"No! No! No! No! No! No!"
This is Alice reacting to Madeleine tipping over her walker, which makes a loud, metallic clatter when it meets the floor.
"Hey Alice," I say after leading Madeleine away from the scene of the crime by her wrist, "Can I put your walker in your room?"
"No!" She's adamant. And loud.
"But Alice, if I put your walker in your room, Madeleine can't knock it over."
"No." Slightly more subdued this time.
"It will be safe in there, Alice. I'll get it out for you when you need it."
"No."
This isn't working. I change tactics.
"Okay, Alice. If you want to keep it out here you need to make a promise."
She looks at me.
"You have to promise not to yell and scream when Madeleine tips over your walker."
"Yeah," she says, and I feel a certain relief rise in my chest.
"That's okay with you, Alice? You can make that promise?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. Good."
I walk back into the kitchen where dinner is simmering on the stove.
Crash!
"No! No! No! No! No! No!"
There is no policy for working with Madeleine. No one has established a set of standards for directing Madeleine's energy on a more productive track. I was warned about Madeleine, but I wasn't given any body of rules for encouraging her growth or deterring her antisocial behavior. As a result, there are two options for dealing with her.
Some people opt for complete laissez faire. As long as Madeleine doesn't physically harm herself or anyone else she has free reign, although the odds that Madeleine might hurt herself are fairly large. When her mood gets really bad, she rolls around on the floor while she whines. Every now and then she'll stop and reach for the leg of a chair, unconcerned that she's lying right on ground zero. I don't think this is an attempt at self-mutilation, but it's almost as scary. Once I caught a falling wooden chair split seconds before it opened Madeleine's skull. Outside of these interventions, this path demands complete hands off. If Alice's walker ends up on the floor, staff sets it back up and lets Madeleine go on her way. Any chairs that end up sideways stay that way until someone wants to use them.
This sounds terribly unfair to Madeleine's house mates and, frankly, it is. With Moe confined to a wheelchair and Alice limited to using a walker, Madeleine is the most ambulatory member of the household. If the staff allows her free reign, Alice and Moe can't enjoy a moment's peace. We sacrifice their basic pleasures for our own daily sanity.
I eventually chose this route, but not before nearly blowing a fuse with the other, which is active engagement.
"You're going to let her get away with that?"
This was Frank, the person who worked upstairs where three other residents shared a home. He often came downstairs to do the laundry and gab about books and music, and now he found me in the kitchen with Madeleine rolling around at my feet, pots and pans strewn about on the floor.
"Yeah, sure. What else can I do, really?"
"Make her clean it up," said Frank, "She can do it."
"She can?" I was incredulous. I had heard many stories about the fragility of her muscles and brittleness of her bones.
"You bet," Frank leaned over the counter, signing and speaking at the same time. "Hey Madeleine," Frank yelled, "Clean up your mess."
Madeleine stopped rolling.
"Madeleine," Frank continued, "Pick it up."
To my utter amazement, Madeleine reached over and picked up a cookie sheet. She held it up to Frank.
"Nope! You put it away. You clean up your mess."
Madeleine whined once and offered the sheet to Frank again.
"Uh-uh. Put it away."
He locked eyes with her. No one moved. For a moment, Madeleine appeared to be concentrating. What was she doing? Weighing her options? Considering alternatives? Scheming some particularly obnoxious way out of this little predicament? Silence reigned for a good two minutes, at least. It was finally broken by the clatter of the cookie sheet sliding into the cabinet.
"A few rounds of that and she'll think twice before making a mess. If you've got the patience for it."
Frank once declared that he'd never work with Madeleine, even if the agency quadrupled his pay and offered him vacations on demand. Considering this, I probably should have thought twice before taking his advice. I was so completely astounded by the sight of Madeleine cleaning up a mess of her own making that I didn't stop to think about it. The next toppled dining room chair gave me the opportunity to see if Frank's philosophy could be applied to furniture.
"Hey, Madeleine! Pick it up!"
She immediately started whining and shaking her head vigorously from side to side. I was unmoved.
"Pick it up, Madeleine. Clean up your mess." Madeleine made to lean down, but then straightened up and started to walk away. I felt an instant flush of anger and grabbed her wrist.
"No, Madeleine. Pick up the chair." She leaned over again, but this time she grabbed on to the wooden seat and began pulling. It rose an inch off the floor before she dropped it, groaning.
"Try again, Madeleine." It was the same thing. Madeleine could lift the chair an inch or two, but no more. Her exasperated grunts made it sound like too much work. I let her off the hook.
"Okay Madeleine, that's enough."
Later that evening I emerged from Alice's room after helping her to bed, and to my infuriated surprise, Madeleine was setting the old chair upright.
It was a little awkward for her. She is, after all, shorter than the chair. She had to lift the chair from the top and walk forward with it, and there was a moment when she and the chair seemed balanced like a bizarre, surreal sculpture. There wasn't any of the heaving and groaning from the earlier episode, and Madeleine had the chair on all four legs in about the same amount of time that it took for her to knock it over. She walked around to the front, climbed up into the seat and crossed her legs. In a few seconds she was gently rocking from side to side.