In Between Days: Raising Jordan (boyxman)✅

Bastards of Young

Jordan

Mom and Art fought a lot and it was usually because of me. They had this heated argument because I was four years old and couldn't speak. Tim and I sat on the porch swing outside while they were at it inside. I couldn't speak and I still wore diapers because I kept having accidents. Because I was still in diapers, I couldn't go to preschool and had to stay home with Mom. I couldn't stop crying because they're fighting because of me. Everything was always my fault.

Mom always said I was fine, but Art said I needed to go to a special school and home for "kids like me," whatever that meant. Art said it was her fault I was the way I was. They thought I didn't know, that I couldn't hear them, but I could. They thought I didn't know what was going on, but I did.

Tim, my nearly fifteen year old big brother held me tightly to him and said, "I won't ever let him send you away." Dishes and glass shattered inside the house, which happened a lot. Mom would get angry sometimes.

"Don't make me call the police, Sherry," Art said. "I've done it before. Don't think I won't do it again."

Arguments often ended with Mom being taken out of the house and tied down on a stretcher.

Tim got off the swing and helped me off it, too. He held my hand and led me around the house. In our bare feet, we walked for what felt like hours and my little legs had a hard time keeping up with his. It turned out it really wasn't hours because we ended up at Sullivan's Ice Cream Stand, which wasn't far from our house. We both had bowls of chocolate chip cookie dough ice-cream and sat on one of the picnic tables. Tim bought me ice-cream all the time. I heard my voice in my head, but never out loud...until that day.

"How's the ice-cream?" Tim asked.

Although I didn't respond, Tim seemed to understand me. He knew I liked it because I finished it before him. A group of high school kids milled around the table beside ours. Tim tried not to look at them. I had a feeling he knew them and didn't like them.

"Hey, Timmie," a boy from the other table said. Tim never liked to be called Timmie.

Sometimes Art called him that. "I heard the cops were at your house again." That was last week. Mom got to come home instead of going to the hospital.

"Did your mother try to burn the house down again?" Everyone knew everything in this small town.

"Hurry up," Tim said to me.

"Hey, Timmie, we're talking to you," one of the bigger boys said. I finished my last bite and Tim got up. "Maybe they should lock you all up, freaks."

Tim held my hand tightly and walked away quickly, ignoring the boys' taunts: "Timmie Timmie Timmie," they shouted.

"Tim," I said quietly as he walked me back to the house.

"Did you say something, baby brother?" he said.

"Tim," I said again. My big brother looked down at me and smiled. I'd never seen him smile like that before.

"Jordan," he said back to me. Art called me Jordie sometimes and I didn't like it. Tim knew I didn't like it.

***

Before my first word, which was "Tim," my parents took me to all kinds of doctors and specialists at Children's Hospital in Boston. Art was home more often back then, from the little I remember. At first, people thought maybe I had a hearing problem, but it turned out I could hear just fine. No one really knows why I didn't speak until I was four and a half years old.

Everyone said my so-called social skills were "abnormal" or below average and something I really never mastered. As a child, I didn't make eye contact the way I was supposed to and I didn't play the way I was supposed to play. I was different. I was also overly attached to Mom and Tim, often clinging to them. They could never leave me with a babysitter because I'd cry the whole time and have huge temper tantrums, often tearing the house apart. I was a danger to myself and the babysitter. And I couldn't go to preschool because I was still in diapers. The only school I could go to was a special school for kids with so-called developmental disabilities or mental challenges. Mom wouldn't hear of it. Because I was finally out of diapers by the age of five and speaking in short sentences, I was able to go to a regular school and entered kindergarten the same time as other kids my age. Doctors determined I didn't have a developmental or intellectual disability or mental retardation, whatever you want to call it. The word Asperger's syndrome was thrown around, but I've been told that word isn't used anymore. Mom refused to label me with anything, she said. I was just "quirky," she said.