Looking For Cheese

45/ Mrs. North knocked on the door. “Let’s go back,” she called. I flushed even though I didn’t use the toilet. I washed my hands and wiped them on my pants. When I exited, Mrs. North looked impatient. It seemed to me like she wasn’t used to being around children. She walked me back to the room.

44/ I didn’t actually need to use the bathroom. I wondered why they only came for me. Why wasn’t anyone else being tested? The hearing test didn’t make any sense. All I did was listen to static and say a word if I heard one. Couldn’t everyone do that? It didn’t seem like I was really being tested.

43/ She got up from her chair and walked with me to the bathroom. I was hoping I’d be allowed to go by myself. I didn’t really need to go, but I wanted to waste time. It was clear she was going to stand at the door to wait for me.

42/ The test ended. I hoped we were going back to my classroom. Instead, Mrs. North said we would be doing another test. “When can I go back?” I asked. “I’m tired.”
“This won’t take long. And it will be fun.” I tried another gambit. “Can I please use the bathroom?”
“Yes. Let’s do that,” she said.

41/ The static crackled into my ears. Both women watched me and I felt uncomfortable. “Floor,” I said. “Powder.” “Flick.” “New.” I shifted in my seat. “Ditch.” “Green.” “Service.” I wondered what would happen if I just made up a word. “Cat,” I said. Mrs. North drew a breath but didn’t stop me.

40/ When we got to the room, there was an extra adult-sized chair at the table. The box with the knobs, the headphones, and the AV cart were all set up. “I heard about your results and wanted to see for myself,” Mrs. North said. She plugged in the headphones and gestured for me to put them on.

39/ A few days later, Mrs. West was back with another woman. They spoke to Ms. Callend for a moment, then came over to me. Mrs. West introduced me to the other woman. “This is Mrs. North.” They both smiled. Mrs. North had lipstick on her teeth and she smelled a little like cigarette smoke.

38/ Mrs. West pressed a button and the headphones went silent. I took them off. Her eyes looked happy. “You did well on the test,” she said. “Better than we
expected. Except me. I had a feeling.” I didn’t understand what the test was or how I did well. She walk me back to Ms. Callend’s classroom.

37/ The words were in different voices. The time between words varied from immediate to almost a minute. “Pit.” “Tool.” “Hotdog.” “Fly.” “Slip.” “Dirt.” “Duty.” “Back.” “Flavor.” When there was a long pause between words, she held her pen and examined it as if she’d never seen it before.

36/ I listened to the static and waited to hear a word. After a moment I did. “Corn,” I said. “Hook.” “Solid.” She was writing down the words I said. She smiled, but this time it wasn’t the forced smile from before. It was real. She turned the other knob. More static. I kept listening.

35/ She gave me that smile that looked forced and told me to put the headphones on again. “When I start the test, you’ll hear noise. Sometimes you will hear a word. When you hear a word say it out loud,” she said. She turned a knob on the small box. It sounded like static between radio stations.

34/ The cart squeaked as she wheeled it over. On it there was a large beige box with buttons and knobs. It had a cord that she inserted into a plug in the box on the table. She had plugged the headphones into the box on the table and told me to put them back on.

33/ After the record finished, she unplugged the headphones and said we were going to do another kind of hearing test. She took a small box out of her tote bag. The box had two tiny knobs, a headphone jack, and two switches. She wheeled over an AV cart I hadn’t noticed before.

She told me we were doing a hearing test today. She said I would hear sounds and to raise my hand if I heard a sound and lower it when it stopped. She put the needle on the record, started the phonograph, and set the cover down. The record started with a man’s voice that said the same instructions.

There was a phonograph on the table and a pair of child size headphones. She told me to put them on. She opened the top of the phonograph and she pulled out a record sleeve from her tote bag. The sleeve was white with no writing or picture. The record she took out had a blank yellow label.

I was in second grade the next time Mrs. West came. She took me back to the little room across from the principal’s office. I sat in the green chair again. She still
seemed to not know how to smile. Like before, she’d smile for a second but it would fade away. Her lips still didn’t come together.

Until then, I hadn’t realized that there were different reading levels. I thought we were all the same. I wondered why Mrs. West only took me to do the reading test and not all of the Scooby Doos. I asked my sister whether she had the reading test. She didn’t. After that, I forgot about Mrs. West.

I got frustrated as kid after kid struggled to read and kept sounding out easy words. “John saw the bus” became “John S-A-W the B-U-S” I burst out, “Its John saw the bus.” I was told not to speak out of turn and let each kid try on their own. I asked if I could just read the purple book on my own.

I was surprised that the Redskins had a different book. The Scooby Doos were reading from the purple book, but the Redskins had a green book. I asked why we weren’t using the purple book. The reading teacher just said that each group had its own book. This book was much easier than the purple book.

We had different reading groups in my class. My reading group was the Scooby Doos. I thought everyone in my group could have done the reading test. One day I had a doctor appointment and came to school late. I had missed reading time with the Scooby Doos and had to read with the Redskins group.

The next day I asked Ms. Callend who Mrs. West was. She said Mrs. West came from “the offices” and did reading tests. I didn’t know what “the offices” were, but to me it sounded bad. I asked if I was in trouble. Ms. Callend put her hand on mine and said they just picked certain kids to test.

When I was eating dinner with my parents that night, I told them about leaving class to do a reading test with Mrs. West and that it was really easy but she was very happy as if it was a huge accomplishment. My mom asked who Mrs. West was. I didn’t know. I said I hadn’t seen her at school before.

She said that I had done very well and it was time to go back to my class. As we left the room and she locked the door, I noticed that it didn’t have a room number on the door like the other rooms in my school. We walked back to my class. A kid asked why I went with that lady. I said I didn’t know.

The woman took out another laminated sheet and asked me to read again. This sheet was also easy to read. She was excited again. I thought these pages were easy to read and I didn’t see why I had to go alone with this lady to this dingy room to do it. She pulled out another sheet. It was also easy.

The woman said that she was testing me for a reading program. She reached into her tote bag and took out a large sheet of laminated paper and asked if I could read it. Fifty years later, I don’t remember what the sheet said, but I remember that it was pretty simple to read. She seemed excited.

The woman smiled briefly. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” she said as she fought to
smile again. “I’m Mrs. West,” she said, with a third attempt at a pleasant face. It seemed to
dissolve. I noticed the lines on her face and wondered why her lips didn’t close when she shut her mouth.

The window in the door was covered with a rectangle of cardboard held on with masking tape. There were no decorations or posters on the walls. As we entered, the lady told me to pick a chair. I sat in the green chair on the right side. Her lower half of her body seemed to deflate when she sat down.

The other side of the room was being used for storage. A box of workbooks sat on a chair with a phonograph on top of that. Other piles had stacks of textbooks, ditto paper, spare blackboard erasers, and anything else that would balance on top. These were things that no one was coming to look for.

The room was smaller than my bedroom at home, which was the smallest room in our house. The wall felt cold and slightly damp when I touched it. The room had no windows. The lights weren’t bright enough. There were three child size chairs on one side of a small table opposite an adult size chair.

The woman was also sweaty even though she was dressed nicely. She walked me to a room across the hall from the principal’s office. I’d never been to that part of the school. Kindergarten through second grade were all in the same wing and we only went there, the gym, the library, and the cafeteria.