by Ruffian
(Names and minor circumstances slightly altered for sake of confidentiality.)
You know, being a kid sucks enough as it is. Then when you're a seven-year-old girl who knows Spanish better than English, who barely knows the alphabet, much less how to read, whose parents can't afford her breakfast or her lunch, and whose parents cannot afford to buy books for her to learn to read, there doesn't need to be anything more to overcome. There just doesn't.
And you know being a woman is miserable enough when you get a pelvic exam. But that's just supposed to be for women.
This little girl has been masturbating, constantly, in my class since before I even began teaching. The question arose: Is she masturbating? Or is she digging at some infection that is itching enough to drive her nuts?
The nurse came and observed three times before finally seeing the same behavior I had. No, this is not an infection. She is reaching climax. CLIMAX! What the hell is a seven year old doing reaching any kind of orgasmic climax? How would she know how? …And do I want the answer to that question?
The nurse immediately demanded a physical exam from a doctor to determine the source of this little girl's touching herself--and the student was not permitted to return until she had seen the doctor. Having just been examined recently myself, and having a far-from-pleasant experience, I could not fathom what this would be like in the eyes of such a young little girl. The humiliation of being poked and probed, the severe pinching pain, all encompassed by a young child's incapacity of understanding what was going on.
She came back half-way through the next day, after being taken to a doctor. She was unusually quiet, and I ached to even begin to think of what that doctor had had to do just hours before. Her mother explained to me in Spanish that she has an infection, that's all. Maybe she isn't changing her underwear enough. Maybe she got it from the bathtub. Maybe anything...
I'm confused. The nurse said she had observed a sexual climax, which stunned me. I hadn’t seen any obvious climax, but I’m not sure what I should be looking for, anyway. Infection or climax? The mother and the nurse seem to have differing opinions (and apparently, the child’s doctor). Although…the mother explained that they had noticed their little girl touching herself as well, and that they were spanking her when they caught her. Spanking her. I listened, trying not to show the forehead-slapping exasperated reaction I was having.
But this is where I want to be. Really...I'm right where I have been so anxious to be--helping children who are desperately in need, thrust into the middle of their lives. This week was unreal. Sarah had a hysterical fit on Tuesday, completely inconsolable. Apparently Dad left after his weekend visit, the first such visit in a long time. Thursday morning, Karina explained that she had forgotten her backpack because her mom and her boyfriend had had a big fight, and then argued over who was taking her to school, and that she may have to leave early that day because they might be moving out of the boyfriend's house. And then on Thursday, this little girl had, in the words of the nurse, "a very hard day."
This is where I want to be. Oddly, I am not overwhelmed, despite being in this profession for only six weeks. This is the life I know I am meant to lead.
And last week was my orientation.