Gil's Secret

"My name is Gil and I'm in the 4th grade. Seemingly, my life is going along just right. I have a lot of friends, I'm well liked, and I'm a good student. I also have a twin sister named Neta.

But, underneath all of this is hiding a big secret that I've been keeping since first grade. I have trouble reading and writing. My sister does my homework and takes my tests. Well, she used to, because at the beginning of this year my secret was revealed. I had to deal with the reactions of my friends, my family, and my teacher, Osnat."

A fascinating story, flowing and full of humor, that tells about the painful coping of a girl with her learning disability. An emotional drama that awakens sympathy in the heart of the young reader and will pave the way for children who are having trouble learning and have been keeping the difficult secret inside.

Dana Aviram - A social worker and an actress who worked for years with children. Wrote scripts for children for television. She's active in drama groups for preschool and elementary school children, and is a mother of three.

Publisher: United Kibbutz Publishing

Illustrations: Avi Katz

Editor:  Yona Tafar

With the generosity of the author, Dana Aviram, and the publisher, United Kibbutz Publishing,

We present to the public a chapter from the book:

Stupid!

When I was in first grade I knew that I was stupid. When all of the children in the class read from the board: "Dana kama, Dana nama, Dana puts on her pajama". I only managed to read from the board, "Dana kama". At the end of the year, when everyone already was reading and writing, I was still having trouble with the letters in the workbook and tried unsuccessfully to put them together.

Since then, the situation just got worse. Everyone read and wrote quickly, as if this was the easiest thing in the world, and I just sat and stared at the board in front of me and copied letter, letter, until I gave up, and quit the race that I always lost. I knew that out of all of the kids in the class that I was the dumbest.

Once, I looked at them from the side, and tried to encourage myself and then I saw Oren, the kid who barely knows how many months there are in a year, reading out loud without any problems. And me? I looked at the letters dancing on the page of the book in front of my eyes, and every time I tried to put one letter together with the next, I felt like a great tiredness was overwhelming me.

Tiredness, sadness, and mainly embarrassment.

My terrible feeling grew and developed in contrast to Neta who knew how to read and write since preschool. When we would come home from school, she would finish her homework in a second. She would put her workbooks away and would come immediately to ask me if I wanted to play. All of this was as I was still trying to figure out the first sentence. And without understanding what's written, I looked frustratingly as the undecipherable letters danced inside my notebook.

I remember the first time that Neta started doing my work. It was in first grade. Mom and Dad were at work, and Hagit, the high-schooler who took care of us was waiting at home. Neta finished her homework already at school during class and wanted to play together with me Barbie. My homework sheets looked at me scarily and sadly from the workbook. "I can't play with you", I told her, "Mom said that first I have to do homework and only afterwards I can play."

"But you've been looking at the same page for an hour", chirped Neta. She grabbed the workbook and asked, "What's the problem?" Her hand ran quickly across the lines, she filled in the two pages, and the homework was finished. I took a deep breath to calm down, and I went with her to play Barbie. From that day this turned into a regular occurrence.

The first year I felt uncomfortable with the fact that Neta did my homework, but I got used to it with time. I was scared from the moment that I would sit in front of my workbook and I would feel how my feet all of a sudden become heavy, and I, Gil, the girl who's tongue runs so fast, the one who always makes everyone laugh and surprises them, sits in front of the words written on the workbook and feels paralyzed.  Every day when Neta finished doing her homework, she would take my workbook and finish it within a second. The troubling feeling I had passed when Neta would close the workbook and say out loud, "That's it, we finished!"

Whenever she called out "We finished" this always made me laugh, as if I also contributed something to the homework. We never talked about this custom of ours, and we didn't tell anyone. This was our secret. It started naturally and continued all of the years.

So, my workbooks were also organized with a nice and neat handwriting, round and soft, the handwriting of Neta. And my handwriting was crooked, the letters covered up one over the other, such that I also couldn't read it sometimes, this became my secret. Nobody knew about this, even Mom and Dad.

But this secret, that I barely know how to read and write, woke up with me in the morning, and went to sleep with me at night, and weighed me down like cement blocks.

You rightfully ask how I got by on tests?

Well, today I'm already a big girl in fourth grade, and we have a test in some subject almost every two days. Also for this, Neta and me found a solution. When I had a test, Neta would come into my class, sit down in my place, and take the test for me. None of the teachers knew to tell the difference between us, and nobody guessed that the person who's taking the test was Neta and not Gil.

When I reveal now what we were doing, I get really embarrassed. I'm not a girl who lies.  That is, sometimes I tell little white lies, but only when I got into big troubles. Except for this, I'm straight as a ruler. Nevertheless, ever since we had to copy from the board in second grade, my twin sister came in and switched with me for tests. 

If they would tell me things like this on another girl, I would say angrily that she's a liar and a cheater. But with me, I felt that it's different. It was like keeping a secret that was forbidden to let out. I knew that if the teacher would find out that I don't know anything that she would criticize me in front of all of the kids in the class, call my parents and invite them to come for a meeting, and then everyone would know that I'm stupid and they would stop playing with me. They might even start calling me names. And if Ohed would know that I'm stupid then...well, it doesn't matter what. I don't know what will happen. I just wanted that under no circumstances anyone would know. I was so embarrassed about this.

I was lucky that Neta could always do my homework and come into class to take my tests. Flying on the wings of my sister's success, I always got between 90-100 in every subject. "An organized and diligent student", my teachers wrote about me on my report card every year, none of them ever thought that what they wrote me on my report card took me an hour to read.

If it ever happened that the teacher asked me to read in class, I would just make something up. I realized that I had an excellent memory.  I remembered very well what the teacher and students said on every subject and even in the previous class the week before. I would hold my notebook and answer by heart all of the correct answers. "Good job Gil!" the teacher would note in front of everyone, "a good and complete answer." She would turn to the other students in the class and say, " It makes me very happy that I have smart students like Gil."

At times like this my hands would start shaking. I would hear my heart pounding rhythmically, reminding me what I wanted so much to forget, "Stupid...you're stupid!"

I would sit back in my chair happy that this episode was finished, and I knew that until the next time that the teacher would ask me to answer from the workbook what I wrote when I did my homework that I would have a few days of calm.

Sometimes there were cases of alarm, that's what I called them to myself, when the teacher would ask the students to read from the book in front of everyone. You know this, every child reads a paragraph, and then it's the next student's turn. This is what I was scared more than anything else.

The teacher would pass among the students and call out their names, and they read easily from the book in their hands. Amit, Yuval, Ronen, Tal already read....and soon, another one or two students and she'll come to me. No! I have to escape. It's forbidden that she'll reveal my terrible secret that I don't know how to read!

In situations like this I used my big mouth. I would start laughing out loud, rocking back and forth in my chair, or start coughing to make the other students laugh. This was a sure way to get sent out of the class, and this always worked.

"Enough talking. You're disturbing, Gil!" the teacher would reprimand me, "if you won't stop then I'll have to send you out of the class."

A sentence like this just encouraged me to continue with more determination.

"Go out Gil!" the teacher would yell, and I, with stumbling feet, and a feeling of relief, would go out to the hallway, free.

Until the parent-teacher meetings the teachers would forget the "problems" that I make, and would note with joy my good grades and neat notebooks.

Mom and Dad were happy. "We have such smart girls!" they told Grandma and Grandpa, to friends and acquaintances, and would repeat it to us as well.

At the end of summer break between 3rd and 4th grade, Dad wanted to show us how much he was proud of us and he declared, "If you'll bring home good report cards this year, I promise to take you to a diving course in Eilat in the summer."

"Hooray, what fun!" we jumped one on the other with joy. A diving course was my big dream. After I got to know the animals on the land, it was time to say hi to those living under the water.

If my relationship with Neta would continue as it was then there wasn't a chance that I would miss the diving course. But a few weeks before the summer break, Neta decided to cheat on me, and she told me that next year, when I would be in 4th grade, she won't do my homework anymore and won't take tests for me.

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