chapter sixteen
BULRUSHES CANNOT FLOURISH WHERE THERE IS NO WATER
TIME STRETCHES. AND snaps back, flinging her into confusion. One minute is like a day, a day a week, a week a month, a month stretches to infinity. It is very much like being a child again when a day was a year of adventure.
It’s spring, June, just a few days short of her two-year Akaesman anniversary, and the Shadow Court is sending her to a three-day vocational assessment as part of her revived lawsuit. They will send copies of the report to both Mr. Mintken and TARC. The location, a two-story brick building in the middle of nowhere, with only sad coffee shops and car repair places with cracked concrete aprons in sight. The bus drops her off at a stop across the street from where the building sits, nowhere near a traffic light or crosswalk. She looks left, then right, then left. She sees no cars zooming toward her and hurries across the wide road and to the ramp that ascends to the front door. She presses the automatic door opener button and waits patiently for the door to swing open. Truthfully, she doesn’t want to be here. She knows her vocation, she knows her goal in life, she’d rather be finding ways to regain that. But she must obey, else be labelled recalcitrant, unco-operative.
Plants sit on the reception desk, phones ring here and there, people walk hither and yon behind the reception desk. She feels a headache coming on, and she has three hours of assessments ahead. Not good.
She’s escorted up to the second floor into a large glaringly white room with overhead fluorescent lights and accordion walls, open for the moment. Long tables face each other, and plastic chairs are scattered around. Her escort leaves her there.
A young nondescript woman, carrying a folder of papers, walks up to her: “Hi, I’m Julie. I’ll be taking you through the vocational assessment. Why don’t you sit down here?” She grabs a chair, pushes it toward the table, and points her to it. She sits down and looks up at Julie as she continues to speak, “I’m going to do a series of tests over the next two days, and on the third I’ll give you your results, and we can start looking for a vocation for you.” Julie walks around the table and sits down across from her, laying her folder on the table; at the same time, she opens her other hand to reveal a gaudy-yellow and black plastic stopwatch that she places on the table. She opens the folder and extracts the first test, which consists of some papers stapled together, and reaches across the table to place the test in front of her. “The first tests we’ll do are math and language tests. We want to assess your literacy and numeracy skills. They’ll be timed. When I say go, you may start. Do as much as you can in the allotted time. There is no right or wrong; however long it takes you, that’s okay. And don’t worry, we don’t expect you to be able to do all the questions. Just do as much as you can. Okay?”
She nods and takes the pencil Julie hands her and pulls the stapled papers closer to her. She glances down at the top sheet. They’re vocabulary questions. She looks back up and watches as Julie pulls out a booklet from the folder and writes on it, picks up the stopwatch, clicks it on, and says, “Go.”
She puts her left hand on the paper and holds the pencil in her right. Vocabulary is easy. Being a reader all her life, she has an extensive one. She begins. Memories of getting sour looks about her vocabulary, hearing over and over how she was stuck up for knowing all those words, get in the way of doing the test. Well, they could’ve read books too and learnt those words. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to learn words. She hears Julie breathing and remembers she has a test to do. She circles the right word for each definition — she knows she’s circling the right words because they’re dead easy. Did they think she’s illiterate? What level are they testing for? Do they know they should be testing her for the kind of artistic, mentally-challenging work she does? Or is this all about high school dropouts. Nothing wrong with dropouts, but why is she being tested at a level that has nothing to do with her? Aren’t they supposed to be assessing her for what she does? Who she was? She finds she’s losing her place along a line from definition through the four choices given. She uses her left index finger to keep her eyes on the line. A niggle that maybe they have low expectations for her tickles her mind. She thrusts it aside. Of course all these therapists and experts are supposed to be helping her regain her old abilities, her old talents. If Akaesman is only in her temporarily, why would they be treating her like she never graduated high school, like she never went to university, like she’ll never write songs again? Do they expect she’s forever damaged and no good for her old career? No. This can’t be true.
“Time.” Julie takes the test from her and repeats the procedure with a spelling test. Julie says the word out loud, and she has to spell it out loud. No chance for her thoughts to stray as Julie’s voice keeps intruding, ensuring she stays on track. But she wonders how long these tests are. She did them before, for that Quickley asshole, and his tester gave her far less time, she’s sure. But then what does she know about time. When she thinks an hour has elapsed, it’s either fifteen minutes or two hours. When she thinks it’s noon, it’s 1:15 p.m.
“You’re doing great. We’ll move on to math skills.”
She nods. Fatigue is seeping from her chest into her muscles; cotton wool is growing round her head. But this deadening is normal for her. If she let fatigue stop her, she’d be permanently planted in front of the television, like Jim was when he came back from that camping trip. He’d become an instant Survivor fan and —
Julie interrupts her thoughts: “Here’s a calculator to help you.”
A calculator? Isn’t this test about her numeracy skills. She didn’t get a calculator last time she had to do this test. She used to be good with numbers. Like notes on music paper, they sang to her. But now … well what a relief she gets to cheat with a calculator.
Julie says, “Go.” She picks up the pencil and begins. The first question is easy, add two small numbers. But each question is harder and harder. She strains to remember her long-gone algebra.
“Time.”
F —. She didn’t finish again. Well, at least she completed more questions this time than last.
“How’d you find it?”
“Hard. I, I used to know all this stuff down cold.”
“It’s what happens to everyone. We lose our math skills as we age and don’t use them. This tests up to grade ten level, but no one is able to do all the questions.” She gathers up the papers, taps them into line, and puts them into the folder. “Okay, we’re done for the day. I’ll see you tomorrow for the next set of assessments.” Julie escorts her down the stairs and out.
It’s cool for a June afternoon. She waits at the bus stop and watches as a stream of working women come toward her, kerchiefs on their head, clutching giant clear bags filled with fabric of some sort or another, all gaggling like schoolgirls. They fill the bus, and it pulls away from the curb with a strained roar as it heads to the Spadina subway line.
She sways with the bus, her emotions sloshing up like small ocean waves growing into larger ones as the earth underneath heaves. She’s angry. She’s angry at doing the same tests over and over, angry that no one is examining what she needs, what she’s looking for, angry that she tests fine yet in the real world she performs so poorly and with so much effort, no matter how simple the task. She hates her fatigue. No one — no one! — thinks how its relentless presence affects her week after week, year after year, for two years. She wants it gone, and all they talk about is living with it. The fury drives her all the way home and to the cupboard for a 100 g bar of 70 percent chocolate.
The next day, a Tuesday, she’s back in the same glaring white room at noon. This time, an older man is sitting there. She stares at him while she waits for Julie to organize the test papers. He seems to have a shoulder injury of some sort; he moves his right shoulder carefully, slowly.
Julie’s voice recalls her, “Today, we’ll be looking at your interests. These ones aren’t timed.” Julie explains the one-to-five ranking system and leaves her while she reads each question labor
iously and ponders whether her answer is a one, two, three, four, or five in interest. Some are easy. She’s so not interested in sawing wood; others are more difficult as she struggles to figure out what she likes now versus what she used to like doing. It’s so hard to let go of the old self, she wants so much to be her old self again, to have that old life again. And she has no clue who she is today. She waits after reading each question for the answer to coalesce in her brain and sweat out through the cotton wool firmly wrapping her mind. When in doubt, she answers as she used to be. She turns the last page over with relief and closes the booklet. She flips it back up so that the cover is facing her and then goes to find Julie.
“I’m finished.”
Julie nods and takes her back to the table, picking up a block and a box of tools and pegs on the way. Julie demonstrates to her how to put the pegs in the holes on the board and in what order. This is like a kid’s game. No problem, she thinks, until she takes the first peg to put it in its hole with her right hand. The peg doesn’t go in. She almost has to slide it along and push it in. She’s right-handed. Why is she so clumsy? Her left hand is no better. Strength drains from her hand up her arm through her shoulder and out, leaving the whole limb limp. Heat fills her chest; the elephant stomps on it and then settles in. Her teeth grind together; her jaw clenches before releasing abruptly as it too loses energy to do anything but sag open, her mouth sucking in air. Her forehead, like yesterday, starts to ache and then to freeze. She hangs onto the knowledge that once the tests are over, the headache will go. After the peg board test is over, Julie asks her to use tools to manipulate objects on another board. Finally, that too is over. She shakes her hands loose.
“Okay, we’re done for the day. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Julie says.
She sits back with relief before gathering up her purse and leaving.
Wednesday is the last day. Last day. She repeats that phrase over and over on the long bus ride up. This time Julie leads her to a table in a corner of the room and then isolates them by pulling the accordion walls closed. Julie explains the paper test to her — she has to look one at a time at diagrams of a box or shape that are drawn as they would look if open and then choose which one of four other shapes would be the boxes closed — and that she’ll be timing her. But she leaves her alone once she begins the test, opening and closing the accordion wall behind her. She has no sense of how many minutes are ticking by. As usual, each shape becomes progressively more complex; it becomes harder to perceive which of the choices given is that shape closed. She fears that with the standards so low here that if she’s too quick, she’ll be told she’s fine. But if she’s too slow, she can’t do her job. She finishes before the time is up. Julie bangs back the accordion wall and tells her she can rest for a minute while she tallies up the rest of the test results. She lays her head down.
Suddenly, Julie has rejoined her in this private area. They go over the results together. She’s above average in verbal aptitude but not at the top. The same with math. Yet her visual-spatial skills are at the very top. Go figure. Julie starts telling her what all this means. She begins with the news that there will be no more songwriting. That’s all she hears. It drowns everything else Julie is saying.
She interrupts Julie, “What do you mean, no more songwriting?”
Julie pauses, “Well, it means you have to slow down, step back from your songwriting. Maybe in five to ten years, you’ll be able to return to it, but you can’t do it now. You need to look for something you can do, something you can do now. Now is all that matters. I know others will be telling you what they think you should do but ignore them. Their expectations are wrong for you as you are today; they’ll only frustrate and anger you and hold you back from improving. It’s baby steps right now, and that’s okay. Baby steps are good because they’re still going forward.” Julie looks at her, as if to imprint her thoughts on her. She looks back, simply absorbing, not processing. Julie looks down at her folder and continues, “So let’s look at your short-term goals. They can be part-time jobs in areas you can do now while you relearn the skills you need to return to your old career. That’ll be your long-term goal. I’m not saying you can’t write songs again. Just not now.
“Maybe in five years, you can try again. Play your keyboard when you can, practice your writing as you’ve been doing. But also pursue successes in a structured routine that a workplace can give you. That will help you retrain. It will help you find those self-discovery skills once again.”
She sits there hearing Julie, becoming numb. And then suddenly tears well into her eyes. She can’t stop them. They want to turn into sobs. She struggles to control herself so that she can speak: “I can’t, I can’t. I can’t not write s-s-songs anymore? How is that? You said my verbal aptitude is above average,” she ends, her voice rising.
“Yes, but your reading and writing skills need to be at the top for writing kinds of jobs, including writing songs. Recovery is going to be really slow and hard. You must have patience. I’ve set up the computer so that you can search for suitable part-time jobs in your areas of aptitude. When you’re ready, come out, and I’ll show you the program.” Julie leaves, shutting the accordion wall behind her.
She can hear voices and footsteps, the clinking of tools, on the other side of the wall. She sits staring at the close walls of her isolated space. Her head slowly sinks down to the table as her arms rise up to cradle it. This is so awful. How can someone be so matter-of-fact about the end of her dream, her career? Who she is? She feels another cycle of crying about to emerge. She pushes her chair back abruptly, fights her way through one of the accordion walls, and almost runs to the bathroom. She turns on the tap to run cold water, leans over the utilitarian sink, and soaks her face until the tears subside. She pats her face dry with rough, brown paper towel and returns reluctantly to the unhappy room. She finds Julie in an alcove at the back. Julie shows her that program she had spoken about on an old DOS computer, its fat grey monitor and green text on black screen blinking her options at her. Struggling against her great need to nap and never wake up, she searches for suitable jobs. When the computer suggests fire captain, a job she’s eminently not qualified for, never having even been in a boat in all her life, the absurdity of it jerks her awake. She looks around for Julie, sees her with that old man, who is looking distinctly unhappy as she guides him through that manual dexterity test. She feels sorry for him. His shoulder is going to hurt like hell at the end of that. She walks over, tells Julie she’s done, and as she thumbs her iPod Mini to Feist’s Let It Die, cranking it up, she walks out into the freedom of the open air.
That Friday, she vents her agony to Sunny for being sent there and for being told that she can’t write songs anymore, can’t play music, that she’ll have to find another line of work, like fire captain. Who the hell thinks she can be a fire captain? And why is that a viable part-time job — and who can captain a fireboat in Toronto harbour part-time anyway — when writing is not? She steams on, righteous fury at the absurdity and injustice of it all energizing her.
“Why not prove them wrong?” Sunny interrupts her, softly, sympathetically.
“What?”
“Prove them wrong. You need to write songs, you’ve told me that many times. So relearn. You’ve explained how it feeds your soul, and anything that feeds your soul is good to overcome Akaesman. All that’s in the way of you doing that, writing songs, is Akaesman. He’s blocking you from accessing your vocabulary, your verbal skills, your music skills. Work on pushing past him and reclaiming them.”
“How do I do that?”
“There must be a writing course, one for songwriting, or a music course that teaches composition, maybe on the Internet. You’re good at finding help, and you know your way around the Internet. A course will help you relearn. It’ll fire up those neurons, get them to grow round the blocks he’s put in. It may take you awhile to find that course, but you’ll find it. I have faith in you.”
“Takes me forever to find
anything,” she mutters.
“No matter how long it takes, you will get there. Baby steps.”
God, she hates that phrase. Baby steps. Well, she hasn’t been a baby in decades. She doesn’t want to be a baby now. She hates baby steps!
“How about it? Prove them wrong?”
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She Page 16
