“He has permanent brain damage.”
“He’s always going to be this way?” Pastor Richardson asked.
“Yes and no. The point is we don’t know what he is capable of accomplishing. It’s hard to tell because I don’t think he was given many opportunities to learn.”
Pastor Richardson looked at the floor. I wondered what he was thinking. “It was those beatings he got in the head, right? He’d be a normal boy otherwise.” His voice shook with a thread of anger. I had never heard Pastor Richardson sound angry before. His wife took a sharp breath and held her patent leather purse closely.
“We may never know,” the specialist said. “He could have been born this way. If his father was mentally handicapped, maybe that explains why he thought it was OK to beat his son. When I was interviewing Donald, I noted several details that suggested this to be the case. For instance, he told me his father only made food out of cans. A mentally handicapped person often doesn’t know how to cook, so they cover it by eating out of cans or fast-food places. But for whatever the reason, Donald has limitations. Still, he has a lot of strong qualities. His verbal ability is good. He can speak well. He has good impulse control. I think he can learn. He will probably just always be a little slower than other people.”
“Is there any treatment?” I asked.
He consulted Donald’s charts. “Most times these scores are pretty static.” He looked at Mrs. Richardson, who was trying hard to follow him. Her wig was slightly askew. “What I mean is if he exercises his brain, we could improve connections to help him learn faster. But he’s never going to be the proverbial rocket scientist.”
“I’d still like to know if it was those beatings,” Pastor Richardson said. I could tell he was grieving what I was grieving. If Donald hadn’t been beaten, he might have been whole, and the Donald we knew would have been a young man capable of going off to college. I thought we were probably feeling the same fury toward a father who would beat his son this way and then discard him.
His wife cleared her throat. “The Lord blesses the meek; he doesn’t ask them why they got that way.”
Pastor Richardson gave her a sharp look. “I guess you’re telling me I don’t need to know.”
“I guess I’m saying you got the clay you got to work with. What kind of pot are you going to throw?”
The specialist looked among the three of us. He cleared his voice to make sure we all were listening. “The most important thing that Donald needs is people to watch out for him, to guide him and keep him safe. I can’t predict the future for him.”
“OK,” Pastor Richardson said slowly.
“Let’s see him,” his wife said, and marched to the door.
Donald was sitting bolt upright on the edge of his bed. He was holding the old floral suitcase in his lap. He looked overjoyed. “Pastor Richardson!” he exclaimed. “Mrs. Richardson.”
“You ready to go, son?”
Some social workers from a school had called about several teenagers living in a house that had no water and no electricity and was extremely dirty. Bouncing over rutted roads that had not seen repairs for years, Jan and I found the neighborhood easily enough. We talked on the way. We had been running the van for a year now and still were discovering new places where the homeless kids hid out.
At the far end of the street lay an empty stretch of boarded-up houses and crude adobe huts. Abandoned cars lay in some of the yards. They had been stripped. As soon as we parked, a group of three kids came over, all complaining of severe ear pain. I treated the two boys first. Both had ear infections. They had previously been on the van in another location, so I was able to check their records on my laptop. I saw they had been given oral antibiotics previously. The drugs hadn’t worked; that meant it could be a drug-resistant strain. I gave them intramuscular shots. “With these drug-resistant strains we have to use the big guns to knock them out,” I told one boy as I prepared the needle. He looked resigned and held his pale arm out. His hair hung in his face.
The girl was even sicker than the boys. She was short and plump and had a wide Slavic face and crystal blue eyes that were watering with pain.
“Where are you guys living?” I asked her. She made a gesture with her thumb to a house outside the exam room window. She held the sore ear with one hand.
“Are you all sleeping on the floor?”
She tried to smile. “Yeah, the maid service forgot to deliver beds.”
“Let me take a look.” Right away I saw the large mass behind her ear. “How long have you had this bump behind your ear?” I asked, examining it.
“Weeks, I guess,” she whispered. She was hot with fever, her eyes glassy and wet.
I looked inside her ear. It was curdling with infection. I returned to the mass. It was large and swollen.
“You’ve got mastoiditis,” I said. “The infection went down into your mastoid bone.”
“Is that bad?” She swallowed.
“It can be very bad. We used to see mastoiditis a long time ago. Or at least doctors older than I am used to see it. Nowadays it’s more unusual because we have antibiotics. We usually see it in Third World countries and places without medicine.” I examined the hot lump while I explained to her how her ear infection had passed down into the hollow mastoid bone behind her ear. Now it was filled with pus. Sooner or later it would explode.
“If it goes backwards into the covering of the brain, you could get meningitis,” I told her. “It can be fatal.”
“I don’t want to go to the hospital.”
“You have to go.” My voice was firm.
“I’ll miss my friends,” she said.
I patted her arm. When the ambulance arrived, her two friends helped her into the back. Then they came over to the van, shouldering backpacks.
“Where’s the hospital?” they asked.
“Clear across town,” I said, giving them directions. Jan handed them bus tickets, and they headed to the nearest bus stop.
When I had a break later, I walked over to the house the girl had said they were squatting in. There was a rusting shell of a car in the front and a sour smell around the place. Aware there might be fecal contamination, I took care as I stepped closer. All the windows were busted out. Glass littered the sandy ground, and thorny bushes grew wild around the sides. I peeked in a window. The floor inside was covered with old sleeping bags and blankets and strewn with garbage. There was an old paperback, a romance novel, open over one unzipped sleeping bag. There was no furniture. It had to be more than 110 degrees inside the room. I was sure that at night the desert wind came in those empty windows and it got bitterly cold. The kids staying there probably sweltered in the day and froze at night. Along with snakes and insects, virulent infections thrived in such places. They spread like wildfire from lack of hand washing and the kids’ already compromised immune systems. Everything from the walls to the sleeping bags was probably hot with contagions.
The rest of the day we spent treating the other kids squatting in the area. All the shelters were full, but we did our best to get them on waiting lists. It felt like a productive day. We closed up the van and headed into town. It was blocks away that we passed the bus stop. I wondered if the boys had made it to the hospital for their friend. Phoenix buses were notoriously infrequent. People sometimes waited for hours.
“It has to be hard on them,” Jan said. She was apparently thinking the same thing. “They’ve got such long distances to walk, even just for food.”
“Or to visit a friend,” I added.
She nodded. The heat shimmered in front of us, and I thought of the journeys these kids made.
Another early ultrasound: I felt jinxed, anxious, bereaved in advance, and, still, madly hopeful.
“Randy, we’re running late.” Amy fretted. “Just drop me off.”
“I’ll catch up to you,” I called out the door as she ran into the hospital.
When I got inside, I expected her to still be filling out forms. But the reception are
a was empty. The receptionist looked up. “Dr. Christensen, your wife is in room two.” I walked in, and the ultrasound technician got up and immediately left the room. Thoughts began swirling through my mind like a snowstorm. I went to Amy. Her face appeared mystical, perplexed, far away. Bright. This wasn’t a smile. It was beatification.
“Both hearts are beating fine,” she said.
I was dumbfounded. “Both? Two? You’re kidding!” I stuttered. I was too excited to even speak. Two heartbeats, I thought. Twins. Two angels on wings.
I held her hand, feeling the warmth between us. The technician came back in and turned on the screen. We watched in fascination. “Remember, Randy, how you used to say you married me because twins run in my family?”
“Maybe Ginger knew all along,” I said jokingly. Since we had figured out Amy was pregnant, Ginger had spent every night lying by her bedside, refusing to leave her presence. Amy was convinced that Ginger had known she was pregnant before she did.
I hugged my wife and felt her hair against my lips. After we talked awhile, I went outside to call my mom and dad. The air was clear and bright, and the palm trees stood in vivid relief. The sun always shines brighter when you’ve had good news. I imagined my mother’s manicured hand reaching for the phone. She had left her family in Las Cruces, Mexico, to marry my father. I knew she loved him, but I was sure there were times she missed living near her own parents. I heard in my mind the things she used to say to me as a child, how she would use all my names when she was mad. “Randal Charles Christensen!” she would yell when I got into mischief. But when she was proud, she would only say, “That boy.” I saw her holding my hand on the way to first grade, feeling special that my mom was walking with me past the dry washes, watching the early-morning rabbits scatter from the brush. I saw her face in the audience while I received my high school diploma. I was seeing in a rush all that had come before, from boy to grown man. “That’s wonderful, how exciting.” My mom was crying on the phone. “Twins!” she called to my dad. I knew he would call me later, full of warnings and precautions. For some reason this thought was comforting.
When I came back in, I announced to Amy that we should talk about names.
“Already?” she said, laughing. “We don’t know if they will be boys or girls.”
“Or one of both,” I said. “Well, one girl’s name is easy,” I added. “Jane, for your mother.”
The look on her face caught me off guard. There was surprise, aching, loss, and joy. “Yes, please,” she said. “Only let’s say Janie Marie. Your mother’s name is Maria and my sister’s name is Marie. It just sounds perfect.” I wanted to kiss her. My mom would love the name.
“What about boys?” she asked after a pause.
“I’m not sure. In my family the men all have the initials RCC.”
“Randal junior?” She looked as if she were half joking.
“No, we can’t have a junior with twins, and what if there are two boys? Let’s think about it,” I said, jumping on the bed. “You know what this means, don’t you? We have to go buy a minivan.”
Now my wife looked incredulous. “Oh, no. I am not a minivan person. I just can’t, Randy. I can’t.”
The technician had come back in the room, peeking to see if we were done with our private time. “Usually when they say they ‘can’t’ it’s because they heard they’re having twins—not because of a minivan,” she said, smiling.
Amy’s curls were shaking. “No way. No minivan.”
“Shh,” I said, laughing and petting her hair. “Shh. Everything will be OK.”
“You dork,” she said, and gave me a punch.
As I spent more time on the van, visiting different areas of Phoenix and the surrounding areas, I was starting to hope I would see kids I knew at certain locations. Some of the kids were easier to help than others, and for the hard ones, like Sugar, I held out eternal hope that each visit might be the one where I figured out what they needed.
For the rough area of downtown, I always hoped to see Sugar, and usually I did. Today I wasn’t disappointed. Almost as soon as we lowered the jacks, Sugar moseyed over from where she had been standing on a curb. It was hot out, and she was wearing short cutoffs and a tank top. There was still a sense of vitality about her. Some of the kids I treated seemed so destroyed by what they had gone through, but Sugar seemed indestructible. I knew this was a dangerous idea, because at any moment Sugar could be destroyed by her life, either actually or emotionally.
When she bounced onto my exam table, she had an energy that was unusual in street kids. She was starting to drop the brash sexual act around me.
“What’s going on, Sugar?”
“Nothing. I heard you got a dog,” she said. I was surprised.
“Where did you hear that?” I asked.
“Around. I hang with some of the street kids. But not too much.” Her eyes were as clear and bright as a white window. So young, I thought.
“Her name is Ginger,” I said. I told her all about the dog while I made notes in her chart. I showed her a picture of Ginger in my wallet. Sugar gazed at it. Her hazel eyes were unreadable. What was she feeling? The dog had a home. She did not.
“It’s been a little while since I saw you,” I said carefully. “Where are you staying?”
Her eyes became guarded. “Here and there,” she said evasively.
Sugar had chlamydia again. “The state health department asks that we promote partner notification,” I told her. “That means—”
“I know what it means. You want me to tell my partners.”
“That’s right.”
“And do you really think I know my partners?”
“Maybe not.” I looked at her with sympathy.
“Maybe I don’t even know their names.”
“Maybe not.”
She looked at me expectantly.
“How long have you been prostituting, Sugar?”
“Since I was twelve.” Twelve. My God.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I’d like to hear. Or maybe you’d like to talk to a counselor?” I was hoping she would go for this option. Whenever possible I wanted the kids to talk to a professional therapist.
She gave that little shrug. “There was something wrong with my mom. She was always hiding in her room. She thought people were out to get her and stuff. I used to take care of my little sister. I’d change her diapers, put her to bed.” Her eyes grew hazy with memories. “Her name was Sara. I called her Sara Bear. I made her bottles, and I’d put her to bed.” There was a silence. She rubbed one sneaker over the other. “We used to fall asleep on the couch together. Sesame Street was her favorite show. When Mom would get food stamps, I’d buy food.”
People said that adolescents were hard to talk to, but I was starting to think the problem was that adults often just didn’t listen. I was patient. She took a breath.
“Then one day I was at the store. I was buying Sara and me Popsicles because it was so hot out. This man came up to me. He looked like he was really nice. He had the nicest eyes. He said, ‘You seem to like sweet things, I guess I’ll call you Sugar.’ He took me to his place.” She stopped and waited, looking at the floor. I was learning just how many girls are molested, some raped, even by their parents. A few I encountered had even been sold into prostitution by their own parents. At first I had thought, There is no way they’re all telling the truth. Now I was realizing how naive I had been.
“At first he kept me for himself. Not too long. Then, well, you know.” The sneaker was still rubbing. Under that veneer of bravado, I thought, this girl carries an immense amount of pain. “They liked me,” she said, sneaking a glance to catch my reaction. “He called me his Sugar.”
Never again would I want to call her by that name, I thought. Never.
The rub of the sneaker stopped. Her clear eyes were wide and full of questions. “I feel so bad I left my little sister. I wonder what happ
ened to her. I think of her all alone in the house. Can God forgive you for that? I don’t know.”
I took my time before replying. I wanted to make her understand that she was the victim and that she couldn’t blame herself for what had happened. But I also sensed how strong her love for her sister was still. If she wouldn’t fight for herself, maybe she would fight for her sister.
“Maybe there is a way to see her again,” I said gently.
“I’d just like to know she’s OK,” she said. “I wouldn’t expect her to talk to me or anything. I’d just like to know if she is OK.”
“If you go into a shelter …” I said. I quickly added, “We could find a safe shelter for you. Like HomeBase.”
There was a quick shake no of the head.
“Or a counselor. You could tell this to a counselor,” I said.
“Naw.” She looked as if she were ready to bolt. “Look, it’s too late. Hell, the last time I was in school I was in seventh grade. I can’t even do math or nothing.” She was being tough.
But I saw under that hard shell of sexuality a twelve-year-old girl who had never been loved, a twelve-year-old girl who loved her baby sister. Just like Mary, Sugar was hiding.
When I got home that night, I crouched down to pet Ginger and rolled her on her back for a belly scratch. She was a little fluff ball. I asked Amy if she wanted to go out for pizza. I had to spend the night studying for my certification tests, and I wanted at least a little time with Amy. I was worried about her. The doctors had told her she needed to gain a good fifty pounds for the pregnancy, twenty-five for each of the babies. She was a healthy weight but needed the extra weight to carry the twins. This task already seemed impossible. Amy had been nauseated from day one, and not mild nausea either. She vomited much of what she ate. We kept expecting the morning sickness to pass, but as the weeks went by, it was getting worse.
“You know what sounds good?” she said. “Chinese hot-and-sour soup.” On the way to the Chinese restaurant, she rolled down her window and let the cooler air flow over her face to calm her nausea. We drove past a girl standing conspicuously on a street corner. Wearing shiny blue shorts and a blue zip-up jacket, she was under a dome of light. I thought immediately of Sugar.
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