Carola Dibbell - The Only Ones

But we have to get Ani fixed, and anyhow, she wanted to go home. She liked Henry, and she got used to everybody else. I really would of liked to stay, forever. But Ani hung tough. And maybe it would of been better if we stayed, and maybe not, but either way, we left.

Henry said don’t be strangers, and when we’re getting on the hybro home, Rauden said if it turned out there was any work in the future, maybe I could come back from time to time for that.

And I will tell you, when he said I could come back to do the work? It wasn’t about the money at all% in the Dupof9H. It just made me happy. I’m just saying, how things turned out — well, I’m getting ahead of myself, but when you find out, maybe you will think it was only about the money, but it wasn’t. I just want to say this now, so you could think about it when you see how things turned out. It just made me happy.

v

To get to Mill Rock Special school you got to take a bus. The bus is one of those alt fuel things, they call it cuchifrito. You smell it first. It has dark windows so no one can see in. You got to wait at a Stop on the old Expressway, near some kind of broken wall, at 7 a.m.

The driver is Kurvinder. The bus goes a short way on the old Expressway, then overla to wish we ne

SHE WAS USUALLY ONE HOUR LATE COMING BACK. I was usually half an hour early, waiting. Sometimes I was one hour early. Sometimes she was two hours late.

Maybe one day you will hear the stupid things people say about what we are, Ani and me. Is it ethical? Are we real? Is she me? Like that is all our whole life will ever be about.

Well, at this point, our life is pretty much wake up, get Ani dressed, put food in her, drag her to the cuchifrito bus. Sometimes she’s crying all the way to the bus.

Wave goodbye.

Sometimes I am crying all the way home.

Mill Rock is an Outdoor School, and I mean really outdoor. Most of the rooms do not even have a wall. It’s windy. When you get off the ferry at the dock, that banner, “EVERY CHILD IS SPECIAL!” is flapping so hard it makes a noise.

Well, she has hardly been at the school two months when she climbs off the bus in Queens, still alive, and says, “You do not know what I am.”

So I’m like, oh shit, oh shit. They already figured us out. They will turn us in.

She is just trying to skip away. “You do not know!”

“Stop skipping. Stop skipping.” I’m a Sylvain hardy, I don’t get anything. But I’m getting a heart attack here.

She, like, tries to twirl. It doesn’t work. She just runs back to me, and, remember how she mouthed “tank” when we saw tanks at JFK? She mouths, “I am Special.” And she hands me a Note. Then she tries to skip off. That also doesn’t work, she has to hop. At least she does it forward.

I read the Note. Well, it is just a lot of words about how our kid is Special because every kid is. Whatever it means, it’s like Melanie said. She’s not the only one.

Special is a big deal. They really cannot shut up about it.

All I really wanted for Ani, besides be alive, and not me, was be regular. It turns out every child is a Special child.

But at the Conference that every Parent must attend two times a goddamn year, Melanie does that squeeze my hand thing, like Rini. Then she looks so deep in my eyes I get dizzy. Then she says, “That doesn’t mean Ani isn’t Special too.”

Whoa!

They’re all supposed to think they are Special, whatever they have.

Maybe she is more Special than the others. How would I know?

At April, she is getting off the bus, still alive, and says that, “I am Special” thing. But she waits till we are past the golf course till she pulls me close and tells me why. “I could tie the shoe. Migan cannot.” Then she p in the dark. I didnPUs"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normaluts her mouth right to my ear and whispers, “So ha ha ha.” Then she just turns around and tries to skip away. She has a problem skipping, and these new purple boots she took from the Mill Rock Sharing room do not really help. She wears them pretty much day and night.

Well, I have a problem skipping, myself, but I was almost skipping too. They’re going to fix her! She will be ok. She could tie her shoes, Migan cannot, she’s going to have regular Needs, how Special is that?

You could say, well I could tie my own shoes and did not have to ride four hours on a goddamn bus to do it. And that is totally true.

But you could also say, come on. Is this a different life or what?

What’s Special about most of these kids is, they have a wiring problem.

Some have a scam. This one kid, Don Park, he is supposed to be Asperger, what they call, Asperger. It turns out he just tested wrong, he’s Gifted. His Parents said, oh, he already made friends. Let him stay. Melanie is so nice she says Gifted is a Special Need too, but to tell the truth I think it is the Parents’ scam. They come from out of state, this school will not ask questions, he will mainstream out and some really good school in the Dome will let him grandfather in. Maybe the whole family could get a Pass to even live in the Dome. This kid gets brought to school in a skiff. I think they camped out on some other island. They aren’t the only ones. A few families did that on the weekdays so they don’t have to travel so far.

Besides Don Park, there is a real Asperger kid too, who likes to say, “Is this the rehearsal?” So you are supposed to say, “Very good.”

Don’t let them think something is wrong with them. The good part is, the teachers all know something is wrong with them, so when the kids do not do what they say, they are not expelled. Most of the time, the teacher does not even make them do anything.

When I ask Ani, do you do what Melanie says, she doesn’t even know what that means. Melanie usually says, oh! Want to play Nature today? Magnet Alley? Where Is The President? But nobody has to do what Melanie says. I guess that is good because Ani does not do what anyone says anyhow. A lot of these kids don’t. So the teachers do Strategies. This one kid, Tensin, is Oppositional, what they call, Oppositional? To take off her coat you have to say, put on the coat. So then she takes off the coat.

Ani, it doesn’t work either way, but she is not expelled. They know something’s wrong with her. They think they know what it is. Give me a break. What’s wrong with Ani didn’t even cross their mind.

These kids all get lost, so Ani’s not the only one. I really don’t think anyone but her is Special from nuclear Transfer. They just have wiring problems. So the teachers let them play with magnets. The kids put on a Special belt with metal on it, then the teacher has the magnet and the kid does not get lost, he sticks to the magnet. These kids do not know where they belong. Some of them, I think it is a kind of vaccine Syndrome, but also Mumbai messed up whatever infrastructure was even left, and then with the reproductive crisis, Hosts, gene splicing, Donor everything, they could end up with a Boundary problem. This one kid, Itzhak, has so much trouble with Boundaries, he could hear a conversation in Yonkers. He just couldn’t hear what the teacher says. So they are devising a Strategy for Itzhak. Should they have walls?

That’s the big question, walls. This Boundary thing, is the wall going to help or get in the way? It also is a problem because it is an Outdoor School. It is about the Funding. what are the chances">riLike they must be an Outdoor School or the Funding goes. As Outdoor School they could have walls if they do not have a roof or the other way around but not both. One mother thinks she could hack Funding and maybe change the Funding rules and we could have both walls and roofs, but so far it didn’t work.