Good Kings Bad Kings

by Susan Nussbaum

  I wasn’t always so cautious. I had a relationship once that started out really well, but as things went on, the guy turned mean. I didn’t see the signs. Famous last words. The guy—his name was Dennis—started to be really critical of me. Critical of everything after a while—my lack of social skills—and I am just shy, or low key maybe, but he convinced me my behavior was equivalent to projectile vomiting at anyone I was introduced to. He also criticized the way I pronounced words, my taste in music, my clothes, and, to add insult to injury, my body. The guy was an infection. And I let it go on for over a year. By the time Dennis broke up with me—I didn’t even have the spine to break up with him—he had pretty well strip-mined my self-confidence. But that came back in time, in little ways at first. I started listening to jazz again, which he never liked. I started using the toothpaste I like instead of his crappy Pepsodent. I started eating tomatoes again because he hated tomatoes. He didn’t even want the taste of tomato on my lips. But I also stayed away from men. I stayed away from everyone, really. Until now.

  Since I work through my lunch hour, I always take a break later in the day to wander around the halls when the kids are between classes. Some of the kids are nineteen or twenty, so they’re mostly out of school, but ILLC runs a couple of classes each day billed as Independent Living Skills classes, which are supposed to prepare them for when they age out of here and which I genuinely hope are not as bogus as they appear to be. The kids are supposed to learn about money—how to make a budget, how to pay bills, all that stuff—but they’re learning from workbooks. These are kids who have never had more than a few dollars in their pocket in their whole lives. They’ve never owned a checkbook, purchased anything more expensive than a Mr. Frosty, they don’t have the first clue about banks or monthly statements or buying groceries. Mrs. Phoebe won’t even let the kids take the bus alone because she says it’s a liability issue. Everything is a liability issue. Ricky said that most of the kids here have never even crossed a street by themselves. Eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds. Kids like this are trained to stay helpless. So they have to stay institutionalized. There’s no other way to explain it.

  My friend Zora is an activist. She’s the one who got me my first subscription to the Plumed Serpent. She tried getting me to go to protests about the institutionalization of crips. The thing is, large groups are my bête noire. I finally attended one protest with her a long time ago and it was horrible. The police went crazy. They treated the crips almost as violently as they treat noncrips. There were even a few broken wheelchairs left in the street after they dragged the protesters, including Zora, off to jail. Zora and I lost touch after that. I think she was disappointed in me for leading an empty and meaningless life and enabling my meaninglessness with the settlement money from the Chicago Transit Authority. It’s just as well. If she knew I was working in a nursing home for juveniles, she’d hate me.

  Sometimes I time my break so I’m there when Mia and her boyfriend, Teddy, get out of class. Teddy showed me how I can attach a bungee cord between one of my handlebars and Mia’s armrest and pull her around that way. If you show these kids the slightest bit of attention, they’ll become your best friend. They’re like sunflowers and you’re the sun. But she’s not in class today. Maybe she’s not feeling well. I can’t find Teddy either, which is too bad because I wanted to tell him about my idea.

  Teddy will be twenty-two in a few months and he’ll be transferred out of ILLC because when you’re twenty-two, the state views you as an official adult. But he doesn’t have much say about where they send him. It will probably be another nursing home, but not for juveniles. He’s this great kid, really funny, always getting into trouble, and a lot of the kids here look up to him. He doesn’t have that institutionalized mentality. But he has a significant disability and, from what I can see, no support and no skills that would enable him to survive on his own. He’d be fine with a little help, but how will he hire assistants and pay them or even fire them if he has to? They do a pathetic job of teaching them here. I met Teddy’s dad once, and he was great but he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who could take on the bureaucracy. Then I was leafing through the Trib a few weeks ago and there was an article about nursing-home abuse in a string of places on the north side of the city and in a few suburbs. There was a quote from a lawyer who works at the Center for Disability Justice, a place I’d never heard of. I called and left a message and about a week later Elaine Brown called me back. She said she’d send me some information. I got the info yesterday, so I wanted to show it to Teddy. Maybe he’ll want to go over there and meet with a lawyer. Maybe there’s a way he won’t have to go to another nursing home.

  But Mia—I’m not so sure what will happen to Mia when she ages out. She showed me her workbook a while ago. She’s basically blind in one eye and needs large print, but her workbook is in regular-size print. So I asked her if she told her teacher and she said no. I said, “Why not?” and she said, “It’s okay.” So I said, “What if someone said to you, ‘Mia, you can’t go to school anymore. No more school for you.’ Would that be okay?” She said, “I don’t know.”

  It’s like she’s trying to make herself invisible.

  Not that invisibility is hard to achieve when you’re a crip. We’re minor characters in someone else’s story.

  ILLC is a state facility, but because the government has been regularly contracting out chunks of its publicly owned programs to the private sector, the state made a deal with a private company to run ILLC’s day-to-day operations. So it’s not really state-run because now a private company, Whitney-Palm Health Solutions Inc., takes care of everything. Whitney-Palm is supposed to turn ILLC into a well-oiled model of efficiency, and because Whitney-Palm is profit-driven, they’re doing everything they can to keep the overhead low. They must be getting paid a nice chunk of change for taking over. The vice president will be at the board meeting tonight. Whitney-Palm only won the contract about a year ago, so I guess I’m getting in on the exciting ground floor of the new and improved state-of-the-art ILLC.

  At five thirty I take my yellow legal pad and go to the conference room, tong myself some triscuits and a few cheese cubes, and spear a couple microwaved mini–egg rolls. One of the egg rolls rolls off my paper plate and under the table, but I pretend not to notice and pull into my place for the board meeting.

  The board members trickle in. None of them have disabilities or are parents of kids with disabilities, and there’s only one person of color, a middle-aged Hispanic man who owns a public relations company.

  I don’t actually participate in meetings. It’s my job to take notes, strictly fly-on-the-wall stuff. Tim McGraw from Whitney-Palm is there, with another Whitney-Palm person named Michelle. She’s a patient recruiter. Sounds ominous. She looks like she’s in her latish twenties. She wears clear nail polish on long nails, and high, high heels with one of those female versions of a business suit. Pretty hair.

  The meeting begins. Whenever anyone refers to disability, they use the word “handicapped.” Or sometimes they’ll say “handicapped or disabled” together. As if they personally prefer using “handicapped,” but they realize there are some newfangled notions out there about saying “disability,” so they’re covering their bases. I’m a little stunned the ILLC board is still struggling with this one. It confirms my every instinct that these are some of the very last people I would consider for a body that makes decisions about “handicapped or disabled” kids.

  I myself prefer “crip,” or variations on “crip,” strictly for personal use. Some crips think using “crip” should be retired for good, because it reveals a deep lack of self-esteem, besides sending the wrong message to the noncrip majority. I disagree. I still find “disabled” pejorative. Why not take back the king of all pejoratives, “cripple,” and re-empower it by giving it the crip imprimatur? All I’m saying.

  Mrs. Phoebe barely says anything at first, just adds a few details. It’s weird to see her be so deferential. Tim introduces Michell
e Volkmann and explains that she is a valued Whitney-Palm staff member and here to observe. He announces a few things that need to be approved budgetwise, and one by one the board approves his proposals.

  Then Tim asks Mrs. Phoebe for her report. Mrs. Phoebe announces that there has been a new lawsuit for wrongful death brought against ILLC by the parent of a ten-year-old boy who was an ILLC resident between 2010 and 2011. She adds that another suit from 2003 and two suits from 2005 have been settled. She reports that ILLC has been staph-free for an entire three-month period. ILLC is at full capacity, or every bed filled, thanks in part to the efforts of Michelle Volkmann. Everyone claps and Michelle thanks them. Mrs. Phoebe ends with a report of a generous private donation to ILLC from the president of St. Theresa’s Hospital.

  The report sounds disturbing to me, at the very least, yet the board members nod with concentrated expressions, except during the part about the donation, which meets with great approval. I decide to compartmentalize this and get back to it later.

  There are a few board members with questions but the whole meeting is over in ninety minutes. No one notices the egg roll under the table.

  Teddy Dobbs

  Me and Bernard was just standing around by the cart where they keep the cleaning stuff. We was, you know, like standing around. Except we can’t stand. Ha. There wasn’t nothing going on, as usual. They was gonna make us go to bed in a while. Bernard took the bottle of soapy stuff the janitor keeps on the cart. I took some straws ’cause you can’t never get one of those when you need one. I would’ve took more but I can’t close my hand good. Then we left the cart and roamed. That’s what I call it when me and Bernard are just walking around with no place to go. Like how cell phones roam. We’re just like cell phones.

  At night there ain’t nothing going on here. Bernard was supposed to go home today for a couple days ’cause he ain’t been in a while but none of his brothers or sisters was gonna be there to carry him up the stairs. They live on the third floor. That’s another reason we was roaming ’cause we was both in bad moods.

  “I’m gonna write to the TV show where they get the guy who gets bullied and the guy who is the bully, you know? And say I’m like handicapped and a wheelchair person, right? And tell them all about Louie and they’ll get one of those fighters, you know? And he’ll beat the crap outta Louie and I’ll get ten thousand dollars. You wanna do it with me? I’ll give you half.”

  Bernard said, “What show?”

  “The show on TV that has the bully and the guy getting bullied. You gotta see that show. You never seen it?”

  Bernard said, “No. You get ten thousand dollars?”

  “Where you got ten thousand dollars at?” Yessie and Cheri was in the elevator right as me and Bernard was passing by the elevator. So we went in.

  I says, “A TV show.”

  Yessie goes, “They gots shows where you can win a million dollars. Why’d I go on a show and get me ten thousand dollars when I can get me a million dollars?”

  Cheri goes, “I wanna go on The Price Is Right.”

  Bernard goes, “Where y’all going?”

  Yessie said, “Nowhere. Where you going?”

  I go, “We don’t know yet. Wanna come?”

  Yessie goes, “Hell yes. We’re bored as dirt.”

  Cheri laughed at that. Cheri laughs a lot. She doesn’t talk much. Sometimes she falls asleep. You could be making noise or one time I saw her at dinner with her head on the table. I guess she gets pretty tired.

  I go, “Just keep pushing different elevator buttons for a while.”

  Bernard says, “We gotta bottle of this soap stuff. We might do something with it.”

  Yessie goes, “Let’s ruin something.”

  Bernard says, “That’s what we was thinking.”

  Sometimes when we get real bored we like to mess things up a little. Mrs. Phoebe got real mad one time when me and Bernard found some superglue and glued the phone receivers to the phones.

  I go, “What should we do?”

  Cheri goes, “Pour some soap in the pop machine?”

  I go, “Yeah, but I like the pop machine.”

  Everybody said yeah. And we didn’t wanna wreck the TV neither.

  Bernard said, “Let’s sneak in the staff bathroom and squirt soap all around.”

  Yessie goes, “I’m in.”

  Bernard goes, “We need a lookout. You wanna be the lookout?”

  Cheri goes, “I’ll be the lookout.”

  Bernard goes, “If an adult comes along you have to give us a heads-up. And you gotta talk them out of coming in.”

  Cheri says, “Okay.”

  We got out on the ground floor and the first person we see is Joanne. Me and Bernard go, “Hey, Joanne.”

  Joanne goes, “Hey. What’s the word, hummingbirds?”

  I says, “How come you’re still here?” and she says, “Just finishing up.”

  I says, “This is Yessie and Cheri.”

  Joanne says “Hi, Yessie and Cheri. Where are you all off to?”

  Cheri goes, “Nowhere.”

  Joanne says, “Okay, well, have fun. See you later, alligators.”

  I go, “Bye, Joanne!” When she was gone I said, “I feel bad messing up Joanne’s bathroom,” and Bernard says, “She can’t go in them toilets anyway ’cause they ain’t assessable. Joanne’s got to go over by the pop-machine bathroom,” so I felt okay after that. Yessie says, “You mean she works here?” and Bernard says, “Joanne’s cool,” and I says, “She’s nice,” and Cheri says, “Why she in a wheelchair?” and none of us knew.

  The staff bathroom ain’t too big. Just the two stalls. Cheri’s standing outside keeping watch, but me and Bernard and Yessie is all in wheelchairs and my chair is a electric chair, so it’s pretty big, so when one of us needs to move we all gotta move to get rearranged.

  Yessie goes, “I got a idea. Long as we’re here, wanna plug up the toilets? You ever tried that?”

  I go, “Last time we was in here we got caught, so we didn’t get a chance to do nothing.”

  Yessie says, “Okay, the best way to do this? Is Teddy, you unroll the toilet paper, and Bernard, you start putting it in the toilet. I’m gonna see can I find extra rolls in one of these cabinets.” Then she hiked herself up off her chair and onto the sink-table thing.

  I go, “We could start squirting the soap on all the toilet paper too and when they try to flush it’ll get all bubbly.”

  She goes, “Oh Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior, look what I found.”

  Yessie opened a cabinet and there’s about a ton a toilet paper rolls in there. Then we hear Cheri in the hall saying kinda loud, “Hi, Ms. Phoebe,” and us three freeze up. Mrs. Phoebe goes, “Hello, Cheri, how are you?” and Cheri says, “I’m fine,” and then she laughs and we hear Mrs. Phoebe’s shoes walking past.

  Then me and Bernard keep on stuffing the toilets fuller and fuller. Bernard shoved a whole roll of it in there.

  Yessie squirted soap on the mirror. “Hey, did Old Skinhead really use to be a prison guard?”

  Yessie calls Louie “Old Skinhead.”

  I says, “Yeah, and he has a Taser.”

  Bernard says, “He says he got a Taser.”

  I says, “You think your dad got tasered ever? In the penitentiary?”

  Yessie says, “Your dad’s in the penitentiary? My dad’s in the penitentiary too! Least that’s what I heard. I don’t even know my father’s name.”

  Bernard says, “My dad’s at Sumter Correctional in Florida.”

  I says, “Louie told Jason Remke he tasered a guy’s balls.”

  Then we heard Cheri in the hall. “I don’t know. I think I hurt my ankle. Can you help me go to the nurse?”

  Yessie and Bernard got real still. Soon as we heard Cheri go off we sneaked out. Bernard says, “Cheri’s good at that,” and Yessie says, “I didn’t realize she was so talented,” and I says, “Yeah. She’s a real good lookout.”

  We went to the infirmary and got Cheri ’c
ause she told the nurse she was feeling better. She has a limp anyways but she limped harder for a while just to be safe.

  When we was back at the elevator talking about how awesome it was gonna be when Mrs. Phoebe went in that bathroom and tried to flush one of the toilets, I remembered how I didn’t think about Mia one time in a whole hour. I wish I could tell Mia how I ain’t thinking about her. I don’t want to talk about what she did to me. Bernard said I must’ve done something wrong but I didn’t do nothing.

  The thing about what Mia did is she didn’t even tell me why. I’m going around thinking everything’s okay and alla sudden she don’t want to be with me. Maybe she thinks she’s too good for me. She hurt my feelings and I ain’t never gonna be her friend or fiancé no more.

  Cheri said, “That was the best time I had since I got here.”

  Bernard said, “You can be our lookout anytime. Dang, girl. You was good.”

  Yessie says, “Teddy, I knew you was a badass. That suit’s just to throw them off.”

  I go, “Yeah, I guess I’m a badass.”

  Yessie says, “Well. It was fun hanging out with you two.”

  We was at Yessie and Cheri’s room. Cheri said, “We could sit at your table for dinner tomorrow.”

  Me and Bernard said that’d be awesome and then everybody said bye.

  Late in the night, I can’t make my mind stop thinking. Even if Mia begs me to be her fiancé again, it’s too late for her. She’ll be real sorry but I won’t care. She’ll see when I get a new girlfriend and look real happy. I wonder do she have a new boyfriend?

  Jimmie Kendrick

  I got permission to take Yessie on a little field trip last night. We didn’t go exactly where we told them we were going. I said we were going to a Valentine’s Day party at Navy Pier. We did go to a Valentine’s Day party, but it was at a hall on the West Side where a group of lesbians I know throw a party every year. There are usually three or four hundred lesbians there, and I’d be singing.