Diane
The phone rings. I pick it up, but I’m also simultaneously getting dressed and finding my keys. By the time they tell me that Jonah’s in the principal’s office, I’m already halfway to my son’s school. I’m married to the local college coach; I learnt a long time ago that the impact of a fast ball can be lessened considerably if you ease into the catch.
Jonah is sitting across from the principal’s secretary, Mrs. Flannigan. “The fifth and worst type of fracture is called a comminuted fracture…” he is saying to the mug on her desk.
For a second I forget why I am here. Seeing Jonah talk is like watching a blend of noctilucent clouds and the Aurora Borealis – so rare you cannot help but catch your breath. I stand there and see my son like I wish everybody else did – the boy who can quote entire pages of medical journals verbatim; my fourteen year old who tells me the total of my shopping cart before we reach the cashier.
Mr. Cahone, the principal, is a short man with a permanently frustrated expression.
“Jonah yelled at a teacher in class today,” he says.
“What did he say?” I ask.
“Mr. Lee had them work in groups today. Jonah told him he was ‘out of order!’”
“A Few Good Men,” I mumble.
“Excuse me?” the principal squints at me.
“It’s…from a movie. His hyper acute senses cause a sensory overload. It frustrates him –he borrows other people’s words. It’s called echolalia.”
I could tell him that I’ve explained this to his teachers in the past, but I don’t. It’s Chemistry 101: if you know that an experiment will result in more harmful by-products than the intended product, you placate yourself with theory until you find an alternative method.
In the car I turn to Jonah. “Why didn’t you ask Mr. Lee to let you solve the problems solo if you weren’t comfortable? It’s in the Blue Book.”
When Jonah was nine, we took this blue binder and wrote down instructions for everything – from Making Friends to Tying Shoelaces.
“I did that before,” he says to the glove compartment. “Melinda called me a freak.”
I shake my head. “Unbelievable. I’m so sorry.”
“Actually, it did happen, which means not only is it believable – but also true. And why are you sorry? You didn’t call me a freak.”
“No, I didn’t,” I tell him. “But I can still be sorry because I love you.”
***
The sun has gone down, and I am whipping up brownie batter because it is Brownie Tuesday when the back door opens with a crash and Jonah thunders in.
Do you know what a whimper sounds like at the top of a fourteen year-old’s voice? If you’re lucky, you’ll never have to. I freeze, as if standing still will stop my heart from breaking. Jonah is worse than I have ever seen him. His fingers are fluttering, his hands flapping so hard that I cannot pin him down. He does not hear me; he does not see me. His whimpers are getting louder now, becoming full-blown screams. This is my worst nightmare: not being able to help him.
Hunting frantically and muttering assurances I can’t hear, I take a still-wet, baby-blue bed sheet over to Jonah and wrap it around him. Three hours later, Jonah is lying on his side, wrapped in a dozen layers of blue clothes. I sink into the couch, my arms sore. I smell of wet laundry.
People ask me what I do for a living, and I tell them I used to be a chemistry teacher until I became Jonah’s mother. But what do you do? they ask. I smile down on the words I don’t say: I fight my son’s battles; I hold my breath and hope we get through the day. I pray that someday I won’t have to. That is what I do.
A few years ago there was a rumor that there were new drugs, that Jonah could be ‘cured’; and I wondered. After a while, though, I knew what I wanted – or didn’t want. Jonah was a package deal – his quirks defined him just as much as his brown eyes did. It was that day that I truly understood what I’d always told my students: look closely at a product you like, and you might be surprised at the reactants that went into its making.
***
Next morning, Jonah has just headed into the living room with his breakfast when I hear a crash. Jonah cowers against the bookshelf, the snow ball I have stupidly put on the shelf lying in shards all around him. His eyes are shut tight.
“Red,” he is muttering. “Too much red…danger…”
“Jonah,” I say. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” I grab his Blue Book from his bag and start reading. By the time I am on page 35, Jonah is only rocking in his place with his eyes shut. When he has calmed down, I sit next to him.
“Jonah,” I ask. “What happened yesterday?”
He looks up and – miraculously – into my eyes for a millisecond, before he averts his gaze.
“You can’t handle the truth,” he whispers.
Assessing if you’re accepted into a conversation
-
Are people looking at a clock, or a watch? They are bored.
-
Making a face may mean they are bored/annoyed.
-
Are they leaning away from you? They may not be interested.
-
If you are in a group, are they standing in a circle with no space in it for you? Are you standing behind everyone else? They may not want to talk to you.
(from the Blue Book)
Jonah
At school, I sit in the front row. This way I can pretend like I am alone, which is slightly less exhausting than hearing and smelling everyone. When I reach home at 3: 25 pm, there is a pair of cream-colored shoes near the door. Inside, Noel’s mother who lives next door is crying on our couch, my mother sitting beside her. It is very loud so I go upstairs to my room.
At 5:57 pm my mother comes into my room.
“Jonah, something’s happened. Noel’s father was just found in the store two alleys away. He was shot. He… passed away,” she says. “It means he is dead,” she adds. When I don’t say anything, she frowns. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. I am not dead,” I tell her.
“I meant are you sad?”
I think about this. “No,” I finally say. “He wasn’t really my friend. Mom, is dinner ready?”
“Give me fifteen minutes,” she sighs.
***
It is 2:03 am, and I cannot sleep.
I look at the contusions (bruises) on my knuckles. These are a collection of blood outside the blood vessels, caused by damaged capillaries or venules. Bruises change color due to the breakdown of hemoglobin (red-blue), as it turns to biliverdin (green), then to bilirubin (yellow) and then finally hemosiderin (golden-brown) before the products clear from the area.
I tiptoe downstairs and go round to the wooden bench at the back. But someone is sitting on it, so I go back into the house. In bed, I start naming sports injuries in alphabetical order. I start with abrasions, go on to ACL, then Achilles Tendonitis. By the time I reach Sciatica the sky is starting to lighten.
The next night I cannot sleep again, so I go out – and there is someone on my bench again! This time I observe from my window. I learn that a) the boy is Noel and b) he just sits there. This is strange, because of the following arguments.
Argument 1
Premise 1: I sit on the bench at night.
Premise 2: People think I’m weird.
Conclusion: Weird people sit on benches at night.
Argument 2
Premise 1: Noel gets invited to birthday parties.
Premise 2: People who get invited to parties are not weird.
Conclusion: Noel is not weird.
Then, considering the conclusions of Arguments 1 and 2 as Premises:
Premise 1: Weird people sit on benches at night.
Premise 2: Noel is not a weird person.
Conclusion: Noel does not sit on benches at night.
But he is sitting on the bench at 3:18 am. Hence it is strange.
***
On the third night, I decide I will go sit on the bench. It is big enough, and even though I want to be alone, I still want to sit outside. So I go and take a seat (this means I sit down). Noel looks sideways at me, his eyes wide, but he doesn’t say anything. I put in my earplugs and close my eyes.
I sit with Noel on the bench for sixteen days before I talk to him. He is still not my friend, but he is not a stranger, because a) I have been seeing him every night for sixteen days, b) he saved my iPod from falling and c) sometimes he cries – something you don’t do in front of strangers.
“Have you always had chronic insomnia?” I ask him. He turns to me, but then he looks away while he answers. This is one more reason why I think he might be my friend.
“Always had what?” he asks.
“Constant sleeplessness.”
“No, I used to sleep like a log.”
“Logs don’t sleep,” I tell him. “They’re inanimate.”
He smiles. “It’s a saying.”
“Did you know…?” I begin, but then stop. I have just remembered that the things I love might not be as interesting to everyone else.
“What?” he asks.
“You won’t want to hear about Septicemia,” I say. “Blood poisoning.”
“I want to be a paramedic when I grow up. I love blood,” he pauses. “I guess that sounds strange.”
“Strange is not always bad.” I tell him.
“No,” he says. “It’s not.”
So at 2:34 am, I tell him everything I know about Septicemia. The next night he helps me with my homework, and the night after that I tell him how First Aid actually saves people’s lives.
It is nice to have a friend.
***
One month and thirteen days later, we are sitting on the bench when Noel opens his bag and takes out a book. It is Red, and I cannot breathe. My chest is being compressed. Everything hurts, like in dodge ball where there are balls coming from every direction, and my head is thudding like someone is breaking rocks inside. I don’t want to see the Red, and I’m trying not to think about that night, but it is hitting me like a flood: so much blood – and open eyes, and broken glass, and candy everywhere –
I take deep breaths like it says to do in my Blue Book, and after twelve minutes it is quiet. Except for Noel, who is talking. “Hey, what’s the matter?” he is asking. “You okay?”
“Yes,” I say.
He looks at me. “What were you muttering about? You were saying something about ‘candy’ and ‘blood’”.
“I was thinking about the store the night your father died.” I say.
Noel’s body becomes very straight. His voice sounds funny. “What – what do you mean? You were… there?”
I nod.
He rubs his face and closes his eyes. His cheeks are wet. “Tell me what happened,” he says.
“I went to the store on Tuesday at 6:00 pm,” I begin. “When I was in the candy aisle a car pulled up screeching and then there was glass breaking and people screaming. I hid near your father’s feet, which were shaking, and a man said “Give me your watch,” to which your father said “I can’t take it off -” and then there was a loud popping noise and your father fell down with his eyes open. There was so much blood. One of the masked men shouted “What did you do? We weren’t supposed to kill anyone!” and I saw him push another masked man, whose mask came off. And then my head was hurting so much, I left the store and ran home.”
“Are you telling me you saw the man with the gun?” he asks me. “And you – you remember it? His face?”
“I remember everything,” I say simply.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he asks.
“You didn’t ask.”
“But if you would have told the police, they would have arrested him!” he is suddenly very loud.
“They didn’t take anything,” I tell him. “They left the store without stealing anything. And killing your father was an accident. When someone does something wrong by accident, you don’t tell on them.”
“Jonah,” Noel says to me. “An accident is when you do something that is out of your control. He killed my father for his watch. That was not an accident. It was a mistake – for him – because killing people gets you more jail time than stealing things. But even people who do things on purpose and then realize that it was a mistake after they’ve done it deserve to go to jail.”
“I didn’t know that,” I explain. “It’s not in my Blue Book.”
“Well,” he says. “I guess we need to add a few extra pages to that blue book of yours. Perhaps ‘Witnessing A Crime’, or ‘Police’. You will come with me to the police station tomorrow, won’t you?”
“Yes,” I say. “I will.”
Now I understand why they write ‘jumping with joy’ in books when someone is very happy – because even though Noel is not jumping, he looks like he would really like to. And that’s not all I learn tonight. I just learnt another ‘rule’- something kids like Noel know and I don’t. People think I don’t notice them talking or whispering, but I’m not crazy, or stupid. What I am is tired of being looked at like a contagious disease.
If I asked my mother, she would tell me to not be bothered; that I am normal only with a few quirks. But then she’s not the one being penetrated by people’s x-ray stares. And this is what I know, statistically: if I learn all the little rules that other people don’t seem to need, after a while I will become like these people, even if it is only on the outside. And then maybe I will start belonging on this planet. By that logic, I made progress today.
That makes it a pretty good day. I mean night.
THE END
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