delacroix, the district’s special services coordinator, who carried a leather portfolio and wore the expression of a woman who had learned to say no pleasantly; and two kindergarten teachers, Mrs. Pruett and Ms. Vance, who had been invited, Mr. Tibbs explained, so that everyone would hear the same information at the same time.

Bea had brought a binder. Étaín had brought a second binder, thicker than the first.

“I want to thank you both for coming in,” Mr. Tibbs began. “I’ve read the letter Dr. Li sent over, and I want to say at the outset that Larkspur intends to welcome Cissy. What we’re here to work out is how.”

“Then let me lay out what she needs,” Bea answered, opening her binder. “She’s still healing in the abdominal area, so she’s tender and can’t tolerate being bumped or jostled. Her bladder control is unreliable because of the radiation, which means accidents, sometimes with no warning at all. She tires fast. Her immune system is rebuilding, so she can’t be near a child who’s sick. And she needs to be able to leave the room quickly, without asking permission from a dozen adults, when her body tells her it’s time.”

Ms. Vance, at the far end of the table, had been turning her pen over and over between her fingers. She cleared her throat.

“Forgive me for asking,” she said, “and I don’t mean anything unkind by it. I have twenty-two children in my room. Is what she has, is any of this, catching?”

The room went very still. In the corner, Cissy’s crayon stopped moving, and Liam lifted his head and looked straight down the length of the table at the teacher, without any expression at all.