Mathematical Sense

Bianca wailed for the volunteers long after they were gone. She couldn’t rest but held onto some hope they would return and she would receive their affection. She held onto the bars of the backyard gate, distressed.

“It makes my heart hurt to hear her wail like that,” a worker told me. The worker told Bianca not to cry, but somehow holding the dirty little Bianca to calm her was something the workers NEVER do. Bianca has stopped looking to them for affection.

I can’t remember what I was doing at the time, but it caught my attention for an hour or less inside the orphanage. At some point, I had come out briefly and noticed that Bianca was still crying.

When I came outside I saw that Bianca had escaped from the back yard. She was moaning, whimpering, and kind of running around aimlessly. The eight year old had somehow lost all the clothes she had on earlier. Even her diaper was gone. She was completely naked. I was distressed by her running around naked and couldn’t help but note that she clearly had a six-pack. A life of tantrums had made this little girl ripped.

An older girl with MR, Doina, was attempting to grab Bianca. But Doina would respond to Bianca as the caregivers did, and Bianca would never willingly go where Doina led. I couldn’t bare Doina’s hitting and yanking the eight year old, dragging her tantruming body on uneven concrete.

I ran to Bianca and spoke to her. “Okay, come with me,” but Bianca was beyond listening. She wouldn’t have trusted an angel at this point. I saw some large cuts on her that were bleeding. I couldn’t take it. I scooped her up in my arms while her legs kicked and her muscles tightened. I held her close to me. Two adult men who work at the center had been sitting just outside the gate, enjoying their cigarettes and laughing at the sight of Bianca running around naked. I could hear their laughter as I carried Bianca inside the building, up the stairs. As I was on the stairs I set Bianca down. I attempted to use my voice in a soft and calm way to create an atmosphere in which she felt she was loved and cared for and everything was okay.

“Bine. Asa. Mergem sus sa facem o baie, dar trebuie sa cautăm pentru rufele inainte de facem baie, da? Cautăm rufele si pampers …” I walked through the steps of what we were doing and going to do. Between every word was another message, “This is such a normal, familiar, calm environment. If we feel a little excited it is only because what we are going to do is so fun.”

I washed Bianca as one of the staff watched. I was glad she only watched and didn’t tell me to make Bianca wash herself. This is usually what the staff tell me whenever they see me doing something children can do themselves. I delighted to wash out the bleeding wounds on the little girl.

“Look at your shirt,” the staff worker and Doina pointed out. Little specks of Bianca’s blood were on my yellow shirt.

I took Bianca to a room to stay alone with her after she was clean and dressed. She was distracted by all the toys in the room, donated but never used, and couldn’t sit still. I employed the ABA techniques I had learned at a seminar the day before to control Bianca, who still lacked calmness. As I sat next to her at the table I had a thought about how Bianca was hated by the staff and the workers because she insisted on receiving what crumbs of love and security she could get and wouldn’t give that up. Being beaten and having her hair pulled out and her body dragged downstairs (as I had watched for two years) wouldn’t keep her from insisting, “I must be loved.”

I thought about how thankful I was for this attribute in Bianca and how I would hate it if it left because that would mean that we had lost Bianca and she would be dead to us. As long as she insisted on being reached in meant she had a soul that still had a hope of being rescued from a mindless black night.

I looked at her across the table and felt compassion for her need.

“Come here and sit in my lap,” I said, and she got up and sat down. I moved us to a bigger chair where I just held her as she held onto a doll with no legs in her arms.

I’ve heard or read somewhere that when a mother holds her infant, chemicals are released in the mother and child’s brain that are so healthy for them. As I held Bianca, kissing her cheek periodically and telling her I loved her and what a good girl she was, I could FEEL the love inside me, and something of its power had to do with the fact that it wasn’t just myself involved with the emotion, but Bianca was there, too, giving and taking.

There was a moment there (and not a second or a minute or anything measurable, but a MOMENT) when I felt with Bianca in my arms that all the pain I had caused and encountered in my life was worth it in order that in that moment I could hold and love Bianca.

Maybe it doesn’t mathematical sense that the nine hours my mom had of labor plus months of depression in my own life could equal one moment in Romania, but in this moment it made sense.