Jeremy made a face. “You kiss Rodney? Why?”
“Because I like to,” Don said as Rodney groaned. “I like him very much.”
“Oh,” Jeremy said, and Don knew him well enough by now to see that his mind was racing. Maybe he hadn’t given it much thought before. Don worried that bringing it to his attention now might make things harder, but he knew truth was important.Jeremy had been fed so many lies over his lifetime that Don and Rodney couldn’t bring themselves to add to it.
“Do you have thoughts about that?” the social worker asked. “Any questions?”
“My mom said people like that are bad,” Jeremy said. “She said they’re all queers.”
Rodney and Don exchanged a glance. If the kid thought he could shock them, he was wrong. They’d heard that word from bigger and scarier people before. This was a child repeating what he’d heard. Nothing more, nothing less.
Rodney leaned forward. “You know bad words?”
Jeremy blinked. “Yeah, words I’m not supposed to say or I get in trouble.”
“Right. Sometimes, those words come out if we mean them or not. It happens to everyone. So I’m not mad at you, but I need you to know some of those words you just used aren’t nice. They hurt my feelings.”
“Who cares?” Jeremy asked.
“I do,” Rodney said. “Words are important. They can be used like a gun or a sword. To hurt people, Jeremy. Words can hurt, even if you didn’t mean for them to. When we hurt someone’s feelings, what’s the right thing to do? We talked about this, remember?”
Jeremy scowled at the floor. “No,” he said.
Rodney shook his head. “We want you to live with us, kid. We want you to live in our home and be part of our family. But if we do that, you need to understand that our family is different than a lot of other families. Different isn’t bad, it’s just… different. Some people don’t like it, but they need to learn to mind their own business.”
“Those words you used,” Don said. “People have called us things like that before. Mean people, bullies. And I know you’re not a bully. You’re better than that. I see it every time we’re together.”
Jeremy ignored them, going back to his cars.
Two days. They stayed away for two days, thinking as hard as they ever had. Weighing everything they could think of. Jeremy’s past. His present. His future.Theirfuture. What if he continued on as he had? What if he never changed? Or was it like deprogramming, in a way, something that would take time? He was a child. He could still learn. He could still have a chance.
They hadn’t planned on going back for three days, but then the social worker called them and told them Jeremy was having a meltdown. He was yelling for them. Screaming. Throwing things. Breaking his bed, his toys. The social worker had a bruise on her arm from where he’d hit her.
When they arrived, he tore into them, demanding to know why they’d left him, that they were just like everyone else, making promises and then breaking them. He was sorry, he told them, tears streaming down his face. He didn’t mean to use those words, honest. He fisted his hair and yelled at the ground, face splotchy, cords on his neck sticking out.
It took him close to three hours to calm down, to start catching his breath. By the time the worst was over, Jeremy was exhausted, lying against Rodney, head on his shoulders. “I want to go with you,” he muttered. “Please take me with you.”
Don wondered if there was anyone strong enough to withstand such an onslaught.Please, he’d said.Please take me with you.
They did.
And it was magic, both light and dark. Sometimes, they had months and months of calm, months of beauty, months of falling in love with a child who was seeing, perhaps for the first time, that things could be good, things could be pleasant and nice and joyful. Months where they’d go fishing or to the movies or the drive-in burger place with waitresses on roller skates. Months where they’d paint Jeremy’s bedroom, where they’d sit around the kitchen tableand laugh and laugh. Months of Jeremy reading to them, getting better with his words almost every single day.
But those months—those beautiful moments in time—did not last, nor were they the norm.
At school, Jeremy was enrolled in specialized classes. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Jeremy qualified for the Individualized Education Program, which catered to those with disabilities. It was strict, but then it needed to be. Different types of homework from the other students. Oral tests instead of paper tests. Monthly meetings, followed by yearly reviews. The people at the school were good, kind. Patient, even when Jeremy was anything but. Did they say anything about Rodney and Don being parents? Not to their faces, but Don saw the whispers behind their hands whenever they arrived or departed.
They received reports. Jeremy did this well. Jeremy did that well. Jeremy listened today. Jeremy didn’t listen today. Today, we learned about kindness. Today, Jeremy threw a book at a teacher. His grades fluctuated, sometimes good, sometimes abysmal. But they did not give up.
And at home: Six months after he arrived, he was told he couldn’t go outside until he finished his homework. Jeremy didn’t want to do homework. He wanted to ride his bike. No, Rodney told him. He had math problems to do, an entire worksheet full of them.
Jeremy had a meltdown. Chest hitching, hands balled into fists, tears in his eyes, he yelled at them that they were stupid, that they were terrible. He hated them. He hated this house, his room. He hated everything. He kicked a hole into the wall. He tried to do it again until Rodney picked him up, pinning Jeremy’s arms to his sides.
“Let me go!” Jeremy howled, kicking his legs out.
He calmed down, eventually. It took hours. By the time he was asleep, Rodney and Don could barely stand on their own. They sat in the kitchen, staring at the hole Jeremy had kicked into the wall.
They took him to doctors, to specialists, to psychologists and counselors. Most said he needed to be medicated. An antipsychotic, among other things. It would help him, Don and Rodney were told. And with puberty on the horizon—the body flooded with hormones—it might only get worse from here without some sort of intervention.