Talker's Graduation

so they can write. Supplies. He donated
    supplies. And I‟d like to help. Can I come in and help?”
    JoEllen‟s warm brown eyes lit up at the word “supplies” and he
    was abruptly enfolded in a warm, fleshy, matronly hug that oddly
    enough reminded him of Brian‟s bird-like Aunt Lyndie for all of that.
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    “We would love the help. That‟s amazing. Come on in and meet the
    gang. There‟s not a lot of us, but we‟re growing.”
    Tate was introduced to five children, three boys and two girls,
    and all he had to do to earn his stripes was sit down at the small
    table meant for small people and color or sculpt or cut and paste or
    thread macaroni on a string. He loved it. He loved listening to them
    chatter, and he loved the outrageous things that would come out of
    their mouths, and he loved the fact that all he had to do to be loved
    by them was to show up once (and then twice and then three times)
    a week and be kind.
    JoEllen was right, too—he was not the only volunteer, and
    soon he was on a first name basis with an assortment of women,
    mothers or grandmothers or graduates of the foster care system
    themselves, who gathered just to sit down and play with children
    and make them feel important.
    It made Tate feel like king of the entire freakin‟ world, and it
    made Brian incredibly proud of him. Talker knew because Brian told
    him so nearly every day.
    Of course, even the best teachers have favorites, and Talker‟s
    favorite was Shelley. Shelley had been there almost from the
    beginning—she‟d been six at the time, and had just been put into
    the system—and when Tate had met her, she was trying very hard
    to draw with a cast on her arm.
    “Hey,” Tate said, sitting down by her. Very deliberately he took
    off the half glove that he wore over his crippled hand and picked up
    a crayon.
    “Hey. What‟s that thing on your face?”
    Tate was used to that by now and he had no problem
    answering, which was funny, because when so-called adults had
    asked the same question when he was in college, he‟d always
    cringed.
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    “It‟s a tattoo,” he‟d said casually. He‟d pushed up the sleeve of
    his sweatshirt and said, “It‟s not just on my face, either. It‟s on my
    arm and my neck and my shoulder.” The tattoo on his arm was
    much brighter than the one on his face. He and Brian had been
    surfing by this time, and the more his skin tanned, the less the tatt
    stood out. He‟d thought about paying to have the whole thing re-
    inked, and then decided against it. He was almost not that boy
    anymore.
    The girl looked at him very carefully, and then at the earrings
    that went up that same ear, hiding the deformed shape. “Why do
    you have all that stuff?” she asked, and he drew a heart with
    flowers all around it. He wasn‟t an artist, not like Brian, but by this
    time he‟d been volunteering at the art center for foster children for
    around four months, and he was killer with hearts, flowers,
    unicorns, trucks, tigers, and Spiderman.
    “Because I got burned when I was your age, and I didn‟t want
    anyone looking at the scars,” he told her. Her mouth made a round
    little “O”.
    “Can I touch?” she asked quietly, and he nodded his head and
    put his hand down. He‟d been molding clay like Brian, and it had
    helped him too. Not as much as it had helped Brian, but some
    nights, when they were sitting down to watch television, Brian
    would get out the clay and they would simply mold it, taking turns
    making shapes and then squashing them and showing each other.
    Sometimes the shapes were abstract, sometimes profane (because
    really, a penis was the easiest thing to make with modeling clay,)
    but mostly, it was a simple way for the two of them to communicate
    when they didn‟t feel like words. So his fingers were improving,
    even beyond where he had willed them to be, and he could use his
    gross motor function better than the doctors had ever predicted.
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    But they were still deformed and still scarred, and Shelley ran
    the fingers poking out of the hand of the cast gently over them.
    “I‟ll have a scar,” she said quietly.
    “Yeah?” He‟d figured. The cast was big and cumbersome, and
    they didn‟t usually saddle little kids with something that big unless
    there had been extensive damage.
    “My bone poked through. It was gross.”
    Tate grimaced. “Ewww. Did you