- Don’t bother sitting down ever. Not worth it. It takes more energy to get up over and over and over again to save your child from the dangers of the household (or vice versa) than you can conserve by sitting at all.
- Don’t close the bathroom door if you’re the only guardian in the house, and even with the door open, take heed of any appliances running that may interfere with hearing what’s going on in the home during the time you’re spending lounged out on the toilet (you self-centered bitch, you).
- Don’t ever take off your shoes. And I mean not EVER.
I’m beating around the bush a little here, I know. Because what I’m trying to tell you, well, I had to live through it, and revisiting it in my mind is a little uncomfortable. Uncomfortable as in it makes my heart thunder in my chest till you can see it jumping around in there and causes unpleasant fluids to rise up in the back of my throat. But we’ve been through so much together, and maybe it’ll be cathartic. Not funny, sorry to say. But worth going over if I can do it without hyperventilating.
It was a beautiful summer afternoon, a few days ago, a Wednesday. Eight-year-old Grace had just left with her BFF and BFF’s mom to bowl a few frames at the local lanes. Six-year-old Calvin was tired and cranky from a long hot day at summer school and wanted nothing more than to chillax on the couch with his sippy cup. His eyes were heavy and I was hoping he wasn’t going to fall asleep there…so late in the afternoon for a nap, he’ll be up all night. But at least he was calm and quiet and settled. I was especially glad of this because I had to go to the bathroom…I mean really, really go...and when you’re alone in the house with your autistic child, lots of stars have to be in alignment for you to actually do whatcha gotta do. Checked and double-checked that the boy was dozy and drowsy and spacing out in front of the TV to the sights and sounds of Thomas the Tank Engine, then went to the loo to do my business.
Now like I said, I know the rules. Don’t shut the door. And of course, I did not. Because if I lean way forward while I’m, um, you know, I can see and hear into the living room area and make sure no one’s acting up, breaking up housekeeping, building scaffolding to climb as high as possible, what have you. Yes, the dryer was running with its hypnotizing chuggagung chuggagung chuggagung. And yes, the article I was reading was interesting enough (although I could not tell you now what it was about). But even so, I would lean forward every minute or thereabouts, yep, everything’s ok. And probably after something like 6 to 10 minutes, all told, I came out of the bathroom.
The first and only thing I saw was the wide-open front door.
Which I had locked, and bolted when I sent Grace off to bowling. Hadn’t I?
Next scene is a complete blur. Nothing but silence outside, silence except for my screaming. Head snapping back and forth to look up and down the ghost-town-empty street while I scream his name at the top of my lungs. Screaming his name, uselessly, because I know full well, despairing and desperate, that I can scream until my vocal chords are frayed and bloody. He does not come when he’s called, not if he’s off on a self-directed mission. He’s not going to come trotting over to me with a hangdog expression hoping not to be punished. No. Calvin doesn’t roll like that. Lots of autistic kids don’t roll like that. I might as well be in one of those dreams where you scream and no sound comes out. But there are times when you know it’s not a dream.
My next-door neighbor, Maria, mother of two boys now grown young men, hears me and figures out immediately what’s wrong. I hear her yell that she’s grabbing her shoes so she can get into her car and start driving around.
Shoes on. Shoes. Why the hell do I not have shoes on. Where are my shoes, what are shoes. Archangel Michael, Jesus, Mary, get on this NOW, I’m not fucking around. Trace, get the phone before anymore thoughts or prayers, before anymore seconds, before shoes.
I call 911, from the land line so they’ll know where I am, still shouting his name from the front yard until the 911 answers, then telling 911 the necessary things—somehow I could still speak English and they understood me, miraculous. Still on the phone I see teenage girls pouring out of Maria’s house, friends of her sons, and I scream at them, “Help me! Find my son, he’s six, he can’t talk, he’s wearing orange shorts! Please!!!!” They start nodding, running in all directions to find the little boy in orange shorts who can’t talk.
I’m STILL 911-ing, answering more questions, and I hear Maria yell to me, “Tracy, Stephen’s at the pool, he says he can see a little boy in the gazebo!!!”
Stephen. Stephen is her son, he works at the pool in our housing complex, he can see the gazebo in the distance, the gazebo in the playground. The playground. The swings. That has to be right. How could I not have thought of that. Because I was thinking about the cars and their moronic drivers who circle the neighborhood like it’s the Indy 500. And the stupid-ass stream down the steep bank behind the house. And last but not least, that murderous sexual predator that network television says is in all our neighborhoods.
So this is where I apologize to 911 that my cordless home phone will be blinking out as I sprint away from the house, across and down the street, hit the open field of the playground grounds, see the gazebo coming into sight as I round the slight bend.
Orange shorts.
Navy shirt.
No shoes.
I get to him and take hold of him. He immediately starts complaining, not at all happy to be pulled away from his happy place. Can’t blame him for that, when he made that front door swing open he must have felt like he’d just won the lottery. He probably dashed across the street (the street, the goddamned fucking street with all those assholes in all those cars), hurtling himself toward that promised land of swings like his hair was on fire. I’d been a full twelve feet away the moment of his escape and none the wiser. He had to have perfectly timed it between my minute-to-minute lean-forward-and-looks. Autistic ninja child.
He grudgingly allowed me to start walking him back home, and that’s when I noticed that I was wailing. Half bent over, holding my stomach with the hand that didn’t have Calvin, convulsing and heaving like a crazed asylum-dweller. I wondered when that had started. I think it was right after I got my first glimpse of orange.
I noticed Maria coming toward me through the playground. She wrapped her arm around me and walked us back home, spoke calming words into my ear, “He’s okay…you found him…it’s alright…Calvin, you scared Mommy!” There was a part of me standing outside myself observing this whole thing that was a little embarrassed by the melodrama. It said, great, now Maria knows you're a hysterical nutcase.
I wish I could tell you how long this ordeal lasted. I now know exactly what it feels like to lose all sense of time.
I’ve read the articles, watched the TV coverage, you probably have too--with the desperate parents, their autistic child had wandered away, slipped the house and property somehow, the community now covering the streets, police dogs trying to pick up scents, helicopters scanning from above. I’ve gotten calls in the past from my mom after she’s heard about a missing child in my neck of the woods, a boy, autistic...she'd call me so she could hear my voice say "It's not Cal."
My story from Wednesday won’t be on the six or eleven o’clock news. I found my boy before we needed any helicopters or bloodhounds. But for some untold number of minutes that I thought were never going to end, I didn’t know if my story was going to be the next story, if my mother was going to call and I was going to have to tell her what she'd called not to hear. For that terrifying moment I got a glimpse of what they’ve all gone through. And it’s inexplicably, horribly, unfathomably bad.
For comfort and courage I keep in the front of my mind that the Archangel Michael and I have a deal. (Maybe you don’t believe in angels? That they can work extra hard for you when you remember to call on them right from your guts, especially when the shit hits the fan? Trust me, I’d be toast otherwise.) Seems to me he’s holding up his end of the bargain. So all I need is the strength to hold up mine.
Scariest job I’ve ever loved, people. Really really really.
(P.S. Got through it without shoes, but I don’t recommend it.)
