My Father's Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents, Jonathan Silin [uplifting novels .TXT] 📗

to her twenty-two first graders from a book about Michael Jordan, part of a celebration of Black History Month. As I scan the room for a seat, I cannot help but notice the physical disorder. Books are strewn around the carpeted library area, plastic foods have been dumped on the floor in the dress-up corner, and a game of lotto sits partially open on a table. Not finding an extra chair, I lean against the radiator at the back of the room. Within a few minutes I see the reason for the housekeeping difficulties. While most of the class is listening to Diane, Ja-m y fat h e r ’ s k e e p e r n 25

mal, a short, compact boy, is wandering from area to area, pulling educational materials off the shelves and leaving them where they fall.

Diane pointedly ignores this disturbing behavior. When Jamal draws near to me and begins to flip through a stack of photographs from a recent class trip, I naively take this as an invitation to social contact.

But my conversational overture is immediately rejected. Leaving the photographs scattered atop the adjacent radiator, Jamal races across the room, opens the door to the hallway, and yells at some passing children. Now sitting on the doorjamb, half in and half out of the classroom, he physically declares his marginal status.

Fifteen minutes into my observation, Diane has finished reading the story of Michael Jordan and is desperately trying to launch a math lesson that requires the class to work in small groups. Several of the children have begun to fight with each other and to openly resist her instruction. Meanwhile, she has pulled Jamal from the doorway back into the classroom. Finally, as he continues to circle around the room, Diane uses the loudspeaker connecting the classroom with the office to request that “security” come to get him. The secretary replies that no one is available to help her at the moment and that Mrs. William-son, the social worker, is also at lunch. Jamal, hearing this conversation, along with the rest of the class, starts yelling, “I don’t want security. I don’t want security. I won’t go.” Faced with this threat and fearful of being sent home, Jamal eventually takes a seat at one of the tables and begins to play distractedly with the math materials.

Jamal’s behavior, the active resistance of the other children, and Diane’s inability to control the class make me want to flee. I am overwhelmed by the evident distress of this sixty-something woman who is being scapegoated by a group of angry six-year-olds. We stand off to the side and I see the tears in her eyes. Although it goes against my better judgment to become involved in an extended conversation before the children, I cannot help but listen. Diane tells me that along with Jamal there are three others in her class whose doctors have pre-scribed Ritalin to calm their behavior. Because of difficulties in filing the Medicaid claims, only one of the four is actually receiving his 26 n jonathan g. silin

medication regularly. Diane is in an impossible situation and woefully unprepared to manage it. She begs me for suggestions. An intruder in the room, I feel it presumptuous to offer advice. At the same time, remaining silent feels equally inauthentic, an act of supreme bad faith.

Diane’s story and Jamal’s life are narratives born out of social injustice. They speak to a history in which material resources and cultural capital are inequitably distributed, most frequently along racial lines. Oddly, however, the emotions that Diane and Jamal elicit in me resonate with experiences from a very different world. It seems im-probable to write on the same page about Jamal, an African American boy of six growing up in poverty, and my father, a white, Jewish man of eighty-seven living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Even as I read that Jamal’s neighborhood was once the seat of a thriving Jewish community, I know that my parents are themselves several generations removed from the immigrant experience, let alone the experience of black families who have emigrated from the American south. Even as I know that racism and anti-Semitism may stem from similar roots, and that both have lethal consequences for their victims, I know that the histories of Jews and African Americans are very different.

It is impossible to equate the lives of families living in deep poverty with the lives of my parents. Yet it does seem possible that the demands Jamal places on Diane and those my father places on me give rise to similar feelings of frustration, anger, and helplessness. It is not happenstance that Jamal and my father share some of the same medications. Jamal races about the classroom pulling supplies from the shelves, poking at children, and ignoring his teacher. At times my father sends a sea of faxes, accuses me of stealing his money, threatens lawsuits, and exhausts everyone with whom he comes in contact. Like Jamal, when my father’s dementia is active, nothing enters his brain.

Rational arguments carry no weight. It is impossible to get through to him. At these times, however, unlike Jamal, my father does not seem to fear the authority of the security guard or the wrath of an angry parent. This has unfortunate consequences for me, since I have un-m y fat h e r ’ s k e e p e r n 27

doubtedly assumed the role of security guard in his life, keeping both external and internal threats at bay. It is I who do battle with the psychiatrist when he fails to understand the depths of my father’s dementia and its toll on those responsible for his care. It is more desperation than courage that leads me to fight for what both he and I ultimately need—a modicum of control over his overarching anxiety.

I too am the court of last resort with the terrible power to remove him from the