J.T.’s Anger

(On Top of Everything Else)

Disambiguation is the speed at which things are revealed. Slow motion, very slow motion, reveals that a mosquito’s wings move about 1000 times a second.

Spellbinding.

So how much is a second worth? Well, it depends a lot on what second we are talking about. About two people die worldwide every second. The rest of us keep going along at the speed of time.

Would the world tick differently if J.T. had a second second?

J.T. was the youngest child ever admitted to our residential treatment center. I figured it was a sign of the times, the Cook County crack epidemic of the late 1980’s. Infants and toddlers, those that lived, that is, were being removed by the state from the custody of abusing and neglecting drug addicted parents and placed with relatives by the state. And, beyond that, there were residential treatment centers for the kids that “couldn’t make it” living in a foster home.

J.T was only seven years old but I could see right away that he was more ready for us than we were for him. He had already mastered the art of angry engagement. He started out by showing us he could screech and make our ear drums pound.

If you didn’t know he was a biter, he’d really hurt you.

Three months after joining us he shut down the center’s Christmas Party. A couple of minutes into the party he bolted from his seat in the first row and pulled down the Christmas Tree. Then he leaped on the gift table and started trashing the beautifully wrapped packages (the work of the Volunteer Women’s Auxiliary.)

“He’s so bad,” whispered the volunteer next to me.

When J.T. jumped off the table, he tipped it over and stood with his arms folded across his chest and flashed gang signs.

This all happened so fast that all anyone could do was respond with watching and cringing. J.T. had put things in freeze mode, sort of like when you stub your toe, and you tense up, waiting and knowing that the pain impulse is certainly on its way to your brain.

Finally, the Center Director stood up and walked towards J.T. He extended his hand, loosely, to J.T. in friendship; perhaps he had read something on extinguishing maladaptive behaviors by ignoring them?

J.T. bit his hand.

I saw it coming.

Everyone felt it.

“Someone do something,” said the director.

From my seat in the second row I said, “J.T., I’ll give you five dollars if you come with me to your room.”

He nodded; the deal was closed.

The room exhaled one collective sigh.

The volunteer gave me a thumb’s up sign.

On the way to his room I asked him, “What does J.T. stand for?”

“Antwan,” he said. “I don’t like Antwan it so I named myself.”

J.T. - Just Trouble?

I gave him the five dollar bill.

J.T. was subsequently transported to a psychiatric hospital.

The director’s hand was bandaged; the skin was bruised but not broken. The director told the Clinical Director about what he called my unprofessional behavior; he also told him to transfer J.T. to me. “Maybe those two weirdos will got along.”

Two weeks later J.T. was returned to us. During his absence J.T.’s putative father, a month out of prison, contacted our center. I was given his call. “I’m out of prison and I want to see my son,” he said. We did diligent research and couldn’t find any legal reason not to allow a family session for the two of them. I asked J.T. if he wanted a visit from his father. J.T. said, “It’s about fucking time.” It was to be their first contact, ever.

During the family session J.T.’s father said, “I told his mom not to name him Antwan. You name a boy Antwan and he’s sure to end up killed.” Hearing this, J.T jumped at his father and let loose a hard wired windmill of punches. His father smiled feebly before covering himself up, accepting the assault in an attempt to get along with his son.

I got between them. J.T. laughed: dad smiled: I ended the session.

We never heard from dad again.

The following Monday, J.T. demonstrated another skill. He asked a child care worker to help him dye his hair with a purple streak. He told her he had seen football fans like this on TV the previous afternoon and he wanted to try the look. The child care worker felt it was a good way for her to get to know him a little bit and to enhance his self-esteem. So she used a little purple food-dye and formed a purple streak in his hair.

“Looks good,” she said.

However, at lunch that day, as J.T. was strutting his streaked stuff in the cafeteria lunch line, three of the bigger kids grabbed him, pulled at the purple dye strak and started giving him a nuggie right in front of all the other kids. While J.T. laughingly squealed his appreciation for finally being noticed by the older guys, the director walked in and hollered out, “Time Out!” and “Quiet Time!” Everybody settled to watch what came next.

“What do we have here?” he asked. J.T. told the Director the purple dye job had been the child care worker’s idea and he pointed her out. The worker felt a very hot flash, shook her head, but the damage was done.

The director apologized to J.T. “I’ll straighten her out,” he said. “And, listen up everybody. No more of that kind of stuff,” he said.

What the director couldn’t see was that nuggies were one form of a rite of passage that all the kids there went through. And, if he thought about it, it was very much like all the ass-kissing he had to do, that many of us had to do, to get noticed enough, beyond our very good, hard work, to get to where we wanted to get.

The next Saturday I had been called in to work to fill in for the weekend social worker who had called in sick. When I got to the center I looked out of the day room window and saw J.T. below in the courtyard.

There he was, all alone, dribbling a basketball. He had seen the older kids dribble the ball and by watching them he learned to mimic the skill.

I thought I knew a bit about effort but I saw it in its rawest form in that little guy. He hadn’t given up despite s an infant being traded off by his mother in his soiled diaper to a foul-smelling sex addict in exchange for some crack.

By the age of three he become proficient at fending off being crushed by his mother as she rolled over him on the tiny mattress on a basement floor.

There I was, at the window, watching him acting out on the court what he kept inside to himself. Time and time again he’d lose the dribble and time and time again he’d retrieve and redribble the full-sized, threadbare leather basketball, a ball that was much heavier than his head and about twice the size of it.

I opened the day room’s window. I heard him talking trash to the basketball.

That’s gave me an idea for our next session.

On Sunday I picked up a package of those little Nerf basketballs and a basketball rim with the suction cup and on Monday I stuck it on my office wall. The next time J.T. came for therapy he noticed the hoop right away. I had used some tape to create a free throw line on the floor in front of the hoop. I tossed him the Nerf ball and he started shooting free throws.

He didn’t want to leave when the session ended. From then on he came ready to hoop it up with me.

We made up all kinds of games.

We created unusual shots, like the ones behind our backs and the ones with the use of a mirror.

J.T. seemed to be making peace with the hoop.

One day, out of the blue, he burst into my office, slammed my door, and screamed at me, “Lock the door! She’s going to kill me!”

A few seconds later there was a knock on the same door.

It was the school principal.

J.T. put his right index finger to his smiling lips and whispered, “Shhhhhhhhhhhh.” I nodded my assent.

Then he slid past me and hid under my desk. I got up to open the door to see the school principal.

“Hi, Ms. Jones,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Man,” she said, “Your J.T. is really fast!”

“He sure is, Ms. Jones,” I said. “How can I help you? Please come in.”

She told me that J.T.’s teacher had just escorted J.T. out of class, again, for the nth time at least, this time for gutting up a juicy one and spitting out a wad of green/yellow on the floor. The kids in the special ed. classroom went nuts, having been dosed with another jolt of feel-good-brain-fever all around. The teacher got angry. She said, “You are in big trouble now you little troublemaker.”

Always ready for fight J.T. escalated it into something more by giving her the finger. The teacher more or less dragged J. T. to the principal’s office where J.T. called the principal out with his falsetto voice with, “Your mama!” Then he turned around, pulled his pants down, and waddled his butt back and forth in the principal’s direction and then he fled the scene, sprinting all the way up to my office. The principal followed, apparently expecting me to help her get even with him.

“Ms. Jones, do you have him on tape?” I asked her, smiling, trying to be funny.

She didn’t laugh.

I asked her if I could meet alone with J.T. for a few minutes.

She agreed and left. At that point she and I knew she was going to complain to my supervisor about my lack of support for her.

Then J.T. came out from under my desk. I said nothing. He grabbed the Nerf, squeezed it and flung a shot at the hoop.

He banked in a perfect toss.

“Perfect shot J.T.,” I said.

So, now what? J.T. stood there, perhaps waiting for me to say something?

Would he run out the door to be chased again and again?

I picked up the ball from the floor and said, “That was beginner’s luck,” and I banked in a shot myself.

“Beginner’s luck!” he cried.

“No,” I said, “That’s experience.”

“I want some of that too. How do you get it?” he asked.

“By just trying to get an education,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “You got yours, right?”

“I’m still getting one,” I said.

After that I never did along with the school principal but my supervisor stuck with me.

My relationship with J.T. grew. We’d keep some kind of score from week to week and I found we had crossed another line together when I couldn’t beat him at any of our games.

Once he knew he had made it “his game” he started talking to me about his life.

“My moms never took me nowhere to play.”

“Some of my moms beat me with a chain.”

“Street corners are bad.”

“I pee in my pants.”

“I had my eye punched out.”

Sometimes it only takes one hit in the eye to close it; sometimes that one hit may open them both.