Chapter 4: The White Coat
Entering elementary school was another battle against low expectations. Many teachers underestimated Dante the moment he walked in. They saw the syndrome, not the boy. In the first weeks of third grade, the math teacher, Ms. Vance, called me in for a conference.
“Mrs. Vance, I believe Dante should be moved to a special education facility,” she told me with that insufferable tone of pity that always drove me crazy. “He simply won’t be able to keep up with the standard curriculum here. It’s unfair to him to keep him here.”
I took a deep breath, controlling my rising anger for Dante’s sake. “Teacher, with all due respect, did you actually give him any knowledge placement test before saying that? Or are you basing this on his appearance?”
“Well, not specifically, but because of his condition, it’s assumed—”
“Then do it,” I said sharply, cutting her off. “Evaluate what he actually knows today. Give him the end-of-year fifth-grade math test. If he fails, we talk about moving him. If he passes, you apologize and teach him.”
She gave him the test, purely to prove me wrong. She almost fell out of her chair when she graded it. Dante didn’t just get every single question right; he wrote complex marginal notes explaining three different algebraic ways to solve the bonus problem. From that day on, the faculty started seeing Dante not with pity, but with a cautious, almost intimidated respect.
Meanwhile, I kept working like a woman possessed. I cleaned office buildings until midnight, then did private housekeeping and laundry on weekends. I aged fast during those years. I went gray before I was forty. My body constantly ached from so much heavy scrubbing and lifting. My hands were permanently raw and swollen from harsh chemicals. But every time I walked into our tiny apartment and saw Dante surrounded by biology and chemistry books, his eyes shining with curiosity, I knew it was worth every single ache.
