A Shining Affliction

by Annie G. Rogers

  “And that train almost ran over me for coming back late!” I exclaim.

  Ben smiles again, then turns away. He sorts through the toys on the floor and retrieves a large blue plastic key. He turns to me.

  “I’m gonna hide this good. You will look for it, OK? Close your eyes,” he instructs me.

  I close my eyes and hear him rustling around.

  “OK. You can peek. You can look!” he says.

  I get up and slowly explore the room, commenting, “No, it’s not here. Not here.” Ben giggles at my efforts, obviously enjoying my search. Slyly, he opens a desk drawer. I look in and see the blue key.

  “Silly me. Silly old me. It was right there!” I say. Again Ben giggles.

  “Now I will hide it again. Now I will hide it so you’ll never find her!” he shouts. “Close your eyes.”

  I close my eyes and hear him scurrying about the room. “Her?” I ask myself. Oh yes, me.

  “Open your eyes,” Ben says.

  This time as I look for the key, looking under the rug, under the desk, opening drawers, I make up a script: “I am Ben looking for Annie. Where is she? She’s not here. No, not here either.”

  Ben joins the game and laughs. “You’ll never find her, never, never, never,” he taunts.

  Then I get angry. “Where is she? She’s supposed to be right here!” I shout, slamming things about. I glance at Ben. He is grinning ear to ear.

  “Here she is,” he says, drawing the blue key out of his pants pocket.

  “Oh, there she is. You had her all along!” I tell him.

  Ben looks at the key and he looks at me, key to me and back again. I sit down and he comes up to me, just looking. He turns back to the toy shelves and picks up the baby bottle.

  “I know. Let’s play baby,” he says.

  “You have only ten minutes left to play baby,” I warn him.

  He walks over to me and looks at my watch.

  “Can I wear that?” he asks.

  I put the watch on his wrist and show him where the “long piece” will be when our time is up. He nods and goes to the sink to fill the baby bottle. Carefully he fills it to the brim, then asks for my assistance in putting the nipple back on. He finds a clear space on the rug among the toys and pushes a red bataka under his head for a pillow.

  “Cover me up,” he asks in a very small voice.

  I take the soft blue blanket from the shelf, kneel beside him and tuck it all around him.

  “There, the baby will be safe and warm now,” I assure him.

  He reaches out and snatches up Tea Bags from the floor, pulling the big yellow puppet under his covers, sharing his “pillow” with it.

  “Now the baby has company,” I comment.

  Ben sucks on the bottle and looks at me steadily. Silence and sucking sounds. He pulls the nipple from his mouth and “feeds” Tea Bags, making loud sucking noises for the puppet.

  “Is the baby-puppet hungry?” I ask. He nods.

  “Is the real baby hungry, too?” I add. Again, the nod.

  I get up and find an animal cracker in a box in my desk drawer. I sit next to Ben and offer him the cracker. First he reaches out for it, then pulls his hand back and opens his mouth. I put the animal cracker into his mouth and he chews it, spilling crumbs about.

  Then he sits up suddenly.

  “I know. Make me into Superman!” he demands, his voice loud and excited.

  “Ben, look at the long piece on my watch. Our time is up today,” I say.

  “No, it isn’t,” he counters. With that he pulls the winding knob out and sets the watch back to one o’clock, the beginning time for our session. “Now we have lots of time,” he says, grinning.

  I laugh at him. “No, you are trying to fool me!” I tell him.

  “But it could be this time,” he offers. I give him my serious look.

  He sighs and hands me the watch.

  “Pick up all the toys? What a mess!” he says, with some exasperation. He begins to pick up the toys, and there are quite a few of them to be put away.

  “No, time is really up. I’ll get the toys, Ben.”

  “Just make a big S for my shirt?” he asks, not giving in yet. I open the door and walk out. Halfway down the hall, Ben joins me. He takes my hand. “Superman next time, OK?” he asks.

  After our three-week separation, Ben comes back into therapy with his trust in me slightly jarred. He tries to return to the familiar activity of making a costume, but shows me his clumsiness and anger, first with the train car, then with the ringtoss game. When I choose to break the rules of the ringtoss game in the same arbitrary way that he does, Ben reveals his anger. When I tell him it is unfair that I was away longer than he, Ben does not respond verbally. He shows me his anger with the train. When I interpret this, “That train almost ran over me for coming back late!” Ben smiles and confirms my interpretation.

  Even after I acknowledge his worry that I wouldn’t come back, and his anger, the issue is not settled for Ben. The game with the blue key reverses our roles. Now it is I who will look for something without reward. Ben is delighted with this turn. The second time he hides the key, he reveals his own experience: he slips and calls the key “her,” and then he makes “her” impossible to find. Then he shows me his anger more directly, “Now I will hide it so you’ll never find her!” When I play Ben looking for Annie and am openly angry that I can’t find her, Ben is delighted again. He has the joy of watching me search and get angry, but he also keeps the blue key, symbolic of me. I assure him that he has “had” me all along, and he confirms this interpretation by looking from the key to me.

  With the issue of losing and refinding me partly in his grasp, Ben uses the remainder of the session to play baby and simply look at me. It is noteworthy that he adds the puppet, almost in a sibling position, in his baby play. Ben is not so hungry that he can’t share, and this large yellow puppet becomes a real character in the therapy after this session. Ben’s attempt to extend the time at the end of the session is also a first. He does not seem overwhelmed with leaving me, for his refusal to leave is too full of teasing. But he is concerned about leaving, and his anticipation of his leaving in the sessions which follow this one shows his continuing concern with time and his attempts to cope with it.

  I might have easily extended the session into my writing time, and perhaps this is what Ben needed today. But he also seems to be searching for continuity and security—and part of that continuity with me is the reality that we have a regular time to meet and to stop.

  This session sets a pattern for the rest of January. For Ben, it is a time of losing and finding; for me, it is a time of taking an active role in interpreting these losses, the searches and the discoveries he makes in his play with me. During this period Ben also anticipates the endings of our sessions with uncanny accuracy.

  I walked out of a new life in Cambridge back into what seemed to be, even in the present, even in relationship with the little boy I love, a life of the past. I had the sense of living in the midst of a time already vanishing. This sense made simple things very poignant—the light on my blue coffee cup, the bricks of the Glenwood buildings staccatoed with snow, and the children themselves, their faces, Ben’s face.

  23

  My twenty-eighth birthday is a child’s dream. My friends met without me and planned it and I didn’t know it was coming: a surprise party with streamers, hats, a cake with sugar-pink roses, noisemakers and balloons.

  Patricia brings me to Sarah’s on a Sunday afternoon. I am told that we are going for a walk in the park. A gray day, nothing to do but errands and take a break for a walk. But the lights suddenly go on and voices shout, “Happy birthday!” We move the furniture out of Sarah’s living room and front sunroom into the back bedroom, and dance until after midnight. My closest friends stay to clean up, and that is the best part of the party. We brew coffee and pick up soggy cups and empty wine bottles and half-finished pieces of cake. We pop balloons and wash and dry the silverware an
d dishes, keeping a constant stream of banter over the four rooms of Sarah’s apartment. We talk to the dog underfoot and speak intimacies in twos and threes and settle finally into the pillows of the couch with fresh coffee.

  When I carry my presents out to the car, it is early morning and a few snowflakes swirl down out of the sky. As I drive away with my sister Mary, I see Sarah framed in the light of her doorway and it is like looking at a painting that emanates a mixture of wishes and truths about someone I loved—from a time I can already vividly remember. I wonder if this is a hazard of being a writer: a sense of detachment that sometimes makes the present seem like it is already past.

  24

  On a warm day in early February, Ben peers around the door to the playroom wearing his red jacket. “Let’s go on a treasure hunt outside today. Can we?”

  “You are wearing your outdoor coat, so you must think I will say yes!” I tell him.

  “Yes, yes, yes, yes, you will say yes!” he chirps, hopping up and down with every yes.

  “Yes, because it is important to you, and it is warm enough too,” I assure him.

  Ben takes his coat off and drops it on the floor. “It’s like spring. I don’t need my coat!” he declares.

  I put my coat on and suggest he bring his. Ben picks up the coat and puts the hood on backwards, covering his face, so the coat hangs down in front of his body. Then he bends over and lets it fall to the floor.

  “Can we take Tea Bags too?” he asks. I nod and he puts his coat on in the conventional way, and snatches the puppet from the toy shelves. He walks over to me and holds the puppet close to his body.

  “Put Tea Bags on your hand?” he asks.

  “You want me to carry Tea Bags?”

  “Yep!” Ben bends to tie his shoe and stands up. “He’s magic!” Ben reminds me.

  As we walk down the hall, Ben asks for a bag to collect things. This stumps me for a moment, and then I go into the staff conference room and find one. When I emerge with a large brown paper grocery bag, he gives a little squeal of delight over its size.

  Outside, the sun is shining on the cars in the parking lot and a little warm breeze passes over us. Ben unzips his coat and begins to pick up small stones, which he carefully places in the grocery bag. I squat down beside him and put the puppet on my hand.

  “How about some treasure for me, too?” I have Tea Bags inquire. Ben looks at the puppet.

  “Some for me. Some for you. I’ll bring you some shoes, too, for your feet. I got some old boots at home,” he answers.

  He stands up and looks at me. At eye level, his dark eyes are piercing. “Tea Bags came down to my room today. He said, ‘Take me out,’ and I did!”

  “And here we are,” I comment.

  Ben looks around him, then motions for me to follow him. “I am taking us to a secret hideout,” he whispers.

  He leads me over a small hill, around some mud, to a small incline by a large tree just at the edge of the field. He drops his brown bag there and turns to Tea Bags and me.

  “There’s a monster in that tree. I’ll get it,” he says. He admonishes me: “No, you and Tea Bags stay back. This is a dangerous hunt!”

  He picks up a large wooden stake lying on the ground and swings it at the tree. Then he bends down and pulls something toward us, as if hauling something heavy. “That was a big bear!” he exclaims.

  Taking a stick, he cuts the bear up into three portions, makes a fire of sticks and weeds, and cooks the bear. After we have all eaten a portion, Ben gets up and motions me to follow. Suddenly he stops in his tracks and points to the side of the building.

  “Oh look, there’s a little baby bear.” Ben runs up to it and bends over it, petting the bear.

  “It’s got a note on it!” he shouts to me.

  I come and take the note from him.

  “What does it say?” he asks.

  “It says, ‘I’m lost. Please take care of me,’ ” I read aloud.

  Ben takes this little bear by the hand and starts back to our camp. On the way, he kneels down by a drainpipe and peers into it.

  “I think I see another little bear down there,” he tells me.

  “Can you call him out?” I ask.

  “Here bear, c’mon bear. I won’t hurt you,” Ben chants.

  And sure enough, the bear emerges, another baby bear with another note on it, which I read exactly as before.

  When we are assembled back at our “camp,” Ben goes out again with the large stake to hunt, motioning me to wait with Tea Bags and the bears.

  “I am going to hunt down the mama bear,” he announces.

  Again he hits the tree and drags something over the grass to me. He looks down at the bear and swings the stake over his head.

  “She’s still alive!” he says, and he hits her again and again. With the last swipe, a tired, halfhearted swipe, Ben swings at the bear and accidentally (?) grazes my arm. He turns white and drops the stake.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, subdued.

  It was a soft hit and didn’t hurt me, but the mangled bear lies at his feet.

  “You did not hurt me,” I tell him. “I am all right, Ben.”

  The child looks dazed. He simply stands and stares at me, unseeing, unblinking.

  I kneel down beside him. “Look at the bear,” I tell him, and he does. “This is the mama bear who left her babies lost in the woods,” I explain.

  He looks at me with an expression of twisted pain, his features grimaced.

  “I killed her?” he asks.

  “No, Ben, she left you for reasons all her own.”

  “I killed her?” he asks again, as if he has not heard me.

  I move in front of him. “You hunted her down to hurt her because she left her babies,” I say, taking it directly back to his play.

  He nods.

  “You did not hurt me, just the bad mama bear,” I finish.

  Again he nods.

  “The good mama is still alive, you know?” I ask him. He nods.

  “Time to go back?” he asks.

  “Yes, it is even a little past that time,” I inform him.

  “C’mon, bears. I’m taking you home,” he calls out.

  “Which ones? What if we left them here?” I ask, truly curious.

  “All of them. The mama bear and her baby bears,” he says, answering my first question.

  “What if we left them here at the hideout?”

  “Oh, no. Annie, they have to come home with me.”

  So Ben collects his paper bag, his bears, and the big yellow puppet. He slides the large stake down the drainpipe, far out of reach, and leads me back to his classroom.

  The child I usually see right after Ben is sick today, so I will have a longer time than usual to write about my experience with him. I am anxious to write with the details fresh in my mind and return to the playroom with a fresh cup of coffee.

  Ben comes to this session in his red jacket, wanting to be outside. He uses the out-of-doors as a stage for his play. The last time we held a session outdoors he reenacted his abandonment in a powerful piece of play. He was the lost and wounded baby bear waiting to be found, fixed, loved. This was early in October. Now it is early February, and he is ready to approach the old abandonment problem from a new angle; he is ready to “attack” it more actively, to grapple with his anger, his fear of his anger, and with something new to Ben: his tenderness.

  What are the foundations of this readiness, I wonder. I sit with my empty cup and speculate. Ben has by now established a relationship where he finds anger, bossiness, fear, hunger and joy acceptable. He has established his effectiveness and mine in what he calls “magical” activities. He has experienced a brief loss of me and my return to him. He has taken in enough tenderness from me to extend it to the puppet, who now fully assumes the role of sibling or playmate. Tea Bags is what Winnicott calls a “transitional object.” Rachael and I love to consider Tea Bags in this light. I think now of what I will tell her later.

  Tea Bag
s is “magic” and has a relationship with Ben, but Tea Bags also has a relationship with me—I animate the puppet, but Ben treats the puppet as I have treated him. Tea Bags might also be an extension of Ben’s body; Ben wants to bring him boots after all, though Tea Bags has no feet. In short, Ben has found a way to put himself into Tea Bags’s “skin,” to guess what the puppet might want as an extension of what he wants. In this way, he is able to guess what a little lost bear needs and to make a tender response.

  In my mind’s eye I imagine that I am with Rachael. Already, I imagine, she is hearing me tell her about this session.

  But before showing tenderness, Ben creates a scene of hunting and killing, then eating a bear. Here he risks and masters danger, and provides us with food. In a traditionally masculine role, he moves out into the world in his play and conquers something. Then he finds the baby bear, an extension of the baby bear he so recently was, and as I read the “note” he offers me, Ben understands the bear’s needs. Anger and need, cruelty and tenderness, become the dialectic of his attempt to master, in his play, the losses of his earliest babyhood. After the first display of tenderness Ben goes out again to hunt, more explicitly, the mama bear, and to beat and kill her. In his final whomp of the mother bear, he makes a slip and grazes my arm with the stake. Such “accidents” (I think Rachael will agree) are significant. Ben looks pale, frightened, and dazed. He does not hear me, as if he were not fully in the present, but so absorbed in his play that he believes in his capacity to kill me as he has just killed the bear. This is too much for Ben.

  I can feel Rachael listening to me with that intent look, and so I go on:

  Just as I would step in to keep Ben from banging his head, I step in here to stop his overwhelming fear. Might a child feel hate when someone hurts him unbearably, and, in his hate, wish a death? When that child then experiences losses, as Ben experienced two losses in early childhood (his biological mother and his first foster family, I remind Rachael), he may begin to believe that rage kills relationships. My imagined Rachael is with me on this.