Gifted and Talented

            Miss Swann, who didn’t know any other pre-K teachers with a PhD in Education, even in a place as overqualified for its jobs as New York City, sat with her head in her hands in a child-sized chair. In front of her was a single sheet of printer paper. Twenty names stared at her, each flanked by a pair of boxes. Yes, or No. Underneath, a handwritten note from Principal Lazar: DUE EOD. Her tailbone ached, but her chevron rug was at the dry cleaners, and she preferred her current position to squatting or kneeling on cold tile. Also, at that moment she felt like she needed the pain. The pain would get her through parent-teacher conferences. The pain would help her decide which of her kids she would recommend to Gifted and Talented for the upcoming year.

            When Eric Adams became mayor and reversed Bill de Blasio’s decision to end the citywide G&T program, instead electing to make massive reforms to the application process, she felt a seed of accomplishment sprout in her gut. From the day she started teaching she resented standardized testing. She knew the history—the Kansas Silent Reading Test, WWI “intelligence tests,” ESEA, A Nation at Risk, No Child Left Behind—that all resulted in little funding for the schools that needed it most, unless they were willing to give up art, music, even recess, to teach to the test. So when Adams made a campaign promise to revamp the program, she put down roots. She spoke to parents, stood up at school board meetings, hung flyers on street corners. She even met the man himself, on a walk in Brooklyn a few weeks into the new year, and he praised her efforts. She wasn’t as big a fan of his tough-on-crime policing, or his zero-tolerance anti-homeless measures, or the fact that, after an apartment fire killed seventeen people in the Bronx, his administration prioritized self-closing-door legislation over the distribution of disaster funds; but she didn’t tell him any of that. Wasn’t her battle.

            Adams replaced standardized testing with the sheet of paper that grew on her conscience like Cuscata once a year. His approach was simple—rather than spending a week of class time test-prepping with four-year-olds (about as fun as it sounds), all she had to do was check the Yes box next to the kids who would benefit from a G & T education, and the No for those who needed a more traditional public school setting. The Yeses were thrown into a lottery, from which twenty-five hundred winners went on to one of five citywide G & T schools. However, it was obvious to anyone that any kid would thrive with prioritized funding, personal tutors, grants for food and housing for their family. And now that decision, who to support and who to abandon, was on her and her colleagues. When Adams announced at an interfaith breakfast that he opposed the separation of church and state, a coworker left the Times dog-eared in the teachers’ lounge.

            But even though Adams’ election felt more and more like a withering on the back of her skull each day, and even though The Paper barely moved the needle in terms of a nonpartisan G & T, she still supported the program. She saw it every time she went down the street to the high school—the kids who didn’t get into Hunter, the ones who really needed it, were the same ones rolling their eyes in the back of the class sophomore year. The same college burnouts with regrets piled up next to their loans. Adams himself said that his dyslexia diagnosis, received at twenty, changed his life; around this time year, Miss Swann liked to imagine his life at Anderson, where she’d gone. Would he have become a different mayor? Would they have been friends?

            Principal Lazar texted—the first parents were on their way up. Miss Swann rubbed her eyes. Her classroom smelled like lemon-line cleaner, and all of the books in the library faced forward for once. The window with the crack in it was taped up and cordoned off. Misplaced action figures and Tupperware containers were labeled and ready to be returned. Watercolors, pin cushioned to the bulletin board, dried in neat little rows.

            Miss Swann took one last look at The Paper. Twenty-five hundred kids got into the Big Five each fall, out of nine thousand applicants. Thirty percent. In a twenty-person class, that’s six kids—the district would pitch a fit if she applied any more. Six Yeses, Fourteen Nos. Fourteen kids sent off to Godknowswhere, fourteen futures dimmed. Her tailbone burned.

            The Mrs. Kaplans came in right as the previous parents left, and their boy, Marco, entered behind them. Marco talked constantly. In a quiet room, he mumbled under his breath. He could read, but if he caught your eye with a book in his hand, every page became a series of what’s this letter? what’s this word? When it was his turn to feed the class pet, a goldfish named Cheese Puff, he took no less than ten minutes telling it about his day before tossing a teaspoon of pellets into its bowl. So, when he toddled in with his moms, Miss Swann exhaled after they took out a legal pad and pencil and told him to sit across the room. A parent-teacher pet peeve: people who expected a babysitter and a coherent conversation.

            “We may as well address the elephant in the room,” Kathleen said after a few minutes of small talk. Her wife, Margaret, who came in with the legal pad, as well as a juice box and what looked like a full first-aid kit peeking out of her bulging tote, shot her a look. “Is Marco gonna get into Gifted and Talented?”

            At the mention of his name, the boy looked up. His lips fluttered noiselessly like they were in a breeze.

            “Kath!” Margaret said. Then, turning to me, she added, “what she means is, do you think Marco is ready for a G & T school.”

            “Because we think he is.”

            “Well—yes. We do, yes.”

            With some parents, it was necessary to lie, to let them down smoothly, but Ms. Swann had found that the Mrs. Kaplans preferred the truth. Rather, that if she didn’t tell the truth they would crumble into tiny balls of anxiety. She sat up in her tiny chair. “Marco is very talented in life skills. I assume he has a lot of responsibility in the house?”

            Both women nod. “We have a chore chart based on your guidelines,” Margaret adds.

            “Good! And he brings that energy back to the classroom, too, which is amazing. Where he falls a bit short is in his concept development.” The clock on the wall chimed to mark the top of the hour. Out of the corner of her eye, Miss Swann watched Marco stare in their general direction. “What I mean by that is, while Marco loves to look at books and draw and talk, he isn’t interested in new activities unless an adult introduces them to him first. Becoming curious, connecting new information to past knowledge, engaging with the world—he’s missing an important piece. It’s perfectly normal, and I think that in a year or two, he’ll be more than ready for G & T. Academically, he’s a very bright child.” Miss Swann smiled her best smile. She wondered how it looked to them—she could give bad news to children, but the adults of those children, she hated to disappoint.

            “Momma, bathroom.” Marco stood up from where he was drawing and beelined over to tug on Kathleen’s jeans. She and Margaret looked at each other, and the latter mouthed something that Miss Swann didn’t catch. Kathleen wrapped her son in a brief hug before handing him off to Margaret. “You’re gonna go with Ma, sweet bean.”

            “I want Momma.”

            “I know, but Momma’s gonna talk to your teacher for a bit. Go,” she added under her breath.

            Margaret got up and began nudging Marco towards the door. He whined in bouts as they left, but he didn’t kick or hit, and as far as Miss Swann could tell his eyes were dry. He was a very easy child to take care of. Selfishly, it made her like him more. Older boys tended to swing one of two ways—ringleaders or loners—but Marco sat comfortably in the middle of the spectrum. He only got testy at lunchtime, but who could blame him? Miss Swann thought about her salt and vinegar chips, the ones she kept in the hall closet because she could never resist helping herself to another bowl.

            Kathleen watched her wife and child leave the room. She waited to speak until they were out of view of the rectangular, tiled window. “Have I told you we got married right before the school year?” she asked.

            “I don’t think so, no.”

            “Late August. Marge is great with Marco, seriously, great. But he’s…” She paused, clicked her tongue. “I’ve had a few partners before her, and I don’t think he’s gets that she’s here to stay.”

            Miss Swann nodded.

            “I don’t hide the fact that she isn’t his real mom,” she said with air quotes, “but, I don’t know. Not to get mushy, but I really need them both. You don’t think this, this development problem, has anything to do with our situation, do you?”

            Miss Swann thought about the divorced couples in this year’s class. The ones that suck it up for their kids. The ones who don’t. “There’s a chance, but there isn’t a whole lot you can do to change that. Like you said, Margaret’s a great mother to him—he’ll come around to her. But why don’t we reframe that word, problem. Marco doesn’t have a problem. He’s growing and learning at his own pace.”

            “A few years ago, there used to be an exam for the gifted and talented schools. A test.”

            Miss Swann looked at The Paper, hidden in a drawer by the door. “That’s true.”

            “And Marco would’ve passed?”

            “Almost certainly, yes.”

            Kathleen began to pace around the room. “So why can’t you just let him apply? I mean, how many children in your class can read by themselves? Sentences, not See Pat Run or whatever.”

            “Mrs. Kaplan, I think you’re getting a bit off—”

            “How many?”

            “Two.”

            Kathleen raised her voice. “Two! Ha!” She smiled, but then she looked out at the tiled window and her grin faded to pursed lips. “I’m—that was a bit rude.”

            Miss Swann felt nostalgic for September, when she was just a stranger who took care of people’s kids. “It’s alright. You want what’s best for him.”

            “No, no. Just, don’t mention it to Marge. It’s the city that does it to me.”

            The sat in silence until Maragret and Marco re-entered the room. Marco cheered when he saw Kathleen. He didn’t go back to his drawing, instead joining the adults at the table, sandwiched between his Momma’s legs. He smiled at her, and she kissed his forehead.

            Miss Swann looked from mother to mother to child and, suddenly, it appeared that a tiny, invisible barrier hummed between them all. Kathleen’s hand hovered over the small of Margaret’s back rather than on it, and when Marco sniffled, and Margaret pulled a tissue out of her bag, she wiped around his nostrils, rather than at them. The children’s chairs they occupied were no longer too small, but too big, too filled with love and desire and fear, overpressurized with everything that could go wrong in this beautiful, miserable city. The barrier trapped it all inside, but it groaned with the effort. Miss Swann could tear it open with the check of a box.

            “Here’s the deal. I’ll register Marco for G & T, but I need something from you.” Marco stared up at her and she tousled his hair. “You too, big guy. He needs more opportunity to make choices in his daily routine. Encourage him to come up with his own ideas, make games up on the fly. When you read to him, pause in the middle and ask him what he thinks will happen next. Does that make sense?”

            “What about the chore chart?” Margaret asked.

            “Keep it, by all means, but maybe let him pick between a few options. And I’ll say it again—he’s a very smart boy, and you are smart parents. He’ll catch on quick.”

            The Mrs. Kaplans looked intensely relieved. They chatted for a few more minutes, Miss Swann handed off Marco’s watercolors, and then they were gone. She trusted that by the end of the school year Marco would be a regular philosopher, but even assuming they won the G & T lottery, would he be alright? Would it be her fault if he fell behind?

            Miss Swann got up and rubbed her tailbone with her knuckles. She made her way to the drawer and took out The Paper. Next to Marco Kaplan, she checked the box labeled Yes. Her fourth Yes in six conferences. She rubbed in large, slow, even circles. Number seven knocked on the door.