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part 1 of the story
The Special Class

Dan Yonah Johnson

Columbus, Ohio, 1969

    It took some days for the school to put a plan together for Julian. His mother Dorothea, a single mom, garnered the details in phone conversations with Mr. Pace, the principal of Wedgewood Junior High School. The Special Class was a brand-new experimental program. On one hand, Julian really didn’t fit into the program’s parameters. He wasn’t mentally retarded or physically disabled. The program supervisors outside the school in the Department of Mental Retardation & Developmental Disabilities and the state Education Department did not initially approve of putting Julian in the class. They certainly didn’t relish setting a precedent of allowing their program to become a dumping ground for just any kind of student the mainstream school system didn’t want to deal with. It was exactly counter to their aspirations. In time, it was their goal to mainstream their special students into regular classrooms...to include them...not have them completely set apart. That’s why they were in the school building in the first place...to prepare for that day...when all children were allowed to be together...whatever their life situation. But. On the other hand, Mr. Pace had the leverage of just being able to throw a monkey wrench by complaining to the Columbus Public Schools administration. He could always throw up his hands and declare that the new experimental program just wasn’t working out. And Pace could be rather lawyerly. He argued to the program supervisors that Julian fell within the MRDD’s language in terms of its stated mandate to serve not only the mentally retarded but also those children who have severe emotional disturbance. Certainly, Pace argued, a boy who strips himself naked during gym class with no warning or reason is definitely severely emotionally disturbed. But Pace failed to mention that the boy was part-girl—a “hermaphrodite”, and that Julian was protesting his best friend Rodney’s suicide caused by the gym teacher ridiculing them both the day before. Times being what they were, the MRDD and the state Education Department buckled. Julian was in. It was put on the calendar: Monday, October 6, 1969. Julian DeCroix would be an official student in the Special Class. In Room 19 at the end of the hall on the second floor.
    When Julian got the news, he was glad. Supremely glad. Extra supremely glad. He had indeed pulled something off. Dorothea, at first, didn’t know quite what to think. But after considerable mulling, she decided that the professional educators knew what they were doing even if she did not. She was a scientist. She had her own expertise in her own field...and considered that she should just hunker down all the more to that...and leave Julian to the professional experts of another field. There was honor and efficiency in one profession placing trust in another. It finally made sense to her...she decided.

    Monday, October 6 came. It was a big damn deal. Julian was nervous. The weekend had been especially nerve wracking. It began with Rodney Fridenmaker’s funeral on Friday afternoon. At first, the Fridenmaker family—through the Funeral Director asked Julian if he would want to get up and say something at the funeral because everyone knew that he and Rodney were best friends. But then, in the same breath, Julian was told he must not mention suicide. Julian refused to abide by the condition, and he just flat out declined attending the whole affair. And he felt nasty bad and guilty about it over the weekend with a lot of second guessing, but still came back to his original decision, time and again. And then it occurred to him how dead...dead was. You couldn’t save it for shit. Not one bit. So then, it was the wondering about his unknown new life, come Monday. What would it be like? To be Special with a capital S from then-on, for all time? How would that go? Who knew?

    Monday arrived. And the moment Julian entered Room 19, he was immediately given cause for relief. The teacher, Miss Jess Moloney, wrapped him up in a big hug. She wore a floor length crazy-print, wild-color bohemian skirt with sandals. Her top was some kind of olive-color sleeveless thing—kind of like a shirt with the arms torn off, open quite a bit at the neck for display of several strands of weird beads of every color in the crayon box. Her auburn hair fell down long and straight from bangs like a lighter shade of Grace Slick. Julian hadn’t really studied her that much, up close, before. But yep. She was a hippie.
    And the room. It was amazing. The color. The walls and ceiling were all artistically painted up in a Caribbean azure-blue complete with white puffy clouds and breezy palm trees. From some remote corner a record player was softly playing Crystal Blue Persuasion by Tommy James & The Shondells. The bulletin boards were bordered in psychedelic paisley and bore posters of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks surrounded by artwork of the students. Stunningly, there were no desk-chairs at all. In lieu, there was a couch and carpet set near several bookcases teeming with books...and many large older couch pillows strewn about the floor.
    And then the kids. Drifting out from Miss Moloney’s hug, Julian beheld the group of them looking at him from the center of the room—assembled rather like the first representatives of Earth to greet the outer-space being who fell from the sky. There were six of them in the most varied shape and form. One, Julian already knew...Dee Dee Walker—who he’d met and befriended in library period and the lunchroom. As she was wheelchair bound, Julian had been wheeling her around on the playground blacktop at lunch recess. Dee Dee smiled a huge grin in her wheelchair from the center of the group.
    “Everyone, this is Julian who I’ve been telling you about,” announced Miss Moloney. “Dee Dee, would you like to introduce the members of our family to Julian?”
    “Yes, certainly,” agreed Dee Dee in jovial formality. Pointing to a tall portly fellow with red curly hair, bushy eyebrows, and very thick glasses, Dee Dee motioned up her hand. “This is Joseph—Joseph Kuhlmann...but we all just call him Joe Cool.”
    “Hellwo,” said Joe, flashing a toothy grin and holding his right index finger in a flicking crook next to his right eye. “Do you know President Nixon?” asked Joe, flicking his index finger at his brow as if it helped him to get the syllables out.
    “No, I don’t know him. But I know who he is,” replied Julian in all earnestness.
    “That’s good,” declared Joe, his eyes widening full circle behind his thick black glasses. “We don’t like President Nixon. Meow, meow, meow...Purina Cat Chow. We don’t like President Nixon.” Joe laughed at himself.
    Julian laughed hard.
    “And this is Aaron Wills,” continued Dee Dee, motioning to a rail-thin fellow in the back of the group. He had short blonde hair and his head jutted up and down in quick movements. His eyes shifted side to side just as fast. Aaron’s spine and knee rhythmically bounced his whole frame up and down as he manipulated his hands together rapidly. And he’d turn back a bit and then return again.
    “Nice to meet you,” said Julian.
    “Nice-to-meet-you,” echoed Aaron in almost a one-syllable blurt as he jutted his hand out for a shake. Julian obliged and Aaron quickly retrieved his hand with a series of rapid head nods.
    “And these guys are Molly Rader and Danny Van Meter,” thumb-motioned Dee Dee to a couple on her left—both of shorter stature and almond eyes. Molly and Danny seemed older than the others, and rather sophisticated in their physical entwining couple-ness. Both had darker hair, cherubic features, and were just generally somewhat familiar looking to Julian. He couldn’t place it...until they told their story.
    “Helllooo,” the two responded in tandem, their syllables elongated but determined. “I’m Molly and this is my fiancé Danny,” she informed in a tongue-rolling cadence. “A fiancé is like a boyfriend,” explained Molly...trying to be as helpful as possible to the uninitiated. Molly knew lots of things and lots of words. She would tell folks that she did. And Danny would always agree that such was the case.
    Danny stuck his hand out. “I’m Danny, but you can just call us Spanky and Darla...because that’s who we look like, you know? In the movies, you know? Yeah, so. Everybody just calls us Spanky and Darla. So, you can call us Spanky and Darla. Okay?”
    Shaking hands, Julian replied, “Okay, Spanky!”—happy with how the words tripped off his tongue.
    Dee Dee went on to her last introduction. Thumbing to her right, she declared, “And this is Robert Rose.”
    A rather short fellow with an off-level hunch to his back and shoulders extended his short arm and hand directly. “Just, Rob,” he stated with a nod as he shook hands with Julian. And said nothing more...for right then.
    “Thank you so much Dee Dee! You are quite the emcee!” gushed Miss Moloney. “But now Julian, I’ll let you in one more thing about names in our room. It’s a secret! Shhhhh”
    All the other students put their index fingers to their mouths and replicated the Shhhh.
    “So. Here’s the deal. Yes, my name...out in the school world...” She motioned her hand out toward the door and the hallway. “...is Miss Moloney. But in here...you can just call me Jess. Okay, honey?”
    And Julian said, “Cool.” And immediately, it occurred to him that suicide was a very, very, very bad idea. And immediately, Julian loved Jess for that. Immediately. It was eternal.
    Regular class began. If it could truly be called regular. The group all sat in a circle on the floor upon their pillows. Jess explained to Julian that everything in their class had to do with books, and reading, and writing. She said, “All of us, every day, are writing our stories and each other’s stories. And some day, all our stories will be put together and it will be one big, good story that never ends.” Jess went on to explain that she read to the class every day from a good book. They were just at the beginning of a new good book entitled My Home is Far Away by the author Dawn Powell. Jess relayed that the story was about poor children in a small Ohio town and what happens to them. And further...that in the book, the author Dawn Powel was actually describing her own childhood in the real town of Mt. Gilead, Ohio—where Jess herself had grown up. Pending approval of Mr. Pace, the principal, the class would take a field trip to Mt. Gilead in the spring to see and experience the setting of the book and its characters.
    After Jess’s reading, it was time for the class to present their writing for the day. Each student was to present a poem or a one-page story. The piece could be about anything in the whole wide universe. The word universe was on their vocabulary list. And the cool thing was, if a student didn’t have a word for a particular thing, they could always draw a picture of it in their writing. Kind of like the Egyptians. They were smart.
    Most of the poems and stories were funny. Joe Cool had a tale entitled Too Much Dog Poop, because it was his job to pick up the dog poop in his backyard at home. It was a terrible job even though that’s how he got his allowance from his parents—which was a pretty good allowance. Because, compared to other kids—even regular ones outside the Special Class, Joe was filthy rich. He always had money. And you could always borrow money from him. And everybody always paid it back because nobody wanted the Bank of Joe to go bust. If truth be told, his moniker Joe Cool was one of respect throughout the whole school. Indeed, it garnered a certain grudging respect for the whole Special Class...lest the money pit go dry. The last thing many students would want to happen was Joe flicking his eyebrow finger at them and going, “Meow, meow, meow...Purina Cat Chow. You look like President Nixon.” And then he’d blow a big puff of full-lipped breath at them which meant that they were officially blown off—banned from the Bank of Joe for life.
    Julian was having the time of his life sitting next to Dee Dee’s wheelchair and listening to the readings. Julian would laugh and Dee Dee’s hand hanging down would rub the back of his neck. Julian and Dee Dee both thought Jess didn’t see it, but Jess did. But being a hippie girl, it weren’t no big thang under the azure-blue classroom sky.
    The last reading was by Danny aka Spanky. He informed that it was his weekly Nantucket Poem. As Julian would be later apprised, it was with some trepidation that the class received each week’s installment into the Spanky chapbook of Nantucket lore. You just never knew what the hell the dude was gonna say or what it really meant...well, you kind of knew...but then again, you weren’t sure that you knew. But in any event, every week’s Nantucket poem would be proclaimed and certified as very good by none other than Aaron Wills. He would rock his body wildly front to back, and without fail or flinch shout at the top of his lungs, “JESUS CHRIST! – GOD DAMN IT TO HELL! – THAT WAS MIGHTY DAMN GOOD!” And so, Spanky took to the circular braided rug in the middle of the human circle and held forth,

There was a boy and a girl in Nantucket
They went behind the barn
To go pluck it.
The flowers were so sweet
From their heads down to their feet
And that is why
They will always really like
Nantucket
Where they plucked it
The flower
With power
Like a hippie
Yippie yippie
Nantucket.
It’s the place to pluck it
The flowers smell so sweet
Lots better than Joe Cool’s feet.
Nantucket.

    The poem’s reading was dutifully certified by Aaron with an EVERLASTING HELL.
    Jess abruptly decided it was about high time for recess. By per diem assigned duty, Robert Rose led the group out the door and down the hallway. It suddenly occurred to Julian that he never had the foggiest idea how Dee Dee got her wheelchair from the second floor to the first. Robert answered that question by opening a utility door midway down the hall. The unobtrusive gray metal door was stencil-labeled in faded red letters: Janitor. Julian had never noticed it before, but the group all filed through—not seen by a soul, as regular classes were all in session. They passed through an expansive dimly lit work room full of cleaning equipment, workbenches, and tools for fixing things. Everything looked gray and otherworldly. To Julian it felt like an important unknown place from which solutions emanated, but nobody really knew that. And it seemed especially appropriate that such an important place would serve as a passageway to a greater outside world. At the back of the room, in even darker grays, was the freight elevator. Like a confident old sea captain, Robert Rose yanked the elevator’s opaque chicken-wire glass door to the side. “All aboard,” he intoned. The group assembled in the carriage and Robert closed the door again, stationing himself at the interior manual control. “Going Down,” he announced, depressing a brass lever with a cocky indifference. He knew what he was doing. Yes, he did. He was certified by Jess. As the elevator reached the environs of the first floor, Robert expertly adjusted the control lever to align the elevator floor exactly to the level of the exterior floor. Then, the good captain waddled himself across the chamber’s floor to its opposite side—with its own door which Robert threw open...letting the group out into a small dim foyer fronted by another gray steel door. Aaron Wills apparently knew the drill. With both hands he pounded the horizontal push-bar blasting the gray door open to the outside world. Cool fresh air gushed all about them as they filed out. The door threshold, nearly flush to the ground, was no impediment to Dee Dee’s wheelchair. With a great heave of her arms, she preceded Julian out onto the blacktop playground behind the school. With the whole group out, Julian looked around and was happy to find they had the whole expanse to themselves.
    While Spanky and Darla meandered off around the corner of the building, and Joe Cool and Aaron went their own way, Robert, Julian, and Dee Dee congregated at a set of monkey bars. Julian latched his hands on a high bar and found it not too difficult to pull up some—after having lost weight. In the stretch, his breasts stuck out more than usual, and there was a bounce when he dropped back down. Robert was leaning against some lower bars, his eye taking in everything with a shrewd calculus. Julian sensed that Robert Rose was very smart.
    “So, Robert. You’re in the Special Class because...why? Just on account of being smaller?” asked Julian in a confused tone.
    “Nah,” blathered Robert. “It’s got more to do with the fact that my mother can’t pronounce the consonant R and she only got a 5^th grade education when she was a kid.”

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