by Tina Traster
Ricky doesn’t buy it. He says those are things that have happened to other people.
“Okay,” I say. “Maybe it’s because my dog died suddenly from a terrible cancer or because I’ve learned love doesn’t last or because at seventeen I aborted the only baby my body will ever bring into this world.”
Ricky smiles at me in that way that makes it impossible for me to stay mad. He wants me to be at peace. I struggle to understand his Zen, considering the fact that he has known loss, lots of it. But it doesn’t bog him down. He doesn’t think each new day will conjure a tragic headline. Studying Reactive Attachment Disorder makes me think about my own nature and my early childhood. Maybe I was starved of some needed nurture or attention. My mother must have been preoccupied with her difficult marriage. And I was always refereeing between my father and grandmother, who lived under the same roof. My sister was born when I was eighteen months, and my mother worked full time shortly after both births. Did I get what I needed?
The universe has thrown Julia and me together because we share something fundamental. We are both afraid. Can we find a way to comfort one another? We must.
Julia has a history of hurt we can’t erase. She’s been with us for three years and four months, but she subconsciously knows what it’s like to slip permanently from her mother’s arms. She understands the dizzying tumble from warmth and security. She remembers, no doubt, what it’s like to lie in a crib and wonder who, if anyone, will attend to her needs and when? Then, one February day, a man and a woman showed up, put her in a yellow snowsuit, spirited her away in the dark night in a car, and then took her on something called a plane. As an infant, the guttural sounds of Russian filled her ears; at eight months, English replaced those familiar sounds. Briefly she lived in a glittery palace—a hotel—and then she went on another plane and was brought to a strange apartment. And there she met a cat and was placed in crisp sheets under a soft yellow blanket in a crib and stared up at a carousel of animals that were put there to delight her. Although these people who took her away had the very best intentions and thought this little child must realize how lucky she is to have escaped life in an orphanage, she must have been lying in that unfamiliar crib contemplating, What will happen next? This inexplicable change must have felt more like loss than luck.
Julia knows she’s dependent on these strangers with their unfamiliar hands and foreign sounds and odd smells to feed her and change her diaper. She tolerates it, subconsciously waiting for something she remembers in her heart to return to her. And it doesn’t. Over time, indifference morphs into anger. Her resolve hardens. I won’t let you love me. I won’t love you. At four, she’s a vessel of resentment, seething because I deign to call myself her mother.
Ricky and I are on a date night, which over the past four Fridays has come to be known as “data night.” Instead of catching a film, we are returning to another bookstore. Ricky thinks we’ve found everything there is. In a sneaky effort to learn more, I’ve even called a couple of therapists under the guise of being a journalist working on a story. Reams of printed paper have poured from our groaning printer and filled every inch of my office. We’ve borrowed library books, too. We’ve gone to independent booksellers and this, our fourth Barnes & Noble, within a ten-mile radius of our house, is the last frontier, in case I’ve missed anything. Day and night, we share opinions about what experts say, we read aloud to one another, volley e-mails during the workday, and go to bed talking about our Holy Grail. We are certain Julia embodies the essence of everything we have read. We have a guide.
There is a lot of advice for raising kids with RAD. Some of it seems extreme—and controversial. Something called “holding therapy,” which forces children who resist intimacy to be held against their will, seems wrong. Instead, we’re focused on parenting techniques that anyone would agree seem counterintuitive. Imagine having to say to your child, “I know it’s scary to love Mommy. But Mommy loves you and she always will.” Not something most birth mothers ever think to say to their kids. The basic idea behind the parenting techniques is to “rewire” the child’s mind. When you shift, they do too, the theory goes. For example, children like Julia don’t feel punished during a time-out—they are relieved. It vindicates their belief that they are alone in this world. Being alone is a RAD child’s best solace. It gives them the emotional space they crave. Instead of reprimanding the child with time-outs that send them to their room or isolate them, the books say to do the exact opposite. Give them “time-ins.” Keep them close. Force them to communicate. Keep the bond solid, even if you are mad and the child is unglued.
Many marriages have been crushed under the weight of raising a child with RAD. This is one thing I don’t fear. I suspect “Operation Love,” as I call it, will bring me and Ricky closer, as every crisis has. We are committed to pulling Julia from the brink. We will ground her. Attach her. Attach to her.
Ricky holds the glass door open, and I walk into the bookstore. He follows behind me.
“Let’s ask at information.”
“Hi,” I say to the pasty-faced man with dark-frame glasses. “Can you help us?”
“I’ll try,” he says with a forced smile.
“I’m looking for books on Reactive Attachment Disorder.”
He looks at me blankly.
I feel like I’m seventeen years old and I’ve gone to a pharmacy with my young boyfriend and asked for a pack of condoms.
“Shall I spell it for you?” I ask. “R-E-A-C-T-I-V-E. Attachment, A-T-T.”
“I got it,” he says, muttering the words under his breath as he types them into his computer. He waits a moment and then squints at the screen. Looking up at me he asks, “Do you have a title, an author?”
“No, I’m just looking for any book on the topic.”
He resumes typing. The glow of the screen makes him seem ghostly.
“Not finding anything specific,” he says. “I’d suggest you look at books on adoption and fostering. They’re over there,” he adds, pointing a bony finger toward the back.
Ricky and I weave through the aisles. We stop in front of the shelf.
“I’ll start from the top; you start from the bottom,” he says. “I’d be surprised if we find anything we haven’t seen already.”
“You’re probably right, but we haven’t been to this Barnes & Noble. I want to make sure we haven’t missed anything. This is the last one, I promise.”
An hour in, we’re sitting on the floor in a fortress of books. We’re thumbing through, reading bits to each other. Nothing new reveals itself.
Ricky looks tired.
“Is there still time to catch a bite?” he asks.
I glance up at the clock. It’s almost 9:00 PM.
“I’d have to call Alison and ask her to stay a while longer.”
“Do that,” Ricky says. “We can talk about this over dinner.”
We are sitting in the window of an Italian bistro in Nyack. A clutch of teens populates the steps of a church. Couples amble by slowly, enjoying the sultry night.
“So what do you think we should do?” I ask.
“Like I’ve said, I think we should spend a few months applying what we’ve learned.”
“And then?”
“And then, if we still feel lost and hopeless, we can seek professional help. I think she’s very young, too young for counseling. Besides, I’m skeptical we’d find a therapist who has a real handle on children like this. And you know what else? I’m afraid that seeing a therapist will create a record that will follow Julia through life. Let’s give it some time, now that we have a whole new understanding of the situation.”
“I completely agree,” I say. “I mean, I know we’re not therapists, but look at all the things we’ve done together. We’ve moved mountains before and we will again, right?”
I look up at him and he’s smiling sweetly at me.
He covers my hands with his.
“It’ll be okay,” he says. “We’ve made a good start. We’v
e got our heads around the problem. We will help her. And if we can’t help her, we’ll seek professional help.”
I wake with a jolt. I peer at the clock—5:55 AM. I groan. It’s Sunday morning and Julia is in her room, across the hall, twelve feet from ours, throwing dominoes onto her hardwood floor. She’s not playing with the dominoes; she’s dropping them from her hands for maximum thumps. Grenades! We know this because this is what she does; it is what she has always done with whatever is her weapon of choice. She’s got a well-honed routine. She rises at the crack of dawn. She puts on her light. She leaps from her bed and orchestrates a jarring cacophony of commotion. Not once—not once—in four years has Ricky or I gone into her room and nudged her from sleep, and not once have we been able to awake leisurely or lie in bed quietly.
I’ve become an ugly morning person. Julia’s trained me to beg her for quiet, to beg repeatedly. To get angrier with each pleading. To boil by the time I toss off the covers and stomp into the bathroom and slam the door. She used to chase in after me and say she had to use the toilet before I’d sit down. One day I locked the door. I felt a pang of guilt. But she found another way to war with me. When I went into the bathroom, she flicked the light switch, which is on the outside wall of the bathroom, on and off a dozen times.
Today, when Ricky feels me stir, he wraps himself around me and whispers, “Remember, we’re going to try something different to throw her off course.”
“Okay,” I reply, my body stiff with tension.
While Ricky and I speak in a hush, the noise from Julia’s room halts. She knows we’re talking and she strains to listen, as she always does. So we quiet ourselves. What will happen next? Ah, the LEGOs! She starts threading her hands through hundreds of plastic pieces in her big red LEGO box over and over. Her hands are a sieve, except she’s not actually looking for a piece to build with. She’s waiting for a reaction. Ricky and I look at one another. He puts his index finger over his lips to keep me from speaking.
Kids with RAD thrive on chaos. It is always Julia’s goal to unhinge me. She thrills when my head is on fire. The more monstrous I am, the better. How satisfying it must be for her to inherently understand she controls me. At breakfast, I’m brooding and ornery. She sits at the table, slurping her cereal, as self-satisfied as a cat who has snatched a blue jay for breakfast.
Ricky and I will lie in bed until 6:45. We will not say a word. No fuel this morning. She’ll be knocked off her game. The books say that if the parents become less predictable, there’s a better chance of interrupting her wiring. She’ll need more time to process. She won’t act robotically, because there is no rote script for her to follow.
After ten minutes of smashing LEGO pieces in the box, there’s stillness again. She’s confused. Hmm, what next? Boom! She’s banging keys on the electric keyboard with the volume cranked up.
It’s hard to remain passive, but Ricky keeps me contained by rubbing my back. At 6:30 AM, Julia comes into our room and whines, “Why are you still in bed?”
Normally, I’d tell her to go back to her room. I’d be disgusted and she’d know it.
Today I am someone else.
“Good morning, Julia,” I say with Mister Rogers’ flourish.
She’s disoriented.
“Daddy and I are having a lazy morning. Why don’t you join us?” I ask, sing-songy. I gesture for her to come into our bed.
“No, thank you,” she says, creasing her brow. She shoots us one more puzzled look and scampers back to her room.
“Okay,” I say loudly. “We’ll all have breakfast when I get up. That will be swell! I’ll make pancakes.”
She goes back to her room to decamp. There’s quiet. She’s likely scratching her head, wondering what stranger she has encountered this morning. I must say I feel more in control.
Wendy is a middle-aged woman with frosted hair and a firm handshake. She leads me to her desk and looks me in the eye when I talk.
“I’m looking for a better preschool for Julia,” I say. “I’m unhappy with Palisades.”
“Why’s that?” she asks directly.
“For one, the atmosphere there is dingy and depressing,” I say. “More important, I don’t think they have the skills to handle Julia.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, in fairness, I never sat down with the director and explained Julia’s situation, but even so, my daughter was not thriving there.”
“I understand,” she says.
She waits for me to continue.
I spool out Julia’s story, telling Wendy that Julia is adopted and she has a repertoire of odd social behavior. I’m terribly concerned about her socialization, I explain. I assure her Julia doesn’t appear to have any learning or cognitive disabilities. In fact, everyone believes she’s a very bright child. But she is not interested in other children, which is troubling. She may appear friendly and vivacious, but she doesn’t engage in genuine interaction or connection. She’s been in daycare since she was two and has been in many children’s classes, and she never bonds. No one ever calls us to make a playdate. Ever.
I take a breath. Wendy’s face is open and kind.
Then I tell her what I believe is most critical. Julia seeks out the weakest female teacher or authority figure and wraps that person around her deft fingers. What she really needs, I explain, is a disciplined environment where the teacher is nurturing but maintains distance and does not baby her.
“I get what you’re saying,” she says. “We have a few other international adoptions here. I understand your concerns.
“C’mon,” she says, squeezing my arm. “Let me show you around.”
We leave the small crook where her desk sits and she leads me through two light-filled classrooms. She points out hanging artwork and a nook for books and cubbies and a bathroom. Children bring lunch. I follow her outside. Wow! It’s how a Fresh Air Fund city kid must feel when he arrives at an upstate camp. There are two in-ground swimming pools, swings, jungle gyms, sandboxes, and lots of room to run. There are grassy areas to sit in and a picnic table.
“This is awesome,” I gush.
Wendy tells me about the summer program. Kids take swim lessons twice per day, and they spend most of the time outdoors, weather permitting.
My heart is a helium-filled balloon, wrestling to tear itself from my chest.
“I’ll get you the application and a check by the end of the week.”
“Great. Camp starts in two weeks.” She hands me a bunch of forms and walks with me to the front door.
Shaking my hand, she says, “Don’t worry. Julia will be happy here. And really, I’ve heard what you had to say.”
I step gingerly into the parking lot. I get in the car and drive a mile up the hill to our home. I pull into the driveway, turn off the ignition, and lean back in the driver’s seat. I snap open my cell phone.
“I’m switching Julia’s preschool,” I say. “That place around the corner, Playgarten. It’s paradise.”
“Great,” Ricky says. “Let the wild rumpus begin!”
Twenty-three
The hulking Victorian house sits across from the railroad tracks in the shadows of tall trees. I park at the back and scramble up a skinny flight of stairs in the dimly lit hallway to the therapist’s office. Neal is a lanky man, looming at six feet, with a bushy beard and a pile of dark hair.
“Tina?” he says with his head cocked and a tight smile, “Your mother’s not here yet. Go on in and make yourself comfortable.”
The high-ceiling wood-paneled room is musky and warm despite the humming air conditioner. Curtains are drawn, making it feel like a dreary March day rather than the searing July day that it is. Neal’s walls are plastered with honorary degrees and baseball paraphernalia. Stacks of folders rise like accordions atop his worn desk, which is chiseled into threadbare carpet. Wall-to-ceiling bookcases overflow. Wait till Rosalie sees this, I think to myself with a silent chuckle. Neal’s office—my unassuming town—it’s a far cry from the sophistic
ated Manhattan therapists we both have known.
Three chairs have been arranged for the session. Two are situated close to one another; the third faces the other two. I slink into one of the paired chairs and pull my shirt away from my sopping skin. When my mother suggested she and I go into therapy a month ago, I’d barked, “Why, so we can rehash a decade’s worth of anger?” But after she planted the seed, the idea of doing something to fix our broken relationship kept teasing me. What if? Maybe it’s the only solution left. Our last chance to find one another again. My mother’s not going to live forever. What if something happened to me first? And Julia—depriving her of grandparents? What have I been thinking? Doesn’t a child with an attachment disorder need family to love her, even if that family is dysfunctional?
I took it as a sign from the universe that the timing of my mother’s call was not coincidental. At the precise moment I was beginning to understand what it was like for Julia to cope with a traumatic break from her birth mother, I realized I was living with parallel pain. I knew what it was like to lose maternal love. My relationship with my mother, the relationship I always took for granted, confounds me. It unthreaded slowly at first, after my divorce. My mother and I had different ideas about how I should rebuild my life. We had never been at such extreme odds. We fought and accused one another of terrible things and equally showed our mutual disappointment. In the end, no matter how much of a hand I had in dissolving our love, I felt abandoned. My mother was no longer there for me, and I found myself mourning her. She was not dead, but she was dead to me.