Rescuing Julia Twice (29 page)

I'm often asked by a teacher or babysitter, “Does she ever stop talking?” I smile a Botox smile because they think Julia is simply a chatty, precocious child. But it's not like that. She chatters from the moment she wakes to the moment sleep steals her from her worn-out vocal chords. She chatters incessantly at the table, in the car, while she's playing. She escalates the chatter when Ricky and I start to have a conversation or when the phone rings and I answer it. She uses the chatter to control her environment.

Ricky has a theory about it. He thinks Julia chatters constantly to soothe herself, to make herself feel present. He thinks silence and stillness scare her because she's afraid of her internal thoughts. Afraid to be, not
by
herself, but
with
herself. This is a fascinating theory because it reminds me of my mother, who also has the need to manufacture noise because she too fears her inner world.

The problem with living with the endless loop of chatter is that it's hypnotic. Sometimes it even makes me sleepy. I'm not kidding. But also I've learned to tune it out and so if and when there is a moment of lucid substance, there's a decent chance I'll miss it. Ironically, or maybe not
so ironically, when Ricky and I try to have a pointed conversation with Julia, she will say “What? What?” She averts her eyes. She pretends not to hear the question. She turns the exchange into a power play.

Thwack.
The mail truck has come. I push myself back from the desk and grab my keys. The white light of the near-summer sun makes me squint. A row of purple irises are abloom. I stick my nose into the fancy flower. They smell like bubble gum. It's hard to be pessimistic when roses are climbing the fence and a rabbit nips at the fringes of your vegetable garden. I grab the wad of mail and head back to the house.

I return to the list on my screen. So far the first eighteen traits are a perfect match. But then I see other characteristics that absolutely don't describe Julia. She is not “cruel to animals.” She has not shown any “fascination with fire, blood, and gore or an interest in weapons.” She is not “self-destructive,” and even though she does not take care of her possessions herself and she does not show any affection or pride of ownership for a favorite toy or teddy bear, she's not intentionally destructive in our house. Nobody has suspected she has any “developmental or learning delays” and she doesn't “steal or lie.”

My head is spinning. I reach for the phone.

“You busy?”

“What's up?”

“I've spent the last three hours reading up on Reactive Attachment Disorder.”

“And?”

“There's a ton of information about this on the Internet. A ton. It's overwhelming.”

“What did you find?”

“Well, there are several sites on RAD. Each site lists characteristics of children with RAD, and what I'd say is that most of the descriptions on the lists really describe Julia to a T.”

“Like what?”

“Okay. Let me read this to you.”

I go down the list, reading slowly, one trait at a time. When I finish he emits a heavy breath.

“What do you think?” I ask.

“I don't know what to think. Like you said, it sounds like a list we could have made.”

“I know,” I say. “On one hand, it's upsetting. But on the other, I feel a weird sort of comfort. Like, it's not my fault. There's a reason things are as they are.”

I tell Ricky that the research says young children who were cut off from their mothers early in their lives display these kinds of behaviors because they instantly learn the world is a cold, untrustworthy, uncaring place, even if they've had a caregiver. They feel like this because most of their urgent needs either had to wait or were never met.

“So now what?” he asks.

“I don't know. I think we should read what I've found on the Internet together, tonight. I'll print out a bunch of stuff. And then, maybe on Friday night instead of a movie, we should head to the bookstore and see what we can find.”

“Sounds like a good plan. Talk to you later.”

I glance at the clock. It's 2:00
PM.
I have three hours before Julia needs to be picked up at school. I must process some of this. I walk upstairs to my bedroom and gather my swim gear. I will drive to the Y. Before I head downstairs, I go into Julia's room. My eyes travel along the bookshelves, which are lined with tattered picture books and framed pictures of Julia. I run my hand along the shelf to fix a frame that's toppled over and feel something obstructing it. I reach a bit further and clasp something leathery. I lift it up. It's one of her white, worn baby shoes with the multicolored shoelace holes. I clutch the shoe against my heart and sob.

I slice through the cool water. My body feels more vulnerable because my heart is hurting. But the determination of pumping blood, of going back
and forth until thirty minutes elapses, of fighting for breath, reminds me that life is always a struggle. But I push past discomfort. I focus on one thing only. I can make change. This is my child. I'm all she has. I have to make love happen between Julia and me.

“What time did you tell Alison we'd be back?” Ricky asks about the babysitter, steering our car along a turtle-speed route lined with neon-lit strip malls, gas stations, and auto showrooms.

“Around 10-ish. Let's go to the bookstore first. Then we can grab a bite,” I say.

“I'm gonna go to the Barnes & Noble in Nanuet. It's easier to park there than at Palisades. Friday night is a nightmare at the mall.”

“That's okay, we've already been to the one at the mall.”

For the past two weeks, I've done nothing but read everything there is to read online about Reactive Attachment Disorder. New Google searches—no matter how I duck-duck-goose the search words—bring me back to research I've already seen. From what I gather, psychologists believe Reactive Attachment Disorder is a legitimate dysfunction that affects children whose maternal bonds were severed or grossly compromised early on. There is a chorus of voices who debunk it; they say it's a made-up diagnosis. But those who treat it as a viable disorder say a child's brain gets rewired when her basic needs have not been met or are screwed with. They say the brain actually changes physiologically when children suffer this kind of deprivation. The most compelling studies on the disorder are about Romanian orphans who were adopted in the early 1990s after Nicolae Ceausescu's repressive regime was toppled by the
Romanian people. Not all, but many afflicted orphans are cold, violent, and detached. Adopting them has been a problem.

Parents going through the adoption process are warned that a child who has begun life in an orphanage may be delayed. Ricky and I had steeled ourselves for the likelihood that Julia would need extra time to sit, crawl, walk, speak, potty train. I remember Olga explaining how orphans have low muscle tone because they are confined in cribs or on indoor swings for long periods of time. Julia, a Lilliputian Olympian, hasn't missed a cue. She sat up on her own days after we brought her home. She crawled shortly after that. She walked at twelve months, ran a minute later. She started making words at a year. She potty trained herself—and I mean
herself
—within a week of her second birthday. Her teeth grew in before many of the other toddlers' teeth did in her playgroup, though the front ones were rotten from decay and lack of calcium. She has never been challenged in motor skills or coordination or cognitive ability. Julia's been on the fast track. The only “delay” she had was growing in her silky, wheat-colored mop. She was bald until eighteen months, but I wasn't too worried. I bought her cute hats.

At every turn, I told myself that this child is okay—she must be okay. She's met every milestone. At the same time, she was detached. I don't know how a normal toddler reacts when a parent is ailing, but when I'm balled up on the couch in extreme menstrual pain, which happens every month and goes on for days at a time and I'm sick like the dickens, Julia shows no concern or empathy. Is that normal? As she got older, she showed constant opposition to everything, anything. She has a dire need to be in control. She will spite herself just to be in control. If I ask Julia to bring me something, say a book, she makes me wait and wait. She dallies or slows down the process of a simple task just to keep me—or anyone—hanging. She enjoys hearing a second request and then a third more impatient one. When I lose patience and get up and get the book myself, she smirks.

Many times Ricky has said to her, “You know, Julia, it takes more energy to be mean than it does to be nice.”

She'll outgrow this spitefulness, I told myself.
She will, she will, she has to.
In my logical mind I could not understand why she wasn't making a connection between positive deeds and positive reinforcement compared to disapproval following rebellious behavior. Now I understand. Kids with RAD are extremely challenged when it comes to connecting cause and effect. But there's another explanation, too. Julia is afraid of the warm and fuzzies. Good, loving deeds are rewarded with smiling faces and loving embraces, and if you're scared to death of intimacy and harmony, there's no good reason on earth to court it. I'm starting to get it. I've got my own cause-and-effect explanation to wrap my head around. I can stop being angry at Julia. I don't have to be disappointed in myself. Julia's actions are a camouflage for fear.

I understand fear. It is crippling and consuming. Fear permeates my bones, my thoughts, and my nighttime dreams. Ricky says I cling to fear like it's a life raft. I need it. I rely on it. It's familiar. He calls it “my friend.” I wouldn't know who I am without anticipating some kind of disaster or loss. Fear and I have a bargain worked out. We need each other. I've worked in the news business for decades. The bad news business. Loss—random, horrific, tragic loss—is what we cover day in and day out. I've covered floods and train wrecks and inner city murders and kidnappings. I've covered good things too, but they don't lodge in my psyche the same way.

Ricky doesn't buy it. He says those are things that have happened to other people.

“Okay,” I say. “Maybe it's because my dog died suddenly from a terrible cancer or because I've learned love doesn't last or because at seventeen I aborted the only baby my body will ever bring into this world.”

Ricky smiles at me in that way that makes it impossible for me to stay mad. He wants me to be at peace. I struggle to understand his Zen, considering the fact that he has known loss, lots of it. But it doesn't bog him down. He doesn't think each new day will conjure a tragic headline. Studying Reactive Attachment Disorder makes me think about my own
nature and my early childhood. Maybe I was starved of some needed nurture or attention. My mother must have been preoccupied with her difficult marriage. And I was always refereeing between my father and grandmother, who lived under the same roof. My sister was born when I was eighteen months, and my mother worked full time shortly after both births. Did I get what I needed?