One hot May day Derek arrived home preceded by Andee tearing through the house to her room. Before Derek had even set down her backpack, Andee had changed into her bathing suit and streaked out the back door to the shed where we kept the flotation devices, calling for Derek to help her with her life jacket. Moments later came the splash followed by squeals of joy as Derek bombarded her with inner tubes and noodles. I could even hear the smiles of the amused elderly neighbors congratulating her for making the best of a beautiful day.
Yet the backpack, propped against the kitchen island, brought other thoughts to my mind. When Derek returned giggling, half soaked from the splash war that ensued after he had tethered her inner tube to the dock, I had to ask, “Does Andee ever have any homework?”
Derek, distracted watching her vigilantly, didn’t answer.
We had lived at the Tender House for three months and I had never once witnessed Andee doing homework. She never brought progress reports or report cards home either. She never mentioned any projects and the school year was almost over.
“She does it with Lucy,” he said quickly, after I had prodded him a second time.
When I asked about her grades he pointed out that those all went to her aunt’s house.
“Do you ever see them?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“How does she do in school?”
“Fine,” he shrugged and left to go help her play.
The proactive decision to move Andee from the school by Derek’s house to the one two blocks from her aunt’s house, where her mother had pumped up her airbed in the spare office/computer room for the past five years, made good sense. Her cousin Lucy could walk her to school and babysit her afterwards.
Lucy, a straight ‘A’ student four years older than Andee, was actually her aunt Debbie’s incarcerated ex-boyfriend’s child of another woman who fled the country at his arrest. According to what I knew of her, she embodied the character of that unlikely success story who inspires others to adopt troubled children. Not that Debbie offered a college track environment. Andee’s natural cousins, one 19 and the other 21, also resided under that roof, the older with her boyfriend and baby. The 19-year old had a part-time job at the mall but neither the older nor her boyfriend worked, Andee reported that they “were always at home watching TV.” Debbie worked as a receptionist and her boyfriend ran a mechanical repair shop. He primarily supported the bulk of them but fathered none in his household. His kids lived out of town.
Into this milieu, Ann brought Andee, and the three bedroom house with an office and den turned into a five bedroom house where nine lodged, three of whom held full time jobs and none of whom had attended college. Andee complained endlessly about Lucy, who never stopped bossing her around, or so she claimed. She said they made her do chores like Cinderella but when pressed for details on who did what it sounded like Debbie did all the shopping, cooking and cleaning for the bunch. Andee said her aunt always yelled at her mom and never smiled.
After three months in the stepmother role, the true origins of the Cinderella story became clear to me:
A spoiled daughter, treated like a princess by her single father, was suddenly doused with the cold reality of life by the introduction of women who had to earn their own upkeep for years. When the stepmother and stepsisters attempted to recruit Cinderella to help in the daily chores the little priss refused and cried to her father who, glad for the relief that he had other people to tend to these tasks, ignored her pleas. Since, in her insolence, Cinderella performed such shoddy work, leaving spots on the glasses, and crumbs on the floor, her step-family gave her only the simplest, dirtiest work to do since she couldn’t clean for a lick, and tasked her only to brush up the cinders once a day, (only once a day!) and this little bitch wined and wined while the sisters did all the other cleaning, all the food prep and stitching and home maintenance. They soon realized that this self-imposed princess would force them into her servitude unless they connived a way to rid the household of her. Since Cinderella had no practical brain cells she fell for a ruse when her stepmother’s friend dressed up like a fairy godmother and finagled her into a high society party where she introduced her to another gullible victim. Presented as a mysterious princess, he had no choice but to fall in love with the beautiful stranger and believe her sob stories. He offered to take care of her… happily ever after.
Eventually, my inquiries about Andee’s education produced evidence, and Andee arrived home from her aunt’s house one evening with a crumpled piece of paper that she tossed on the counter in front of us before running into her room. It was her third quarter report card, which I admit, I initially had trouble deciphering due to the fact that the grading structure was different from what I expected. Her school used abstract descriptors such as Passing Ps, Non-Passing NPs, Needs Improvement NIs, Proficient PRs, simple Ms for Meets standards and NM for does Not Meet standards. They also had a + and – system that indicated behavior traits and not, as I initially assumed, a nudge up or down on the grade.
Asking Derek to translate what I thought he was more familiar with exposed the first tier of the problem. He confessed he never could understand those things but reassured me that come 5th grade they start giving out standard letter grades. Somewhat appalled by that answer I started reading the fine print that keyed the code, and growing increasingly agitated, demanded that Derek turn off the TV and give this his attention.
In 4th grade, I explained, Andee was proficient in nothing. Art and PE represented her only positive grades. She had a “meets standards” M attached to a “needs improvement” NI for Language Arts. For History and Math she did not meet (NMs) and her Science grade was left blank with a note explaining that missing assignments did not qualify her for a grade…translate fail.
“That little bitch,” he said.
“I wouldn’t use that word,” I responded, shocked that he spoke that way about Andee. He did not.
“After all the babysitting money I gave her she is ignoring Andee after all,” he said about Lucy. “That’s it, that house is not helping her any.” He resolved to take action and fire Lucy immediately.
For the following week Derek talked to Ann, Ann talked to Debbie, Debbie talked to Lucy, Lucy talked to Ann, and throughout the course of it all nobody talked to Andee about her grades. I found it strange. When I proposed that we sit down with her to assess her strengths and weaknesses at school Derek deflected it to a criticism of Ann’s living situation, and how Andee did fine in school when under his watch. I wondered how he could say that with such confidence when he never bothered to figure out the report card.
We then began a routine where I reminded Derek to ask Andee about her homework every day. Andee said she had none, every day. After the third day of this Derek said, “wait a minute, don’t you have to read for 20 minutes a day?”
“No, that was in the old school,” Andee said.
“I’m pretty sure that they said that was for all grammer school kids,” Derek said.
“No we don’t have to do that anymore,” Andee said.
“Well, even if you don’t, since you don’t have any other work, please read,” he said.
“Can I play first?” she asked.
“Why don’t you get your reading done and then you can play the rest of the night?” he said.
“No, I want to play first,” she argued.
“OK, you can play for 20 minutes and then read,” he compromised.
She agreed and he smiled all smug from his ‘victory.’
An hour went by before I reminded Derek about their agreement. He told her to read. She argued that she didn’t want to, he insisted and eventually she sulked back to her room. Ten minutes later she came out to ask how long she was reading.
“You’re only halfway through.”
“Can I be done?”
“No.”
“Why?
“Because you need to read for 20 minutes.”
“No I don’t, we don’t have to do that anymore.”
“Do it anyway for another 10 minutes.”
“But why?”
At this point I freaked out and yelled that she needed to read for 10 minutes and it is only 10 minutes, she never did anything else, this is the only 20 minutes she has ever had to do anything so just do it!
She scuttled back to her room and Derek told me that I had acted inappropriately.
Five silent minutes later Andee emerged again and asked Derek is a pathetic voice with a wisp of a baby lisp if she could be done please. He announced her 20 minutes over and peace again reigned.
This same exercise took place for about a week before I happened to pass by her room during one of her reading sessions and saw her flipping through a kindergarten-level picture book. I told her to read something more age appropriate. She said didn’t have anything else, and though no doubt a convenient excuse and a slight stretch of the truth, I did notice that all of her books had more pictures than words. Even the educational ones about biology or natural sciences featured large pop-ups and little tid-bits of facts. I asked her about the library at school and she told me they weren’t allowed to take those home because nobody brought them back.
An avid reader, I was immersed in series books at her age, but then again I also watched soap operas and this kid who flipped through picture books only cared about cartoons. When another parent suggested that she may have unidentified learning problems I rummaged through my library and, emerging with Treasure Island, stopped the daily anti-reading argument by offering to trade page for page with Andee. To my surprise, she read well, clearly and without hesitation, able to figure out the meaning of unfamiliar words. However, she complained about the book being boring and raved about a fantastic series her friends were reading so when I offered to buy her age appropriate books of her choice she came away with three that she devoured, after the daily argument of course, forgetting her time and losing herself in the story.
Yet the fact that she had no reading books prior led me to suspect that throughout the entire school year she had only taken up her designated reading per our intervention, which made me question how much work she ever got done at her aunt’s house at all, especially as we became aware of the struggle it took to get her to focus on her work. Did Lucy entertain the 20 minute argument that preceded the 20 minutes of reading? Did Ann?
“Probably not.” Derek admitted. “Ann’s stupid. She dropped out of high school to run away with her 30-something boyfriend at the time. She didn’t even complete her GED.”
“How do people like that get jobs?” I had to ask. I had a bachelor’s degree and found it hard to secure a good job without more specialized education.
“Friends, family,” he said. “You have to remember she has low standards. She works on an assembly line now and that’s only because her ex-boyfriend’s family owns the place. I got her the receptionist job when we were together, before that she lived with her parents…”
“So knowing this about Ann, why did you not look into her grades all year?”
“She had Lucy. And her cousins graduated, at least her cousins who live there, besides, I didn’t do well in school either but I’m fine. She’s a good kid, as long as she doesn’t get involved in a bad group she’ll turn out.”
Why anybody would accept mediocrity as a natural course of life when other options existed stumped me. My parents set a high bar and raised starry-eyed children. We wanted to be astronauts or Oscar-winning cinematographers or at the very least President of the United States but when I asked Andee what she wanted to be when she grew up she said she wanted to be a mommy and have lots and lots of kids. I asked her how she would earn the money to feed all her kids and she shrugged. “Mom wants at least five grandchildren and I’m her only kid,” she said.
In 5th grade I got a D in science and my parents made me copy science essays on the subjects we had studied out of the encyclopedia. I never dipped below a C again though I could understand how, if left on my own I probably would have similar grades to Andee’s. I asked Derek what harm could be done by encouraging her to do better?
“It will hurt her self-esteem. You need to always tell kids that they’re doing a good job,” he said “It’s called positive encouragement.”
On the last day of school Derek’s mom picked up Andee from her half day and kept her at her house until we arrived after work to retrieve her for her celebratory dinner. Andee greeted us with her award, distributed to all kids for something or other, hers being attendance. Her grandmother directed my attention to a large shopping bag which contained the contents her locker. She explained that Andee was too busy saying goodbye to her friends during the time allotted for kids to clean out their lockers so she had taken it upon herself to shove everything in a shopping bag to sort out later. I extracted a large poster board from it out of curiosity.
Divided into four sections, three of which had charts and data, it looked like some documentation of a science experiment. A name headed each section and beside it what looked like grading numbers. Keyana 8/10, Bethanny 9/10, Allie 7/10, and Andee 1/10. Random messy drawings occupied the space where the rest of her classmates had data, and drawings of the same embellished the other girls’ squares as well. A large 6/10 grade stood out above the rest in the upper right corner.
Derek, after thoroughly congratulating his new 5th grader for her excellent attendance record caught a peek of it over my shoulder and said loudly, “And you brought home your work! Great! Now we get to see all you learned in school this year, tell me what this is Andee,” he said, approaching it with parental pride, obviously not yet noticing that the impressive data on display was not the work of his daughter.
“I don’t know, some stupid project,” she said.
In the time it took her to answer Derek had processed the evidence and changed his tone. “What is this, this is your handwriting isn’t it?” He pointed at the scribbled notes that changed Keyana’s name to The Key, and Bethanny to B-Dazel and Allie to Lolipop, also adorning the rest of the posterboard.
“Yeah, it was a joke,” she said.
“Did your friends find it funny when you brought their grades down?” he said in an unfamiliar tone.
“They’re not my friends,” said Andee in a too-cool-to-care tone.
“Why not, you don’t like smart kids, because it looks like they did all the work and you did nothing.” I never saw him address her this way. “What, they gave you a 1 for participating?”
“We got two grades,” she argued her face set in a scowl that anyone would talk to her that way. “We got our own and the group.”
“So the only reason you got a 6 out of 10 for the group was because everyone else did their work while you were drawing pictures and you dropped their grade because you weren’t paying attention.”
“It was stupid,” she said.
“You’re stupid,” he yelled at her.
“Hey!” Andee screamed back, offended.
Derek’s mother quickly intervened, explaining to Andee that he didn’t mean it.
“Yes I did, because I’m ashamed to have the kid that sits on her butt while everyone else is doing their work, you even tried to distract them by making all of your silly pictures and playing with the names and then you don’t even appreciate that they helped you with your grade!” He shoved the poster towards his mother. “You throw this away or give it to Bethanny’s father who would be proud of her,” and stormed out.
I had sense of mind to grab the shopping bag on our way out.
“That’s all garbage,” Andee warned.
Had Andee taken the responsibility of cleaning out her own locker it would have all gone in the trash, and we would never have discovered the page after page of blank sheets with the titles ‘homework 1.2, homework 3.5, homework 5.9’ or the many tests and quizzes, one after another with failing grades. I found progress reports with comments like, ‘has a good attitude but needs to put more effort into her work,’ ‘does not pay attention,’ ‘distracts classmates,’ ‘does not complete homework,’ ‘many missing assignments.’
Though the homework dated from the beginning of the year, the more crisp ones displayed dates within the past few weeks, during the time when Derek asked if she shad homework daily and she always said no. We even found the reading log she was supposed to complete after the 30 minutes of reading she swore her school had discontinued. That lying aspect irritated me the most, but Derek seemed more bent on the participation aspect, that his kid seemed to have no scruples letting others do all the work, which, knowing her character, should not have surprised him.
One day about a month prior Andee had arrived home wearing a shirt featuring a stupid cartoon face and the words, “Homework? What homework???” She said her mom bought it for her. I told her to keep it at her mom’s house.
“Why? It’s cute!” she said.
While everyone finds pleasure in blaming others, I couldn’t ignore the reality I had taken until May to identify. Derek had never asked about her homework until I brought it up. Nor did he even question her report card contents.