by Rica Keenum
A few weeks later, I am attempting to pack J a sandwich when I find a pair of pink satin panties in his lunch box. Fishing them out with two leery fingers, I hold them up and ask, “What the hell is this?”
He looks directly at me. “Must be a prank,” he says. “You don’t know the kind of guys I work with.”
I throw his lunch box on the counter and it lands with a clunk.
“Bullshit,” is all I can muster before his face begins to morph. Eyes like ammunition.
He takes two steps toward me and leans in. I’m pressed between him and the wall, a bookmark in a horror story. “You have some serious jealousy issues,” he says, spitting each syllable at my face.
Again, I am silent. I’ll never get a straight answer from a crooked man.
***
We all pile into our Chevy Malibu and I balance a hot tray of cocktail wieners on my lap.
“You’re too damn handsome,” J hollers to the boys as they scramble to find their seatbelts. He leans into the backseat with his eyes narrowed in their direction. “Who told you to look so damn handsome today? So. Damn. Handsome! We’re going to church, not Hollywood,” he says.
He begins jabbing the boys with his finger and they curl up and giggle. Their little feet thrash in the backseat and I shove the wieners aside so I can grab Sym’s untied shoelace and fasten a quick bow.
At the potluck, we are happily married like everyone else, and J mingles with the crowds while he approaches the line for more lemonade. I watch Pastor John shake his hand then they stand together for a moment and chat, occasionally chuckling or nodding in mutual agreement. My husband is pleasant today. He is the charismatic man who slid his phone number across the counter at a Milwaukee gas station. I am on the other side of the church gymnasium, fielding basketballs and other playground equipment. The boys are sweaty, and they scamper around like baby squirrels. Sym found a jump rope and KJ is busy with two boys and a football. Their little tanks are full of lemonade and apple pie, and they could go for miles. I look up and see J returning with a small plate and a plastic cup. “I brought you a piece of cheesecake,” he says. “With strawberries.”
We go home happy until gravity takes hold and pushes us back to ourselves, J on the upstairs sofa and me with my face in a book. After work, he stays out late and when I ask, he says, “sports.” He likes to watch races, basketball, football and all the rest on the big screens downtown with a basket of chicken wings and a side of ranch. This goes on for months and I’m alternately angry and relieved. Angry because this is no marriage. Relieved because the boys are in bed and Lucy and Ethel are on TV. In the quiet house, I can spread out in front of old sitcoms and laugh. I can read books about other families and forget everything I know about my own.
***
Six months pass before J is in the mood for another church function. And really, he’s not even in the mood. But I have somehow convinced him to attend. This is our ticket, I think. Can’t God save us?
J dresses quietly, slowly. I try to watch the clock without watching the clock. When he turns his back, I steal a glance and sigh. Maybe, if traffic is good, I think. But he lumbers about, opening dresser drawers and slamming them until he finds his belt and slowly begins threading it through the loops on his pants. Five more minutes. Maybe if traffic is really good and we get a great parking spot and there’s a pew way in back… The boys are on the stairs, tossing toy cars down and declaring winners. “Can I watch cartoons now?” KJ calls out, bored with his game.
“We’re going to church,” I say.
“But when? What’s taking so long?” he bellows.
“Shut your mouth, son.” J snaps. Then, “Please,” like bad punctuation.
The boys and I collectively harden, frozen until J grabs the car keys and they clink us to life once again. We are off to church.
When we arrive, the congregation is on its feet and music fills the room. I weave through the center aisle with the boys at my side. Perfume wafts from every direction and people smile tiny, distracted smiles as we scout for seats. When I find a pew, I hunker down with the boys and search the room for J. Where is J? There are little old ladies clutching their adult grandsons and young women corralling their children. A pigtailed girl stands in her seat and yanks at her father’s elbow. He scoops her into his lap. The ushers are shutting the big oak doors and as they thud to a close, I see J through the glass pane. His black hair glistens in the sun-dappled hall. I watch as he makes his way toward the foyer and then disappears. Someone picks him up and I don’t know how it goes down, only that he doesn’t reappear until well after midnight.
He’s silent the next day, so I decide to make some noise. I don’t know where to begin with my words, so I let the drawers do the talking. Slam. Slam. Slam. Our entire house is indignant on my behalf. When I search the cupboards for a pot, I clang the cookware together like cymbals, again and again and again. When I find my pot, I place it on the stove and let it crash down so hard the boys turn to see what’s happened. Then I hustle out of the kitchen because the bathrooms need a good cleaning. I am hurricane-wife.
The real storm hits a few nights later. The snow comes down in a hectic, bleach-white haze and I watch it cling to the trees outside. J’s words come slow like syrup from the bottom of a bottle. After hours of silence, he finally says, “I want a divorce.” Before I can feel the impact of his statement, KJ runs in from the playroom.
“Dad, come see the fort we built,” he pleads, yanking J’s arm.
“In a minute, son,” he says in a voice that’s almost a whisper. KJ bobs out of the room and we begin to argue. This is the end of us, and I feel like the little girl on the cracked cement step.
“What about the mortgage? The boys’ schools? Their playroom — their neighborhood friends? We have everything here,” I say. But I know it’s a lie. I am the girl who believes every lie, even my own.
I keep talking, cobbling together lists like a salesperson trying to close the deal. “We’re so close to the library and my work, and maybe if you went to church with us…” My voice trails off. We’re quiet for a moment then J speaks again.
“Would you even be with me if it weren’t for the boys?” It’s the first time he has looked at me today and suddenly, I wish he wouldn’t. His eyes are sad. So sad. Broken window eyes.
I know the words he wants to hear, the assurance he gropes for even as the truth has returned to rattle our walls. My answer is small but mighty, an arrow in the bow of my mouth. Once I say it, I know I can’t stop its trajectory. But neither can I lie.
“No.”
I watch him leave the room. It seems we don’t talk about divorce again. We just do it.
***
My sister announces she found our cousin, who led her to our dad. He reappears in my life with grand tales that only partially explain his absence. When I see him, I stand awkwardly in my sister’s kitchen, unsure of my hands, my smile, the rules that apply in this scenario. But he is confident, and he hugs me as if he knows me. I wonder if he does, if it’s possible that he could have carried me with him all these years. “I would recognize you anywhere,” he says. I watch his hands move to the beat of his words, slender hands like my brother’s. He tells me he wrote poems in jail. Poems like I write — me, his daughter. I am someone’s daughter. He is brown-skinned and blue-jeaned and familiar as if from a dream. He is deja vu.
I think of the metal box I found in the hall closet when I was 15. The crusty pages of court documents, the sight of his name — the name of my dad. I think of the days I dreamed I could find him, the bus fare that jingled in my pocket. I could ride the bus straight to him. Which bus would take me there?
Now he promises to treat us to ice cream and shopping — father, daughter, grandsons. We wait for him on a Sunday afternoon. The boys place their plastic army men in tidy rows near my feet. I sit cross-legged, watching the street, waiting for my father to arrive. Waiting, waiting. The weather is turning, and the colors make me hopeful. A kaleidoscope o
f leaves is splayed across the grass: orange, red, yellow — the jewels of autumn. When KJ asks if it’s time to go yet, I check my watch and realize how late it’s gotten. How did it get so late?
“Let’s go inside, guys,” I say.
I hear the ghost of my mother's voice whispering in my head — my father is worthless.
***
Two weeks post-divorce I am back at the house that is no longer my house.
J decided to keep it, although I can’t fathom how he will pay the mortgage. But it’s not my problem anymore. I have taken what was mine: vases and valances, little lamps that lit the corners of our rooms and the trinkets I hoped could make a home. I found a place for everything in an apartment across town, and it fits but it doesn’t.
The wind has pitched the porch chairs on their sides, and I stand at my old door, resisting the urge to straighten them. The grass is long and weedy, and the plants I left are now prickly brown shoots, potted ugly afters. Before I can knock or think about whether I should knock, J opens the door. He smells like Drakkar Noir and the memories come flooding back. I picture him standing in the bedroom we shared, wet from a shower, spritzing this man-scent on his chest. “Who wants some smell good,” he’d ask, and the boys would line up, lift their shirts and giggle as he sprayed their little bodies.
“The boys are upstairs watching a movie,” he says.
I glance down at my feet, considering my options.
“Do you want to come in and wait?” he asks, stepping aside so I can enter.
I don’t answer but I follow him into the house where cozy rugs once warmed my feet and the aroma of a meal in the oven filled every room. Now there are pizza crusts in open boxes, Mountain Dew bottles, crumpled receipts and stacks of old mail. In the sink, there are no dishes. Probably because there are no dishes. Neither is there any furniture. The house is a dorm room on steroids. And when I excuse myself to the bathroom, there is no toilet paper on the roll. Instead, a pile of Burger King napkins.
Because there’s nowhere to sit, I lie on the floor in the living room downstairs and listen as the boys’ movie shakes the walls in the upstairs playroom. J finds a spot next to me and we begin to chat. It’s like we are relearning each other, and ourselves too. I am someone else now, no longer his wife. When he looks at me, he looks at me and not through me, the way you look at a person you just met when you’re attempting to know who they are. This is new territory and I am a new woman, someone he deems worthy of manners. His movements are cautious, his eyes quizzical. I can tell he’s noticing things about me as he explores the landscape of my face. When we were married, he filled out an insurance questionnaire and his answers surprised me.
“You’ve got me down as 5’7” and 110 pounds,” I said. “I’m 5’2” and 125 pounds. Do you even know my eye color?”
If he had to fill out that form today, I wonder what he would write.
We get quiet and I feel his hand edge toward mine on the carpet. It’s inches away, idling like an engine. He’s so close I can feel his breath, but I am lost in the shadows on the ceiling. Shadows everywhere.
“I made a big mistake,” he says in a whisper that could be a roar.
I swallow the shockwave in the room and say, “I can’t fix this.”
Chapter 7
ADHD
Things get better and worse, better and worse. Our apartment is in a quiet building with a manicured lawn where the boys pound snow into their gloves and launch ice bombs in the yard. In the summer, they meander with stick swords, poke beetles and collect dandelions in their muddy fists.
“Look, Mom, we brought you flowers.”
On good days I serve chocolate cake at the kitchen counter and fill their cups with cold milk. On bad days, Sym yanks the television to the floor or gut-punches me in the grocery store checkout line.
A year prior, during Sym’s first week of preschool, the teacher had pulled me into the classroom. A plump young woman, her rosy cheeks had gone pale. We stood for an awkward second as I considered taking a seat on one of the miniature chairs.
“We’ve had some problems,” she began.
Between story hour and snack time, my 40-pound son had flipped over a table and knocked a bookshelf to the ground. A heap of hardcover books bore witness as she pointed and cleared her throat. It was the first of many classroom outbursts I would hear about from every teacher, counselor, or faculty member I met in a cold conference room or office. And she was the first of many who summed it up in four letters: ADHD. The symptoms: impulsivity, anger, hyperactivity. Check, check and check. I had to admit he fit the profile. So I went home and typed the letters into the search bar, then chased them down the internet rabbit hole.
Was this a marketing ploy to peddle a high-priced drug? My son is willful, spirited, shaken by the family drama. But then I would watch him with KJ, two brothers so vastly different — one child captivated by the cartoons, the other rocking wildly in his chair, eyes darting around the room. I wavered from wanting to embrace the diagnosis to wanting to smother it like a grease fire. When the doctor handed me a Ritalin prescription, I slipped it into my wallet and kept it there like a bullet in the chamber. I could not endorse junk food, but I was supposed to feed him mood-altering drugs whose side effects could potentially damage his heart or turn him into an insomniac? I didn’t have the courage to dose him.
Now I am desperate for help. I find a child psychiatrist, a 60-something man who wears cardigan sweaters and wire-rimmed glasses. He is gray and gentle, and he plays basketball with Sym during meetings at his office. Monthly sessions are all I could afford, but they’re worth every penny. At his suggestion, I place Sym in the bathroom when his anger flares. The idea is to isolate him in a place where he can’t do harm.
“Don’t address him when he’s angry,” the counselor warned me. “He has to learn that it won’t solve his problems.”
Ignoring my child is the hardest thing I have ever done. Watching him spiral into anger feels like letting a tornado seize him. I pick up my flailing little boy and sit him on the bathroom tiles, pulling the door shut before he can plow into it. I kneel in the hallway with both hands clamped on the knob, sobbing and gasping for air as his feet stomp against the wood veneer. I feel every kick in my throat, against my chest and inside my head. My blood pounds in my ears. I pray the neighbors don’t call the complex management or worse — child protective services.
I try to hear the counselor’s words in my head over the thumping and wailing.
He has to learn. He has to learn. He has to learn. I repeat it like a mantra and it keeps me steady on the other side of the door.
Later, I enroll him in martial arts when his counselor recommends it. It is another therapy I can scarcely afford, but it is priceless to watch his little body bundled in a clean white dobok, kicking with control. Kicking with a smile.
He is proud of his physical achievements, asking, “How far do you think I can throw this?” when choosing a rock at the park. When he speeds by on his bicycle, he urges me to watch as he pedals up a hill. “Count how many seconds, Mom.”
On neighborhood walks, he turns to me suddenly as if set on fire. “Look how fast I can run, Mom,” he hollers before shifting into turbo, cheeks flushed as he sprints toward a light post.
“That’s incredible,” I say.
***
The noise jerks me awake. I open one eye and see my cell pulsating on the nightstand near my bed. I am curled like a warm shrimp inside the eggroll of many blankets. I wriggle an arm out and grab the phone. It’s Rawson Elementary.
“This is Sandra from the school office. Symeon is on the playground again and we’re going to need you to come…” Before she finishes her plea, I slide out of bed and unfold a pair of socks, shimmy my cold toes inside. I know the drill.
The snowbanks swell outside my window and the fog swirls against the pane. I stand near the front door, thrusting my feet into damp boots, still salt-stained from the morning drop off. The clock says 10:42. It’s
been just over an hour since I drove the boys to school and raced home for bed. If I’m lucky, five hours of sleep and copious amounts of coffee keep me oiled enough to operate. But not today. My thoughts spiral out of sleep like steam from a boiling pot.
The apartment door clicks shut behind me and when I get in the car it’s an icebox. I hit the window button and a blurry sheet of glass slides down. I inhale the frosty glaze of winter air, feel its hypothermic prick. In a daze, I drive to the school and pull up to the lot. Sym is twirling on a swing. He is the only child on the playground, which makes me the only parent. The only divorcee with bedhead, sporting snowflake-patterned pajamas. It is the second time this week I have been called to wrangle him back to the classroom. My feet crunch on the hard-packed snow as I make my way toward him. His hair is windswept and he’s not wearing the hat I pulled over his ears this morning. He looks at me, unperturbed.
“Sym,” I say, and the word puffs to life in the frigid air. I take a swing beside him and sink into the cold rubber seat. I consider what to say, how to corral him back to his class. It’s what I’m supposed to do, but I don’t want any part of it. I silently reason with myself. Couldn’t we just go home and hibernate, just the two of us? Couldn’t we just climb into bed, pull the blankets up to our eyeballs and forget who we’re supposed to be? The damp ache of winter stretches out across my chest. I want to fall apart with my son.
Two students peer at us from behind a glass pane. They watch us like morning cartoons.
***
The faculty has asked me to medicate him for his ADHD or consider placement in a special class.
“It’s a bad idea,” Ms. Patrick said in a private meeting. “He’s too smart for that class.” Those kids aren’t on his level, and she thinks they’ll drag him down.
Ms. Patrick is Sym’s second-grade teacher. For all the headaches he causes, she continues to advocate for my son. This gives me courage, her belief in our collective ability to manage Sym’s behavior. When someone dares to empathize with your child, even and especially when he is being unlikable, that person instantly becomes your hero. Such is the case with Ms. Patrick. She keeps the faculty off my back and does her best with the 27 kids in her classroom. But Sym is a beast some days. Even she, with her take-the-bull-by-the-horns-approach, cannot cajole him into submission. So we devise a plan. Based on research that says caffeine can boost concentration for some kids with ADHD, we decide to test the therapeutic potential of a potent cup of joe. Because it's a stimulant drug, caffeine mimics some of the effects of prescription amphetamines used to treat ADHD. Although caffeine alone is less effective, I see it as a hopeful option that is far less scary than a schedule II substance.