Good Kings Bad Kings

by Susan Nussbaum

  I never get home before 7:00 p.m. First thing I do is wash up really thoroughly and then sit in front of the fridge eating whatever I see. If I have wine I’ll pour myself a glass, but I don’t have wine because I haven’t had time to pick any up. I’ve forgotten how much energy it takes to actually do something all day without liberal napping throughout. So I drink a lot of water, tilt back, and look around me and think how much I love my apartment and my CD collection and the trees just outside the window and my wok and my futon couch, even though I can’t sit in it because I can’t transfer by myself. When you spend your day in a noisy, stinky nursing home filled with people who have no choice but to be there, you become more appreciative of your eclectic dish and coffee-mug collection and your wall of oak bookshelves including two entire rows of classic science fiction and a whole shelf that slides out just for your Oxford English Dictionary. It’s all in the luck of the toss between living in a cozy apartment with a view and living in an institution where someone’s asking you about your bowel movements and you have to go to bed at seven o’clock every night no matter what.

  No one works at nursing homes unless they’re scraping the underneath of the bottom of the barrel. The kid thing makes it easier though. People think there’s nothing more horrifying and depressing than a disabled child, but even when kids are all messed up and spazzed out and needy as hell there’s still a ton of good energy coming off them. They’re so funny and surprising and they are who they are.

  It may not be everyone’s idea of a dream job. To severely understate. But when I wake up in the morning I have a destination. If someone should happen to ask what I do, which of course no one ever does, but my point is, I have an answer. I work in a nursing home.

  Ricky Hernandez

  When I get to Mrs. Schmidt’s classroom, I see right away it’s Pierre again. He’s up outta his chair and he’s waving his arms and doing his little jumpy thing. He’s screaming, “Gimme my Baby Ruth! Gimme my Baby Ruth!” The other kids are just sitting there and Mrs. Schmidt looks at me real exasperated, like will I help her, so I say, “I have to wait for Louie,” because you’re supposed to have two people if you’re going to grab a kid up, but Mrs. Schmidt is freaking and she says, “I don’t care! He’s out of control!” so I go over to Pierre to see can I get close enough to grab him. It ain’t a problem though. He knows me from the two other times I had to tackle him. Soon as he sees me walking over it’s like the air goes out of him and he quiets down. He practically offers me his arm. I say, “Come on with me, Pierre. Let’s go.”

  First time this happened I had to put him into a basket hold. Imagine I’m behind you holding your arms like you’re hugging yourself—that’s a basket hold. It’s the position your arms would be in if you were in a straitjacket, but you’re being hugged, so it’s more calming. I like the hold because sometimes a kid will relax into it. Not all the time though. Some of them just get madder when you put the basket hold on them. But with the arms like that they can’t hurt themself.

  Next thing is I have to take him to the time-out room. As we’re leaving, Mrs. Schmidt calls to me, “He was eating his crayons! Don’t feed him!” Real nice. Calling the kid out in front of the world.

  On the way to the time-out room I try talking to him, but he’s not going for it. I say, “So how you doing today?” and he says, “Fuck you.” This kind of thing is not unusual. I just think of it like, you know, that’s the disability talking. Pierre has the ADHD. He’s real hyper and he just can’t settle in, he can’t concentrate. I know he’s got some other stuff too. He’s got that thing that the veterans get. Post-dramatic stress. Believe it or not with a young kid, but some of these kids been through some hairy shit already. It’ll make you sick to hear it. I don’t know what happened to Pierre but I remember the day he came here he looked pretty beat up and he must have had thirty, forty stitches in a bald patch on his head. Sometimes if you look at him from a certain angle, his face looks like he’s got the weight of the world on him. Kid is fourteen. I look over at him now and he says, “What you staring at?” I caught a glimpse of that blue crayon caught in his teeth. His teeth are real white. White like how kids’ teeth are because they haven’t turned all yellow from all the coffee and what have you.

  “I ain’t staring. Just looking,” I say.

  My tía Briselda lived with us growing up. My mom’s sister. She was retarded which now they’re supposed to say “intellectually disabled” but nobody here uses it much. We got a lot of kids here who are intellectually, you know, retarded. Man, she was stubborn. My uncle had this whole song about her, about a bullfrog because a bullfrog is stubborn or has a reputation for that. She was a hard case, Tía B., but we had a lot of fun with her. You know, we didn’t know any better. She died way back.

  By now, we should know better how to treat them. Here they use the time-out room as a punishment. They have some other ways to punish the kids, but judging from the times they call me to come and hijack one of them from a class or whatever, the time-out room is a favorite. It’s basically legal, I’m pretty sure, except right now, since it’s supposed to be me and another person taking a kid out, not just me alone. The kids hate time-out and I don’t blame them. It’s embarrassing, the teacher calling them out in front of the peer group like that, and the time-out room itself is no picnic. It’s got a smell you can’t get rid of, which I know because I tried. The walls are carpeted and all the smell has settled in that. I brought in carpet cleaner, Glade, whatever I could think of, but none of it worked. The Glade was bad because of the chemicals—the kids can be allergic and then instead of a pissed-off kid you got a pissed-off kid with a asthma attack or whatever. Hives sometimes.

  So the room stinks. There’s no window you can open either, so. But what do you do when a kid is causing a big disturbance or whaling on another kid or what have you? You gotta do something, right? Removing the kid, I mean, there are worse things. I come from a family, real hands on, you know? Let your fists do the talking. I don’t know, you know? Is that bad? I mean, my parents loved us and they did what they knew to do. My mom, she’d ask you to do something once, and you don’t do it and she asks again—“Take the laundry to the Laundromat,” or whatever—and meantime you’re still reading the back of the cereal box, I’ll tell you what happens. She whacks you on the head. Sometimes she’d just take ahold of whatever she could grab onto, a hunk of hair or an ear, and drag your ass in whatever direction she needed you to go. And you’d go. You would definitely go. My dad the same thing. He must’ve ten, twenty times told my brother Angelo, “Stop hanging around with those gangbangers.” He called them “sod oh mon biches,” like “sons of bitches,” because of the accent. He told Angelo, “You gonna get busted, you gonna end up in jail,” but Angelo wouldn’t stop. One night my dad unscrews all the lightbulbs downstairs. When Angelo comes in and it’s late, of course, because he’s been with the bangers, he tries to turn on a light. Nothing. My dad comes out of the dark swinging a two-by-four and beats the living crap outta my brother. My dad felt like talking didn’t work no more. I ain’t saying that would be my way. But that was them. They were old school.

  One time I was babysitting my nephews and we were at a table drinking some juice and the little one, about four—Junior, we call him—was a little excited. Jumping up and down and laughing and he spills his juice. All over the place and I start yelling at him. Really yelling and I look at his face and his lip is quivering a little and his eyes are beginning to drip and he looks like he might crumple up into a little ball. Oh, man. Little César Junior. I remember thinking how I wasn’t never going to do that again. Hurt a kid or yell at a kid like that. Why teach a kid to be afraid? I ever have a kid or kids, I guess that’s a way I might act different from my parents.

  Pierre says, “Can I have something to eat now?”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t give you anything now, buddy. Soon, okay?” It’s good to keep a little dialogue going with Pierre and get his mind off his problems. “So what kind o
f computer games do you like? You ever use those computers they got around here?” Now that we’re at the time-out room is the time he might try to bolt, so I tighten my grip a little on his elbow.

  “I want some pizza.”

  “Pizza fan, huh? What’s your favorite kind?”

  “Pepperoni.”

  “Get out. That’s my favorite! You like onions?”

  I’m like six feet, 190 pounds. I’m the tallest person in my family. For a Puerto Rican I’m like a giant. But if he’s resisting me, even a skin-and-bones kid like Pierre wears me out. He’s not big—for fourteen he’s a little guy. So he’s little but when he’s mad he’s a handful. He has the mental problems but he also has a physical thing going on. Something with the legs, maybe rickets. We have about eighty kids here, all kinda mental, physical, whatever. They’re actually very cool kids.

  The main thing I do is drive the bus. I load up a bunch of kids in wheelchairs and take them to school, little field trips, or to church or what have you. When I ain’t driving, they call me when a kid gets out of line. I’m a bus driver / cop. Somebody’s gotta do it, I guess. No, but I like it here okay.

  Pierre goes into the time-out room no problem. He’s still talking about pizza and he’s looking twitchy. Once I get him in the room, I can sit down and watch him through the window that looks right into the room, make sure he’s okay. He starts pounding on the door but it’s carpeted so he can’t hurt himself. That’s okay, Pierre, pound until you wear yourself out. That’s what we’re here for.

  With Pierre—he’s skinny as hell, so if he’s hungry, why not give the kid some food? But that’s what they do to a kid who’s really acting out sometimes. They’ll make him skip a meal or they’ll do a “delayed meal” deal.

  Pierre sometimes’ll take some food out of the kitchen, crazy stuff like a pack of frozen hot dog buns. I caught him with a Salisbury steak once, which was a pretty big mess. He’s such a little guy, I don’t know. The rickets, if that’s what it is, comes from not getting enough food when you’re growing, which is how come I think it’s rickets. Like I’m Dr. Hernandez now. But his legs are all bent and he’s got a pretty big limping problem and that’s the way rickets look. I’m just guessing, it ain’t like I’m all up to speed on this shit. But you know, his main problem is the mental, not the physical.

  He sits down in the corner, staring up at the ceiling. He acts like he has a gun and he’s shooting at something or other. I don’t know why Pierre gets so mad. You’d need to be a lot smarter than me to figure that out.

  My opinion is, it’s possible to know too much. I like to take each kid at face value. I don’t want to memorize someone’s file or chart or whatever they got and think I know them by that. That’s bullshit. If I get to read your chart, then you should get to read mine. That’s how I feel.

  After another fifteen I’ll tell Mrs. Schmidt how good he did so he can go for lunch. Feed his inner beast. Some of the houseparents want to leave a kid in there for longer but they’re doing it for themself. Not for the kid. The adult just wants to hang out in the basement and talk to whoever passes by, you know, take a nice long break. And that’s not right. Do your job, man.

  Pierre throws up then and I can see from out here there’s blue crayon in it. I’ll be the guy to clean that up later. That’s all right. I seen way worse than a little recycled crayon.

  When the kids start coming down for their lunch period, I see Mrs. Schmidt and I say how I was just about to let Pierre go, how he’s all calm. She’s says, “Well, he’s supposed to get a delayed lunch, but okay. He can eat.” I say, “Yeah, he’s really hungry,” and she says how he’s got to learn not to act up in class.

  Yeah, don’t be hungry. Have some crayon.

  Michelle Volkmann

  I just left Oscar Mayer Children’s Hospital Parents’ Resource Fair, where I was hoping to recruit one or two possibilities for one of our client’s facilities. It was a waste of time but you never know. Once, I recruited two children from there, but that was over a year ago. I get paid for beds filled, so after I left Oscar Mayer’s at about seven thirty I headed over to a homeless shelter I know that’s not too far away. If I don’t get a hit within half an hour, I don’t care, I am going home.

  I’m on the success track. Those are not my words. That’s what Tim, my boss, said. I’m a recruiter for Whitney-Palm Health Solutions. If you’re in this field you’ve most likely heard of us. All our contracts are basically skilled-nursing facilities but they’re all different. What I mean is, we have some of what you might think of when you think of a nursing facility, like “oh, nursing home” kinds of places, but we also have some places for kids. I recruit for the Illinois Learning and Life Skills Center. I love that place. It used to be that places like ILLC were state-run, but the state made a mess of it and now they pay our company—which, unlike the state, knows how to run a business—to do everything. It takes business acumen to run a nursing facility. If Illinois knew anything about making money, there wouldn’t be so many potholes in the streets.

  I love Whitney-Palm and the VP there is my boss, Tim, who is gorgeous and of course his wife looks like a runway model. He is so on my side and appreciates my work and he tells me, “Michelle, if you have a problem of any kind or you’re not happy here, you can come straight to me because we want to keep you happy.”

  Honestly? I can really see myself being in charge of a big business like Whitney-Palm someday. They’re definitely grooming me for management because they are paying for me to take a class that’s being taught by an important businesswoman who is totally respected in the field. Her name is Helen Fairweather. She’s very well known.

  Every time I recruit a new person for a Whitney-Palm facility, I get $300. So that explains why I’m still out here at eight o’clock in the stupid night looking for parking at this homeless shelter.

  But the work I do is important because I’m getting people off the streets and into warm beds with three meals a day and medical care. Do you have any idea how many people are out there without medical? Or dental? Seriously. My mom has this constant coughing thing because she smokes, but she says she has no idea what she’d do if she didn’t have her job with insurance even though it’s not the greatest insurance. She manages an Aldi in Valparaiso, Indiana, which is a supercheap grocery store. She really likes it there but work is about the only thing she likes in her life. I told her how she could get free psychiatrist appointments or at least lower-priced ones with her insurance but of course she refuses to see one because she’s crazy. No, I’m kidding. Oh my God, parking.

  The shelter is ladies only and is actually in a church, but this area is creepy at night. It’s dark for one thing. My entire family basically refuses to come visit me because they all lived in Valpo or the UP for their whole lives and they think Chicago is full of criminals. In Valpo the fanciest restaurant is an Outback Steakhouse. I am so serious.

  They were showing Finding Nemo at the shelter. You’re homeless and watching a movie about this homeless fish. But it’s a Catholic place, so maybe it’s the only thing they could find that was G rated. The ladies already had dinner. The good thing about recruiting at shelters is that if someone is desperate enough to need to be in a place like this, they are open to suggestions. You’d think it’d be easier to recruit the ones who’ve been out in the streets for a long time, but no. Uh-uh. It’s actually the ones that have just landed here. The new ones are more—they’re like, “Ahhh! Get me out of here!”

  So while they’re watching Finding Nemo I look around to see who might be good to talk to. That’s how I recruit. I just keep talking to people until I find someone who is interested in hearing about Whitney-Palm’s lifestyle alternatives.

  I’m standing at the door when I see this woman who is kind of fiftyish and she has a big cut over her eye with stitches in it, so I think she looks promising. I go over to her because we have a nursing facility in Darien that we just signed, but the woman sees me coming and says, “I ain’t intereste
d,” real gruffly. Well, fine, excuse me for living, but just then I realize I tried recruiting the same woman last week at a different shelter.

  Then I see this black girl get up and walk out. She has a really noticeable limp and she rocks from side to side when she walks. She might not be handicapped enough for ILLC but you never know. She looked like about fifteen or fourteen, which is perfect.

  I follow her out and she sits down on a bench in the hall. I introduce myself and ask her if I could sit down. First thing I notice is she has her hands in her lap and one of them is all in a fist and twisty looking, like definitely abnormal, but the other hand is normal. Maybe her foot is twisted too and that’s why she limps. She says her name is Cheri. “Cheri Smith. With the accent on the second part. The ‘ri.’ Not ‘cherry,’ but ‘Cheri.’ ”

  I’m thinking, “Okay, whatever.” She has this way of talking that’s like jerky. I don’t mean like “you’re a jerk” but like her speech came out stiff sounding. I ask her if she’s had dinner and she says she has. I ask her if she liked the movie and she says yes. Then she asks me if I have a Kotex. She says, “My cycle just come on.”

  I go, “Oh, I don’t have any. But maybe they have some here. I’ll go ask, okay?”

  So we walk over to one of the nuns or whatever to get Kotex and thank God they have it because these places, believe it or not, don’t always have stuff like that. Nobody thinks about things like Kotex or tampons because they just don’t. Like the only homeless people in the world are guys. But the shelters need pads and tampons to be donated too. I think I’ll bring it up at Whitney-Palm tomorrow and get people to start a fund. You can really make a difference with something as simple as a sanitary napkin.