Ma’am? Do you want the paper?”
Thursday’s Child
Thursday’s Child is a weekly column in The Caledonian-Record featuring a child currently in foster care in the Northeast Kingdom, awaiting adoption. There are over 100 children needing safe, loving, permanent homes. This Thursday’s Child is Jericho, 7.
Jericho describes himself as quiet and good but with a sense of humor. One of his favorite gifts is a joke book, and he loves to make people laugh. He also loves to paint, draw, and model clay, especially Sculpey because of the bright colors. When he gets the chance to be outside, he likes watching birds and squirrels and wishes to know more about the natural world.
In school, Jericho is supported by an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) as he has some learning challenges. While he has the capacity to be a strong student, Jericho suffers from voluntary mutism and can become easily distracted and unable to concentrate for extended periods. He struggles to interact with his peers, preferring to remain solitary, even non-reactive.
With a significant history of trauma, Jericho receives weekly therapy. His individual trauma-focused therapy is helping him develop confidence and expression. He is beginning to process his trauma through art and play therapy.
Legally freed for adoption, Jericho will thrive in a calm, stable home with a parent or parents who provide structure and clear expectations of engagement. Given his delayed entry into the schooling system and on-going learning disabilities, it is recommended that Jericho be in a supportive academic environment able to address his specific academic, social, and emotional needs. His therapy should also continue until further assessment. Jericho would very much like to be in a home with a pet, in particular a dog.
“Yes,” Kay said, corralling it with the toilet paper, eggs, bread, Cheerios, dish soap, broccoli, butter, olive oil, pasta, organic chicken thighs, lemon, peaches, cherries, wine, cheese, organic yogurt, pizza sauce and pizza crust, low sodium soy sauce, organic tinned tomatoes—the bounty so casually available to her and her children.
She loaded up the car, sat for a moment in the stunning, tinned heat of the car. She should turn on her phone, she should check for messages, perhaps she should send some. But to whom? The heat, the sealed car was womb-like, impervious. Certainly, if she was ever to consider suicide, she would do it with car exhaust. Although she’d heard that it was more difficult now, to asphyxiate oneself, due to the smog controls on cars.
But it wasn’t suicide she was considering—rather dispersement: the fragmenting of what had been whole, or had at least appeared whole. Break anything down far enough, and it’s not whole at all; it’s merely a collection of particles in specific and temporary proximity.
Jericho, she thought. A fetus grown, not aborted, and born, a baby given the name of an ancient city, an uncommon name—chosen, intended, not merely drawn from thin air. His parents had meant to love him. But children do not always obey, they do not understand, they will not be quiet.
At Kamp Yahoo, her children careened toward her, brown-limbed, well-fed, remnant paint under their fingernails, juice staining their t-shirts. They could be broken down, too. It took so little effort, only consistency, the breaking and breaking again and again into smaller pieces. What is done to children, she thought, shutting her eyes because such thoughts frightened her: you can’t think them, you become inhuman, you can’t even write them anymore. When she opened her eyes Tom was at the window, his mouth agape.
“Mum! Mum! I lost a tooth! I lost a tooth! Mrs. Figgs put it in a baggie for me.” He held up the baggie with the tiny pearl of a tooth. “Do you think the tooth fairy will come? Will she, even if we’re here in America?”
Freya leaned in, winked, “She’ll have to pay in dollars, won’t she, Mum?”