Free A Safe Place for Joey by Mary MacCracken Page A

were all crazy about him,” she smiled, remembering.
    As she talked I glanced at Eric from time to time. If he understood any of what was being said, he gave no sign. He was moving around a little now, lining up the cars and trucks in a straight row. He turned each car over and over, inspecting it carefully. Then, evidently having made a decision based on somestandards of his own, he placed it in a certain spot in the row. There was something enormously appealing in his serious concentration. Sometimes he used his right hand, sometimes his left. When the cars were all properly aligned, he began lifting the dolls out of their carton, which was designed to look like a dollhouse.
    There were five small figures made of soft, bendable plastic – theirfelt clothes somewhat torn (they had been with me a long time), but still completely recognizable – father, mother, girl, boy, and a diapered baby. Eric took them all out and laid them on the rug.
    The bottom of the box was divided into compartments, representing rooms. I watched as Eric picked up the father doll and sat him in a room at the back end of the box. Next Eric placed the girlbeside the father. Now he put the mother standing up in a room at the opposite end. Only the boy and the baby remained. He picked them up – holding one in each hand – and then put the baby next to the mother, but only for an instant, replacing the baby with the boy. He tried the boy doll in several different positions – standing, sitting, lying down – but evidently none was to his satisfaction. Finallyhe stashed the boy doll under one of the cushions of the couch and put the baby back beside the mother.
    I had become so absorbed in Eric’s play that I missed some of Mrs. Kroner’s words. Now her voice reached me again, saying, “… never was one to say much, but he didn’t get into things or talk back the way Bella did.”
    She hadn’t sent Eric to nursery school. It had seemed like a wasteof money, and besides, she liked having him around. Bella and her didn’t get along, and Mr. Kroner slept days and worked nights at the factory, so it was kind of nice to have some company.
    Eric had started kindergarten a year ago, when he was five, and everything seemed to be going along all right, although he was smaller than the other children and he was sick a lot. Just colds, earaches– nothing serious.
    He didn’t want to go back to school after summer vacation, but Mrs. Kroner had taken a job in a cosmetic factory a few blocks from their home, knowing Eric was going to be in first grade and in school all day. So she had to insist that he go, and after the first week or so he got used to it and stopped “crying his head off. But he still doesn’t like school. He doesn’tact up, but he can’t wait to get out.”
    Neither she nor Mr. Kroner had ever gone for a parent conference, until last week. His first-grade teacher, Miss Selby, was “just real pushy” and said if they didn’t come in, she’d come see them.
    “So last Thursday I went, but now I wish I hadn’t. All she did was say Eric didn’t know this, didn’t know that, didn’t do show and tell, didn’t followdirections, didn’t talk right, couldn’t learn his sounds. Said she wanted him tested. Well. I don’t want any tests. I’ve had plenty of tests myself over the years, and if there isn’t something wrong with you when they start, there is by the time they’re done. So now I make Errol do his sounds at home with me every night.”
    It was not a happy picture. Mrs. Kroner had been in her late thirtiesduring her pregnancy with Eric. She had a history of a difficult earlier pregnancy and subsequent spontaneous abortions. During Eric’s gestational period she had severe nausea and vomiting. Eric was a low birth-weight baby with a weak sucking reflex, and he was colicky. He lacked the stimulation of nursery school. There was a history of ear infections, and Eric had disliked school from the beginning.Besides, there