TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 220

[Tobie Shapiro]

May 16, 200000007


Dear Wandering Seekers,

	It's Wednesday morning, and Mint is still 
at the veterinary hospital.  She's getting I.V.s 
to keep her hydrated, and now they're force 
feeding her, because she just doesn't seem to be 
eating.  A kibble here, a crumb there.  Not 
enough.  All the lab results are good, except 
anemia, which they are taking care of with the 
I.V.s.  The ultrasound showed that she has an 
enlarged liver, which is something we learned 
from the X-rays that our regular vet took about a 
week and a half ago.  So they took a little 
biopsy of the liver and should get the test 
results back today.  No one can figure out why 
she stopped eating and what's going on with her 
liver.  Feyna isn't doing so well around all 
this.  She's got three courses she's taking in 
school, which is an overload for her.  Finals are 
coming up and she's nearly in a panic.  She has 
papers due and tests to take and she's trying at 
the same time to support herself partially with 
the Cutco demonstration job.  That job is well 
suited to Feyna, but it can't pull in enough 
money to finance her BART fare to school and 
back.  She's intent on having no help whatever. 
If she accepts help, then she's failed, she says. 
But everybody needs help sometimes.  I had to 
call her neuropsych, the one who prescribes the 
meds, on his emergency line when Feyna was 
falling apart the other night.  And Alex, the 
lying friend who is a boy, doesn't seem to be 
much help when Feyna is in panic mode.  He 
develops his own fears and needs and Feyna winds 
up having to take care of him.  I have found 
fresh evidence of his lies and have chosen not to 
tell Feyna, after ethical wrestling with myself. 
It would be most ethical to tell her.  And she'd 
be very upset with me for not telling her if she 
found out about his lying and then that I knew 
all along and didn't say.  But psychologically, 
she wouldn't want to hear it.  She's in no 
condition to hear it.  And it would set me up as 
the enemy.  She'd say she wanted to hear it, but 
she really doesn't.  So I stand here watching her 
with her panic attacks and deep depression, her 
self abusive thoughts and language.  And I can't 
do anything.  She just has to learn this herself. 
And I say unto you all:  Oy!




                                 

































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Care and Treatment of the Odd People Out

	Suzanne Dermody's head bent over so she 
was looking at her feet when she walked down the 
street.  I remember seeing her at it while my 
mother was driving me down to my Young People's 
Symphony Orchestra rehearsal.  There she was, 
travelling on foot down to her house on Florence, 
a one block street that bridged Ashby Avenue and 
Russell about a block above Telegraph.  We'd 
dropped her off there one day after she'd been at 
my house for a few hours.  She'd directed my 
mother expertly, and when we drove in front of 
her house, she'd said, "That's it.  That's where 
my grandparents live.  Stop here."

	The fact that she lived with her 
grandparents intrigued me.  My twelve year old 
mind spun around in some of the few circles it 
knew.  Maybe Suzanne was an orphan.  Her parents 
had died in an exotic epidemic in Indonesia where 
they'd been missionaries.  That was how goyim 
wound up in foreign lands, right?  Convert the 
heathens with their twenty thousand year old 
religions that had served them well since they'd 
begun hacking local stones into arrowheads to 
snare their supper.  The epidemic swept through 
the complex.  The survivors  found Suzanne 
squalling in her crib, alive through some 
miracle.   Knowing that the infant couldn't stay 
there, they searched for her next of kin.  This 
is when she was shipped back to the United States 
to her grandparents who swore to raise her.  Or 
maybe Suzanne's parents were drunks or criminals, 
and the authorities had taken Suzanne away from 
them in the middle of some orgy, then awarded her 
to her grandparents because her parents were 
going to spend a long time in jail.

	Her grandparents lived in a two story 
Victorian, well kept and neatly painted.  She ran 
up the stairs, waved to us and disappeared into 
the house.  The fact that she lived with her 
grandparents endeared her to me.  I gravitated 
towards the ones at the end of the bell curve, 
the ones who were shunned by the others, the ones 
whom nobody understood.  I identified.  I was the 
world's least important misfit.  Who would 
befriend these misunderstood people if not I? 
This was my way of reaching out to me.

	That is why I took Patty under my wing in 
elementary school.  Patty followed me around the 
school yard because I was probably the only kid 
who was nice to her.  I'd walk her home and go 
inside and try to play with her.  Patty was 
seriously retarded, and no one else would 
tolerate her.  I saw that she had a generous 
heart, and she never thought ill of anyone, even 
the ones who tormented her.  There wasn't much 
that we could do together.  I just followed her 
lead.  Whatever she wanted to do, we'd do.  I 
caught a cold in the beginning of the school 
year.  In November, she was still asking me how I 
was.  "Is your cold better?"  And I'd tell her 
that it was, never getting impatient.  So Patty 
became increasingly dependent on me.  She'd wait 
for me every day after school so I could walk her 
home.  And I'd do so.  I was pained by what to 
do.  My conscience wouldn't let me abandon her, 
but caring for her was more than a ten year old 
could handle.  I didn't know what to say to her. 
I didn't know how to answer her repeated requests 
that I give her a big hug.  She wanted a big hug.

	One afternoon, her mother took me aside 
and said to me, "Tobie, you don't have to be 
responsible for Patty.  Really.  This might be 
too much for you."  And I was surprised.  My 
mother had taught me about heredity, and I 
thought her whole family must be like her.  Her 
mother was perfectly normal.  How did that 
happen?  The same day, my mother took me aside 
and told me that it wasn't my responsibility to 
take care of Patty.  She had friends in her 
special education class.  I couldn't decide.  I 
was pinioned between what was the right thing to 
do and what was comfortable.  Not an easy choice. 
I chose neither.  Patty stopped following me, 
waiting for me.  I wondered what had happened to 
relieve me.

	This is the same thing that drew me to 
Janet in Jr. High School.  Janet was painfully 
shy.  She never made eye contact with anybody. 
She never asked questions in class.  She didn't 
have a small cluster of friends she hung out 
with.  She sat at her desk, her face in her 
books, reading, taking notes.  She crept 
anonymously from class to class.  She fascinated 
me.  Why couldn't I be like that?  Why couldn't I 
stay to myself, hide away, lose myself in the 
crowd and keep quiet, never drawing attention to 
me?  Why did I have to be such a loudmouth, 
making wise cracks all the time, raising my hand 
in class, commenting on everything?  I would sit 
in social studies, watching Janet at her desk, 
taking notes, her eyes trained on her binder, her 
pen moving quickly over the page.  She would look 
up at Mr. Garcia every once in a while and then 
dive back down into her notes.  When other kids 
whispered at her, she ignored them.  If they 
asked her to pass a note, she didn't even turn 
around.  She just shook her head, no, and went 
back to her work.  I thought maybe Janet didn't 
need anyone, least of all me.  But I wanted to be 
her friend.  I wanted to be her champion.  I 
wanted to save her from her isolation and I 
wanted to make her smile.

	We were the two students who got As on 
all our papers and tests.  When the homework was 
graded and handed back to us, I could see the red 
A with an exclamation point after hers.

	"I got an A on that, too," I said to her, 
confidentially, "But you take much better notes."

	She smiled at me and looked up.  It was 
exhilarating.  "But that's all I do," she 
answered me, shrugging her shoulders.

	"That's not true, Janet," and I tried to 
think of something else that I knew she did, 
anything to repair her, and to keep the 
conversation going.  "I'll bet you bathe 
regularly."  She gave me a funny look; the smile 
returned.  This was a fine beginning.  We were 
getting along.

	After a couple weeks of exchanges like 
that, I invited her home.  I don't know what 
possessed me to do that.  How could I expose poor 
Janet to my father?  What would she think of my 
lunatic family?  My sister would probably sneer 
at her, or hit her.  My father would pull some 
disgusting stunt and my mother would stand there, 
giving him the eye and whispering explosively, 
"Justin!  Stop it!"  He'd say, "What did I do? 
Did I do something?  I have nothing but love in 
my heart."  Then they'd get into a fight and 
Janet would barely escape with her life.

	I gave a speech to my family.  I said 
that my friend, Janet, was coming over to visit, 
and that everyone should be specially considerate 
and gentle with her, because she was very shy. 
Don't do anything to upset her.  Don't be 
yourselves.  Act normal.  "Please," I implored 
them.  "I really like her."

	Dana huffed, "I have no interest in your 
little friends."  Daniel said he'd be nice.  My 
mother nodded her head in understanding.  My 
father disturbed me.  "I assure you, Tobie, that 
I'll do nothing to cause your friend any 
embarrassment."

	Had I said anything about embarrassment? 
The man had a plan.  I went to my mother after 
everyone dispersed, and I begged her to rein 
Justin in, make him behave.  Keep him away from 
Janet.

	"He's not going to do anything," she assured me.

	When Janet came over, I was nervous.  I 
didn't want anything to go wrong.  I felt like 
I'd led a sweet little fawn into a clearing 
surrounded by rabid members of the National Rifle 
Association on the opening day of deer season. 
Even if my family members wanted to make nice, 
would they be able to stop themselves from 
shooting her?

	Janet sat on the couch in the living 
room, and I sat in the chair nearby.  We were 
talking about the atomic bomb.  My mother 
appeared on the dining room stairs and asked 
Janet if there were anything she could get her. 
Was she thirsty?  Would she like some cookies? 
Janet shook her head.  "No thank you, Mrs. 
Shapiro.  I'm fine.  Thank you for asking."  My 
mother disappeared back into the kitchen.

	Dana passed through.  "So this is your 
LITTLE friend," she sniffed, and she left the 
room.

	Then the doors to the front entrance way 
suddenly opened wide and my father thumped down 
the steps into the living room.  He strode in, 
saw Janet sitting on the sofa and threw himself 
down next to her, then re-threw himself closer to 
her, so that his leg was touching her leg.  He 
leaned his face over into her startled face.  He 
quizzed her in a loud voice.

	"Tobie says you're shy.  Are you shy?" 
He kept his face an inch from hers.  She 
recoiled, leaning hard away from him.  He stared 
intensely at her.  "Being shy is a pathological 
problem."  She didn't say anything.

	I sat in my chair, stunned.  Telling him 
to stop would just encourage him to escalate.  I 
didn't know how to rescue her.  I wanted to go 
get my mother, but I didn't want to leave Janet 
alone with my father.  I stood up and interrupted 
my father's script.  "Let's sit at the piano." 
She gratefully followed me to the piano bench, 
leaving my father without his direct object.  He 
got up and left the room.  We sat there at the 
piano, and Janet played an etude she'd been 
practicing.  She was good.  Her fingers were 
graceful and she had expression.  She folded her 
hands in her lap when she was done.

	"Play something else," I urged her. 
"Please."  I got up to give her more room.

	My father rushed into the living room and 
advanced on the piano.  He sat down hard on the 
piano bench, next to Janet, and delivered his 
speech at close range, right into her face. 
"Mickey said I embarrassed you!  Did I embarrass 
you?!"

	She froze and answered the only way she 
could answer remaining polite, adhering to the 
rules of social conduct that my father was 
breaking.  She said, "No," barely audibly, and 
moved away from him to the edge of the bench.

	He moved his ass in closer.  "I didn't 
hear you.  Did I embarrass you?!" he bellowed. 
"Tell me.  You can tell me."

	She shook her head, no, again.  He got up 
from the bench and marched purposefully back to 
the kitchen yelling, "Mickey!  I didn't embarrass 
her.  I told you so!"

	"I'm really sorry," I begged Janet.  "I 
hate my father.  Maybe I shouldn't have invited 
you."

	"It's okay," she murmured.  She became 
stiff and nervous and very subdued.  She called 
her mother to come get her.  I waved to Janet as 
she descended the front stairs.

	She never came back.



                                 

































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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net