Can You Keep a Secret? (19 page)

The other passengers were by now terrified and I just couldn’t work out what to do. In the end, a mum came up with a plan and, although I am ashamed that I agreed to it, I hope that everyone can see that we really had no choice: we held Benjamin’s mouth open and forced some Phenergan into him – it’s like a teething
medication, or that’s what people use it for, because it’s got a sedative in it – and within half an hour or so, Benjamin had pretty much collapsed on the floor in front of his seat.

The same stewardess who had made such a fuss of Benjamin crouching behind the rear seats, went to say, ‘Children aren’t allowed to sleep on the floor,’ but there was such protest from people in the seats around us that she backed off and let Benjamin stay down there. And for the rest of the journey, he pretty much slept there, not peacefully, but horribly, making groaning sounds, like he was being tortured.

I was pretty hysterical myself by this point, sobbing, and I said to Colby, ‘What are we going to do?’ But what could he say? Nothing! All he could say was what I was thinking, which was, ‘I don’t know, babe. This isn’t how I expected it to be.’

I’ve got more to tell you, obviously, but to be honest just admitting all that was quite a leap for me and pretty exhausting, so I might leave it there for now and just say again, thank you, Sandi, for helping me tell it like it is.

Comment (1):

Dear Caitlin, it was so lovely to meet you at the catch-up and I wish I’d had more time to talk to you, but I’ve read your whole post twice now and I wanted to get in touch and say, good for
you
for telling it how it is! So many of us are concerned with appearances and desperate not to look like we are failing, but in sharing our experiences we learn that we are not alone and we can conquer our problems together. I look forward to reading more of your journey and I hope you will join us again soon. Kind regards, Sandi Miller, Ho-Ho-Kus, USA

Comment (2):

Dear Caitlin, you might remember that we said hello at Sandi’s and I have been following your website for a while. I’m relieved to read this post because I have to admit I was very jealous of how well you were doing too! Now we can just all admit to each other: this is really hard!

Comment (3):

WOW, way to put people off adoption!! You’ve said in the past how sorry you feel for all the kids stuck in orphanages around the world and then you go and write a post that basically condemns more of them to that life because who is going to want to take on this kind of challenge? Don’t you think it would have been better to do what adults do and SUCK. IT. UP????

The (Alternative) Book of Benjamin

Well, what can I say? Firstly, thank you, Sandi Miller, for your lovely comment after my last post, and as for the (anonymous) commentator, well, you’re entitled to your opinion, I suppose.

I’m actually glad that I decided to be honest about this process that so many of us are now sharing. Meeting Benjamin and then bringing him home has been challenging, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t acknowledge that truth. Life is not a fairytale.

Now that Benjamin has been under our roof in Larchmont for a while longer, I thought I would update you all on his progress.

It was late at night when our flight from Moscow finally landed at JFK. Believe me, there was a great sigh of relief from everyone on the plane when we finally touched down. I suppose the other passengers were thinking, ‘Thank God that nightmare is over,’ but it was far from over for us.

I did think, ‘Well, the worst is surely over. Now let’s get our boy home and we can all start settling down.’ Colby had organised a
town car from the airport to our home and Benjamin must have still been exhausted because he slept on the back seat. He only woke up when Colby started carrying him up the path to our house.

We put him down on the floor in our living room and he immediately scampered into the furthest corner and curled up in a tight ball.

I had already decided that it would be a good idea to try to get Benjamin into the local time zone and into our routines so I gathered him up and sat him down in our kitchen and tried to serve him some dinner. He had eaten very little – nothing really – on the plane and by rights should have been starving.

Well, maybe he was, but sitting down to eat like any other hungry four-year-old obviously wasn’t going to happen.

One of the first things I’d found out about Benjamin when we were still in Moscow was that he didn’t know how to use cutlery. He ate with his hands. I accepted that because I really had no choice, but obviously it can’t be allowed to continue. Colby says we need to get him into new, more civilised habits.

The doctor in Moscow had warned me that Benjamin had probably been taking a lot of his food from a bottle in the orphanage – meaning, he’d been sucking on juices and formula – because it’s easy for them to just drop a bottle into a cot rather than getting every child in the orphanage to sit up to eat.

Sucking on bottles had left him with really bad teeth.

I had let him suck on bottles in Moscow, thinking, ‘I’ll sort out the whole knife and fork thing when I get home.’ Of course, I didn’t expect it to be easy. You can’t just give a knife and fork to a child who has hardly ever seen one before and expect them to know what to do.

So that first night I served up some soft food – mashed pumpkin, mashed potatoes, some gravy – on one of Benjamin’s new plates and gave him the curved fork and spoon, made especially for small hands, but instead of trying to pick up a forkful of mashed pumpkin with the fork, he picked up a handful and squeezed it.

You have to imagine what this was like for us, just off the plane, after that horrific journey, exhausted, heads spinning, now having to try to start teaching our son table manners!

I tried to show Benjamin how to use the spoon, but he wouldn’t even pick it up, he just dropped it on the ground. I picked it up, and he dropped it again. And then again. Obviously I got sick of that pretty quickly and tried to spoon the meal into his mouth myself, but that set him off screaming again.

In the end, I just gave Benjamin another bottle, which he gulped down – so he obviously was hungry! – and then he collapsed onto himself, and started making the same terrible snoring sound he’d made on the plane.

I took him up to his room – that beautiful blue room that I’d put all my heart into – and put him in the crib we’d bought for him. I know that at four he’s too big for a crib, but everyone on the Yahoo chat boards – and even our attorney, Laura – said that even the older children in the orphanages sleep in cribs in the orphanage. It’s what they’re used to doing and you don’t want to give them too many shocks when you bring them home.

Benjamin didn’t resist being put in the crib. He seemed to be out cold. I left him there, tucked under the covers, and went downstairs and poured myself the biggest glass of wine you’ve ever seen. It wasn’t quite the first evening home that I’d imagined with Colby. There was
no: ‘Oh my goodness, aren’t we lucky?’ and ‘Can you believe he’s really here?’ It was more just trying to keep our eyes open.

Anyway, an hour or so later, I went into Benjamin’s room, and I saw that he was awake, but even though he must have heard me when I came up the stairs, he didn’t react. The way he was sitting really depressed me. He had his legs coming out between the bars of the cot, and his forehead resting against the bars, like he was some kind of caged animal.

I went over to make some loving, motherly gestures. Benjamin’s eyes were open but it was almost like he was in a trance. He didn’t respond at all. By now Colby had come up the stairs to see what was going on, and he said, ‘We should just leave him, let him sleep tonight and see how things look in the morning. He’s probably exhausted and I know I am.’

I agreed to follow Colby to bed, but I couldn’t go to sleep. I watched Benjamin on the monitor. He didn’t move for an hour. He stayed exactly where I’d left him, with his head resting against the bars and his legs stuck out through them. I decided I should go back in and see if there was anything I could do to settle him, or at least get him to lie down and be more comfortable.

I went up the stairs very quietly and went over to touch him, but he flinched. It was as if he was allergic to me, or as if my touch was hot.

I went back to the kitchen and just sat at the bench for a while. Then I gulped down the rest of the glass of wine and decided that I would have to get some sleep, and I must have managed to nod off because the next thing it was dawn.

It was still a little dark outside, but I went up the stairs to Benjamin’s room. There wasn’t much light coming through the attic
windows, so I ran my hand along the inside of the wall until I found the light switch. I wanted to be careful not to wake Benjamin if he was asleep. I turned the dimmer down low, and flicked the light. At first I thought, ‘No, my eyes mustn’t have adjusted properly, I must be seeing things.’ But I wasn’t seeing things: Benjamin had spent the night clawing the beautiful blue-and-white wallpaper off the walls around his crib.

There were large strips of it lying in the crib and on the floor, and he’d left patterns on the wall, like when you get sunburnt and you peel all the big strips of skin off.

I was really angry – I had spent ages decorating that room – but everyone says that these adopted children are distressed when they get taken out of the orphanage and you have to be kind and patient. So I gulped my feelings down, walked across the room and lifted Benjamin out of the crib, saying, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, I can fix this.’

Of course he couldn’t understand me – I still have no idea, really, how much English he understands – and in any case, my patient reaction seemed to make no difference to him. I went to gather up the strips of paper out of the crib and that’s when I saw that Benjamin had pooped in his bed as well.

I didn’t know what to make of that. I’d put Benjamin into Pull-Ups before I’d put him in the crib. That might sound strange given he’s four, but he really isn’t toilet-trained. The staff at the orphanage had him in underpants – horrible old grey ones with stretched legs and an old man’s opening in the front – but he’d wet them in the van on the way back to the hotel.

I had tried to change Benjamin out of those wet pants back at the hotel, but he fought me off and it felt … I don’t know … wrong to
be trying to rip the undies off a child I hardly even knew, so in the end I left them on, and maybe that was a mistake because from that day forward there’s been trouble on the peeing and pooping front.

I started each day in Moscow trying to get Benjamin’s pale legs into the new trendy undies we’d brought for him from the US. But before long, every pair we’d taken with us was soaked through, or stained with poop, and how can you really encourage a child to use the toilet or the potty when you aren’t even speaking the same language?

We decided in the end to put Benjamin in the Pull-Ups that we’d brought with us, which worked well enough and were a godsend on the plane.

I figured that I’d have plenty of time to help Benjamin get back into using a toilet once we got home, but I have to tell you, it hasn’t been easy. I didn’t scold Benjamin for pooping in his crib that first night, but even though he’s been with us for almost two months now, he is still not using the toilet and will go in his pants or on the kitchen floor, or wherever he happens to be.

For some reason, Colby seems to think that this is my fault, and also my problem to solve.

I don’t know if everyone’s relationship is like this, but Colby hasn’t actually been all that involved with the day-to-day caring for Benjamin since we got back from Moscow. He went back to work a week after we got home and Benjamin has mostly been my responsibility since that day. I have no idea what Colby told his colleagues about the experience of picking up Benjamin. I do know that he didn’t exactly take the digital camera in to show off pictures of his new son. I also know that I lasted only about ten minutes that first
day before I was phoning him, trying to get him to come home and help me, because Benjamin had started screaming again. But of course Colby isn’t stupid! He didn’t pick up because he knew it would be me, sobbing and crying.

People who haven’t experienced what we’re going through probably don’t understand. There’s the screaming to deal with, and the pooping and peeing, and there’s the problem of getting food into Benjamin, and of trying to get him to understand what I’m saying, and believe me when I say I get no thanks from him, not a smile, not a giggle, nothing.

It’s more like a war.

With the toileting, I’ve tried everything – coaxing him, praising him, threatening him, rewarding him – and he simply will not use the toilet, and because he kicks and scratches when I try to get his wet underpants off – and he’s incredibly strong – I’ll admit that I’ve taken to leaving him wet, and I’ve found that he’ll eventually strip himself out of his filthy pants and he’ll leave them where they fall for me to find. I’ve also lost count of the number of times I’ve had to get down on my hands and knees to wipe a fresh poo – sticky and stinky – off the floor, or even the walls, because he throws his filthy pants at the walls, too.

I keep thinking, it’s just not possible that he behaved this way in the orphanage, is it? Because I honestly cannot imagine those Russian nurses walking around behind Benjamin, cleaning up his mess. Colby has said to me, ‘We should do what my father used to do with the dog, and rub his nose in it. That’ll put a stop to it.’ But you can’t do that, obviously, and in some ways, the poop is the smaller problem, because the bigger problem is food.

My initial thought, back when we first found out that Benjamin was four years old, was that he would be able to sit at a table and eat from a plate, like anyone else, and so I didn’t buy a highchair. I didn’t think I’d need one.

Then we found out that he couldn’t use cutlery, so I’ve had to start teaching him, as if he’s a baby. And it’s not exactly easy because Benjamin also doesn’t know how to sit at the table. I’ve tried to help him. I’ve demonstrated how it’s done, and so has Colby: we’ve pushed him down onto a chair, and we’ve moved the chair into place, bending his knees and pushing his bum down, but he immediately climbs off and sits on the ground. I said to Colby, ‘It’s crazy. He doesn’t seem to understand about furniture.’ Luckily one of the neighbours had an old highchair they didn’t need anymore and Colby asked if we could borrow it. So, now I have a four-year-old who uses a highchair! And that means I start each day strapping Benjamin into the highchair, in the hope of getting some food into him, but even that doesn’t really work. He’s strapped down – the highchair has some braces built into it – but he still thrashes his head from one side to the other, refusing to let the food on the spoon anywhere near his mouth.

Sometimes he thrashes so hard, I think the chair might topple over, and I almost always end up with food splattered all over the walls. I’ve taken to wearing a rubbish bag over my clothes so I don’t ruin everything I own. It really is amazing to me, how he resists being fed. Surely, after the orphanage, he’d be so happy to have good healthy food?

Another problem we’re having – and I’m sorry to have such a long list – is Benjamin’s basic lack of respect for things. I told
you how he scratched all the wallpaper off the wall? Well, that hasn’t been the end of it. Like everyone, I was looking forward to reading books to Benjamin at bedtime. That’s one of the lovely things about being a new mum, right, being able to read to your little boy?

Well, one of the first times I tried, I pulled up a chair beside Benjamin’s crib and said, ‘I have a new book here and I’d love to read it to you.’ I speak to him in English like that because everyone says the best way for children to learn is just to speak English. And also, the sound of your voice can comfort them apparently, even if they don’t understand what is being said.

I opened the book – it was a thick cardboard picture book – and began to read. I turned each page slowly, and I gave a commentary: ‘Look at this, Benjamin! A blue horse! Have you seen a horse before?’ I might as well have been talking to myself for all the reaction I got, and in the end, when I was finished reading, I just said, ‘Alright, I’ll leave the book here for you, Benjamin, and I’ll leave your night light on. Maybe you can look at the pictures? Anyway, good night.’

I didn’t dare try to lean into the crib to kiss him, and instead I stretched out an arm and put my palm on the curve of his bony spine. Just like every other time, he flinched at my touch.

I left him to it, and watched for a while on the monitor, but there was no real movement. Then, in the morning, when I went into Benjamin’s room, I saw that he’d torn all the hard pages out of the book and thrown them around. I was very upset and trying not to show it because everyone says that’s the worst thing you can do and you just have to be patient. Believe me, I’m trying.