Somebody Somewhere (4 page)

For me, teaching stood for the mere imparting of knowledge. And that knowledge was about all there was among twenty-five years of stored-up, unchosen crap that I was willing to identify with. It may not have been my choice to accumulate ninety-five percent of the stuff I had absorbed on automatic pilot. In a sleep-walking state I had taken it on without learning, but it was still my memory bank that stored it. It seemed less of an act of prostitution to exploit the stored mental knowledge than it had been to exploit stored social, emotional, or physical repertoires.

I never saw a role for communication in teaching, for closeness or physical contact. I just figured I would smile in some of the right places, know what I was there to teach, and study the strategies of holding children's attentions.

I got out the yellow pages and landed two positions. I never told these employers about my autism. I wanted a job, not to have to try to justify to them why I felt capable of working. It was only temporary work, a few days here and there. It wouldn't hurt them to scratch their heads and wonder what planet I had come from.

I was assigned to a teacher and entered a classroom full of children with special needs. “We don't do much more than babysitting here,” said the woman in charge of the “classroom.” The word “expectations” seemed to be written in very small letters here. The “dis” in “disability” seemed written in letters ten feet tall; it cast a shadow over the fact there was any ability at all to be found in that word.

When people think of brain damage, they generally think of the whole brain. If we say leg-damaged, we ask which part of the leg. A lot of ability can get swept aside in that big…“Ohhh, I see.”

“You have to talk s-l-o-w-l-y to Donna, she's a l-i-t-t-l-e b-i-t s-l-o-w,” teased my older brother, speaking to me like a 45 record switched to 33. He would put his face up patronizingly close as though I were not only slow but blind as well.

I was angry. Anyone who wears glasses or has a hearing weakness is, by definition, brain-damaged. People with nervous tics, weight problems, and trouble sleeping can have these problems because of neurological problems and by definition be brain-damaged. The brain is made up of many different parts, containing many different abilities. Just because one area is affected doesn't mean others are, too. Retarded people are not necessarily physically disabled, and vice versa. The ability of the brain to compensate for damage by using functions that are still intact is often overlooked. Too often, also, those who have trouble linking thought to action or words, or vice
versa, are thought retarded or disturbed, when the problem may not be in the capacity so much as the mechanics.

In this well-intentioned teacher's classroom, I was unable to say any of this. Here in this hygienic, laminated, playschool atmosphere, I stood watching “the babysat.”

Vegetables grow in gardens, not in classrooms. It seemed inexcusable to get paid to watch vegetables grow when attempts could be made to help them realize a little more humanity as human beings. Years pass too quickly, and those assumed to be vegetables sometimes fulfill low expectations and do not grow up to live as human beings.

I entered a classroom for special-needs adults. Robbie seemed to me to be a shining example of someone who had won in terms of a battle to keep the world out and convince everyone there was nobody home. He was twenty-two, six feet tall, and clad in diapers.

“He's severely retarded and autistic,” said the member of the staff quietly. Robbie's pale blue eyes stared hypnotically into nothingness. I felt he “wasn't home.”

Robbie was being regularly toileted. This constituted most of his “education” five days a week, and my job was to take him to the toilet at regular intervals. It was hoped that after twenty-two years Robbie would realize the system and do it for himself. It was just as likely that he'd already developed another system they'd taught him; that of living up to unbelievably low expectations.

It was dinnertime. A tin of baby food was opened and the yellow-brown slop was spooned into Robbie's expressionless face. The slop soon covered his chin and nose. Watching him slowly swallow the mulch was like watching a tree grow. Apparently Robbie could not hold the spoon. Apparently Robbie could not hold anything. At home, Robbie was kept in diapers and hand-fed.

His crystal blue eyes staring straight ahead into nothing, his face totally expressionless, a haunting dead smile fixed upon his face, Robbie's hand went to jelly as he was handed anything—a master of the art of non-being.

My older brother's six-year-old hand had hold of my wrist. He shook my hand in front of my five-year-old face. The waving hand would attract my
attention.
Slap.
My hand was smacked into my face to the sound of laughter. “Here, make your hand all floppy-woppy again,” came the excited voice of the one still holding my wrist. To him it was nothing more than a child's game meant in “fun.”
Slap
came the sound of my hand hitting my face like a limp, wet fish. It was thought hilarious. How could I be so stupid that I didn't learn the consequences of letting my hand go floppy? I thought I was “disappearing.” I didn't connect the feeling of “disappearing” with its effect upon my body or appearance. The fact that my hand went floppy as a result was entirely irrelevant.

My hand stretched out in Robbie's direction. My eyes were fixed on a distant spot on the other side of the room, well away from where I was, as though I were entirely unconnected to the hand approaching him. My hand let go of the object it was holding out. My face expressed no recognition of my action. This was “giving” according to “my world” definitions. I was a passing machine, an object passing object after object to someone who was not there.

To the amusement and surprise of the two other staff present, Robbie took the things my hand dropped in front of him in the same way I had “handed” them to him, his eyes staring straight ahead into nothingness. He was using peripheral vision. Robbie was peripheral.

Object in hand, Robbie paced in an apparently aimless, sleep-walking way. Was it possible that my “not being there” allowed
him
to be there enough to hold the objects passed to him? In the system of “all world, no self” versus “all self, no world,” the rules were simple. Take away awareness of the world, and the overload on the self is drained. The self can dare to come back.

With each new object I handed him, I took away the last one, always without looking at him. I looked only into the distance or fixed sharply upon the object itself. It didn't matter what I handed him. The more impersonal and less obviously interesting the better: a doily, a block, a sponge, a plastic fork, a tea towel. Dumping them, I turned sharply and walked away, with every expectation and assumption Robbie would hold them, and with no need to watch or wait for confirmation. There was no look of anticipation, no expression of excitement when he met my expectations. We spoke a silent dialogue.

Pacing up and down, Robbie began to wander in and out of a small side room, appearing all the while as if it were just part of the general nowhere to which he was going.

Don't wake up the mind. Don't tell it what you are doing. Otherwise, the hand will not be allowed to grasp, the eyes will never be allowed to look. Do not show an expression or have a thought, or your mind will know you are there and send “tidal waves” to drown you. Affect, when it brakes through mile-high walls, hits with the impact and devastation of a sudden “tidal wave,” an emotional fit.

Robbie's face was as dead and bland as a McDonald's hamburger as he ambled into the small room holding the latest object I had passed him. For an instant on his way back out, I had caught him smiling as he glanced momentarily for the first time at one of the objects he had been given. It was a book, and he had smiled as he glanced at the colorful cover just before the curtains were drawn once again across his face, returning him to his “the world” face: a nobody nowhere.

I laughed inwardly to myself and expressed nothing. I had seen a Robbie in there. If only for a day, Robbie had dared to accept. If only for a minute, he had dared to have an interest. If only for an instant, he had dared to have a self. If only for one day in his life, it was worth it.

Entering the infant room, I saw a girl about four years old curled up in the dark interior of a crate. Her eyes were sharply crossed, her fists clenched into balls. The staff had been advised that in the safety of her self-controlled isolation, she might begin to explore her surroundings. Hung inside the crate were various mobiles and objects.

Fabrics dangled in front of me in my dark cupboard, the security of my chosen darkness. Here the bombardment of bright light and harsh colors, of movement and blah-blah, of unpredictable noise and the uncontrollable touch of others were all gone. Here was a world of guarantees, where things were controlled for long enough that I could calm down and have a thought or become aware of a feeling. I reached out to touch the fabric in front of
me. I ran my hand over the silky surface of the patent leather shoes at my feet. I picked them up and ran them across my cheek. Here, there was no final straw to send me from overload into the endless void of shutdown.

The two supervising staff were excited by the novelty of their ideas and the equipment for the little girl. Like overenthusiastic relatives on the first meeting with a newborn child, they were half in the tiny crate with her. I stood there feeling ill as they bombarded her personal space with their bodies, their breath, their smells, their laughter, their movement, and their noise. Almost manically, they shook rattles and jiggled things in front of the girl as if they were a pair of overzealous witch doctors hoping to break the evil spell of autism. Their interpretation of the advice seemed to be to overdose her on experiences that they, in their infinite “the world” wisdom, would bring to her. I got the feeling that if they could have used a tire jack to pry open her soul and pour “the world” in they would have done so and would never have noticed that their patient had died on the operating table. The little girl screamed and rocked, her arms up against her ears to keep their noise out and her eyes crossed to block out the bombardment of visual noise. I watched these people and wished they knew what sensory hell was. I was watching a torture where the victim had no ability to fight back in any comprehensible language. I stood almost numb with shock. She had no words to put to what was happening, to analyze or adjust to it as they did. As far as introducing her to a safe, peaceful, consistent, and controllable place in “the world,” it looked like a shattering first impression. It was medieval. These people had been told to use something that might work but no one had told them why or how. No one had given them the set-up instructions or rule book. They were surgeons operating with garden tools and no anesthetic.

I felt shattered. The logic of the situation seemed so self-evident. Yet it was the child's behavior that was termed “bizarre.” I stood there full of dread, knowing I would hardly be able to get two words out before being forced to argue my case. Verbal argument was a stored skill, but one I knew I couldn't use consciously as myself. It could be triggered but not used consciously. I could have trusted that
the words coming from my mouth would have made sense, even if I couldn't hear them with meaning, but the feelings were too true, too “self” to be sold out by something on automatic pilot. It would be five times removed from what I'd have said with conscious effort. So I said nothing.

I thought about the war zone of my own environment. Every strategy had been met with counterstrategies. I felt stunned by the impression of what things might have been like if I'd grown up somewhere else.

Jenny was ten with big, round eyes and a forced smile upon her freckled face. “Severely retarded with autistic tendencies,” said the teacher accompanying me. “Hello, sweetie,” said the freckle-faced kid. Carol's “adoptable image” came to mind.

Jenny had been with the “school” for some time. They had been teaching her every day to do a sorting task with plastic knives and forks and spoons that might one day get her employment in a sheltered workshop. Jenny busied herself by rocking across the room.

There was an “education” plan for Jenny. As the assistant there, it was my job to follow it. When Jenny misbehaved she was to be firmly put into a chair in the corner of the room facing the wall.

Like a gun going off, Jenny's hand flew out, suddenly striking one of the staff sharply across the back. It was too fast to be other than an automatic response and looked more like a nervous tic than naughtiness. Jenny seemed to have no idea of what she had done wrong or that she had done anything wrong at all. Into the corner she was sat again and again and again.

I stood in the rubbish bin of my third-grade classroom being pelted with chalk to the sound of laughter. This was the price to be paid for trying to save some dignity. The punishments made no sense. They weren't logically connected to the actions they were meant to address.

I had had no idea of what I had done wrong. The best thing I could do was try to work out what “good girls” were like and try to make myself one of them. There were enough examples around to mirror, examples that were forever shoved in my face but had too many bits and moved too fast to make
sense of. The “bad” behavior continued but I smiled more and more. I studied TV sitcoms compulsively and watched TV people like their TV children for doing dishes and giving gifts. I polished Carol's “adoptable image,” putting my head to the side like children who were thought of as adorable did. “You think you're so fucking cutesy wootsy,” came a “the world” cutting snarl.
Slap.
My head now flew sharply with the hand, no longer cocked to the side looking “cute.” If only I lived with the Brady Bunch, I had thought. On the TV, “cute” seemed forever likable. Maybe my version seemed haunted and forced, some perverse mockery of the evasive child I truly was.