Dani's Story: A Journey From Neglect to Love (14 page)

Just when it seemed as if she was settling down, she started rocking herself back and forth, her arms wrapped around her torso, gently at first, and then harder and harder. She put her arms up in the air and started waving them around as if she was batting something away. Her eyes were closed, but she was making the guttural moaning sound again, and then with one super roll, she fell off the bed onto the floor. Bernie came rushing in, and I explained what had happened. He lifted her up and put her back in the bed. Although she was getting sleepy, thanks to the medication, the rocking resumed, and it was only a minute before she threw herself out of bed again.

Bernie and I had the same idea at the same time. I lifted her up, and he pulled out the trundle under the bed. At only about six inches off the floor, she wouldn’t hurt herself if she fell out, and maybe, since she was accustomed to sleeping on a mattress on the floor, this would be more familiar to her. I laid her down again and covered her in the Hello Kitty quilt. Bernie kissed her goodnight, and I stayed with her another forty-five minutes until she was asleep. I left her bedroom door open and a nightlight in the hall so that if she did wake up, she could find us or we would hear her. Grabbing all of the poopy clothes and towels from the bathroom, I took them downstairs to the laundry room, closed the door, and then checked in on Willie, who had already checked out. We were all exhausted—physically, mentally, and emotionally. And it had only been half a day!

Back upstairs, I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and slipped into bed beside Bernie, who also looked sound asleep. The clock on my nightstand read 12:30 a.m. I remembered that tomorrow was Saturday, so I could sleep in until six.

As I lay on my back, looking at the ceiling, I replayed the day, thinking about what we could have done better, what we could do better tomorrow, how soon I could start toilet-training her, and how to keep her from swallowing the ocean water. I was setting myself up for a sleepless night, when Bernie reached across the bed and took my hand in his. I turned my head to peer at him. “That went well, don’t you think?” He winked at me in the semi-darkness of our bedroom. I started laughing, he did, too, and we must have laughed for ten minutes. I’m sure we both fell asleep with smiles on our faces.

Chapter 15

Ready, Set, Go

Day Two. I overslept until six-thirty and woke up with a start. Where was Danielle? And where was Bernie? I jumped out of bed and sprinted down the short hall between our bedroom and hers, then nearly tripped over my husband, who was sitting on the floor outside her door, watching her . . . sleep? She was lying on her back, the Hello Kitty comforter twisted around her waist and legs, her head propped on a pillow, snoring softly. I sat down across from Bernie and asked him how long he had been there. “Ten minutes. I didn’t want to wake you. Look how peaceful she is.”

“Don’t wake her up!” I hissed at him, gesturing for him to come with me. He pulled her door partway shut, and we tiptoed to the kitchen to put coffee on and make breakfast. Ten minutes later, Willie came upstairs still rubbing sleep from his eyes, then did what millions of other American kids do on Saturday mornings—turned on the television to watch cartoons and flopped on the couch.

We didn’t hear Danielle coming down the hall, but when I turned around to ask Willie if he wanted waffles or toast, there she was standing in the living room. Her hair—a little longer than chin length, fine but thick and cut in a bowl with bangs—looked like a fright wig. When she rocks in bed, she moves her head along with her body, twisting it from side to side on her pillow, which results in something atop her head that resembles a nest of twigs assembled by a blind bird. I couldn’t help a laugh that escaped me, and when Bernie turned around, he did the same. Willie looked up from his cartoons long enough to state the obvious. “Her hair looks crazy!”

I took her by the hand to walk her to the bathroom, change her diaper, and try to get a brush through her hair. The diaper change was a breeze, the hair something else entirely. Danielle threw her arms around her head, jerked away, and started wailing and crying. I had barely touched her head with the brush. The commotion bought Bernie and Willie running down the hall and was so loud I was sure Bill and Doris could hear it from across the street.

What was the reason for her fear of anyone coming near her head? She had pulled away yesterday at the beach when Steven tried to pat her head, and now she was freaking out at the brush. All I could think is that someone—her mother, her brothers—must have hit Danielle around her head or at least pulled her hair. Something very real had caused this over-the-top reaction. But unless we elected to shave her head, which was not an option, we would have to figure out how to make brushing her hair less traumatic for her and for us.

We needed to simultaneously distract and comfort her. Bernie had already calmed her down quite a bit by simply picking her up and walking back and forth in the hall with her as you would a baby. She was just considerably larger than a baby, and her legs dangled below Bernie’s knees. I thought we’d give it another shot, so we went back to her bedroom. I had Bernie sit on the bed across from Danielle, and I placed her so that her back was to the room, to me and the scary hairbrush. While he held her hands and played songs on the Lullaby Gloworm we got her, I approached her head from behind. A weed whacker would have been a better tool than a brush. As gently as I could, I started at the bottom, letting her know she was all right, that we were just going to brush out her hair to look pretty and it wouldn’t take long. She wasn’t completely on board with that, but rather than wailing, she whimpered, letting Bernie guide her hands to squeeze Gloworm to make him light up and play a song. When I was finished and her hair was smoothed out again, we both praised her profusely. Bernie took her to the bathroom to admire herself in the mirror, repeating over and over, “What a pretty girl! Look at pretty Danielle! Pretty, pretty girl!” That seemed to please her, or at least it didn’t upset or annoy her, so he and I slapped five on another small victory and went to the kitchen for a celebratory coffee.

I called Willie and Danielle to come to breakfast, but when not even Willie answered, I looked into the living room. Danielle had plopped on the sofa beside him, her legs curled up under her like a pretzel and her upper body leaning against him. He looked at me with wide eyes as if to say, “Help!” She was fixated on the cartoons, so I turned off the television, pulled her up from the sofa, and led her to the kitchen, pointing out the blueberries she had liked so much the night before.

I repeated the word
blueberry
each time I gave her one. Then
strawberry
several times. Then I put them both on a plate and pointed to first one and named it, then to the other and named it. Blueberry. Strawberry. Blueberry is blue. Strawberry is red. In the five seconds it took me to get the chocolate milk out of the refrigerator, she crammed all of the remaining blueberries and strawberries into her mouth, her cheeks as fat as a nut-hoarding chipmunk. Lesson over.

I got Danielle’s now clean clothes out of the dryer and brought them up to her room. I was curious whether she knew the first thing about dressing herself or was open to learning. I took her pajamas off and held a T-shirt in front of her. “Do you want to put your shirt on, Danielle?” Blank stare. “Do you want to help me put your shirt on?” She looked somewhere over my shoulder. “We have to get dressed to take the dogs for a walk. Don’t you want to help me?” She turned her back. Guess not. “That’s okay. I’ll show you how, and we’ll work on this another time.” With her hair brushed and her dressed, I realized I had forgotten to brush her teeth last night, and I dug through the backpack. No toothbrush, but a very odd bathing suit. It was yellow with short sleeves and a high neck, with huge pads front and back. It looked like something a peewee football player would wear. “What is this, Danielle? Is this your bathing suit?”

I had decided that I was going to talk to her as if she could understand everything I said. That was how babies learned. Well before they themselves could talk, they absorbed all of the language around them. If they were never spoken to, how could they possibly learn to speak? I wasn’t going to assume it was too late for Danielle to learn or that because she couldn’t talk to me, she didn’t comprehend what I was saying. How would she ever feel like a part of our family if we didn’t find some way to include her in everything?

Danielle playing bubbles with Mom.

 

I added a toothbrush to my shopping list, along with a hairbrush, clothes, a bathing suit, and sandals. The only shoes she had were big black clunkers that looked like boys’ shoes and were hard to put on and take off a squirming child.

I got Willie and the dogs, and holding Danielle firmly by the hand, we made a short loop of the neighborhood, shouting hello to all of the people who were out working on their yards or washing their cars, but we didn’t stop to chat. Bernie was in the driveway talking on the phone when we got back. “All right, Garet, thanks for calling. We’re on our way to the store to pick up some things for her. We’ll talk to you tomorrow.” I asked him if anything was wrong. “No, she was just checking in, asking how Danielle was doing and how the visit was going.” “What did you say?” “Great!”

On the way to Target, I wondered what Danielle’s daily life was like in the foster home. I doubted that it was very similar to what we were doing, but she certainly didn’t seem to be having any trouble adjusting. Her good mood changed the minute we got out of the car, and she saw that we were going into a store. She pulled away from Bernie’s grip and made a dash for it in the parking lot, but she didn’t get far before he grabbed her by the arm. He turned her to face him and very sternly told her she was not to do that. He pointed to a car driving slowly past and said how dangerous it was, that she could have been hurt. I was instantly thrust back to the times when each of my three boys pulled the same thing in a parking lot, darting out between cars in that one second while you’re fiddling with the car seat or locking the door. It had scared me to death all three times. Each boy was still in diapers when he did it, which cushioned the quick smack on the bottom I instinctively gave him. Those are the only times I’ve ever been physical with any of my kids, and it sure got their attention. It must be an unwritten rite of childhood and parenthood. Danielle was also wearing diapers, but even a well-padded tap on the behind would not have been appropriate. We had no idea what she had been through and whether physical punishment had been part of her ordeal.

Bernie lifted her up and put her in the basket section of a cart, but her tantrum got worse when we got inside the store—wailing, screeching, hitting herself on the legs, and biting her own forearms. It was an arresting performance. I gave her the hairbrush and the toothbrush I had picked out, hoping it would help her get familiarized with them, but she dropped both over the side of the cart onto the floor. People were staring, and Willie looked embarrassed. I told Bernie to take Willie with him to the auto department to take care of his list, while I wheeled the screaming meemie to grab up some clothes and a bathing suit, then zipped over to shoes. Danielle stopped crying almost immediately and seemed to take an interest in a pair of pink slip-on sneakers I picked up. “What do you know?” I thought to myself. Just like a girl to be distracted by a cute pair of shoes.

We met Willie and Bernie at the cashier station, where Danielle started wailing again. Bernie carried her out, while I stayed inside to check out and took the opportunity to talk to Willie privately.

“You know, Danielle is going through a pretty big change right now. She is with an all-new family in an all-new place. She had no choice but to be here. She doesn’t know what’s going on from one minute to the next and has no way to tell us what she needs or wants. Her crying and yelling are the only ways she knows how to communicate, just like babies before they learn their words. But she also communicates with us when she laughs, when she smiles, when she sits beside you to watch cartoons, even when she steals your French fries.”

Willie smiled at that. “She acts like a baby, but she’s so much bigger than a baby. It’s kind of weird.”

I said, “Yes, it is, but that is a great way to look at it. She is like an overgrown baby. She missed so much when she was a baby and a toddler and a little girl. She is starting way behind everyone else. It’s like starting a race after everyone else has almost gotten to the finish line. She has a lot of catching up to do, and she may never catch all of the people who started before her. But we have to let her try and help her along the way. It’s the only way she will learn. There are times she will embarrass you, and I understand that and don’t think badly of you for it. It’s the people who are staring at her who should know better. Keep in mind that we will probably never see those people again, but, hopefully, Danielle will be with us forever.”

Willie looked thoughtful. “Okay, Mom, thanks. Are we going to the beach after lunch?”

At the car, I put Danielle’s new shoes on her, and Bernie made a big fuss about how pretty they were. I handed her the brush and the toothbrush to play with on the way home, and this time she held onto them. After lunch, I asked if she wanted to help me put her pretty new bathing suit on so we could go back to the beach. She didn’t want to help, but she did allow me to put it on without a fuss.

Willie had brought pails and shovels to make sand castles, but Danielle had no interest in that at all. She just wanted to be in the water, splashing, rolling, and batting at the waves. She had no fear of putting her head underwater, which was amazing to me. I know people who have been around the beach their entire lives who won’t go under the surface. The seaweed on the surface scared her at first, but when I took a piece and handed it to her, she seemed to like the texture of it and took to chasing it in the waves.

Out of the water, she tried walking on my feet so that she wouldn’t have to touch the sand. We spend a lot of time at the beach when the weather is good, so we needed to get her over that particular phobia. Bernie picked her up, took her about ten feet away from the water, put her down, and walked quickly away to the edge of the water. The only way she could get to him was to walk over the sand. He called to her several times before she did it, but when she did it, I told her what a good girl she was and that if she did it three more times, Dad would give her a ride. Dad? Bernie and Willie looked at me. It had slipped out. I was so used to saying it to Willie, and how else should I refer to this new man in her life? Bernie? Mr. Lierow? Uncle Bernie?
Dad
was it. I wondered if Danielle even knew what the word meant. It had probably never been used in her presence.