do anything the rest of his life except wander these halls.”
“What about that suit to shut down places like this?” I ask, feeling the waxy cover of the book beneath my thumb.
Andy gives me an indulgent smile and for the next ten minutes lectures me on the myths of what he calls the deinstitutionalization movement.
“You get all these Utopia training models like this,” he says, pointing at his book, “but it’s not the real world. What good does it do to put a nonverbal, severely retarded man in a group home? There’s no place for people like that in American society. Retarded people are, by definition, the losers, the bottom of the barrel, in a country that insists on competition from the moment a child is born. Sure, the mildly retarded can learn enough adaptive behavior to get by, but the Homers of the world don’t fit in anywhere. In a consumer society people like him won’t ever be accepted because they don’t have any value.”
I nod, more interested in the emotion in his voice than in what he is saying. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t want Homer moving in next to me. The price of real estate in my neighborhood is already low enough without having to worry about Homer coming over to peep in Sarah’s window. What I want a jury to hear, though, is that Andy cares about these people even if they don’t. And it won’t hurt if they agree with him.
All Andy was trying to do was stop this child from mutilating herself-he wasn’t trying to move her into the half-million-dollar homes overlooking the Arkansas River. To get him to talk more, I deliberately bait him.
“You don’t sound too liberal on this subject. I thought you’d tell me that retarded people were like blacks- just give ‘em a chance to show they’re regular folks.”
Andy gives me a look that reminds me of the first time I talked to him in my office: Is this white asshole educable?
“The people who write these books and lead these movements are basically ideologues, no matter how much they’ve worked with the develop mentally disabled. It doesn’t matter whether you call them liberals or conservatives. They have this grand vision of how things ought to be. Frankly, I think they’re dangerous as hell,” he says, softly slapping the table in front of him.
Feigning disapproval, I cross my arms in front of me, anxious to keep him going. A jury has got to be made to see the guy’s no Dr. Strangelove rubbing his hands with glee at the thought of Armageddon. Down deep, Andy is paternalistic He just wants to stay down on the farm and take care of his retarded folks. He is probably deeply conservative, like most Arkansans. If so, I want to exploit that identification at the trial.
“You’re going to play into the prosecutor’s hands,” I say, believing just the opposite.
“She’s going to try to paint you as a real Neanderthal, the kind of professional who’s keeping Arkansas in the Dark Ages. Shocking defenseless children, keeping them locked up in institutions.”
Andy stands up and looks out his window. I can’t see what he is looking at, but probably he is staring off into the woods.
He says, after a long pause, ” You really think desegregation, when you weigh the pluses and minuses, has benefited most blacks? Look at where a lot of blacks are in the average school. Special ed. The slow classes. Or out of school hanging out, getting stoned on drugs and killing each other. In the United States there can only be so many winners. For whatever reason blacks aren’t ever going to win in America.
Sure, there are exceptions. The liberals will trot out a black who’s made it to prove integration is working. But you don’t prove anything by how your best kids do; they would have made it anyway. It’s your average kid who proves whether the system is working or not, and for most black kids it’s going to be the bottom, and it’s not really getting any better
His voice trails off, as if I should be making a connection.
What is it? Is he conceding black inferiority, or what? Is he saying blacks are like retarded people too stupid to compete? I stare at his back, unable to try to read his face. I have lost the thread somewhere. “It’s too late to go back to Africa, Andy,” I say, wondering whether he will take this as a slur.
He turns around and gives me a wintry smile.
“All I’m talking about is a sense of identity. These reformers have decided retarded people should be a part of the American rat race as if that were a good thing. I’m not so sure the Homers of this world would be better off competing and losing in a society that values only winners.”
I look toward the door, wondering if I should get up and close it. We are at the end of the hall, so it hardly seems worth it. The fire has gone out of Andy’s voice as if he has gotten stuck. Perhaps he has. Somebody is always ahead of us, but that doesn’t mean we have to slit our wrists. Normal everyday life has compensations other than just winning.
Maybe, though, if you’re forced to compete and you usually come in dead last, it’s hard to see the virtue in lining up for the next race. I say carefully, “I want the jury to see you have a point of view, but I’m not sure a racial analogy is going to be appreciated, however sympathetic it is.”
Andy props one leg against the wall and leans back against the windowsill with both elbows resting on the edge. He says sarcastically, “You really belisve in this legal crap, don’t you?”
My right ear itches and I dig at it with my little finger, a pleasure so sublime I scratch until it hurts. Is that how a self-abusive child begins? How to explain I don’t “believe” in the law.
“A friend of mine,” I say, remembering Clan Bailey’s beatific expression after he won his first jury trial “once said the law is like toilet paper; sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.” I study Andy’s puzzled expression and decide to spell it out for him.
“His point was that there’re more efficient ways to clean up a mess, but it’s what we’re used to in this country, and consequently a lot of people swear by it. I don’t swear by our legal system, but I ‘m getting used to it.”
Andy wrinkles his nose slightly at my remark. He is too proper to appreciate it. The truth is that I am surprised he was willing to get his hands dirty enough even to get close enough to Pam to touch her, much less shock her. I ask, “Can you get away with giving me a tour?”
“I think so,” he says.
“It’ll have to be a quick one, but you need to see this place to get a feel for what’s going on.”
In the next twenty minutes I see more than I want to. With me trailing Andy, we cover four of the six buildings on the grounds. It is the locked wards that give me the creeps.
Somewhat surprisingly, Andy still has a set of keys, and though all eyes are on us from the time we enter a ward until we leave it, Andy acts as if I am about to make an offer to buy the place. As we stride briskly through a ward in which some of the men are tied to their beds, I get a feel for the first time what Pam must have been like. Though none of them are in a position to abuse themselves, it is possible for me to picture some of them ramming their heads against their beds. One hideously deformed man (his eyes look turned inside out, and he has scar tissue for skin) rhythmically rubs his head against his sheets.
On this same ward several men, none with intelligible speech, gather around us. They seem starved for human touch, but, like Homer, they are hideous to me, and there are too many of them. The level of noise is astonishingly high, but I can’t understand a word. All I want to do is get out of here. Two male aides, one black and one white, walk over to us and greet Andy warmly. Andy acknowledges that he is showing his lawyer around, and we leave them shooing the men back toward a group of chairs and tables in the corner by a TV. Reading my mind, Andy says, “Homer’s ward is higher-functioning. You’d get used to it and see them as distinctive individuals. It’s the aides who don’t see them as individuals that give us the problems.”
One of the men, wearing only a pair of jockey shorts, bends down like an animal searching for food, picks up a cigarette butt, and brings it toward his mouth. The black aide catches him by his wrist and forces the man, who is babbling angrily, to drop it into his hand.
“That’s called pica,” Andy says as I watch dumbfounded.
“Some of them will try to put anything in their mouths that’s not nailed down. Including their feces.”
Outside, I realize I have been holding my breath, and ex hale. As we walk toward a building on the western edge of the campus, Andy points to a similar structure directly across from us.
“Pam lived over in Pindley. I could take you in there, but some of the women, like the men, like to take off their clothes, and it would cause more of a ruckus. Since it’s about the same, we’ll go to the boys’ building.”
As we approach the brick building, I feel myself becoming claustrophobic again. “How do people keep working here?”
I ask, shaken by so much abnormality in one room.
