Went to my tutoring gig at the rehab a night or two ago...while trying to figure out who I’d be working with, was told I wouldn’t be seeing Mandy [names and other details are changed]...who I enjoy for her unstoppable sarcastic, irreverent sense of humor...who’s seemed lately, at last, like she’s starting to believe that she might be smarter than she thinks...who slipped out and did a massive amount of coke, and was now back, in the infirmary...though thankfully, she wasn’t sent back to prison...for now, at least....Janie wouldn’t be there either, though she was brand new....I’d met with her just once, was surprised at how young she seemed...in fact, well under eighteen...and that she seemed to know something about poetry, and coasted through the reading comprehension practice GED test with little trouble...I was gonna dig out some poems from my shelves at home for her...but there’s not much point in that now...her pimp came to pick her up a day or two ago....
Then there was Sophie, who’ll be leaving before I’m there again....who, in my experience, rarely smiles, and is strikingly reticent to speak, and only ever does so in a guttural mumble...any expression at all seeming to dribble up from beneath layer upon layer of impenetrable scar tissue...any attempt at encouragement I gave her received as if it were some vague insult....Recently, one of the therapists suggested that we make up a certificate for people who are about to leave, formally signifying what they’d accomplished with me, on paper...which, in her case was significant...even if it’s hard to say how much that was a matter of improved ability, and how much simply realizing that she could do more than read the most basic words...not that, practically speaking, that distinction matters much...so, I had this cheesy piece of paper to give her, stating that she’d completed some tutoring...wasn’t sure what to think about that...
...but, oh god, opening the folder I handed her and seeing it...she glowed like the rising sun....
