punchdrunkmom

In which I see Mr. X in court

Have you ever been to court? Because I haven’t, at least not until Monday.

There were more than a few shady-looking people. Apparently, Monday is a busy time in court because of all the drunks and prostitutes that get busted over the weekend.

"This is the parking lot of broken dreams," I said to Scott, as we walked past a couple smoking what looked like a joint but smelled like burning rubber.

We had to go through security, and there were a lot of rules about where you could loiter and where you could use your cell phone, and there must be some sort of problem with people putting their feet on the walls because:

:::

My friend Erin was there with us. She’s an attorney, and also has a daughter in Kai’s class. And also has a passion for special ed law. And also e-mailed me and volunteered her time to come to court with us, and also talked to the State’s Attorney, and also advised him on the statute for battery of a child.

The State’s Attorney didn’t seem too impressed with our case, which Erin argued could be tried as aggravated battery, a felony, rather than simple battery, which is a misdemeanor.

“Aggravated is usually your gunfights, your stab wounds,” he said.

In Illinois, for battery of a child, the nature of the injury is irrelevant, but he still wasn’t impressed with my 8x10 glossies of Kai’s injuries.

“We’ll see what the defense has to say,” the guy said.

We weren’t sure if Mr. X would even show up to court. The address on the police report was different than the one he gave the school, and the warrant was served by mail.

But he showed up. He was shorter than I remember, and a few pounds heavier. I don’t know if he recognized me, but I definitely remember him.

Erin thought we should sit right behind him in court, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t have that kind of mettle. I’d used most of mine up just getting him here.

:::

And so we stood before a judge, and Mr. X decided that he wanted the case to go to trial. He said that he was just doing his job.

This is his best defense, to say that he had no choice but to handle Kai physically to get him off the playground equipment. Even though that's total bullshit.

So now we have a trial date.

It was all very clean and clinical, a flash of Blackberries to add a trial date to various calendars. I never spoke a word to Mr. X. I didn’t even have to look at him.

The State’s Attorney took my glossies and my witness lists and my doctor’s report and wrote down a bunch of notes.

On the way home, Pearl, the social worker from DCFS happened to call.

“Mrs. Judy,” she said, “I just wanted to let you know that we concluded our investigation.”

I asked her what they found.

“We found that he was indicated.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it's either ‘unfound’ or ‘indicated,’ meaning that excessive force was indicated. It was indicated.”

I didn't need her three month investigation to figure that out, but I thanked her anyway. I told her that we had been to court that day, and that we had a trial date set.

“I think the State’s Attorney might be interested in your investigation,” I said.

And he was.

:::

I thanked Erin outside the courtroom.

“I’m just sorry that you had to go through this,” she said. “When something like this happens, it hurts all kids, not just Kai.”

I broke down a little then, because as much as Mr. X tore through our lives these last few months, some amazing things have happened, too.

Like parents I’ve never met before introducing themselves to me and offering support. Like AJ on the playground. Like a lawyer with two children of her own volunteering her time and sitting with me in court, warm and confident and reassuring and squarely on my side, on Kai’s side, on the side of justice.

:::

The trial is January 16^th unless he makes a deal with the State’s Attorney. I think he will. Scott thinks he won't. I guess we'll see.

I got home from court earlier than I had planned on, and decided that Mr. X had taken up too much of my energy already for one day.

And I decided that we had better things to do.

And we did.

 

Cojones

The night that Mr. X hurt Kai, I got a call from Child Services. The social worker was in the neighborhood, and could she stop by to see us?

And so I did what every single one of you would do, which was spend the next 45 seconds frantically cleaning, because OMG, you guys, DCFS was going to be at my house! I tried to remember if I had milk in the fridge, and then there was a knock at the door and the social worker was here and I probably shouldn't have had that glass of wine, and then remembered that I wasn’t the one in trouble.

The social worker, Pearl (not her real name), sat primly, with her knees together and her purse in her lap as she asked me questions. I tried not to stare at her fantastical wig.

I couldn’t believe that they were there so fast, and I assumed that they took this sort of thing very seriously.

Pearl seemed most interested in the fact that Mr. X had children. She advised me to take Kai to a physician, and to have that person contact her right away. She told me that she would go to school and interview the witnesses. She advised me to wait for her report before deciding to press charges.

So I took Kai to the doctor. I e-mailed her the pictures of Kai’s injuries.

And I waited.

A week went by, and when I hadn’t heard from Pearl, I called her.

“Did you get the pictures I sent you?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “When did you send them?”

“A week ago,” I said.

Pearl asked me to hold on a second, that she would check, that she hadn’t opened her e-mail for a couple of days.

“Oh, here they are,” she said.

“Have you been to the school?” I asked.

“No,” she replied. “I’ve got to do that. Maybe this week.”

“Have you talked to Mr. X?” I asked.

“No. I’ve got to do that, too.”

I hung up with Pearl, and my initial optimism began to erode.

I know that Child Services is swamped with cases that make mine look like the legal equivalent of an expired parking meter. I know this because I have a friend who works for DCFS, and the kids she sees are actual crack-addicted teen prostitutes. With children. Fathered by their pimps. She’s the one who takes your kids away, and, as she will tell you, when that happens you really, really, really deserve it.

And so, yeah, a guy handled my son too roughly, but Kai otherwise has every advantage (except, you know, the autism) and is essentially going to be okay. I get that, I really do. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t want justice for Kai. Or that I wanted Mr. X waltzing in to another school and getting a job with another kid.

I called back the next week, and the week after that.

No, she said, she hadn’t talked to Mr. X. Okay, bye-bye, now.

So I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I still wore a bra, though.

:::

I called the area police headquarters and asked what to do, and was transferred to a guy named Detective McClane (totally his real name!).

Yes! Now we're talking!

He told me that I needed to go to the courthouse on Harrison and see a warrant officer to have a summons issued for Mr. X to appear in court.

And so, during the teacher strike, I did exactly that, hauling Kai down to the courthouse. They were very nice to me, and even had free childcare. So I plopped Kai into a room with a bunch of kids who were coloring while their parents sought justice, and went off in search of the warrant officer.

We left five minutes later, as we were in domestic court, and ours was not a domestic issue. The bailiff gave me directions to another court building, and advised me to get Mr. X’s address.

I called Detective McClane, since I already had his phone number, and asked him for Mr X’s address from the police report.

McClane sounded annoyed. “Can’t you get that from the school?”

I had no idea if the school would release that information to me, and if that was even legal, and was about to ask, when McClane said a gruff "good-bye" and hung up.

Get you an address that's on a police report right here in my computer? Are you kidding? We've got an emergency over here! We're all out of jelly-filled! Did you hear me? There's no jelly-filled!

Domestic court sent me to circuit court, which sent me to a different branch of the circuit court, who told me that I needed to talk to the detective in charge of my case.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

The guy tapped around on his computer.

“Looks like…a Detective McClane. You need to call him.”

“But McClane sent me to you guys,” I protested.

The warrant officer shrugged. “You have to call him. It looks like he actually closed your case.”

I took a deep breath.

“Sir, I’ve been to three different courthouses, and already talked with McClane, and this case is absolutely not closed. Perhaps you could call him? Because I’m kind of going to sit right here until we issue this summons.”

:::

So we have a court date. It’s next Monday, October 22. I have some 8x10 glossies of Kai’s injuries. They came the other day in a folder from Snapfish. “Happiness Within,” it says on the envelope.

I have my witness list, and the doctor’s report.

I called the State’s Attorney, and the lady I talked to told me that this wasn’t a trial. Rather, they were going to talk to me and talk to him, and possibly offer him a sentence. If he chooses not to take the sentence, we could go to trial.

:::

Today, when I picked Kai up, his teacher told me she had a story for me.

“Guess who tried to use my name as a reference?” she asked.

It took me several long seconds before it dawned on me.

“No.”

She nodded.

“DCFS called and asked me for a character reference,” she said. Some employer had asked him for one, and for reasons clear only to him, Mr. X gave them Kai's teacher's name. It would appear he’s trying to get a job working with children again.

I stared at her. Kai's teacher was probably as devastated by this whole thing as I was.

“Talk about clueless,” she said.

I kept staring.

“I’m—” I paused. I was having trouble forming a thought.

“Speechless?” she supplied.

I stared across the playground for a minute.

“Wow,” I said. “That takes giant, elephant size—” and stopped, remembering the children in line. I saw a few of them looking at me, their eyes wide.

“That takes cojones,” I finished.

Kai’s teacher agreed.

She also agreed that October 22 can’t come fast enough.

 

 

In which I teach you two new words, and possibly put you off soup for a while

Recently, I took Kai to be re-evaluated by the neuropsychologist who diagnosed his autism. I filled out approximately six million surveys, answering questions ranging from when Kai first began to talk to whether Kai likes canned peaches or fresh.

I've seen most of the questions before, and there was a question that stood out to me last time: “Does your child create new names or phrases for things, such as calling steam ‘hot rain?’”

#6 above.

A year and a half ago, the answer was no. Plus, the question was confusing to me, which is the reason I remembered it among the host of questions I answered about every aspect of my kid. Hot rain? What?

But now, all these months later, I’m all, Hot rain! Shit, yeah, Kai does that all the time!

Air conditioning: cold wind.

Thermometer: head checker

Quesadilla: circangle pizza

This type of linguistic idiosyncrasy is common in autism and, according to the Internet, is called “neologism,” which means “a new word, usage or expression.” It apparently also means “meaningless words made up by psychotic people.”

Gee. And he looks like such a sweet kid.

I mention this to you because a.) I’ve been meaning to actually write a whole post about it and b.) I had the opportunity to actually watch the wheels of his brain whir and click while he invented an entirely new phrase.

A beautiful, terrible new phrase.

:::

Kai crawled into bed with me on Wednesday morning. I put my arm around him and noticed that his heart was racing.

“What’s going on, pal?” I asked him.

And he opened his mouth and vomited spectacularly all over me.

Hours later, he sat on a pile of pillows and watched as I made up the bed, spreading freshly washed sheets and stuffing the comforter into the duvet.

 “This is my fault,” Kai said, pointing to an ancient stain on the dust ruffle, a splash of brown from a wayward Diet Coke.

“That? Oh, no, that’s not your fault. Mommy spilled a soda.”

Kai shook his head.

“No,” he said. “It’s my fault. From my, um…”

He seemed to be searching for words, and I realized he thought the stain was from him puking in the bed that morning. I was ready to supply a word for him—puke, throw up, barf, hurl, ralph, when he came up with one on his own.

“From my...poop...soup,” he said haltingly, his mouth careful in forming the words.

I stopped shaking out the comforter and giggled.

“Did you just say, ‘poop soup?’”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Poop soup is stinky. And hot, too.”

Having been covered in said poop soup, I can honestly say that that’s no lie.

“I think you mean ‘vomit,’ honey. You vomited this morning.”

“Poop soup tastes bad in my mouth.”

I finished spreading out the comforter.

“I think that’s something we can probably all agree on,” I said.

Poop soup, you guys. And can’t you just see the logic? What is vomit but a sort of horrible, reverse diarrhea? And what is diarrhea but a soupy sort of…

Oh, God, never mind.

We’re having soup for dinner.

Or, at least, we were.

 

In which we travel to Unicorn Island, which is in Europe

When we finally ran out of wine around here and I felt we’d said everything we could say about the start of the school year and Mr. X, I started making appointments.

I wanted to put everything on the table. Are we really at the right school? The right school district? The right city? Do we need to shake up his treatment? His IEP?

Last year I had resolved to back off a little, and let the professionals do their jobs. For me there is a very fine line between being an advocate and being overbearing that I’m still learning how to negotiate. But it could not be more apparent that I’d backed way too far off, and we all know what’s been going on since.

So, I’ve been on a special needs warpath for the past month or so.

I took Kai back to his neuropsychologist to see how he has progressed since his spectrum diagnosis.

Kai's brain. Got all that?

 We’ve got appointments on the books for a pediatric neurologist and a pediatric sleep specialist.

I spent two hours at $250 each with a special education lawyer, with whom I have an appointment to speak again on Thursday, and who keeps my credit card on file so he can just charge me when I call.

I have school observations for me and for a battery of experts, a meeting with the IEP team on Monday and I’ve been riding the school social worker about getting Kai to express his feelings and how to get him into the school building without crying. Kai, not me.

I’ve been researching school districts in the (gulp) suburbs and beyond.

I’ve upped Kai’s private OT to two sessions a week and added a permanent appointment with our private social worker.

It’s every day, a constant stream of phone calls and therapies and evaluations, driving miles and miles and back again and trying to stay a step ahead of whatever autism is going to throw at our family, all the while trying to parent a whole other child and occasionally put dinner on the table and maybe take a shower.

OMG. The other one! She is showing off her boots.

Something is happening with Kai, though, lately.

The other day, he asked me to help him make a t-shirt. We do this often, as Kai will get a sartorial whim which we have to satisfy immediately. I learned this the hard way, when he broke out of our car and ran across the street and up the block toward a local t-shirt shop, where the day before he had fallen in love with a shirt that had been screen printed with tiny squares of the available ink colors.

“Rainbow shirt,” he sobbed, as I carried him back.

I went to Target the next day and bought a pack of Hanes t-shirts, and now we just make our own.

Kai wanted me to draw a picture of a place called Unicorn Island.

“What’s an island?” I asked, knowing that he had learned about islands at school.

“It has water,” he said.

I drew on his shirt, the sky, the sun, the loopy-loop palm tree, all per his specifications. He wanted the unicorn to be red.

“Has a horn,” he said.

I drew the unicorn’s horn.

“A horn is a cone,” he said.

I wondered if I knew what a cone was when I was in kindergarten.

“Where is Unicorn Island?” I asked him, handing him his shirt.

“It’s in South America,” he answered, and then changed his mind. “No, Europe.”

He thought for a moment. “Europe has snakes, too.”

Unicorn Island

:::

Last night, when I unpacked his backpack, I found a library book. It was The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“It’s Sneetches,” he said.

We read about Sneetches at bed time, about how some Sneetches had stars on their bellies, and how they looked down on the Sneetches without stars, and how a guy came along and sold stars to the plain Sneetches and chaos ensued.

It was a book I had as a kid, the kind of book you want your kid to read, a book not about stupid Thomas the Tank Engine with its sexist and Communist overtones, but a clever book about the arbitrary nature of discrimination. It is the kind of book that I would have picked out before I became a parent, when I still thought I had a chance in hell of controlling any aspect of who my kids might become.

Somehow, Kai had picked it out himself.

At the library.

:::

People ask me all the time how Kai’s doing in school. I tell them that he says school makes him sad and he doesn’t want to go, that we don’t know why, and that I’m moving Heaven and Earth to figure it out. It could be that thing with Mr. X, or that we had we’ve had him on and off ADHD medications or the teacher strike or the longer school day, or all of it. Or none of it. It’s been as bad a start to a school year I ever could have imagined for him.

And yet.

Islands. Europe. South America. Cones. The library and Dr. Seuss.

He didn’t talk about these things last year.

And you know what?

For all of the fuss, it really sounds like a regular kid is going to kindergarten. And learning stuff.

And for the first time in weeks, I can feel a little ray of hope.