Just Another Kid

by Torey Hayden

  Ladbrooke paused. Bringing one hand down, she ran her fingers along the edge of the table. Back and forth, back and forth, with hypnotic slowness.

  “The weird thing, the thing I remember most clearly about that Christmas wasn’t that we didn’t get toys or such. It was sitting out on the back step. From where I was sitting, I could see across our backyard to the houses on the other side of the alley. It was the middle of the day, so everyone had their curtains open, but it was wintertime and overcast, so they had their lights on, and I could see right into their houses. I could see Christmas trees and I could see moms going back and forth in the kitchens, making Christmas dinner. I could see the little kid who lived right in back of us come out in his backyard to play. He was maybe two or three, and he’d gotten one of those riding toys a kid sits on and pushes with his feet. It was a little car. And he got on it and rode back and forth for hours. It was a marvelous present for him. He loved it. So I watched him and the others until it got dark and my mom let me in again.”

  Silence.

  “I can see where that might put you off the idea of Christmas.”

  Ladbrooke shrugged slightly. “It hasn’t really. That’s the weird part. If anything, it’s made me want Christmas more. I keep sitting out there year after year, still waiting to be let in. Every Christmas, I think, this one’s going to work out. This one’s going to be as nice as all those Christmases in other people’s houses. But I keep finding myself back outside on the step. It’s sort of an annual nightmare.”

  I nodded.

  Another long silence came then, and Ladbrooke fell deep in thought. Not wanting to shatter the moment, I sat very quietly, regarding my half-constructed spider. Lifting my eyes, I looked beyond her to the window. It had begun to snow.

  “My mom really had a lot of trouble with drinking,” Ladbrooke said quietly. “She was always thinking these crazy things. I remember once when I was about five, she got really mad at me. I was in the bathroom by the sink—I remember that—but what exactly I was doing in there, I don’t recall. Anyway, she came in and she was really, really angry. She had this funny idea that I was trying to come on to my stepfather. It was a persistent thing with her. I didn’t even know what she was talking about. I mean, I did. She didn’t leave much to the imagination. But I didn’t know why she thought I was doing it.”

  Ladbrooke paused. As I watched her, I could picture what she must have looked like as a little girl. I remembered seeing a photograph of Brooke Shields as a small child, and I could imagine Ladbrooke’s having the same kind of infantile sexuality about her, although that was hardly the type of thing to threaten an adult woman.

  “Anyway, there I was in the bathroom, and she came in, absolutely furious with me. I had long hair at the time, and it was loose. Usually, I had it in two braids, but it wasn’t that day. And she grabbed me by my hair, grabbed me so hard she lifted me off the floor. She told me to look at myself in the mirror, to look at my kind of face. She said the Devil’d have me, the way I looked. And she took the scissors and cut my hair. Not just short, but right off. I had about half an inch of hair when she got done.”

  I looked down at the table. “She did all this because she thought you were making sexual advances toward your stepfather?”

  “I guess so. And because she was drunk.”

  “Was there anything going on with your stepfather? Did he ever make advances toward you?”

  “No. I was five, for God’s sake.”

  “Well, it does happen. And it’s not the little one’s fault, no matter how much sexual provocation adults might read into it.”

  “No. Not with my stepdad. He was really good to me. I wished he had lasted longer in the family. He was better to me than any of the others. Sometimes, he’d come in, after my mom had had one of her do’s, and he’d take me on his lap and just hold me. It was nice, like. He’d tell me not to mind my mother, that she was just that way and I’d have to forgive her. But everything he did was innocent.”

  Silence. Ladbrooke exhaled noisily, scratched her head, ran her fingers through her hair.

  “The thing that kills me,” she said, “is that my mom drank. She was so terrible. She made me feel like such dirt all the time. I spent my whole childhood running after her, trying to please her, placating her, taking care of my brothers, because she never did. I ended up hating her. And I swore I would never be like her, that I’d never make anybody suffer the way I had. But look at me. Look at me now.”

  I said nothing.

  Ladbrooke lifted her eyes and regarded me for the first time during the conversation. There was a long moment’s eye contact between us before she looked away.

  “Do you hate me now?” she asked softly.

  “Of course I don’t.”

  “I do,” she said wearily.

  “I know.”

  She sighed. Elbows on the table, hands interlocked, she rested her cheek against them. “What am I going to do with myself, Torey?”

  “Stop drinking.”

  “How?”

  “By not taking the next drink.”

  She sighed again.

  Silence.

  “I’ve never told anyone about any of this,” she said. “Never. Not a word. Even Bobby and I never discussed it. It’s why I don’t want to get into AA or anything like that. I don’t want to have to tell them about my mom. I mean, part of me blames her for my ending up like this. But part of me tells me that I have no justification for talking about what she did when I’ve done no better. And part of me says, what the hell, why bother? I’ll just fail.”

  “I can appreciate that maybe a group setting like AA wouldn’t be the best choice for you. I think you’d probably feel better in a one-to-one situation. Have you ever considered therapy?”

  She nodded. “We had to go. About four years ago. Both Tom and I had to go. It was part of the whole deal when Leslie was being diagnosed.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t like to even remember it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was horrible. I was frightened of the therapist. I didn’t know him, and it was hard for me to talk. He kept saying I could talk, that I wasn’t talking because I wanted to keep him out. I wasn’t talking because there wasn’t anything in there I could manage to say. But he wouldn’t believe me when I said that.”

  “How long did you see him?”

  “For about six months. I had to quit after a while. I started getting sick from about Monday on. The appointments were on Wednesday, and I’d be throwing up for two days out of every week. But Tom kept going. Tom went for about a year and then got fed up too.”

  She put another mint into her mouth and sucked it thoughtfully.

  “I got angry this one time. I said it wasn’t that I didn’t want to change. I did. But people were always expecting me to do it all on my own. I said, ‘You want me to change, but you never meet me halfway. To help me.’ I said, ‘Some days it’s going to be harder for me, and you’re going to have to meet me seventy-five percent of the way, because I’m only going to manage twenty-five percent. And some days, you’re going to have to go ninety-five percent. And just occasionally, you may have to go all the way, all one hundred percent of the way, and carry me, because otherwise, I’m not going to manage to get anywhere. Someone is going to have to carry me sometimes and not just stand around waiting for me to do it all myself because otherwise, I’m simply not going to make it.’ And he said that was my whole problem in a nutshell. I expected other people to do all the changing for me.”

  I looked over.

  “Well, that’s not what I meant when I said that.” She raised her eyes to meet mine. “You understand what I meant, don’t you?”

  “I think so.”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “No, not necessarily. The problem is, some of the hardest changes, no one else can do for you.”

  She nodded. “I know that. It’s just that, well, doing them … Well, I just want … I need … What’s the word I
’m looking for?”

  “Support?”

  She shrugged. “I guess so … no, not exactly. Not support. Help. Help to keep control. You know. In those times when I can’t do anything right, when I can’t keep myself together any longer, then I need someone else to take over.”

  I regarded her.

  “I’m still not saying it right. It still comes out sounding like I want someone else to do my work for me, and that’s not what I mean. It’s not like that at all. It’s like …” A very long pause followed while she thought. “Well, it’s like with you and the kids. Like the other day when Geraldine got so upset and out of control. She just went to pieces. But you were there, saying not to worry and picking up the chairs. That’s what I mean. I need to know it’s just me that’s fallen apart and not the whole universe. I’m so weak. I need to know there’s someone out there’s who’s stronger, someone still in control. That’s what I’m talking about. Like what you do for the kids. Like what a mother does for her child.”

  Chapter 16

  Back to work. These were my favorite months: January, February and March. Undisturbed by major holidays, vacations or good weather, I had a nice long stretch in which to work uninterrupted. We were far enough from the beginning of the school year to be settled in and acquainted with one another’s idiosyncrasies, yet far enough from the end to be able to see through what we had started. Now was the time to apply myself. I was a winter person anyway, thriving in the cold weather and the short, gray days. This time of years always made me feel energetic, ambitious and motivated.

  After the initial week’s chaos, the children all settled down well from their long Christmas break. This was an unusual group in that respect. Change and disruption of routine did not bother them in the way it had my other classes through the years. I was never sure exactly why, but assumed it stemmed primarily from the fact that most of the children came from warm, stable homes. Only Mariana had a truly horrific home life, which was offset by the fact that she was one of the less disturbed children in the class.

  The hardest person to resettle was Ladbrooke, who returned not only filled with emotional turmoil, but had some dramatic physical problems to contend with as well. She vomited constantly, seldom making it through the lunch hour with me. Her weight dropped even more. Her hands shook. Her skin had a dryish, loosened look. And always there was that distinctive sickish color to her face.

  I wished fervently that she would see a doctor, and I urged her numerous times to go, until in the end, she told me she had. So I eased up on her some, but not because I believed her. I didn’t. I think I knew as well as she did that she’d be hospitalized if she saw a doctor. However, there seemed little point in pressing her to the point where she lied to me to get me to leave her alone.

  All during this time Ladbrooke said she wasn’t drinking. I had no way of verifying that, but I felt perhaps she was telling the truth. I think this was all just recovery from the two-week binge over Christmas, because slowly, slowly, she did improve. As January progressed, she finally got to the point where she no longer needed to bolt from the room to be sick. The dark circles under her eyes faded. Her skin color improved. She grew more energetic. And I relaxed.

  When it came to the kids, Leslie was at the head of my list for some serious intervention. Since my first concentrated efforts in November, I had made slow but steady progress with her. She would now sit down with me and do a few manipulative tasks or simple worksheets, but it was still hard going. She needed constant reorienting and total teacher involvement. Leslie wasn’t the kind of child you could teach with five others present.

  She still resorted to her disappearing act quite frequently. Particularly when angry, she could go maddeningly vacant and refuse to do a thing. However, I made it clear to her that sitting with me, being in my lap and being held, were all privileges and not rights. If she wanted to withdraw and do nothing, she did it on her own, because it just wasn’t sociable. If she was responsive, she could have all the advantages that went along with it. And as I suspected, Leslie had no trouble understanding this.

  Once Leslie confirmed to her own satisfaction that she could no longer control us in the classroom by her customary methods of withdrawal, she began to experiment with a wider range of behaviors. Many of these were distinctly less pleasant to put up with than the withdrawal had been. Sudden outbursts of temper became a regular, daily feature. UFOs took to the air. Worksheets and art projects met untimely ends. Wastebaskets appeared upside down, their contents strewn. And boxes of tissues, a particularly favored target for Leslie’s energies, were being shredded on a near-daily basis, leaving the room looking as if a snowstorm had happened by. And Leslie grew much noisier. Although she still used only the very rare meaningful word, she now began to scream and shout and otherwise demand attention vocally.

  As unpleasant as many of these changes were, I took them all to be signs of definite progress. They also confirmed my now long-held suspicion that Leslie’s withdrawal had been purely a conditioned response and not a parameter of her disturbance. Once it was no longer rewarded in the classroom, it disappeared with amazing speed.

  Once Leslie reached this noisy, rebellious stage, I felt more certain about the value of undertaking major changes. There were three areas in which I felt it imperative that Leslie show some improvement, both for her own future good and for the sanity of the people around her. One was to gain some form of communicative speech. Two was to achieve toilet training. Three was to diminish her bizarre midnight activities. I now felt improvement in all three areas to be within Leslie’s capabilities.

  Although Leslie did not apparently exhibit this new negative waywardness at home to the extent she did at school, her behavior there was changing as well. Ladbrooke was trying to apply some of my more successful techniques in that setting. Particularly, she tried not to reward Leslie for her continuing withdrawn behavior and to not play into Leslie’s long-established struggle to control the family. Unfortunately, well meaning as Ladbrooke was, she was not yet very competent at controlling Leslie’s behavior, as indeed, even I wasn’t in the classroom. Predictably, this was having dramatic effects on the family dynamics in general, and they weren’t especially positive ones.

  By the latter part of January, I could see we all needed to get together for another conference over Leslie, so I arranged for Tom to join Ladbrooke and me after school one afternoon.

  Tom Considyne was definitely underwhelmed with Leslie’s “progress” and spared no words whatsoever in telling me so. When I explained that evidence showed Leslie’s withdrawal to be simply a form of manipulation, that it got her what she wanted when she wanted it, and that this now angry, disruptive child was simply one finding a more appropriate way of relating, he was unimpressed. If she did what she did to make us hug and cuddle her, he said, then she should be hugged and cuddled. Nothing manipulative in that. She needed hugging and cuddling or she wouldn’t go to such extremes to get it, and he pulled out the hoary old chestnut about Ladbrooke’s maternal coldness. She had driven Leslie to such bizarre lengths. Poor Leslie. We should hug and cuddle her more, he said, not deprive her of it. I tried to explain that, yes, of course, Leslie needed to be hugged and cuddled. I wasn’t advocating otherwise. I was simply saying there were more appropriate ways of getting hugs and cuddles from other people than blackmailing them into it.

  As the discussion progressed, it grew heated. Tom was angry with me for creating a little monster. I was angry with him for seeing Leslie as an abstraction of a child rather than an actual human being. Ladbrooke sat apart from us at the far end of the table, her head down, her hands against her face, and never said a word.

  Leslie needed to change, I said. She was a real child living in a real world. Being hugged and cuddled and coddled and allowed to do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, was probably just fine by Leslie and probably always would be, but it was cheating her. We were shirking our responsibilities. She wasn’t Peter Pan. One of these days she wouldn
’t be seven any more. She’d be seventeen. Or twenty-seven. Or forty-seven. Who’d be wiping her bottom then? Which backward staff member would the job fall to?

  This, of course, made Tom Considyne furious. I was sullying Leslie. She was pure and innocent and natural, and he felt she herself was the only valid judge of what was good for her. Left alone with her purity, she could only be beautiful. But I was destroying her, destroying her innocence, taking a dream and making it into a nightmare.