CHAPTER 6
The next Monday was the start of another workweek in the carefully-programmed life that Abra had orchestrated. Usually she was up by 5:30 without the aid of NPR, but this morning she was exhausted from the previous week’s events and didn’t awake until her clock radio went off with the news at 6:00. She showered, ate her orange and cereal, and packed her yogurt, fruit, veggies, and crackers for lunch. She would go at a non-stop pace until she got home from work and shopping 14 hours later.
During the school year, her life followed the same routine. She went to work at 7:30, ate lunch at her desk, and left at 4:00. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she saw clients at her friend, Anne’s counseling practice. This brought $300 a week of extra, always needed income. But it also gave her the challenge of helping kids cope with emotional and psychological problems that were tearing at their young lives. This was the reason she went into psych - to help kids meet the challenges of living life, hopefully more effectively than she had done with Ella. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, she ran errands and went to the gym where she swam laps or jogged the track so she could lose herself in suspended mental animation, her way of emptying the tension bin.
She headed to Black’s Run Elementary School, a school from kindergarten to fifth grade crammed with kids representing the America that was emerging from the recent influx of immigrants from all points of the globe. There were white, middle class, high achieving “American” kids as well as kids from Kurdistan, Honduras, Pakistan, and Vietnam. She was the psychologist assigned to do all testing, counseling, and teacher consultation in the school. She had a heavy work load, on which she thrived.
This morning she had psychological testing scheduled with a socially isolated second grader who was not reading despite intense remedial efforts. After listening to her phone messages, she set up the testing materials and went to get Bailey. She didn’t dare look at her e-mail because she knew she had loads of messages that needed immediate responses. She had responded to some of the most critical ones the week before during breaks at the conference, but she had saved the ones that needed consideration and access to her master schedule for her return to work.
She went to the second grade class, asked the teacher for Bailey, and then gave her a warm smile and cheerfully said, “Hello Bailey. I’m Ms. Berg and this morning we’re going to do all kinds of interesting, fun things together.”
She never used the title Dr. Berg because the children might think she was a medical doctor, possibly even one who would give them dreaded shots. Bailey reacted like most children Abra saw for the first time, she was unresponsive and petrified. Her face was frozen in terror at what this strange lady was going to do to her. When they got to Abra’s office, Abra showed her a pop-up book she used as an ice-breaker. She leafed through the Wizard of Oz book and had Bailey put on the green glasses accompanying the book to look at an emerald world. The glasses transformed Bailey. She relaxed and even smiled. Then Abra whacked her with an intelligence test. After a break drinking water and looking through the Alice in Wonderland pop-up book, she did some personality testing. She ended the session with Bailey selecting a sticker and a pencil as reinforcement for being cooperative. Abra walked a very different child back to her classroom. Bailey squeezed Abra’s hand, and said, “I like doing testees with you. Can I come back and do them again tomorrow?”
Abra stifled a smile at Bailey’s use of the diminutive for the word test. “Well, not tomorrow, but maybe we’ll get together another time. I really liked meeting you Bailey. Thanks for working so hard.”
Abra returned to her office to immediately score the tests and record her notes in the child’s file. She found that if she waited even a short time to record her impressions and observations, she forgot important behaviors and reactions. She e-mailed the social worker about materials she wanted Bailey’s parents to complete when the social worker made a home visit. Then she e-mailed the special education coordinator about the times she could attend a meeting to determine if Bailey was eligible for special education services.
Abra ate her lunch as she tackled the endless e-mails waiting for her attention. At 1:00 she collected the three boys who were in her anger management group. As usual, there were no girls in the anger management group. Girls expressed their anger in ways other than acting out at school, usually with food or sex, as Ella had so clearly demonstrated. The group was on its third session so the three boys knew the procedures. They were forthcoming about the anger problems they had had over the previous week and how they had tried to cope with them. She greeted Barak, a boy growing up as one of six sons in an Arab home, where his anger at females was not considered negative. “Hello Barak. It’s good to see you again.” Barak expressed anger at his female teachers, talking back to them and challenging their authority. So far he had been cooperative with Abra, not demonstrating the antagonist behaviors he was showing in the classroom to the teacher and especially the paraprofessional.
She greeted Josh, an overweight bully, who physically and verbally harassed smaller kids. “Hi Josh. I see you got a haircut while I was away. You look cool.” Abra had met Josh’s father, who was also an overweight bully, but he owned a car dealership where his bullying was socially acceptable and profitable.
And finally she acknowledged B.J., who took his anger out by destroying objects, hitting the wall, tearing up school papers, and carving on his desk to vent the anger that built up in him for no apparent reason. He came from a “good” home and no one could find a cause for this anger that would erupt with little or no provocation. “How’s my buddy B.J? Did you have a good week?”
The kids shared their experiences, wrote about their feelings, did some role playing, and analyzed their behaviors. After the session, Abra recorded her progress notes for the group and for each of the boys. She felt that the only one who was making progress was B.J. He seemed to be more aware of triggers that set off his anger and to use self-talk to prevent the eruptions. She felt that Barak needed more experience with the culture before he could make any changes, if he ever did. Josh had a perfect role model of bullying behavior, his father, so it would be unlikely that he would change completely. But for now, Abra hoped to have him substitute words for actions whenever he bullied other kids.
At 3:00, she met with a first grade teacher who was concerned about a child who masturbated in class. They discussed the child’s background, factors that might cause the behavior, and a time for Abra to observe the child. At 3:30 she met with Charlie Washington, the principal of Black’s Run. How Abra adored Charlie! Although he was in his mid 40’s and black, she looked up to him as a father figure and he looked at her in a fatherly way knowing that she was an “orphan.” He was a wise, kind man who felt responsible for the kids, teachers, and support staff of his school. If a teacher or parent did not put a child’s welfare first, he would let them know in blunt terms. He ran Black’s Run as a tight ship and he was the commander. For the past two years his personal life had been under siege because of his wife’s battle with cancer. Joan, too, was a principal, but had taken disability leave this year. They had no children and were totally devoted to each other so her cancer was hitting Charlie hard, making his Santa Claus sounding laughter which frequently echoed through the school corridors, sound forced. Abra had offered to become involved in their lives and they had accepted her kindnesses. She helped out when Joan was weak after chemotherapy by cooking meals or driving her to appointments, and keeping her company during the evenings or weekends when Charlie had to be away. They were both members of the Black’s Run’s teachers’ book club. She made sure that Joan read the monthly book, or got it on tape, so she would be prepared for their meetings.
Charlie wanted to see Abra about setting up a support meeting with some of the teachers who had three former students who had committed suicide the first week of school. These three students who were in high school together, had all been problemless, high achieving students while at Black’s Run. Abra was sure that Charlie want
ed the meeting for himself as well as the teachers.
Then Abra was back at her office to finish off the most important paperwork. She didn’t get out at 4:00 as she had hoped, but she did make it out by 5:00, the absolute cut-off for the latest she would stay at work. She had to pace herself and not completely engulf herself in her work. She knew that she could work until 10:00 every night and still not finish everything that needed attention.
She stopped at the supermarket to replenish her empty cabinets and refrigerator. Then she headed to the cleaners to pick up much needed clean work clothes and back home to do laundry and catch up on last week’s mail and newspapers. There was no time for the gym today. That would have to wait until Wednesday. As usual, she had a hectic day. That was what she loved, being engaged every possible minute so she didn’t think about anything other than her work and her most immediate needs. And being engaged in worthwhile work, doing something that helped kids, that was her anchor. She knew she could never hold a job in business or government like many of her friends. She had to see change in others and know that she was responsible for the change, even if only in small part. She heard Martha’s words echoing in her ears – we can make the world a bit better one child at a time. She was content with her life and didn’t want anything or anyone new to complicate it.
Then she was back at her two-bedroom apartment in a large apartment complex near the Beltway and Rte 66 making it relatively easy for her to get around traffic-clogged Fairfax County. Her apartment was on the second floor and had a view of the parking lot and other buildings that differed from hers only in their pastel shade of paint. There was a pool and workout room in the complex, but she never used them, preferring the gym with an indoor pool and more advanced equipment. She knew her neighbors to say hello, but had never established a relationship with any. She was just another anonymous apartment dweller filling the impersonal Monopoly apartment houses of the county.
She had furnished her living room and bedroom with modern furniture from IKEA. The second tiny bedroom was set up as a home office with her all-important laptop. She kept her apartment immaculately clean, dusting and vacuuming every few nights even if there was no need for dusting and vacuuming. She scrubbed her tub, toilet, and sink after every use. She did her laundry every few days. To someone who didn’t know Abra, she might seem compulsively clean. To someone who knew Abra Ginzberg and Abra Berg, she might seem to be marking the difference between the dirty life she lived in the 17th Street apartment and the immaculate life she now lived in the Sunset Hills apartment complex.
When she went to bed at 11:00, she immediately fell asleep. No thoughts about her trip to New York, her family, her friends. Just sleep with dreams that were irretrievably buried by the time she awoke at 5:30 the next morning.
Her life at school was the same on Tuesday and Thursday, filled with testing, counseling, consulting, meetings, and paperwork. But promptly at 4:00 she left to head over to Developmental Counseling Associates, the counseling practice owned by her friend, Anne Simmons. Anne had been a psychologist with Fairfax County when Abra first started working with the county. She was a single mom with an adopted daughter from China. She wanted more flexibility in her work schedule so she started her own counseling practice which had become successful in affluent Fairfax County. She only hired therapists she knew were competent and caring, and catered to the upper middle class who could afford expensive counseling. Anne charged $300 per hour and took half toward overhead and commission. She accepted no insurance. She refused to be hampered by the regulations of insurance companies that paid little, limited the amount of counseling, and had no regard for the well-being of the clients. At the end of every school year, Anne asked Abra to work for her full time, but Abra always refused preferring the school setting.
Abra had two clients, on Tuesday she saw Wendy Taylor and on Thursday Sasha Weiss-Parker. Twelve-year-old Wendy attended a private day school for students with learning disabilities where she was doing marginal academic work. Her parents ran a successful accounting business, and her younger brother, Seth, was intellectually gifted and socially adept. Her parents were eager to have Abra “make” Wendy more like Seth and themselves. That didn’t seem to be a viable option considering Wendy’s low average IQ and diagnosis of Asperger’s, a high level of autism reflected in social interaction problems. Her parents were at work from early morning until after supper so Wendy saw them infrequently. Seth was busy with school and extra-curricular activities so she rarely saw him. The person she saw most was the maid, Consuela, who spoke broken English. But even the time with her was limited since Consuela talked on the phone in Spanish to her friends whenever the Taylors were out of the house, which was most of the time. Most of Wendy’s time was spent alone in her room watching TV, knitting, and doing cross-stitching. She was an isolated child with limited social skills for reaching out to others, and no one to reach out to.
Abra started working with Wendy the previous February. Abra felt that it was important that Wendy develop some interests to fill the time that she spent alone so she taught her to knit and do cross-stitching. Wendy became adept at these and knitted Abra several very long brightly colored scarves and stitched pillow shams and table runners with flowers and puppy dogs. Wendy was so proud of herself. She found something she could do well and everything she knitted or sewed was evidence of her new-found competence. Wendy talked more freely whenever her hands were engaged with needles so Abra encouraged her to knit or cross-stitch during their counseling sessions. She would acknowledge her tenuous position in her home making statements such as “See, I can do something. I’m not a dummy like Seth says,” or “I’m so glad my mother can’t sew. I can do something she can’t. She tried it and got a needle in her finger. It wouldn’t stop bleeding. I laughed and laughed.”
Abra knew that Wendy needed social skill training more than anything, but she couldn’t do that on an individual basis. Wendy needed to learn social skills through practice with other kids. Abra was working with the psychologist at Wendy’s school on setting up a social skills group to help Wendy develop skills to interact with others. So far, this had been unsuccessful because the psychologist did not follow through on arranging group sessions. Abra and Anne had identified a number of clients of Wendy’s age who needed social skills training so that they could offer a group on Saturday mornings. Abra had even agreed to give up her Saturday mornings to lead the group. So far they had been unsuccessful because all the children, except Wendy, were programmed with lessons and activities from early morning to late afternoon.
At their last session together, Abra and Wendy explored the possibility of Wendy taking a baby sitting course at the Y so she could be a companion to a young child after school, while being monitored by the child’s parent who would be at home. Hopefully, this would give Wendy more responsibility and increase her interaction with others. Abra was pleasantly surprised to find that over the two week hiatus, Wendy had enrolled in a baby sitting class at the Y and would start the class the following Saturday. They discussed expectations for the class, especially those involving reading, and how Wendy could meet these considering her low reading level. Abra asked Wendy to bring the book to the next session so they could work on it together.
Abra and Anne had talked about the need for Wendy’s parents to have counseling to arrive at more realistic expectations for Wendy’s future. They were becoming increasingly unhappy with Wendy’s lack of progress and were blaming her, as if she chose not to do well in school and she chose not to have good social skills. They resisted family counseling, saying the problems were Wendy’s, not theirs. But one of their major reasons for not wanting counseling was time. They wouldn’t fit counseling into their tight schedules.
After the session, Abra completed a progress report to share with Anne as well as the forms for the all-important billing. As she left the office, she met Anne who was coming to meet with her evening clients. Abra briefly updated her on Wendy. Anne asked Abra if she c
ould take on another case, perhaps on Saturdays. She tried to entice Abra by describing a seven year old Asian child from a high achieving family who lost the spelling bee and stood on his desk holding a scissors threatening to kill himself. Although the child sounded like a challenge, Abra knew her limit. She screamed NO at the top her lungs, drawing attention from others in the parking lot. Then she smiled widely and hugged Anne. They made a date for lunch on Saturday so they could review Abra’s cases and chat about life. Abra hugged Anne again and got in her Honda for a quick ride home, supper, and deep sleep with irretrievable dreams.
Before seeing Sasha on Thursday, Abra reviewed Sasha’s file to be ready for this most challenging child. Abra had started with Sasha four weeks earlier. She was 8 years old and an adopted child from Romania. Her files indicated a great deal of previous psychiatric and psychological testing and therapy. Of the many diagnostic labels that had been hung on her, the most intimidating was reactive attachment disorder. Sasha had lived in an orphanage for the first year of life where she was fed with a propped bottle and had limited contact with people. She was adopted by two gay women who were determined to build a loving family, which was difficult with a child like Sasha. She was hard to manage from the first day they brought her to the US. She had eating, sleeping, and behavior problems. Sasha received preschool disability services from the county which improved her behavior somewhat, but she still posed difficult problems. The parents were not able to take her out to eat in a restaurant until she was 7. Now at 8, she was emotionally flat with occasional explosive, violent outbursts. She rejected physical affection. Her mothers so wanted to hold and caress her, but when they tried to hug her, she would stiffen her body transforming herself into a wooden board. She had been placed on a number of different medications, most of which worsened her behavior.
Abra was using play therapy in an attempt to help her establish positive emotional relationships and be responsive to physical contact. Sasha enjoyed playing with Barbie dolls, endlessly dressing and undressing them. But it was difficult for Abra to elicit any language from her. She just wanted to engage in silent play with the dolls. She did not simulate social situations among the dolls nor did she talk to them. Each doll was in a world of her own, just like Sasha. Abra also used books and story completion tasks to spark discussions with Sasha. Abra read a book about a princess who got lost in the woods and stopped before the ending. Sasha finished the story by saying a policeman found her and brought her back to the castle. It wasn’t the most creative response, but it was language and she was being responsive.
Abra had made some progress in the area of physical contact with Sasha. Now when Sasha entered the counseling room, Abra lightly touched each of the doll’s shoulders as she greeted them and then she touched Sasha’s shoulder as she greeted her. Today, Abra also touched Sasha’s and the doll’s shoulders as they parted. Sasha did not withdraw.
After the session, Abra spoke with Sasha’s moms who said that they, too, were now able to touch Sasha’s shoulder without her cringing. Abra suggested moving on to trying to hold her hand in certain situations. These wonderful women were happy with any improvement, no matter how small.
Abra treasured her periodic Saturday lunches with Anne. Here was a 45 year old woman, twice divorced with no biological children, who had found fulfillment in adopting a Chinese girl five years earlier. Anne was an outstanding psychologist full of empathy and knowledge. She seemed to intuitively know what approach to take with the different kinds of problems her clients displayed. She understood herself and knew that she was not a woman for marriage. Her two marriages had failed because she didn’t like being married, but she did want a child. She had maternal instincts that demanded satisfaction. She had traveled half way around the world to spend three grueling weeks in China to pick up Mai. The trip was worth it. The last five years had been the happiest of Anne’s life. Mai gave meaning and direction to her life. She made her complete.
Anne always brought Mai along to their lunches. Abra marveled at how well behaved the child was. She ate what was given her, even vegetables, played with the toys and books Anne brought, and verbally interacted with them like a little adult. What Abra most loved about watching Anne and Mai together was the affection they showered on each other. When Anne held Mai, the tiny child wrapped her arms and legs around her as if she were climbing a tree. Anne kissed Mai’s forehead, cheeks, nose, lips, and chin. Then Mai planted kisses on Anne’s forehead, cheeks, nose, lips, and chin. Mai always kissed Abra hello and goodbye, not because she was told to, but because she wanted to. Abra adored Mai and thought that Anne was so lucky to have found such a precious child. But Abra did not envy Anne. She did not want a child, not even one so precious. Usually after these lunches, Abra searched inside herself for any maternal instincts, but couldn’t find any. If there had ever been any inside her, they had been destroyed by Miriam.
Abra’s weekend life usually involved getting a haircut or a manicure, shopping, going to the gym, and reading. She often went out with others for lunch or dinner, a movie, a concert, or a show. During the summers she traveled with other women or men, one summer to Vancouver, another to Russia, and one Christmas to Hawaii. She tried to combine her travels with attendance at international professional conferences so she could deduct her expenses from her taxes. She was always discovering ways to save money, something she would always need to do.
Abra had lots of acquaintances who were both male and female, straight and gay, white and non-white, Jewish and non-Jewish, some psychologists, and some other professions. She was an equal opportunity acquaintance. But she didn’t have any real friends other than Beth. All her acquaintances were like her, content to be engulfed in their professional lives.
Abra dated occasionally, but usually broke off the relationship before it got to the stage of sex. Over her six years in Fairfax, she had two sexual relationships. One was with Mark, her dentist. She enjoyed his company until he started spouting his right wing rants. He was extremely conservative politically and believed every word Rush Limbaugh uttered. She hated to end the relationship because she had to find a new dentist, and Mark was very good. Her second involvement was with David, her accountant. They enjoyed each other’s company and especially enjoyed sex with each other. After four months of dating, David started talking about getting married and having kids. Soon afterwards, Abra ended the relationship. In this case, she hated ending the relationship more because she would miss David than the need to find another accountant.
Abra felt that she was destined to be like Miss Benjamin, an old maid, a spinster, not because she was unattractive like Miss Benjamin, but out of choice. She could never have a relationship like Pete and Martha or Beth and Tim. She didn’t feel badly about this. She felt that she had so many good things in her life and that no one was entitled to have everything. She felt like a deaf person who had a fulfilling life even though she would never hear Brubeck or geese honking or a 2 year old giggle. She felt that you can’t have everything, but what you could have, could be good. Life could be satisfying without a significant other. She knew that she was independent and didn’t need anyone to lean on and she certainly didn’t want anyone to lean on her, not after 18 years of having four people lean on her until she was almost crushed into the ground. She was happy being Abra Berg and satisfied with her life as it was. She was especially happy when she thought about what her life would have been like had she stayed Abra Ginzberg.