Antonia's Choice

by Nancy Rue

  I gave him a hike into the seat and pulled the belt across his lap. “You’re the only person on the face of the planet who doesn’t. We’re going to see a man named Doc Opie—”

  “No!”

  “Good grief, Ben.” I tried not to slam either door as I closed his and got into the driver’s seat. “I haven’t even told you about him yet. He’s way cool—”

  “No doctor! He’ll make me take my clothes off.”

  My hands turned to ice on the steering wheel, and my eyes would barely move to the rearview mirror. When they did, the terror on Ben’s face went through me like an ice pick.

  “It’s not that kind of doctor,” I said. “This is a doctor who just plays with you.”

  “Why?”

  It was one of those times I wished my child weren’t so bright.

  “Because he wants to help you,” I said.

  “Help me with what?”

  I hesitated, pretending to concentrate on pulling onto the freeway and making my way down I-65 to 100 Oaks. What was it Doc Opie had said? Quietly deal with the subject of the molest if he brings it up, but focus more on making his world a safe place for him to be.

  “Help me with what?” Ben was clenching his teeth, just the way I did.

  “Help you not to feel so afraid all the time.”

  I held my breath. He was either going to scream—or he was going to scream. Recently, those were the only choices he had given me to deal with.

  But he was quiet for a few minutes, almost until we pulled onto Murfreesboro Road, the last turn before Doc Opie’s. Then he finally said, “What kinds of toys does he got?”

  I let out all the air. Cheated death again, I thought.

  YMCA girl—whose name, it turned out, was Alice—greeted us with a grin and a set of Legos. Ben barely had a chance to slide to his knees in front of them when Doc Opie came out and pulled up a bean bag.

  “Ben,” I said, “this is Doc Opie, the way cool doctor I was telling you about.”

  “How ya doin?” Doc Opie said to him.

  I had to blink. He was talking to Ben as if he were sixteen.

  Ben took full inventory of Doc Opie’s face before he said, “Where’s that thing doctors are supposed to wear around their necks?”

  “You mean a stethoscope?” Doc shook his head. “I’m not that kind of doctor.”

  Ben looked at me as if he were surprised that I actually knew something. I resisted the urge to say, “I told you.”

  “I’m not going to do any of the stuff doctors usually do when you go to their office,” Doc said. “Mostly we’re going to talk—”

  “And play.” Ben looked accusingly at me. “You said he was gonna play with me.”

  “That’s what he told me,” I said. “You better ask him.”

  Ben shifted his gaze to Doc Opie, eyes narrowed.

  “It’s the truth,” Doc said. “We’re going to talk while we play.”

  “About what?”

  I squirmed a little. Ben was starting to sound like his father doing a cross-examination. It didn’t seem to be bothering Doc Opie, who looked as if he were accustomed to being interrogated by five-year-old boys. Now there was a tough way to make a living.

  “We can talk about anything you pick,” Doc Opie said. “And the best part is, you can say anything you want to me, and I won’t tell anybody.”

  Ben looked at once at me. I tried to look innocent.

  “No tattling at all?” Ben said.

  “No, not even to your mom—unless you want me to.”

  That seemed to stir something in Ben. His fine little eyebrows shot up. “You mean—I get to decide my own self?”

  “You bet you do.”

  Ben considered that while I held my breath and watched him. What I would have given to know what was going on behind that furrowed forehead.

  Finally, Ben gave the waiting room a flourish with his hand. “Are these the toys we’re gonna be playing with?”

  “Nah—I got better ones than this inside.”

  “He does,” I said. “I saw them.”

  Ben completely ignored me and slowly stood up. “Okay. Let’s see ’em.”

  “Follow me,” Doc Opie said.

  Without another word to me from either one of them, they disappeared through the door that led to Doc Opie’s office. I looked at Alice.

  “That was easy enough,” she said. “I think our boys going to be just fine.”

  “What do I do now?” I said.

  “Kick back for forty-five minutes. You want a magazine or a bed?”

  “A bed?”

  “We have a little sunroom back here for parents who just want to put their feet up and close their eyes while their kids are in session. For some of them, it’s the only real rest they get until Doc Opie can work his magic.”

  “Lead me to it,” I said.

  I didn’t really expect to fall asleep, but the minute I stretched out on a day bed in the little greenhouse of a room, I zonked out. Alice had to wake me up to tell me the session was over.

  I was bleary-eyed as I half-stumbled to the waiting room, digging in my purse for my keys. But Doc Opie invited me into his office, and Ben was too busy with the Legos on the floor to notice me.

  “I’ve got the Ben-watch,” Alice said to me. “It’s okay.”

  “So—how did it go?” I said when I was once again ensconced in the papasan chair. I quickly put up my hand. “I’m not asking for details.”

  “It’s okay,” Doc Opie said. “It’s natural to want to know everything that goes on with your child.”

  “Now it is. It’s like I suspect every man he comes into contact with to be a potential child molester. I mean—not you.”

  I could feel my face going red up to the tips of my ears, but Doc Opie just grinned at me. “Don’t worry about it. That’s normal, too. In fact, everything both of you are going through is normal behavior for two people in a situation like this.”

  “Gee, that’s good news,” I said, sarcasm lacing my voice. “I’d hate to think I was really going nuts.” I shook my head. “So…is there anything I need to know that you can tell me?”

  “I think Ben and I are going to be able to work together just fine. He’s still checking me out, which is healthy. I can’t tell you that he’s going to open up to me next week—or maybe ever—but from my experience I will say he’s a good candidate for disclosing what’s happened to him.”

  “Okay.” I had a hard time swallowing. “So let me ask you this—why would he tell you and not me? I mean, aside from the fact that he thinks I’m Public Enemy Number One right now.”

  Doc Opie’s eyes drooped sympathetically. “That’s the really tough part, but it’s common with a child who’s been abused by someone he used to trust. He’s already learned to associate nurturance and love with eventual betrayal, so it’s hard for him to trust anybody right now, especially you because you’re the person who claims to love him the most.”

  “I do!”

  “Which is exactly why you’ve brought him here.” Doc held out a hand, palm up. “Besides that, he’s angry, so he’s being defiant with you, and besides that—” he held out the other palm—“he feels alone and unprotected and vulnerable.”

  “In other words, he’s a mess.”

  “Yeah—but I’ve seen worse. I think I can help him.”

  Panic was clawing at my throat, and I couldn’t sit in the bowl any longer. I struggled out of it ungracefully and began to pace the room. Doc Opie didn’t ask me to sit down and calm down, which was good. I might have decked him.

  “It just sounds like too much,” I said. “How are you ever going to get through all of that when he’s just a little boy? I mean, really—are you being straight with me? Is this hopeless?”

  The doc watched me calmly. “I would tell you if it were.”

  “Have you ever told anybody that about their child?”

  “No, because it never is hopeless. And it’s even less so in your case because you’re
so motivated to help him. Some parents expect me to fix their kid while they go on about their lives. It’s like dropping him off at Cub Scouts—they come back and want to see a merit badge that says he’s cured.”

  I stopped pacing. “You told me all this the other day. What I don’t get is how do I help him? Everything I do is apparently wrong. There’s no way I’m going to be able to erase this from his mind.”

  “That isn’t our goal. What we want to do is restore him to a normal level of functioning so he can find comfort in relationships again and be able to experience a wider range of feelings than fear and anger and hate for himself.”

  I dragged a hand through my hair. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “There’s one thing you can concentrate on this weekend.”

  I lunged for my bag and pawed for a pad and pen. Doc Opie waited patiently. I still didn’t sit down, but scribbled furiously as he talked.

  “Let him be in control of his own body as much as you can.”

  I looked up. “You mean, like, let him pee on the floor?”

  He gave me a half grin. “Does he want to pee on the floor?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Just think of it this way. The sexual touch is over, but the knowledge of the abuse is with him all the time and everywhere he goes. He thinks other people are in control of his body. Let him be in control of who touches him, who sees him naked, that kind of thing.”

  “Do I force him to take a bath?”

  “Tell him he has to get into the tub, but you don’t have to be in the room with him, and he can wash himself.” Doc Opie pulled a piece of paper from his clipboard, drew a square in the middle of it, and showed it to me. “In the box are all the things that aren’t negotiable. Take a bath. Go to bed. Brush your teeth.” He grinned. “Pee in the toilet.”

  “Preferably with some decent aim,” I said.

  “Outside the box are the things he can make decisions about. What’s he going to wear? Is he going to wash himself, or are you? Which of three healthy foods you offer him is he going to have for supper?”

  “What do I do, hang this on the refrigerator or something?”

  “You can. The two of you will figure it out. It will get him talking. I noticed that he likes to make choices, so give him as many as you can where his own body is concerned.”

  “Anything else?” I stood with pen poised. I was already feeling better having something concrete to focus on. At least now I could swallow.

  “If you can, take him out this weekend to a store where they have a nice selection of stuffed animals and let him pick out one to be his Safe Animal. Don’t make any suggestions—just stand back and let him decide unless he asks for your opinion.”

  “Fat chance. Is that it?”

  “I think that’s a lot.” Doc Opie stood up and stuck his hands into his pockets, cocking his red head at me. If it hadn’t been for the ears, he would have reminded me of a curious woodpecker.

  “He’s going to need total commitment and tending to from you,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve been a devoted mother or he wouldn’t be the neat little kid he is. But you have to almost go into overdrive now. Not smothering, just completely committed. Put whatever you can live without in your own life on hold right now—your therapist can help you with that. Take care of yourself as you need to, and focus the rest on him. He needs you.”

  “Whatever it takes,” I said.

  But as I stuffed the pad and pen back into my bag, the lump took shape in my throat again.

  How am I going to do this? I thought as I went out to retrieve Ben. I don’t know how—I don’t!

  I wanted to turn on my heel and go back to Doc Opie and make him give me specifics, details, directions I could scrawl on my pad and type up and print out in triplicate. But he had followed me into the waiting room and was already intent on a little girl of about seven who was explaining some malady that had beset her stuffed rhinoceros.

  I felt a pang of jealousy for Ben that Doc Opie was focusing on some other kid—that he wasn’t committed to Ben’s care 24/7.

  No. That’s up to me. And I don’t know how.

  But God knows, I tried that weekend.

  I made an offer to Ben to take him to McDonald’s for supper. He immediately said he hated McDonald’s. Doc Opie hadn’t been kidding when he said this wasn’t going to happen overnight. When I said I thought Ben loved McDonald’s, he told me McDonald’s had stupid toys and he wanted to go to Burger King.

  Let him pick which of three healthy foods he’s going to eat, the Doc had said. Okay, so we were talking junk food, but at least it was a start.

  Bath time was less of a success. I said Ben had to take a bath, but he could do it however he wanted. He chose to sit on the floor in the bathroom with the door closed and kick his feet on the linoleum. I then stood outside the door and gave him a list of three choices—play in the tub, play in the shower, or let me squirt him down with the hose. He hated all three and opted for dragging a washcloth across his face. I was going to have to ask Doc Opie about that one.

  I started keeping a list of questions. By Saturday morning, it was two pages long.

  What do I do when he throws himself down in the middle of the mall and holds his breath?

  If he doesn’t want any of the food choices, do I stuff one of them down his throat or let him starve?

  Why isn’t any of this working?

  The one successful outing we had on Saturday was the trip to the toy store for a stuffed animal. I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to tell Ben this should represent safety and security and all the other things I hadn’t given him, so I just took him to the stuffed animal display at the Discovery Store at the Green Hills Mall and said, “Pick any of these guys you want. Think of him as your Safe Animal.”

  “Why?” he said immediately.

  Given that we had just had a scene out in the mall and one at Baskin-Robbins, I was tempted to say, Because I said so. But I restrained myself and said instead, “Because Doc Opie said so.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  Doc Opie was turning out to be a handy little fella to have around. I made a note to later try saying, Doc Opie says you have to take a bath.

  Ben stepped up to the display like he was about to do battle and surveyed the contents with discerning eyes. It was all I could do not to jump in there and recommend the thirty-pound lion, the plump grizzly that was bigger than he was, or the giant frog whose tongue when pulled out to its full extension would have gone all the way down our stairs.

  Let him choose, I told myself firmly. He can’t do it wrong, for Pete’s sake.

  Ben finally began to pick up various possibilities, and I watched in fascination as he examined their tails, smelled their fur, and rubbed them up against his cheek. His final test was a hard squeeze with both arms against his chest—until I was sure I saw the poor creatures’ eyes bulge. After that, each one was returned to its shelf with such finality, I felt a little sorry for them.

  I was starting to get a little afraid that he was going to decide he “hated” all of them and hurl himself into the sale bin, when he pulled out a slightly emaciated looking lamb.

  Get ready for this one to go flying back in there, I thought. Poor thing.

  Ben put it through the same paces he had all the rest of them; nobody could say my son wasn’t an equal-opportunity chooser. When he got to the final squeeze, he closed his eyes, and I heard him sigh.

  “This one,” he said.

  I covered my bewilderment remarkably well, if I do say so myself.

  “Oh,” I said. “Well—cool. Let’s buy him.”

  Ben surveyed me over the top of the lamb’s semiwooly head. “Don’t you want to know why I picked him?”

  “Urn—yeah. But you should only tell me if you want to.”

  He held the lamb out in front of him and looked deeply into its pink button eyes. “I don’t,” he said.

  “Oh. Well…okay.”

  From there it was as
if Doc Opie had put some kind of instruction chip in Ben’s head. He hauled the lamb around with him the rest of the day and had it sit at a chair at the table while we ate the hot dogs he had selected from my choices of wieners, Hot Pockets, and macaroni and cheese. I decided I was worse than a meat and three and needed to work on my menu.

  But Lamb was no help at bedtime. Ben started right after supper getting worked up about not wanting to go. I was tempted to tell him that Doc Opie said he had to go to bed, until I remembered that box thing he had shown me. I grabbed Lamb and headed for my study.

  “Where are you taking him?” Ben shrieked.

  “In here. If you want to have him, you have to come in here.”

  Ben tore after me, and I pointed to a chair next to the desk. He climbed into it and pulled his face into a knot until I gave Lamb to him. The two of them then glared at me. There is nothing worse than being stared down by an animal with pink eyes.

  “Okay,” I said. “Here’s a box.” I drew one on a piece of white paper. Ben watched me warily. “Inside here I’m going to write down the things you don’t get to choose.”

  I could tell he hated it, but Ben still watched as I wrote Go to bed at bedtime.

  “Go—bed,” he said. “That’s all I can read. Mrs. Robinette draws us pictures.”

  Wonderful. I could draw stick people and pigs, my two artistic claims to fame. However, since he hadn’t run for the television yet, I attempted to draw a bed. He nodded, as if that would do.

  “You also have to eat,” I said.

  “Draw a fork and spoon. And a knife.”

  “You never use a knife.”

  “I wanna eat something that you hafta use a knife for.”

  “Got it.” I painstakingly sketched a set of silverware.

  “Can I do one?” he said.

  I could have cried. “Sure.”

  We traded places, and he clutched the pencil in true kindergarten fashion.

  “So?” Ben said.

  “So what?”

  “What do I draw?”

  “Oh! Well, you have to take some kind of bath.”

  He nodded and studied the box. Slowly, he put pencil to paper, and a very small bathtub appeared.

  “It’s little,” I said, “which is fine, of course.”