Girl Alone: Joss came home from school to discover her father’s suicide. Angry and hurting, she’s out of control.

by Cathy Glass

  Linda, Joss and Kevin didn’t return to live at their house, even though after a year Linda was considered well enough to parent her children on her own. I could understand why they didn’t return. What had once been a happy family home had been scarred by the tragic and horrendous events that had taken place there; first with the father’s suicide, and then Eric’s abuse. Every room would have been haunted by ghostly reminders of what happened there. So once the social services felt Linda was able to look after her children, she sold the house and bought a bungalow on the same street as her parents. A fresh start, a new beginning, but wonderfully close to the loving grandparents who had done so much for their daughter and grandchildren, and without whom I’m sure the family would not have survived and been reunited.

  Tragedy can strike any family, and Joss’s family had more than their fair share of sorrow, but thanks to Andrew and Joan’s unfailing support, they were able to come through it and look forward to a brighter future. I know from the many emails I receive that grandparents of children taken into care often have a very hard time trying to persuade the social services that they can look after the children when their parents cannot. The social services can be dismissive of grandparents, or get bogged down when assessing them with issues such as their age, the size of their home and other practicalities, which are factors, but not as important as what good grandparents have to offer: unconditional love, a wealth of experience, stability, endless patience and a life-long commitment to the family. At present, grandparents don’t even have the automatic right to see their grandchildren if they are taken into care. This needs to change.

  For the latest updates on Joss and the children in my other fostering memoirs, please visit www.cathyglass.co.uk.

  Suggested topics for reading-group discussion

  Cathy blames herself for not spotting the signs that Joss was being abused by her stepfather earlier. Were there indicators, and if so should she have reasonably seen them?

  Joss is very angry, as many abused children are. Why do you think this is?

  How culpable is Linda? Should she have spotted the signs that Eric was abusing her children?

  Why do you think Joss took comfort in the company of Zach, Dave and Chelsea?

  Cathy is critical of the contract of behaviour. What do you think would be a reasonable contract of behaviour for Joss?

  Cathy is concerned about how Joss’s challenging behaviour might affect her other children. Is she right to be so? What is the likely impact on them, and what could Cathy do to minimize it?

  Was Cathy right to go to Dave’s flat and bring Joss home when she wanted to stay the night? What were Cathy’s reasons for doing so?

  Grandparents are often overlooked as full-time carers if the children can’t live with their own parents. What are the positives and negatives of grandparents bringing up their grandchildren?

  Did you feel that justice had been served to the perpetrators of Joss’s abuse at the end of the book? Do you think our current justice system adequately supports victims of abuse?

  Do you think Joss’s family will be able to successfully rebuild their lives after everything they have been through? What could they do to move forward after experiencing so much trauma and distrust?

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  Chapter One

  Zoo-boy. The legs of the table were his cage. With arms up protectively over his head, he rocked. Back and forth, back and forth. An aide tried to prod him into moving out from under the table but she had no luck. Back and forth, back and forth the boy rocked.

  I watched from behind the one-way mirror. ‘How old is he?’ I asked the woman on my right.

  ‘Fifteen.’

  Hardly a boy anymore. I leaned close to the glass to see him. ‘How long has he been here?’ I asked.

  ‘Four years.’

  ‘Without ever speaking?’

  ‘Without ever speaking.’She looked over at me in the eerie gloom of the room behind the mirror. ‘Without ever making a noise at all.’

  I continued to watch a little longer. Then I picked up my box of materials and went out into the room on the other side of the mirror. The aide backed off and, when I entered, she willingly left. I could hear the click of a door in the outer corridor and I knew she had gone behind the mirror to watch too. Only Zoo-boy and I were left in the room.

  Carefully, I set down my box of materials. I waited a moment to see if he would react to a new person in the room, but he didn’t. So I came closer. I sat down on the floor an arm’s length away from where he had barricaded himself under the table. Still he rocked, his arms and legs curled up around him. I could get no idea of his stature.

  ‘Kevin?’

  No response.

  Not sure what to do, I looked around. I was acutely aware of the audience beyond the mirror. They were talking in there, their voices indistinct, no more than an undulating murmur, like wind through cattails on a summer’s afternoon. But I knew the sound for what it was.

  The boy didn’t look fifteen. Even wrapped up in a ball like that where I couldn’t get much of a look at him, he didn’t appear that old. Nine, maybe. Or eleven. Not nearly sixteen.

  ‘Kevin,’ I said again, ‘my name is Torey. Do you remember Miss Wendolowski telling you someone was coming out to work with you? That’s me. I’m Torey and I work with people who have a hard time talking.’

  Still he rocked. I wasn’t given even the slightest acknowledgment. All around us hung a heavy, cloying silence embroidered with the rhythmic sound of his body hitting against the linoleum.

  I started to talk to him, keeping my voice soft and welcoming, the way one talks to timid puppies. I talked of why I had come, of what I was going to be doing with him, of other children whom I had worked with and had success. I told him about myself. What I said wasn’t important, only the tone was.

  No response. He only rocked.

  The minutes slipped away. I was running dry of things to say. Such a one-sided conversation was not easy to maintain, but what made it more difficult was not Zoo-boy so much as the ghostly presence of those beyond the mirror. It was too easy to feel stupid talking to oneself when half a dozen people one couldn’t see were watching. Finally, I pulled over my box of materials and sorted out a paperback book, a mystery story about a teenager and his girl friend. I’ll read to you, I told Zoo-boy, until we feel a little more relaxed with one another.

  ‘Chapter One: The Long Road.’

  I read.

  And read.

  The minutes kept moving around the face of the clock. Occasionally there was the muffled noise of a door opening and closing beyond our little room. They were leaving, one by one. Nothing in here was worth wasting an afternoon to see. I was not a spectacular reader. The story wasn’t riveting. And Zoo-boy only rocked.

  I kept on reading. And counting the openings and closings. How many people had been in the room behind the mirror? I couldn’t recall exactly. Six? Or was it seven? And how many had gone out already? Five?

  I read on.

  Click-click. Another gone.

  Click-click. That was seven.

  I continued to read. My voice became the only sound in the room. I looked over. Zoo-boy had stopped rocking. Slowly he brought his arms down to see me better. He smiled. He was nobody’s fool. He had been counting too.

  He gestured at me, a small movement within the confines of the table and chairs.

  ‘What?’ I asked, because I couldn’t understand what he was trying to communicate.

  He gestured again, more widely this time. Only it wasn’t just a simple motion. Rather, it was a sentence, a paragraph almost, of gestures.

  I still couldn’t understand. I moved a chair aside to see him better but I had to ask him to repeat it.

  There was something he wanted me to know. The motions were poetic in their gyrating, wreathing urgency. A hand bal
let. But they were no sign language I understood, not Ameslan, not the hand alphabet. I couldn’t comprehend at all.

  From under the table came a deep sigh. He grimaced at me. Then patiently he repeated his gestures again, more slowly this time, more emphatically, like someone speaking to a rather stupid child. He became frustrated when he could not make me understand.

  Finally, he gave up. We sat in silence, staring at one another. The book was still in my hands, so in desperation to fill the time, I asked him if he’d like me to read a little more. Zooboy nodded.

  I settled back against the wall. ‘Chapter Five: Out of the Cave.’

  Zoo-boy pushed the other chair slightly out from the table and reached to touch the cloth of my jeans. I looked up.

  He had his mouth open, one hand pulling the lower jaw down. He pointed down his throat. Then dismally, he shook his head.

  Chapter Two

  For a little over a year I had been working at the clinic as a research psychologist. Most of my professional life had been spent as a teacher. While in education I had held a variety of positions, running the full gamut from teaching a regular first-grade class to teaching graduate-level university students, from working in an open-plan progressive school to working in a locked classroom on the children’s unit of a state mental institution. I loved teaching. I always had; I still did. But then, as years passed, the general philosophies, particularly in special education, began to shift and I grew to feel like a stranger in my own world.

  At that point I decided to work on a doctorate in special education. I’m not sure why. I never particularly wanted the degree itself, it would overqualify me and I could never return to the classroom with it. And no other aspect of education appealed to me. I certainly would never make an administrator. But I went ahead and started the doctorate anyway. In the final analysis I suppose it was simply something to do while I tried to decide what direction my life should take next.

  In my deep heart of hearts I was hoping that the philosophical pendulum would swing again in education and I could return to the classroom without compromising my own beliefs. However, as I dragged out my studies over four years, the change did not come, and I was faced with the brutal decision either of actually getting the degree and slamming shut the classroom door forever or of leaving the whole thing messily unfinished and trying something new. In the end, I chose the latter route because I just couldn’t confront the thought of never being able to return to teaching in the future. So I moved away from Minneapolis and the university with nothing to show for my four years there.

  Throughout my career I had been working on research into a little-known psychological phenomenon known as elective mutism. This is an emotional disturbance occurring primarily in children. The child is physically capable of speaking but for psychological reasons refuses to do so. Most of these youngsters actually do speak somewhere, usually at home with their families, but they are voluntarily mute everywhere else. Over the years I had accrued a large body of data on this problem and developed treatment methods. Thus, when I saw an advertisement for a child psychologist, a research position with some clinical work, it seemed a reasonable solution to the difficulties I was having with my own field.

  As the months passed, I found I was happy enough in my work at the clinic, but it was different from teaching. The children were parceled out to me, mostly by virtue of their language or lack of it, since that was my specialty. But they were never my children. In the few hours a week that I saw them, each individually, there was no opportunity for that small, self-contained civilization to develop when the door to the outer world was closed.

  The clinic, however, did provide a lot of advantages. It was pleasant to be in the company of adults again for the major part of my working day. It wasn’t so much because I preferred their company but rather for the side benefits. I could wear decent clothes and put on makeup and not worry if some kid was going to spit up on my dry-clean-only blazer or escape the room because I wasn’t wearing my sure-grip track shoes. I could wear my long hair loose without worrying about someone pulling it out of my head. And perhaps best of all, I could wear skirts again. I didn’t need the freedom of movement and washability jeans provided, more to the point, my legs were not covered with bruises from being kicked constantly.

  Association with my new colleagues at the clinic was reason enough to take the job. All of them were well educated, experienced, intelligent and expressive. There was always someone to kick an idea around with. In addition, there were other good points. I had magnificent facilities at my disposal, including a large, airy, sunlit therapy room, brand-new toys and equipment, a video recorder that worked, a computer down the hall and a statistician to go with it who spoke genuine English. Moreover, I had recognition for my work. I had a good salary. And I had more free time than I had ever had before. So, all in all, I was happy enough.

  Then came Zoo-boy.

  I hadn’t especially wanted the case. Right from the beginning the hopelessness shone through. One morning a social worker named Dana Wendolowski from the Garson Gayer Home had phoned the clinic in search of me. We have a boy for you, she told me, and the weary despair was a little too clear in her voice.

  His name was Kevin Richter, although no one seemed to call him Kevin. He had earned his nickname because he spent all his waking hours under tables, chairs lined up in front of him and around the perimeter of the table until he was secure behind a protective barrier of wooden legs. There he sat, rocked sometimes, ate, did his schoolwork, watched TV. There he lived in his little self-built cage. Zoo-boy.

  But Kevin’s problem went deeper than just an affinity for tables. He did not talk. He made no noise, even when he wept. The files claimed he had talked once upon a time, a long time ago. According to the sketchily drawn past in the Garson Gayer records, Kevin had never spoken at school when he’d attended. He was retained once and then twice because he did not talk to the teachers and no one knew whether or not he was learning. He had talked at home, at least that’s what the report said. And then he’d stopped. First he stopped talking to his stepfather, then a little later to his mother. Supposedly, he continued to speak to his younger sisters but by the time he was committed to the first residential treatment program, at nine, someone noticed Kevin was not speaking at all. No one could say exactly when he stopped talking. One day someone asked, and no one could remember the last time they had heard Kevin. And no one had heard him since.

  Far more apparent than his lack of speech were Kevin’s fears. He lived in morbid, gut-wrenching fear of almost everything, his life was consumed by it. He feared highways and door hinges and spirals on notebooks and dogs and darkness and pliers and odd bits of string that might fall on the floor. He was too terrified of water to bathe; too superstitious of being without clothes to change them. And for the last three years Kevin had refused to set foot outside the door of the Garson Gayer residence. He had actually stayed inside all that time. Kevin’s fears had trapped him in a far more secure prison than he could ever have built with tables and chairs.

  As the social worker told me these things I braced my forehead on one fist, the receiver of the phone in the crook of my neck. With my other hand I filled the margin of the desk blotter with doodles. The woman’s voice had a hurried desperation to it, as if she knew I would cut her short before she had said everything she needed to say.

  Garson Gayer was a new facility, a model progressive institution. They had a full staff, including a resident psychologist, speech therapists, nurses and teachers. Why did they want me? I asked.

  She had read about my work. She’d heard I worked with children who did not speak. I wondered aloud, Why, when there was so much wrong with this boy, had they decided to tackle his lack of speech? Well, you have to start somewhere, she replied, and her laugh was hollow. The phone grew quiet for a moment. Truth is, she said, it’s not quite like that. Kevin would be sixteen in mid-September and here it was, already late August. Garson Gayer only took children up t
hrough their fifteenth birthdays, so the rules had already been bent for him to allow him to stay this long. The state had custody of Kevin. And so far nothing they’d done for him at Garson Gayer had produced any improvement. If they couldn’t come up with something soon, well … She did not say it. She didn’t have to. We both knew the places boys like Kevin went, who had no family, no money, no hope.

  He sounded like a lost cause right from the beginning. He had a lousy past. Very little useful data was recorded in the Garson Gayer file but there was enough to make Kevin’s childhood sound like so many others I had known. School failures, financial difficulties, physical abuse of Kevin and other children in the family, marital troubles, friction between Kevin and his stepfather, alcohol abuse, and perhaps most sinister of all, the fact that Kevin had been voluntarily given into state custody by his mother. What must a kid be like when even his own mother did not want him? Moreover, Kevin had spent seven years already in institutions, more than eight totally mute, and almost sixteen learning to feel comfortable being crazy. If that wasn’t the portrait of a loser, I didn’t know what would be.

  I didn’t want this case. As it was, I already had too many children to become involved with one who would obviously be a black hole – a maw to dump time and energy and effort into with no return. And as I sat and listened and drew geometric designs on the blotter, I had an even more shameful thought. This was a private clinic; we usually didn’t get the welfare kids. All I had to do to get rid of this case was mention money in a very serious way. While Garson Gayer would obviously foot the bill for my initial work with Kevin Richter, if I didn’t want the case, well, that would be the easiest way …