Chapter II

Jai

We met in the summer of 1999 at Waiter on Wheels, an independently owned radio-dispatched restaurant delivery service that served hot pho, fresh sushi, baby back ribs and butter chicken in temperature controlled bags from eighty different restaurants in Montgomery County, Maryland. Conor was 26 when I was 19. He was just over six feet tall — but with his shoulders hunched in humility he was usually not as big. And he was strong and dark and always clean shaven, his jaw sharp like a Potomac River rockface. For the first six months I knew him, he didn’t talk to anyone, just showed up early, ran his delivery runs, checked out, and went home. He had soulful dark eyes that avoided contact, but once in a long while they would look openly into mine and search for trust, and I would look away. I wondered if he was from Pakistan, too. But he wouldn’t talk to me.

After a few months at Wheels he started growing his hair long, and then, on rare occasions, he began to hang out for a bit after work, and he would just listen, trying not to rock the green leather chair with the creaky springs, outside the loose circle of shaggy guys and the occasional girl in our thin, baggy green work jackets in the musty, dirty-brown carpeted office in a one-level office building off Shady Grove Road. And when he finally spoke, he would lean in, wrap his long arms around his large chest, crane his long neck forward, and offer a thoughtful word of support to a lone someone arguing passionately for a loser something. At my post by the bathroom wall, even farther outside the circle, I would count out my earnings for the day.

I used to change my oil on Deer Park Road, three miles from my home. At the end of the road, there was a gravelly patch by the woods where no one bothered you, and early one spring day I was under the truck, on my back, when I saw his his old torn leather boots walking out of the woods where I didn’t even know there was a trail. Hey, I heard him say gently. I thought that was your truck, he said, when I wiggled out from under. He stood by while I finished, and then we walked to his apartment where he had large plastic kitchen grease containers for the oil.

Wait, he said, I’ll change and drive you back to your truck.

It was dark in the basement apartment. There was just one old brown couch and a TV with a video game console. In the middle of his living room there was an old, tattered, black leather weight bench with one rusty 45 lb weight on each side and one on the floor beside. Under the weight bar the bench had sunk holes into the fawn, once plush carpet. Two big jars of protein powder on top of his fridge. As he comes out of the bedroom, I am holding the weight bar, but not lifting it. He smiles. I just got it six months ago, he says, as he tucks in his green Waiter on Wheels shirt, wrapped tight around his arms. I love how lifting makes me feel.

During the day, I was a drive-thru cashier at a fast food restaurant called Roy Rogers, and Conor was a behavioral therapist for children with developmental delays and on the autism spectrum. Before he clocked in at 4 p.m. at Wheels, he saw one or two kids most days, for a couple hours each. They were looking to hire, so Conor asked if I wanted hours at $15/hour.

A therapist? I've taken one class in Psych.

All you need is training, he said, and one day he took me with him. It was a hot, humid midsummer morning, and Conor and I were wearing our green t-shirts. He was freshly showered and shaven, his hair was not yet long, just finger length and neatly slicked back, and his biceps were bulging out of the thin green short-sleeves. I had on my perpetual two-week beard, my full smile and floppy hair that fell over my eyes, and my green shirt that hung like my shoulder tops were plastic pins on our backyard clothesline back home in Gilgit. In the summer, we hung the clothesline. In winter we laid out our clothes out on the floor and on chairs by the stove.

 The boy was seven, and his name was Jai. It was a two-hour session.

Jai lived in a split-level home on a little hill off Randolph Road between Rockville and Wheaton. The homes’ fronts were brick frontage on the bottom and siding on top, and the cars on the street were three to fifteen years old. Mom unlocked the door. She was Indian, about five feet tall, thick around the hips with big black eyes that burned, and long black hair that fell into a bun low on her neck. Loose hair escaped from the knot on either side of her face, framing liquid black eyes. She was holding a struggling Jai with her left hand under his arm pit, and his arms were free and clawing at her face. A fresh thick vertical scratch blooded her left cheek. She had been crying, her chest was heaving, and her body leaned toward Conor like she was reaching for him to just hold her. Jai was about three and a half feet tall and thin, maybe 40 lbs, lighter skinned than mom. Maybe his dad was white. He broke partially free but she held on by his hand. I’m Rakshika, she says to me simply as she plants herself with a wide stance to stay balanced. Call me Raksha. Her palm is small, plump and brown in my long, bony fingers.

Ali, I say, and she smiles quickly and pulls her hand back to grab both of Jai’s hands.

Conor goes around me and inside in his humble bent-shoulder way and kneels on the floor, so his face is level with Jai’s. He is light and cheery. High five? Conor asks, holding up both hands. Mom lets go.

Jai catches Conor’s eyes and smiles, but then he looks at me and looks away, turns and walks over to the carpet in the living room and sits cross-legged, between two old fabric couches catty corner against the wall. Conor follows and props couch cushions on the sides of the couch so they form a padded semicircle behind Jai, between him and the couches. I perch at the end of an old velvety, thickly padded loveseat backing to the street facing window, elbow on knee, chin cradled on palm, watching Conor and Jai on the carpet to my right.  Diagonally across the room on our left are the steps going upstairs to the living room and bedrooms, where Raksha stands, watching, and in the far corner are two more doors. Perhaps a bathroom and another room.

The three walls around us are covered with large gym mats drilled in with screws. Two gym mats come together behind my head, covering the bottom three-fourths of the glass window behind my head that overlooks the street. The mat on the wall on my right has been pulled out at the top corner, so there’s an open right triangle that exposes an eight-inch diameter jagged hole in the drywall. Conor sees me looking at it, raises his open hand toward his lips for a quick second, and I look away.

It’s air-conditioned cold in the lower level of the home, and Jai is wearing a full-sleeved green plaid sweatshirt and full khaki pants.

Ready? Conor says.

Jai is impassive. He has small scars on his left cheek. Conor has a scar as well that runs all the way down his left cheek.

Okay then. High five!

Jai grins and tries to smack Conor’s palm but Conor pulls his hands out just in time. Low five, he says, holding his palms on Jai’s lap. But once again Jai misses and emits a funny high-pitched squeal. Conors hand is high again. Jai laughs again and grabs Conors hand by the elbow and smacks it.

Ali will watch today. Right before he says it, Conor put his arms out over Jai’s. To block Jai from hitting himself. I’m looking at Raksha, watching from by the stairs, ready. But Jai smiles at me, I smile at him, and everyone relaxes. Raksha lets out a big whoosh breath and her shoulders slump and all the lines in her forehead are now etched deeper into her cheeks. She is so tired. Our eyes meet and she smiles through her tears and climbs quickly up the high and narrow wood steps. At the top of the stairs she says, her voice choking a little: Call if he poops, please.

Arms up, says Conor.

Arms down.

Stand up.

Sit down.

Touch nose.

Touch lips.

Touch mouth.

High five!!!

Later they are doing laminated pictures.

Who’s this? Laminated picture of mommy.

Who’s this? Laminated picture of dog.

Jai is getting lots of praise and happy.

It is monotonous work, but Conor is connected, and Jai is engaged.

Now they are playing an elaborate game with fist bumps.

And then a 100-piece puzzle of a cute puppy with a girl outside a picture perfect home.

15 minutes into the puzzle, Jai’s eyes go wide and he screams at such high pitch my brain tries to jump out of my skull. Conor recoils too, then corrects himself. Jai goes for Conor’s face, but Conor puts his hands under Jai’s forearms and brushes them aside like windmills. Jai lunges for his underarms and pinches high under the right arm pit and pulls hard and Conor gasps and his eyes tear up.  I reach for Jai and pull back but he won’t let go of his pinch. Conor grabs his little hands and pries them off, and his face is red with pain and anger. He raises a huge arm up and his face is contused, his eyes big. I grab Jai from under his armpits and pull him back and he propels himself from his feet and throws himself back at me so the back of his head cracks my chin and my lower incisors bounce against my upper lip, and Conor goes on top, rolls him onto his side, and gets him down on the carpeted floor with a leg on top. Jai is shaking hard but can’t get off the floor because of Conor’s weight. Breathe, Conor says. Breathe. Holding down his upper arms and leg over his body. And Jai takes big belly breaths. Slowly Conor relaxes the weight off and I grab Jai and hug him tight to my chest, my beard on his shoulder. His little back keeps trying to arch and fight but I curl him in and fold over him. And he slows. There’s a gash on Conor’s cheek, a line of blood on it. I catch his eye and draw a line down my cheek to show him. He points to my lip, and I notice the blood dripping down my black beard on my green work shirt. We are breathing heavy. I smile. He smiles.

Raksha has come down and taken Jai off my hands and is sitting cross-legged on the floor, hugging him tight, rocking him side to side, singing something soft. Conor facing away from us, his hunched back shaking. He’s crying, I think. Sorry. I’m so sorry, he is saying. No, says Raksha. It’s my fault. I’m so sorry. Still hugging Jai tight she scootches over to Conor and puts her hand on his hunched back. It’s not your fault, she says. I’m sorry. She’s rubbing Conor’s lower back gently with her fingertips. Cece turned on the microwave. I’ve told her not to do it, but she put her Weight-watchers in the microwave.

Cece is their neurotypical 15-year old. She is not overweight.

It’s okay, Conor. No worries. He gets up off the floor wipes his cheeks and takes Jai by his hand. He sits Jai and settles across, his arms over Jai’s elbows. Jai tries to hit his own face but can’t.

Breathe, Conor says, as he evens his own breathing.

Raksha is wiping Conor’s cheek with wet toilet paper. So gently. She hands my the rest of the roll and I hold a wad to my lip. Jai's breathing slows. Low five? Conor asks quietly. Jai smacks his hand weakly. Conor grabs another laminated pic. A golden retriever. Who’s that? Conor asks.

It’s not your fault, I tell him later. Raksha has gone to the Safeway across Randolph Road to get groceries. Jai is on break, watching Blues Clues with Steve Burns on Raksha’s laptop and giggling.

It’s the anger, he says. I need to kill it. He’s sitting on the floor with his back to the couch, hunched over his big knees up agains his chest, staring at the floor between his legs at a two-inch wide hole where the carpet is missing, and he’s trying to cover it up with the fronds that surround. Under the brownish black carpet I can see the hole in the white carpet pad and the dark moldy wood. He’s patting it down from all sides, smoothing it, pulling the threads over, but the hole in the middle stays.

Leave it, I say.

No. He says. It’s evil. It’s because of my dad.

There’s not enough carpet there, Conor, I say. They need to cut out a patch out and replace it.

But he’s intent on covering up something that cannot be covered.

Jai stands up suddenly, and there’s wet diarrhea coming out the side of his shorts. He’s got no diaper on. Mommy, he says softly. Mommy.

It’s okay, buddy. Conor jumps up and walks him wide-legged to the bathroom. There’s a roll of brown paper towel in the corner between the couches, and I grab it and go to the bathroom to wet it and clean the carpet.

It’s a small, old bathroom, and the tiny squares of white mosaic tile are turning black. From a street facing window high in front of me a sun beam lights up Jai laying on the floor with a towel stretched under and one rolled up under his head. I flip the light switch and Jai is startled, so I turn it off. His pants are off and the poo is all over his legs. Conor is kneeling on his side, wedged in the little space between the toilet and sink, right arm covering Jai's waist and preventing his flapping hands from smearing, left hand reaching across the toilet for the toilet paper, trying to wet it from water running in the sink to his right and cleaning off his thighs gently. I drop the paper towel, break off long pieces of  toilet paper. Conor runs them under warm water, folds them one-handed and cleans with long gentle, careful wipes, hips to toes. He’s hamming. Rock-a-bye-baby, from the treetops. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, … He has such a soothing, low voice. And Jai is responding. A low moan that starts in his throat for five to ten seconds and rises with Conor’s voice. He hasn’t said one word all day, and now, stretched on the bare bathroom floor with Conor wiping his legs, he is cooing. When Jai’s legs are clean, Conor signs arms up and rolls up Jai’s shirt and takes it off carefully folding over the poo on the shirt so it doesn’t touch anything. I point to Conor’s shirt at a six inch long light brown smear from his  right shoulder all the way down to his chest. He grins. It’s okay, he says, I have another one in the car. I hold my hands out to Jai, and he takes them willingly. Conor takes off his green work shirt.

How did you learn to clean like that?

I’ve been doing it since I was seven, he says, and smiles. My mom died, and I cleaned Kara from when she was a baby.

In his undershirt now when Raksha comes in with plastic bags bursting with groceries. Oh. She says as she walks in and stares at his chest.

Sorry. Conor is abashed. It got dirty.

Jai learned patterns, today, Connor says excited to mom. Jai, we show mommy?

Connor pulls Jai to the corner where the couches meet and they start.

High five. Low five. Fist bump. Finger bump. Shake hand. Drum a pattern on the upside down box of tissues.

Repeat.

And Conor is beat boxing low in his throat.

He knows the Algebra, Conor says excited! They repeat the pattern four times and then change it. Jai is confused, but in a moment he catches the new pattern. And he laughs so hard.

Jai is tapping his hand on an empty diaper box, and Conor is rapping with his hand dramming the tissue box.

In Al-ge-bra,

every time you create

a new variation

you model it with a higher degree.

So a change in a pattern

Is a new vari-able

Just a little change

A new complication

We can fix it

We just need

a bigger polyno-mi-al!

A bigger polynomial.

A bigger polynomial.

Then he whistles the tune as he drums the beat on diaper box.

Jai is clapping. Giggling.

Afterwards he pulled out his map book and showed me a little entrance to Rock Creek Park off a neighborhood off Randolph Road, so we drove a mile through the red brick homes, he in his Cavalier and me in my truck, to a small children’s playground where we sat silently on the steps of the slide and ate Subway in the late afternoon sun.

On the parallel swings, warm sun in my face, and I’m nodding off in the 80 degree heat on my face. Suddenly, he says:

You know what I don’t understand?

What?

If there is a God, then why do children have to suffer?

I shrug and raise my open palms to the sky in question. And he laughs.

I mean my dad beat my mom. Now he’s in pain every day. And he deserves it. Karma. But what did Jai do?

It’s all fucked, he continues. I asked Father O the same question, and he told me to read the bible, and I would find the answer.

I nod.

Wake up sleepy, he says. If we go now we can get to Wheels at 4.

*

He was teaching Jai to whistle. For two years every week he worked on it, played with it, and Jai, who loved him, tried but he always blew out when Conor asked him to suck in. And one day Conor came to Wheels and was mad I wasn’t answering my phone, and when I called back he said, where were you. And I said the phone was in the glove box. Jai whistled, he said. Jai frigging whistled! It was the happiest I have ever seen him.

*         *             *

Next —> Chapter III