Strange Beauty by Eliza Factor

Author:Eliza Factor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Parallax Press
Published: 2017-08-22T04:00:00+00:00

The Devil Screech

When the au pair that we had hired to replace Bruna did not work out, a neighbor suggested Svetlana, who had just graduated from college and was interested in physical therapy. On the day I interviewed her, we met at the Rebecca School. Observing the warmth of the staff and the intrigue of the students, she promptly got herself hired as an aide, and so it came to be that she worked at the Rebecca School during the day, learning the tools of Floortime, and two or three evenings a week, she helped out with Felix. Bruna had been a swimmer. Emily had been a basketball player. Svetlana had a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. I was learning to appreciate athletes. I was also beginning to wonder if Felix had a magnetic power that attracted good people right when we needed it. For we sure did need it.

On a Sunday, in the autumn of Felix’s fifth year, Jason and I brought the kids back from a typical visit to the playground. We had spun Felix belly-down on the rubber swing. His feet, clunky in their braces, had scrabbled against the pavement, and though you couldn’t see his face that well, for his trunk dangled toward the ground, his whoops were cheerful and loud. We had bounced on the squeaky bridge with Miranda, who was now almost two. We had chatted with other parents. Now I rested on the couch, exhausted from my pregnancy, summoning the energy to get up and make dinner. Felix sprawled companionably beside me. Then, out of the blue, he began to scream. Not an ordinary scream. It sounded as if he had been shot, or as if someone were yanking the hair out of his scalp. But no one was attacking him. We had a set routine when Felix was upset: first, see if he was hungry or thirsty by offering him food and drink. Then check his diaper. Then pick him up by the trunk and swing him around. Turn him upside down. Tickle him. Sing, too. If your voice was too strained, put on a CD. Jason and I tried all of these things. Felix kept screaming. We were beside ourselves. We had no idea what was going on. Then as suddenly as it started, it stopped. Poof! Felix was back to himself, calm and sweet.

I started making dinner. But we never got a chance to eat it. A half hour later, and just as abruptly, he began screaming again. Felix? What’s wrong? His hand swung through the air in a swift, angry arc. He slapped himself on his cheek. Hard. He tried to hit himself again. I grabbed his wrist. I had never seen anything like this. I knew that he had hit himself before, at the preschool where they strapped him into that torture device chair. But I had neither witnessed those slaps, nor had I been puzzled by them. I had assumed that they were a form of protest.

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