I also have to go up to the patient floors and inspect the supply closets and all that. I’ve never been up there, so I’m looking forward to it. If things are so terrible here maybe I can help make it better.
“Ahem.”
It’s her again. She’s so juvenile. I say, “Are you talking to me?”
She says, “Yes. Will you be reviewing patient outcomes?”
So I say, “Patient outcomes?” I have no idea what she’s talking about. I mean, that could mean anything.
“Right. The kids who live here. How are they? How is their health? How often do they get sick? Is that something you look at?”
“No, not really. I just get the information about how much everything costs, basically.”
“Oh. Okay. I thought you might also be looking at the health of the children. You know.”
So I say, “Like if they’re healthy?”
She says, “Yes. How often they get sick? How many die and why do they die? How many of them go on to live in their own apartments in the community?”
So I say, “Those sound like good questions.” Well, they did sound like good questions. “I’ll bring them up to my supervisor and maybe someone can look into it.”
Then she says, “You will?”
I say, “Sure.”
She says, “Great. Thank you.”
So that was the end of that conversation.
Maybe it was inappropriate for me to talk about her fingers before. It’s hard to know about that kind of thing because I don’t want to act like, “Oh, I’m going to pretend I don’t see it,” so then I say something, but on the other hand it’s not like I’d say something to Dr. Caviolini about the thing on his eyelid. Whatever it is. A mole or something.
Mia Oviedo
In class I jus’ sleep. I so tire all the time. After class Mr. Sokolsky say, “Mia, why you so tire? You don’t feel too good?” I say, “I don’ know, maybe I got something, maybe a cold.” He say, “You wanna go to the nurse?” I say, “No, I seen the nurse. She say everything okay.” Mr. Sokolsky is the only one who ask.
In the night I keep awake. I watch the big bird with black feathers. He sit and watch. One night I in my bed and he whisper at me. At first I don’t know what he say. He say over and over the same thing. Then I know. He say, “I gonna get you. I gonna get you.” Sometime he lift up one of his foots and I see his claws. Sometime he stretching out his wings at me. He whisper, “Puta. Puta sucia.” He don’ wanna wake up Fantasia. He very careful. Sometime he climb down from the closet and hold on my skin with his claws on me and whisper bad things. “Mi putita. Me gusta cuando me llamas Papi.” I think maybe I going crazy.
Right now I don’ feel nothing no more. I too tire. Only thing I feeling when I see Teddy and he so sad. Yessie say, “Why you make Teddy feel so bad? He looking like his dog die.” Then I ask Toya or Beverly to take me to the toilet and when they close the door I put my hands on my face an’ I cry. Beverly say, “You okay?” and I say, “Yeah. I gotta allergy a little.” I don’ cry no more.
But if Teddy know about—about it, you know what I saying? About Jerry. How he do bad things to me. Teddy think I making it up. He thinking I a puta too.
Joanne, she say I look depress. And I didn’ tell her nothing about what happen. Joanne look at me and I bend my head down so she can’t see but it don’ matter. I think she knows. She ask me, “Why you not with Teddy no more? What happen?” Why eberybody asking me all the time? I tell her I don’ know. I don’ know why I not with Teddy. I just not. I can’t talk about that. She say maybe I gotta talk to a counselor but why I do that? I not a snitch. No le voy ha decir a nadie.
Teddy Dobbs
Before Louie can get to me and take me out of drive, I smash my wheelchair into the wall and make a big hole. I back out and go as fast as I can to smash into the wall again and he grabs my handlebars and he’s saying, “You retarded little shit,” and he tries to get to the gears but I just keep ramming into the wall and backing up into his legs and I can hear Mr. Sokolsky at the door saying, “What’s going on out here?” but I keep up ramming the wall and ramming Louie till Louie gets ahold of my gears and then my chair stops dead. I hear Mr. Sokolsky telling the class, “All right, all right now, settle down, it’s all over,” and the door to my class closes shut. Then Louie starts in pushing me to the time-out room.
He won’t shut up. The whole way to the time-out room he’s saying mean things to me. I ain’t trying to hear him either. Fuck him. And I don’t care if he sees me crying because I ain’t crying ’cause of him. I don’t give two shits about Louie. I don’t give a shit about nobody.
When he sticks me in the time-out room he goes into my pockets and takes my pen and pencil and a dollar I had left over from my allowance and two of my stamps I’m collecting. He says, “I’ll just take this, retard,” and I say, “Fuck you, dickhead!” He’s laughing at me like I’m a joke. He says, “Fuck you, dickhead,” like he’s aping me and then every time I say something mean to him so he’ll leave me be he says the exact same thing back at me. So I just stop talking. Then he makes like he’s going out and he stops at the door.
“I can be a good king or I can be a bad king,” he says, and I don’t say nothing and he walks out the door and shuts it.
Now he’s asking me how I’m doing in here. I can see his fat head in the little window they got there so they can keep watch on you.
It stinks like piss in here. They must’ve had a million cripples piss on themselves and on these ugly-ass carpet walls. They don’t have to get locked up in here, so they don’t care. You know what I want to do? I want to shoot Mrs. Phoebe up with drugs. I’m gonna steal drugs from the infirmary and sneak up on her and stick a needle right in her butt. Then I’m gonna get Bernard to help me drag her ugly self into the time-out room and lock her in here and leave her here and when she begs and cries to get let out I’m gonna say, “I’m afraid there ain’t nothing I can do about it, Phoebe. I’m real sorry about it.”
Me and my dad went to Mrs. Phoebe’s office this morning ’cause she’s telling us what the deal is with shipping me outta here. She says they’re sending me to Maywood way far away in two months. My dad asks her can’t they send me someplace closer to home? Closer to where he lives so’s he could come visit easier and she goes, “I’m sorry. It’s a very nice home. I think Teddy will be happy there.” But I won’t be happy. My dad’s gonna have to take about fifty trains out there and he works all night at the restaurant and they cut his hours back, so he’s trying to find a extra job, and I won’t never see nobody.
And Mia hates me.
I don’t know what I did, but Mia won’t barely talk to me. She don’t even look at me.
I want to stab myself in my stomach with a knife. That would feel better than what she did to me. I asked Fantasia if Mia was mad at me and she just shakes her head and won’t say anything. I want to know what I did! Or maybe Mia loves somebody else. If she’s got a new boyfriend, he’s dead. What’re they gonna do to me? They can’t do nothing worser than I feel now. When I’m in prison Mia will know it’s her fault and she blew it. She turned around her back on the one man who really loved her.
I don’t care who sees me crying, this retarded Louie or nobody. He’s more retarded than me.
One day when I’m out of here and I live on my own I’m coming back and burning this place down. First I’m getting the kids out, but then I’m gonna blow it up. With Louie and Mrs. Phoebe in it.
I cursed out Mr. Sokolsky. Maybe that was bad but I—Mia’s in that class. She don’t say nothing or pay attention. She closes her eyes like she don’t wanna see me. She goes to sleep. I’d like to see Mr. Sokolsky try to sit in the same room as the girl who was his fiancée and then she acts like you better go forget it. She won’t even tell me what I done. At least at Maywood I won’t be in this place and I won’t have to look at her no more.
I want to live with my dad again. I want to go home. When I lived with my dad it was better. It was mor
e normal. He doesn’t really know how mean some of them are here. He wouldn’t never stick me in a room by myself. I’m sorry I told Mr. Sokolsky to get out of my face and threw chalk at him. But why’d he have to call Louie?
I’m getting out of here. I’m running away for real. I’ll get a job and my own place. I’ll watch TV all night. I’ll eat at McDonald’s.
Yessenia Lopez
I go to a counselor now called Mr. Bonelli. I told Mr. Bonelli about how Jimmie took me out to the lesbian party and how Jimmie is a singer and she sounds like Patti LaBelle except better. I told him that every female at the party was a lesbian and he says, “Are you a lesbian?” I just knew he would say that. So I say, “If I am or I’m not I don’t see how that’s any of your business.” Well, I didn’t! I told him one thing and all of the sudden he’s all, “Are you a lesbian?” He don’t ask me about Jimmie, he don’t ask me did I have a good time. No. He just wanna know am I a lesbian. I see from that a little bit how a real lesbian must feel every day when the very first question people gots for you is, “Are you a lesbian?” And then I had a worse thought about my own self. Maybe I don’t say it? But I think it. That’s the same shit as how everybody look at me and say, “Oh, that girl’s in a wheelchair, she can’t do nothing.” Even Tía Nene who loved me with all her might thought deep, deep down that poor Yessie wouldn’t never be able to do a damn thing for herself.
Mr. Bonelli says he’s sorry he ask. I say fine and for his information I am not a lesbian. I just want to be honest. Seeing as he write every itty-bitty thing down on my file. I’m only there in the first place because it’s a condition on my parole.
I told my friends at Hoover all about Jimmie. Like Veronique who I see now that I can go back to classes. I told her how Jimmie wears jewry in her nose and her eyebrow and in her lip, and how she gots locks that hang down her back and she looks so, so, so cool. I even told her how her pants ride low on her butt so you can see her boxer shorts just like half of the males we see walking down the hall at school every day. I told her how much me and Jimmie talk all the time and how she misses her mama just like I miss my tía Nene and how I can tell Jimmie everything and she respects what I got to say. Veronique is my friend? But she thinks being a lesbian is bad. I can see right now how that could be infecting my feelings about her because I thought she’d be happy for me that I got someone I can talk to but she isn’t happy. That’s all right. Cheri is my friend now. Jimmie said that’s how it is sometimes. You got some friends who are your friends for a while and then you got your friends who might be your friends forever and a lot of the time you never know which ones gonna last and which ones gonna just fall down on the side.
You wanna hear something that happened to myself and Cheri when we was just walking down the hall at ILLC minding our own sweet businesses? We bump straight into this female who it turns out was the person what talked Cheri’s mama and daddy into shipping her butt off to ILLC. This chick is all “Hi!” and tossing her hair all over the place like she’s Barbie in her Dreamhouse. “Hi! How are you! Do you remember me?” The look on Cheri’s face could have stopped a bullet. I swear her face got so mad-looking and her good hand is clenching in and out and then she just let loose. “Don’t you talk to me like we’s friends! You are a liar! You get outta my sight before I beat your ass!” That was the first time I ever seen Cheri mad. I thought she might really jump on her for a minute. If I wasn’t on parole I would’ve jumped on her my own self and pulled that bitch’s hair out. Just so I could be a good friend to Cheri. But I’d have to catch up to her first. That girl’s high heels clicked away so fast to Mrs. Phoebe’s office that she left a trail of dust behind her.
Me and Cheri told Ricky the whole story when we was in the bus and he was mad for us. Even Ricky wanted to go kick that female’s ass. He said how he was gonna tell Joanne. Ricky don’t say so but we can all tell he thinks Joanne is the Queen of Sheba.
I can’t hardly believe Cheri is a mentally ill schizophrenic sometimes. But two nights ago she woke me up and told me she was seeing patterns on the wall and she had some bad thoughts running through her head. I said, “What kind of bad thoughts?” and she said, “Bad thoughts,” and I said, “What kind of bad thoughts?” and she said, “Just bad thoughts.” Then she walked out the room—just walked right out in the middle of the night. So I real quick got in my chair and followed her out ’cause I was kind of worried for her but also I didn’t want no maniac loose running the halls and I wanted to tell somebody even though Cheri is my best friend. I saw her get into the elevator, so I rushed and got in the other one. When I got downstairs I didn’t see her, so I woke up the night nurse and told how Cheri was running loose, so we went looking for her which didn’t take too long because she turned on the TV in the TV room and it was loud. It was loud loud. The nurse told me to go back to bed but I said hell no and when we got in the TV room the nurse says to Cheri did she know what time it was and Cheri said, “Uh-uh,” and the nurse said, “Three thirty in the morning and it’s time to be in bed.” And Cheri said, “Okay,” but then all of a sudden she screams and my heart flipped around and the nurse jumped up like she just been goosed by King Kong. The nurse said, “What’s the matter?” and I said, “She keeps seeing patterns,” and Cheri said, “I’m feeling very agitated.” The nurse said, “Did you take your medicine tonight?” and Cheri said, “I ain’t sure.” Then the nurse said, “Well, do you think you did?” and Cheri said, “I probably didn’t because I’m feeling so agitated.” So we went back to the infirmary and Cheri took her pill.
I said, “What’s your name?”
“I’m Nurse Jackson,” she said. “But you two can call me Lorraine.”
After that Cheri did go to sleep for real.
I never seen that nurse before because she works graveyard shift. You know how a smell sometime make you think of something? Well, Miss Lorraine smelled like my tía Nene, and I had that good smell in my nose when I went to sleep.
Joanne Madsen
The more I rely on Ricky, the more complicated things get. Not that he minds. He loves driving around in the bus together. In the beginning everybody loves doing everything for the other person but then one day it’s not convenient and then it turns into something you have to do all the time or you’re just not in the mood to see the person every single minute, and before you even notice, you’ve become the white man’s burden. Or in this case, the Puerto Rican man’s burden. And there goes the romance.
Ricky is picking me up at the AutoMex on Racine at six o’clock, but I have some time to look through the file of a kid he’s been asking me about. His name is Pierre Washington and Ricky is frequently called upon to put him in the time-out room for crimes against humanity such as whistling or jumping out of his seat. I’ve seen Pierre in the halls a lot but never had a conversation with him. He’s almost always alone.
The way these files read is very bare-bones, just an accumulation of forms really. Here are the highlights: When Pierre was five, he was picked up by the police when they saw him looking for food in a grocery store Dumpster. It was snowing and he wasn’t wearing a coat or shoes. They found his younger brother at an apartment that looked like it had been abandoned. The kids were taken out of the apartment and put in custody of Family Services. Pierre was put into foster care but there’s nothing in the file about what happened to his little brother. Pierre had at least three different foster care placements. No details are given. When he was eleven—God, this is so fucked up—he was transferred to a residential treatment center. He was diagnosed with cerebral palsy—which is weird because according to Ricky he doesn’t even have cerebral palsy. He also has learning disabilities and attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder. ADHD. So he was a hard-to-place, disabled, African American eleven-year-old and he was lost in the matrix. I’m filling in the blanks here. Poetic license. Somewhere there should be medical test results and psych evals but not in this particular file. They transferred him to a residential treatment center called Moreland
Estates in Indiana where he stayed for three years. I don’t know anything about Moreland Estates but their website listed lots of very good activities and services. Pierre was transferred to ILLC after one of the staff at Moreland Estates hit him in the head with a wrench. Nothing about whether there was long-term damage.
The most informative document was from Pierre’s caseworker, Clarinda Cummings at Family Services. She must have been the one to get the call from Moreland. Clarinda called Pierre’s Guardian ad litem—GAL is what they say for short. A GAL can represent a ward in court and is supposed to make sure the kid gets the best placement. Even a guy can be a GAL. Ha-ha. From what it looks like in the little narrative, the guardian went over to Moreland and asked to know the name of the person who hit Pierre, but the staff closed ranks. She must’ve brought a camera too because it says she took pictures of everything—Pierre’s room, the rooms in the institution, the hallways, et cetera—but none of those pictures were in the file. There was one of Pierre which was taken at the hospital. It shows the gash in his head. She must have found out who hit him because at the bottom it says he was charged with a felony. She’s the one who had Pierre transferred to ILLC.
Good Kings Bad Kings Page 10