By Lynnette
Bukowski © 2010
At
11:42 pm on a Wednesday night I opened the front door to a weary-eyed social
worker, a police officer so rigid he looked to be vibrating, and a two, perhaps
three-foot tall blanket that may have been light green at some point in its
history. I stepped to the side to allow
them entry. No one moved. Red, usually attached to my hip, stayed in
the doorway in a sit position, but his front paws crept forward until the tip
of his black nose nudged the blanket. A tiny hand appeared, touched the top of
Red’s head, and then quickly withdrew. The movement snagged a silky frayed edge
and the cloth fell away to reveal a mess of brown hair, round blue eyes and a
perfect spray of freckles across cheeks and nose. The boy stared straight ahead,
jaw set, lips rigid, “I not talk,” he said.
I
nearly smiled, but this felt like a test, so I nodded once and said, “Good to
know.” I ignored the woman’s raised eyebrows and instead, turned and walked
down the hallway, as though welcoming a frightened child and two strangers into
my home with five children asleep upstairs and my husband deployed was simply
another day in the life. It wasn’t. But I had trained for and signed on to be an
emergency therapeutic foster parent, and it was far too late at night to admit
I might be in over my head.
A
piercing, rigid scream coincided with me flipping a switch in the kitchen; the
brightness igniting the sound and the child until both dissolved onto the
floor, skittered across the tile and came to rest as a steady choking sob in
the corner of the room. I glanced toward
the sound of whispers in the hallway, heard the baby cry, heard the upstairs
floor creek with footsteps and nearly missed the words from woman to officer, “I
thought I mentioned he doesn’t like to be touched.” Still, my focus was on the
dog huddling peacefully next to the trembling boy in the corner of my kitchen. My first thoughts: Who the hell touched him?
Then: Dog is fine, boy is breathing, floor is clean. Really, this is my brain in crisis-mode.
I’m sure I heard God chuckle as I ushered the
adult people out of my home with a quiet thank you. To my ears I sounded like a crazed Ms. Manners. I just barely controlled my urge to laugh
aloud at their relieved smiles, the promise that the child would be placed in a
permanent foster home by the weekend; and the pitifully small paper sack in my
hand with the name “James” scrawled in black marker. It was weep or deal time so I closed the
door, found two pillows and a large quilt and settled in for a long night on
the kitchen floor.
Until
that night I thought I knew what was in the next room, what kids like for
dinner, what grass feels like on bare feet.
I was comfortable with the orderly mess I orchestrated each day. It was
crazy and hard and joyful and it was mine. Until the night of James -- when I
discovered that in three years a child can be so badly abused that his small
world is reduced to a corner in the kitchen and an old soiled blanket.
On
day two, James and I compromised with a makeshift bed upstairs next to Red’s
pillow at the end of Aaron’s crib. He
dressed himself, but only while underneath the blanket draped over his
head. He ate with his hands, brushed his
teeth and appeared intrigued by the maneuverings of the older children in the
house. They spoke to him, answered for him, proclaimed his cuteness and ignored
his quirks. Still, he did not talk. He paid no attention to Aaron, or so I
thought, who, for most of the day remained strapped to my chest in sling. One
morning, in the midst of a chaotic (our norm) breakfast, signing papers and
packing lunches, James tentatively stepped very close to me and with the edge
of his soiled blanket, reached up and wiped a bit of spittle from Aaron’s
chin. For an instant all activity
stopped. A collective deep breath filled
the space and then – through the guidance of angels perhaps – we all knew not
to react to this tender moment – instead, we resumed chaos as usual.
Baths were out. Since I drew the line at Red and
the blanket in the bathtub, our first attempt at bathing ended in shrill
screams and a brief regression to his safe place in the corner. Sheri
– in all her eight-year-oldness, cleaned out the plastic baby pool and with
Red’s patient cooperation, a bar of soap and a three-year old at the end of a
hose, we had a semi-clean boy and a sparkling, if not matted, Golden Retriever every other day.
James’
two day emergency stay turned into two weeks, four days and three hours – this
according to James –and not duly noted until the day I received a phone call
notifying me of a permanent home move, to which I responded with a simple, no
thanks, he’s already home. The social worker was still speaking when James took
my hand (a touch miracle of its own) and pointed with glee to his tiny drawings
on the wall in his safe corner. This was
the first smile, the first initiated touch and the first emotion I’d seen from
this child. After some confusion (he
still wasn’t speaking) I came to realize that he had drawn meticulously neat small
dots to represent hours, circles around exactly 24 dots to represent days and
squares around each set of circles to represent weeks. Also, he was partial to blue crayons, which
oddly complimented my yellow flowered wallpaper.
Patience
is not one of my virtues. I tend to set
my course and go, obstacles be damned. James, though, elicited a calm in me I
cannot to this day explain. I was
content to watch him watch life, soak it in and return to his safe place in the
corner as necessary.
Red
was my Godsend and as it turns out, James’ confidant. Shortly after the baby pool baths began – and
out of necessity – I showed James how to brush Red’s coat. Our back deck was about a foot off the ground
and built around a large oak tree. Each
day, James would sit on the edge of the deck next to the Oak trunk. Red would cuddle up to his left side and as
the brushing began – a methodical, tender child stroke – James would quietly
talk. Usually, I sat in a glider on the
other side of the massive oak rocking Aaron, but James never seemed to notice
that there was anyone else in the World except for him and Big Red. He told Red in vivid detail about his broken
arms, his round scars, his mommy’s bruised eye, how Man #3 was more mean than Man #2, but wrestled
better until he got mad. How touching
meant hurts and talking was trouble and how he thought maybe Man #1 might be
his dad who went to Heaven but mommy didn’t tell him for sure.
On
the forty-second day of James, a sunny, breezy day, James asked Red if he ever
wanted to be a cowboy some day. I heard
hope in the question and I so wished Red could just this time… answer the
question with a hearty Yes! I was still smiling to myself when I heard Red’s
sigh from the other side of the Oak, heard his nails scratch the deck board as
he stood and shook. James – holding on
to Red’s collar – appeared at the side of my chair. He reached out and patted Aaron’s head,
touched my hand and asked, “Could Red and me please have a butter jelly
sammich, Mommy Lynn?”
Exactly
one year, thirty days and two hours from the first moment we met – and I have
the wallpaper saved to prove it -- James left our home to live with his natural
grandparents in another state. From
letters and phone calls I know that James learned to ride horses – to be a
cowboy – and in high school he began to train dogs specifically to work with
abused children.
That
was the year I learned to listen. Really
listen. I kept notes – The Journals of
James – I wept in the shower each night for the pain this child endured, I
testified in court to make sure Man #3 saw the inside of jail cell, I learned
to listen to small words, small gestures, tiny movements and night terrors and
wait with baited breath for the moment when a simple request for a butter jelly
sammich rocked my world.
We
have to be willing to wait.
