You have to understand that when Kevin started school at age 3, he’d been walking for less than a year.  He wore Orthologix braces on both legs and big, clunky shoes to fit over them so he fell down and rammed into things,  A LOT. “Isn’t there something else we can do?” I asked the physical therapist rather pitifully one day. “I’m afraid not,” she replied. “The only way to learn how to walk is to keep walking.”  So I relented, and allowed Kevin to crash and fall every day, several times a day. By his first day of school Kevin looked like a prizefighter who’d just been defeated after 12 rounds in the ring. Thank GOD the physical therapist conducted a team meeting the day before or I’m certain someone would have called the police.   And despite the detailed explanation his therapist offered and the documentation his pediatrician provided, I spent that first day waiting for the nurse to call and declare she was reporting me to DYFS.

The exact opposite happened.  The phone did ring, but it was the school nurse explaining how Kevin was coming home with a black eye he got in gym. And so began what I came to call “The Great Injury Exchange.”  Every Sunday night I’d email Kevin’s teacher to say something like, “Hi! Kevin has a bruise on his knee from where he rammed into the coffee table.” And she’d write back, “I’m sending him back with a welt on his head the size of a grapefruit.  Recess, need I say more?” This went on for months until Kevin adjusted to the leg braces and started responding to physical therapy. And just when all the bruises healed and I’d stopped waiting for DYFS to call the therapist said, “Yeah!!!! We’re going to take the braces off!” and The Great injury Exchange resumed as Kevin learned how to walk all over again. 

As the years passed, the fear of child abuse accusations dwindled.  Everybody in school and the community understood what was happening. If you read this blog regularly you know Kevin has a harem.  One of the original members is a girl I call Aquila because it means gifted with reason. Anyway, one afternoon as all the kids were running out of pre-school Kevin tripped and fell. Aquila’s mother screamed, ran over to him and said, “Sweetheart are you OK?”  And Aquila said, “No attention Mom! Don’t do attention or he will think he’s hurt. When Kevin falls down, we act like nothing is happened and he gets himself up just fine.”  Then she stood above Kevin with the same stance his physical therapist always used. “Kevin,” she said, “You need to be careful when you walk or you fall down. Now pick yourself up,”  and Kevin obeyed. Aquila brushed the dirt off his pants, squeezed his hand and said, “You’re a good boy Kevin. Remember to concentrate and walk slowly and you won’t fall down ok?”  “OK,” he said, and went on his way. Then Aquila turned on her mother and said something I will never forget. “Mommy if you know nobody’s gonna pick you up when you fall, you try a lot harder not to fall.” 

Fast forward 5 years and we’ve discovered Kevin has an incredibly high tolerance for pain. We had suspected this for years but the real proof came when he broke his finger at camp and didn’t realize it.  To this day, whenever I give Kevin his bath, I usually find a mark somewhere on his body.  When it first started happening I’d say, “Kevin did you fall down today?” And every time he’d say, “I not know,” so I’d ask his sisters. Sometimes they’d have an answer like, “He rammed his bike into a mailbox,” but more often than not they didn’t know either. It became part of our normal: Kevin always had a mark on his body from an injury he barely felt and didn’t remember.  After awhile I gave up questioning him…….until that day.

I’ll never know what it was because I never saw anything like it before or since, but one morning Kevin woke up with a strange, red mark across his chest.   It looked like someone had splashed him with paint. I poked it and said, “Kevin does this hurt?”  “No,” he replied. “Do you know how you got it?” I asked. “Not know!” he screamed. “Fine,” I said, and finished dressing him, but I was torn.  It was a suspicious mark. Was he having an allergic reaction? Did he pinch himself? I poked at it one more time before he left for school and decided to drop it.  “You’re overreacting,” I told myself, and headed off to work.  

When the phone rang and I saw it was the school I wasn’t worried. I assumed it was Kayla in the nurse’s office AGAIN, complaining about something ridiculous AGAIN.

As a side note my Kayla has been going to the nurse’s office to complain of imaginary ailments since pre-school.  In Kindergarten she said a leaf had blown into her ear and was infecting her brain. In first grade her eyebrows were hurting and could the nurse please shave them off? I could go on forever.

I wasn’t the least bit surprised when I heard the nurses’ voice

Nurse:  Hello, Rachel?

Me:  What is it this time Nurse, are her eyelids broken?

Other Voice:  Hello Mrs. Ulriksen

Me:  Is there someone else on the line?

Dr. Tee:  Yes Mrs. Ulriksen this is Dr. Tee the school social worker.

And in a flash I realized it was “the call.”  The call I’d laid awake at night for years dreading.  The call I’d finally stopped fearing would come.

Me:  How can I help you both?

Nurse:  Well Mrs. Ulriksen we’re hoping you can explain the mark on Kevin’s chest. 

Me:  The red mark?

Nurse:  Yes, Do you know how he got it?

Me:  No

Nurse:  No?

Me:  No. I asked him how it happened this morning and he said he didn’t know. 

Nurse:  He said he didn’t know?

Me:  That’s right.  Nurse you know Kevin, he’s clumsy and he has a very high threshold for pain.  There’s always a mark somewhere on his body he can’t explain.

Nurse:  I see. Well Mrs. Ulriksen this morning Kevin told his teacher that his chest hurt.  She lifted his shirt and when she saw this big red mark she asked Kevin, “How did you get this?” and he replied “My mommy did it.”

SILENCE

Nurse:  Mrs. ______ brought him straight to me, I examined the mark, and when I asked him how he got it he repeated, “My mommy did it.”

SILENCE

Dr. Tee:  Mrs. Ulriksen are you there?

Me:  Yes

Dr.  Tee: Do you have anything you’d like to say?

Me:  No. Is there a question you’d like to ask me?

MORE SILENCE

Dr.  Tee: Mrs. Ulriksen I’ve been deeply concerned about Kevin for some time now.  He’s always covered in bumps and bruises and now, this.  

Me: That’s not a question.

Nurse:  Mrs. Ulriksen we’re just trying to understand…

Me:  No your not.  You’re covering your ass.   You KNOW me nurse. If Dr. Tee had “concerns” you could have explained.  Remember all the bruises he sustained when he was learning to walk? What do you think it’s like for us now that he’s only just learned to ride a bicycle? 

Dr. Tee: Mrs. Ulriksen, did you put that mark on your son?

Me:  No, I did not. I love Kevin and I would never, ever hurt him.

Dr.  Tee: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Me:  First, fuck you. Second, have the Nurse look at Kevin’s chest again.  She knows the signs of physical abuse, and that mark doesn’t match any of them.  It’s not on a fleshy part of his body and it’s not in the shape of a fist. There’s no bruising and the skin isn’t broken. In my opinion, it’s a minor allergic reaction.  If Kevin says I made that mark it’s because I poked at it several times this morning in an effort to ascertain what it was. If you think a call to DYFS is warranted, knock yourself out. I have nothing to hide.

Then I hung up the phone, ran to the physical therapy suite, tripped on a balance beam, collapsed onto the floor, and cried my eyes out. I was hurt and humiliated, in every way a person can be.

I thought,  “The ladies at that school talk faster than their lips can move.  I give it 2 days before the whole town is gabbing about that mother who is suspected of abusing her special needs child.”  It took the wind right out of me. Then I heard her voice:

Aquila:  Get up

Me:  No.

Aquila:  Why?

Me:  Because I’m humiliated.  

Aquila:  That’s your fault.  

Me:  What?!

Aquila:  You heard me.  5 years ago everyone knew he was just learning to walk.   They saw him falling all the time so the bruises made sense but he doesn’t fall anymore.  What were they supposed to think when they saw all those new bruises? You didn’t tell them about the bike.

Me:  Oh

Aquila:  Yeah, oh.  And not for nothing but I’m pretty sure you’re the ONLY mother who let’s her disabled son ride to school when the only way he knows how to stop is to ram into mailboxes!  

Me:  Well he has to learn.

Aquila:  Yeah so do you.

Me:  Learn what?

Aquila:  That no one is ever going to understand anything about him or you unless you explain it to them.   

SILENCE

Aquila:  I know it’s not easy being different but that’s what you are: different. You’re down there because you forgot to be careful, so get up.

Me:  But they all think………….

Aquila:  Fuck what they think.  So your “Mother Teresa with the disabled child”  image is blown. You don’t need it. It was a crutch, like the braces they put on the legs of little boys who can’t walk are a crutch.  You have to learn to walk without that crutch Rachel. Kevin did it and so can you.

The last thing I heard before I walked out of the physical therapy center was this:  Remember to walk slowly and be careful and you won’t fall down anymore ok?” 

 “OK,” I said, and she was gone.

This all happened 3 years ago.  If there was talk around town of me being a child abuser I never heard it.  Kevin learned to use brakes instead of mailboxes to stop his bike and today, he and Aquila are in a play together.   She’s pretty easy to find. Just head in to rehearsal and listen for the girl yelling, “Enough! You do not get to be in the front row for every scene Kevin. Man up, stop crying and get in the back.”  

Sometimes when I see her I whisper the words I’ll find the courage to say one day when she’s old enough to understand:   It wasn’t actually you that day in the physical therapy suite.  It was just me talking myself through something very painful and embarrassing but it was YOUR voice I heard. I never would have found the words I needed to hear if it hadn’t been for you.  Thank you for telling me the truth: That sometimes, even when you’re knocked down hard, nobody’s gonna pick you up but you. I get better every day but in the end, I’m still learning to walk, and I promise to be careful.