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Parents and Sick Children 129 23 How to Win  Rosellen Brown All they need at school is permission on a little green card that says, Keep this child at bay. Muffle him, tie his hands, his arms to his ankles, anything at all. Distance, distance. Dose him. And they gave themselves permission. They never even mentioned a doctor, and their own certified bureaucrat in tweed (does he keep a badge in his pocket like the cops?) drops by the school twice a year for half a day. But I insisted on a doctor. And did and did, had to, because Howard keeps repeating vaguely that he is “within the normal range of boyish activity.” “But I live with it, all day every day.” “It? Live with it?” Well, Howard can be as holy as he likes, I am his mother and I will not say “him.” Him is the part I know, Christopher my first child and first son, the boy who was a helpless warm mound once in a blue nightie tied at the bottom to keep his toes in. (“God, Margaret, you are dramatic and sentimental and sloppy. How about being realistic for a change?”) “It” is what races around my room at night, a bat, pulling down the curtain cornice, knocking over the lamps, tearing the petals off the flowers and stomping them, real or fake, to a powder. Watch Christopher take a room sometime; that’s the word for it, like an army subduing a deserted plain. He stands in the doorway always for one extra split-split second, straining his shoulders down as though he’s hitching himself to some machine, getting into harness. He has no hips, and round little six-year-old shoulders that look frail but are made of welded steel that has no give when you grab them. Then what does he see ahead of him? I’m no good at guessing. The room is an animal asleep, trusting the air, its last mistake. (See, I am sympathetic to the animal.) He leaps on it and leaves it disemboweled, then turns his dark eyes to me where I stand—when I stand, usually I’m dervishing around trying to stop the Rosellen Brown, “How to Win,” from The Massachusetts Review (Autumn 1973). Copyright © 1973 by Rosellen Brown. Reprinted with the permission of the author. 130 Fiction and Poetry about Family Caregiving bloodshed—and they ask me, Where did it go? What happened? Who killed this thing, it was just breathing, I wanted to play with it. Christopher . When you’re not here to look at me I have to laugh at your absurd powers. You are incontinent, you leak energy. As for me, I gave birth to someone else’s child.  There is a brochure inside the brown bottle that the doctor assigned us, very gay, full-color, busy with children riding their bicycles right through patches of daffodils, sleeping square in the middle of their pillows, doing their homework with a hazy expression to be attributed to concentration, not medication. NONADDICTIVE! NO SIGNIFICANT SIDE EFFECTS! Dosage should decrease by or around puberty. Counterindications epilepsy, heart and circulatory complications, severe myopia and related eye problems. See Journal of Pediatric Medicine, III 136, F’71; Pharmacology Bulletin, v. 798, 18, pp. 19-26, D’72. CAUTION: DO NOT ALLOW CHILDREN ACCESS TO PILLS! SPECIAL FEATURE: U-LOK-IT CAP! REMEMBER, TEACH YOUR CHILD THE ETIQUETTE OF THE MEDICINE CABINET!  I know how he dreams me. I know because I dream his dreams. He runs to hide in me. Battered by the stick of the old dark, he comes fast, hiccoughing terror. By the time I am up, holding him, it has hobbled off, it must be, into his memory. I’ve pulled on a robe, I spread my arms—do they look winged or webbed?—to pull him out of himself, hide him, swear the witch is nowhere near. He doesn’t go to his father. But he won’t look at my face. It was you! He looks up at me finally and says nothing, but I see him thinking. So: I was the witch, with a club behind my bent back. I the hundred-stalked flower with webbed branches. I with the flayed face held in my two hands like a bloody towel. Then how can I help him? I whisper to him, wordless; just a music. He answers, “Mama.” It is a faint knocking, through layers of dirt, through...

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