From
the journal of Lucy
Thames
April/May
2006
Saturday
4/1
Just got through an e-mail exchange.
I'm going
to have a new student under my care.
LS. Family
moving into town
tomorrow, starting school Monday. Highly introverted, poor
social skills
— possibly autistic — very good at keeping secrets, has
made
friends with dubious characters, and most importantly, suffered a
tragic loss
within the past few months.
Or so I'm told. I won't really know
anything
until I meet him. I've arranged for weekly appointments on Thursday
afternoons.
Of course, his mother expects me to
tell her
everything. That's not gonna
happen.
Monday
4/3
I saw LS for the first time. He was
getting off
the bus. Tall for his age. Couldn't read
much from his
face. GT was with him.
There was a little incident in the
boys' locker
room. Nobody in authority saw it, but we're pretty sure DF decided to
see how
tough the new kid was. Anyway, DF came out of there with a broken nose
and
wouldn't say how it happened. So does this mean LS is good at standing
up for
himself, or is he going to turn out to be a worse bully than DF?
The fact that he seems to be getting
along with
GT is a good sign. If he were a bully, GT would stay as far away from
him as
possible. I'll know in a few days, I guess.
Tuesday
4/4
TO had a bad day yesterday. When she
met LS, he
noticed her T-MAU without even having been warned about it.
Her parents keep telling her it's
all in her
head, and she knows better but she keeps hoping it might be
true. So when
she met the new boy, who had never heard of her or her problem, and he
picked
up her scent as soon as he got near her, she knew it was as bad as ever.
Now, of course, she's mad at him.
Better she
should be mad at him for no reason than mad at herself for no reason, I
guess.
The people she should really be mad
at are her
parents. People in my line of work are always being accused of turning
children
against their parents. And yeah, we do do
that
— but not nearly often enough.
It's almost a relief that she
had this little
moment of weakness. She has such strength of character — I don't
think I
could have handled having her problem. My own "problem," as my own mom
and dad
tried to persuade me it was, was hard enough.
Thursday
4/6
Had my first meeting with LS. He
seems to be
more or less as he has been described. Nice kid in his own way. Social skills not as bad as they might be, but
definitely an
introvert. He's made friends with some oddly assorted
characters. (Some other children are intimidated by
him — I wonder
if he even knows it.) And I'm sure he's hiding something.
I think he trusts me, though. In his
own time,
he'll tell me about his earlier troubles at school, and about his
father.
And I don't think he's autistic at
all —
or if he is, he's at the highest-functioning end of the spectrum.
Friday
4/7
JR had another rough night at home.
Some people
should not be allowed to raise children. I almost wish her mother or
stepfather
would step out of line and hit her, just so I would have to call the
police.
And the best part?
Spring break is next week. Time for everyone to
stay home
with the family. Because we all know that's really
what's best
for our young people. As for me, I'll be commemorating what Blue Eyes
calls "The Crucifixion and Resurrection of the Easter Bunny" by
catching up on
paperwork.
Tuesday
4/18
Now this is interesting. TO met LS
at the 7-11
over Spring Break. Some mysterious man was following him around. (Was
it this Hantz (sp?) character?) He talked
her and the manager into
helping him escape. She took a malicious pleasure in ripping the man's
jacket
out of his hands and getting her natural perfume all over it.
In spite of this, she says she
doesn't like LS.
I think she's afraid of GT abandoning her to hang out with him. Or is
she
attracted to LS? If she is, she'll never admit it even to herself. All
her
loyalty is given to GT, who is, after all, the only friend she's ever
had.
There's nothing at all wrong
with GT, but I
think he's going to grow up to be the kind of man you settle for, not
the kind
of man you dream of. But TO doesn't even dare dream of romance and
excitement.
There are 50-year-old women in singles bars with higher expectations
than her.
I should find that much sadder than I do. All I can think is that she's
gotten
a lot of misery and disappointment out of the way early.
Wednesday
4/19
Today, Crazy Pete cornered me in the
staffroom
and warned me not to let myself get kidnapped and sold to rich evil
Arabs by
President Bush. Thanks for the tip, Crazy. I wish I had the time to
start counseling the faculty
and
staff. God knows some of them need it.
In other news, I just realized I
can't ask LS
about the incident at the 7-11, or he'll know TO talks to me. Good
thing I
remembered that before I opened my piehole.
Maybe
he'll mention it himself.
Thursday
4/20
LS didn't bring up the 7-11
incident. Instead,
we talked about this weird thing that happened to his mother, which he
says
this enemy of theirs was behind. Then we talked about this incident
that
happened at the last school where he was. A socially maladjusted friend
called
in a bomb threat, and LS wouldn't say which
of them
had done it. (Of course, everybody knew anyway.) He doesn't want to
talk about
his father just yet. He managed to get me talking about my plans to
quit
smoking this summer. Like all introverts, he's learned early on to get
the
other person talking. I'll have to watch out for that.
Sunday
4/23
Oh, damn. I just got an e-mail
from LS's mother.
Why do these things always come out
of nowhere?
Has he not been through enough?
Monday
4/24
Ever notice how every damn thing
happens at
once?
First, some worm put a bottle of
mouthwash in TO's locker room again. Don't
they understand it doesn't
help?
Then, she threw the bottle at TO,
and the fight
began… if you can call it that.
Maybe guys like
Mister Big Stuff have the right idea about kids like JR. Maybe what she
needs
is discipline. Real discipline, not just being
randomly
shouted at or thrown out of the house whenever her mom and stepdad are
in a bad
mood. In other words, discipline from people who have already
disciplined themselves.
Only problem is,
I
can't do that. I don't have the authority. Even if they let me impose
physical
restraints on her, I'm pretty sure she's stronger than I am.
Just to make the day complete, our
resident
evil scientist finally pushed LS too far, and the kid threw a book at
him. He's
only getting one day in the AC, partly because he's suffered yet
another tragic
loss and partly because everybody wishes he'd lobbed a brick into
Mister F'edupsome's nuts.
Anyway, three of my regular cases
are in the
rubber room together. Coincidence? I think… so, actually. I
don't know if there
is a God, but if there is one, I'm quite sure teaching me lessons is
not why
He's in business.
Tuesday
4/25
Now this is irony — LS, who
could endure
the rubber room forever, was let out after only one day. TO and JR are
going to
be in there all week. TO is a little more used to isolation, but she's
not happy about it.
Thursday
4/27
"This must be Thursday. I never
could get the
hang of Thursdays."
First, the good news. LS
and I have made about three months' worth of progress today.
Now for the bad news. It
isn't just that he lost his father. It's how it happened. I don't think
he even
knew how much anger he was carrying around on account of it.
I said all I could think of to say.
I don't
think it helped. My head is still reeling. More later, when I've had
time to
digest all this.
Friday
4/28
JR finished her week in the rubber
room today.
You'd think she'd be used to it by now. She cried on my shoulder during
our
session. I had to walk with her back to the room — she couldn't
make
herself go there on her own. This is the second person I've had
collapse in
tears on the sofa in as many days.
The worst part is, she says I'm the
only thing
keeping her from running away. I'd like to tell her to find some better
reason,
but I'm afraid it would just sound like "don't count on me, I'll just
let you
down like everybody else." I keep thinking I never asked for this kind
of
responsibility, but the truth is, I asked for it when I applied for the
job.
It wasn't her who put the mouthwash
in TO's locker, though. If it was,
she would have said so. She trusts me that far. I think.
And even after all that, I'm still a
little
preoccupied with Thursday and LS. We're not allowed to talk religion
with the
kids. I know for a fact that some teachers ignore this rule, but
they're good
Christians and are allowed to get away with it.
I'm not even an atheist. Sometimes I
think I
should be one on principle, because even if there is a God, He doesn't
deserve
to have people believe in Him. But saying "Okay, God, I don't believe
in you
any more, because You don't deserve it"
would kind of
defeat the purpose.
I
can't be an atheist. Proving a negative is
hard enough under normal circumstances. When you don't even have a
clear sense
of what you're trying to prove, it's hopeless. I've heard God described
so many
different ways — how can I rule them all out? I've heard it said
— "God is truth," "God is love," "God is light." Well, these
things do exist, and
if they're God, then God does exist. But that's not much help, is it?
Light is
no good to the blind, there isn't enough love in the world… and
there's plenty
of truth, but it's usually unpleasant and is famous for not changing to
suit
anybody's prayers.
So how can I comfort LS? If I said "Trust in God" I'd be lying, because even if
it was
true I wouldn't believe it myself, and he could probably tell. (ALWAYS
assume
they know when you're lying or being a hypocrite.)
Back to JR. Why do I keep
wanting to talk about LS instead of JR? Maybe
because
his situation is a little more hopeful. His mom may be a little
overbearing, but she's still everything a parent ought to be. He has a
good
home to go to. All I can really tell JR is "be patient, get through
school,
learn enough so you can support yourself, and THEN you can get out of
that snakepit and make your own way in the
world." It doesn't
help that everyone else is telling her that in spite of the evidence of
every
day of her life, her mother really loves her.
If the JRs
of the
world really got that there are such things as "supportive parents" and
"loving
families" which other people had, but they didn't — I think
they'd all
drop dead from the shock. Then they'd all show up at the Pearly Gates
at once
and tear them off their hinges and there'd be such a war in Heaven that
that
little tiff with Lucifer would look like the Grenada invasion. They
wouldn't
stop trashing the joint until Somebody came
forward
and explained to them why they'd been born cheated.
Saturday
4/29
Still thinking about Thursday. This
is the
story I wish I could tell LS:
A few years ago I was an intern at
the office
of a regional blood bank. This was right after 9/11, and everybody who
could
give blood was giving blood. It kept me very busy, making the
appointments, but
we liked it like that. For the first time in God knows how long, we
were getting
more donations than we knew what to do with.
That turned out to be the problem.
We had more
blood than we could use, and that stuff can only be stored for so long
—
it's got live cells in it, you can't just freeze it like lemonade and
thaw it
out again when you need it. So a lot of it had to be destroyed. I mean, we had to. It was no good to
anybody. It was
standard procedure and we never thought much about it, but when the
media found
out about it they treated it like a scandal.
But my problem wasn't the media. My
problem was
the people calling up my office — in tears, some of them —
begging
me to tell them that we had put their blood to good use,
we hadn't just thrown it away. My idiot supervisor actually wanted me
to try to
explain the situation rationally. To him, it was just blood. He only
thought
about what it was good for. He never thought about what it meant to the
people
who gave it. He didn't get it.
And some of them were threatening to
never donate
again. We really couldn't afford that. Every year it seems like medical
science
comes up with some new reason to reject somebody's blood (the latest
one is Mad
Cow Disease) and every time that happens the donor pool gets smaller.
People
who can still give blood have to be willing to do it.
So I had to lie. I'd say, "Normally
we don't do
this, but… just this once…" and I'd type on the keyboard
and click the mouse,
like I was looking up their contribution when really I was just messing
around
on the Internet. "Ah, yes, I see your donation was used — I can't
tell
you where or when or anything, because of confidentiality, but we did
use it."
It was a nightmare. Days and days
and days I
spent on the phone, just lying my ass off
to these people and going
home sick to my stomach, feeling like I needed a shower, or maybe a
good
horsewhipping. The worst part is, I still don't know if they could tell
I was
lying or not. None of them ever accused me out loud — that's
something, I
guess.
Maybe some day I'll tell him this
story, but
not any time soon. First of all, telling him about people I've lied to
may make
him trust me more, but it's more likely to have the opposite effect.
(This kid thinks.)
Second, it's not about me. Every minute I spend telling him about my
stories
and my problems is a minute he isn't telling me squat. I haven't even
really
told him about Blue Eyes.
I just wish I had a better way of
letting him
know that the pain and anger he's feeling are things I've run into
before.
And why do I still think he's hiding
something?
Sunday
4/30
A day of peace. The
Week from Hell is over, and a new one is about to begin. (I'd say I'm
getting
cynical in my old age, but I'm not even thirty.)
Tuesday
5/2
Thank God I made the call.
Authoritarianism is a disease.
It is not
just an "alternative lifestyle" or a "different personality type," it
is sick
and wrong and it kills people. (Yes, I'm stealing this kind of language
from
other people, but I need it and they don't.) Thank God it's not a
disease I
have. Thank God I broke the rules. Thank God I made the call.
And thank God LS was willing to
break the rules
too. I knew he was into T&F, but I had no idea he was so fast.
Poor Mr. Big Stuff. I hope he's
learned a
lesson. Self-doubt is a good thing if you are an idiot.
I have to end this now. I really,
really,
really don't want to think about what could have happened.
And I almost helped. That's the
worst part. I
almost helped it happen. Is he ever going to forgive me? Should he?
THANK GOD HE RAN.
THANK GOD I MADE THE CALL.
P.S. TO is doing much better.
Thursday
5/4
Dammit, I know
LS is hiding something. But at least he's still willing to talk. I
wasn't sure
he would be after Tuesday.
Friday
5/5
Tomorrow, Blue Eyes and I are going
to do something
different. We're going to watch LS at the track meet. I feel like I owe
that
boy something after Tuesday.
Saturday
5/6
Well, this was unexpected. LS is here, in my apartment.
He's asleep right now. Just to be on
the safe
side, I'm going to hide this.
P.S. He was so cool when he met Blue
Eyes. Very proud of him.
Sunday
5/7
The good news is, LS never found
this journal.
The bad news is, I'm pretty sure he
found Blue
Eyes' comic books "graphic novels" while we were asleep. If he
ever tells
anybody we let him read those, I'll be in more hot water than I can
handle. Thank
God he doesn't talk.
Thursday
5/11
Everything going to hell all at
once. LS, JR, TO — all of them hurt
or in
trouble today. No time to explain. More later…
Friday
5/12
WOW.
All this time I wondered what LS was
hiding. I
don't know what I was expecting, but it sure as hell wasn't that.
More later,
I promise…