A Mirror of Before and After - CHAPTER XX
By Frank Moore circa 1970s
The next day was almost like spring.
“What is this?” The businessman with stylish, long sideburns asked, looking down at the board and then up to Moe, who was standing on the tower’s steps handing down a package.
“A letter board. He spells out words,” Moe said, taking the money.
“How interesting. Are you his trainer?”
“Yes. I trained him by using a Skinners’ box. When he pointed to the right letter, I gave him a gumdrop,” Moe said.
“It must have taken a long time to train him.”
“Ah, yes! Much longer than a pigeon or a mouse would take.”
My protesting laugh startled the guy who was studying me with deep interest. “Really, I am his trainer,” I said.
The guy went out with his package, not even wondering if Moe had put him on … my line hadn’t even reached him.
A group of nine kids came in a little while later with a young man. Not a normal bunch of kids. They acted like the store was a different world than the one they were used to. The young man who seemed to be their teacher had to hold onto the black, eight-year-old to prevent him from fleeing in fright.
“Why do you want to run away?” he asked the young man.
“Donna know … Let’s go back to the car … Please, John … Let’s go back,” said the little boy, and then seeing me, slipped behind John’s back to hide. “Donna like that man.”
The kids … some of them, went exploring the store, a world of colors, smells, sounds and textures. Most of them ran around staring at the posters and feeling the clothes with the curiosity of kittens. One boy spent his time smelling the scented candles. A blonde-haired kid kept popping questions at Moe about how the motorcycles and blacklights worked and kept asking, “How much?”. Two other boys just sat on the car seats withdrawn; the store was a bit too much for them to take it all in.
“Why don’t you like him?” John asked, hugging the black boy close to him.
“Donna know. He looks strange. Why is he like that?”
“I don’t know. The only way we’re going to find out is to ask him,” John said, easing the boy towards me. “Can you understand us?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Did you see what he does, Jimmy? He spells out words on that board with that thing on his head.”
“Why?”
“Because he can’t talk.”
“Why?”
“When I was born,” I said, half-expecting the kid to lose interest before I had finished, “The doctor pulled me out of my mother by my head using something like pliers. He squeezed too hard and cut off oxygen, air, to my brain … the part that controls my movements. So now the message gets scrambled between my hand, say, and my brain…”
The blonde kid got it … what I was talking about; he was interested in science, even entered a project in the Science Fair. The other boys had crowded around me, listening and watching. Jimmy was still hiding behind John, his eyes wide open.
“Did you sue the doctor?” asked the fat boy standing next to the blonde brain.
“Stupid, you don’t sue doctors,” said the blonde one.
“If a doctor did that to me, I’d sue him,” the fat one said.
“Why should I sue him?” I asked. “He just made a mistake.”
They were so interested in me that we talked for a half hour, exchanging names and ages. They asked me questions like why did I slobber. Ralph, the smart kid, asked if I could come visit the school. John liked the idea and said he would come back that night or the next day to talk about it and to get to know me. Carol walked in and stood listening, watching. Jimmy was still huddled behind John, afraid of me.
“Still don’t like me?” I asked.
“No.”
“I like you,” I said.
He didn’t come out from behind John, but he knew that I wasn’t bullshitting him, that I did really like him. For the first time, he looked me straight in the eye.
After they had gone, Carol asked, “Are those kids mentally retarded?”
“No,” answered Moe, “Emotionally disturbed … which means anything from slow learners to kids who are too smart, too sensitive for their own good. The kids that the world freaks out so bad that they can’t function in it … supposedly. I talked to that guy John … a good dude … works with those kids in a special school near here. He brings a bunch of them here every week. This is the only contact they get with the real world, except when they go home for the weekends and get fucked up even more. The school is a weird place, an old mansion. It’s supposed to teach the kids how to cope with the world, but it keeps the world from them … and it keeps most of them doped up. If the kid is too speedy, too emotional, too violent, they give him downers; if he is too listless, too slow, they give him something to hype him up. There is even a drug to keep a kid happy. Sure is easier than relating to the kid.”
“Could I go when you visit them?” Carol asked me.
“Sure.”