This story is about my autistic brother's residence in Lowell, Mass, in the 1970's: an imposing, white Victorian mansion. Maybe not so big as I remember, but at the time it felt like a museum. Behind each door was a different room, a different tenant, a different exhibit. It's not around anymore. These days Michael lives in North Reading.
I was a boy of ten when the event occurred, Michael, about thirteen. I don't remember what the event was exactly. But for whatever reason, there was a big to-do happening at his residence. A barbecue, potato salad, and chips. It may have been a graduation ceremony, or it may have been the fourth of July.
Don't look too close, I would tell myself on the ride over, don't examine their behavior. Don't stare. Try to look on the bright side. Maybe they aren't as bad off as they seem. Maybe they know what they're doing: the kid in the hockey helmet who banged his head against the wall. The wild-haired girl who came running at you, babbling, and kissed you insanely until you pushed her away. The balancers, three of them, who walked atop the second floor porch railings and crossed over at the ledges, nonchalant as Chinese acrobats. The staff members would call up to them in shouted whispers (trying not to draw attention), begging them to please come down. It's time for all of you to climb on down now and sit and have something to eat.
There was always street parking and the long concrete walk up to the front door, my father leading, my mom holding my sister's hand. Following some distance behind, I paused at the pair of tall granite posts that stood guard at the entrance. At one time they supported a pair of cast-iron gates. but now only the thick hinges remained. I followed with my fingers a date —1852—inscribed as if on a tombstone, and then sprinted to catch up to my folks at the door.
We let ourselves in, as we always did. As we were supposed to, apparently. We rang the doorbell and then opened the door and greeted whoever happened to be standing by, rocking on his heels and muttering. Then we headed upstairs, up the massive curved stairwell, my head level with the sloping oaken banister, and began down the long, wide hallway. I remember the length and girth of it, the number of rooms we passed. I remember being jealous of the wall-to-wall carpeting. Finally, we reached Michael's room and knocked a polite warning: stop masturbating and pull up your pants. Your family is here.
We opened the door. Michael was warding off evil spirits, rubbing his ears and emoting open-throated moans: primitive guttural melodies that sound vaguely like an air-horn, or a moose. Animal yet mechanical. When he saw us, he stopped vocalizing and rubbed his hands together fast and then fiddled with the dials on his boombox. He was tuning in on something.
"Hi, Michael," mom and dad said, "How are you?" "Fine," Michael said.
You could hug Michael if you wanted do, but you didn't have to. It didn't matter either way, and he'd probably prefer it if you didn't. If you kept your distance. My parents would hug him, regardless, and my dad would call him "putchkie" and act as if he was excited to see him. And who knows? Maybe he really was. It didn't appear to affect Michael one way or the other, all of us being there. His family. He could take it or leave it. Just about the way any teenager would respond if his family showed up suddenly out of nowhere, demanding answers.
My folks would soon be occupied with paperwork. There were always charts to be gone over, results to be discussed. So they did what any parent did back then. They showed me where the food was and left me to my own devices.
I meandered through the building, opening every door, exploring every sofa cushion. I came up with a handful of FunSpot tokens, a chewed-on Mork from Ork, a switchblade comb. I put the comb in my pocket and headed outside. Back to the action. Back to the smells of people, the chants and ejaculations.
But then I found a doorway I’d never noticed before and an echoey, desolate hallway opened up before me. And at the other end I saw a door.
Unlike the rest of the house, which had been recently given a fresh coat of antique white, this door remained in its original state. It was a deep New England green and the paint was thick and leaden and the green was peeling so you could see all the layers of color underneath. You could tell just by looking, it was a door that wasn't meant to be opened. Not by the general public, anyway. The doorknob was battered and rusty and would not turn but the door itself was slightly ajar, hanging freely in its frame, held in place by nothing more than a loop and eyelet hook.
I unhooked the door. Hinge-bound, it swung open on its own, and I found myself at the edge of a precipice, looking out over an unfinished staircase that led downward into darkness. The boards beneath my feet were swollen and bare. I ran a hand along the wall and found one of those old-style light switches, the kind that isn't so much a switch as just two buttons, one atop the other. I pushed them both, alternately, but they did not respond.
My eyes adjusted as I began my descent. The air was musty and I could see myself reflected in puddles where the groundwater had seeped in. A stack of mattresses lay rotting in the dampness, colored with mold. A ventriloquist dummy sat slumped in one corner: the remnant of some outdated therapeutic method. Scores of laboratory devices sat along one wall, as in an old sci-fi movie‚ all meters and switches, their circuitry long gone bad. Tall-boys of Black Label lay scattered on the floor around a ratty antique couch‚ the uncomfortable kind with the fabric that ripples like an old window. There were deep holes sliced into it and the springs were poking through. I reached my hand in and poked around and found a hard pack of cigarettes and a Bic besides. So far this was turning out to be a pretty good score.
I made a mental note. On Monday, at recess, I would offer a smoke to Sarah Jacobsen, a cute girl in my class who would be intrigued to learn I had taken an interest in cigarettes. When did I start? She would ask. How did I feel about menthol?
In the dim light that leaked down from upstairs I could make out something big not five feet away. A booth, the size of an outhouse: unfinished plywood reinforced by two by fours. It looked like a one-hour photo. The thing Superman used to change in; the thing magicians use to make assistants disappear.
On the door, in permanent marker, were scrawled the words, "The Box."
I opened the door. Briefly, I thought of children's stories and magical passageways to new worlds. But here there was no Witch, no Watchdog. Just a hinged latch with a lock through it. I removed the Master lock and pulled at the wood but the hinges creaked and resisted. I braced myself as best I could and tugged harder, reckless with boredom, until suddenly the hinges gave way, propelling me backwards into the muck.
I recovered and stepped into the box and closed the door. It was dark now so I pulled out the lighter. The booth was empty on the inside save for a classroom chair, the unpadded kind built from that indestructible material that feels like slate, but is not stone. There was nothing to distract a disturbed autistic mind, only the smearings on the walls and the places the residents had dragged them down. A pair of handcuffs dangled invitingly from each arm of the chair. Another lay on the floor, attached at one end to the chair's leg.
I heard footsteps above me. A female voice called out, "Hello? Is anybody down there?" The lighter was getting hot. I extracted a cigarette from my khakis, raised it to my lips, shielded my hand the way they did on television, and fired it up. The woman shut the door and engaged the eyelet and the basement was mine again.
Self-injurious behavior is common among the severely autistic. Head-banging. Self-flagellation, even self-consumption—devouring one’s own flesh. Michael is a biter, his thumb a mass of callouses and scars. His frustration is only mitigated between his teeth, most noticeably once blood is drawn. A lot of things get to him this way: clothing that doesn't feel right‚ or has a hole. A round of Happy Birthday To You or Pop Goes the Weasel. The sound of a diamond needle on a phonograph, the pop-top roof-motor of our '66 Bonneville.
I pocketed the lighter and sat down in the chair. The Marlboro was beginning to make me nauseous so I crushed it out. It stunned me, how absolutely dark the room was. And how quiet. It was like being in a cave. The solidity of it. Out of respect, I stopped moving. I lost the will to speak.
I wondered how many children had been made to sit here over the years, how many uncontrollable fits had led a boy to this punishment, brought on by a button hole or an unexpected birthday. I wondered was the box a regular practice or last resort.
I wondered if they had ever made my brother sit here and for how long. I wondered if they let him know how long it was going to be, how long he'd have to keep sitting here, secured to this uncomfortable chair in the basement of this old Victorian. I wondered if they told him it would be forever.
There have been times. Episodes the doctors now say were seizures of the temporal lobe. Seizures that make Michael lose himself, however much of him there is to begin with. Times that simply take over, leaving an automaton in my brother’s place. His arms flail. His ordinarily dopey eyes fill with rage. When he’s like this, your natural inclination is to wrap your arms around him. To hold and comfort or restrain him with a jacket so he'll calm down. But this is the last thing you want to do— a major thumb-biter. Held-down, Michael goes from awkwardly aggressive to intentionally violent, like Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk.
Back when he still lived at home, whenever Michael tantrummed‚ or "transitioned," as we called it‚ our mother would send him to his—to our—room and close the door, gripping the knob with both hands to keep him from getting out. Other than that, he was free to do whatever it was he needed to for however long he needed to do it. He would howl and moan and spend the next half-hour destroying our bedroom: shredding dust-jackets and dismembering GI Joes until the demons that had seized his mind were gone.
We've told them time and time again. It's right there in his file: if he acts out, lock the door, and let him be. Regardless, the case workers still knock him to the floor and pin him down. They pay for it in blood. Flesh has been torn, noses broken. One evening, the staff were holding Michael down just as mom arrived to bring him home for the evening. Her finger wound up in his mouth somehow and he nearly bit it off. That night, Michael was unusually verbal, weeping and apologizing unceasingly once he'd realized what he'd done.
Doctors in the 1960's used to blame the mothers for their children's autism. They called them "Refrigerator Mothers." They likened them to guards in a Nazi concentration camp.
As punishment, our father would hug Michael if he howled too much. He tried to make a game of it. “I’m going to hug you, Michael!” He would shout. Dad always claimed Michael loved the attention, that he laughed when he hugged him, that he got the joke.
Down in the box, I closed my eyes and began to relax. Safe from the chaos outside, enveloped in the welcoming darkness, I sat there and waited for the day to be over. I hoped we wouldn't miss Happy Days by the time we finally made it home. I opened my eyes but could see nothing. I blinked, to confirm they were open. For a moment I wondered if I was blind. I found myself slipping into a warm hypnotic haze. And then the dreams came: colors and swirling abstractions that morphed and floated about like ghosts, vague strand-like apparitions, like so many silken scarves, intertwining, as in a waltz. My mind tried to find something to grab hold of, to accommodate this foreign, senseless world and fill the void with meaning.
And then I began inexplicably to rise. The feeling was subtle at first, illusory. Something in that cigarette, perhaps. But the motion persisted. I went on lifting ever upwards, into space. I hovered a foot or two above the boy in the chair. I could no longer sense the position of my limbs.
For a moment, I wondered how I might settle back down into myself, even whether I would be able to return at all. I forgot all about the box, all about the basement, all about the autistics. Is this what Leonard Nimoy was talking about on that episode of In Search Of? When they talked about looking down upon themselves as they lay on that hospital bed, unconscious. Is this how it happens when you die?
Without thinking, my hand grabbed a handcuff and secured it around my wrist, squeezing it tight to keep myself from floating away.
As soon as I felt the cold steel against my wrist, and heard the ratchet of the handcuff's angry gears, in an instant I returned. I could feel my tight-laced Adidas again, my wool sweater tugging at a pimple on my chest. I awoke as if from a dream and realized I had to get the hell out of there. My parents must by now be wondering where I was, where I could have gone off too. What perverted activities I’d become involved with.
It was only then I realized I had literally handcuffed myself to the chair. And that they weren't just toy handcuffs, the kind you won at the carnival, with the release button on the side. These were the real deal. Completely regulation. I worked at them for a few minutes, struggled to mold my hand into a tube, like Houdini, and slide it out, but to no avail. And without a pair of pliers, there was no dismantling the chair.
Suddenly, I heard my brother. I heard the words that Mike repeated in his mad seized-up ranting over and over so many times before: "Pu--pu--put him in the box!! Going to pu--pu--put you in the box!"
"Help!" I screamed, suddenly panicking, "Anybody! I'm down here! In the Basement! Hello?? Somebody help me, please!"
But nobody could hear me. They were all outside, bellowing and rocking on their heels and eating themselves.
And then I stood up and the chair came right up with me. It wasn't bolted down. All I had to do was carry the chair upstairs. It wouldn't look that bad, I thought. I've talked myself out of worse predicaments than this. Nobody had to know the whole story. Just the basics. I had handcuffed myself to a chair is all. I could work the guilt angle. Somebody else handcuffed me to the chair. One of the autistics. "Where were you?" I would implore, "Couldn't you hear me? I yelled and yelled for help and you never came!" For realism I produced some tears, then found them difficult to stop.
I was lucky, I thought. I would always be able to escape. Unlike my brother, I would never be trapped inside my own head. I could always carry the chair upstairs. I let the tears stream convincingly down my face as I messed-up my hair with the switchblade. "I was freaking out!” I’d say, “That guy could've killed me!" Then I gathered my nerves, picked up the chair, flicked the Bic to light my path, and, stumbling, worked my way upstairs to meet my folks.
I was a boy of ten when the event occurred, Michael, about thirteen. I don't remember what the event was exactly. But for whatever reason, there was a big to-do happening at his residence. A barbecue, potato salad, and chips. It may have been a graduation ceremony, or it may have been the fourth of July.
Don't look too close, I would tell myself on the ride over, don't examine their behavior. Don't stare. Try to look on the bright side. Maybe they aren't as bad off as they seem. Maybe they know what they're doing: the kid in the hockey helmet who banged his head against the wall. The wild-haired girl who came running at you, babbling, and kissed you insanely until you pushed her away. The balancers, three of them, who walked atop the second floor porch railings and crossed over at the ledges, nonchalant as Chinese acrobats. The staff members would call up to them in shouted whispers (trying not to draw attention), begging them to please come down. It's time for all of you to climb on down now and sit and have something to eat.
There was always street parking and the long concrete walk up to the front door, my father leading, my mom holding my sister's hand. Following some distance behind, I paused at the pair of tall granite posts that stood guard at the entrance. At one time they supported a pair of cast-iron gates. but now only the thick hinges remained. I followed with my fingers a date —1852—inscribed as if on a tombstone, and then sprinted to catch up to my folks at the door.
We let ourselves in, as we always did. As we were supposed to, apparently. We rang the doorbell and then opened the door and greeted whoever happened to be standing by, rocking on his heels and muttering. Then we headed upstairs, up the massive curved stairwell, my head level with the sloping oaken banister, and began down the long, wide hallway. I remember the length and girth of it, the number of rooms we passed. I remember being jealous of the wall-to-wall carpeting. Finally, we reached Michael's room and knocked a polite warning: stop masturbating and pull up your pants. Your family is here.
We opened the door. Michael was warding off evil spirits, rubbing his ears and emoting open-throated moans: primitive guttural melodies that sound vaguely like an air-horn, or a moose. Animal yet mechanical. When he saw us, he stopped vocalizing and rubbed his hands together fast and then fiddled with the dials on his boombox. He was tuning in on something.
"Hi, Michael," mom and dad said, "How are you?" "Fine," Michael said.
You could hug Michael if you wanted do, but you didn't have to. It didn't matter either way, and he'd probably prefer it if you didn't. If you kept your distance. My parents would hug him, regardless, and my dad would call him "putchkie" and act as if he was excited to see him. And who knows? Maybe he really was. It didn't appear to affect Michael one way or the other, all of us being there. His family. He could take it or leave it. Just about the way any teenager would respond if his family showed up suddenly out of nowhere, demanding answers.
My folks would soon be occupied with paperwork. There were always charts to be gone over, results to be discussed. So they did what any parent did back then. They showed me where the food was and left me to my own devices.
I meandered through the building, opening every door, exploring every sofa cushion. I came up with a handful of FunSpot tokens, a chewed-on Mork from Ork, a switchblade comb. I put the comb in my pocket and headed outside. Back to the action. Back to the smells of people, the chants and ejaculations.
But then I found a doorway I’d never noticed before and an echoey, desolate hallway opened up before me. And at the other end I saw a door.
Unlike the rest of the house, which had been recently given a fresh coat of antique white, this door remained in its original state. It was a deep New England green and the paint was thick and leaden and the green was peeling so you could see all the layers of color underneath. You could tell just by looking, it was a door that wasn't meant to be opened. Not by the general public, anyway. The doorknob was battered and rusty and would not turn but the door itself was slightly ajar, hanging freely in its frame, held in place by nothing more than a loop and eyelet hook.
I unhooked the door. Hinge-bound, it swung open on its own, and I found myself at the edge of a precipice, looking out over an unfinished staircase that led downward into darkness. The boards beneath my feet were swollen and bare. I ran a hand along the wall and found one of those old-style light switches, the kind that isn't so much a switch as just two buttons, one atop the other. I pushed them both, alternately, but they did not respond.
My eyes adjusted as I began my descent. The air was musty and I could see myself reflected in puddles where the groundwater had seeped in. A stack of mattresses lay rotting in the dampness, colored with mold. A ventriloquist dummy sat slumped in one corner: the remnant of some outdated therapeutic method. Scores of laboratory devices sat along one wall, as in an old sci-fi movie‚ all meters and switches, their circuitry long gone bad. Tall-boys of Black Label lay scattered on the floor around a ratty antique couch‚ the uncomfortable kind with the fabric that ripples like an old window. There were deep holes sliced into it and the springs were poking through. I reached my hand in and poked around and found a hard pack of cigarettes and a Bic besides. So far this was turning out to be a pretty good score.
I made a mental note. On Monday, at recess, I would offer a smoke to Sarah Jacobsen, a cute girl in my class who would be intrigued to learn I had taken an interest in cigarettes. When did I start? She would ask. How did I feel about menthol?
In the dim light that leaked down from upstairs I could make out something big not five feet away. A booth, the size of an outhouse: unfinished plywood reinforced by two by fours. It looked like a one-hour photo. The thing Superman used to change in; the thing magicians use to make assistants disappear.
On the door, in permanent marker, were scrawled the words, "The Box."
I opened the door. Briefly, I thought of children's stories and magical passageways to new worlds. But here there was no Witch, no Watchdog. Just a hinged latch with a lock through it. I removed the Master lock and pulled at the wood but the hinges creaked and resisted. I braced myself as best I could and tugged harder, reckless with boredom, until suddenly the hinges gave way, propelling me backwards into the muck.
I recovered and stepped into the box and closed the door. It was dark now so I pulled out the lighter. The booth was empty on the inside save for a classroom chair, the unpadded kind built from that indestructible material that feels like slate, but is not stone. There was nothing to distract a disturbed autistic mind, only the smearings on the walls and the places the residents had dragged them down. A pair of handcuffs dangled invitingly from each arm of the chair. Another lay on the floor, attached at one end to the chair's leg.
I heard footsteps above me. A female voice called out, "Hello? Is anybody down there?" The lighter was getting hot. I extracted a cigarette from my khakis, raised it to my lips, shielded my hand the way they did on television, and fired it up. The woman shut the door and engaged the eyelet and the basement was mine again.
Self-injurious behavior is common among the severely autistic. Head-banging. Self-flagellation, even self-consumption—devouring one’s own flesh. Michael is a biter, his thumb a mass of callouses and scars. His frustration is only mitigated between his teeth, most noticeably once blood is drawn. A lot of things get to him this way: clothing that doesn't feel right‚ or has a hole. A round of Happy Birthday To You or Pop Goes the Weasel. The sound of a diamond needle on a phonograph, the pop-top roof-motor of our '66 Bonneville.
I pocketed the lighter and sat down in the chair. The Marlboro was beginning to make me nauseous so I crushed it out. It stunned me, how absolutely dark the room was. And how quiet. It was like being in a cave. The solidity of it. Out of respect, I stopped moving. I lost the will to speak.
I wondered how many children had been made to sit here over the years, how many uncontrollable fits had led a boy to this punishment, brought on by a button hole or an unexpected birthday. I wondered was the box a regular practice or last resort.
I wondered if they had ever made my brother sit here and for how long. I wondered if they let him know how long it was going to be, how long he'd have to keep sitting here, secured to this uncomfortable chair in the basement of this old Victorian. I wondered if they told him it would be forever.
There have been times. Episodes the doctors now say were seizures of the temporal lobe. Seizures that make Michael lose himself, however much of him there is to begin with. Times that simply take over, leaving an automaton in my brother’s place. His arms flail. His ordinarily dopey eyes fill with rage. When he’s like this, your natural inclination is to wrap your arms around him. To hold and comfort or restrain him with a jacket so he'll calm down. But this is the last thing you want to do— a major thumb-biter. Held-down, Michael goes from awkwardly aggressive to intentionally violent, like Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk.
Back when he still lived at home, whenever Michael tantrummed‚ or "transitioned," as we called it‚ our mother would send him to his—to our—room and close the door, gripping the knob with both hands to keep him from getting out. Other than that, he was free to do whatever it was he needed to for however long he needed to do it. He would howl and moan and spend the next half-hour destroying our bedroom: shredding dust-jackets and dismembering GI Joes until the demons that had seized his mind were gone.
We've told them time and time again. It's right there in his file: if he acts out, lock the door, and let him be. Regardless, the case workers still knock him to the floor and pin him down. They pay for it in blood. Flesh has been torn, noses broken. One evening, the staff were holding Michael down just as mom arrived to bring him home for the evening. Her finger wound up in his mouth somehow and he nearly bit it off. That night, Michael was unusually verbal, weeping and apologizing unceasingly once he'd realized what he'd done.
Doctors in the 1960's used to blame the mothers for their children's autism. They called them "Refrigerator Mothers." They likened them to guards in a Nazi concentration camp.
As punishment, our father would hug Michael if he howled too much. He tried to make a game of it. “I’m going to hug you, Michael!” He would shout. Dad always claimed Michael loved the attention, that he laughed when he hugged him, that he got the joke.
Down in the box, I closed my eyes and began to relax. Safe from the chaos outside, enveloped in the welcoming darkness, I sat there and waited for the day to be over. I hoped we wouldn't miss Happy Days by the time we finally made it home. I opened my eyes but could see nothing. I blinked, to confirm they were open. For a moment I wondered if I was blind. I found myself slipping into a warm hypnotic haze. And then the dreams came: colors and swirling abstractions that morphed and floated about like ghosts, vague strand-like apparitions, like so many silken scarves, intertwining, as in a waltz. My mind tried to find something to grab hold of, to accommodate this foreign, senseless world and fill the void with meaning.
And then I began inexplicably to rise. The feeling was subtle at first, illusory. Something in that cigarette, perhaps. But the motion persisted. I went on lifting ever upwards, into space. I hovered a foot or two above the boy in the chair. I could no longer sense the position of my limbs.
For a moment, I wondered how I might settle back down into myself, even whether I would be able to return at all. I forgot all about the box, all about the basement, all about the autistics. Is this what Leonard Nimoy was talking about on that episode of In Search Of? When they talked about looking down upon themselves as they lay on that hospital bed, unconscious. Is this how it happens when you die?
Without thinking, my hand grabbed a handcuff and secured it around my wrist, squeezing it tight to keep myself from floating away.
As soon as I felt the cold steel against my wrist, and heard the ratchet of the handcuff's angry gears, in an instant I returned. I could feel my tight-laced Adidas again, my wool sweater tugging at a pimple on my chest. I awoke as if from a dream and realized I had to get the hell out of there. My parents must by now be wondering where I was, where I could have gone off too. What perverted activities I’d become involved with.
It was only then I realized I had literally handcuffed myself to the chair. And that they weren't just toy handcuffs, the kind you won at the carnival, with the release button on the side. These were the real deal. Completely regulation. I worked at them for a few minutes, struggled to mold my hand into a tube, like Houdini, and slide it out, but to no avail. And without a pair of pliers, there was no dismantling the chair.
Suddenly, I heard my brother. I heard the words that Mike repeated in his mad seized-up ranting over and over so many times before: "Pu--pu--put him in the box!! Going to pu--pu--put you in the box!"
"Help!" I screamed, suddenly panicking, "Anybody! I'm down here! In the Basement! Hello?? Somebody help me, please!"
But nobody could hear me. They were all outside, bellowing and rocking on their heels and eating themselves.
And then I stood up and the chair came right up with me. It wasn't bolted down. All I had to do was carry the chair upstairs. It wouldn't look that bad, I thought. I've talked myself out of worse predicaments than this. Nobody had to know the whole story. Just the basics. I had handcuffed myself to a chair is all. I could work the guilt angle. Somebody else handcuffed me to the chair. One of the autistics. "Where were you?" I would implore, "Couldn't you hear me? I yelled and yelled for help and you never came!" For realism I produced some tears, then found them difficult to stop.
I was lucky, I thought. I would always be able to escape. Unlike my brother, I would never be trapped inside my own head. I could always carry the chair upstairs. I let the tears stream convincingly down my face as I messed-up my hair with the switchblade. "I was freaking out!” I’d say, “That guy could've killed me!" Then I gathered my nerves, picked up the chair, flicked the Bic to light my path, and, stumbling, worked my way upstairs to meet my folks.
( Steven Brykman )
www.ChordsAZ.com