The White House Boys: An American Tragedy (5 page)
Shaking my head back and forth, I slowly walked into the bathroom and closed the door. I almost went out of my mind when I saw my reflection in the mirror. I was a bloody monster. There was blood all over my battered face and in my hair and around my mouth. I took my torn shirt off and let it hang from the waistband of my pants. Then I turned around to look in the mirror at my bloody back.
I started to cry, but I covered my mouth with both hands so none of the boys in the office would hear me. I loosened my belt buckle to get my pants down. It was very painful, but the worst was yet to come. Once they were down, I noticed that my legs were all bloody and parts of my skin were black.
I stood over the toilet and tried to urinate, but it just would not come out. I decided to take my underwear down and sit on the toilet until I could go, but the underwear would not come off. It was stuck to my rear end and legs. The cotton material had been beaten into the skin of my buttocks and was caked with blood. I pulled my pants back up and washed my face, mainly because I did not want the other boys to see that I had been crying. My cheek stung and started bleeding again. I was so scared by the pain and my appearance that I could not stop shaking.
Finally, I walked back into the outer office and was told to report to another office building. When I entered that building, I was so bloody that not one person in the office recognized who I was.
I saw Mr. Sealander, my cottage housefather, standing by the doorway. He, of course, knew who I was because he was waiting for me. He took me back to my cottage and called the office to complain. Then he took me to the hospital where the old nurse, Ms. Womack, soaked me in Epsom salts. With tweezers, she and the doctor pulled the underwear from my skin and sutured up my buttocks. Then she petted that big, ugly cat of hers and sent me away.
All that, and I didn’t even know what rule I broke.
Much later I found out that I’d been beaten like that because someone reported that I had said “shit” when I slipped on the diving board at the pool. For as long as I live, I will never forget that vicious beating I endured without even knowing why. I will never forget the monster I saw in the mirror that day. I will never forget what adults are capable of doing to a child. I will never forget that the State of Florida was behind what happened to me and to many, many other boys.
Roger Dean Kiser, approximate age 13
D
avid and I were friends at the orphanage. We were good friends and shared something that only we knew about, something we would keep a secret for many, many years. It just so happens that David was sent to the reform school the same day I was. As scared as we boys were, it was comforting we had each other, even if it was something we were not going to admit.
The two of us were sent to the main office and sat there for almost an hour, too afraid to speak or even look at each other. I had a lot of time to think just then, and so I thought about the tin box.
It was one night just after dinner at the orphanage when David came running up to me. “I have something to show you,” he said.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Can’t show you till tonight. Before I do, cross your heart you ain’t never gonna tell no one. Never, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, crossing my heart.
I waited all the way till bedtime, but David didn’t show up. I fell asleep, disappointed that I had crossed my heart for nothing. But then, I found myself being shaken awake.
“Roger, wake up,” David whispered.
Groggy, I asked, “What? What’s going on?”
“Come on, come with me. I got something important to show you,” he said.
Quietly, and on tiptoes, so that we wouldn’t wake up anyone, we snuck down the hallway, down the back stairs, and through the telephone room. David unlocked the door very carefully and outside we went.
David led me to the “Christmas Tree,” a fifteen-foot pine. He got down on his knees and dug out small tin box that had been buried, not too deep. He pried off the lid and took out the contents of the box.
“Gosh!” I said. “That’s only for girls.”
“I know, but it’s something to do.”
David was right. It was something to do, something other than work. We didn’t really have any toys at the orphanage, and we spent most of our time doing chores, either inside or outside—raking leaves, cleaning toilets, washing pots and pans . . . “entertaining” Mother Winters. This was something we could do that we might enjoy.
As often as we could, David and I snuck out of the building to dig up that tin box. We’d play with the contents of that box for about an hour. When we were done, David always made me promise I wouldn’t tell.
I never did. But there we were at the Florida Industrial School for Boys, and the tin box wasn’t ours anymore.
“Okay, you two, follow me over to Dr. Curry’s office,” said a guard. “You’ll get your cottage assignments from him.”
We got up and followed the man to a small building. We were told to stand with our noses in the corner, which we did for about ten minutes until we were escorted into Dr. Curry’s office together.
Dr. Curry was the head psychologist at the school. He sat behind a large wooden desk and just glared at us with those bulging eyes of his. Every once in a while, he’d puff from his pipe, the smoke curling around his head. He was a heavyset man who wore glasses, and he seemed pretty old, but was probably only about thirty or so.
“You aren’t sissy boys, are you?” he asked.
David and I looked at each other. We didn’t know why he was asking that question. Neither of us responded.
“Sissy boys? Are you sissies?” he asked again, gruffly.
He leaned forward, picked up a pencil, and pointed it at us. “Have you even worn girl’s clothing, like panties or a bra, anything like that?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
“I, uh, rode a girl’s bicycle once,” I admitted.
“I won’t count that,” he replied.
The buzzer sounded on his desk, and he got up. “You boys don’t move,” he said. “I’ll be right back. And when I get back, I want answers.”
As soon as Dr. Curry walked into the outer office, I whispered to David, “What about the tin box?”
“You keep your mouth shut about that box,” he said, balling up his fist.
“But it’s for a girl. If we don’t tell, we’ll be lying.”
“You crossed your heart. You swore. Don’t you ever,” he said, still shaking his fist.
When Dr. Curry came back, I didn’t tell him about the tin box. He didn’t ask about the sissy stuff again anyway. He finished interviewing us by asking the strangest questions that I tried to answer as honestly as possible. Then he assigned us to our cottages. I was assigned to Cottage 11, Cleveland cottage. David went to cottage 1.
Ten months later, David ended up “making ace.” This meant that he was released from the school for good grades and good behavior and was transferred back to Jacksonville, Florida. Me, I was going to be there for a while yet.
It would be forty years before I saw my friend David again. He’d gone on to become a police officer and later a private investigator. We were in touch for about a year before he was diagnosed with cancer. The day before he died, I sat beside him at the hospital. We both knew he had very little time.
“Remember the tin box at the orphanage?” he asked.
I nodded.
“I wonder if anyone ever found it.”
“Don’t know,” I said, swallowing the lump in my throat.
“I just wonder,” he said again.
David died the next day, and with him, my promise to never tell what was inside that box was released.
On those nights when we managed to sneak out, we’d dig up that tin box, pry open the lid, and take out the long, slender, well-worn jump rope with two red plastic handles hidden inside. Then, we boys, well, we’d take turns jumping that rope, hoping nobody would catch us. I wonder what Dr. Curry would have thought of that.
Psychological Help:
My Rehabilitation
“S
end in Kiser” blared the speaker on the secretary’s desk.
The old woman looked at me over her glasses, motioned her head forward, and pointed her finger at the doorway on my left. I stood up, turned, and waited for the door to open. Dr. Curry leaned out and looked at me with a very stern expression.
“Let’s go, mister, move it,” he said.
Quickly, I walked into his office and sat in the wooden chair to the left of his large wooden desk. His office smelled like tobacco smoke and already the smell was sickening to me.
I had heard from a few of the other boys that Dr. Curry was weird—and after meeting him that first time for my interview and cottage assignment, there was no doubt in my mind they were right. But no one had the guts to say he was a queer or a pervert, but I didn’t really know the difference one way or the other. I had already been molested in one form or another at the orphanage by Matron Mother Winters, Mr. Ball and Mr. Henderson, my orphanage housefathers, as well as a teacher named Bill. So being around weirdos was just a way of life for me.
There was a certain type of sacredness that followed me from the orphanage to this place. It was like a light buzz that immediately began generating in my head and throughout my body when confronted by anyone in authority. The truth be known, to me all adults were nothing more than a bunch of evil no-good bastards. But I sat there, keeping that secret thought to myself.
“Okay,” he said in a loud voice, “how many times have you fucked your mother?”
I just sat there in silent fear. The words
Think, Roger. Think, Roger. Think, Roger . . . Think quickly!
began racing through my mind.
“Goddamn it. Are you going to answer me boy?”
“I, I, don’t have a mother, Dr. Curry, sir,” I stuttered.
“Everyone’s got a goddamn mother, boy.”
“I came here from the orphanage home.”
“Well, you still have a mother. How many times did you fuck her?”
“I ain’t seen my mother in a long, long time, Dr. Curry, sir.”
He spun his chair around, facing the corner of the wall, with his back toward me. A minute or so passed without a word.
“Dr. Curry, sir. Are you alright?”