--
I hadn’t noted the appearance of the building the day I applied for the job. But, as I stood in front of it on my first day of work, the grey monotony of the walls and the lack of a significant amount of windows along them made me feel nauseous. It was ugly; but at that moment, it was better than a fairy tale.
“Good morning,” I approached the receptionist casually. As much as I wanted to avoid her, I had no idea where I needed to go.“I’m Amanda Thurman, and I’m supposed to be starting work here today… could you tell me what I’m supposed to do?”
“Through there,” she pointed towards a brown door labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY, “you’ll find the superintendents office. Report to him.” She didn’t bother looking up at me.
“Thank you.”
Through the swinging brown door I went, mulling over the excitement of passing through an Employees Only door for the first time in my life. I suddenly wished that the receptionist’s directions were clearer, because passing through the door only presented me with the challenge of finding the superintendent’s office. There had to be at least a dozen doors lining the sides of the hall. And they all looked identical.
It didn’t take long to find the door. A brass plate with the word superintendent engraved hung on the wood. I tapped lightly on it, and a gruff voice coughed and told me to come in.
“Good morning,” the superintendent, a man approximately in his late fifties straightened his tie and smoothed his wispy hair down. “Miss Thurman, is it?”
“Yes,” I squeaked, balling my hands into fists to steady them from shaking.
“I'm Mr. Truman, the superintendent. Ready for work?” I nodded at him. He extended a hand towards me, I reached forward and shook it tentatively. "You're going to start working with the kids. Melissa will show you around. You'll find her in the staff room.
"If you need any help, go to her; if anything goes wrong, come to me, got it?" I nodded again. "It's tough work at first, but you'll get used to it. You might need to change out of those," he gestured towards my skirt and blazer, "in order to chase kids."
Slightly offended by his comment on my outfit, I sharply responded with, "I'm fine in this, sir."
"Very well, then. You'll have two breaks throughout the day--"
"Only two?" He raised his eyebrow at me.
"Only two, which should be more than enough. Lunch is at one-thirty, and you'll have two breaks aside from that. Any questions?"
My head was spinning with questions, but none of them made it to my tongue to be pronounced. He took that as a no. He rose from the chair, rounded the desk, and handed me a pin with AMANDA engraved in it.
"Here's your name tag."
"What are the dots for?" I asked, noticing a set of raised dots beneath the letters.
"It's braille."
"Why do I need braille on this?"
"We have a few blind children, Miss Thurman," he said calmly, "they'll want to feel your name tag to see who you are."
"Oh," I wasn't so confident about handling blind children, but I pinned the tag to my blazer. "Thanks," I forced a smile on my face and he gave a slight nod.
"Good luck. Staff room's at the end of the hall."
-
The door to the staff room was much easier to find than the superintendent's, not only because the sign was much larger, but it had a long narrow window above the doorknob. I peered through it before entering, but I couldn't see more than a blue wall directly ahead of me.
As the door whined open, a few people turned to see who entered. A brown-haired woman turned around and smiled at me.
“I’m Mel,” she said, “You must be…?”
“Amanda” I said.
“Amanda. We’ve expected you. Welcome.” Her voice had no trace of warmth in it, but she smiled again and gestured towards a table with food on it. I forged a smile on my face.
“It’s breakfast hour. I doubt you’ve eaten. Help yourself.” She shrugged and sipped her coffee. I reached for a bagel, although I had eaten a rushed breakfast and bit into it. It was hard and stale, but I didn’t care.
“So, what do we do now?”
Melissa continued to sip her coffee. “Eat. Work.”
“Oh.” I nibbled on my bagel in silence for a moment, trying to ignore the fact that I stood out in my skirt. Glancing around the room, I noticed that everyone else was either in jeans and t-shirts or scrubs. Curiosity was gnawing at me, so I tried to find the best way to form the list of questions that overwhelmed me at the time.
“What do we do first?” I asked, trying my best to sound as if I had some indication of what I was about to begin.
“Wake the kids.”
“Wake the kids?”
“Wake the kids.” She glanced at me and took in my expression. I watched her face relax into a smile. “You weren’t expecting the kids to arrive here on a school bus were you?”
“I kind of was,” I said weakly. At that moment, I had a feeling that working at Mayflower Center for Challenged Children wasn’t going to be anything like I was expecting.
-
In the sleeping quarters (I cringed when I saw the name, too; it sounded like the children were prisoners) we were each assigned to a room. After waking the kids in the rooms, we had to herd them into the washrooms.
“We have two rooms today, ‘Manda.” Melissa said. I raised an eyebrow at her. “Can I call you that, by the way? Manda?”
“Sure, if you want.” If anything, it made her sound slightly more friendly.
“Good. So, we have two rooms today, Room 4 and room 8. They’re a little far apart, but if we move we’ll finish in time. We have to wake and clean all of these monsters.”
I laughed, in case that was a joke. “Why are they in rooms like this?”
I was expecting they would be categorized by disabilities.
“Last names,” she said, “easier to sort like that. If I’m not mistaken, I think the assigned workers last name’s initial matched the room last names? Not sure, just a theory.”
“That could explain having room four and room eight.” I muttered. She didn't seem to hear me.
“There’re five kids in each room. We like to keep the numbers low for convenience, so that means we’re dealing with ten kids between the two of us.”
“So, we’ll start with room 4, then? You’ll need to show me how it’s done… I feel so inexperienced.” I tried to steady my voice, but it still shook as I spoke. Melissa shrugged.
“It’s okay to feel like that, I guess. It takes some getting used to.”
“It won’t be hard, will it?”
She shrugged again. “I don’t know. Could be. But that’s depending on your experience with kids and how well you deal with disabled people.”
I swallowed. I didn’t think it could be that hard.
I was wrong.
When we entered room four, the smell of iodine and antiseptics, coupled with the lack of color on the walls nauseated me.
In the first bed, a little boy with one leg lay blinking up at us as we entered. He grinned at Melissa, but his grin disappeared as soon as he saw me.
“Morning Thomas, you’re always up first, aren’t you?”
“Morning Melly,” he said. “Who is that?”
Melissa ruffled his brown hair. “This is Amanda, she’s going to be helping us today.”
He wrinkled his nose and struggled to a sitting position. “Go away,” he said to me, “I don’t like you.”
I glared at him, folding my arms across my chest. Looking back, I realize how pathetic that motion was, but at the time, I could only set my foot and say: “I’m not going anywhere.”
Thomas wrinkled his nose more and let out a low whine. “Make her go away,” he cried, burying his head into Melissa’s shoulder, “make the scary lady go away.”
“Why don’t you wake the next one, Manda?” Melissa suggested, patting Thomas’ back.
Having no siblings more than two years younger than me, I wasn’t quite sure what the best method for waking children was. My first instinct was to shake the child and practically roar in their ear, but once again, I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. I ended up doing just that.
Squinting at the name tag on the headboard, I grabbed the child’s arm. “Laura, time to wake up,” I practically dragged her from under the covers, causing her to land on the floor with a plunk. Her head rose and unseeing eyes blinked up at me.
Gasping, I backed away from her just as she reached out a hand, groping at the empty space as she tried to find the person who had woken her. I crashed into the wall.
“What’s wrong with her?” I cried. Melissa sprang from where she sat helping Thomas into a wheelchair and looked at the little girl sprawled on the floor.
“What do you mean?” she asked. I assume that the only thing wrong with the picture in Melissa’s eyes was the fact that Laura was off the bed.
“Something’s wrong with her eyes.”
Melissa laughed. “She’s blind, Amanda. Nothing’s wrong with her aside from the fact that she can’t see.” She carefully lifted her from the floor and set her back on the bed.
“You get the next kid, Mandy,” she said, walking over to a narrow door across the room, opening it and drawing another wheelchair out. I looked at the next bed, afraid of what I would see.
It wasn’t horrific; glancing at the sign beneath the name tag, I realized it was just another blind child. I called her name softly and almost deemed her unresponsive when Melissa came to my side.
“Gertrude’s deaf,” she said, “you have to use motion to wake her.”
I nodded and stiffly watched as Melissa woke the child. Not wanting to seem incapable of doing work, I walked over to the next bed and gently shook the child. He seemed fairly normal, despite missing an arm.
Melissa took care of the last child in the room, who she told me had a Down’s syndrome. I wasn’t exactly sure what the symptoms and effects of downs syndrome was, but I figured I would find out sooner or later. I wasn’t wrong.
After repeating similar processes in room eight, we herded the children—some of them in wheelchairs—down to the massive washroom. I found the trip tedious and it was hard to keep up in my narrow skirt. Melissa, in her jeans-and-t-shirt, seemed to have no problem.
Washing the children was an even more tedious task. We had to strip the children first, and secure them into bath seats—chairs with suction cups that stuck firmly to the ground in the showers, with buckles and bars to keep the children from falling out. Next, we had to make sure that the soap we used wouldn’t affect the children in any negative ways. It was annoying having to look at each chart a million times, not to mention the added stress of having to wash them not only with their favorite bath toys and sponges, but in the way that they preferred.
I was having a hard time of it. Kneeling in my skirt was extremely hard, and greatly restricted my movement. I ended up tossing my blazer aside, pushing up my blouse sleeves so that I could work. I scrubbed Daniel’s skin too hard, and he whimpered constantly. By the time I had finished him, the first child I had to wash, Melissa had already gotten three of the children squeaky clean.
As I wrapped him in a towel, he started to complain, telling Melissa that he “doesn’t like this new lady.”
“Her name’s Amanda, sweetheart,” Melissa said softly to him, wrapping him tighter in his towel. “She’s new here, but she loves you just as much as me and Sally and Carissa. She’s going to be helping us now.”
Daniel didn’t seem to hear her. Instead, he turned his head towards me, as I struggled to get his pants over his leg-brace. He gave me an icy glare and in a loud, clear voice said: “I hate you.”
I shouldn’t have let it get to me, but I did. “You’re difficult.”
He stared at me, unblinking, and then tilted his head back and started to bawl. Throwing my hands up in the air, I declared I give up and walked out of the washroom, only to be dragged back in a moment later by Melissa.
The other workers shot me disproving glances as I tried my hardest to get the children clean. I never knew how much difficulty washing children could be; they squirmed and cried and begged for a familiar face to wash them.
I was thoroughly stressed by the time I finished. I had only done three children; Melissa had volunteered to take over the other seven, telling me that I would need to work faster, because I would soon have 5 to take care of. I groaned at the thought, and gathered my hair that had worked loose from it’s bun back into a knot. The front of my shirt was wet, so I dabbed at it furiously with a paper towel, envying Melissa’s ability to stay dry.
Next up was breakfast, which I was expecting to be a breeze. Melissa herded room 4 to the dining hall with ease, but I had trouble pushing a wheelchair, stopping every few moments to push another wheelchair a few feet further. It was anything but fun, and by the time we made it to the dining hall, I was sweaty and exhausted. Melissa still looked as if she was ready to do it five more times.
“Now, you just need to place them in their respective seats,” Amanda said as she lifted a child out of a wheelchair and into a chair.
“Respective seats?” I looked at her to see if she was joking, but her face showed no signs of amusement.
“Yeah, each chair has the kid’s name on the back. Some of them don’t like to sit next to each other, while others don’t care at all, but it’s important to avoid any food fights, especially at breakfast.”
I rolled my eyes. It seemed impossible to remember every child’s name, let alone find their chair in time for breakfast.
“What are you waiting for?” Mellissa raised her brow at me. I bit my lip and got working.
Ten minutes later, I had finally gotten them all seated without too much trouble. Mellissa then reminded me that I needed to not only push them to the table, but also strap them in so that they don’t slip out of the chair. By the time I had finished, all of the other workers had gotten the children strapped in and seated.
I was hot, hungry and desperately wanted a shower.
A minute later, Laura started banging the table impatiently, chanting “I want my food.” No sooner had she began, the other children joined in, louder. The staff made no move to silence them, so I guessed it was a usual practice at meal time.
Nevertheless, it annoyed me. I tried to cover my ears, but I could still hear them, slamming their fists into the table and screaming at the top of their lungs. Whatever patience I had left dissolved.
“Stop!” I screamed, “this is too much noise! You’re not ever going to get food acting like this.” And around the table I went, placing my hand on any hopping fists to try and silence them.
Melissa stood on the side, shaking her head at me in disbelief. I glanced around at the other workers, noted their unamused expressions and retreated.
When the food came, I eyed it hungrily, only to lose my appetite when I saw that it all looked like grayish mush.
“What is that?” I wrinkled my nose at it. Melissa shot me a warning look, but one of the other workers, Celia, said, “It’s food. What did you think?”
“I don’t know, it just looks gross.”
Celia rolled her eyes at me and turned to Melissa, “How did she get this job, again?” Mellissa shrugged and rolled her eyes, too.
Some of the children ate greedily, while others took their time slowly selected a piece of food and even more slowly shoveling it onto a fork ; some of them, such as those who were missing arms had to be assisted. It was a tedious job, and I frequently lost the remains of patience I had left. I wanted to shove the food down their throats and be done.
The day droned on in a very dull manner. It consisted mostly of playing with toys in ways I never imagined possible, reading stories thousands of times over, assisting each child with whatever they needed and cleaning up behind them. By lunch time, I was whining to go home, saying that my first day was nothing as I expected and I desperately needed a vacation.
