he little transistor radio floated in the toilet, and Madeleine was the culprit. She leaned against the counter, rocking back and forth and whining at the top of her lungs. In that moment, I wanted nothing in the world so much as the permission to slap her as hard as I could. There is exasperation and there is rage. I had long since crossed into the latter.

            I didn't slap her. It was right there in my hands, making my palms itch, but I stayed firmly on this side of the line between acceptable anger and physical violence. I did, however, throw her over my shoulder and haul her out of the bathroom. Then I tossed her into the easy chair in the living room, probably a little too hard.

            "What is with you, Madeleine? Why do you do this?"

            Even if these weren't rhetorical questions, I wouldn't have expected an answer. Madeleine isn't capable of that kind of response. I slid down against the wall next to the chair and rubbed my hands over my forehead. Madeleine's eyes were wide and she breathed quickly. It should not have been a surprise that she was afraid of me.

•

Seeing Madeleine for the first time is a shock. Because we keep her out of society's way, her appearance evokes the full range of discomfort that "normal" people feel in the presence of someone with a disability. At three an a half feet tall, she almost comes up to my waist. She might be able to touch the fabric beneath the collar of my shirt if she reached up as high as she could. Scoliosis has ravaged Madeleine's posture, so her head is cocked at a surreal angle and her right arm juts oddly out into space. The edges of her mouth are often crusted with a combination of fruit juice and whatever she last ate, which may not have been food. Her eyes are a fantastic shade of January sky, but they seem misty and unfocused unless they are narrowed in rage.

            For all intents and purposes, Madeleine is completely deaf. She doesn't speak at all, although she uses sign language occasionally, and I suspect she knows more sign than she lets on. When she does use her vocal chords, it's in a particularly grating fashion: Madeleine can whine non-stop for an entire day.

            Now, when I use the word "whine" I'm not talking about the annoying tone of voice that we all occasionally employ when we're not getting what we want. Madeleine's whine has shape and texture. It looks like a car wreck. It feels like an old, rusty knife with a rotting wooden handle. It moves like broken glass across the soft skin of your stomach.

            What causes Madeleine to whine this way? Sometimes a soiled diaper. Other times hunger. Most of the time a complete mystery. After a month or so of working with her I decided that it was a singular lament for the fundamental fact of her existence.

            Madeleine relieves this immense misery by knocking over furniture. Especially chairs. If she could take on the dining room table, I'm sure she'd have it on its side in no time. I don't know if it's the pleasure of feeling the object hit the floor, or delight in contributing to the laws of entropy, but she clearly enjoys it. And she hates having her plans thwarted. I once sat down in a chair that she was heading towards, and it resulted in a couple hours of whining.

            It's not just furniture, either. Madeleine will knock anything to the ground that she can reach. Early in my tenure with the agency, I made the mistake of letting her stay in the kitchen with me while I cooked dinner. Bowls of food, cups, pots on the stove. Nothing is exempt from her gravitational experiments. Not even knives. That's the one that really scared me. I watched her reach for a serrated utility knife once and it gave me nightmares for a week.

            Nothing beats getting an immediate reaction, and this is why Madeleine loves to go after her two house mates, Moe and Alice. They both have their favorite things. Moe, for example, is absolutely content when he has a bowl of potato chips and a glass of cranberry juice on the table in front of him. Madeleine knows this, and left unsupervised she will dispatch both things to the floor. If she's in a particularly bad mood she'll actually dump Moe's juice on his lap, sending him into paroxysms of grief.

•

This was my first gig in social services, and the agency didn't hire me outright. They wanted someone with more direct care experience and I had to drop a name to get in the door. Not that I didn't have the basic qualifications for the job; I am patient, sensitive, and responsible. Although I'd never been in a formal setting, I had some experience working with disability. Not to mention my personal background: as someone who stutters, I know what it's like to fall short of society's outrageous expectations. I must have communicated these things in my interview because they hired me within the week.

            Social service is notorious for low wages but renown for extremely flexible hours. With an overnight shift I could log twenty four hours in three days, leaving me plenty of time to write. The house was a short block and a half from my apartment, so I could walk to work instead of wasting time and money in my car. The schedule balanced well with my other job, a dance class that meets twice each week. All the parts of my life fit together rather nicely (for a change) so I didn't mind if the walls of my financial space were a little narrow.

            The house manager described Madeleine as "someone who required a lot of supervision." She warned me about the furniture tipping and her propensity for annoying Moe and Alice. It occurred to me that I might be in a little over my head, but I feel that way at the beginning of any new job. I decided to get into the situation before making any decisions about what I couldn't handle.

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Copyright © 1998 Jesse Loesberg