Chapter 22
I propped myself against the pillow
as I watched Jeannie work with Robertito. She had
completed almost four weeks with us, marking our entrance
into the seventh month of the program. Her responsiveness
to an onslaught of dialogue sessions and feed-back
discussions propelled her into an immediate and effective
use of her teaching talents.
She growled and scratched her hands
on the floor like a young lion, then lunged at Robertito,
tickling him while trying to wrestle with him as well.
He remained gentle, passive and rubbery in her hands.
Little-boy giggles filled the room as she rolled him
over and over like a limp sack of disconnected limbs.
Jeannie played peek-a-boo with him by asking him to
hide his face behind his hands. He separated his fingers
enough so that he could peek out at her.
"Whoaa," she groaned comically.
"You're cheating, Tito. C'mon, I see your eyes."
Jeannie pushed his fingers together tenderly. They
opened immediately. "Okey dokey. I'm gonna get
you." She assaulted him again with her playful
fingers, tickling his belly and thighs. He tried to
scramble out from beneath her when she tucked her
bare feet under his body and shook her sandy-blond
hair in his face. I remembered my first impression
of Jeannie. I could easily recall the warmth, the
caring and the wonderful enthusiasm, but something
had changed. She had grown prettier in the past weeks.
I noticed that phenomenon after some of our dialogue
sessions. After she discarded a problem or fear, her
face actually seemed to change, or evolve, as if she
felt freer to be and expose more and more of herself.
As we had discussed the night before,
everyone began to concentrate more on massaging his
hands, particularly the right one. Although we had
continued stimulating the right side, the time allotted
to that activity had gradually diminished. Our constant
vigilance allowed us to keep reassessing all our decisions.
I had tested his hands with the needle a week before.
His right one had almost as much feeling as his left.
As he put the left side of his brain to more and more
use, we noticed a dramatic increase in physical sensation.
We also noted that the more we stimulated his right
side, the more active he tended to be in terms of
talking and game-playing for the remainder of the
day. When we brought these elements into sharp focus,
a renewed effort with tactile sensory input appeared
appropriate. In itself, such an accent had little
meaning. But in conjunction with our total teaching
and therapeutic effort with Robertito, physical stimulation
had a significant supportive role.
Jeannie sat him at the table and
rubbed his soft, fleshy hands. "They're like
little paws," she mumbled, smiling at the child
who waited patiently while she worked on his limbs.
In conjunction with her physical contact, she tried
to create a dialogue of questions and answers.
"What is your name?" she
asked.
He watched her mouth studiously,
then said: "Robertito."
"Robertito what?"
"Ro-ber-ti-to-So-to." He
grunted each syllable separately. His eyebrows arched
into his fleshy forehead as he pushed out each breathy
sound.
"Wonderful. Fantastic, But how
do we say it? Not Ro-ber-ti-to-so-to, but Robertito
Soto."
"Robertito Soto," he repeated
perfectly.
She hugged him, then gave him a silly
high school cheer.
"Okey dokey. Ready? Okay, how
old are you?"
He looked at his fingers to find
the answer. "Mas, Jeannie," he said.
Flabbergasted by his use of two words
together, Jeannie gaped at him wide-eyed. I couldn't
believe it either. He had strung two words together.
An image of Raun flashed before me. I still remembered
the day, the hour, the instant when he first used
more than one word as he sat, smiling, on the bathroom
floor.
"More what, Robertito?"
she asked, recovering from the shock quickly. He did
not answer. "C'mon, we'll try again. How old
are you?"
"Six," he replied. When
she applauded him, he, too, clapped his hands. But
when she finished the accolade, he continued banging
one hand against the other. In recent weeks, he had
elevated this activity into an "ism."
She looked at me, obviously seeking
advice with her confused grimace. Realizing her own
responsibility to decide how to respond, she shrugged
her shoulders innocently, then smiled and waved at
me. Jeannie and Robertito clapped together for over
two minutes, then she resumed the massage.
"Que es esto? " she chimed,
touching between his lips.
"Boca," he answered correctly.
"And what is this?" she
asked, touching his eyes.
He pulled his hand away from her
and ran to the window. A plane passed overhead. He
followed it until it passed out of view, then, still
holding her question in mind, he mumbled, "Ojo,"
the Spanish word for eye. Jeannie lavished applause
and affection on him, ending her celebration of his
achievement with some food.
Later, she and Robertito lifted weights.
He pushed his hands up together, favoring his left
slightly. Two months ago, he could barely get the
dumbbell off the floor with his right hand.
"Okay, now let them down slowly
... slowly," she counseled. But instead of listening,
he let them drop to the floor. She repeated the exercise
countless times, yet, no matter how much she asked
him and demonstrated how to put the weights down,
he still let them drop. I felt he enjoyed the sound
of the loud thud against the floor as well as the
vibration beside his body. Seven months ago, such
a sound might have sent him scurrying from the room.
Jeannie introduced the blocks next.
Robertito started to build a tower. He moved his hands
mechanically, frequently looking away as he constructed
his little building. We made a special effort to vary
the games and interaction since Robertito often learned
things by rote, repeating exercises and accomplishments
as if programmed. We wanted him to flex the membranes
of his mind by using them creatively, rather than
performing sequences on automatic pilot. Jeannie built
the exact same tower as Robertito, allowing him to
be teacher. When he put four blocks together, she
put four together. He put a block on his head. So
did she. Jeannie loved her sessions with Robertito.
She used more of herself with him than when in school
or student teaching. Aware of the sameness of some
of his actions, she reasserted the initiative again
in the session. She placed two blocks parallel to
each other and a third block on top of them. The design
was infinitely more sophisticated than a vertical
tower of single blocks on top of each other. Robertito
eyed her, then clapped his hands rhythmically. She
put a second story on her original form. Robertito
threw his head from side to side, then stopped. He
looked directly at her structure and, without hearing
any request, proceeded to duplicate it on his own.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph,"
Jeannie exclaimed. In that instant, Robertito had
graduated on to the next level, illustrating his increased
ability to understand as well as a dramatic improvement
in his small motor dexterity. I found myself clapping
and cheering with her. His intensity of concentration
continued throughout the remainder of the session.
He reassembled three puzzles simultaneously after
Jeannie mixed all the pieces together. His ability
with the contrasting lotto cards also increased. His
receptive vocabulary had grown enormously, but now,
as he viewed some of the cards, I noticed him mouthing
words before Jeannie even said them, documenting the
expansion in expressive language as well.
The final activity of the session
had a very special meaning for all of us. Jeannie
lifted several big books from the shelf and put them
on the table . They contained portraits of animals,
household objects, vehicles, tools, people and a host
of other diverse elements. Each item had been expertly
cut out of magazines or reclaimed from other sources
and then glued on a page. The Spanish name was placed
below each form.
These handmade education books had
been fashioned by Roby Soto for his son. Each night,
alone in the silence and emptiness of his house, he
turned his energy to making these books. He had spent
weeks collecting pictures, photographs and magazine
illustrations, often securing discarded publications
from customers and other store owners. As I watched
Jeannie use these hand-crafted tools, I felt, the
soft, gentle man by my side. Roby remained as much
a part of the program as any of us.
I brought Robertito back to my house
at the end of the day, enabling Carol, Jeannie and
Chella to treat Francisca to dinner and a movie. Suzi
and I, with Bryn, Thea and Raun, played with our little
friend as we prepared him for bed. Raun made funny
faces which Robertito tried to imitate. Thea played
patty-cake with him. Bryn experimented with short
memory sequence games, saying three dissimilar words
in a row and having him repeat them. Initially, his
success at it astounded us, but soon he tired and
stopped participating.
Despite the fact that he was in unfamiliar
surroundings, a strange house, a strange bed and without
his mother, he seemed entirely relaxed. We took turns
camping outside our bedroom door and waited for him
to fall asleep. But for the next several hours, we
heard him clap his hands, hum and sing in English
a refrain from a Billy Joel song which we often danced
to called "I Like You Just the Way You Are."
He babbled a host of different words, disconnected
and disjointed ... but words. Perhaps, he verbalized
a fantasy in his head. Perhaps, he simply reviewed
the file system developing in his brain. In any case,
instead of whining or cooing or grunting unintelligible
sounds, Robertito now exercised his intellect by taking
his own excursions into the left side of his brain.
In the darkness of a room and in the privacy of a
bed, he chose to play with the language symbols he
had learned; symbols which gave him his only chance
of ever grasping and utilizing our world.
As I listened, I wondered whether
in some intrinsic, cosmic and, perhaps, unknowable
way, we had, in fact, done him a favor.
When Suzi and I went to sleep, our
little friend was still busy with his movements, words
and "isms." We kept him between us in the
bed. Within seconds, Suzi fell asleep, exhausted from
the rigors of our schedule. Unfortunately, his clapping
kept me awake. He lay on his back and, with his arms
extended, hit his hands together. Finally, in an attempt
to find a creative solution to my dilemma, I tucked
one of his arms under my body. Since he did not resist
and seemed perfectly content with my solution, I proceeded
to try to sleep. The repetitious motion emanating
from his body continually distracted me. When I opened
my eyes, I saw his single arm still extended, making
the same clapping motion but without a companion hand.
I couldn't help but consider an old Zen riddle which
asked ... what was the sound of one hand clapping?
*****
At the beginning of the following
week, Robertito became physically ill, a rarity since
his move to New York. Rather than simply rest, he
withdrew dramatically, retreating into himself and
escalating his "isms," a response typical
for a child whose internal systems draw much of his
attention. Our little friend became totally unreachable.
His only interest focused on food. Jeannie, after
working with him for three hours, left the room visibly
drained. She smiled at me as I passed her in the hall
and said: "I wish I had the charisma of tuna
fish and toast." Carol kept calling him her little
space cadet. Several times, I heard her say: "Hey,
handsome, you're on Mars, aren't you?" Suzi whistled
and laughed at him, nicknaming him "mush-face"
during this period. Despite his unavailability, Francisca
flowed with it, not once exhibiting anxiousness. Slowly,
the idea of trusting herself and her son became a
working premise. She understood the lack of equilibrium
in his body and accepted his response to it. She maintained
her conviction even as his withdrawal persisted into
the end of the week and through the following one
as well.
Unlike the summer, this major "pause"
did not evolve into the anger of hitting. After the
symptoms of a mild flu passed, Robertito vacillated
between lethargy and self-stimulating rituals. Often,
he laughed and giggled without any apparent reason.
His infectious smile bathed everyone in his strange,
timeless and surrealistic mood. He could sit quietly
for hours with a soft, blissed-out grin on his face.
Although most of us solicited him for more contact,
no one panicked or disapproved, even implicitly, of
Robertito's passivity. An accepting attitude prevailed.
On the thirteenth day since the beginning
of his happy inertia, Francisca dressed him and fed
him as usual, almost expecting the current state of
affairs to continue. Nevertheless, consistent with
her attempts to engage her son, she began to build
an irregular tower of blocks in front of him on the
table. He side-glanced at it, then raced around the
room, balancing on his toes. When he touched the wall,
he giggled.
"Come, my love. Build a tower
like Mommy." Surprisingly, the child turned,
walked to the table and sat down attentively. Francisca
furrowed her forehead. "Robertito …are
you ready?" No response. She could feel a wave
of excitement bubble within her. His eyes were different.
More alert. Less glazed. "Build a tower like
Mama." His first effort to lift the block reflected
the same lethargy evident all week. But then, he quickened
his pace, finally duplicating the exact tower his
mother had built.
He learned over, flapped his hands
for a moment and said: "Lo mismo [the same]."
Francisca could not believe her ears.
He had never used that word before and as he said
it now, he used it in the correct context. "Yes.
The same. Mama and Robertito made the same tower.
The same." She showered her child with affection,
then fed him some food. "Okay, Robertito Soto,"
she bellowed, priming herself for the first real teaching
session in two weeks. "I think you are wiser
than all of us. I think so." She set a small
blackboard in front of him and handed him a piece
of chalk. Guiding his wrist, she had him draw a circle,
a straight line and a cross. Within ten minutes, he
made the marks on his own.
"Look at my hand, papito. How
many fingers on my hand?" she asked.
"Using his index finger, he
touched each finger tip and counted. "Uno. Dos.
Tres. Cuatro. Cinco."
"Bueno, mi amor," she said,
beaming at his achievement She held up her other hand
and asked the same question" Again, he counted
each finger. Then she raised the first hand again,
but this time she pulled her hand away from him, thwarting
his attempt to touch and count.
"Look carefully. How many fingers?"
she asked.
Robertito made a clicking sound and
turned away.
"Ah, my child. You don't have
to answer. We will find something else to do."
She left the table, crossed the room and rummaged
through the piles of toys on the shelves.
Robertito, still sitting in his seat,
said: "Cinco."
Francisca whipped around and screamed,
"You understood. You did." She grabbed her
son out of the chair and hugged him. He continued
to perform a series of minor miracles for her. Her
attitude and quality of teaching motivated him to
try harder and harder for both her and himself. Francisca
was wonderful to watch.
When she took him to the toilet,
he pulled her close to him as he sat on the bowl.
Robertito played with her hair, then he flapped his
hands. She admired her son, learning each day from
his softness. Robertito flapped his hands even more,
but Francisca, so taken by the communion of this day,
forgot to imitate him. He finally took her hands and
physically motioned for her to join him. They did
that for a minute while looking in to each other's
eyes. He stopped, rested his head on her shoulder
and refused to leave that position for over an hour.
Francisca took a ride on a cloud with the child who
used to frighten and frustrate her.
Carol introduced him to the flannel
board and taught him to assemble faces and bodies
on it, which he did with a rather lopsided expertise.
She built an obstacle course in the room using old
cartons, pieces of lumber, the chairs, the table,
rubber tubes and a slant board. Once she demonstrated
how to move through it, her student followed. She
supported his every step. This day proved something
special for Carol. Despite Robertito's cooperation
and concentration, she loved him no more now than
during the past two weeks when he had been distinctly
unavailable. She knew she no longer needed him to
grow. Robertito worked for Carol. As I watched them
together, I suspected he knew and trusted her wanting.
For some, she might have seemed like a tough taskmaster,
but she remained flexible, loving and acutely responsive
to his every cue.
As she left her session, she stopped
at my squatted form by the door. Carol flashed a wild
grin, bent over and whispered: "Today's my anniversary.
One month without any seizures."
"How do you feel about that?"
I asked in a hushed voice, not wanting to interrupt
Chella, whose session with Robertito had just begun.
She inhaled like an athlete ready
to sprint, then hugged me aggressively. "I feel
like I just took my first step off the planet."
The implications of Carol's willingness
to take responsibility for her illness were awesome.
It took me almost a half an hour to focus my attention
back into the room after her dramatic exit. Chella
worked the lotto cards with Robertito, who not only
identified almost all the images she verbalized, but,
for the first time, used words like hot, cold, day
and night in response to seeing corresponding scenes.
Suddenly, Chella put the cards away and did something
which surprised me. She threw about twelve different
objects into a carton, placed it in front of Robertito
and closed her eyes. Ten seconds passed. Robertito
dipped into the box, grabbed a tennis ball and handed
it to her. As she cheered her student, she turned
and looked at me. We both smiled. She repeated the
exercise four times with the same results. On the
fifth try, Robertito picked something she had not
visualized. The spell seemed broken. Chella reverted
back to voice requests for a short period, then attempted
to use her thought patterns for communication again.
This time he completed five out of the next six simple
tasks correctly, an average better than his response
to verbal cues, yet by no means infallible. As she
tried to get him to insert pegs by using an image
held in her mind, he left the table and went to the
window. I knew Chella was relieved. In effect, Robertito's
responses confirmed what she had come to understand
in exploring her fears during our dialogue sessions.
She didn't control this little boy ... nobody did.
She had found another bridge to cross by opening a
new route through which they could touch each other.
Though others in the program tried
the same technique, only Chella seemed to have the
ability to relate to Robertito in this manner. When
she thought of a word, he usually never responded.
But when she made a picture in her mind, he always
reacted in some form, though not necessarily correctly.
Again, his dependence on the right side of the brain,
the picture-making side, and the probability of his
developing an alternative internal radar system during
those years of silence and isolation seemed confirmed
by his reactions to Chella's picture-thoughts. We
tried to maximize his skill by coordinating our words
with something he could also see.
For the last part of the session,
she brought him outside, capitalizing on our recent
decision to take short breaks from the ritual of teaching
and the sameness of the room. We believed his development
had surged ahead to such a point that such sensory
bombardment would not overload his circuits. As Chella
and her young student walked together on the sidewalk,
a man, dressed in a gray sweatsuit, jogged by them.
Robertito shouted the word "run" in Spanish,
turned and immediately ran behind the jogger. Chella
burst into laughter, calling to her little friend.
She chased them down the street. Finally, on his own
initiative, Robertito stopped. About four minutes
later, when the man passed again, Robertito said "run"
again. But rather than join in, he watched the man
intently, ultimately laughing at him as he passed.
Suzi and I sensed Robertito's readiness
to climb to even more sophisticated plateaus. During
her session, she taught him spatial concepts, such
as over and under, in front of and behind. Slowly,
very slowly, he began to grasp each idea as he placed
objects on top of the table and under it. Suzi clapped
and laughed. "What a smart mush-face," she
exclaimed. They danced, lifted weights together and
counted birds, flowers and toes. When Robertito disengaged
from participating, Suzi placed Angelina in his chair.
"Okay, Angelina, are you ready?"
Robertito walked directly to the
table, pushed the doll out of his seat and sat down.
"Ah, my sweet boy, you want
to play," she said to him in a low, supportive
voice. His moment of lucidity suggested all the untapped
intelligence lurking behind those huge, dark brown
eyes. In spite of the incredible, mind-boggling progress,
he still kept a foot planted in each world... his
own and ours. Unlike Raun, who discovered he loved
to talk, Robertito had yet to develop a passion which
would swing the pendulum to one side.
While I observed, he came over to
me often, though I tried to be unobtrusive. One time,
he stood in front of me and "ismed" in my
face, an action I quickly imitated. In another instance,
he stood beside me and leaned on my shoulder in an
old Charlie Chaplin pose. I rubbed his arm gently
and told him what a special person I thought he was.
He pulled on my beard and watched my jaw flex up and
down. Finally, he flopped into my lap and buried his
head in my chest. I rocked him like an infant, trying
to find the most loving part in myself to share with
him.
Before I left, I put my hand out
to him, which he took. "By-by, Robertito,"
I said.
"By-by, Bears," he grunted,
demonstrating his new proficiency in using two words.
Suzi giggled and furrowed her eyebrows. She repeated
his good-by in exact tone and quality. I kissed them
both and left.
"Okay, big boy," she said,
acknowledging his scratching of his genital area.
"Off to the bathroom we go." Since the summer,
the number of "accidents" in his pants had
decreased sharply, making him almost completely toilet
trained.
Suzi kissed his nose as he stood
in the doorway beside the tub. "Now you know
how to do it... at least you can help. Together, they
pulled his pants down. Since he had been so willful
today, Suzi decided on furthering his ability to take
care of himself and get what he wanted. She sat on
top of the toilet seat, crossed her arms and waited.
Robertito looked at her without moving. She would
wait until he pushed her aside as he had done with
Angelina. The little boy stared at her, then approached
her seated form. She smiled at him. Suzi prided herself
in helping Robertito break new ground. When he stood
directly in front of her and squinted his eyes, she
realized suddenly what he was about to do. Before
she could move, Robertito urinated right in her lap.
*****
As Jeannie pulled the car into the
parking space, she marveled at her own ingenuity.
She had thought of the idea all by herself. As we
began to explore other experiences for Robertito,
we now ventured out of the room several times a week
for periods of almost an hour. Jeannie wanted that
experience with him, so she suggested the local library.
She took Robertito's hand and led him through the
front entrance. He seemed slightly more agitated than
usual, yet he stood quietly, like a gentleman, as
they rode the elevator downstairs to the children's
section.
Jeannie guided Robertito into a large
room occupied by other children and their parents.
Taking the initiative, Robertito grabbed a book from
the shelf. Jeannie helped him set it on the table.
Since she spoke to him in Spanish, she attracted attention
immediately. She suspected the other mothers thought
she was Robertito's mother, an illusion she enjoyed.
Jeannie could not have loved her own son any more
than this little boy.
The noise in the room seemed to unnerve
Robertito slightly as his attention drifted from the
book. He finger-twirled and hand-flapped, but without
his usual intensity. Jeannie joined him until he worked
through the self-stimulating rituals. When she tried
to concentrate on the book again, she felt a heaviness
as if the air had become thick and burdensome. As
she looked up, a woman holding a baby in her lap turned
away. Several other people avoided her glance. Two
women, standing by the book shelves, whispered as
they stole glances at Robertito. Yet the children
in the room didn't seem to notice anything unusual.
Jeannie tried to ignore the obvious
sentiment developing in the room. As she flipped a
page in the book, Robertito bolted from the chair
and circled the tables. He said "blue,"
indicating the painted walls, and "green,"
indicating the painted floor. He approached a mother
with an infant near the corner. As he watched the
child and smiled softly, the woman pressed her baby
to her and turned her back to Robertito. Jeannie wanted
to confront her, but suppressed her impulse to protest,
not wanting to destroy her own calm and connection
with her special student. Perhaps, the noise, the
light and the people were too much for him. When she
tried to take his hand, he moved away. He ran to the
desk and "ismed" at the lady on the telephone.
She laughed, waved to him and proceeded with her call.
Now the other children began to note
the difference between them and this little boy. Taking
their cues from the parents, they avoided him when
he came near them. Jeannie tried to smile at the mothers,
but they turned away from her as well. She felt like
she was losing control of the situation. Again, she
tried to take Robertito's hand. She could see him
withdrawing, the exact impulse she felt herself while
in the room with these people. Instead of venting
her own feelings, she focused on her little friend.
"C'mon, Robertito," she said softly in Spanish.
Everyone watched them like they were freaks.
As Robertito jogged around the room,
he paused in front of a chubby little girl chewing
gum. Her enormous cheeks flopped in and out like a
giant expanding and contracting bubble. She smiled
at him. He flapped at her as if saying hello. She
giggled. Then wonderful, open, silly and loving Robertito
Soto hugged the other child spontaneously and kissed
her. The mother, who had been one of he women whispering
by the bookcases, grabbed her daughter's arm. Frightened
by her mother's response, she began to cry. Jeannie
wanted to scream as she lifted Robertito off his feet
and carried him up a flight of stairs and out the
front entrance of the building.
"You're a beautiful boy, she
told him as she knelt in front of his small form in
the parking lot. She wanted to dispel whatever he
might have absorbed in the library. "You did
right. You loved that little girl better than anyone
else in the room." Robertito threw his head from
side to side, inattentive to her words. Jeannie realized
that somewhere, somehow, he had felt the assault of
their disdain and disapproving glances. She led him
back to her car as the tears began to flow. Her initial
anger at those people had dissipated, but she wondered
how she could ever explain to this child what made
absolutely no sense to her.
Robertito recuperated from the experience
within the hour and continued his surge forward. The
discomfort lingered with Jeannie for the remainder
of the week. She asked me for an additional Option
session to deal with her unresolved feelings. Eventually,
she freed herself from her anger when she realized
that by holding those people in contempt, she did
to them exactly what they had done to Robertito.
Chapter
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