My Gentle Barn (22 page)

I looked at Blue, head down at the back of her stall. “What if we were to take her?” I asked, just trying the idea on. “Maybe we could try to cheer her up.”

“Well, you’re certainly welcome to try,” Liz said.

On the drive home, the kids conked out in the backseat, and Jay and I talked in the fading light about Blue.

“There’s just so much going on in our life,” Jay said. “Do we really have the right to bring another animal into this mess?”

“But if we don’t, she’s just going to go from kid to kid to kid. We could save her from that.”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“It would remind us of who we are. We were born to save animals, and we can’t let anything, or
anyone
, get in the way of that. And besides, no matter what happens, we’re never going to just abandon any of our animals. If Blue joins us, she won’t be abandoned either.” As I talked about this new potential project—taking on a new horse and trying to raise her spirits—I could feel my own despondency lifting. In fact, just being out of our usual environment had done me a lot of good. I realized as we drove home that I’d been drowning not in an ocean but in a tiny little pond. All I needed to do was step out of it. There was a whole world out there.

The next morning Jay had come around, and we called Liz to tell her we wanted to come get Blue the following weekend. On Saturday, we took a trailer back out to the horse rescue and brought Blue home, and I began her emotional rehabilitation. But after a few weeks of
concentrated effort, Blue was staying true to her name. Nothing I did seemed to lift her spirits. I even tried equine massage, which had been a miracle cure for our horse Shy when she’d arrived depressed. Not knowing what else to try, I called Liz at the horse rescue. “We’ve got to get that other horse back,” I said.

“But we adopted Sasha out,” Liz said.

“Blue is dying of heartbreak. I think seeing Sasha is the only thing that will bring her back.”

“I’m sorry, Ellie. We placed her. I can’t just yank her out of the home without cause.” Liz told me she’d let me know if Sasha ever got returned. But she said she doubted that would happen, at least not anytime soon.

I had hoped that taking on a horse rehabilitation project would lift both the horse’s spirits and ours, but the project had not solved a thing. Now we not only had a neighbor who was making our life hell but also an inconsolable horse. It seemed like a collection of failures was racking up, and I secretly began to wonder if the magic I had felt in my barnyard since the start of the Gentle Barn was beginning to wear off.

When the winter holidays were over, my sessions with the at-risk kids picked up again. I even had a new group sign on. Before each session I had to pack away all my doubts and grief, push aside the mess with Paige, and quell my worries about Blue. I would take several deep breaths to steady myself.
Be present for the kids
, I would remind myself.
Blue will be fine, just like all the animals end up being fine. And don’t let one angry neighbor rob these kids of your attention. They deserve better than that
.

The group that had just signed on would turn out to be not just another new group; working with them would ultimately be the experience I needed to remind me—really remind me—of why I did this work. They were from a foster-care facility. Among them were a few
older teenagers who looked almost too old to be in foster care. My guess was that they were “transitional,” just about to age out of the program. Whereas an eighteen-year-old with a solid family structure generally has his parents’ support through the transition to college or a job, a kid in foster care gets dropped the moment he turns eighteen—dumped from the program and stripped of government support, with very few systems in place to pick up the slack. Many end up on the street or in a homeless shelter, or even in jail. Some don’t make it to adulthood. Understandably these kids develop well-honed attitudes of indifference as a defense, and the teenagers in this group walked into the barnyard with their strut and their tough-kid masks.

One of the older boys stood outside the far edge of the group, like a satellite held in orbit just beyond my grasp. He was tall and kept his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes focused on the ground. Nothing I did or said got his attention, though I kept trying. “Hey, come on over,” I called. Or: “Do you want to give this pig a tummy rub?” Never a response. I kept looking up to see if he’d uncrossed his arms, let down his guard, but there was no change in him even as the rest of the group softened and began to engage more wholly with the animals. He was the most resolute teenager I’d ever had in the barnyard. I could feel all the pain that was balled up inside him under that false front of apathy.

But the other kids needed my attention too, so finally I had to just let it go and focus on the rest of the group.
I guess you can’t win them all
, I thought. I hated feeling like I was giving up on him—just like the system was about to do.

I sat down with some kids who were petting the chickens and rabbits, and we talked about how to tell if the animals wanted to be picked up or not. Then I showed them how the goats liked to be scratched right between their horns because it was a spot they couldn’t get to themselves. Eventually it was time to wrap up, and as I watched the kids navigate their way through the barnyard, saying good-bye to the animals, I heard a deep, quiet voice behind me.

“Can I pet that chicken?”

Could it be?
I whirled around to see the tall, quiet boy standing there, his arms still crossed and his gaze still on the ground. But he had spoken to me and he wanted to pet a chicken.

“Of course,” I said. “That hen there?”

He nodded, and I practically ran to where the hen was pecking at the dirt. “May I pick you up, Strawberry?” She stopped pecking and cocked her head. “Thank you,” I said, and I brought her over to the boy and held her out to him.

He allowed me to set the hen in his arms. For a second he seemed frozen, just staring down at Strawberry. But then very gently he began to pet her head with two fingers. He opened his hand and stroked her from head to tail feathers with the tenderest touch. I gestured to one of the counselors who’d accompanied the group to give us a few more minutes, and the boy stood there petting Strawberry as though in a trance. After a while he looked off into space, and his eyes were glistening. “I used to have a chicken when I was a little kid,” he said. “I came home from school one day and she was gone. No one would tell me where she was.”

“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” I told him. “That happened to me too when I was little, and I know how much that hurts.”

“She was the only one who understood me,” he said.

“Mm-hm.” I held him in my gaze, even though he was looking down again.

Slowly, as he talked and as I let him know I understood, his gaze traveled higher and higher, until finally he was looking right into my eyes. “I miss my parents,” he said.

I nodded.

He told me he hadn’t seen them in a very long time, that he’d been put into a foster home, and then another and another. He told me his name was Andre, and he gently petted the hen the whole time he talked.

This was a different person from the tough, apathetic teenager
who’d walked in two hours earlier. Locked so deeply within his pain and isolation, he’d been unable to give anyone a chance to get inside. He’d built a fortress to keep out the hurt, but those thick walls had also kept out the love. Andre’s walls came down that day because of a little hen named Strawberry; she’d opened him up wide and allowed him to feel my empathy.

As I waved good-bye to the group, I felt a fire ignite inside me. I was not going to let Paige stop this boy and others like him from getting the love and healing they needed. Hell if I was going to give up on my dream! I didn’t know yet which path would lead us out of this insanity, but we had to find a way. The Gentle Barn was not going to shut its doors because of one selfish person.

The path became visible one cold evening in the barn. I have no idea how it materialized, but I think maybe Buddha had something to do with it. I was leaning into her warmth when inspiration struck. I’d been sorting through the questions we’d been facing for weeks, trying to figure out what our next step should be, tears washing down my cheeks—which was a frequent state for me ever since Paige had let the fence literally come between us.

“What should we do?” I said to Buddha.

Move
, something inside me said. I stopped crying. That thought had never even occurred to me. I looked at Buddha and listened.
Get off your ass and move
. I wiped at the tears and sat up taller, and I felt it suddenly in my whole body.
You’ve been dreaming for ages about a huge property with room for lots of animals. Now is the time
.

But I liked my house; I was comfortable here, and it was fully paid off. Besides, moving all these animals would be an enormous task. “This is my place,” I said out loud. “This is the place I always wanted.”

Truth was, this was not what I had envisioned. It was a step in the right direction, but my vision had always been on a much grander
scale. More acreage, more shade trees, room for more animals, space to heal more kids.

“Oh my God,” I said. “Is this really what’s supposed to happen now?”

Move
, I heard (or felt) again. I jumped up, my heart beating faster. I had to tell Jay.

We were standing in the living room of a beautiful house with a gabled roof and exposed rafters. The place had been kept up impeccably, white and sealed wood on the inside and a cheery yellow exterior. We wouldn’t have to do a thing to move in; it was in tip-top shape. The problem was the rest of the property. The hill fell away from the house on a steep grade. Mountain goats would be the only animals who could live on this land.

Next.

Jay and I were on a hunt for a new home for our human and animal family. At first Jay had not agreed that moving was the answer to our problems.

“I think we should hold our ground,” he had said when I’d told him about my epiphany. “I don’t think Paige should get away with this.”

“But don’t you see?” I said. “This is what I’m always talking about. How everything happens for a reason, and for the highest good. Maybe she’s not victimizing us; maybe she’s helping us. I’ve meditated and visualized forever, trying to manifest a huge haven for the animals, but I’ve never done anything about it. I think this might be the opportunity to do something about it.”

“But you’ve created all of
this
,” Jay said, gesturing to the whole of the Gentle Barn. I loved Jay for his belief in me and his appreciation of all I had worked for.

“Why don’t we just look around,” I said. “Just to see what’s out there.”

I owned the house free and clear. We could sell the property and have plenty for the down payment on a new, larger place and something left over to get a fresh start.

It only took Jay a few days to come around. It became clear to him that fighting Paige was taking too much of a toll on our family. Removing ourselves from the situation would preserve our energies and allow the Gentle Barn to continue on with its positive growth.