My Gentle Barn (11 page)

One o’clock came and went, and I began pacing alongside the fence. Finally I ran in to get my cell phone. When I’d dialed the number for Daybreak House, the woman who answered said she didn’t have anything on her schedule about a barn. Disappointment replaced the panic. I knew it had all seemed to fall into place too easily. It had been too good to be true. And yet there was also a feeling of relief as the nervousness drained out of me.

I went back into the barnyard and started sweeping off the barn’s patio, even though I’d done it just an hour before. When I moved to raking through the sand, I heard a car pull up outside. Then I heard the boys’ voices as they piled out of the van.

It was 1:45 and no one had called to say they were running late.
This would turn out to be a common scenario with a lot of the groups, from a lot of different agencies.

I opened the gate, and eight boys—twelve to sixteen years old—filed in with their eyes cast downward and their shoulders rolled forward, their hearts well out of reach. Most had short-cropped hair and oversize pants hanging low on their hips; some had tattoos, and not one of them looked me in the eye when I said hello. Most didn’t even say hello back.

I led them and their two counselors to the picnic tables in the grassy yard next to the barnyard. But most of the boys remained standing.

“Hi, welcome to the Gentle Barn. My name is Ellie,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. My nervousness had returned full force the moment the boys had walked in. “How are you all doing today?”

A few of the boys shrugged or grunted. One said, “OK,” but didn’t look up.

“You guys can sit down,” I said, “if you want to.” And two more boys sat, but the rest stayed on their feet.

“OK,” I said, touching the folded-up notes in my pocket but not pulling them out. “The Gentle Barn was my dream since I was seven years old. I didn’t live on a farm. I didn’t know anything about these kinds of animals.”

Most of the boys turned away to look at the animals.

“We’re going to talk here for a little bit,” I said. “Then we’ll go over and meet the animals.” But the boys were still looking over the fence, not at me.

“Hey, guys,” one of the counselors said. “Sit down and listen to the lady.” And slowly the boys made their way to the benches and sat.

“Thank you,” I said, and I really meant it. I swallowed hard and my mouth was dry, but I managed to get my next line out. “The animals—these and others before that—they saved me.”

At this point, one of the older boys perked up and said, “I thought
you
saved the animals,” and I was so grateful to this boy for speaking to me.

I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “I rescued them, but they also rescued me. They rescue me every day.”

“How?” the boy said.

“Thank you for asking.” I could feel myself beginning to relax, just a bit.

I told the boys about the animals, how they had survived abuse and neglect, how they’d healed and were such good models of resilience and hope. And how working with them gave me such a deep sense of purpose. “They’re my heroes,” I said. “I’m touched every day by their courage. By their forgiveness and trust.”

Even though most of the boys were staring down at the table or off into space, I could see that some of them were listening to what I was saying.

“Now,” I said, “I’d really like to know your names.” And I turned to the boy nearest me. “Let’s start with you.”

Some of the boys mumbled their names so quietly I had to strain to hear them. I suspected they’d been practicing for a long time at being unheard and unseen; it had probably been safer that way.

After they’d all told me their names, I said, “OK, let’s go meet the animals now.” And I walked to the gate in the chain-link fence and held it open for them. But the boys were just as slow to stand up as they’d been to take a seat. I took a breath and tried to relax, to give them as much time and space as they needed. But I was so anxious to have this all go well and to fit everything in that I wanted to do; I could feel myself straining against my own impatience, like a horse against her reins.

When the boys finally were all in the barnyard, I had the impulse to take them first to meet Mary, since she was the founding animal, but that wasn’t how I’d planned it. It made me nervous to second-guess myself, and I decided to stick with the plan I’d mapped out; somehow that made me feel safer. I led the boys across the barnyard to where Rudy the goose was drinking, making that quick slapping sound she made in the bowl as she snapped at the water.

When the boys had finally gathered around, I told them how Rudy had come to me from living in a car with a homeless woman and dozens of other animals. Then I shared how this goose had taught me an important lesson. For her first few weeks in my barnyard, she had stood in my way and gotten underfoot as I’d tried to do my morning chores. I sometimes stopped to pat her and say hello, but then I’d continue on with my chores as Rudy honked and stuck her long neck out this way and that, making odd, curling shapes with it. Each morning, I chugged along with my chores, ignoring Rudy’s fuss, until one morning when she bit me right on the butt.

At this the boys laughed, as I knew they would. And the sound of their laughter made me relax a little bit more.

“I was mad at first,” I said.

“Damn right,” said one of the boys.

“But then I realized that maybe she was just trying to tell me something.” I paused and looked around at the group. “You know how sometimes people can do something that seems mean, but it’s just because their quiet request got ignored?”

I could see in the boys’ faces that they were taking this in and thinking it over.

“What do you think she was trying to tell me?”

A couple of the boys shrugged, and one said, “Who knows? How would you know what a duck wants?”

“She’s a goose, stupid,” one of the other boys said.

“You’re right, she’s a goose,” I said, “but I’d like to ask that we talk to each other with kinder words, especially while you’re here. Remember, this is the
Gentle
Barn. Let’s try to be gentle, even with each other.”

The other boys laughed and taunted, and the boy who’d said “stupid” kicked at the ground.

“All of us,” I said. “This is a place to practice kindness.” I took a breath and then continued with my story. “So, I’m going to show you how I found out what Rudy wanted.” And I sat right down on the
ground in front of my goose, and she climbed straight into my lap and wrapped her neck around me.

“Whoa,” said one of the boys, and some of the others laughed.

With this big, warm goose in my lap, I took my first really deep breath of the day.

“Thanks, Rudy,” I said before I took the boys to meet the next animal.

I introduced the boys to all of the chickens and ducks, and then the goats and pigs, encouraging them to pet and interact with the animals, and telling them each animal’s story. After a half hour in the barnyard, I passed out grooming brushes, and the boys took turns brushing Shy the horse. Then I took them across the barnyard to meet our other horse, Katie. “Katie’s different from Shy,” I told them. “We have to walk very slowly and listen to her.” As we approached, Katie laid her ears back. “There,” I said. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” one of the boys said.

“Let’s take a step back,” I told them, and we all backed up and Katie’s ears relaxed forward. “Did you see that?”

A couple of the boys shook their heads.

“We’re going to take a step forward again, and this time watch Katie’s ears.”

We all took a step forward, and on cue, Katie laid her ears back again.

“She moved her ears down,” one of the boys said.

“Yes, good. Let’s back up.” When we’d taken a step back, I said, “She’s talking to us when she lays her ears back like that. What do you think she’s telling us?”

“She doesn’t like us,” another boy said.

“Well, she doesn’t know everyone here, so she doesn’t know yet if she likes you or not. But she is saying, ‘Don’t come any closer.’ I’m teaching her she doesn’t have to yell for me to hear her—yelling in Horse is biting or kicking—she just has to whisper—like putting her ears back.”

“Do all animals put their ears back?” one of the smaller boys asked.

“Great question,” I said. “All animals have a way of communicating. Not all of them put their ears back, but all of them have their way of saying, ‘Back off’ or ‘I’m hungry’ or ‘I love you.’ ”

“Animals say ‘I love you’?” the boy said, incredulous, and the other boys mocked him in false, high voices:
“I love you, I love you.”

“You have great questions,” I said, ignoring the other boys’ taunting. “Yeah, animals say ‘I love you.’ That’s what Rudy was telling me when she climbed into my lap.” I knew the taunting and mocking these boys did was their defense against being vulnerable. If a subject made them uncomfortable, they acted fake or macho to cover it up. “Rudy was being real,” I said. “She knows she’s safe here, so she doesn’t have to put on an act. She can show her real feelings.”

For our last half hour, I suggested that each of the boys go back and spend time with their favorite animal. Some went straight to a particular goat or to Shy, but others seemed uncertain and wandered around the barnyard or hung back, undecided. Eventually they all found their way to an animal or two. I sat and watched as these “tough” guys slowly began to let down their guard, interacting gently, almost tenderly with the goats and chickens and pigs.

At the end of the visit, I thanked the boys for being so kind and trustworthy with the animals, and I shook each one’s hand. The kids who walked out the gate looked like different people from the withdrawn teenagers who’d walked in just two hours before. Most of them had begun looking me in the eye when they spoke to me. They were standing taller, their chests less sunken and their heads held a bit higher.

“I knew it!” I said after the van had pulled away. I shut the gate and walked into the house with a huge grin on my face. It was true, I
had
suspected that some kind of transformation would take place in these kids, but it was something else to see it in action.

That night when I said good night to all the animals, I told them
how great they’d been with the kids that day, and how proud I was of them. I sat down in front of my big white goose. “Rudy, you’re a star,” I said. When I got to Katie, I kept a respectful distance, as I did every night. “Katie, your timing is impeccable. You’re the best teacher. One day, I’m going to kiss that soft nose of yours and scratch you under your beautiful mane.”

When I went inside the house, I wanted nothing more than to tell Scott all about my first day with the at-risk kids—how amazing it was to see them slowly come out of themselves and open up to the animals and even begin to open up to me—but I knew I wouldn’t get much of a response from Scott, so I held myself back, saying only that it had gone very well.

Daybreak House called me within days of this initial field trip to sign on to a once-monthly schedule of visits. They said the boys couldn’t stop talking about the animals. The counselors had been amazed at how much the boys had transformed in such a short time, how quickly they’d dropped their usual guardedness. The director said they’d been looking for something like this for a while, an alternative to traditional therapy that would reach inside the toughest of the kids and open them up.

I wanted the groups to come as often as the agencies could bring them. With consistency we could really make some headway with the kids. By the end of the first month I had different groups visiting three days a week, and I was still getting calls from more places. I had kids signed on to come regularly from probation camps, foster-care facilities, and special-needs classes. I also started getting one-time field trips from local schools; I’d sent brochures to every school within a fifty-mile radius of the Gentle Barn, but I’d had no idea so many would take me up on my offer to come visit.

I continued to be a nervous wreck before each new group of kids
arrived. Did I really know what I was doing? I was, after all, making all of this up. I hadn’t learned it from some authority in the field; I didn’t even know if there was an authority in the field. Was my theory about animals healing kids really viable? But slowly I began to see miracles taking place in my barnyard.

One such miracle happened on the very first visit from Evergreen Foster Care Facility. A lot of these children had been pulled out of severely abusive homes. Because of their emotional issues many didn’t go to regular schools but were schooled in the facility where they lived. On this first visit from Evergreen, fifteen boys and girls—ages six to fourteen—arrived at the barn. I could hear the excited chatter as they walked up the driveway from the bus. Five seconds after their arrival, one boy stopped and picked up a rock and threw it at the rain gutter of my house.

A counselor was immediately at his side. “Joey, stop! What are you doing?”

“A spider,” I heard him say. He bent to pick up another rock.

The counselor grabbed his arm and said, “I knew you weren’t going to behave. That’s it. You’re going to wait on the bus.”