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Authors: Eric Manheimer
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that kids cannot make up. I don’t think there is one thing you have shared with us that we don’t believe. Not one. You really amaze us with how well you look after yourself. We know your suffering has been real.”
“Well, maybe sometime I will share this with you. You told me you keep a journal. You always have that little black notebook with you in your pocket. I see you taking it out and writing in it. What do you put in there?”
I took it out and let her thumb through it. “I have a hundred of these notebooks. I have been writing down my thoughts and the odd things, connections that I know I will forget. Like a vivid dream that wakes you in the morning and then vanishes.”
“The stories that
Abuela
told me come back in dreams. Like last night I was riding a horse bareback in the countryside. Going to the next town to get some milk for a baby I helped deliver, and the mother’s milk had dried up. I was terrified the baby would die before I got back.
Abuela
was a midwife. She told me many times there wasn’t enough food for everyone. They pretended to eat. She said in Haiti, just over the border, they were so poor they ate dirt. They made it into patties, cooked it, and ate it. Just to fill their bellies. She said so many babies died over the border they stacked them in the morning like wood and at the end of the day a man would come and put them on a cart and take them away.”
My mind drifted to my time as a medical volunteer in central Haiti, in the Artibonite Valley. The neonates did die, a lot of them. The ones with tetanus were hard like cordwood. Their tiny emaciated cadavers frozen in a death rictus. Their ribs like grinning teeth. They were stacked and taken away by a man with a cart. I didn’t know where they went.
We sat and talked until the bell rang and the class was dismissed. The kids moved to music and art class two doors down at the southernend of the corridor. “I am drawing my dreams as I write about them,” she said as she packed up her stuff. “I will give you the one I have been working on this week.”
The kids were escorted down the hall by a tall well-groomed black man wearing a suit and a yellow tie with a lovely smile. “Okay, kids, let’s get to it. Music and drawing. Work and fun to be done. Dr. Manheimer, you are welcome to join us. We do some great stuff in here.”
Tani pulled out a large drawing from her personal stack. Chagall would have been proud. “I had a dream I was on the farm in the DR, the Dominican Republic. All of the animals were talking like humans, just like us. Many were half humans and half chickens,” she said, pointing to one peculiar beast that had the head of a chicken and the body of a man but also had wings and was floating through the air. The yellows were mixed with reds, blues, and purples. An enormous moon eclipsed the sun so only a sliver could be seen. Animals and people floated by. A silver-haired woman rode a horse in the center with a man behind her. His arms were wrapped around her. “You can keep this, Dr. M.” It was beautiful and dream-like. There was no anger or rage in the picture. Everything was in harmony. The center was holding. The couple, clearly Tani’s
abuela
and her
marido
or husband, were the force holding everything in orbit as they moved around, floating in the ether. Something clicked at that point. I made a connection and wrote a note in red ink in my black notebook with the picture secured under my arm. I took the elevator down to my office.
Patty buzzed me on my cell phone as I was checking my email on the BlackBerry waiting for an elevator. The Abeloffs, Emily’s parents, were in the office. Of the dozens of emails that had accumulated, a couple stood out.
I apologized to the Abeloff family for my lateness as we settled in the office. Emily had been with us for over two weeks at this point. There had been family meetings and a miscellany of private discussions. I thought they wanted to transfer her to a
“Well, maybe sometime I will share this with you. You told me you keep a journal. You always have that little black notebook with you in your pocket. I see you taking it out and writing in it. What do you put in there?”
I took it out and let her thumb through it. “I have a hundred of these notebooks. I have been writing down my thoughts and the odd things, connections that I know I will forget. Like a vivid dream that wakes you in the morning and then vanishes.”
“The stories that
Abuela
told me come back in dreams. Like last night I was riding a horse bareback in the countryside. Going to the next town to get some milk for a baby I helped deliver, and the mother’s milk had dried up. I was terrified the baby would die before I got back.
Abuela
was a midwife. She told me many times there wasn’t enough food for everyone. They pretended to eat. She said in Haiti, just over the border, they were so poor they ate dirt. They made it into patties, cooked it, and ate it. Just to fill their bellies. She said so many babies died over the border they stacked them in the morning like wood and at the end of the day a man would come and put them on a cart and take them away.”
My mind drifted to my time as a medical volunteer in central Haiti, in the Artibonite Valley. The neonates did die, a lot of them. The ones with tetanus were hard like cordwood. Their tiny emaciated cadavers frozen in a death rictus. Their ribs like grinning teeth. They were stacked and taken away by a man with a cart. I didn’t know where they went.
We sat and talked until the bell rang and the class was dismissed. The kids moved to music and art class two doors down at the southernend of the corridor. “I am drawing my dreams as I write about them,” she said as she packed up her stuff. “I will give you the one I have been working on this week.”
The kids were escorted down the hall by a tall well-groomed black man wearing a suit and a yellow tie with a lovely smile. “Okay, kids, let’s get to it. Music and drawing. Work and fun to be done. Dr. Manheimer, you are welcome to join us. We do some great stuff in here.”
Tani pulled out a large drawing from her personal stack. Chagall would have been proud. “I had a dream I was on the farm in the DR, the Dominican Republic. All of the animals were talking like humans, just like us. Many were half humans and half chickens,” she said, pointing to one peculiar beast that had the head of a chicken and the body of a man but also had wings and was floating through the air. The yellows were mixed with reds, blues, and purples. An enormous moon eclipsed the sun so only a sliver could be seen. Animals and people floated by. A silver-haired woman rode a horse in the center with a man behind her. His arms were wrapped around her. “You can keep this, Dr. M.” It was beautiful and dream-like. There was no anger or rage in the picture. Everything was in harmony. The center was holding. The couple, clearly Tani’s
abuela
and her
marido
or husband, were the force holding everything in orbit as they moved around, floating in the ether. Something clicked at that point. I made a connection and wrote a note in red ink in my black notebook with the picture secured under my arm. I took the elevator down to my office.
Patty buzzed me on my cell phone as I was checking my email on the BlackBerry waiting for an elevator. The Abeloffs, Emily’s parents, were in the office. Of the dozens of emails that had accumulated, a couple stood out.
I apologized to the Abeloff family for my lateness as we settled in the office. Emily had been with us for over two weeks at this point. There had been family meetings and a miscellany of private discussions. I thought they wanted to transfer her to a
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