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Show It is the second day of class. Our students run wild in the back of the room, caged in, only because somebody had the common sense to shut the door- The class on the other side of the room has stopped. It is a tableau on which the curtain has just risen. They are stilled about the room in various actions of learning. All of their faces turn toward us. They are staring. Patty lies flat on the floor in the middle of our half of the room. Two aides are each holding a wrist straight out from her body, to keep her from tearing at the backs of her hands with her teeth. I am sitting on her legs to keep her from kicking someone. I hold the sides of her face with my hands. It was not what would be thought of as a pretty face. Her eyes roll about, pupils disappearing behind her cornstalk lashes. She sees only our shadows looming over her, an occasional glimpse of the sun, as we all move in unison. We form a sort of chaotic rhythm, letting the window light bar cross her face in shadow patterns. I see in that face the molding of several years in a back "ward" chiseled into only one emotion, defiance. I see the quality of "those most likely to succeed," found in any high school yearbook at seventeen. Young faces, sure that the world will be theirs, and oblivious to any handicaps yet to come. And like the lull before a storm, I know that look in her eye. It is a teacher's first learned skill, to recognize a strong will to survive. "Strong as a horse,u the doctor had said. It is an ego-centered mania, deeply imprinted, even in Patty's blank stare. She had come with the usual bowl haircut, grown out a little, and with the usual sign of rubella, straw-like hair that stands on end by itself. The very first accomplishment was turning it into a mass of permanent curls. She alternately cries and bellows. Someone has just run down the hall to get the behavior specialist, who saunters back and rests his chin in his hand as he leans over a bookshelf and observes us. Even if we had known about the ten or so drugs she was on at that moment, we still would have been ignorant of how they would feel in our own "normal" bodies. Actions and counteractions that flowed through her •2- |