[This week we present the second place winner in our first No-Contest Contest. The work Nicole Janeen Jones sent in moved me very much. Most of the essay was fluid and kept me engaged in the weightiness of Nicole’s subject and the urgency of her occasion. There were some places in the essay, however, that jarred me just a little as a reader. I awarded the essay second place. When I told Nicole her essay had placed, she told me she was making edits based on my responses. It is with great pleasure that I post the revision she sent–very much like the original but with those areas that had caused some confusion now beautifully rendered. It is an essay born of the strong need to evoke and expel great sadness. It is the kind of writing that can help defeat the hopelessness that sets in when we feel how futile even our best efforts seem in the face of enormous social problems. In this essay, Nicole captures not only the feelings of defeat and helplessness that eat one up but the ray of love that might, we readers hope with all our hearts, light the path of one whose journey is difficult.

I am delighted that in a contest like the No-Contest Contest, an essay that needs just a little polish can place. I am even more delighted that using the response I send, writers can learn more about developing an essay, how the right edits allow every part of an essay to sing. –ed.]

An Escalating Din
Nicole Janeen Jones
[Author’s note: Some names have been changed]
The kids at the daycare center I worked at were out of control. I could not blame them, how else were kids who’d been abused or seen their mothers abused nearly every day of their short lives supposed to act? I tried every technique that I could find in teaching books, every suggestion from teachers who worked in “normal” daycares, anything at all to at least diminish the sound of flesh slapping flesh. We listed out all the things that hands were used for, even the things that hurt: holding cigarettes, pouring vodka into shot glasses, tattoos. Clapping, because of the If You’re Happy and You Know It song, inspired me. When someone was hit, I reminded the hitter that hands were not for hitting, they were for clapping. For the first week, I think I said it eight times an hour. Finally, as I set the table for a snack of buttered toast and apple juice, worried about my back turned toward the classroom, yet pleased because no mayhem had erupted in those two minutes, I heard clapping. I faced the classroom. Three-year-old Jack sat in the book corner clapping with the concentration of a kineticist as another child slowly crawled towards him, growling and barking like a rabid dog.

 “Nikki, look I am clapping…but I am so mad!”

On my first day, as Jack slept on his nap mat, I recognized his name written in black marker on a piece of masking tape above a coat hook near the door. I knew who his mother was; Angela was only two years younger than me. We hadn’t mixed in the same social circles during high school, but I knew that she’d had a baby right after she’d graduated, with a guy three years younger. Jack was the last one to rouse after the lights had been turned on. As the other kids ran through the room pulling out toys, only to abandon them for the tv that the afternoon teacher turned on, Jack sat still, blinking. He turned his head and saw me looking at him. He looks exactly how I feel in the morning when I get up. He immediately got up from his mat and climbed into my lap.

I attempted to keep the class awake ten minutes longer in hopes that they’d stay asleep until after I left. On the days that they saw me leave, chaos ensued and the afternoon teacher who closed the center each night retaliated by leaving Legos and Lincoln Logs dumped into the book corner. I stretched out lunch as long as I could and then insisted that all the toys be put away before we brought out nap mats. For Jack, who arrived at the center at five in the morning, this delay was impossible. He crawled onto my lap and sprawled out on my outstretched legs as I separated jumbled cardboard puzzle pieces. As I returned the pieces to the corresponding board with my left hand, my right hand rested on his small chest. I directed the rest of the pre-nap pick up from that position on the floor. Two girls, fresh from the toddler room, began a skirmish over the Mr. Potatohead bucket. “Hey,” I said, trying not to contribute to the escalading din, “What are your hands for?”

“Clapping.” Jack whispered, his eyes closed. He clapped his hands as if in a dream.

****

Jack’s brother, Elliot, was 18 months younger. In every way that Jack was gentle, sullen, and Nordic, Elliot was opposite, with brute exuberance and café au lait skin. Elliot refused to walk upright until he was nearly two years old; he bear walked everywhere. If his teacher, Denise, left the room to heat a bottle or take a break, he howled like she’d never done this before and feared being alone. The brothers did not play well together. For many weeks I assumed that Angela favored Elliot since his face was hers while Jack’s was his father’s. Maybe that was why I hugged Jack more often than the other kids, was more patient with him when he screamed that his sock was askew inside his winter boots. But I realized she favored whoever suited her whim that moment: whoever was the quietest after a long, noisy day working at the factory, whoever ran to her first when she arrived, whoever scribbled with her favorite color crayon.

“All he does at home is go around clapping. Can you get him to stop that?”

I was guilty of taking part in the buffet of parent gossip. I knew nearly all the mothers because I’d gone to high school with them. How did they get this life, yet I managed to escape it? We had the same teachers, same small-town atmosphere. I was the one who grew up in a single-parent, welfare-at-one-time, deadbeat dad, no organized religion household. I knew that Angela grew up with both parents, both who worked at the best paying factory in town – in the office, not out on the floor, attended St. Mary’s, and lived in a three bedroom ranch style home in the new housing development. Every night the news beleaguered the fact that our lives should be transposed. I should not have a college degree. I should not have a savings account. I should be pregnant with a third child.

I took my cue from Jack and feigned obliviousness to Angela’s expanding middle.

****

Angela informed me as she dragged a groggy Jack and Elliot into the daycare, that her new boyfriend, Garron, would pick the boys up that afternoon. Jack stirred from his near slumber on the floor, leaning against my calf, by the announcement. I’d wondered who this Garron was, that Jack now talked endlessly about. Jealousy swelled in me. In the past nine months, Jack hadn’t been excited about anyone…except me.

 

That afternoon, a guy around my age walked in. Jack bolted from his nap mat and ran to him; Garron smiled broadly and held out his thick arms for Jack to throw himself into.

 

As we gathered Jack and Elliot’s bags and projects to take home, Garron asked me how we disciplined at school. The boys had fought a lot at home and he wanted to do the same thing that we did. I explained the clapping technique that worked so well for Jack.

 

“Our hands aren’t for hitting, right Jack? What are they for?” I knelt down beside him.

“Clapping!” He laughed as he demonstrated, essentially ruining it with the last clap being against Elliot’s summer sun darkened skin.

 

“Thanks, Nikki. We’ll give that a try.”

****

“Nikki, what does this look like to you?” Denise asked as she changed Elliot’s diaper. I peeked first through the lattice that separated our rooms, but then moved to peer closer over the half door since I couldn’t believe what I saw.

“A bruise?”

“How does a baby get a bruise on his penis?”

Two new kids were enrolled in the daycare. Their last name was Gribble.

“Isn’t that the last name…”

“Garron Gribble.”

“Did you notice this when Jack and Elliot were dropped off?” asked Denise, standing at the changing table with Elliot. As she rolled him towards her, I saw on his chubby buttock what looked like a healed over burn mark. The perfect size of a cigarette. Healed over about two days. I found Jack and looked underneath all his clothing for any suspicious scabs or bruises. There was nothing. It was Monday.

“I can’t believe that you called Social Services! I’m outta here!” screamed Angela as she grabbed the boys’ bags and blankets. She paused at the door, not to console the boys as she dragged them to the hallway, but to rip down the name tape above their coat hook.

Angela’s rage had occluded the presence of her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, picking up her own kids. As I’d followed Angela out, explaining that we’d had to call Social Services – Wisconsin was a mandatory report state, Denise learned that Garron had a restraining order against him. Even his supervised visitation had been revoked.

****

“Nikki, when you get this message, call me back.”

“What? Dead? What?”

On Sunday at church, Jack’s paternal grandmother, stopped me at church to thank me for being so good with Jack.

“What happened…on Friday?”

The boys had taken a bath. First Jack got out and went into the room he and Elliot shared to get dressed. All anyone knew after that, from Jack, was that Elliot hit the wall. No one knew if Garron threw him in by the hands, by the feet, or some other way. Elliot was a big kid, not easily thrown. There was no way that it was accidental, judging by the dent in the drywall.

Garron packed the boys up and picked Angela up at work. She didn’t realize until halfway out of town that Elliot wasn’t breathing.

Jack’s grandmother told me all. But as soon as I heard Jack had seen it all, I collapsed to the carpet.

Like most of the teachers at the daycare, I couldn’t continue to work there much longer. One-by-one we left, unable to admit that the reason was Elliot’s death. It was difficult to look at each other, impossible to talk about it. While most people struggle with what they should have done in a situation gone wrong, what consumed us was what we shouldn’t have done. Our call to Social Services caused Angela to pull the boys from the school and leave them in Garron’s care that day. There were many reasons why I decided to move to Seattle, but I couldn’t deny that Jack and Elliot were not one of those reasons.

During my last week in town, I biked to all my old haunts. Past the library that I used to frequent nearly every day of the summer before I was old enough to babysit. Past the movie theatre where I’d held hands with a boy for the first time. Across the footbridge that I’d always been scared to walk across because some of the boards were missing and I never seemed to get across it without some jerk standing at one end and rocking it side to side. As I passed the library, Jack was out on the sidewalk; his aunt owned the house next door.

I couldn’t say good-bye to him. But, I couldn’t ride past and wave either. I stopped and we sat on the curb. He didn’t talk about Elliot. Nor did he talk about the baby his mom had given up for adoption last month. Fearful that Angela would be angry if she saw us together, I stood and told him that I needed to go. I knelt down and snuck a hug from him. I kissed the backs of his hands and brushed the bangs off his forehead.

“Don’t go yet Nikki.”

I couldn’t reassure him or even smile. I mounted my bike and took off. He said my name twice more. As I turned the corner to escape, I thought I heard clapping, but wouldn’t turn to see.