Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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1
No
if, no buts, and no maybes—the opinion was unanimous. Every
physician, every hospital, and every clinic came up with the same
diagnosis: Retardation. The only one who sometimes questioned it
was her mother....
Sarah hadn’t slept through a night since she was two and a half, she
hadn’t eaten a proper meal since she was two and a half, hadn’t gone
to the bathroom since she was two and a half except when she could
not hold her eliminations any longer. They would fall out of her or
run out of her, wherever she was standing. She hadn’t focused her
eyes since she was two and a half. She hadn’t gone to a window since
she was two and a half, nor had she looked in a mirror since she was
two and a half, and she had not let her mother out of her sight since
she was two and a half. “She always wanted packages,” her mother
continued. “Wrapped and tied packages.” And whenever any of these
requirements weren’t met, which was often because of the
impossibility inherent in the nature of the demands, Sarah had
terrible rages, terrible screams, and terrible tantrums. Lately she had
developed something new, her mother was saying. She stretches out
her hand in front of her, looks at it, and has long conversations with
it...
Dougie was eight and a half years old. His beautiful face shone with
intelligence and curiosity. His Asian-shaped eyes, larger than plums
and darker, carved into that handsome swarthy face with beautifully
proportioned features, made one think of some exotic fruit or prince.
His body, again, perfectly proportioned, lithe—that is, when he did
not look like he was in the last months of pregnancy.
He was a liar and a cheat. He stole with the most innocent
expression, and when he did not, you still suspected him of it. He was
a fire starter and a potential killer, so great was his rage.
He could neither read nor write, and his conniving had no equal. He
was thrown out of every school he went to, and was now in danger of
being hospitalized.
Matthew With that hat of his pulled hard over his forehead, half
covering his eyes, the ear flaps covering his ears. His jacket was
buttoned down no matter what the temperature was, scarf tied
around his neck, gloves shielding his hands, and those big shoes
covered by galoshes. Even inside the warm League School room. He
looked like a caricature of a baby owl, eyes big, bulging with fear, and
always on the watch, lest someone come close to him, touch him,
talk to him, smile at him. Those were transgressions he could not
tolerate.
His face always contorted with anger, and teeth bared in rage. He
came to us from a world totally inhabited by enemies. A world
inhabited by legions of huge, angry, hopeless, helpless, shapeless,
raging women, with bared teeth and terrifying eyes. A world
inhabited by Lilliputian men, who were all out to kill and to get killed.
It was a hurting, angry, desperate world, and so Matthew was an
angry, desperate, hurting little boy.
Then Amy came, with her deranged look, dark hair flying all over her
face, eyes wandering in opposite directions, hallucinating out loud
and masturbating constantly. At age seven she looked like a painting
of insanity captured for one single moment and arrested for eternity.
Jonny. When I first saw him, in 1957, he was six years old, could
barely walk, seemed totally deaf and dumb, could not look me in the
eyes, and from time to time hit himself in the face with a
heartrending savagery. At the time, I was working with other similarly
impaired (though uniquely bizarre) children. All of them had been
diagnosed as suffering from childhood schizophrenia. Their parents, it
was believed, were responsible for their “madness,” though no one
was sure exactly how. There was no cure. Best to warehouse the
children, some experts said. Treatment was impossible.