The Tiger's Child Read online

  He was a really vicious little boy. Most children, when I had to deal with them physically, fought back in a reasonably predictable, “fair” way and I was able to hold them and move them without hurting either one of us. I got the odd knock on the shins, but that was about all. Not so with Alejo. When he fought, it was with fierce, no-holds-barred desperation, biting, scratching and squirming so violently that I found it almost impossible to hang on to him.

  Both Jeff and Miriam tried to help me move the boy up the steps and into the school, but, if anything, Alejo struggled more as each additional pair of hands took hold of him. In the end, I asked them to let go and just make sure the exits were guarded, in case I accidentally let go of him before we got into the classroom.

  Once we reached the classroom doorway, I did release Alejo and he bolted off to the same far corner that had succored him the day before. Dropping down, he slid back behind the stacked chairs and tables and under the teacher’s desk.

  “Oh, good,” muttered Jeff and turned to me. “You’re the expert in these kinds of things. Now what?”

  What came back to me was my own first encounter with a seriously disturbed child. I was eighteen at the time and a volunteer in a preschool program. There had been a small girl there who, day after day, spent the whole time hiding behind the piano. The director of the program, a marvelous, innovative individual who was to serve as my mentor for several years afterward, had set me the same kind of task. I was to go spend time with this little girl and get her to come out. He didn’t tell me how to do it or what to do, just that this was my task and that he had faith in me. He said, whatever I chose to do, it would make the child’s life better than it was at the moment. Whether or not he realized that the months that followed would change my life forever, I never knew, but my entire career in special education could be traced straight back to that one small girl.

  What had affected me indelibly in this encounter had been the director’s faith that I, a rather awkward and self-conscious teenager, had the ability to think for myself, to discern what needed to be done and to do it. Looking at Sheila, I thought how much I wanted to give her that same gift.

  “You go with him,” I said to her.

  She looked disconcerted. “And do what?”

  “He must be terribly frightened. Talk to him. If he wants to come out, great, but otherwise, just use your judgment.”

  For a long moment, Sheila regarded me, her expression flickering between puzzlement and uncertainty, then she glanced over at Alejo behind his barricade.

  “Remember how you felt when you first came to my class?” I asked. “Talk to him as if he were you, then.”

  “I don’t remember,” she said. “So I don’t think I can do that.”

  “I’m sure you can.”

  Going down on her stomach so that she could see under the tangle of chair and table legs, she spoke softly to him in Spanish throughout the morning. Not fluent myself in the language, I could not understand most of what she was saying, but her voice grew gentle and encouraging.

  Alejo didn’t come out. Safe behind his barricade of metal legs, he kept himself curled up and resisted Sheila’s charms. Indeed, I don’t believe he even talked to her that first day. Sheila, however, proved just as persistent. She got up a couple of times and came and joined me, working with the children I had that morning, but she always went back to sit on the floor beside Alejo’s den. I was impressed with her concentration. It was the first time, I think, we had managed to fully engage her.

  For the following two weeks, Alejo continued to take refuge among the table legs. Each morning he would arrive, be carried in from the taxi, shoot across the room and under the tables to lurk until extracted again at lunchtime to go home. Jeff and I discussed the merits of hanging on to him when we got him inside the door of the classroom and not allowing him to get into his hideaway, but in the end felt it was perhaps better that he be allowed this form of security. So each day went the same.

  Sheila accepted the ongoing challenge of trying to charm Alejo out. For several days she lay on her stomach on the floor and talked to him, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English. She was surprisingly good at keeping up these one-sided conversations. I had never perceived Sheila as particularly garrulous and would not have expected her to tackle the situation in such a manner, but she did, maintaining a pleasant chatter full of questions to him about what he might like in the way of food or sports or other activities, what he did with his day when he wasn’t here, what his preferences were in regards to animals, school subjects and a host of other areas.

  Occasionally, Alejo could be drawn into answering, although he never said much. He seemed to appreciate her efforts at Spanish, as we often heard him murmuring back to her then. And so they went, three and a half hours a day, five days a week.

  As she continued to share floor space with him, Sheila grew intensely interested in Alejo’s circumstances. Nothing was known about his real family, not even their names or whether or not any of them were still alive. Repeatedly, Sheila queried the possibility of finding out. I tried to explain the impracticality of it, and most likely the total impossibility of it as well, but Sheila’s curiosity remained.

  The tale of how Alejo had been found, living in the garbage can, provoked a particularly large amount of conversation from Sheila. She mused on everything from how cold and hungry he must have been to the logistics of a young child’s actually surviving in such circumstances. My suspicion, of course, was that in some unconscious way, Sheila was relating this to her own abandonment. I could recall how, at six, she used to recount over and over and over again the incident where her mother had left home, taking her and her younger brother Jimmie, and how her mother had stopped the car and pushed Sheila out onto the verge of the freeway, before speeding off into the night, never to be seen again. Sheila’s need now to recount Alejo’s abandonment caused all those long-ago conversations to echo in my mind.

  Whatever was happening psychologically, Sheila became increasingly committed to Alejo. She was desperate to reach him, to convince him that he could trust her, and it was this desire that engaged her so completely in her work with him.

  Despite this newfound intensity in her work, however, there were still plenty of hot moments with Sheila. One of the most dangerous areas was her appearance.

  Having known her as a child, I must admit Sheila did not now look at all as I had expected she would. She had been a very pretty girl, even through the dirt and grime of her early days in my class. Her long hair, a dark honey-blond in color, had been very, very straight, of the sort to slide off the fingers in a fluidlike motion when lifted. Her features were bold, with a cheeky little cleft in her chin and a particularly attractive mouth.

  The chin, the mouth, the bold features were, of course, all still there, but the permed, brightly colored hair diminished them, and everything was overshadowed by Sheila’s wardrobe. Where she got her fashion sense I could only guess at. It was so far out as to be almost in.

  We had been treated to various combos involving the white long johns and an assortment of dresses and T-shirts. Indeed, one of her favorites included wearing nothing over the long johns except a very baggy peasant-style shirt, which made her look like an extra from Fiddler on the Roof who’d been interrupted in the changing room. She also had an assortment of what appeared to be lacy, white Victorian nightshirts, which she wore as dresses, usually layered over long-sleeved striped T-shirts in loud, occasionally neon, colors. And all of these were complemented by the thick black lace-up workman’s boots.

  She had had her ears pierced, the left one five times, the right one twice, although, thank God, no other parts of her anatomy seemed to have received this treatment. She wore nothing more than thin gold rings in her ears, but the sheer quantity made up for their simplicity.

  Admittedly, it did all take a bit of getting used to, but the fact was I didn’t mind it. In fact, as I did grow used to it, I found some of the sartorial combinations attractiv
e, if a little bizarre. She did have an obvious flair for clothes, and, moreover, she had the slim, waiflike build needed to carry such outfits off. Had Sheila been among people a little more in the fashion vanguard than Jeff and I could lay claims to, I suspect her imagination would have been admired.

  Sheila’s father, however, did not appear to admire Sheila’s dress sense whatsoever, and from what I could make out, there were many arguments over the matter. Moreover, her school hadn’t taken a very enlightened view either and she had, on more than one occasion, been sent home to change. This, I assumed, was what accounted for Sheila’s touchiness over the matter, because it became obvious from the first day that she wanted to wear these things and look the way she did and not have a single person even allude to the fact that she might appear a smidgen peculiar.

  Jeff was always landing himself in it. He had nicknamed her the Orangutan as a result of her orange hair and her climbing feat on that second day and this was guaranteed to make her shout, just by his saying it. Worse, he could never resist commenting, “Shall we turn the air-conditioning down for you so you won’t have to come in with your nightgown on over your clothes?” or “Isn’t Grandpa missing his underwear yet?”

  Sheila reacted to these comments, like most of his tongue-in-cheek humor, with the spitting rage of a wildcat kitten, and I was quite certain the rage was genuine. Whatever hopes I had had about bringing two such powerful minds together had long since evaporated. Sheila appeared to feel nothing short of hate for Jeff and Jeff was never much help. I tried to get him to turn off his undisciplined mouth, but it made no difference whatsoever. He enjoyed winding her up.

  Once I’d adjusted, I didn’t find it too difficult to keep my own mouth shut regarding her appearance. I’m fairly unshockable and can screen out unwanted sensory information quite easily, so except for mediating over the matter between her and Jeff, I could generally steer clear. This was just as well, because on the few occasions when I accidentally got drawn in, Sheila came out with all guns firing. In fact, I suspect there was a provocative aspect to Sheila’s appearance, which, when I didn’t react to it, made her have to come after me occasionally.

  On one such time, we were at the back of the room after the session ended. Some of the children had done painting and Sheila was helping me wash out the paint pots. The sink was full of soapy water and Sheila had her arms plunged into it almost up to her elbows.

  “Could you get my hair back?” she asked, as I came around the side with more paint pots. “I got a ponytail holder in my left pocket. Could you just pull it back and fasten it for me?”

  I reached in her pocket, extracted the holder and began smoothing the hair back to fasten it. What came immediately to my mind were memories of doing Sheila’s hair when she was little. It had been wonderful hair, so silky straight that it was lovely to feel, and I had always enjoyed our mornings before school when I had brushed it. What I felt now was quite a different matter. Treated and colored, it was a crinkly mass.

  “I’m thinking of doing my hair yellow this weekend,” Sheila said. “I saw this stuff at the drugstore and it was only two dollars and ninety-nine cents.”

  “Do you ever think of letting it grow back like it was?”

  In a split second, Sheila had whirled around and whacked my hand down, soapy water flying everywhere. “Stop it! Just stop it!” she shouted in fury.

  I jumped back in surprise.

  “That’s what you want, isn’t it? To control me! To make me back into your little darling. Well, I’m not her. I’m me! And you can’t tell me what to do anymore.”

  She had gotten so angry so quickly that I was stunned into silence. Both Jeff and Miriam were in the room too and they stopped short and stared.

  “I’m not your property anymore. You don’t own me. You didn’t create me!”

  Chapter 15

  The following Monday morning, I was playing “empty chair” with David, Tamara and Violet. A variation of the therapeutic technique developed by the renowned psychiatrist Fritz Perls, it involved setting an empty chair in the middle of the group and talking to it, as if a person were sitting in it. We were discussing angry feelings and sad feelings and how the two sometimes got mixed up. I had asked the children in turn to think of an occasion when someone had made them each feel that way, then to imagine that that person was sitting in the empty chair and to talk to him or her, telling that person about their feelings. It took us a while to get going. I gave an example, placing in the chair a neighbor of mine who disliked my cat, and then telling the empty chair how angry it made me feel when I saw him abusing my pet. Then the children had turns. It wasn’t until we were on our second round that everyone began to pick up the right mood.

  Tamara’s second turn came. “I’m going to put my mom in that chair,” she said.

  “Okay,” I replied. “And what do you want to tell your mom?”

  “I’m fed up with the baby.”

  “Okay.”

  Tamara looked over at me. “I want to tell her I don’t want to take care of the baby anymore. Why did she have so many kids that she can’t take care of them all herself?”

  “Can you tell her that?” I asked. “Imagine she’s sitting just there and you tell her how you feel.”

  “I don’t want to take care of the baby anymore,” Tamara said. “I’m sick of the baby. He’s not mine. It’s not fair, just because I’m oldest. Why do I have to take care of him?”

  Tears came to her eyes and she stopped. Looking over at me, she said, “I’m too little to take care of him.”

  I pointed to the chair. “Why don’t you tell her you feel like that? That you feel too small for such a big responsibility?”

  Tamara nodded tearfully. “I’m just little, Mama. I need you to take care of me.”

  She sat down, and for a long moment everyone was absorbed in a pensive silence.

  “Okay, Violet?” I said gently. “How about you?”

  Violet lumbered to her feet. She approached the chair, walked around it, all the while regarding the seat. During the first round, she had seated a girl from school in the chair. Violet told me that she wanted to ask the girl why she always treated her in such a mean way, but when redirected to imagine the girl sitting in the chair and to address her comments there, Violet had degenerated into silly chatter about ghosts. I wasn’t holding out much hope for this new attempt. Violet’s problems were so all-pervasive that she didn’t appear able to cope with such a direct approach.

  “I’m going to put Alejo in the chair,” Violet said, much to my surprise.

  Alejo wasn’t far away. We were in a circle only feet away from where Sheila had been lying prone on the floor and talking to him; however, over the course of the empty-chair exercise, Sheila had gotten caught up listening to us and was now sitting cross-legged on the edge of the circle. She ducked her head slightly to see Alejo under his tangle of furniture when his name was mentioned.

  “All right,” I said. “What do you want to say to Alejo?”

  “Why don’t you come with us, Alejo?” Violet said, approaching the chair. She cocked her head and regarded it closely, as if really seeing the boy. “Why do you keep hiding from us? It isn’t scary here and I miss you. I wish you would come out.”

  She circled the chair and then came to stand on the left side of it. “I feel angry with you when you go hide, because I think you don’t like me. I feel sad, because I want to be your friend. Why don’t you come out? I want you to be with us.”

  “All right.”

  Stunned, we all jerked our heads over to see Alejo standing beside the stacked table.

  “He’s come out!” David shrieked with such loudness that I fully expected Alejo to bolt back under, but he didn’t.

  “Do you want to join us?” I asked. I snagged a chair from an adjacent table and pulled it into our circle.

  Alejo remained right where he was.

  “Would you like to play too? Do you want to talk to someone in the empty chair?” I a
sked.

  He shook his head.

  Sheila, still sitting cross-legged on the floor, reached her hand out. “Come here, Alejo. Sit down beside me.”

  Without hesitation, he went over to her and sat down.

  “Let’s change things. You’ve had a chance to talk to the empty chair. Now, let’s pretend the empty chair can talk back,” I said. “Tamara, you just talked to your mom, sitting in the empty chair. Now you go sit in the empty chair.”

  Hesitantly, she rose from her place, walked across the circle and sat down in the empty chair in the center.

  “Now you’re your mom. You just heard what Tamara said. You answer her back.”

  Tamara sat silent a long moment. “I don’t mean to make you work so hard,” she started quietly. “I just got too many children.” She paused. “Don’t get married, Tamara. Don’t have babies.” Then she stood up and walked back to her place.

  “My turn now. I get to be Alejo,” Violet said and beamed at him. She went over to the empty chair and sat down. “I’m glad you asked me to come out, Violet. I was tired of being under there. You acted good to me. Now I’m going to be your friend.”

  I smiled at Violet and then looked over at Alejo. “Can you share with us how it made you feel, when Violet said how much she wanted you to come join us again?”

  “Good,” he said.

  Sheila and I didn’t join Jeff and Miriam for lunch as we usually did. I had a client meeting very near the school in the early afternoon, so I’d brought my lunch with the idea of eating it over in the park across the street. Deprived of her usual ride down to Fenton Boulevard, Sheila needed to make the rather complicated set of connections from the main road two blocks over. She left immediately after the program ended that morning and I assumed she was headed for the bus stop; however, she returned, a McDonald’s bag in hand, and joined me on my picnic bench in the park.