Scarborough

by Catherine Hernandez

  Umm. No, I do not. Nor will I, ever. Fern knows full well, looking at my second-hand clothes—this goddamn Canada T-shirt with the name “Sarah” marked on the label and these tear-away pants—that I have never been to any cottage, thank you very much.

  I was glad for Ms Hina. I could tell by the way she positioned her shoulders that she, too, was drowning them out. Plus, I know she has a special place in her heart for Johnny. She knows things aren’t quite the same for him.

  One of Johnny’s favourite things to do is turn lights on and off. The look on his face is priceless. The wonder of it all. One direction, there is light. Another direction, there is darkness. One day at the literacy centre, Johnny wouldn’t leave the switch alone. Humming as he usually does, he climbed the bookshelves to get to the light switch and began his on-off routine. I didn’t mind it so much, as it kept him from eating the playdough. I was also busy sweeping up the sand off the floors.

  All of a sudden, that bitch Helen picked Johnny up under the arms, sat him down, and screamed at him while wagging her finger, “It’s cleanup time!”

  I was mortified. Really and truly, my heart stopped. I know this. He was so far away from me, everyone surrounding him like he was to be hanged. And he kept humming. I’m going to be honest, there was a part of me that wondered if this was right. It’s my own stuff, you know. Thinking that way. Like it’s bad to be different. I felt my voice rising though, to its rightful place, out loud, into the air for everyone to hear.

  “Get away from him now!” I said firmly. I had never heard myself like that before. Loud enough that my ears were ringing. My cheeks were red and hot. You could have fried an egg on my forehead. “He is not like your kids. You get away from him.”

  Ms Hina stopped slicing oranges. She entered the scene wiping her hands with a brown paper towel.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  “These women think he’s bad, but Johnny isn’t a bad boy, you understand?”

  Helen began treading backwards, not making eye contact. “I wasn’t saying—”

  “Never ever touch him again. Johnny is different. He doesn’t even know how to stop himself for anything. He has different needs. He isn’t hurting anyone.” And that’s when Johnny came up to me and bit my hand. I must have scared him with my yelling. It certainly wasn’t the first time he’d bitten me. He had done it so many times, my skin was practically rubber. But this time, I was so hyped up and ready to fight that I let out a squeal. I shook my hand and checked for blood. Only teeth marks. I quickly grabbed Johnny and hugged him. I stroked his hair and kissed his forehead.

  The group of women huddled together, silenced and embarrassed. I made a point to stay a bit longer, not moving a single inch until they all left, to ensure they wouldn’t think I was scared by their presence. I let Johnny turn the lights on and off. Eventually, Ms Hina took her room keys off the wall for Johnny to play with, because she knew he loved all things metal.

  As soon as those ladies went about their quiet privileged lives, I put Johnny in his stroller and let him play with my wedding ring until he fell asleep. I pulled up one of those tiny kid-sized chairs and stared at him. Ms Hina pulled up a chair beside me. We both looked so funny with our knees close to our chins. But we didn’t feel like laughing.

  “Hey, Marie. Would you be open to talking while Johnny is asleep?”

  I nodded. I just wanted to hear the words.

  “I want you to know that I am speaking with you now and that it’s not bad news. I just want to help you. Would you be open to that?”

  The tears rolling down my face cooled everything down. I was reminded of those old Pepsi cans from the eighties with the two holes: one for drinking from, the other just to relieve the pressure in the can. That was me, decompressing.

  “I have been watching Johnny for a while. He is an amazing kid. But I can see he is finding it challenging to express what he wants or to look anyone in the eye. Now, I’m not an expert. But I think it would be beneficial to get him assessed by one. Once we have that assessment, and if they determine that Johnny needs to learn differently, then we can work together to find the right services for him.

  Does that sound like something you would be interested in?”

  It was like I was peeing from my face. The tears kept coming and coming. I sounded like I was choking on a carrot. I had to stifle myself so’s not to wake Johnny up.

  “The doctor at the walk-in clinic didn’t want him to get assessed.”

  Ms Hina grabbed a box of tissues off the windowsill and offered it to me. I wiped my face.

  “Since he’s too young for school, you actually need to see a family doctor. The walk-in clinic should have told you that. I’m sorry they gave you the wrong information. It’s a family doctor who refers you to a behavioural psychologist to assess him.”

  “I don’t have a family doctor.”

  “We’ll get you one.”

  “But a family doctor’s hours ... I have to be here by the time school ends ...”

  “I know. All of these challenges are completely valid. But I will try my best to help you.”

  After Ms Hina closed up shop at the centre, I walked with Johnny in the stroller. I walked and walked until I realized the shoelaces on my soggy running shoes were untied. I walked until it was time to pick up Sylvie at school.

  It didn’t matter. Those ladies didn’t matter. I was going to understand him. His special language.

  Ms Hina managed to find me a family doctor at East York Hospital. It was so far away, but she drove us to our appointment after centre hours.

  While she was unbuckling Johnny from a borrowed car seat she said, “It’s probably best we don’t share this with anyone at the centre, okay?”

  The family doctor happened to be a high school friend of Ms Hina’s. She also wore a hijab. Ms Hina explained the situation after I filled out the paperwork to be one of this doctor’s patients. The doctor began typing on her laptop, then printed out the referral to a behavioural psychologist. It felt like that golden ticket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

  The next morning, Michelle, the shelter supervisor, approached me in the hallway as we were on our way to drop Sylvie off at school.

  “Hi, Michelle!” said Sylvie.

  “Hey, sweet girl,” Michelle turned to me with a note. “It’s a message for you.”

  I looked at the pink chit of paper. It read, “Dr Berger. Appointment set for November 10, 1:00 p.m., West Hill Memorial Hospital, Child Development Clinic.”

  “That’s a month from now,” I whispered under my breath. I tried to catch Michelle as she was walking away. “Hey, Michelle. Sorry to bother you, but I’ll need some more tokens for the bus, please.”

  On the day of the assessment, not only did Johnny decide to pick his nose until it bled, but there was a transit strike. I dropped Sylvie off at school, then walked Johnny in his stroller, blood all over his face, straight to the literacy centre.

  “Psst,” Ms Hina gestured for me to go to a corner of the centre and secretly handed me a fifty-dollar bill.

  “I can’t accept that!”

  “Yes, you can. There’s a transit strike. You need to get to an appointment you’ve been waiting a month for. There is blood all over your child’s face. You still need to get back here in time for Sylvie after school. You can accept this money. Take a cab.” She straightened her hijab and looked around conspiratorially. “Plus, I need to reimburse you for cooking the community meal this week, remember?”

  Of course, I didn’t remember. God bless that woman’s soul.

  The specialist’s office was exactly how I pictured it in my head. We were ushered into a room with a small table and chairs. On the table were three large balls of green, blue, and pink playdough. Next to them sat a basket of blocks. Dr Berger, this white lady with red curly hair, asked me to take Johnny out of the stroller. Johnny went straight to the light switch on the wall. He reached his hand up and could not touch it. So he pulled a chair to the w
all and stood on top of it. Now his hand reached it; he turned the light on and off. On and off. Over and over he did this, while Dr Berger asked questions both to me and to Johnny.

  She asked me to leave the room for a moment. I sat in another room with a TV screen where I could watch what was happening. Johnny began screaming as soon as I left. He didn’t want to engage in any of the activities. He began hitting his own head with his fists. He tried to bite Dr Berger. The doctor smiled up at the camera, pretending to be calm.

  “Miss Beaudoin, can you come back inside?” At first I was embarrassed but then reminded myself that she must have seen this kind of stuff a million times. I came back inside the room, and Johnny ran to my leg.

  “Can I put him back in the stroller?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “It’s time for his nap anyway.” I strapped him in, and I let him play with my wedding ring as he usually did until he fell asleep.

  Dr Berger kept smiling. I kept thinking about how Ms Hina said this wasn’t bad news. It helped me a lot, remembering that nothing this lady was going to say was bad news.

  “So, Miss Beaudoin, I have some observations about Johnny. Are you open to hearing them?”

  “I’ve been open for a long time, doctor.”

  She smiled. This was not bad news.

  “Good. From what I can see here, Johnny has autistic disorder, operating at a twelve-month capacity despite being three years old. It’s important to give him this designation because then you will have access to programs that will help him.”

  “That’s what we need. Thank you, doctor.”

  “I understand your housing is precarious at the moment?”

  If precarious meant we lived in a place where you needed to get buzzed in by twenty-four-hour staff because the other occupants were being chased by either their abusive partners or their angry drug dealers, then yes, it was precarious indeed.

  “When you see my receptionist at the front, she will give you a list of free resources and specialists. I’m going to warn you though. This is not going to be easy. These resources might be hard to get to. They’re far apart from each other, and often times you will be given only a limited number of sessions per specialist. There are usually long waiting lists for these services. A lot of this work has to be done at home, and I can’t even imagine how difficult that will be, given you don’t even have a secure home.” She touched my shoulder gently. “Are you ready for this challenge?”

  I did go from service to service trying to find support, sometimes through snowstorms, using my ugly twenty-dollar stroller with a kid as large as Johnny in it, that damned thing with its crooked wheels making crooked lines through the slush. I knocked on office doors. Found doors locked after I had just missed appointments because of a transit delay. Cried in hallways. On the days I miraculously made it to appointments, I was told not to expect him to ever be toilet trained. I was told not to expect him to ever use full sentences. I was told to start planning on what his support structure would look like when I was an old lady, unable to cart around an adult in diapers. I didn’t care about all of that. I just wanted to understand him. His own special language.

  The speech therapist—with whom I had a whopping six sessions—gave me a binder full of laminated pages of cartoon images. Some of the images illustrated faces with emotions. Some images illustrated food. Some were of toys, and some were of activities. Since Johnny was motivated by food, the therapist placed apple slices on the table.

  “Apple.” She pointed to the apple. She pointed to the cartoon image on the laminated page. “Apple.” This went on for thirty minutes, until Johnny decided to poop his pants.

  After those six sessions were over—all located an hour-and-a-half west of our shelter, mind you—the only thing Johnny learned was that shitting himself quickly ended the session.

  “Just have patience, Miss Beaudoin,” the speech therapist told me. “Sometimes this can take months and months.”

  “But I only had you for six sessions.”

  I was showing Sylvie how to floss her teeth one night. Poor thing has been so neglected. With everything happening to Johnny, I just about left her high and dry.

  “It’s bleeding!”

  “How do you know? You got eyes inside your mouth?” She struggled to get herself free from my prying thumbs. There was just one little piece of corn there, way in the back.

  “I can taste it, Mama! Stop!”

  I stopped. There was blood. I felt like a right asshole looking at the blood staining poor Sylvie’s pyjama collar. I could have told her I’d never let her eat corn again if this drama continues, or something motherly like that, but I think we both had had enough. I washed her face and kissed her chin and cheeks, seeing as I couldn’t kiss her gums.

  I tucked her in, just the way she likes it. Two pillows on either side, blanket to the chin.

  “Want to hear a story?” I asked her while stroking her hair away from her face.

  She nodded yes. She loved to be touched.

  I told her the story of my grandma and how she was a teacher. Her trailer was next to a lead, zinc, and copper mine in New Brunswick. She taught reading to the miners.

  “What? They can’t read?” I asked her, laughing at the thought of a helpless adult. I was a smart-ass child.

  “Oh yeah, sure. These men, they all got through school without teachers even knowing if they were literate. They didn’t care. Not when they were destined for deep elevators and pickaxes.”

  I would sit beside my grandma and watch her teach these men, belittled and eating humble pie with every new word in English or French. She would kick me under the table if I tried to beat the student to the punch.

  “They’re already embarrassed. They don’t need any reminding from you, dear.”

  One night, the lesson with her usual student, Ben, was interrupted by his wife, Rita. She came in with her chin up, saying she was “just in to pick up Ben,” then took a seat on my grandma’s couch.

  “Did you notice that lady? Did you see her putting on airs, like she could read herself?” my grandma said. “She brought a newspaper just to show me how. But when you have taught for as long as I have, you know when people are just looking at the pictures.”

  Sylvie was listening hard to my story. Then she shook her arms out of the covers I had tucked under her. She held my face like she always does when she wants my undivided attention. “Maybe Rita wanted to learn how to read, too. She wanted to learn but was too ashamed.”

  There is something about that memory that gives me hope. So much hope that even after I watched Sylvie fall asleep and turned out the lights, I stared out the window until the streetlamp became blurry.

  The next day there was a snowstorm. I didn’t give a shit. I fed Johnny and Sylvie hot oatmeal. After I dropped Sylvie off at school, I walked as fast as I could in my squishy sneakers to the library. Johnny was asleep and blanketed in his stroller. I used the computer and looked up anything about communication with people who have autism. I didn’t even take off my coat. I was soggy but determined. It was hilarious, at first, thinking of how good a drinking game it would be to down a shot every time I watched another video of a researcher showing a brain lit up by animated bolts of lightning. Yes, I know, I thought to myself. My child is so disorderly and such a mystery. It was sickening.

  I found this one video of these kids with autism using tablets to communicate their basic needs. Same thing as my laminated pages, but with these fancy tablet things. This little boy, around Johnny’s age, tapped away at images on this tablet to tell his caregiver he needed a drink, or wanted to play. I watched as many videos as I could to see how the therapists taught the kids. I looked at Johnny, asleep in the stroller. I put the rain cover on the stroller and headed out again into the snow to the literacy centre. I was going to do it myself.

  I entered the centre, and those damn ladies with their Starbucks coffees took one look at me and my snow-drenched hair and began convening in the far corner. I
didn’t care. I was on a mission.

  I wanted to add images that Johnny recognized to the book. I also thought he might have a better chance if they were actual photos and not drawings. Ms Hina supplied me with the magazine clippings, construction paper, glue, scissors, and markers. She even offered me a hole punch and binder. I found actual photos of things I knew Johnny liked. A kid biting into an apple. A tray full of crackers. A woman drinking a glass of milk. A little boy playing with trains. A man fixing a light switch. An ad showing a woman using keys in a door lock. Anything I could think of. I started with ten squares of images at first.

  Edna helped me cut the squares and arrange them in the binder.

  “Did you want me to laminate them as well?” Ms Hina asked.

  “I dunno.” I looked at Johnny, full of doubt. “This may not work.”

  Edna slapped my shoulder playfully, the way she always does. “It will work! Have faith.” Damn Catholics.

  I waited until it was snack time at the literacy centre. I turned the page to “Apple,” with a big picture of an apple on it.

  “Johnny,” I said to him while hooking my finger around a chunk of playdough in his mouth and throwing it in the garbage. “Do you want apple?” I pointed at the picture. “Apple?” I had a slice of apple in my hand at the ready. Hopeful. Scared.

  Johnny stared at it for a long time. Then he walked away. My heart dropped. Why did I think this was a good idea?

  Ms Hina rubbed my shoulder reassuringly. “It may take some time.”

  I cut the apple into smaller slices. I put them in my pocket.

  “Johnny, look. Look. Apple.” I pointed at the picture. He stopped humming. I took his hand and touched it to the picture. “Apple.” I handed him one piece of the apple and he swiped it away and onto the floor. I did this four more times, until all the apple pieces were gone. What a waste.

  Ms Hina encouraged me to do this again and again at every snack time, since Johnny loves eating. I should know; I’m the one cleaning the shit that exits him each time he eats!

  After about three months of this apple nonsense, I was about to give up. Maybe it had to be a tablet, like in the video. Not a bunch of cut-up pictures in a binder. Maybe the lamination on the pictures made it too shiny for him to read. I was feeling lost and sad.