The Perfect Child(25)
Janie strained against us. She growled and grunted, alternating between screams. It was hard to believe we weren’t hurting her, but Rhonda had assured us it was a safe hold. We stayed in our position for an hour before she was finally still. Not asleep but still. The fight had left her body. I scooped her up and carried her to her room. I placed her on the bed, and she lay there motionless, staring at her ceiling.
“Do you think she’s all right?” Hannah asked. “Should we take her back to the hospital?”
I eyed the clock. It was four thirty. “I don’t know.”
Hannah rested her hand on Janie’s forehead. “It’s okay, Janie. You’re safe.”
Janie didn’t move or respond. It was as if she hadn’t heard her. We crawled onto the bed with her, resting against the wall. I took one of her small hands in mine and held Hannah’s hand with the other. We sat that way until the sun came up.
FOURTEEN
HANNAH BAUER
Allison waved to me from a spot in the corner, and I made my way through the crowded coffee shop over to her. She jumped up and hugged me before sitting back down and sliding my latte across the table. “Okay, you have one hour to tell me everything. Go.”
Janie had been with us for five days, and I hadn’t talked to Allison since her first night. We’d texted, but even that was minimal. I didn’t even know where to begin. I took a sip of my coffee.
“I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve rested since we brought her home.” We’d assumed that if we mimicked the hospital structure, Janie would respond to it in the same way that she’d done there, but it hadn’t been the case. She screamed and cried for hours. Most of our days were spent trying to console her. Her doctors and therapy team had warned us about her episodes, but it was different once you were in them yourself. “She has fits every day, and they can go on for hours—I’m not even exaggerating when I say hours—and there’s nothing you can do to calm her down. I’m continually amazed at how much rage can come out of such a little girl. She’s got that frothing-at-the-mouth kind of rage, and you just have to sit with her during it and restrain her if she starts banging her head. I hate holding her down, but we have to do it to keep her safe.”
“What gets her so upset?”
I shrugged. “We never really know what triggers her. Certain things are a given, like taking away her food or being told no, but most of the time we have no idea.”
Allison’s face filled with sadness. “That sounds terrible.”
“It’s pretty awful for her right now. She gets overstimulated really easily, and she’s hyperaware, so she jumps and plugs her ears every time a car goes by. Tuesday was one of her worst days since it was trash day. Most of the day was spent trying to coax her out from underneath the bed. Oh, and she’s decided she doesn’t want to wear clothes anymore. She scratches and claws at them like they’re burning her skin. We spent the first two days getting her dressed over and over again because she kept ripping them off.” I laughed. “Now we just let her run around in her diaper.”
“Her diaper?”
“I thought I told you she wasn’t potty trained?” I could’ve sworn I had. They had put her in diapers in the hospital, and she’d been content running around in them ever since. She wasn’t bothered by her soiled diapers even when they were packed with feces. If it weren’t for the smell, we wouldn’t have noticed because she never complained about it or told us she’d gone. Urinating was the same way; she’d sit in her mess all day.
Allison shook her head.
“Yeah. She has no idea how to use the toilet. At least she’s good about changing her diapers, though. She lies right down on the floor and raises her legs for one of us to change her. There’re so many things she doesn’t know how to do. Like she doesn’t know how to hold silverware. Isn’t it weird that holding silverware is a learned skill?”
Allison laughed.
“What?”
“It’s not all that weird when you have kids.” Her eyes widened in horror. She reached across the table and grabbed both my hands. “I’m so sorry, Hannah. I’m such an idiot. It just came out of my mouth. I wasn’t even—”
I interrupted her. “Stop. It’s okay. Really, it is.” I gave her a convincing smile. “You know how you used to say motherhood was a world of conflicting emotions?” She nodded. “I get it now. I mean, I said I did before, but now I do in a way that I don’t think you can understand unless you have kids yourself. Like last night after the dinner battle finally ended, we were all exhausted and frustrated, but as soon as we got Janie in the bath and started splashing around with her toys, it was all forgotten.”
Allison took a bite of her muffin, chewing quickly before talking. “You’re going to have such a hard time when she leaves.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” I smiled, tossing a napkin at her.
“You are, and you know it.” She shook her head.
“Of course I’m attached—I’m not going to deny that—but it’s actually been good for me. It really has in a lot of ways.”
She tilted her head at me, skeptical still. “How so?”
“Before Janie, I was thinking about giving up on my dream of being a mother. I didn’t tell you that, but I was. As much as I wanted to be a mother, I didn’t think I could stand to get my hopes up another time and end up disappointed, but Janie’s made me realize that I don’t want to give up on it. I can’t ever give up because no amount of disappointment is worth giving up on what it feels like to be a mom. She gave me a taste of it, and I know I’ll never be satisfied until I get to enjoy the experience.”