Z
Z
LAST NIGHT WAS MY SECOND NIGHT AT THE CHILDREN’S Trust Residence Center. I threw up next to my bed.
It started when I had my appointment with Dr Nevele yesterday. He knew I am writing on the Quiet Room wall but he told me I am allowed. He said, “Maybe Burton can express himself better in writing than he can verbally.” I don’t know what verbally is. I think it is some kind of vegetables.
At home I am not allowed to write on the walls, if I do I get it. But once I drew a horse on my bedroom wall and got spanked for it. I was just on the mane when Mom walked into the room. She screamed.
“What do you think they make paper for, young man?”
I said, “Airplanes, what else?” So she smacked me. She said, “Who do you think you’re talking to, one of your friends?” And I said, “I thought you were.”
“Wash it off, mister.”
“Wash it off.”
“No, it’s my room and I can draw if I want.”
She said, “It isn’t your room, who do you think pays for it?”
“Who?”
“Your father.”
“I’ll pay him for it then.”
“How?”
“I’ll get a job.”
“Doing what?”
“Selling stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Lemonade.”
I had to wash it off. It took all day, I used Bab-o.
At my appointment Dr Nevele made me sit in the same chair where I had the seatbelt before. He smiled at me but it was phony baloney, he made me sit there for a long time without saying anything. Then he did.
“Tell me about school, Burt.”
I looked at the carpet in his office, it is brown with little lumps in it and I thought, Those are the buildings of the city down below where criminals lurk on every corner to steal things from innocent people. Up here in the sky I can use my x-ray eyes to see them and swoop down to make them give it back.
Dr Nevele looked at me.
“Who are your favorite teachers, Burton? You must have a favorite.”
A little girl was standing on the roof of one of the buildings down below and a robber was chasing her around. I yelled, “Don’t worry I’ll save you!” and got off my chair and swooped down through the clouds and socked him and saved her. She had on a red dress with like waves in it.
“Please sit, Burton. A chair is to sit in, not climb on. You wouldn’t do that at home,” said Dr Nevele.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” I said.
“She’s not here,” he said and shook his head, and I kicked over the chair and it fell against the table and made the lamp tip over and it fell and the bulb exploded. Dr Nevele didn’t say anything except, “What’s your favorite class in school?”
Then out in the hall I heard wheels and I thought, There is a wagon with hay in it and inside is Shrubs only no one can see and he will jump out and throw me my sword and I’ll point it at Dr Nevele and throw my head back and laugh and ride away. And I ran out into the hall, but I didn’t see Shrubs. It was a wheelchair with a child in it with hardly any hair and her hands were like claws. I walked back into Dr Nevele’s office and sat down. He didn’t say anything to me.
“Can I have the seatbelt?” I said.
“Pardon me?”
“May I have the seatbelt?”
Dr Nevele shook his head slow, like my dad did once when he had to put our dog to sleep.
“Please don’t put me to sleep,” I whispered.
I looked at the floor but there weren’t any more buildings on it, just carpet. Dr Nevele shook his head. “Are you talking to me now, Burton?” he said. And I said, “I don’t know.” Then I started to cry.
He wrote something in his book for a long time and I just sat. Then he closed the book and said if I wanted to I could go to the Quiet Room and write things, if I didn’t want to talk about them.
He stared at me for a long time then. He tried to smile at me. He tried and tried. I saw him trying. It made me sad. Dr Nevele was trying so hard to smile at me. He didn’t know how.
I went to the Playroom instead. It is a room, it has toys in it for playing, there is even a little jungle jim made out of plastic which is good for climbing on and playing Tarzan. I am good at Tarzan, I can give the call.
There is a little square cut in the door of the Playroom so you can look inside from the hall. I did. There were children falling off the jungle jim who hit their heads, and other children running around like spazzes. I deduced they are mental. And there was a man with them who had red hair and white shoes like a doctor. I looked at him through the square. He was like the doctor of the spaz children. Suddenly he came toward me and opened the door and looked at me and said, “Keep an eye on them will you, till I get back?”
One little boy sat by himself in the corner of the Playroom, because no one would play with him. He was a colored negro. He put his fingers up to his eyes and wiggled them like he was waving goodbye to himself. He rocked on the floor back and forth back and forth. Over and over. And over.
“Any trouble?” It was the red-haired man, he came back.
At first I didn’t say anything but he looked at me with his eyes and they were brown with green pieces in them, like Jessica’s.
“There’s a little boy in there,” I said, “who is waving goodbye to himself.”
The red-haired man looked at me. He held out his hand. “Name’s Rudyard,” he said. But I didn’t shake his hand. I didn’t want to. I was scared. “Actually,” he said, “he’s waving hello.” And he went back in the Playroom.
I went back to my wing. I was sleepy. I sat on my bed. It has sheets. At home is blankee. He is blue. I have had him since I was a baby. My mom wants to throw him away but I won’t let her. But one time I did something. I peed on blankee. He smelled very pungent.
My bed is in the middle of the row. There are six beds in my wing and four other children. I don’t know their names yet, except one. His name is Howie, he sleeps next to me, he has scars on him from when he threw a can of gas into a fire. He is mean. I asked him if they had hot dogs at The Children’s Trust Residence Center and he told me to blow it out my ass hole. (This is swearing.) The bed next to me on the other side is empty. Maybe a little boy will come and sleep there and be my friend.
I sat on my bed and then I started to cry because I wanted to go home, so I pushed my face into my pillow and pushed and pushed until I fell asleep. I had a dream.
It was my house only not. We were in the den watching Popeye on tv, my mom and dad and Jeffrey. Then a man came on with a special announcement that there was going to be a tornado. I jumped up and yelled, “Come on everybody, quick, down into the cellar for shelter.” But no one moved. Mom laughed at me and said, “Don’t be such a little baby, Burt.” Jeffrey was on the floor. He was looking at cars in a magazine. He said I couldn’t look. I looked out the window and saw the sky was black and I yelled, “Hurry up!” But nobody moved. They acted like I wasn’t even there. They talked to each other. My mom said, “Now no horseplay,” and my dad looked at me and said, “Burt, did you take your bath? No bath, no Zorro on television.” Behind him, through the window then I saw the tornado coming, it was long and black and squirmed so I couldn’t tell which way it was going. I ran downstairs to the basement. I sat under the stairs and listened for them to come down, but I couldn’t hear anything except the tornado. It sounded like a train, so loud it hurt my ears. It got louder and louder. It was coming at our house. And I screamed, “Please you guys, please hurry up.” I screamed so loud I got sick until I couldn’t hear myself anymore. Everything started shaking. A glass broke. Then I looked toward the door. There was Jessica, standing there and her lips were moving but I couldn’t hear. I said, “What?” but I couldn’t hear. The tornado roared like lions inside me, and then Jessica turned and bowed and walked away. I ran after her, but I was afraid to leave the cellar because of the tornado. I was scared. Chicken, man. I yelled and yelled. Then Jessica turned around and looked at me, and said, “Why did you do that to me, Burt, what you did?” I started to cry. “Why did you do it?” she said, and the tornado was inside me and I got down on my knees and put my head against the floor and said, “Please don’t be dead, Jessica, please don’t be dead.”
When I woke up I didn’t know where I was. I threw up because I was so scared.
They had to get a janitor to clean it up this morning. Howie said I am a baby for throwing up, and I didn’t know what to say back.
And today I had Dr Nevele again. I asked him if my letter from Jessica got here yet. I told him on the night we did it she said she would write me a letter if we ever got separated.
“Don’t count on it,” said Dr Nevele.
I didn’t talk to him after that. I folded my arms and sat. And talked to Jessica. And when he told me again that Jessica wasn’t there I grabbed the papers on his desk and started to tear them up. But he just looked at me, and I didn’t tear them.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Or if you want them so badly, you can take them with you.” I did.
I went to the Quiet Room. I am here now. I wrote something on the wall. Z. For Zorro.
(I got pungent from my dad. He said it about beets.)
12/3
Reticence continues as regards verbalized interaction with therapist. The patient will not speak directly to me, but favors a protracted form of verbalization. That is, communicating with me through the imaginary presence of the girl Jessica Renton (see file s7, item one). I judge this to be a function of two overlapping conditions: (a) The child unwilling to face the reality that Jessica has in fact been harmed by him and is at this writing being held for observation at New Mercy Hospital (reports to be forwarded as per request 12/1), thus creating her fantasy presence here, unharmed; and (b) The child using this second person to speak to the therapist indirectly. Through this personality transference, he speaks to her and I hear it. It is my opinion that both conditions are at work here.
The fact remains, however, that for treatment to be effective in this case, direct verbal communication must be achieved. The issue of the wall-writing (see 12/2) proves the child to be language-oriented, indeed gifted (he is a spelling champion at school), and seems to be an appropriate avenue to explore.
The patient is displaying symptoms indicating a rescuer complex. This too serves a double function. (a) Displacement of guilt. Making oneself a hero by definition creates an external villain, thus displacing blame for bad deeds onto that villain and escaping one’s own guilt. And (b) Omnipotence. Sociopathology. The constant allusions to flying, or jumping safely from high places, sailing through the air. Putting oneself above, and apart from, society. A symbolic way of playing out his severe antisocial tendencies.
At present this therapist judges the patient’s uncontrollable temper to be the severest and most immediate problem at hand. It is pathological and inappropriate. He is a threat to those around him and for that reason must be kept under constant surveillance (at least kept within the walls of this institution) and given few privileges and no latitude in which to display his violence.
I copied this on the wall from the papers I got from Dr Nevele’s office because I was bored, but I don’t understand it. It is too big words.