Читать книгу Do We Not Bleed? - Daniel Taylor - Страница 9

Life does not stop just because someone goes missing. Someone going missing, in fact, is the very stuff of life. It happens about 150,000 times a day. If it touches us personally, we sometimes call it tragedy, but that word means less and less in a world that does not believe there is anything to fall from or fall to. If everything just is, then “missing” is just another is.

(There I go trying to figure things out again and be clever at the same time. It’s a bad habit.)

Anyway, the Schedule says today, only a couple days after Abby’s disappearance, is a special day. Every day is a special day for some of our Specials, but no day is more special than Special Olympics day. It’s the day some Specials realize for the first time how entirely Special they are. It’s four hours of hugs, medals, high-fives, hugs, food, doing your best, everyone a winner, hugs, self-esteem, more medals, thumbs-ups, more food, laughter, hugs, and cheering. Did I mention hugs?

New Directions has a big field, and so the local Special Olympics folks have chosen it for a preliminary competition in preparation for the statewide competition next year. The nuns had used the field to raise vegetables for the dinner table, provide work for the residents, and raise a few cows. But New Directions plowed it all under and turned it into a big, grassy recreation field. Mens sana in corpore sano. Well, not exactly.

We have a number of Special Olympic immortals in our own group home. Jimmy is a bowling force—and bowling is part of the expanded field of Special Olympic events. He is more about style than pin count. He likes to dry his hand on the air blower for an inordinately long time—both hands in fact—holding the ball first in the crook of one arm and then the other, peering into the distance with chin held high, a look as resolute as Napoleon’s before Waterloo. He then finds his pre-established mark, a piece of tape on the floor, places both feet together as instructed, tosses his hair into place, puts the ball under his chin, and stares down the lane at the pins, his mortal enemies. Waiting patiently for the synapse to fire that says “bowl,” he sometimes holds this pose interminably, deaf to the occasional outburst from Bonita: “Bowl the damn ball, for Christ’s sake!”

He eventually shuffles purposefully toward the line and swings the ball gracefully, releasing it with an upward motion of his arm that he holds overhead, like a Greek statue frozen in time. He invariably releases the ball late, causing it to arc to the floor, bouncing once or twice on the lane before settling into a roll. About half the time, that roll leads to the gutter, sometimes immediately, but this is of no concern to Jimmy. He pivots back toward the onlookers—proud, solemn, regal—and returns to the bench, collecting high-fives and other tributes along the way.

There will be no bowling today. This is a field day—all running, jumping, and throwing, with some lifting and tossing along the way. The tossing is bocce ball (that famous Olympic sport) and Bonita and Judy are both competing—Judy in singles and Bonita in what they call a “unified” event that pairs her with a Normal.

One of those explosive words—normal. Seems innocent enough, but for some it reeks of elitism, condescension, insensitivity, Otherism, and who knows what. Start with the idea of norms—how things ought to be—and you end up with firing squads. Cassandra seems to think “as normal as possible” is the goal for our clients, but the whole concept calls out the “who are you to say?” types that reject all generalizations about anything so “totalizing” (or whatever the word of the day might be). And nothing, apparently, is more totalizing or generalizing—or abusive—than the notion of normal. (I thought I left this stuff behind when I fled the academy, but I’ve found that snow is general all over Ireland.)

But I have to say, I think the anti-Normalizing crowd has a point. I mean, if they themselves are normal, who would want to be like them? Or me? If normal is measured by Western, productivity-obsessed, make-money-don’t-cost-money, be successful or be gone, self-actualized individualism, then Lord make me a Special. As I guess he has.

Anyway, Judy is in the bocce ball singles division and Bonita is paired with, let’s just say, a non-Special. They should, of course, have had it the other way round. Bonita—irascible as a wild boar—should have been in the singles, and Judy—mender of the world—should have been someone’s partner. But perhaps pairing up was seen as a growth opportunity for Bonita, and so the die is cast.

I’ve been asked to keep an eye on my residents, especially Bonita, and so I watch as the bocce competition proceeds. Her partner is a quite large, middle-aged woman with a constant smile on her face. She is wearing tight stretch pants that no woman would inhabit in public who had a full, three-dimensional understanding of the consequences. Her name is Flo.

Bonita’s bocce style betrays something about her upbringing before she arrived at Good Shepherd as a teenager. She holds the ball in her hands, bends low, kisses it and says things like “talk to me baby” or “go fetch,” then snaps off a line-drive throw in the general direction of the object ball. She actually is pretty good, and on the occasions when the ball bounces off course, she has a ready explanation—“Damn gophers.” Or something equally exculpatory.

Bonita and Flo make it to the finals. That’s when the wheels come off. It looks like they’re about to pick up two points at a crucial moment in the championship match when one of their opponents—a Special from a facility in the next suburb—puts a toss within six inches of the object ball. He lets out a whoop of delight, which gets Bonita’s engine running.

“Keep it down, retard.”

There is a gasp from the onlookers, some of whom stare at me as though I had said it—or, just as bad, created an environment where she was allowed to demean herself by saying it. (Some folks are big on the “creating an environment” thesis.) This is Bonita’s second offense, which makes it my second offense. If this gets back to Cassandra, I’m cooked. We clearly have a situation on our hands—and I have a lifelong aversion to situations.

Flo tries to help. She shouldn’t have.

“Now Bonita. We ought not use that word.”

“What word?”

“Well, you know what word. It’s not appropriate and it’s mean.”

Bonita is not a woman to be lectured.

“No, mean would be calling you a lard ass. I’m not calling you a lard ass, even though you are one, so I’m being nice. But he is a retard. Just look at him. He’s like me. I know a retard when I see one.”

This is too much. The person running the competition, a slight man with a now deeply mournful expression, intervenes.

“I’m calling a time out here. Let’s take a break and we’ll resume the finals in fifteen minutes.”

Bonita isn’t having it. Her eyes narrow and she starts gesturing dramatically with her arms.

“I want my medal! You’re trying to cheat me out of my medal! That’s not fair! You bastards, I’ll see you burn in hell if I don’t get my medal!”

Not—definitely not—the Olympic spirit.

I move in to hustle Bonita away, but she’s already moving back toward the group home on her own, spouting as she goes, me trying to catch up.

“I know my rights. They can’t treat me this way. I’m going to tell Miss Pettigrew.” (Bonita has never mastered the “miss/ms.” distinction and I’m not going to be the one to correct her.) “She’ll fix their asses. They won’t get pop for a year! Ten years! Things are going to change around here or somebody’s going to hear from me!”

I’ve heard it all from Bonita myself any number of times. It’s her standard rant against the universe. Losing your pop privileges is the ultimate expression of the problem of evil—and the ultimate grounds for revenge.

Halfway back to the house we run into Bo Springer. He’s familiar enough with Bonita to know not to ask any questions when she has that carnivorous look. I have to get back to the field to help monitor things, so I enlist his help.

“Bo, can you take Bonita here and get her some pop? Then bring her back to the field after she’s cooled off a bit?”

“Sure. No problem. Come on Bonita. Let’s get some pop.”

Bonita brightens and heads off with Bo. I head back to the field.

Coming down the hill, I see they are about to run a heat of the fifty-yard dash. Ronnie, the young kid from the football game, is in lane three, wearing a cape. He looks to be about twelve—physical age of course—and I call him the Black Proteus. I call him that because, well, he’s black—which is to say, African American—and because, like Proteus of Greek myth, he is a shape-changer. One day he presents himself as a superhero, the next as a movie star, the third as a sports icon. He fully inhabits the character of the day (or month) and expects you to respond to him as such. I once greeted him outside the main building with a “How are you doing, President Lincoln?”—the character he had been for weeks before. He looked at me solemnly and stuck out his hand for a shake, “Cash is the name. Johnny Cash.”

Mrs. Francis, the crafts teacher, is watching the race from a distance. I walk up to her and ask, “What’s up with Ronnie’s cape? Superman?”

She laughs.

“Oh no. Wonder Woman.”

“Wonder Woman doesn’t have a cape.”

“She does in Ronnie’s version. And you don’t mess with Ronnie’s version of anything.”

Good for you, Ronnie, I think—gender-bender, all-inclusive, be-whatever-you-want-to-be, All-American boy.

The race starter claps two big wooden blocks together and they’re off. (No starter pistols allowed in Minnesota Special Olympics. Another blow against militarism and the NRA.) Off, yes, but at greatly different speeds. Three actually run at a pretty good clip, heads back, eyeing the finish line ahead. A couple more, bent at the waist and staring at the ground as they move, are mostly stamping the grass, a lot of energy going up and down with the legs, not so much going forward with the body. And then there is one fellow, a teenager, for whom the concept of “race” seems rather obscure. He is on a stroll, waving to the crowd, smiling, wandering back and forth across two or three lanes, but heading roughly toward the finish line—a crowd favorite.

Ronnie is in the first group. He knows how to run and he is leading the race until he starts to notice his cape flapping behind him. He tries to look at it and run at the same time, quite conscious of the profound effect the cape must be making, perhaps wondering if he is going to fly. Looking slows down running, and he is passed near the tape. But no one really cares, including Ronnie. Because each runner is engulfed by a hugger as he or she crosses the line. There hasn’t been this much public excitement since the moon landing. Whoops and hollers and hugs and high-fives all around, for the stroller as much as for the winner. And this was just the first of many heats. Six new huggers wait in the wings for heat number two. If we had more huggers—say at the United Nations, for instance— the world would be a happier place.

I look over and see that Bo is back, sans Bonita. He is talking to Cassandra, whose anxiety is evident even from a distance. This is a big day for New Directions—lots of donors, parents and grandparents, local media, the entire board, heads of local government agencies, corporate sponsors, a celebrity athlete or two, and, of course, clients galore from various organizations. Abby’s disappearance has cast a pall over the event for New Directions folks, but most of the people here haven’t even heard about it yet. Bo puts his hand on Cassandra’s shoulder in a gesture of support, but she sort of pulls away and goes to talk to a couple of parents with their client-child.

I decide to check in on Ralph. They’ve set up the lifting events in the center of the field. His event—the deadlift—is almost over by the time I get there. The deadlift is the most cognitively straightforward activity imaginable: here is something on the ground, pick it up, then put it down. Take turns. Keep picking it up and putting it down until someone tells you to stop. Right up Ralph’s alley. Rarely does life match need with gift so perfectly. God should have made me a deadlifter. (Maybe he did.)

By the time I get there, the ninety-pound weaklings have been eliminated (weaklings being a seriously inappropriate word that I would never utter aloud). It’s just Ralph and one enormous black kid about eighteen years old. (Should I have noticed that he’s black? If so, should I have said it to you? It’s a tough call. Let’s just pretend I didn’t bring it up.)

Anyway, this kid is huge and he looks like he could deadlift the Great Sphinx of Giza. I think that for once Ralph has come across someone who is stronger than he is, and I don’t know how he’ll handle it. He’s pretty much as silent as that Sphinx most of the time and not one to tune in to any particular emotion, but he does have his pride and losing here might chip it some.

What I didn’t figure in were their respective amygdalas—you know, the part of the brain they say deals with aggression and competitiveness. It’s not how you were raised that determines what pisses you off or how much you want to win; it’s electricity moving through that particular neighborhood of the brain. (Bonita must have constant thunderheads in that huge amygdala of hers!) Ralph is not aggressive at all in the usual sense, but apparently he doesn’t mind a little competition.

So they both struggle pretty hard to lift the barbell with three big plates on each end. But when they add two smaller plates for the next round, the kid waves his hand.

“No way. That’s enough for me.”

So they ask Ralph if he wants to try it. He chuckles his contentedness chirp and walks up to the bar. Jimmy and Billy are in the crowd watching (if you can describe Billy as ever genuinely watching anything) and Jimmy shouts out encouragement.

“Go gettem, Ralph. You’re the best! Pick that sucker up!”

Ralph bends down and grabs the bar, bends his knees and keeps his back straight, just like Bo taught him. “Da dooey!” he yells as he pulls the bar up and arches his back, legs shaking. The small crowd erupts in applause.

Da dooey power!

That’s when the trouble starts. They come trooping down the hill with their signs and placards, singing “We Shall Overcome.” The activists have arrived.

Their signs are professionally printed and come in rainbow colors of earnest aggrievement. One reads “Ableism=Racism=Sexism=Homophobia.” I think there would have been a longer list but there wasn’t room.

Another says “Keep Your Attitudes Off Our Genes!” I like that one. And then there’s “If We Can’t Do It, It Doesn’t Need Doing” and “Rights for the Neurodivergent.” The last one is a head scratcher for me, but then I’m new to the disability branch of the Euphemisms R Us industry.

There are about fifteen activists altogether. They march onto the running lanes marked out on the grass and stop. None of them looks disabled, but what do I know? The leader has a bullhorn and he leads them in a chant.

“Oh no, we won’t go, / we are here come rain or snow. / Stop your running, stop the schism, / stop your ugly ableism!” (Schism and ableism—a rhyme never contemplated by Shakespeare or Poe.) They repeat it a half dozen times while people gather round—some puzzled, some angry.

The activists lock arms in an outward-facing circle around the man with the bullhorn, like mother elephants around their calves when predators threaten.

I am highly perplexed, one of my default states. I’ve been too obtuse to realize that the Special Olympics are a bastion of oppression. The guy with the bullhorn enlightens me.

“Ladies and gentlemen and beloved victims. We are here to put a stop to this charade of misplaced compassion and pseudo-acceptance.”

His pronunciation of charade catches my ear—this “shah-rod” he says, with a strong emphasis on the second syllable, “this shah-rod of misplaced compassion.” I am a word collector and I start wondering where that pronunciation comes from—shah-rod—and whether it signifies anything. So I miss the next couple of sentences of his critique. Then I pick him up again.

“Your hearts are in the right place, but you are actually abusing the people you want to help. You are infantilizing them. All these hugs, all this mindless cheering. These people are, for the most part, adults, and you are treating them as though they are little children. This is not normalizing. This is not treating them as equals. We do not have huggers at the end of the races in the ‘non-special’ Olympics”—he flashes air quotes—“so why here? No one hugs you at the end of the day at the office, so why here?

“And these sponsors—Wells Fargo and Medtronic and Cargill.” He gestures toward their corporate signs around the field. “It’s all public relations. It’s feel-good propaganda. Do you think they hire these contestants? Will you find the people competing here—faux-competing I should say—behind the bank window at Wells Fargo or in a business meeting at Medtronic? I don’t think so. These are giant, soulless corporations—international conglomerates—and they eat up and spit out real people like pistachios.”

Some people start giving him pushback.

“That’s not fair.” “We’re having a good time here. Why are you trying to wreck things?” “Go save some other part of the world!”

The guy with the bullhorn seems glad for the interruption. It gives him new material to work with.

“Having a good time here? Is that what you said? Having a good time? Well, let’s see if everyone is having a good time. I have someone here who does not seem to be having a good time at all. Because oppression never creates a good time for the oppressed. Let’s see what she has to say about your good time.”

The ring of protestors opens at one point and who is led into the circle and up to bullhorn man but Bonita. How he has managed to recruit her between the parking lot and the center of the field only God knows.

“What is your name, please.”

“My name is Bonita Marie Anderson.”

“And where do you live, Bonita?”

“I live right here at Good Shepherd.”

He looks confused.

“Right over there.” And she points to our group home.

“And are you having a good time here today, Bonita?”

“No, I am not. They are trying to cheat me out of my medal, the bastards.”

More people start yelling and even pushing against the security circle.

“Now who’s the abuser, fella? You’re exploiting that woman.”

Bonita doesn’t know what exploiting means but she doesn’t like being interrupted.

“Pipe down, asshole. I’m talking here and I know when I’m being cheated.”

This is not exactly how bullhorn man wants the interview to go, so he tries to end it and move on to other issues.

“Well, thank you, Bonita, for helping us see through the ‘just having fun’ shah-rod.”

But Bonita is not one to be cut off so easily, shah-rod or no shah-rod. Activist boy keeps the bullhorn away from her, but she just starts yelling instead.

“I’m not finished yet. They didn’t give me my medal and Mote promised me a pop and I didn’t get that either. And I’m not going anywhere until I do.”

Then activist boy makes a big mistake. He puts his hand on Bonita’s back and tries to direct her out toward the opening in the circle.

No one pushes around Bonita Marie Anderson. She pivots away from him and turns back into his face.

“Take your hands off me you dirty pervert! You can’t touch me there! You can’t touch me anywhere!”

He looks stricken—and then he is stricken. Bonita kicks him in the shin. He drops his bullhorn and howls in pain, holding his injured leg while pogo sticking on the other.

Now the crowd, most of which can’t see what’s going on, is angry. They start breaking through the security cordon.

“Where’s he touching her?” “Somebody stop him!” “Get him!”

Things are turning ugly, but then people at the back of the crowd start looking behind them. A young boy is running toward us, coming from the reed marsh beyond the athletic field. He’s yelling something as he runs, but I can’t tell what. Some people start running toward the reeds as he enters the center ring of the crowd.

“There’s a body out there! I found a body! Call the police! There’s a body!”