Rescuing Julia Twice

by Tina Traster

  “Okay, Mama,” she says, calmly.

  “Okay, let’s find your size. Let’s see, size four or six? Hmmm.”

  I receive a jolt of joy as my hand brushes through a selection of tiny sweet dresses hanging on little hangers.

  “I like that one and that one and that one,” Julia bleats indiscriminately.

  “Hold on,” I say, trying to combat the adrenaline. “Let’s look at these carefully and decide what you really like.”

  It’s not easy to pace Julia, but it’s important to try. I take one dress at a time, hold it up against my chest, and say, “Look at this one. No, no. Really take a long look. Okay. Now do you really like it?”

  I’m trying to teach my child to think about what she really thinks—or doesn’t. Clothing can be an emotional decision. Shapes and colors speak to us. I want Julia to locate the flutter that comes from seeing something you really want rather than wanting everything you see.

  Thirty minutes later, I’ve got a stack of dresses and cardigans and T-shirts and pants draped over my outstretched arms.

  “Would you like some help with those, madam?” says a voice from somewhere behind me. I spin around and some of the clothes tumble to the floor.

  Julia lets out a streak of laughter.

  “That’s okay,” the woman says. “Let me help you with those. Follow me. You too, young lady. Let’s go to the dressing room.”

  I’m surprised to see Julia in lockstep as we walk toward the dressing room.

  I sit down on a cushioned chair and think about the circle of life. How many times did my mother and I disappear into a dressing room so I could try on the latest fashions? I remember times when we’d get loopy and giggly because we’d been in the airless department store too long and we were hungry, anticipating crepes at The Magic Pan. I can easily conjure the look of pleasure on her face while she watched me model tight bell-bottoms or peasant blouses. Once she cajoled me to try a skimpy, white knit bikini. It was totally impractical for swimming or even tanning, something Bo Derek might have barely had on emerging like a mermaid from the sea. “Go on,” she’d said, with a glint in her eye. “It’s sexy.” I was fifteen.

  “Julia, stop, calm down, come here.” She’s ripping clothes off the hangers and flinging each item on the floor. “Stop. Right now. These are not our clothes. We don’t put them on the floor.” I tug her toward me. “Take off your pants and shirt. We’re going to try each piece of clothing on, one at a time.”

  Right at this moment, if she were a cartoon, there would be a calculus machine in each eye, sizing up her options. She’s excited about the prospect of trying on clothes, that’s for certain. But to get undressed without my having to press or beg her is to cooperate; it’s a relinquishment of power and control. This, I understand, is a fork in the road. It always is. It’s a juncture that causes her a feeling of unease, as it does for other children with Reactive Attachment Disorder. Here’s how it goes in her unconscious mind: Getting undressed and trying on clothes is exciting and leads to the prospect of getting things. That’s an endorphin release. Then there’s the flip side: If I cooperate and get along with Mom, then I leave myself open to feeling a moment of love and calm and that’s dicey, because I know how ephemeral love can be.

  It is torture to watch her struggle with this every day over the simplest of things, over minutia. In a situation like this, we are alone, cloistered in a small dressing room. The stakes are high, and we both know it. I remain neutral while she shakes off her chaos, and I refuse to ask her to get undressed twice.

  She dilly-dallies a few minutes, and then looks at me for a reaction. No dice. Then she kicks off her shoes, peels down her pants, and lifts off her shirt. She tries on one dress after another and then the coordinated little outfits. I can’t speak because the lump in my throat has taken up residency, and no sound or sigh can slip around it. I’m overcome with the joy of seeing my pretty little girl trying on clothes.

  Half an hour later, there is a sea of clothing on the bench in the dressing room. I want it all. Even more than she does. To make up for lost time?

  Clothing is not yet important to Julia—it’s more like something that is just always there, like oxygen. But I know Julia understands something special is happening here. Mommy is excited and super cheerful, which is not her usual disposition. At the register, I swat away any thoughts about being excessive. Why not? I say to myself. It’s long overdue. The saleswoman folds each item and flattens it into bags. When she’s done, she hands me two big brown bags.

  “Enjoy your clothes, honey,” she says to Julia.

  Julia looks up at me. “Thank you, Mommy.”

  “Use them in good health,” I say, which is exactly what my mother used to say to me after we bagged our prey at the end of our shopping expeditions.

  It has been one year since Ricky and I turned our attention to healing Julia and ourselves. It hasn’t been a perfect run, but we are far from where we began. The other night, after Julia was asleep, Ricky and I examined what’s been accomplished and what hasn’t. It’s a tricky analysis because Julia drops certain aberrant behaviors and replaces them with new ones, albeit what we see now is not as dark as what we used to see. One of the worst—smearing the bathroom walls with feces—stopped six months ago, which was a great relief. It started a few months after we moved in to the new house. She would come out of the bathroom, always the powder room on the ground floor but never the upstairs bathroom, with a smirk on her face. It had taken a while to figure out what she was doing, but after a while she’d trained me to expect this aberrant behavior. At first I yelled a lot, got in her face, and asked her why she was doing this. A few times I had her clean it up. I would fantasize about pushing her face right up into it, though I never let myself go that far. But once we were more schooled in RAD kids, my husband and I made a pact not to react because we understood that was the chaos she was courting. We maintained poker faces to deny her the rise she was looking for. And so it stopped.

  This is how it went with many of her intentionally provocative behaviors. So she doesn’t purposely spill water at the table anymore. When I pick her up at preschool, she doesn’t retreat under a desk or make me wait; she actually runs and greets me. Then she collects her lunch box and jacket. When I’m not feeling well, she’s more apt to notice and bring me a stuffed animal from her room. Julia has always showed outstanding artistic ability. We’ve noticed she’s drawing cartoons with a mother, father, and child. She’s processing the notion of family and her place in it.

  Her impulses to be oppositional and rebellious remain intact, however. A couple of months ago she shoplifted a flashlight from Eastern Mountain Sports. “I want this, Mommy,” she’d said, holding up the little flashlight. “I want it. I want it.” I had said no and asked her to return it to the shelf. When we got back to the car, she took it from her pocket and turned it on and off several times. I caught the self-satisfied expression on her face from my rearview and intentionally said nothing. When Ricky got home, we had a Julia conference, which is a part of our daily routine. We agreed it would be prudent to frighten her on this one. Saturday morning at breakfast, Ricky asked Julia to get the flashlight from her room. She hesitated because she didn’t know where he was going with this. Again, the imaginary calculator spun in her profoundly deep brown eyes. She scrambled upstairs and came down a minute later. Although her room is always a tornado, she knew exactly where the treasure was hidden. She bounded back down the steps and held it up.

  “Mama tells me she didn’t buy that for you,” Ricky said. “She says you took it and we didn’t pay for it.”

  She was about to take off.

  Calmly Ricky said, “Do not move.” Because he said it so sternly but without emotion, she froze.

  “We’re going to go back to the store, and you’re going to tell the salesman you stole this and you’re very sorry and you will never do it again. And hopefully he won’t call the—”

  Julia burst into tears. Real, hysterical tear
s. It surprised us because historically she is steely when being reprimanded.

  “I don’t want to. I don’t want to. I’m sorry … I’m sorry. No, Mama. Don’t make me.”

  What surprised us was that, literally, she cried like a baby. The kind of wailing that comes from a primal place. The kind of crying we never ever see or hear from Julia. She has an innate but unhealthy ability to resist the urge to express pain. But not at that moment. What a triumph it was! We both knew something magnificent had been accomplished, more than we could have expected.

  Still crying, she collapsed into Ricky’s arms.

  “Okay, I tell you what. I’ll give you a pass this time,” Ricky said. “But if you ever steal again, we’re going to go directly to the police station.”

  By now the tears had subsided, and Ricky and I felt pleased. Something mattered enough to touch her.

  For the first year of our grand experiment in managing RAD, there were more bad days than good days. Ricky and I held each other up with encouragement. We’d pick out the tiny victories and recount that winning the battles was the way to win the war. There were times when I felt hopeless and wondered if we should seek counseling. Because kids with Reactive Attachment Disorder are detached, I had read that they tend to become more destructive as they age. They can be a danger to themselves, their parents, siblings, the animals they live with. I’ve read they hurt and kill animals, start fires, are sexually promiscuous, and steal. Although many have bright minds, they’re too distracted to use them productively. I’ve read about parents locking children in bedrooms or stowing away knives and sharp objects in the kitchen. There are too many terrible stories about violent kids ending up in juvenile delinquent facilities and several accounts of parents giving up and relinquishing custody of teens or older children.

  One day I learned about the Ranch for Kids in Montana. This is a temporary home on a working ranch with horses and cows, in the aptly named town of Eureka, for adopted children who struggle with Reactive Attachment Disorder, prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol, or other issues that make post-adoption life impossible and unbearable. For parents, this is the last resort for children they can’t manage, though the price tag is nearly as hefty as a boarding school. The home, on 170 acres in the Rocky Mountains, is run by Joyce E. Sterkel, who adopted three Russian children, including a boy who had attachment issues. Sterkel, a midwife, had spent time in Russia delivering babies in the early 1990s. She knows a lot about orphanages and the way Russian babies start their lives. In 1999, after raising her own children, other parents of Russian adoptees asked her for help. In 2003, Ranch for Kids, a nonprofit group, was born. The stories I’ve read say hundreds of adoptees, nearly all from Russia, have come here to live and heal by way of communing with nature and living in a group setting. Some return home. Others are readopted domestically. A small percentage age out and end up in the federal Job Corps program.

  Knowing about Ranch for Kids should make me feel like there’s an alternative, a last resort if things don’t work out. But it doesn’t. It fills me with dread and sadness, which serves to fire up my adrenaline and make every neuron in my body work harder and faster every hour of every day to make sure Julia is never so far gone and out of control that we feel as though we have no other choice but to have someone else raise her.

  A year down the road, we have lots of eureka moments. We see the work and focus paying off. We know she’ll never be free of demons, but now there are more good days than bad, the opposite of how things were six months ago. She’s calmer. I don’t often see that depraved look she gets in her eyes. She’s more communicative, which I guess is partly because most children have a big language jump between four and five. It occurs to me that her ability to converse and express herself and understand what we are saying has been a big component to achieving success.

  I smile when I see Julia lift and squeeze Alex, our smallest cat. “She’s mine,” she says, pressing her face in Alex’s soft fur. Julia never showed any possessiveness or favoritism toward a teddy bear or any one toy when she was younger, so this display of affection and the declaration that Alex is “mine” is a big deal.

  “I’m going to help Julia get dressed,” I say to Ricky. “Can you feed the cats and get our breakfast ready?”

  Today is the year-end concert at Playgarten.

  “Hands up,” I say, slipping one of the pretty dresses we bought in Bloomingdale’s over her head and onto her stocky body. Then, I make two pigtail braids. I don’t know whether to ask her if she knows the songs or whether to let the excitement of dressing up and looking special propel her. If I am overly assertive and communicate to her I want her to perform well, it will backfire. Unconsciously, the idea of making me proud of her generates angst, as it always does in her mind. If she succeeds, I’ll love her more, and if she allows that, she could get hurt if that love goes away. I understand the counterintuitiveness of her psyche now, so on this occasion I play it cool. When I drop her at school at 8:15 AM, I say, “Daddy and I will be at your concert later. Good luck.”

  Ricky and I are walking around the lake before Julia’s concert. We hold hands and enjoy the silence. On one side of the lake, swans dip their heads like ladles in soup. Ducks congregate in the shallows. The path is not crowded, even though it’s a perfect June day. As we round the bend, I notice in the corner of my eye a white flickering flash of a tail in the woods. I hear a rustle in the trees. Not fifteen feet from the well-trodden path, a doe nurses her spotted fawn. Mama’s wide eyes flit back and forth furtively while her baby nourishes itself. I grab Ricky’s arm and whisper, “Look, look at that.” I gaze longingly. Tears trickle down my cheeks.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  “It’s so beautiful,” I say, shaking my head. “Natural.”

  I pause for a minute.

  “You know, things are really so much better with Julia. The other day we were in the supermarket and when she called out ‘Mama,’ I noticed how hearing her call me that no longer seemed foreign … but still. I don’t know. Look at how natural it is between this deer and her baby.”

  “I understand. I really do,” he says, embracing me. “But it’s not too late. She’s coming around. She knows you’re her mama. And she knows what that means.”

  I burrow into him.

  “You think so?” I say.

  “You know it,” he says.

  He’s right. I do.

  “Let’s keep walking. We’ve got to be at the school by 11:30,” I say.

  Julia is always in the front row, on the end, at school concerts. She’s the smallest one. It reinforces my fear of her being an outsider. Today she is on stage, bright-eyed, looking adorable, and singing the songs she’s been taught. She’s a little light on the hand movements, but she’s humorously eyeing fellow students for cues. That she even cares is amazing. She’s up there singing the songs. Progress. When it’s over she flies into my arms and says, “Did I do good, Mommy?”

  “Better than good,” I say. “Awesome.”

  Twenty-five

  Julia taps the school bus window with her balled-up fist and waves to me. She slides into the first seat on the right side so we can hold each other’s gaze until the bus rolls past our driveway. Each day since kindergarten started three weeks ago, I choke on tears after the boxy bus morphs into a wisp of yellow streak and disappears. I hobble down our long path to the front door wondering what the hell is wrong with me. Julia’s been in a school setting for three years, and I’ve never had trouble with the departure. I’m realizing you have to be bonded with someone to feel the wrench of separation.

  There was a time when women with older or grown children would glance at Julia and then look at me with moist eyes and sigh, saying, “It goes so fast. Enjoy it.” I’d smile and nod as though I empathized, but inside I’d be saying, if only. There were times when I felt like I had nothing but time, and time had nothing to offer me. Now I understand I have something to cherish. Maybe that’s why I cry when the bus leaves. Or
maybe I cry for the time when I didn’t know this.

  I met with Julia’s kindergarten teacher before the school year started. I wanted her to know Julia’s story so she would be prepared. I told her Julia was adopted and she did not bond easily. The early years were difficult. I credited Playgarten with doing a great job of evolving her and explained we were also working with her at home. I didn’t delve too deeply into detail, and I certainly didn’t want to bias the teacher or brand Julia as a problem child, but I begged her to keep an eye out and let me know if she observed any kind of learning or behavioral issues. Before I left I said, “Just so you know, we have not told Julia she is adopted. We don’t believe the time is right yet, so please understand, what I’m telling you is in strict confidence.”

  Each day at 3:30 PM Julia bounds off the bus, chatting her head off about her day, waving something in her hand. A drawing. A chart. She talks nonstop about Mrs. G. and the other teacher, who apparently gives her a lot of extra hugs. She tells me about circle time and how she’s not really sleeping when the other kids are napping, but that’s okay, “Right, Mommy?”

  “Right, Julia,” I say, “as long as you let the other kids sleep.”

  “I do, Mommy, and I pretend I’m sleeping too.”

  I’m sitting in a comfy chair in my home office, mindlessly stroking the silky coat of my newly adopted black-and-white cat. I should get back to my desk, but it’s hypnotic to sit with him. He purrs like an engine, making my hand vibrate and allowing my mind to wander. Occasionally he lifts one side of his face and rubs it against my shoulder. We can’t get enough of one another. He follows me around and I look for him when he’s not by my side. We’ve only known each other for a few weeks, but I feel as though we’ve been together for a lifetime. It is that kind of love: unquestioning and profound. I fell for him easily and effortlessly, all heart, no head. He’s the fifth cat to join our brood, but he attached himself to me like no other cat has done before. I didn’t need weeks or months to prove I was trustworthy. He didn’t test me or warm to me slowly. He allowed me to love him instantly, and I did. Patch, as I named him because of the patch of black fur on his white chin, attached himself the way a puppy does. You fall deliriously in love with a puppy the moment you lay eyes on him or drink in his smell. It is miraculous that a two-year-old cat who was discarded in a state park and left to die by some coldhearted human had room in his heart to trust again.