The Card

There was a boy... a very strange, enchanted boy.   He had been taught by his Grandmother to love all things beautiful and artistic, by his Grandfather that being overly emotional was acceptable in all circumstances, and by his Mother that he was different and special.  Because of the things that he witnessed from the adults around him, and because of the ways he was taught to be, he did not fit in at school, indeed, he had never fit in at any school.  The boy had lived in a variety of places and gone to a variety of schools, and each time he tried to assimilate into the school system, he was bullied, beaten, ostracized, teased, and made miserable.  One day, at a small private school in Carnaxide, Portugal, the overly-dramatic and reactionary boy decided the time had come to take matters into his own hands.

The boy had grown up with stories of Hollywood in the air.  His grandparents had, both, worked within the Hollywood studio system.  His Mommy had had brushes with the likes of Mae West, Lana Turner, and Jennifer Jones, and his Grandmother had been friendly with people like Barbara Stanwyck and Roddy McDowall.  And, so, the boy began watching old movies at an early age, growing up with a working knowledge of the stars of yesteryear, and reading library books like Hollywood Babylon, My Wicked Wicked Ways by Errol Flynn, Judy by Gerold Frank, and Norma Jean: Fred Lawrence Guilles’ Biography of Marilyn Monroe.  The boy had a growing awareness of the tragic lives of the legends, and an increasing fascination with suicide, a fascination that turned from the merely curious to the highly personal.

One day, when the boy was thirteen, the boy was more unhappy than he had ever been before.  His youngest brother had been declared “mentally retarded” by specialists who did not know, in 1978, the weight of the words that they used, words that would, one day, be replaced by medical terms like “developmentally disabled” and “developmental delays.”  The child could not be placed in a learning program until he had been fully tested, in order to establish his capabilities.  The child’s parents determined the best way for those tests to happen would be for the special needs child to be taken to America, where he would spend much time with many specialists.  The child had an older brother with whom he had shared a room, since birth - they were best friends and were not to be separated, so the Mother and her two youngest children left Portugal and returned to the States for nine months so that the baby of the family could get the help that he needed.  The boy was devastated because his Mother was his world, but he understood and he promised to be strong while he and his older sister and their Father stayed behind in Portugal.  Except it didn’t work out that way.  Situations arose that necessitated that the older sister relocate to America, where she joined the Mother and two young ‘uns, leaving the boy in Portugal with his Father and a school life that consisted of harrowing bullying and constant derision, not only from the students but from teachers and the headmaster, as well.  Alone, lonely, and desperate for the pain to stop, the boy decided to control his own destiny.

Having read enough about suicide to formulate a plan of action in his mind, the boy waited until the 10:30 am recess and, seeing that the science lab was empty, padded his black loafer-encased feet over the gravel path of the schoolyard to the building where bunsen burners abounded, slipped quietly and unseen inside, and went to work.  Choosing a bunsen burner at the back of the lab, the boy turned the dial, listened for the hiss of the gas, and began to inhale gulps of the steam escaping from the spout.  Nervous, scared, excited, terrified, the boy sucked in as much gas as possible, over and over, inhaling through his mouth, through, first, one nostril, then through the other.  He felt nothing.  It wasn’t working.  Recess would soon be over and the class would be filled with other students: it had to work and it had to happen soon.  Scared of being caught, the boy began to hyperventilate, trying to capture as much of the colorless, odorless (and, eventually, harmless) gas as he possibly could.  The hyperventilating was more effective than the gas itself, and the boy grew dizzy and fainted, landing on the floor with a soft thud, and hitting his head.

When the boy came to, an upperclassman was sitting with him in a garden adjacent to the office of the headmaster.  The Eleventh Grader sat with the boy, talked with him, and showed him kindness and concern.  When the headmaster arrived, he spoke to the boy as one speaks to a person that they are trying to keep calm but not out of care or concern, merely for peace and quiet.  Eventually, the boy’s father arrived to take him home, where little was spoken between the two about the event.  The boy did not return to the school because two weeks later the Father and the boy would be living in Switzerland, preparing for a new life there, a life that had been planned for months, and a life where the rest of the family would be welcomed, just as soon as their work in America was concluded.  There, in Switzerland, the boy was mandated to see a barrage of therapists, counselors, and psychiatrists, none of whom really knew how to help the boy, none of whom seemed to understand or take seriously his grievances with life. most of whom were just passing time until the boy either grew up, grew out of it, or grew tired of coming.

There was someone who did understand.  There was someone who did want to help.  There was someone who provided a beacon in the darkness, a light that would carry the thirteen-year-old through the next few years, until it was time to leave for college, where a new story and new struggles would begin.  That someone and that light came in the form of a greeting card that arrived from the States, in the weeks after the bunsen burner incident.

That someone was the boy’s devoted Mother, who had always, who would always understand him, and speak to him in ways that made him feel seen.