By Nicole Bradford
Fall 2009 Kaplan Award Winner
“Sing in your head Rosie, just Sing In YOUR HEAD!!” My voice is accelerating. I won’t even tolerate a mumble from the backseat. Heat of Phoenix, suffocating traffic sludge, trapped – and her strangled interpretation of a Michael Jackson melody persists in the backseat. Exasperating! I should be able to chill out, this is a paid vacation after all. I’m even paid to sleep! To drink wine on the back porch, to shop and be a merry fun maker! My friend Kay and I take Rosie and Flew, our developmentally disabled clients, on trips, this one a Phoenix time share in July. Charming weather this time of year.
We’re heading away from the zoo where Kay and I took turns pushing Flew’s elective wheelchair up hills in 104 degree heat. Flew cranking and crooning all the way, damp, smelling of poo and mirth. Rosie’s sticky fingers lifted some memorabilia in the gift shop. The items end up in her pants. “Rosie, get the elephant out of your shorts,” Kay hisses sharply. People are looking at us. They think Kay and I are being mean. This job is smelly, sad, hilarious, and wretch inducing. But we’re laughing through the bone rubbing exasperation, inwardly, outwardly, thoroughly.
On the way to Phoenix, Flew craps herself in the airport no less than six times before we ever make it to security. In our trauma, Kay and I decide she’s doing it on purpose, a card from Flew’s retinue of drama and mischief making. We are flagged as terrorists as Flew refuses to go through the metal detector, forgets how to walk, and clings to me shrieking when the terror wand attempts to detect weapons on her person. This morning we half carried Flew to the car, once her stubby fingers were pried from the door jam. The long anticipated trip that dazzled her speech and eyes for weeks is now a dreaded affair. The anticipation is transformed to fear and she stage-cries and spouts “I HATE FUN!” all the way to the airport.
We are brutal. Kay has a German-mistress routine that usually rectifies Flew’s behavior and Rosie is often persuaded by my Daddy’s-tough-love approach. Any incidental onlookers are inevitably horrified by our glaring insensitivity. “How can they treat those poor handicapped people that way? tisk, tisk…like regular people.” Oh, Rosie and Flew know what’s going on alright. When Flew forgets to be infirm she runs and dances with great agility. Take your eye of Rosie and she’s batting her eyes and convincing strangers to buy her pop, candy, perhaps a darling stuffed animal. Rosie is a rebel rouser to the core. She’s a shoplifter, compulsive eater, sexual deviant, poop hoarder, and danger seeker. At a demure 5”2” and 180 lbs, she has the soft flesh of a sensual babe inspiring protection and indulgence.
Rosie’s eyes are those of a girl younger than her years, beautiful, radiant and mirthful. Her face is blank but warm, her smile easy to urge. She’s boy-crazy, food-crazy, annoying-question-crazy, and endlessly devious. Clever girl bypasses the locks on food in her apartment by unscrewing the hinges of the cabinets themselves. All is returned to par by morning. Her stealth skills are unparalleled. Her subtle manipulation, inspiring. In Phoenix, Rosie agrees to play extra handicapped and we get upgraded to an expensive suite. Who doesn’t love a nice view and a jacuzzi?
Of her many antics none beat the inventive ways Rosie avoids exercise. Forty minutes of treadmill a day is the prescribed dose for a slew of health conditions – but, clever Rosie usually evades it by exhausting staff until they give up. It’s a magical comedic moment. Rosie, wearing a tactical pair of loose fitting shorts and no panties, starts the treadmill slowly, shifty eyes gaging staffs’ commitment, reluctantly, testing our fortitude, she gradually increases the speed until whack! She plops a poo and it’s catapulted from the spinning treadmill onto the wall with a splat. “I’ve had an accident.” Exercise averted. You have to admire her dedication, the artful ingenuity, the fortitude.
Lately, we laugh even harder at such filthy antics. Less than a month ago Rosie was diagnosed with aggressive thyroid cancer. At 27 this smooth skinned, shining eyed woman is riddled with disease. Rosie has been her typical Pollyanna persona throughout the panic, planning, and preparation. “What are you feeling?” I prompt -”Fine.” She answers before my question is fully sounded. She smiles and looks away to close the emotional intrusion. There is a shadow in her eyes. She’s stopped working to subvert staff, food doesn’t interest her, and even her dedication to annoy her roommate is waning.
Do we call this denial? Acceptance? How can a mind, regardless of its functionality, be so resigned to the short end of the stick? Abuse from family, the juggle of a broken social services, repeated disease, nagging staff? Does she just not understand? That’s what Rosie’s mother Donna says loudly to her cell phone while sitting next to Rosie in the hospital bed. “Oh it all just goes over her head,” Donna says with bravado, and then laughs. I look to Rosie to support her but she avoids my eyes. It’s not over her head. She’s determined to protect her mother.
Donna, the estranged mother has arrived for the cancer show. Though Donna revoked guardianship years ago, has almost no contact with her daughter, and has left an official paper trail of neglect and abuse in Rosie’s file. Yet, she has arrived for her acting debut as the committed mother. It’s not a part she plays well. There is no mirth or love in Donna’s demeanor towards Rosie. Rosie has someone with her at all times so she’s not subjected to the unadulterated Donna who mocks, rips, and undermines everything Rosie does or doesn’t say. We’ve all read the papered history, surely not the whole story but endlessly condemning, nonetheless.
Rosie just looks to Donna, again and again, radiant with her cancer. This disease that brought her mother back into her life. Another person Rosie’s age might be tirelessly running themselves through the prostrations of a pondered mortality and spirit, but Rosie just wants to watch the food network and have her mother near. So blank but happy Rosie looks. Numb with an empty smile to the surgeons’ explanations, to Donna’s cruelty.
Kay and I are there too, joshing to make Rosie smile, ripping into one another like a a regular comedy team, no topic too sacred. “That surgeon is hot, huh Rosie? What’s up with that gold chain, think he moonlights as a gangster?” But nothing beats the greatest joke of late: radioactive poo. Rosie is overly joyed that her treadmill torture will be suspended until her poo isn’t a danger to roommate and staff. Can’t have radioactive poo on the treadmill! That gets everyone going. Rosie laughs knowingly, like she developed cancer intentionally to subvert the exercise routine.
Rosie might be lacking cognitive ability, but she has a miraculous capacity for mirth, tolerance, and forgiveness. I can only think about these things at home though. This the morning I cry when Michael Jackson comes on the radio. Rosie has really ruined his music for me. Then I have to laugh. “Sing in your head!” Who tells a disabled person to stop singing? I guess you have to take what life gives you, radioactive poo and all.