"Left Behind"

by Billie Hanson-Dupree

I approach the double doors, feet dragging. Wrench one door open and enter. Breathing hard. The air is thick. The same air I breathed before I walked in, but it doesn’t feel the same. Is it the school smell of floor wax and disinfectant?

Memories stab as if I had been here yesterday instead of thirty years ago. I remember how I squirmed at my desk when the teacher asked me to read aloud. Sweat slid down my back. I stumbled through the page. She had to tell me half of the words. I could recognize some, but I never understood how the other kids remembered so many more. My searing rage against myself bubbled. I couldn’t do what seemed so easy for my buddies.

At the end of third grade, all my friends passed, promoted to fourth grade. Kids I had grown up with, friends since kindergarten. I was left behind. Repeating third grade.

Never learned to read. Another year of third grade wasn’t the cure.

Today I trudge down the hall to room 14, my son Malcolm Junior’s third grade classroom. Lower my heavy body into the hard plastic chair in the hall. I’m early. Clench and unclench my fists. And the familiar dread rises again, like hot motor oil in my chest. I study my shaking hands, and examine my short fingernails, still rimmed in black. Scrubbed them with Lava before I left work, but no matter how much I scrub, they never look clean. Mechanic’s hands.

I glance at the magazines spread on the small table next to me. Pick up the one with monster trucks on the cover.

The dark grey door clicks open, and a short, dark-skinned middle-aged woman wearing wire-rimmed glasses peers around it.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Madkins. I am so pleased that you could attend Malcolm’s conference. Please come in,” Mrs. Owens says in her perfect schoolteacher voice.

I rise from the chair, replace the magazine carefully on the table. Follow her into the classroom. My gut feels like I have been punched. After all these years.

I take a deep breath.

Twisting my body into the mud-colored wooden chair next to her, I try to check the fear, still rising in my chest like fluid from a busted radiator hose. Fear that Malcolm will be left behind like I was.

I wipe my sweaty palms on my khaki pants and hope Mrs. Owens doesn’t notice the beads of sweat gathering on my forehead. She hands me a beige paper with a drawing on the top half of the page and a child’s writing on the bottom half.

“Mr. Madkins, I asked you to come here to share an exceptional story Malcolm wrote about you.”

I inhale slowly, exhale, hoping to release the panic squeezing my heart and the slight shaking of my hands.

I study the detailed drawing of me half-hidden under my black pick-up truck.

Malcolm is handing me a large silver screwdriver. We both wear dark blue mechanic coveralls. I look at the words on the thin paper. I see some words I know, but most of them I can’t read.

I can’t fake this. Won’t fake this. What did Malcolm write?

I take a deep breath and stare at the paper. I exhale releasing some of the worry that grips me. Keeping my eyes on the paper I slide it across the table toward Mrs. Owens.

“Ma’am, I can’t read too good. Could you read Malcolm’s story to me?”

I raise my eyes and study Mrs. Owens’ face, ready for pity, or surprise.

Mrs. Owens smiles warmly, nods her head. She takes Malcolm’s paper and begins to read.

My Dad

My dad is great. He can fix anything that is broken. He fixes cars, bikes and even my toys. He teaches me how to fix things too. He always tells me I can do anything he can do if I watch carefully. And I can! My dad taught me how to bait a hook with night crawlers and then he took me fishing in the delta. I caught a catfish!

My dad taught me how to ride a two-wheeler. He taught me how to plant okra and corn in our backyard. He made me a kite without looking at the directions. He showed me how to run fast and hold the kite string tight so my kite would fly. When I read to him he makes me figure out the words by myself. My dad is the best teacher in the whole wide world!

Mrs. Owens removes her glasses and slides Malcolm’s story back across the table to me.

“I asked the children to write about their favorite teacher, and this is what he wrote. Isn’t that beautiful?”

I nod. I try to stop the tears slipping down my face. I can’t. She pulls a tissue from the box and silently hands it to me.

` “I’ve never been called a teacher before,” I whisper.

Mrs. Owens gazes at me. The sunlight from the classroom windows brightens her brown face.

“You may not be able to read very well, Mr. Madkins, but you are giving Malcolm an excellent education. He’s one of my best students.”

I release a sigh. “Thanks for reading this to me.”

“And thank you for teaching Malcolm, Mr. Madkins. It is a pleasure working with a child who is so eager to learn.”

She rises from the wooden teacher’s chair and puts out her small hand. I take her soft, hand in my sweaty, calloused one and smile. Like I just won a million dollars.

Malcolm won’t be left behind.

Billie Hanson-Dupree’s debut novel, Still Kickin' was published in the spring of 2025 by Tuleburg Press. She is currently completing her second novel, Some Greens for my Blues.

Billie is a member of the California Writers Club and an active participant in a critique group of talented Bay Area writers.