Do We Not Bleed?. Daniel Taylor
would inhabit in public who had a full, three-dimensional understanding of the consequences. Her name is Flo.
Bonita’s bocce style betrays something about her upbringing before she arrived at Good Shepherd as a teenager. She holds the ball in her hands, bends low, kisses it and says things like “talk to me baby” or “go fetch,” then snaps off a line-drive throw in the general direction of the object ball. She actually is pretty good, and on the occasions when the ball bounces off course, she has a ready explanation—“Damn gophers.” Or something equally exculpatory.
Bonita and Flo make it to the finals. That’s when the wheels come off. It looks like they’re about to pick up two points at a crucial moment in the championship match when one of their opponents—a Special from a facility in the next suburb—puts a toss within six inches of the object ball. He lets out a whoop of delight, which gets Bonita’s engine running.
“Keep it down, retard.”
There is a gasp from the onlookers, some of whom stare at me as though I had said it—or, just as bad, created an environment where she was allowed to demean herself by saying it. (Some folks are big on the “creating an environment” thesis.) This is Bonita’s second offense, which makes it my second offense. If this gets back to Cassandra, I’m cooked. We clearly have a situation on our hands—and I have a lifelong aversion to situations.
Flo tries to help. She shouldn’t have.
“Now Bonita. We ought not use that word.”
“What word?”
“Well, you know what word. It’s not appropriate and it’s mean.”
Bonita is not a woman to be lectured.
“No, mean would be calling you a lard ass. I’m not calling you a lard ass, even though you are one, so I’m being nice. But he is a retard. Just look at him. He’s like me. I know a retard when I see one.”
This is too much. The person running the competition, a slight man with a now deeply mournful expression, intervenes.
“I’m calling a time out here. Let’s take a break and we’ll resume the finals in fifteen minutes.”
Bonita isn’t having it. Her eyes narrow and she starts gesturing dramatically with her arms.
“I want my medal! You’re trying to cheat me out of my medal! That’s not fair! You bastards, I’ll see you burn in hell if I don’t get my medal!”
Not—definitely not—the Olympic spirit.
I move in to hustle Bonita away, but she’s already moving back toward the group home on her own, spouting as she goes, me trying to catch up.
“I know my rights. They can’t treat me this way. I’m going to tell Miss Pettigrew.” (Bonita has never mastered the “miss/ms.” distinction and I’m not going to be the one to correct her.) “She’ll fix their asses. They won’t get pop for a year! Ten years! Things are going to change around here or somebody’s going to hear from me!”
I’ve heard it all from Bonita myself any number of times. It’s her standard rant against the universe. Losing your pop privileges is the ultimate expression of the problem of evil—and the ultimate grounds for revenge.
Halfway back to the house we run into Bo Springer. He’s familiar enough with Bonita to know not to ask any questions when she has that carnivorous look. I have to get back to the field to help monitor things, so I enlist his help.
“Bo, can you take Bonita here and get her some pop? Then bring her back to the field after she’s cooled off a bit?”
“Sure. No problem. Come on Bonita. Let’s get some pop.”
Bonita brightens and heads off with Bo. I head back to the field.
Coming down the hill, I see they are about to run a heat of the fifty-yard dash. Ronnie, the young kid from the football game, is in lane three, wearing a cape. He looks to be about twelve—physical age of course—and I call him the Black Proteus. I call him that because, well, he’s black—which is to say, African American—and because, like Proteus of Greek myth, he is a shape-changer. One day he presents himself as a superhero, the next as a movie star, the third as a sports icon. He fully inhabits the character of the day (or month) and expects you to respond to him as such. I once greeted him outside the main building with a “How are you doing, President Lincoln?”—the character he had been for weeks before. He looked at me solemnly and stuck out his hand for a shake, “Cash is the name. Johnny Cash.”
Mrs. Francis, the crafts teacher, is watching the race from a distance. I walk up to her and ask, “What’s up with Ronnie’s cape? Superman?”
She laughs.
“Oh no. Wonder Woman.”
“Wonder Woman doesn’t have a cape.”
“She does in Ronnie’s version. And you don’t mess with Ronnie’s version of anything.”
Good for you, Ronnie, I think—gender-bender, all-inclusive, be-whatever-you-want-to-be, All-American boy.
The race starter claps two big wooden blocks together and they’re off. (No starter pistols allowed in Minnesota Special Olympics. Another blow against militarism and the NRA.) Off, yes, but at greatly different speeds. Three actually run at a pretty good clip, heads back, eyeing the finish line ahead. A couple more, bent at the waist and staring at the ground as they move, are mostly stamping the grass, a lot of energy going up and down with the legs, not so much going forward with the body. And then there is one fellow, a teenager, for whom the concept of “race” seems rather obscure. He is on a stroll, waving to the crowd, smiling, wandering back and forth across two or three lanes, but heading roughly toward the finish line—a crowd favorite.
Ronnie is in the first group. He knows how to run and he is leading the race until he starts to notice his cape flapping behind him. He tries to look at it and run at the same time, quite conscious of the profound effect the cape must be making, perhaps wondering if he is going to fly. Looking slows down running, and he is passed near the tape. But no one really cares, including Ronnie. Because each runner is engulfed by a hugger as he or she crosses the line. There hasn’t been this much public excitement since the moon landing. Whoops and hollers and hugs and high-fives all around, for the stroller as much as for the winner. And this was just the first of many heats. Six new huggers wait in the wings for heat number two. If we had more huggers—say at the United Nations, for instance— the world would be a happier place.
I look over and see that Bo is back, sans Bonita. He is talking to Cassandra, whose anxiety is evident even from a distance. This is a big day for New Directions—lots of donors, parents and grandparents, local media, the entire board, heads of local government agencies, corporate sponsors, a celebrity athlete or two, and, of course, clients galore from various organizations. Abby’s disappearance has cast a pall over the event for New Directions folks, but most of the people here haven’t even heard about it yet. Bo puts his hand on Cassandra’s shoulder in a gesture of support, but she sort of pulls away and goes to talk to a couple of parents with their client-child.
I decide to check in on Ralph. They’ve set up the lifting events in the center of the field. His event—the deadlift—is almost over by the time I get there. The deadlift is the most cognitively straightforward activity imaginable: here is something on the ground, pick it up, then put it down. Take turns. Keep picking it up and putting it down until someone tells you to stop. Right up Ralph’s alley. Rarely does life match need with gift so perfectly. God should have made me a deadlifter. (Maybe he did.)
By the time I get there, the ninety-pound weaklings have been eliminated (weaklings being a seriously inappropriate word that I would never utter aloud). It’s just Ralph and one enormous black kid about eighteen years old. (Should I have noticed that he’s black? If so, should I have said it to you? It’s a tough call. Let’s just pretend I didn’t bring it up.)
Anyway, this kid is huge and he looks like he could deadlift the Great Sphinx of