Saturday night, sitting in the Espresso Laundromat in Butner, NC, drying laundry and watching Jeopardy with Claire. After I posted this as my Facebook status, I got lots of emails asking how I got to that place.
Answer: I got on I-85 in Durham and drove to exit 189 in Butner, present home of Bernie Madoff.
I know that's not what you are asking. And that's not really the answer. But lately that's about the best I can do, even as I know that requests for information are expressions of caring. Facebook sentences are so much easier than stories and Facebook friends offered concrete expressions of help in ways that didn't seem to come from other sources.
But today the right person asked the right question in the right way, one that wasn't an attempt to judge or fix. It was someone who didn't know me and who had too much pain and too little time to care at that moment. But he did. And then the wrong person—or at least one that I had no expectations of—offered an act of kindness so helpful that I wanted to cry. And the combination of these two events allowed me to breathe and think and tell a piece of the story.
I didn't expect to be in Butner, home of the state mental hospital, something to be avoided at all costs. Elizabeth has been in a therapeutic foster home, called level II care in the mental health system, ever since she hurt me last spring. The foster home was going fairly well, but school was not. She seemed happy enough, but "Aunt Jackie's" wasn't home and after every visit, going back to the home was an ordeal.
In January she went on a church youth group ski trip. She had a good time and did well. She was out of school on Monday, so I offered her the chance to spend the night and go back to Aunt Jackie's before I went on to work myself. We had a wonderful Sunday evening, playing board games with Claire and her boyfriend, pretending to be the kind of family we aren't and doing a damn good job of it too. Such a good job that she decided she was not going back. She would force me to wreck the car or hurt me badly, but she wasn't going back.
When we got to Aunt Jackie's, a neighbor observed our struggle, and thinking some poor white woman was being mugged, called the police. They came and took Elizabeth to Duke's ER. We spent about four hours there, sitting with our Kenyan sitter, talking to the psychiatric social worker, and I assured her that Elizabeth usually calmed down after an ER visit. Elizabeth said all the right things to the doctor and she released us. Elizabeth's therapist came to take her home.
After a great deal of difficulty and help from Duke Security, she arrived at home. But not for long. Two horrible, unprofessional and humiliating police visits later, we arrive back in the Duke ER. Same Kenyan sitter. Same billing clerk. Same nurses. Same room. The resident psychiatrist informs me that they really aren't there to work with undisciplined children and will probably send us home. I inform her that we will probably be back for a third time. She rolls her eyes and goes up to find the attending.
The attending decides to admit, but Duke has no psych unit. They tell me it will be days before a bed can be found in the state. I expected this. I push the now sleeping Elizabeth over on her gurney and crawl on with her. Later I feel our sitter cover both of us with a blanket and slide a pillow under my head.
In the morning, I give thanks for the hospital wireless while Elizabeth watches TV. The TV gets stuck on the golf channel. Finally they call the TV remote technician (who knew there was such a position?) and she comes and switches us to Disney. Later, miraculously, we're told that a bed has been found, in Central Regional Hospital, a 452 bed hospital for those with mental illness. It's a state facility. They have 32 child and adolescent beds and Elizabeth gets one of them. She is stoic as we wait for the sheriff's deputy to come and take her to Butner. The deputy is terse and won't look at me. I follow in my car. We've only been in the ER for 24 hours, which must be a record.
When we arrive, I ask to see Elizabeth, but I'm told that they are doing intake and I can't see her yet. I sit in the lobby and cry. It's the change of shift and people walk by me, people who are nurses and social workers and doctors, and they pretend not to see me. It's time to go home. I wish I had a friend who would call and say "I'm on my way!" but no one does and I can think of no one to call. I ask again to see her. Not yet. After three hours, I ask the receptionist to call. She does and is told that I can't see Elizabeth, that they aren't convinced I'm her legal guardian.
I'm tired and hungry and scared and lonely. That's my excuse. I can't believe what I'm hearing and I proceed to pitch a fit. The receptionist tries to calm me as I yell in the phone, saying things like you have no legal right, and I want to talk to a supervisor, and this feels like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to people too young to even know what I'm referring to. Finally they ask Elizabeth why she is in foster care and she tells them that she had broken my head. No, I had never abused her. I realize that the horrible treatment I'd received all day—the police, the resident, the deputy, here—all was because they thought I was an abusive mother who had no right to see the child she'd hurt. All these people who are part of the mental health system don't know the difference in a level II home and a DSS foster home. They think she has been taken away from me because I was a bad parent. They still aren't convinced.
But they do let me see her for a few minutes. She touches my name tag with her finger. F-0 she traces. That's her unit name. The 0 looks like a teardrop she says. That's because we're sad, I say. But the F stands for fine, and that's what we'll both be. She nods. I'll be back tomorrow, I say. She nods again.
She's been there a month now. We're lucky; at UNC she would be out in ten days. Here they can keep her longer. Her social worker has a caseload of four; her psychiatrist has a caseload of six. I can't ask for more. They feel she is over medicated and pull her off most of her meds. They feel her diagnoses are not accurate and are intrigued enough to want to find a new one. They are kind enough, but it's a cold place, with lots of locks and rules. I can't even see her room. But at least they no longer think I'm a bad parent.
And so I drive the 54 mile round trip to Butner on a daily basis. I now do all my banking in Butner, and since the dryer died, I dry my laundry here as well. I eat most of my meals in the car. I've become preoccupied with finding my way around the little town and I drive back roads while the laundry is in the dryer. I find the even smaller town of Stem and good barbecue and wonderful pie.
If I can't know where we're going, I have to know where we are. And I don't know where we're going and I'm not in a huge hurry to find out although there is a lot of pressure to do so. Events seem out of my hands and I watch with mild interest as people make decisions that they pretend I have a say in.
See, it's not a good story, just a list of unpleasant events. There is no ending, happy or otherwise. There is not even a take-home point. Maybe later.
