The Tiger’s Child and Somebody Else’s Kids 2-in-1 Collection

“Do you get together with friends?”

She hesitated over her food, then shrugged again. “Not usually.”

“I don’t hear you mention friends very often,” I said.

“Doesn’t mean I don’t have any, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said a bit testily. “Just I don’t do much with them, that’s all.” She took a bite of her hamburger. “It’s a dorky school I go to. There’s not really anyone there I’d want to be friends with, if you want the truth.”

“What do you do?”

“Like I said, depends. I always got the housework, you know. My dad sure wouldn’t do it. If it’s left to my dad, we’d live in a pigsty. And the shopping. And the cooking. Who do you think does our cooking?”

I nodded.

“He’s very lucky he’s got a daughter, you know. Somebody to do all this for him. He’d have been stuck, if I was a boy.”

“How’s it work out? Does he give you the shopping money and you make the decisions about what the meals will be?”

“I got to get it off him.” She finished her hamburger in two big bites. “I learned that, like, ages ago. I got to get the money off him within minutes or it’s not there to get.”

I regarded her.

“Mostly he gives it to me when I ask. He’s getting used to me doing it now, but if he doesn’t, I’m still pretty good at getting it. I tell him I’m going over to the Laundromat and I got to have the pants he’s wearing right away, so would he change? Then he takes his wallet out. Or sometimes I just wait till he’s asleep.”

“I thought he was done with the alcohol and stuff. I thought all that was in the past.”

She snorted derisively. “Don’t kid yourself.”

“He’s still drinking?” I said in dismay. “I thought the baseball team …”

“People don’t change. Didn’t you know that? Circumstances change, but people never do.”

Now that Alejo had come out from his hideaway of his own volition, Jeff and I decided to take definitive measures to prevent him from returning there; so we arrived early the next morning and humped the extra tables and chairs down the hall to a room we were not using. This had the added advantage of leaving us with a much larger working space.

When the taxi arrived, Alejo again showed reluctance to get out, but Sheila climbed in and sat with him a moment before finally coaxing him out with her. For the first time in three weeks he did not have to be dragged into the room, but instead walked in, holding Sheila’s hand.

“Can I just take him and work with him on my own?” Sheila asked.

“If you’d like. Do you have something planned?” I replied.

She shrugged. “All that time I was with him on the floor I was thinking of different things. And I thought maybe he would find it easier than being in a big group.”

They went to the far end of the room near a small, low bookcase and sat down on the floor. I saw Sheila tip out the canister of Lego bricks in the middle between them and then both bent forward to begin building.

It was my day to take Joshua and Jessie, our two autistic children, and between them, they were a full load, so I did not get much of a chance to oversee what Sheila and Alejo were doing together. They remained absorbed in the Lego bricks all the way to snack time and the break.

While they were outside, I took the opportunity to walk over and see what they had been building. It didn’t appear to be much. There were several rectangular forms, looking like half-started houses or the like, and a few long strings of bricks clicked together.

“Should we let them continue?”

Startled, I jumped at the unexpected voice and turned to see Jeff. He crossed over to where I was standing. Bending down, he picked up one of the rectangular structures. “I think they’ll go back to this after the break. Do you think we should leave them to it?”

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I was eavesdropping. It was quite an interesting conversation. They seemed to be building jails with the Lego and putting the little Lego people in it. From the sounds of it, Alejo was putting his mother in jail. He said, ‘She says No! No! No! You do that again and I will lock you in your room. I won’t talk to you for two days. You are a wicked boy to do that and you can’t watch TV.’ And Sheila says, ‘Lock her in the jail. This is the bad moms’ jail. Put her in there and we’ll give her punishment. What shall we do to her?’ And Alejo says, ‘Cut her throat. Make her bleed. Drop bombs on her till she’s dead.’ So that’s what they were doing, dropping hunks of Lego.” Jeff looked over. “It was a little difficult to tell who was leading whom.”

“So it sounds,” I replied.

“I think we should let them go on, if they want,” Jeff said. “He’s talking more than I’ve heard yet, but … I want to keep an ear tuned.”

I felt unnerved by the content of the conversation. As much as I wanted to give Sheila a positive experience here with us, she was an untrained teenager and not a therapist; moreover, she still carried plenty of her own emotional baggage. Was she encouraging Alejo’s play in an effort to imitate Jeff’s and my therapeutic activities? Or was she fulfilling her own needs? Or both?

We didn’t get a chance to find out. When Miriam and Sheila came back in with the children after break, Alejo quite happily joined the others at the painting table and Sheila retreated to the back to clean up the things from snack time and to polish off the remaining cookies.

When the morning was over, Sheila came over to me as I was putting things away. “Let’s not go to lunch with them,” she said, as she handed me the materials to put up on the shelf.

“You don’t feel like it?”

“Let’s do what we did yesterday and eat in the park. I liked that. It’s so nice and sunny out and then we spend it sitting around in that dingy restaurant,” she replied.

“The problem is,” I said, “I haven’t brought my lunch today, so I don’t have anything to eat. Moreover, I have an appointment back at the clinic at two, so if I don’t eat promptly, I won’t be able to take you down to Fenton Boulevard before I have to be back.”

“I don’t care. I can take the bus from here.” She bent down and unlaced one boot. Lifting the boot up, she tipped it and out spilled a five-dollar bill. “If you don’t eat too much, I could buy you something from McDonald’s.”

“All right. McDonald’s it is, but I’ll buy,” I said. “You can provide the delivery service and go get it when we’re done here.”

We’d had a messy morning, using finger paints at the table, soft colored chalk on the blackboard and water in the sand tray. In addition, there was the usual debris. Jeff was at the back sink washing out paint pots, while Miriam was sorting through books and putting them back into the bookshelf.

“Have you told them?” Sheila asked, coming over to where I was wiping down a table.

“Told them what?” I asked.

“Well, that we’re not going out to lunch with them,” she replied, a little exasperated.

“No, but I will. Let’s just finish the cleaning up. We were really mucky in here today.”

“We can clean up,” she said. “Why don’t you tell Jeff and Miriam they can go now. Then you and me can clean up.” When I didn’t respond immediately, Sheila continued. “This is the only problem with this work. You and I never get to spend any time alone. I thought we would more, but there’s always them around. Sometimes I just want to be with you.”

I smiled. “Well, go tell them we’ll do the room on our own then.”

I was hoping that Sheila’s request to be alone with me was an indication that she wanted to talk. The conversation Jeff had reported earlier between her and Alejo still disconcerted me a little and I was anticipating that she might want to discuss it or at least discuss Alejo with me; but this didn’t seem to be the case. Once there were just the two of us, we continued to clean up the room.

Taking a set of fresh erasers from the cupboard, Sheila erased all the colored drawings from the chalkboard, while I tacked up the finger paintings on the bulletin board. When I next looked over, she had a box of the colored chalk in her hand and was drawing on the board. I didn’t say anything, but Sheila quickly became aware that I was watching her.

“The only other problem with this place is that I don’t get to play too,” she said and grinned sheepishly. “I keep wishing, like, I was one of them instead of one of you guys. God, it looks like so much fun, what these kids get to do. Like a dream school.”

I grinned back.

“Can I make a picture with these?” she asked hesitantly, holding up the box of chalks. “Like, maybe it could be decorative? For when they come in tomorrow? It’d look better than just a blank blackboard, don’t you think?”