A Shining Affliction

by Annie G. Rogers

  “Yes. I’m tired of this Rip Van Winkle feeling of waking up from a long sleep over and over again. I’ve lost time. I’ve lost so much time that I don’t feel my age. I don’t want to end up in the hospital once or twice every year. Is this ever going to change for me?”

  “I think that it’s changed a little already,” Blumenfeld says. “Am I right about that?”

  I nod. Tears bloom in my eyes, but don’t run over. I look down at my hands.

  “I don’t know if I can go back and work with the children I was seeing,” I mumble.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you, Annie,” Blumenfeld says.

  “Ben,” I say, and the tears suddenly brim over.

  “The little boy you played with, Ben?”

  I nod.

  “What about Ben?” Blumenfeld asks.

  “I don’t know if I can go back and work with him. I keep dreaming about him, and about fires.”

  I see Ben lying before me in the grass just after he has played out his abandonment by the mama bear. Ben, child of my childhood.

  “How could you not go back to Ben?” Blumenfeld asks, incredulous.

  For the first time, it is clear that it would be impossible for me not to go back to Ben, and to the other children I was seeing.

  “What about the fires?” I ask Blumenfeld.

  “What about them, Annie?”

  “Ben was forgotten in a fire when he was a baby, and my mother was almost killed in a fire, and now ... but I don’t know what to tell you about fire.”

  “You want to understand all these connections before you go back to Ben?” he asks.

  I nod.

  Blumenfeld finds this hilarious. When he wipes his eyes, he says, “No, Annie, it doesn’t work that way. Don’t you remember that healing is two-sided? The connections you want to make will be there when you play with Ben again, not now, not before then.”

  60

  I make arrangements to return to my internship. I tell my three supervisors only a very small part of my story—that I have lost an important relationship in my life, and have been through a time of intense grieving. They assume someone has died; they assume I have been depressed. I do not try to dissuade them of these ideas. I have already lost scholarships, fellowships, and clinical opportunities by being honest about my history. I am not naive about truth-telling in a clinical context. I have learned well how important it is to keep the realms of wellness and sickness separate.

  I find that each one of my supervisors is excited about my return to Glenwood and trusts my capacity to take up my work with the children again. I feel deceitful about not saying what has happened and wish I could tell them. Rachael and Mary Louise and Helen seem to have an unwavering faith in my work.

  I wonder if it would waver, if they knew.

  But Blumenfeld does not believe I must be “cured” before going back to work with children.

  I dream of Ben crying to me, “Don’t you remember me?”

  I dream that Blumenfeld and Ben and I are playing catch with a baseball on a wide green field. Telesporus runs and wings his way over home plate with glee, even though we are not running bases. Even in my dream, I notice the silence on the other side of silence that streams over everything -grass, trees, the sound of the ball smacking into leather, dust, light, cloud shadows—blessing of silence over everything.

  III

  MESSENGER

  Angels are spirits, but it is not because they are spirits that they are Angels. They become Angels when they are sent. For the name Angel refers to their office, not their nature. You ask the name of this nature, it is spirit; you ask its office, it is that of an Angel, which is a messenger.

  —Saint AUGUSTINE, Confessions

  Every angel is terrifying.

  —RAINER MARIA RILKE, Duino Elegies, 2

  Between angels, on this earth absurdly between angels, I try to navigate

  in the bluesy middle ground of desire and withdrawal ...

  -STEPHEN DUNN, Between Angels

  61

  May is the back door into summer’s kitchen; the screened door springs back, and summer light splits the green-and-white linoleum into wedges of sweet watermelon. Scattered bricks by the curb become intricately feathered cardinals and transform themselves back into bricks again; something or someone unknown plays with her senses, and shifts everything back to reality.

  The need to write thrums on the back of my hands, and my knuckles jut out white; my fist is a promise to remember, to define the undefinable edge of lost memories. I begin to write whatever comes into my mind, a free stream-of-consciousness writing, a broadening of memory as if in preparation to see Ben again.

  What you fear most has already happened. And outside the glass, Ben, five irises. The purple bloom repeats itself too.

  The rain begins to fall in thin, lenslike drops, erasing slowly, like snow, the line between the curb and the street—until all the lines of the boundaried world are unrecognizable and all along the water’s edge the long stretch of sea is gray, blue-gray, white-gray, and white out there where the horizon meets the bright rim of the great bowl of ocean that tips over into European things: better tea older houses famous cathedrals she’s never seen. The history of the world opens before her eyes, turn the page, witches are burning, turn another page, a peasant girl hears holy voices, fights a war, fears every war, and listens for voices, burning. The rain falls, erasing a summer life of shells and little sea beings, and she casts off her life too, and comes back in the spring when the poppies, too red, hurt her skin, and filigree of green grows fast on the skinny arms of trees, and memory is ripped wide open. She walks carefully around puddles, centuries deep, broken by the rain—the heart breaks too, shattered by arms held out to her, then gone. The rain falls in thin, lenslike drops, a man holds a stuffed rabbit and cradles it, and she is lost to a little boy. Some ordinary human fear of returning unrecognized turns up in her and she turns it over to see that it was minted just recently, nothing to make a stink about, but the terror in her body wasn’t minted yesterday, she knows that from the voices falling into her ears all night long. She sleeps without dreaming and dreams without sleeping. Love was snuffed out under burning lights and she has to make it back to him, one little boy, trying alone to put out all the fires in all the skies ...

  62

  In early May I mail Ben cards, stickers, notes, and yellow pom-poms to tie on his shoes, aware that these gifts are no real compensation for my long absence.

  Before I see any of the children, I meet with Mary Louise late in the afternoon in her sun-drenched little office in the second week of May. I learn that while I was away Ben has reverted to biting himself, scratching himself, head-banging, and striking out at adults and children without provocation in shattering losses of self-control. He has not been formally assigned another therapist, however. It was clear to Mary Louise that he was attached to me, and she guessed that I would be back. (This astonishes me.) Because Ben was unable to be contained in his classroom, he spent a lot of his time alone with someone familiar, often Mary Louise herself, while I was away. Now as I make plans to return, the Glenwood staff, his parents and his psychiatrist, are all considering residential placement at Glenwood for Ben.

  I am bereft, hearing this.

  On the day of my return Ben has to be held in his seat on the bus as he rides to school. Mary Louise pulls him into her office as he comes in. He continues to cry and struggle, and cannot or will not tell her what happened on the bus. She tells him that I am back, and he begins to calm down.

  In the playroom, my phone rings. Ben is waiting to see me in Mary Louise’s office. Walking down the long hallway, every door and turn familiar to me, the light new as the month of May, unexpected as my return, I wonder if Ben will be able to bring himself to see me again. I wonder if I will be met with distance, or angry rejection, or, at best, with ambivalence. I have abandoned him, after all.

  When I come into the room, he is standing by Mary Louise’s desk in b
lue shorts and a gray T-shirt. He looks stunned to see me. He rushes to me and winds his arms around my legs. I reach down and lift him up, and he allows this. He wraps his arms around my neck and clings tightly. It is my turn to feel stunned. I do not put him down, but stand and rock him lightly side to side, talking to Mary Louise.

  “You’re back,” Ben finally says, incredulous. “Will you see me today?”

  “I will see you right now,” I tell him.

  I put him down then, and offer my hand. He takes it and we go down the hall together in silence to the playroom. I hand Ben my keys and he selects the right one without hesitation and opens the playroom door.

  He goes immediately to Tea Bags and runs his fingers over the soft puppet.

  “I visited Tea Bags while you were gone,” he says, turning to face me.

  “You did?”

  “I did. He was all alone,” Ben replies.

  “Tea Bags was alone and you felt alone, too,” I say.

  Ben does not reply. He walks slowly around the room, looking, touching the toy shelves, the edge of the sink, my desk, the wall: a brushing, fleeting touch. He finishes his circle at the toy shelves and stands with his back to me. His movements are the same movements of our very first meeting, except this time he makes his circuit slowly, as if he has grown very old, or very sad.

  “I missed you,” he says in a voice so toneless and so quiet I hardly hear him.

  He stands so still, and I do not know how to make an adequate reply.

  He turns toward me and his chin trembles, but he does not cry.

  “I missed you a whole lot,” he says, accusing me, his eyes hard.

  It would be easy to comfort him, to reassure him, but he is being so brave and trying so hard to handle this in his own way. I do not want to rob him of his pain to spare myself my own grief.

  “I see that you missed me a whole lot,” I say softly. “It was a very long time.”

  Ben breaks our gaze and turns away again. For a moment he does not know what to do.

  Then he picks up a little red cowboy hat from the toy shelves and puts it on, and reaches up for the baby bottle. He slowly fills it at the sink and screws the top back on; slowly, he comes up to my desk and sets the baby bottle down on the corner. Pointing to the hat, he says,

  “Make me a cowboy hat, just like this one.”

  “A cowboy hat you can take with you today?”

  “Yeah. And you know what? We can play cowboy in here,” he says, picking up a little energy in his voice.

  He helps me cut paper and tape a hat together, tearing off long strips of tape and biting them apart with his sharp little teeth. As we work together on the hat, he decides he also wants guns, boots and a saddle.

  “And you could be my horse,” he suggests.

  “I could. And you would ride me?”

  “I know. Let’s play baby horse!” he exclaims, his eyebrows arched high.

  Then he coughs and tightens his hold on my desk as the cough shakes his whole body. He stands very still, unblinking and unfocused, as if in a short trance. Then he looks down and pokes one finger at a ball of gray clay. He smashes it down and rolls it into a long piece.

  “This is a worm. No, this is a snake. It will bite you,” he mutters.

  “It will sting me,” I say, leaning in to hear him.

  “No, it will bite you.” And he moves the snake up to my arm, “Hisss, hisss.

  “Bite, bite, bite, bite!” he says suddenly, his teeth clenched tightly together.

  “Because I left you, this snake is biting me good,” I interpret for him.

  “It will make you sick?” he asks, pulling the snake back.

  “I don’t think so.”

  He demurs, “Animals will be good to you.”

  “Your snake will not make me sick,” I tell him more forcefully. “I am back to stay, Ben.”

  But as Ben talks to me, he picks up a ball of string and drops it, unwinding it. He continues to unwind it and moves in rapid circles, tangling himself up in it.

  “You have got yourself all tangled up,” I notice. “Can I help you out?”

  “No!” he shouts. “I can do it by myself,” he says softly, with dignity.

  And slowly, carefully he unravels himself. He comes back to my desk and picks up the baby bottle. Looking at me solemnly, he says, “You could be the baby horse?” very tentatively, in a small voice.

  “Me or you?” I ask. “You would sort of like to be my baby horse?” I feel his longing and his fear.

  Ben gets down on all fours by my chair and looks up expectantly.

  I take my cue and hold the baby bottle for him, and he sucks hard on it, pulling quite a bit, and letting go from time to time to make a whinnying noise. Then he goes back to sucking hard again. Suddenly he lets go of the nipple and looks up at me. I offer the bottle again, but he shakes his head.

  “Burp me,” he says, a little annoyed that he had to say it. I smile and kneel beside him on the rug, and pat and rub his back until he lets out a soft burp. This takes several minutes. After he burps, he jumps to his feet abruptly and snatches up the hat I’ve made for him.

  “Now I’m the cowboy. Make me some guns!” he demands.

  “You’d like me to make you some guns, but our time is about up today.” Ben reaches out and picks up the ball of string he had tangled himself in and hands it to me.

  “Then you keep this for me. Hide it away in a secret place.”

  “Where shall I hide it?” I ask.

  “In the very back of this drawer. Way back there,” he tells me, opening my desk drawer, “so nobody can find it.”

  “Nobody but you and me?” I ask.

  “That’s right,” he says.

  I take his hand and walk back to the classroom with him.

  Ben goes into the room and shouts, “Hey, Mrs. Engle, look. Annie’s back!” As his teacher continues to speak to another little boy, Ben goes straight up to them and kicks that little boy hard on the leg. His teacher pulls him away and he begins to struggle. I leave him like this.

  For all of this regression, the period of our separation and my return shows me things I did not know about Ben’s relationship with me. Whatever he experienced during my absence, whatever questions he had about my return, there is one area where he has made a very solid gain; he has become attached, and even ten weeks of separation could not undo that attachment. If anything, the time lost seems to have intensified the quality of our relationship, though I am not sure why. This intensity is clear when Ben clings to me as I hold him. I might have distrusted it entirely had he not shown me, in his play, his hurt and anger as well. It is as if he is working with greater intensity to make up for lost time.

  My absence and return impelled Ben forward in ways which may not have happened otherwise. It is as if this undeniable period of abandonment and this undeniable return have clarified something Ben kept trying to play out with me earlier. But who can ever step into a child’s soul and know what he really gained, what ground he actually lost?

  Today Ben becomes reacquainted with the playroom, with Tea Bags and the toys and the room itself. He moves close to me, distances, and comes back, reacquainting himself with the possibilities in our relationship, too. Very early in the session, he is able to say directly, “I missed you,” but standing some distance away and with his back turned. Then, given his own time, he says, “I missed you a whole lot,” showing me his determination not to cry and his anger at my betrayal. Ben controls the experience throughout, literally finding his way back to me in the way he constructs the drama between us. He has a new dignity in this, something almost tangible, something that demands my respect. But he is also vulnerable. When he first makes mention of playing “baby horse,” he is seized by a racking cough, which puts him into a very short trancelike state. Perhaps “baby horse” is reminiscent of “baby bear,” and Ben is too afraid to approach me in this way. First, he has to show me his anger. This he does, very effectively, with the snake. Again, his
dignity is striking. Not long ago he would have been overwhelmed by his rage. He, not the snake, would have bitten me! But the biting snake frightens him, too. He is afraid it will make me sick, and when I explain I am back to stay, he shows me his confusion and fear, tangling himself up in the string. He declines my help forcefully, and with dignity he again finds his way back to me. It has to be on his terms. Only then is he willing to trust me with his “baby horse” wish. Again, I see a new readiness, a new kind of intensity in him. For the first time ever, he cues me to feed him, and then to burp him. Never before in his play did he invite or allow this. At the very end of the session, he again reveals his vulnerability, asking me to hide the string, to keep it in a special place, as though asking me to safeguard the tangled-up, confused Ben.

  The story that continues after I return to Ben astonishes me even now, years later. It remains a mystery to me—how Ben’s attachment to me endured that long two-and-a-half-month separation, and how we then proceeded to heal one another in the few months left to us. The dramatic conversation of our playing can’t be reduced to the inner life of either one of us as individuals; rather, it contains the overlapping drama between us—the conversation of two playing. We two, Ben and I, are also accompanied in our playing by Blumenfeld, by Rachael, Mary Louise and Helen, and by Telesporus, to mention just a few of the other characters and players.

  Later in the day, Ben asks Mary Louise, very anxiously, if he had made me sick. She tells me that she doesn’t know exactly why he imagines that, but it is not so unusual for a young child to believe he or she has that kind of power over someone else. I missed this question in his snake play, this fear that he’d sent me away and been the cause of his own suffering. Mary Louise assures Ben that he had not made me sick. Before I leave for the day, I repeat this to him. As he waits outside for his bus, I kneel beside him. “You did not make me sick, Ben. You are magic, but not that magic,” and he smiles and blushes a little.