Unsubstantiated. I don’t like that word. I realize this is probably a form letter, but it bothers me because “unsubstantiated” leaves the door open. When this first happened, I was more worried about what would happen to Janni than about what would happen to me. I knew I had nothing to hide. I figured DCFS would do their investigation and eventually it would be over. When the letter arrived, I thought it was finished. Then Susan says, “I should still be the one to keep giving Janni her baths.”
I stare at her, not understanding.
“It’s just not worth the risk,” Susan continues.
“But I didn’t do anything.”
“I know that, but an accusation was still made against you. Yes, you were cleared, but what if you get accused again? They’ll look back over their files and see you were accused once before and why take that risk? There’s no need for you to give Janni baths anymore.”
“I thought I was being a good father, helping out.”
“I know, and you did. But you can’t do that anymore. Look, I don’t like it, either. It means more work for me. She really needs to bathe herself. Also, you need to make sure you are never alone with any girls.”
This annoys me.
“When am I ever alone with any girls other than Janni?”
“I’m just saying that you don’t want to put yourself in a position where there will be any question at all.”
Now I know. This will never really be over. No matter what the letter says, this will hang over me for the rest of my life.
Susan starts to turn away.
“You cried out.”
“What?”
“That night when they came. I heard you cry out from the bedroom. You were so upset Carlos had me hold Bodhi.”
“Of course I was upset. I couldn’t believe what he was telling me.”
“Did you believe him?”
Susan hesitates and I have my answer.
“I didn’t know what to believe,” she answers. “He was telling me all this stuff like it was fact.”
I feel ripped apart. How could she possibly have thought me capable of that, even for a second?
“Did you ask her?” I ask, my voice amazingly level.
“Yes, I did. Wouldn’t you have if you were in my position?”
I nod. “Of course. I would be worried if you hadn’t asked her.” But that’s a lie. I am devastated. Susan has known me for thirteen years. I thought she knew me better than that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
September 2008
After dinner, I go into Janni’s bedroom and open her backpack. Her “take-home” folder is thicker than usual. First, there are two or three pages of activities related to the lesson of the day. Then there is a “daily homework” sheet. Each student is expected to do one assignment each from the “reading list,” “writing list,” and “spelling/vocabulary list.” To do everything will take two or three hours of nonstop work. And then there’s a small white notepaper clipped to a stack of assignments. It’s from her new first-grade teacher, Mrs. Parris. I read it.
Janni refused to do her work in class. I am sending it home for completion, along with her regular homework.
I flip through the papers behind the note from Mrs. Parris. It isn’t just the work Janni refused to do in class today. It looks like a whole week’s worth of assignments.
I sit down on the floor, feeling overwhelmed. It’s eight o’clock at night. Janni is out on the couch, finally getting sleepy from all the Seroquel and Depakote she’s had today. There is no way I can get her through even half of this stuff. I exhale, trying to stay calm.
“Come on, Janni. We need to do your homework.”
“I’m tired,” Janni yells from the living room.
I look at the unfinished work. One page is about identifying nouns and verbs. Janni has known this since before she was two. I remember driving around and quizzing her, and she would get it right every time.
I emerge from Janni’s room and go into our bedroom, where Susan is sacked out on the bed.
“It would be helpful if you had her do some homework right after school, when she is not wiped out from the meds.”
“When I pick her up, I have to take her out for stimulation. Have you forgotten Janni won’t just stay at home? How am I supposed to keep her occupied for five hours until you get home, while protecting Bodhi?”
“Make her do her homework.”
“With a baby in my arms?”
“Put Bodhi down and work with her.”
“You don’t know what I go through with both of them while you’re at work. You’ve forgotten.”
“I used to take both of them when you went to work.” Susan was just laid off from her job.
“That was only two days! And now I’m constantly on the go with them when Janni is out of school. I take them places where I can keep Janni entertained. I don’t come home until right before you do.”
I sigh, exasperated. “And then it’s on me. You need to be tougher on her.”
“I’m exhausted!”
“So am I. I’ve been teaching all day.”
Susan sits up, angry. “It’s not the same. You don’t have to worry about Janni running off. What am I supposed to do if that happens? Run after her with Bodhi in my arms? Or just leave him?”
“Calmly tell her that if she doesn’t come back, you’re leaving. If there were consequences, she would eventually get the message. But you don’t enforce the rules. You keep taking her places she wants to go because it’s easier for you.”
“Yes, I do.” Susan stares defiantly at me. “I am alone. I do what I have to do to get through the day until you get home.” She lies back down. “By the way, it’s not like I have the time while she’s in school to myself. Every day I take Bodhi and meet Janni at school.”
“You shouldn’t be going there.”
“I have to. The only way Janni will even go to school is if I promise to come meet her for lunch.”
This is true. Every morning when I drop Janni off at school, she asks me when Mommy is coming.
“She’s got to learn to function in society.”
“Mrs. Parris doesn’t like her, and Janni senses that.”
“No, you don’t like Mrs. Parris because she doesn’t teach Janni what you think she needs to be learning.”
“Yes! She’s a genius!”
“Nobody will give a damn unless she learns to follow the rules.” I turn away from Susan and go back out into the living room, where Janni is falling asleep on the couch. “Come on, Janni. I know you’re tired. Mommy should have had you start your homework earlier, but she didn’t.”
“I don’t want to,” Janni mumbles. “I’m too tired.”
“Let’s just do a little,” I reply. “I’ll help you.”
Janni walks into her room and plunks down at the special desk we got for her.
“I’m tired,” she complains again.
“I know. Let’s just do three. Which one do you want to do first?”
“This one.” She points to a homework sheet with a cat.
“Okay.” I read the directions. “Write a paragraph and then circle the nouns. That should be easy.” I hand her a pencil.
“What should I say?” she asks.
“Write something about a cat,” I reply.
I have a cat named 400. She is an orange tabby. She starts on the “y” in “tabby,” but drags the tail of the “y” far down the page, like she can’t stop. She reaches the bottom of the page.
“That’s not right,” she says, more to herself than to me.
“It’s okay,” I say, handing her an eraser. But Janni takes the eraser, throws it, and tears up the sheet of paper.
“Janni, you’d already finished it! Now we have to do it all over again!” I close my eyes, struggling to stay calm.
“I don’t want to.” Janni is staring straight ahead at the wall.
I exhale, pushing my hair back. “Janni, you need to do your work.” Janni turns to me and
hits me on the arm.
“Okay, Janni. Ten-minute time-out for hitting.” I start to walk out. Janni dives to the floor, for my ankles, to stop me from getting to the door, but I easily step out of the room and lock the door behind me.
I hear the sound of something heavy hitting the other side of her door. It must be her chair. That is the only large object left in her room that she can pick up and throw. Every time she gets a time-out, she picks up anything she can lift and throws it at the door.
“Now it’s fifteen minutes,” I call.
She throws the chair again. She’s going to break it.
“Twenty minutes,” I call out, feeling like a judge increasing the sentence on a prisoner who refuses to cooperate.
I wait, expecting the sound of more items being thrown against the door, but they don’t come. I put my ear to the door, trying to hear the scratching sound of pencil on drywall. Typically, once Janni runs out of things to throw, she starts writing on her walls. Things like the word “Lion,” the names of her imaginary friends, and phrases that make no sense at all, like “Von Dog.”
“Janni,” I call through the door. “If you’re writing on the walls, you know you’ll have to clean it off before coming out of your room.” I say this even though it is impossible to get the words off the wall, especially red marker, no matter how hard I scrub.
No answer.
“Janni?”
I unlock the door and open it to find that the room is a mess, with papers strewn everywhere. Her lamp is on the floor.
But no Janni.
“Janni?”
The walk-in closet light is on. I walk over to it and see Janni sitting on the floor, gritting her teeth as she pulls the sleeves of a shirt around her neck.
“What are you doing?” I demand, yanking the shirt away from her. “Don’t do that! You’ll stretch out your shirts and they won’t fit you anymore.”
“I want to break my neck,” she answers in a voice that is equally dreamy and forceful. She pulls another one of her shirts off a hanger and wraps it around her neck, pulling so hard I can see her hands shaking,
“Janni, stop that!” I grab the second shirt, trying to pull it away, but she clings to it like it’s a life preserver.
“Don’t do that,” I say. My words sound insane even to me. I am commanding her not to try to kill herself?
“I want to know how to break my neck!” Janni screams.
I should ask why in the world she would want to, but I don’t. Over the past nine months, our lives have gone to a place I never could have fathomed. I’ve become numb. Nothing shocks me anymore. It can’t. Even this.
“You can’t,” I simply tell her.
Janni wraps her hands around her neck and squeezes.
“Janni, stop that,” I yell, reaching for her hands, trying to get my fingers underneath so I can pull them free.
“What is she doing?” Susan calls, running into the room.
“She says she wants to break her neck,” I answer, turning away. I know I should be terrified, but I feel nothing except slight annoyance.
“Oh, my God! Janni!” Susan runs to Janni. “Why do you want to hurt yourself?”
“I want to break my neck.”
“You can’t, Janni,” I say over my shoulder. “It doesn’t matter how hard you squeeze. Eventually, you will just pass out and let go.” I can’t believe how cavalier I sound. Something is seriously wrong with me. Or maybe I’m just tired of always fighting her. But this is my daughter!
“How can I break my neck?” Janni repeats, struggling to keep her hands on her neck.
Susan looks at me. “Help me!”
“She’s fine,” I say. My voice doesn’t sound like my own.
“She’s choking herself!” Susan yells at me.
“If she can talk, she can still breathe.”
Susan finally manages to pull Janni’s hands free. Janni hits at her.
“Why?” Susan asks, tears in her eyes. “Why do you want to break your neck?”
“I don’t want to live,” Janni replies and goes back to trying to choke herself.
Susan again struggles to get Janni’s hands free, then turns to me, her eyes blazing with anger and fear. “She needs to go to the hospital!”
“What’s the point?” I reply. “They’ll just release her and she’ll still be the same.”
“Something is wrong!” Susan screams at me. “Can’t you see that?”
Yes, but six months ago, I had to stop feeling anything in order to function. Now it appears I can’t turn it back on.
“We need to call Dr. Howe! She needs more medication!”
I turn back to Janni and Susan. I have no idea what to do.
“It’s late. The office will be closed,” I say stupidly.
“She needs to go the the hospital.”
“Which one? Alhambra?” I shoot back. “She’s not going to the hospital. Kids do weird things. I picked my gums as a kid until they bled.”
“It’s not the same thing!” Susan cries. “She’s trying to kill herself.”
“Will you stop saying that?” I yell back.
“What do you want me to say?” Susan demands, holding Janni in her arms. From the other bedroom, I hear Bodhi start to cry.
“Just give her a bath and get her to bed. I’ll leave a message for Howe.”
I leave Janni’s room and retrieve the phone, dialing Howe’s number. The after-hours message comes on, telling me, “If this is a life-threatening emergency, hang up and dial 911. Otherwise, please leave a message and your call will be returned on the next business day.”
The message beeps at me. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. What do I say? Ah, yes, hi. This is Michael Schofield. My daughter is January Schofield. She wants to break her own neck. Can Doctor Howe please call me back at her earliest convenience?
I hang up the phone.
“Dial 911,” the message said.
We already tried that once and that didn’t help, either.
I don’t know what to do anymore.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
October 2008
I decide that Janni’s attempt to strangle herself isn’t serious, but just a way to avoid being put in time-out. All she needs to do is act like she is going to hurt herself and Susan will let her out, defeating the whole purpose of time-outs, which is to get Janni to think about why she got them in the first place. I am trying to connect consequence to action.
So I up the ante. When I come home from work, I usually have to make two dinners: one for me and Susan and another for Janni, because Janni won’t eat what we eat. She will eat only mac ’n’ cheese or cheese pizza.
That has to change.
Tonight, I make only one dinner for all of us, a rice dish, which I serve to Janni.
She looks down at it like it is a plate of worms. “I won’t eat this.”
“Well, that’s dinner, Janni.”
“I want mac ’n’ cheese.”
“You eat too much mac ’n’ cheese.”
“That’s all I’ll eat.”
“You’ll eat what I put in front of you,” I answer, the words sounding unnatural coming out of my mouth.
Janni turns to Susan. “Mommy, make me mac ’n’ cheese.”
Susan starts to get up.
“No,” I tell her forcefully. “No mac ’n’ cheese. She has to eat what we’re having.”
Susan ignores me, pulling a box of microwave mac ’n’ cheese from the freezer. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Yes, it is! She’s got to learn to knuckle under.”
“I was a picky eater when I was a kid. So were you. I remember your dad telling me that you wanted your food mashed up in a blender before you would eat it.”
“That was just another part of my mother’s craziness.”
Susan puts the box in the microwave. “Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just you.”
This makes me see red. “That’s not the point. The point is you are letting her d
ivide us. We need to be a united front. She needs to eat what we put in front of her. We’re the adults, not her. If she doesn’t eat, she doesn’t eat. Eventually, when she gets hungry enough, she’ll eat.”
“I won’t eat,” Janni chimes in.
“Then you get nothing,” I say to her.
“You’re acting like your mother. I’m not going to starve her,” Susan replies.
I turn away to avoid saying an expletive in anger. “Janni, sit at the table,” I command.
“I’m not eating the rice.”
“If you want the mac ’n’ cheese, you need to eat some of the rice.”
Janni picks up her spoon and shovels in a mouthful, then immediately leans over and spits it onto the floor.
“That’s it,” I say. “Time-out. Go to your room.”
“I’m hungry!”
“Go!”
Janni picks up the plate of rice and dumps it on the floor. I grab her arm. “Let’s go,” I say. Janni lets her body go limp. Damn, she is too smart for her own good. She knows that going limp makes it harder for me to get her into her room because I have to pull her entire body weight. I won’t pull on her arm for fear of dislocating it, so I pick up her legs and drag her across the carpet.
“You’re not Ghandi,” I tell her. I’ve taught her about Ghandi and nonviolent resistance. “This is not nonviolent resistance against oppression.” I’m talking to her like an adult again, but it’s only because of the “disconnect” between her mind and her body. If I don’t punish her for a tantrum, all people will see is her behavior.
I pull Janni into her room and let go. “Ten minutes. You need to think about why you are in a time-out.”
As I am walking past, she reaches up and hits me hard in the shin. “Twenty minutes now.” I walk out and lock her bedroom door.
Nothing crashes against the door. Not that there is much left in her room. The beautiful room I made for her before she came home from Alhambra has been largely destroyed.
I put my ear up against the door, straining to hear any sounds that might tell me she is trying to choke herself.
January First: A Child's Descent Into Madness and Her Father's Struggle to Save Her Page 15
