January First: A Child's Descent Into Madness and Her Father's Struggle to Save Her (27 page)

But that is exactly what I am worried about. We are through the looking glass now. Things that I thought could never happen have happened. Kim can tell me until she is blue in the face that Jani will never just slip away into Calilini, but what if she does?

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Late March 2009

W
hat food did you bring?” Jani asks me as I enter the unit.

“I brought mac ’n’ cheese from Burger King …” I stop, seeing Jani’s middle finger, splinted, wrapped in bandages.

“What happened to your finger?”

“Adam slammed my finger in the door. Look.” She removes the bandages. Her finger is mottled black and blue.

Adam is another boy on the unit. He’s a year younger than Jani, but he’s the first child on the unit who’s worse than she is.

I immediately get a nurse.

“We had it checked by a doctor and x-rayed,” she tells me. “It’s not broken.”

“What happened?”

“She called him a dog; he hit her and she hit him back.”

Oh no. Jani calls all people “dogs,” but this kid is African-American and he may have had a bad experience with the word. Is this going to
be Jani’s future, I wonder, unintentionally starting fights because she doesn’t understand social cues?

I go back to her room, where she’s eating the Burger King food I brought.

I left the door open and a small boy appears at the door.

“That’s Adam,” Jani tells me.

Adam, a smile on his face, the same twisted smile I’ve seen on Jani’s face, takes a step into her room, a violation of the rules. He is now trying to provoke her.

Jani moves toward him, lifting her arm in preparation to hit. I grab her by her shirt and hold her back just as a male nurse, Adam’s assigned “one-to-one,” reaches the door and pulls Adam back.

“Sorry,” the nurse says. “He got away from me for a minute.” He closes the door.

Jani immediately pushes it open again.

“Jani, where are you going?” I ask nervously, even though I can guess. “Come back and finish your food.”

“I have to hit him,” she tells me in the same voice she used going after Honey.

I run out into the hall. Jani is already at the entrance to Adam’s room. She disappears inside. I race in and see her with her arm raised, moving in for the strike.

Adam is struggling to get free of the nurse holding him. I grab on to Jani and start moving backward, pulling her along with me. The nurse and I look like boxing referees trying to keep two fighters apart.

“I need to hit him,” Jani repeats.

“No, you don’t.”

“He hurt me.”

“That’s because you called him a dog. He didn’t like that. You have to call people by their names.”

Jani is struggling against me. “Let me hit him!”

“I need something to distract her,” I call to another nurse in the
day room, the unit’s communal area, and look around. At the end of the corridor is another room. This one is filled with musical instruments, including a drum set. Maybe I can get her banging on the drums as a way to vent her aggression.

“Could we get the music room opened?”

The nurse unlocks the music room.

I take the drumsticks and pound on the snare and the floor tom.

“Here.” I hand Jani the drumsticks, and she hits the floor tom without much enthusiasm.

I pick up a second set of sticks. “No, like this.” I pound the hell out of the floor tom, the snare drum, and the crash cymbals. “Really hit ’em,” I yell over my noise. “This is something you can hit. It’s okay because it’s not alive. Really get into it! Take your aggression out! Beat the heck out of them! It’s okay.”

Jani hits harder.

Adam appears at the door, followed by his nurse.

“Sorry,” the nurse says apologetically, trying to pull Adam away. “He heard the drums.”

“I want to play, too!” Adam calls into the room.

“You can’t right now. Jani is in there,” the nurse answers, trying to steer Adam away.

“It’s okay,” I call to the nurse. “He can come in. There are two sets of sticks.”

The nurse looks at me like I’m crazy.

“Are you sure?”

If Jani is ever going to be able to survive in the outside world, she has to learn how to deal with people. If she can socialize with Adam, despite wanting to hit him, then that would be a huge break-through.

“Yeah,” I reply. “There’s enough drums for everybody.” I flip my sticks, holding them out to Adam.

“But first let’s make sure everybody understands the rules. The
only thing you can hit with the sticks are the drums. There will be no hitting of each other. Understood?”

Adam nods. I hand him the sticks and position him on the opposite side of the kit from Jani.

“Adam, you hit this drum, which is called the floor tom, and Jani, you hit this drum, which is called the snare drum.”

Adam bangs on the floor tom.

“I don’t want to play anymore,” Jani says, tossing her sticks on the floor.

I pick them up and hold them out to her.

“No, I am going to teach you and Adam how to play the drums.” I know I am tempting fate by having them within an arm’s reach of each other with wooden drumsticks, but I am determined to make this work.

Jani takes the sticks, bangs on the snare a few times, then reaches for Adam with her right stick.

“No,” I say, grabbing her arm. “We hit drums, not people. Come on, you two. Let’s see if we can get a beat going.”

Jani goes back to drumming. Adam is beating the skins as well. They are completely out of time with each other, but I don’t care. If I can get them to play beside each other without hitting, I’ve succeeded.

I see Jani extend her arm again, past the crash cymbal, drumstick raised above Adam’s head.

“No!” I say, grabbing her arm again. “Jani, if you hit Adam, then we have to leave the music room.”

Jani pulls back her arm and screams, hitting the drumstick against the side of her head with full force.

I am so shocked I can’t move. Jani screams again and pounds the stick into the side of her head as hard as she can.

The need for action finally breaks through the shock of what I’m seeing, and I jump forward, wrenching the drumstick from her hand.

She uses the other stick to hit her head, and I quickly take that as well, standing there, breathing heavily.

“Jani! Why did you do that?” I want an answer. I need an answer. Hitting herself like that must hurt beyond belief, yet she is not responding to the pain.

Jani suddenly looks up at me as if she just realized I am here. She looks scared and confused, like she isn’t sure what just happened.

Oh, my God.

For more than a year, I’ve wanted to see the enemy and I just saw it. That wasn’t a behavior. Something took control of Jani’s body, and when it was gone, Jani was left with no idea what had happened. Up until now, there was still a small part of me that wondered if she could control this, but there is no doubt anymore. Its name is schizophrenia, and if she doesn’t do what it wants, it will turn on her, making her hurt herself.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Early April 2009

V
isiting hours at UCLA are longer on the weekends, from 2 to 4
P.M.
, the only time all three of us go to visit Jani. It’s our family time, but there is one other reason we bring Bodhi. He is a necessary guinea pig. The only way to know if the medications are working is if we can make it through the entire two hours without Jani attempting to hurt Bodhi.

“Bodhi!” Jani cries and runs up to his stroller as we come in. She is happy to see him, and that is an encouraging sign, but I don’t start jumping for joy. We still have two hours to get through.

“Hi, Bodhi.” She looks down, waiting, like she’s expecting an answer. I think she’s hoping he’ll understand her and be the flesh-and-blood friend she’s never had.

Susan lies down on Jani’s bed, like she always does. These trips to UCLA really seem to exhaust her. She talks to Jani, asking her about
the other kids on the unit, particularly if there are any other girls, and if she ever plays with any of them.

I take Bodhi out of his stroller, and he begins crawling around the room. For the life of me, I can’t remember when he started to crawl. He’s already pulling himself up to a standing position, using the chair next to Jani’s desk to reach for the painted bobblehead animals Jani makes in occupational therapy.

I watch him get his stubby fingers around a bobblehead dog. I glance over at Jani, who is still talking to Susan, praying she won’t notice.

But she does. I wince as she moves to him, grabbing the dog away.

“Bodhi, no!” she scolds him like a puppy that just peed on the floor. But she doesn’t hit him. She just holds the toy, looking down at him, telling him he can’t touch her things. At least she didn’t hit him. Maybe the Thorazine is having an effect.

Bodhi starts to cry, not understanding why he can’t have the dog.

“Jani,” I say to her, “let him have it. He just wants to look at it.”

“No.” She lifts the dog high above her head so Bodhi can’t reach it.

“Jani, he just wants to explore. That’s how babies learn about the world around them, by touch.”

“But he’ll teethe on them,” she complains.

That is true. Bodhi puts everything in his mouth.

“But that’s just part of the exploration. His mouth is more sensitive than his hands are at this age.”

“I don’t want baby slobber on them.” She scoops up all her toys in her arms.

“We can wash them off.”

“He’ll break them,” she argues.

“How?”

“With his teeth.”

“Jani, your toys are solid plastic. That’s the whole reason plastic
was invented. It’s unbreakable. Humans can’t bite through plastic. It’s impossible.”

“Bodhi can.”

“No, he can’t.”

“Yes, he can,” she says, convinced, even though she’s never seen him do it.

I take one of her toys, a Littlest Pet Shop dog, from her hands and put it in my mouth. I bite down as hard as I can and pull it out.

“See?” I show her. “Not even any teeth marks. And my teeth are way stronger than Bodhi’s.”

Jani is still jealously guarding her toys. “I still don’t want him teething on my stuff.”

“How come I can put your toys in my mouth but Bodhi can’t?”

“Because you’re not going to break them.”

“Jani,” I say, fighting a sense of exasperation. “I just showed you nobody can bite through plastic!”

“He will.” Jani looks at Bodhi like he isn’t human.

There is no reasoning with her. I can see it in her eyes. She really believes Bodhi can bite through her toys.

“Fine. Then you need to put your toys where he can’t reach them.”

I bring his toy cars out from under his stroller. “Here, Bodhi. Come play with me.”

Bodhi needs someone who’ll be kind to him. Susan and I bring him here every weekend, to the sister who is supposed to love him. But she can’t, I remind myself. The schizophrenia won’t let her.

Because Susan is lying there, Bodhi crawls over to Jani’s bed and pulls himself up. He finds one of Jani’s stuffed animals, a dog, and moves it to his mouth. He chews on one of its legs, probably because it feels good on his gums.

“Bodhi!” Jani moves like lightning, snatching the dog from Bodhi’s mouth so hard I am afraid she’ll pull his teeth with it.

I grab the dog and put the same leg in my mouth and chew, then hand it back to Jani.

“See? It was me,” I lie.

Last weekend, Bodhi knocked one of her toys over. She didn’t see it happen but heard it. When she turned and saw her toy on the floor, she started moving toward Bodhi, fist up, but I was able intervene.

“Jani, Bodhi didn’t do it,” I said, desperate to protect Bodhi without having to leave.

And then an idea came into my head. If Jani’s grasp on reality was basically gone, maybe I could make her believe something that didn’t happen.

“Jani, didn’t you feel that earthquake just now?” I asked, testing my theory. Of course, I was hoping she would say no and wonder why I was asking, but instead she looked confused for a moment.

“Yes,” she finally answered.

I swallowed down my sense of devastation. “That’s right. The earthquake knocked over your toy.” I lied to protect my son. And she believed me.

Now I am biting down on the stuffed dog again. “See? It was me.”

“No, it wasn’t. It was Bodhi,” she says now.

I deflate. It isn’t working this time because she actually saw his teeth on her stuffed animal. I prepare to stop her from hitting him.

But she grabs the stuffed dog, turns away, and opens the bathroom door in her room.

“Don’t forget to wipe yourself and then flush the toilet and wash your hands,” Susan calls out.

I hear water run.

Suddenly, Jani emerges from the bathroom, wailing and in tears.

“Jani, what is it?” I rush to her.

She holds up the stuffed dog. “He’s all wet.”

The dog is soaked.

“I was trying to wash the baby slobber off,” she continues through her tears, “but he got all wet!”

I force a laugh, hoping I can prevent her from going off by playing down what happened.

“That’s no big deal. We can just pop him in the dryer. He’ll be fine.”

“No, we can’t! He’s ruined. I’ll have to throw him away.” She drops the dog into the trash. “Bye, bye, doggie.”

“Jani …” I retrieve the dog from the trash. “Actually, he’ll probably dry in the sun.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jani striding for Bodhi. Susan sits up like a gunshot, and I break for the other side of the room; as wired as we are, we are still too slow. Jani hits Bodhi square in the back, hard.

I reach out and pull her back, angry because my reflexes are slipping. I guess more than a year of always being ready to react has worn me out.

“Jani, it’s okay,” I say to her, soothingly. “We can dry him.”

She turns and starts hitting me.

I get down on my knees, my hands on her shoulders, trying to reach her.

“Jani, we can dry him—” I break off as she hits me in the face.

I suck in my breath, tasting blood from my lip.

Susan takes Bodhi out. She has gone to get the nursing staff, to tell them what happened, that the meds aren’t working.