My Abandonment(20)

"Kind of," she says. "They've been asking him a lot of questions. He's been very cooperative."

"We're different than you," I say.

"We're just deciding what is the best thing to do," she says again. "You can see that we have to understand where you've been and who you are, first."

I don't know what to say so I just look out the window again. I button the button on the cuff of the shirt they gave me.

"Please," I say. "I don't know what to say. Those are all the things I can think of. Can I not go in with those girls again?"

"Is there a problem?" she says.

"There's not even any books in there," I say. "I can't breathe. I can't even see one tree out the window."

"We don't want to make a mistake," she says. "How about this? How about we try something new?"

She takes out a bright blue box then, thin but as tall and wide as a piece of paper. From a drawer she pulls out a square machine with black and red buttons on it.

"I am wondering if it's all right if I make a tape recording of our conversation," she says. "Would that be all right? If you like, I can give you a copy of the tape to keep."

"All right," I say. "But I already said I'm out of things to say."

Miss Jean Bauer pushes down the red button and I can see the wheels turning inside the clear plastic window. She picks up the blue box again and takes off the top.

"This is a storytelling test," she says. "Actually, it's more like a game. Think of it like a game. I have some pictures here that I am going to show you, and for each picture I want you to make up a story. Tell what has happened before and what is happening now. Say what the people are feeling and thinking and how it will come out. You can make up any kind of story you please. Do you understand? Well, then, get ready for your first picture. You have five minutes to make up a story. See how well you can do."

This takes an hour almost. She keeps telling me if I have more time or if I'm running out even if I can see the minutes going on my watch. The pictures are not easy. There's a woman coming through a door with her face down in her hand and men asleep on the grass resting with their heads on each other and hats over their eyes and one where a girl in a tree watches another girl in a dress running along a beach and holding up her dress out of the waves. I tell stories for them and mostly Miss Jean Bauer tells me they're good stories. The first one is a picture of a boy and a violin and this is the story I tell:

"There's a spider down in the violin and then he's sitting there wondering if it's going to come out of it and if it will bite his chin if he begins to play. But his mind keeps drifting away so he's not worried."

"Where is his mind drifting?" she says. "What's he thinking about?"

"He wants to go outside, I think."

"And what will happen?"

"He'll probably play that violin for a while and the spider will just listen," I say. "How do you read my answers? You think they mean in a certain way, but how do you know?"

"Don't worry about any of that," she says. "Just tell me the first story that comes in your mind. Have you ever seen an X ray?"

"Yes," I say. "I know what one is."

"Well," she says, "we're trying to find out what it looks like inside you, by the stories you tell."

"You could just ask," I say.

"Yes, but you might not be able to say it."

"So it's a crooked way you're going," I say. "So I'll somehow say what I can't say."

"Right," she says. "That's not a bad way to think about it." And then she shows me a picture of a person turned away with their head on a bench and a gun on the floor and then another with a woman on a couch reading a book to a girl holding a doll and looking away like she might not be listening.





It is so hard to be in the room with these girls. I sit at the round table with the pencil and scratch paper trying to write and then I get up and stand next to the window and I feel like breaking the glass in that room since it seems like it should be easier to breathe and I can't get air. Every time the door opens I think it could be Father and I look up and instead it's Miss Jean Bauer or Mr. Harris coming to get me or Valerie or Taffy.

My feet hurt so I take off my shoes and put the socks inside them. The floor is too hard and smooth beneath my feet. It's cold. The air smells like all the chemicals it takes to keep everything so clean.

"Gross," Valerie says. "You're getting your dirty feet all over everything."

"My feet are clean," I say.

"You act like you're better than everyone. Different."