Somebody Else’s Kids. Torey Hayden

coffee cans and set the orange juice cans inside them. Carefully I layered salt and ice.

      “Here, Tor, I’ll bring over the ice-cream stuff,” Lori called.

      “No, Lori, please wait. I think that’s too heavy for you. Wait. I’ll bring the cans over to the table.”

      “No sir, it ain’t too heavy. I’m strong. See?”

      “Lori, wait, would you?”

      She would not. Hefting the wide mixing bowl in both arms, she struggled around the table. I could not make it from the sink in time. I saw the entire disaster coming but I could not prevent it. Halfway around the table Lori dropped the bowl. It did not survive this time. The bowl nicked the table corner as it fell and glass and cream went everywhere, pouring down the front of Lori’s clothes, across the tabletop, out in a huge white puddle on the floor.

      Lori froze. Indeed, I did also. Even Boo was momentarily motionless.

      “I didn’t mean to,” she whispered. Impending tears made her voice tiny and high-pitched.

      That thawed me. I came over. It was hard not to say I had told her to leave it alone, so I took a deep breath. “Look, I know you didn’t. Those things happen.”

      “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

      “Yeah, I know. Lor. It would have been better if it hadn’t happened, but it did so the best thing is to clean it up.”

      “I didn’t mean to.”

      “Lori, I know you didn’t. Don’t cry about it. It isn’t that important. Come on.”

      Still she did not move or even look at me. Tears rolled over her cheeks but she did not brush them away. Her eyes were fixed on the broken bowl. Boo walked around to stand near me. The crash had knocked the silliness out of him. Kneeling, I began to collect the glass shards.

      “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to,” Lor said again.

      I stared at her. “Lor?”

      “I didn’t mean to.”

      “Are you all right. Lor? Lor, look at me.”

      “I didn’t mean to.”

      Concern pushed my heartbeat up. I rose, broken glass still in my hand, and looked at her carefully. “I know you didn’t mean to, Lori. I heard you. And I’m not angry. It’s okay. Now come on, snap out of it.”

      “I’m sorry,” she said again. Her voice was still the tight, high voice of a frightened child. She did not look at me yet. In fact she had not moved at all since the bowl broke.

      “Lor? Lori? What’s the matter?” She was scaring me. It was becoming apparent that something more had happened to her than simply dropping the bowl. A seizure? That was my instant thought, although many of my children had had seizures before and none had ever looked like this. With one hand I touched her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

      She refused to move from the oozing puddle at her feet. Over and over again she whispered how sorry she was, how she had not meant to do it. This unusual behavior frightened me so much that I was totally without confidence as to how to handle it. Finally I went to the sink for a bucket and sponges and began to clean up the mess myself. Lori never moved an inch. She remained paralyzed by some force of which I had no perception.

      Boo seemed as scared as I was. Warily he moved around the periphery of the action. Gone was the earlier delirium but also gone was his usual rigid inwardness. He watched us with concern.

      Desperate to relieve the mounting tension, I began to sing the only song Boo knew. Willingly he joined me.

      “Was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name-o,” I sang in shaky a cappella.

      “B-I-N-G-O!” Boo shouted, his eyes riveted on Lori. “B-I-N-G-O!”

      Twelve choruses of “Bingo.” The tension was still palpable.

      With a wet rag I knelt before Lori and sponged the ice-cream mix off her dress and knee socks. From where I was on the floor in front of her I could hear her raspy, fear-strained breathing. Having never been wiped away, tears had dried along her cheeks. Now she was watching me, yet her eyes were vacant. It was like looking into the eyes of a ghost.

      I sat back on my heels. We were very close, she and I. In that position I was lower than she and she had to look down on me. For a long, wordless period we gazed at each other. Gently I brought my hands up to touch her cheeks, to encompass her face. “What’s wrong, Lor? Can’t you talk to me?”

      “I didn’t mean to. I knowed you tole me not to.” She spoke as one in a dream.

      “What happened? Tell me what happened.”

      “I know you tole me not to. I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t on purpose. I’m sorry.”

      “Lori?”

      “You gonna wup me?”

      She was not talking to me. I do not know who else she thought was there. This abrupt aberrancy in her behavior scared me so much that my hands shook as I held her face. I could feel the soft, warm skin of her cheeks beneath my fingers and the tightness of her jaw. We were so close her breathing was hot on my face. Yet she continued to stare through me to whomever else it was she saw.

      “Don’t wup me, okay? Please? Please, don’t.”

      Boo joined us. He came very near, his hands fluttering, making soft slapping sounds against his bare thighs. Every few moments he would reach out to touch Lori, to touch me, but never quite make contact before jerking his hand back.

      “Lor, it’s just me. Just Torey. We’re here in school.”

      What the hell was going on? When she still did not respond, I rose and lifted her into my arms. On the far side of the room was a small, not quite adult-size rocking chair. I sat down in it with her in my lap. At first she was stiff and I had to physically move her limbs into a reasonable position. Then unexpectedly she relaxed, melting into the form of my arms. I rocked.

      Whatever had happened to her I did not know. Nor, as it turned out, would I ever know. A seizure of some bizarre kind? A psychotic episode? A stress reaction? I had no idea. Lori never gave me a clue. But it was one of the most frightening episodes of my career.

      Not knowing, I simply rocked and held her close against me. Back and forth. Back and forth. She was large for the chair and for me, her long legs coming nearly to the floor. Boo watched us. Then he came over. On his heels, he rocked too, swaying back and forth to our rhythm. Yet he watched me intently. No tuning out this time; Boo was fully alert. Next, he did something he had never done since joining me. Boo touched me voluntarily. He put his hand on my cheek, explored my lips and my chin, all the time observing me with the rapt scrutiny a scientist gives his new discovery. Then he climbed into the rocker with us.

      There we sat, the three of us, one on top of the other in that small rocker. Lori was pressed against my breast. Boo sat mostly on the arm of the rocker, his bare legs across Lori’s. He reached over and took my free arm and pulled it around himself. Gently he leaned forward, his head resting atop Lori’s, under my chin. With one hand he clutched his penis, with the other he tenderly stroked Lori’s cheek. “B-I-N-G-O,” he began to sing in a soft, clear angel voice, “B-I-N-G-O, and Bingo was his name-o.”

      I was struck by the poignant absurdity of the moment, of what someone would have thought who might have ventured in on us, crammed together as we were in that chair. Bare Boo, lost Lori and me. Unexpectedly, it made me think of Joe. I pitied him for what he would never understand.

       Chapter Six

      I needed the parents. I always needed the parents. To fill in all of the missing pieces. To let me know what happened the other eighteen hours of the day. To reassure me that someone else was just as perplexed about this little person as I was.