A Safe Place for Joey by Mary MacCracken

for school the night before and let him dress himselfby himself as much as possible.
    I asked her to keep on reading to him, to occasionally underline the words with her fingers as she read, to show him how the words ran from left to right across the page. Eric should be encouraged to use words as much as possible. If he wanted milk or a cookie, have him ask for it.
    I told her how well Eric had done at this last session and that I couldalready see improvement in his speech.
    Mrs. Kroner carefully read back her notes to me, and it was clear that she really understood. I cautioned her to keep their practice sessions to no more than a half hour at a time and to end each one with a task that Eric could do well. I also told her not to worry if something came up and they missed a day – and most of all to have fun.
    Mrs.Kroner proved to be a talented teacher. During the following weeks she not only did the things I suggested, she went further and played games based on the same ideas. When she unpacked the groceries, she had Eric hunt for items beginning with the letters we were working on.
    Consequently, well before the month was out Eric had learned the
b
,
p
,
t
,
k
, and
d
sounds, and could also write theletters. He was still having difficulty with
l
and
r
, but his speech was clearer and he rarely used single words to express his thoughts. Now he spoke two, three, sometimes four words at a time, arranging them in meaningful order.
    Best of all, there was carryover in school. Each week I reported to Miss Selby what he was doing at home and with me, and I suggested the kinds of things he mightbe able to do in school, such as matching some of the upper- and lowercase letters, circling pictures to go with sounds, tracing templates, colouring. I ran off some worksheets of visual motor skills (increasingly difficult paths to trace, mazes to follow) and sent them in with Eric.
    And bless Miss Selby, before I knew it she had cajoled some readiness workbooks from the kindergarten teacher,and Eric was actually working along with the other children every day. She was careful to remind me that the work he was doing was “certainly not on grade level, but at least he was doing something.”
    Easter came early that year, and the day before Eric’s sixth visit I set up an Easter egg tree on a table by the window. Not really a tree, just a bare branch sprayed white and hung with decoratedeggshells. A friend had shown me how to make a little pinhole at the end of each egg, put a straw to one hole and blow the insides out the other. This way the egg could last forever. And each year I managed to get through this messy job and make a special egg for each child who came to my office.
    Actually, I made six for Eric. They were easy – just dipped in primary colours, a differentletter on each one. I couldn’t wait for him to come and pick his eggs and tell me the names and sounds of each letter, his eyes shining with excitement, his head nodding up and down with pleasure.
    Six forty-five. I checked my watch again. Mrs. Kroner had never been late before. They had to leave promptly at the end of each session to make the bus back home, so she and Eric were always inthe waiting room well in advance of their appointment.
    At seven o’clock I called the Kroners’ house. A female voice answered on the third ring.
    “Hello,” I said. “This is Eric’s tutor, Mary MacCracken. I was –”
    There was a click on the other end. I dialed back immediately. The phone rang a dozen times. At seven thirty I dialed again. Nobody home – or at least nobody who wantedto answer the telephone.
    I called again the next morning, only to reach a busy signal. A busy signal that lasted all day long.
    I searched the Yellow Pages, trying to find the name of a cosmetic factory in the Kroners’ part of the city, without success.
    At noon I called Miss Selby, and she said Eric wasn’t there; in fact, he hadn’t been in all week. She didn’t know what was thematter,