12

ANTHONY

Anthony would not shut up. He had gone from pre-verbal to never-ceasing verbal within a few months of living with us. He liked to perseverate, repeating the same stories again, and again, and again. His favorite one went like this: “Melissa take a wagon outside and fix it.” It’s a little story about his teacher Melissa and her wagon. One day her wagon broke and well, the rest is history. Twenty, thirty times a day we heard about the wagon. The kids weren’t allowed to tease him about it, but sometimes we would smile at one another while he was looping, the same smile we shared when Dad was snoring loudly on the couch.

Growing up in a dangerous environment, Anthony survived by being cute and making people feel special. He is what is called an “indiscriminate attacher,” making everyone feel that they, and only they, can save him. He plays the baby, asking complete strangers to pick him up, and then gazes into their eyes like an infant Casanova. He’ll remember your name and everything about you, flattering you until you start to believe you, and only you, are on this earth to love and protect him. I have to tell adults repeatedly, “Please do not to pick him up and cuddle him. He’s six years old.” They can’t help themselves. Even educators will say, “I know I shouldn’t pick him up, but he’s so cute!” as Anthony wraps his arms around their necks and put his head on their shoulder. I had to remove him from an after-school program when one of the younger counselors became obsessed with him. It was kind of intense. I met with her on several occasions, explaining our situation and asking for her support in helping Anthony behave like a six year old and attach to his adoptive parents. “Please, do not to pick him up, do not to carry him around, and do not to cuddle him.” She wouldn’t hear it. “You don’t understand,” she told me. “He needs me.” A blessing and a curse: his baby charm kept Anthony alive in an abusive world, and now safe, it kept him infantilized.

Behind this loving, innocent demeanor, however, was an angry little human who could express his rage with adult sophistication. His behavior was cruel and devious. He called his classmates names, swore at them, and grabbed the little ones by their necks when no one was looking. He was aggressive to animals and babies. Once my sister, Michelle, saw him bullying Jimmy and Ruby, his high-pitched voice knifing at his older siblings, “Your parents are dead! They didn’t love you! You have no one!” Jimmy, hurt, begged him to stop, “Anthony, don’t say that!” Anthony, sadistic, “They are dead! You don’t have parents!” Ruby was crying, “Anthony, stop! It’s not true!” Michelle was disturbed. She came back and told me what she’d seen. “I would never have believed he could be so hateful if I hadn’t seen it for myself. It was chilling.”

Anthony broke every toy we gave him, broke the zippers off his coats, and dug holes in the plaster walls of his room with his fingers. He was systematically destroying the bathroom: yanking on the spigots, cranking on the faucets like they were handbrakes for a runaway train, and unscrewing the bolts on the bottom of the toilet so that water soaked into the basement through the floorboards.

And I get it. He’s in a small body he was neglected, malnourished, and mistreated, but no different from anyone else in wanting to leave his mark on the world. One night Anthony snuck out of his room, took our video camera, and made fifteen short films of his hands screwing around with the computers in the dark. Throughout the films is a whispering voice over, “I am Anthony Fox, I am Anthony Fox, I am Anthony Fox . . .” It was profound and pathetic. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. When we confronted him the next day about the broken computers, his denial was like an exclamation mark. He wanted us to know he did it. He wanted us to know that he is Anthony Fox, and with the limited tools he was given, he was leaving his tag. “I am Anthony Fox! Anthony Fox was here!”

* * *

A year into our parenting, we were getting a lot of pressure from both the school and child psychiatrist to put Anthony on Ritalin. No one was telling us explicitly to do it, but the suggestion was always there. Our pediatrician made a good case for a trial, saying if Anthony’s problems stemmed from ADHD, the medication would help him; if it was not ADHD, then the Ritalin would have no effect and we would take him off of it. “The medication will keep him from feeling frustrated with his learning in school.” Anthony frustrated? I am pretty sure the teachers were frustrated with Anthony. I was definitely frustrated with Anthony.

We gave it a shot. A few days into the trial, Anthony’s behavior got worse. He was getting out of his room at night, climbing on the kitchen counters, playing with the stove, putting pans in the oven, and scribbling all over the walls and computer screens. It wasn’t working. Or maybe it was working and we just had so many other variables in play that we could not tease out what was causing this flare in behavior. We took him off the Ritalin and pulled him out of summer school.

* * *

A problem with disciplining Anthony was trying to figure out what his mental capacity was at the time of his infraction. Was it the impaired, impulsive toddler acting his delayed age? Or was it the advanced manipulator, pleading incompetence to get a lesser sentence? We were not always sure. As noted, our standard length of a timeout is the child’s age in minutes. “Okay, Anthony, take a timeout. You have six minutes.” He’d act as if I’d baked him a cake. “Six minutes? Thanks, Mom! Woo hoo.” Hmm. “Actually, let’s make that twenty minutes.” Again, excited, “Twenty? Alright, thanks, Mom!” I upped it to forty and he looked sad. But could even he sit still for forty minutes? Did he even know what forty minutes was? I would set the timer for ten minutes and then watch him. Just before he would start to wiggle in the timeout chair, I would turn the timer off and let it ring. I wanted to help him. I wanted him to succeed.

I focused on Anthony the toddler. He was not safe unattended. We had two carpets on the first floor, one by the kitchen door and one at the main entrance, which we named “the magic carpets.” They were industrial looking, red and black with rubber trim. I would put him on whichever carpet was closest to me while I worked. He was allowed to sit or kneel, but not stand. He could play with his toys as long as he kept them and himself on the carpet. Anthony loved his magic carpets. He would play for hours and hours, watching me, basking in benign attention. He would talk to himself and roll back and forth like a two year old. I would give him an empty cereal box and a paper bag and he would tear the box into tiny pieces and put the pieces in the bag, laughing.

But he wasn’t a toddler. He was perceptive, sometimes freakishly so. He could tell I was looking for the measuring spoons. “You put them in the squeaky drawer.” The squeaky drawer? He pointed to a drawer. It squeaked when I opened it to find the spoons. I hadn’t noticed the drawer squeaked. “Do any of the other drawers squeak?” He shook his head. I checked. He was right.

When I sprained my ankle on a family camping trip, I wore a white, elastic ankle support over my white sock, in my sneaker and under long pants. Barely visible, I wore it every day for a month without a mention. The first day I came into the kitchen without it, Anthony asked, “Is your ankle better, Mama?” Dan bought two identical jackets for work. I hadn’t noticed and if I had, would not have been able to tell them apart. “Hey, Dad, you changed your jacket. It looks good.” It was uncanny

Watching an animated film during movie night, Anthony accidently read out loud a sign over a cartoon gas station, “Dino Pump!” We looked at him, surprised. He turned bright red. He had told us this entire time he didn’t know how to read. His hyper-vigilance was impressive, his listening skills bionic. I was talking to a friend in the kitchen while Anthony was engaged, playing with his trains in the next room on his magic carpet. She asked me a question about Jason and I told her we could speak later, when Anthony wasn’t listening. She said, “Oh, he’s not listening!” I winked at her. Quietly and breathily, “Anthony, which sibling are we talking about?” He answered instantly, “Jason!”

And yet, Anthony couldn’t do simple tasks, like set the table. I would give him a stack of plates and have him count them, one for each member of the family. “Good, now set them out where each person sits.” He would put two plates together, almost touching, and then one at the end of the table and three on the other end. I coached him, reminding him who sat where. He couldn’t do it. Or wouldn’t. I don’t know. Was he just screwing around? Playing dumb was a defense mechanism for Anthony but also a control mechanism, a way of screwing with his authority figures.

But how could I help my little guy? He needed to succeed at something, I needed to give him some directions he could execute, rules he could follow. When I was a kid, my Mom would pass me a plate of warm cookies and say, “Be sure and take the biggest one!” She wasn’t being sarcastic, she was showing me she knew what it was like to be me, giving me permission to be my selfish little self and hover forever over the cookies with my greedy little fingers tingling with anticipation: calculating, comparing, you touch it you take it! She’d smile at me, “Did you get the biggest one?” Oh yes, I did. “Nice work, honey.”

On St. Patrick’s Day, Anthony and I snuck into all the bathrooms in the house while no one was looking. I told him to put five drops of green food coloring into each toilet bowl. His eyes got big. “Shh! It’s a secret!” He was ecstatic.

“Now Anthony, when people see this, they are going to ask, ‘who did it?’ and you have to pretend it wasn’t you. We want them to think a leprechaun used the toilet. Leprechauns have green pee.” Anthony said, “But I did it.” I knelt down and looked him in the eyes, “This is a practical joke, Anthony. We are pretending something happened that didn’t. I am giving you special dispensation to lie. Let’s practice. ‘Gee! I wonder who peed in the toilet! The water is green!’ Now, Anthony, you say what?” He said, “A leprechaun?”

I prepped one of the tutors before we sat down at the table for lunch. The tutor said, “If you’ll excuse me, I need to use the restroom.” She went into the bathroom and exclaimed, “Gee! I wonder who peed in the toilet! The water is green!” Anthony burst out, “I did it! I did it! I put the green in the toilet!” Oh, well.

About six months into our relationship, I was sitting with Anthony in the kitchen, waiting for him to finish his dinner. I was exhausted, but couldn’t leave him alone at the table or he would give his food to the dog. It was dark outside and rain was falling. I should have been doing dishes, writing checks, opening the mail, but my brain had shut down. I just sat there, staring at nothing. Anthony, eat dammit. It was 7:05. It felt like midnight. I still had to help Jimmy with his homework.

Anthony had not gained one ounce in six months. We put butter on his peanut butter sandwiches, gave him half and half instead of milk. Nothing worked. We tried everything to get him to eat: coaxing, pleading, threatening, bribing. Nothing worked. I was trying out the “it takes as long as it takes” method for his eating. Guess what? It takes too damn long! I thought about the wet laundry sitting in the washer since yesterday, folded my arms and put my head down on the table.

“Mama?” Anthony said, his voice uncharacteristically calm. “Mama? This my table?” I lifted my head slowly and smiled. “Yes, Anthony. This is your table.” He pointed out the kitchen window to the neighbors’ house. “My neighbors?” I nodded. “This my house, Mama?” I told him yes, this was his house. “My Mama?” I said, “I’m your Mama, Anthony.” Anthony slowly looked around the room and then at me. “Is perfect,” he said. “My Mama. My table. Perfect.” And then he took a bite.