I chose the route of active engagement, but not from any desire to encourage Madeleine's growth or alter her behavior for the better. It was completely selfish. Watching Madeleine raze the house and needle her house mates, completely unaccountable for the consequences got me totally peeved. Now that I had uncovered her ruse, I felt no sympathy for her "struggle" as she avoided picking up the chairs. In fact, I had begun to feel pleasure at her obvious rage when I knelt down and signed the horrible, dreaded words: "Pick it up, Madeleine."
Seeing her professionally maneuver a chair back onto its legs altered my perception of Madeleine's abilities, and now I felt that she was playing us all for fools. Instead of presupposing that her physical condition prevented her from accomplishing some task, I began assuming exactly the opposite. Most of the time I learned that she was completely up to the task, though she despised being found out.
My new approach followed through to bath time. Since the people who trained me led me to believe that she lacked the manual dexterity required to remove her clothing, I always did it for her. One night I sat her down on the toilet seat cover, turned on the water for the tub and turned to looked at her. She was holding out one foot for me to untie her shoe and take it off.
"Nope. You do it, Madeleine."
The usual barrage of whining and head shaking ensued, but I held my ground, locking eyes with her the way Frank did in the kitchen.
" You take off the shoe, Madeleine. I know you can."
A solid five minutes later, both shoes were off, and she was whining about having to take off her own shirt. In the end the whole process took about twenty minutes or so. Without all the fuss she could have undressed in as much time as it takes anyone else. This all took a lot of patience, but it also gave me the opportunity to get off my feet for a few minutes. After a couple of weeks I began bringing the house's little transistor radio into the bathroom so I could listen to A Prairie Home Companion while Madeleine wailed and shook on the toilet seat.
The training for this job included a two day class in the Mandt System which, as any initiate can happily recite, teaches you to manage yourself as well as others. It recognizes an obvious but frequently overlooked fact: a situation that is spiraling out of control is most likely spiraling you out of control as well. Any assessment of this situation must include an examination of your own physical and emotional state, otherwise you will unwittingly contribute to the problem. David Mandt uses the term "escalation".
During this training, I imagined large, violent people on (or off) lots
of medication wielding sharp household objects. The instructor
proudly recounted numerous tales of encounters with huge, angry men to
whom he valiantly applied the appropriate Mandt hold and skillfully
de-escalated the situation. I smiled at the stories, unconcerned
about their degree of accuracy. The trainings were pretty boring
and the narrative grandeur broke an otherwise mind-numbing eight hours.
I took comfort in the fact that I'd be working with a much less
volatile population anyway.
Although the instructor was a little too obsessed with the physical aspects of the Mandt System (it includes a rigorous method for "restraint") the basic philosophy still came across. What failed to breach the gap, though, was the idea that any situation can escalate anyone. It never occurred to me that what drives a scenario into the red can be subtle, insidious, and instigated by very small people. You might suddenly look down and find yourself on a dangerous and precipitous edge with no idea how you got there. Except for the unfortunate person who helped you get to such uncontrollable heights, you will be completely alone.
"Alone" was most of the problem. I was often the only staff person in the house and I frequently worked ten hour stretches by myself without breaks. There was little support on hand and certainly no opportunity to take a fifteen minute walk around the block to calm down.
I no longer work for that agency and I now have the benefit of hindsight. I'm clearly not the right person to be working with Madeleine. My buttons are far too available for pushing, and she managed to figure out how to hit at least half of them. At the same time, I wonder whose fuse is long enough to work alone, week after week, with someone as difficult as Madeleine.
Madeleine's breathing was finally slowing down, and so was mine. Her eyes returned to their original size, and I could feel a headache starting in the tight, sore muscles at the base of my neck.
She looked very, very tiny in the easy chair. This recliner was Alice's throne. Alice is a large woman and she usually fills the chair with her sizeable girth. Madeleine seemed awkward in the seat with so much of it looming up around her odd, angular body. Her hair was still wet from her bath, so the disconcerting angles of her skull were pronounced and strange to see. As my pulse began to come down, I thought to myself that if some mysterious force in the universe offered me the opportunity to hear one person's thoughts for just a few minutes, I would choose Madeleine. Without thinking twice, I would choose her.
Madeleine stayed in that big, blue chair for the rest of the evening. I cleaned up the kitchen, vacuumed the carpets, and cleaned the bathroom. Her eyes followed me from room to room as I did the nightly chores. Eventually I fished the radio out of the toilet. Water drained out of the cassette player and the battery case. A quiet, formless static emitted from the tiny speaker when I turned it on. I put it back on the mantel, hoping that it would still work in the morning after it dried out.
