Time of the Locust

by Morowa Yejidé

  Apprehension tightened Manden’s throat. He would go inside the facility with them as he had done before, and he would remain silent, invisible, during the meeting as he had done before. His support of Sephiri was obtuse, and he was ashamed to admit that he had been reluctant about it from the beginning, never understanding his place, his role. And even in situations such as this, when he was asked to come forward, when he was needed to step in as the man in a certain circumstance, he knew that he would not be able to speak. For what could he say in defense of his brother’s absence, in defense of his own paternal impotence? He could not bring himself to cast such shame at Brenda’s feet in front of others and heighten the burden she had been carrying alone.

  Manden watched Brenda hold Sephiri, cooing to him to come along, her great arms trembling under the child’s weight. Her forehead was thick with perspiration. Manden waited for her to ask him to help carry Sephiri, but she did not. She held him like a heavy basket in her arms and carted him into the Autism Center.

  Manden shoved his chilled hands into his pockets and followed behind them.

  Observations

  The Autism Center was filled with pictures of smiling children that hung along both sides of a long hallway. Skylights above shed a cheerful light on the yellow walls and the gleaming parquet floors. An enormous sculpture of children hugging the earth stood at the end of the hallway near the office entrance. Dr. Robert Peterson, the facility director, was a short, bubbly man with glasses. He was waiting for Sephiri, Brenda, and Manden with a big smile. “Greetings,” he said. “I’m glad you could make it today. Shall we go in?”

  A redheaded attendant appeared from another door behind the sculpture to lead Sephiri to the playroom. The boy balked, and the attendant produced a bright green ball from her apron pocket. “I brought your favorite, Sephiri,” she said. “Remember?”

  Sephiri began to flail his arms, ignoring her.

  A pleasant chime announced the morning snack somewhere in the facility. Three cheerful-looking assistants came out of another hallway door with trays, chatting among themselves.

  The attendant in the apron smiled at Sephiri, put the green ball back into her pocket, and produced a red crayon. “Look, Sephiri,” she said, holding it out to him.

  Sephiri began to spin around as the attendant drew closer. He let out a high-pitched squeal when she attempted to take his hand in hers.

  “Are you upset about something, Sephiri?” the attendant asked. Her soothing voice had not changed. “I’m sorry it is not the color you may have wanted.” She put the crayon on the floor in front of him.

  Sephiri picked it up and began breaking it into little pieces.

  “That’s not how we express our feelings, Sephiri,” said the attendant.

  Sephiri continued on in silence, staring at the crayon intently as he shredded it. While he was engrossed in this activity, the attendant picked him up and carried him away.

  Brenda tried to numb herself to all of this, as she had tried on a thousand other such occasions. She always had the unnerving feeling of watching a wind-up figurine when she looked at Sephiri, hypnotized by his strange movements. Each time, her trance was arrested by an overpowering sense of helplessness, a feeling that the hand of God had wound up Sephiri and she could do nothing to control his curious dance, his spine-chilling sounds from the great beyond.

  “Thank you for coming today,” said Dr. Peterson, gesturing for Brenda and Manden to go into the office and sit down at a large conference table. He had learned to be careful in the way he addressed them as Sephiri’s parents, even though Sephiri’s file had a letter stating that Manden Thompson was the boy’s uncle and had Brenda’s permission to attend meetings and discuss all matters related to Sephiri and the center and that on the line next to “Father,” his name was typed. A letter from the State of Colorado noting the incarceration of Horus Thompson was at the bottom of the file. Dr. Watson, Sephiri’s speech pathologist, had come to him with the delicate matter of Horus Thompson shortly after Sephiri was first enrolled. She told him that Brenda Thompson seemed very uncomfortable discussing anything regarding the boy’s father and that she did not make a correction when she was addressed as Mrs. instead of Ms.

  Dr. Peterson had seen such things before in his years in social work. Even under the most difficult of circumstances, he always thought it better that children had some semblance of a father as part of the household, or at least their lives. It was a Band-Aid, but it was better than nothing. Because of Sephiri’s autism, the doctor was uncertain about the degree to which Sephiri was aware of how Manden Thompson figured into his life or the impact his father’s absence had on him. But he thought it best never to bring the subject up for discussion. Sephiri was in good hands at the Takoma Park Autism Center. That was the most important thing.

  The table was covered with bottled water, notepads, and folders. A man and a woman were seated at the table.

  “You already know Dr. Susan Watson, our lead speech pathologist working with Sephiri,” said the facility director. “This is Dr. Edward Smith. He’s going to share some interesting things with you today. Please have a seat. Water?”

  “No, thank you,” said Brenda. Manden sat down without a word. The formality of the meeting made Brenda nervous. It wasn’t like the one-on-one conferences she had with the young Dr. Watson periodically, when it was just the two of them in the playroom with a cup of coffee. This looked like a panel discussion.

  Dr. Peterson sat down and took a deep breath, a half-smile smeared across his face. “Mr. Thompson, Mrs. Thompson,” he began, pushing the rims of his glasses back up the slope of his nose. “Again, thank you for joining us today. I’ll come straight to the point. Sephiri has exhibited some remarkable things lately, things I’ve never seen in my thirty years in this profession.”

  The others at the table nodded in agreement. Dr. Watson looked at Brenda and smiled.

  “Let me first say,” Dr. Peterson continued, “that I’ve discussed Sephiri with some individuals at the National Institutes of Health at great length. They are very excited, and with your permission, we would like to study him.”

  At the word study, Brenda was sickened. She looked at Manden. His face was pained, but he did not speak. A violent cough took hold of her, and she drank some water to calm her throat. “Study?” she asked.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Thompson,” said Dr. Peterson. “Perhaps study is too strong a word. What I mean is, we would like to take a closer look at Sephiri and the extraordinary shift in what he is exhibiting.”

  Brenda looked from Dr. Peterson to the other doctors. Sephiri was all she had left of Horus, as painful as it still was, all that remained of him since he had been put away. She didn’t want her boy’s peculiarities, however profound they were, under a microscope. Although Sephiri had been living bottled in a world of his own making, it was a safe world as far as she knew. His autism had allowed him that, at least. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “It’s all very special, Mrs. Thompson,” said Dr. Watson. Her face was flushed with excitement, and her blond curls bounced as she spoke. “It’s an observation of savants, extraordinarily talented autistic individuals. We think Sephiri is phenomenal. There are only a small number of these individuals identified in the world. They’re unexpected. They appear like rainbows. I can assure you that Sephiri would not be subjected to anything intrusive, you understand, only close observation. We could arrange for a special room here just for him, with all of his favorite things. Even a bathtub. In fact, this new style of observation allows minimal contact for the levels of sensitivity that we know Sephiri is prone to exhibit. The observation is pure. It is aimed only to enlighten us about the unknown, about the full spectrum of this condition, of the human mind. It could be groundbreaking.”

  Brenda looked at the animated young doctor. She did not want to say that as far as she could tell, what was amazing about Sephiri was the tremendously thick walls that seemed to shield him from everything and the mysterious
mazes he seemed to wander alone. She did not want to say that her boy seemed as trapped as his father, that Sephiri might only be a riddle to them all. “Doctor, what do you mean by an extraordinary shift?” she asked.

  The director’s eyebrows rose. “Have you seen Sephiri’s drawings, Mrs. Thompson?” He reached for a folder and opened it. He took out some papers and spread them around the table. There were enormous illustrations of insects, as if under a microscope. Some were drawn in pencil. Incredibly, others were sketched in multiple shades of brown, amber, or gold crayon. The outlines of things were drawn in the most delicate lines of black. There were fantastical renderings of abdomens, antennae, and wings. The veins across the wings were elaborate webs, with patterns drawn within patterns. From the head of each insect, a bold, piercing eye seemed to rise from the page. “Dr. Smith here can explain it better than I can,” said the facility director. He nodded to the other man sitting at the table.

  Dr. Smith, a short and stout man with a balding head, pointed to the drawings with his pencil. “These insect renderings are anatomically correct. I’ve had them checked.” He picked up one of the drawings and shook his head. There was a bulbous thorax and abdomen, from which six mechanically drawn legs dangled; joints and musculature were visible, every femur and tibia shown, with finely drawn barbs lining the edges. “We discovered many such drawings stuffed behind the bookcase in the playroom after Dr. Watson retrieved this one from Sephiri.” He took another sketch from a different folder and held it up. “But this is the only one that seems to depict something different.”

  The sketch showed a valley surrounded by enormous mountains. A great wall of dark rock was etched across a pallid-looking sky, and the charcoal-colored jagged heads of the mountains were capped with a smattering of white. Their hulking forms corralled an ominous structure in the foreground. Two towers flanked the extremities of a huge building in the middle. There were shadows of figures standing on the ledges of the tower. Thin rods extending from the frames of their bodies could have been long sticks. Or rifles.

  “This really is rather extraordinary, even imposing,” said Dr. Smith. “Could it be somewhere Sephiri has been before?” He placed the drawing in front of Brenda. “Do you recognize it?” He looked at Manden. “Anything familiar at all, Mr. Thompson?”

  Brenda looked at Manden, who remained silent.

  Brenda was stunned by the drawings. She looked back again at the towers and the mountains in amazement, telling herself there couldn’t possibly be a connection to what was creeping into her mind. It looked like a prison, with the silhouettes of men standing atop the towers and the ominous-looking walls. It looked like Black Plains. She had never been able to bring herself to go near there, and after the verdict, she was only able to look at photographs of it on occasion in those darkest of times, when she tried to fathom the place her husband was condemned to. The prosecutor called Horus a domestic terrorist. The judge said that he would be going where terrorists go. And she had looked at the images of the perimeter of the compound, wondering how something so sinister and terrible could be placed among such spectacular mountain majesty. In those first months, she had many nightmares of the dreadful place. And whenever she thought of Horus, it rose in her mind like a mirage of Hades.

  But Sephiri had never been to Black Plains, and he knew nothing of Horus. His autism had cloaked him, hadn’t it? And it was then that Brenda thought of the tapestry she’d spent so many days in front of at the museum, for which she had named her son. Sephiri, the hidden place of the heart. Was this the same boy who threw plates of food on the floor and banged his head on walls? Who would not let her touch him sometimes, who screamed when she tried to get him out of the bathtub? She was never sure if he even recognized his own name, since he was often indifferent to whether she used it to try to get his attention or not. How could he know about insects in this way or Black Plains? Brenda’s stomach knotted, and she swallowed hard, staring at the drawings to glean some meaning from them, trying to balance an impossible equation.

  “Mrs. Thompson?” asked Dr. Smith, louder.

  “No,” she said. “This is not somewhere Sephiri’s been before. I would never take him to a place like this.” She did not look at Manden. They did not discuss such things. What she would never know was that Manden had never gone out to the prison, that he had written a letter to Horus on the anniversary of their father’s death every year since he was sent away. Some of the letters were one sentence. Some were pages and pages. Things had a way of coming out on the page, even when he hadn’t wanted them to. But he had folded each letter up, sealed it, and thrown it in the trash. He had convinced himself that it was better this way, with the blood dried on the concrete of their lives and certain things left blank.

  “Well, it doesn’t particularly matter,” said the facility director. “The point here is the extraordinary show of mastery. We think Sephiri may be a savant. Such sudden displays of amazing ability have been documented before. There are still so many things we don’t know about autism, so much of the brain that has yet to be unlocked. You have to understand that through careful observation, we might be able to learn more of the crucial elements of his condition. It may help you to understand him more.”

  Brenda looked at the beautiful sketches and was amazed. If there was anything she wanted in the world, it was to understand Sephiri more. He had been unreachable since his toddler years. He had started to speak, first in baby gibberish, then with a few intelligible words. But when he turned three, it was as if language fell away from him altogether, and he descended into a world without words and the feelings associated with them, without facial expression or interaction. He looked at her arm or her hair as if from a distant place, somewhere too far away to hear her calling to him. He had turned to stone before her eyes.

  “What kind of insects are these?” Brenda asked.

  “Locusts. That’s what the entomologist I had examine the drawings tells us,” said Dr. Smith. “An extinct variety of locust, distinguishable only by a few specific characteristics. From what I understand, it’s a kind of mountain locust that was once native to the western United States. They used to lie dormant for years underground before hatching and emerging. They’ve been extinct since the eighteen hundreds.” The director shook his head. “All the more amazing that Sephiri would draw such a thing and all the more reason to watch him closely. He might teach us something.”

  The facility director clasped his hands together and smiled. “We will keep you informed every step of the way. As you know, Sephiri will be challenged by a change to a different room, and this is the only initial concern we have. But a room of his own without the possible distraction of other children would be ideal, we think. It is a lovely space, with clear glass walls. We know of Sephiri’s fondness for baths, and we have even equipped the room with a tub. Think of it like his own warmed pool, where he can relax. He would really like that, we’re sure. Of course, we will have to allow time for him to adjust before we could actually begin noting anything in his behavior. We will have to help him to understand the new environment as being a friendly one, which may be a little difficult for him to realize at first. But we think this arrangement would be for the best. May we have your permission?”

  Brenda again looked at Manden. He looked back at her but remained silent. Brenda knew it was her decision. She had been solitary in Sephiri’s care. Despite her occasional insistence on this family charade and Manden’s monthly check, she had been on her own. She felt her ankles swelling as she fidgeted in the seat. Perhaps this was a way to finally get a glimpse of what was going on in Sephiri’s mind, some circuitous route to reach him. This could be a chance to connect with him, to get him what he needed. Maybe then she would have a chance to tell him that he was precious to her in spite of everything, that he had been conceived in love after all. In saving him, perhaps she could find a way to save herself.

  Sugar

  There are moments that leave a mark. That set in motion a traject
ory of events from which there seems to be no escape. There were many such marks for Brenda; pivotal among them was the day her doctor told her that she was heading toward diabetes. His warning came the morning after a long night with Sephiri. He had been agitated by something, and she could not get him to stay in bed and go to sleep. She walked him back to his room over and over, laid him down next to her in her own room, put pillows and blankets on the floor in the hallway, all to no avail. When she gave up well after midnight, she turned on all the lights, locked herself in the bathroom, and broke down crying. She let him roam around the house while she slumped on the sofa. Around three o’clock, he finally settled on the living-room floor in front of the television turned to a channel with nothing but loud static. Exhausted, she tried to cancel her appointment later that morning and was told by the bubbling receptionist that it was important that she not miss it.

  “Impaired glucose tolerance,” the doctor said. It was a prediabetic condition (pre meaning one last chance before it all goes to hell). Her cells were swimming in a bath of sugar. Her pancreas was turning on itself. The rest of her would be next. Kidneys. Eyes. Nerve endings. Heart. She needed to make some lifestyle changes. Eat healthy. Exercise. Reduce stress. Lose weight. She stared blankly into the doctor’s eyes, thinking, When? How?

  The doctor went on about green leafy vegetables and thirty-minute walks, and Brenda drifted into thoughts of how the vortex of Sephiri’s autism consumed her. What scraps were left around the edges went to supporting the two of them with her job. The money from Manden helped with unexpected expenses, but she wasn’t foolish enough to think that this would go on forever. Eating, as she was loath to admit unless she was in one of those soul-clutching moments late at night, was her only comfort. Often it was the drive-thru, takeout, or frozen meals. Burger King. Checkers. Kung Pao chicken. Sara Lee. Hungry-Man. This freed her to get through meal ordeals with Sephiri, who wanted peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Brenda was determined that he would eat something more substantive. Quinoa and buckwheat. Raw vegetables and fruits. Fresh strawberries and turkey. Fish and eggs. Most of the time, Sephiri was fussing at the table, throwing his plate on the floor, screaming and grabbing the grape jam from the pantry. Or else, he was motionless at his plate, lifeless and staring. There wasn’t time for her own meal planning. She couldn’t leave him in the house alone to take a walk, nor could she bring him with her. There weren’t any yoga classes or gym memberships to fit into her day. Insomnia, which ruled her life by force or default, took what energy stores she had left.