And Then There Was Billy

  One of the very special people I welcomed into my home, back when I was a single mother, when my own children ranged from three through thirty-one, was a nineteen year old young man with Down's Syndrome named Billy. Billy lived with us for a year, and we kept him, and cared for him for a family who was in crisis. I took him without seeing him, and without hesitation, because I had three daughters with Down's Syndrome, and had known countless others, through the years. I had older sons also, and I thought Billy would fit right in. No one explained that Billy was mentally ill.

  Billy had been placed in an institution at birth, and was there until he was eleven. Then he was adopted. At nineteen, he came to us, and at twenty he moved to a new family; a family more able to meet his needs.

  Billy lived in two worlds. An imaginary one, and the real one. His imaginary world overlapped the real one quite often, so that we often had a very hard time understanding if he understood things as they really were.

  He was quiet, and unobtrusive. He spent a lot of time in his room, doing absolutely nothing. He was interested in absolutely nothing that we had to offer. Not books, games, tapes, or regular videos. He did ask to see horrendous, violent, science fiction R and X rated videos that he had been allowed to see before, and explained many things that were in them, in detail to me. These were movies that I would never in a million years have in my home, or let any of my children see. Perhaps it was those videos that pushed him over the edge. I'll never know. He was angry with me, for refusing to rent these movies for him.

  I could not get him interested in anything. I thought he was very depressed, and did not blame him at all. He would not talk about his life before. In fact, he basically did not talk at all, though he could. He wanted nothing to do with my children of any age, or either sex. The only things he really talked about was murder, mayhem, and aliens from outer space.

  The first thing we noticed about him, was that he had never been taught to help others. He refused to help in any way, standing and watching us all, for instance, clean the kitchen after meals. He would stand grimly, with his arms folded in defiance around an ever-present clipboard and pen that he carried to, he said, record everything we did wrong, and a fierce, grumpy look on his face. At first I told him everyone worked together here, and that made all the work easy. "NOT ME!" He informed me belligerently, and wrote quite a while on his clipboard, as he did every time I said something he did not like. (Much later, I got a glimpse of the papers he was writing on. It was all stick figures illustrating murder, mayhem, and outer space creatures. No writing at all.) Hmmmm. I thought about it, and prayed about it. Then I did not ask him to help any more. I did not know what kind of heartbreaks he had been through, and did not want to push him. I refused to enter into any power struggles with him. I knew I had no way to win. Besides, I wanted to bring cheer to his life, and tried hard to do so. Also, I knew I could not change him, having only a limited amount of time to do it in, since he was already an adult. But he continued to stand in the doorway like some prison guard, with grim face, and arms folded across his chest, watching us do our kitchen chores, with that clipboard, often appearing to make notes, "to get us in trouble". Who knows what he was thinking? We ignored him.

  One thing he loved to do, we discovered after a few weeks, was to chase the girls around the house, and, when catching them, spray them all over with shaving cream. At first this was hilarious. I took pictures. But shortly, the girls were sick of that. It is a pain, for a teenager in a wheelchair, to wash shaving cream out of her hair, etc. So I told Billy he would not be allowed to do that any more. That the girls didn't like cleaning up afterward. That made Billy angry.

  When Billy was angry, and also when he was not, he would go to his bedroom, and lie on the floor beside his bed, arms crossed over his chest, straight and rigid, like someone in a coffin. At first I would go in and ask him if he was all right. He would not answer, just stare straight up at the ceiling. So I would go out. But then, he began to explain. "I'm waiting for them" he told me one day. "Waiting for whom?" I asked. "For the people in outer space. They're coming to get me. They'll be here any minute" That was all I ever got. But after many times, I grew to believe that this was something he eagerly looked forward to, not something he dreaded. He WANTED those people to come and get him, and take him away. From what? From this family, who had made him mad? From the world, which had so confused him? I never knew. There were times when I thought he had been told about God, and in his mind, had confused God and some movie about aliens, but was waiting to be summoned to Heaven. I did not know if his adoptive family was a Christian family.

  Once, he stayed lying on the floor all day long. He would not get up to eat, even, and he loved eating. But finally, in the night, he got up, and got himself something to eat. I puzzled over Billy a great deal. I spent quite a bit of time trying to talk to him, get him to talk to me, so perhaps I could cheer him up, but to no avail. Many times he would simply sternly order me to go away, when I came in. I went away. Other times he would allow me to come in and sit down, but he would never take his eyes off the ceiling. If he would not speak, I would talk to him for two or three minutes. I never talked too long, because he would get frustrated, and order me to leave. I preferred to leave on my own, thank you. I had never dealt with anyone like him before. I had never taken in a disabled adult before, much less an adult whose mind was as confused as his was.

  I would tell him that God is good. That God lives in a beautiful place called Heaven, in the sky, so far up that we can't see it. That God made all of us. That God is more powerful, and wonderful than anyone. That Heaven is a really happy place, and no one is ever sad there. That God can see us, and takes care of us, and loves us all. That some day everyone who loves God, will go to live in Heaven with Him. I told him that everyone in our family will be there some day. That when we get to Heaven, everyone will be able to walk, and talk, and no one will have any problems ever again.

  I told him that God loves him, and would love for him to talk to Him. That if he talked to God, God would always be listening, and caring about everything he said. I would pray about a one sentence prayer, to show him what I meant. "Dear God, Thank you for loving Billy. In Jesus' name, Amen." Sometimes I prayed "Dear God, Please help Billy to be happy. In Jesus' name, Amen." He would stare steadfastly at the ceiling. No response at all. I only talked a short time, careful not to make him feel rebellious. Just a bit, time after time. I did not want him to turn against God, just because he was bored with, or mad at me. He had a vengeful spirit.

  Billy resented our praying before meals. At first he tried forcing his hand, by refusing the meal altogether, if he couldn't eat before prayer. I ignored him, and did not give him any snack afterward. He simply had to be hungry until the next meal. This did not last long. He loved to eat, and so it didn't take him long to find a way to save his own dignity, and control the issue in his own mind. Because I would not let him eat until we had thanked God for the food, he did not come to the table until after we had prayed. Then he would dig in. I said nothing. The last thing I wanted, was to turn him AWAY from our Heavenly Father, with my human rules which made no sense to him.

  Billy disappeared often. At first it was alarming, but he never fell, never injured himself, and always came back. We grew used to it. He was found in the crawl space under the house, up in the cherry tree, behind the greenhouse, in the attic. He was found all kinds of places. We had an eighteen bedroom house, on a third of an acre, carefully fenced; so there were lots of places to hide. Often, he would be on a roof, somewhere. Since our house was made up of two houses built together into one, there were lots of roof areas that couldn't be easily seen from the ground. So it did not surprise us one day when no one could find him. However, as the hours past lunch went by, and then dinner came, and still, there were no signs of him, I grew afraid. I became certain that he had gone out the gate, and down the road, though he had never done that before. So I called the police. Well, I did not have to wait to find my answer! They were SO glad to hear from me! Billy had been found a mile away, by someone who lived there, and he had invited Billy in, and kept him, and called the police. Everyone was waiting, hoping that someone would call. He did not know his last name, did not know how old he was, did not know where he lived, or who his parents were, and spoke only of the people from outer space who were going to come and get him!

  The kind neighbor had kept him all afternoon, rather than have Billy go through the scary experience of waiting at the police station. What a kind man! He was so very relieved to have that afternoon over, and I don't blame him! The police promptly brought Billy back home to us, and without even giving me a glance, Billy led them straight over to a certain roof of our house, pointing up, and telling them something none of us could understand, in his slurred, garbled speech. They came over to me, and asked me if he was my child. I said "oh, no, I'm only babysitting him! And to be honest, I'll be glad when it's over!" They smiled and said they didn't blame me! And that was that.

  My, oh, my, was that a shock! What an illustrious day!

  Billy very rarely smiled. But one thing I discovered that often made Billy smile, was to put on lively music, and dance. My children and I had always done this, and danced around the living room, (more or less skipped, whirled, and jumped) laughing. Billy would never join in, but watched from the doorway. But one day he came in, demanded that I turn off my music, and, curious, I did. He then went over, turned on the radio, tuned in some popular teen music, and began to dance. Somewhere, he had learned some very good dance steps, and, with much politeness, one by one, he bowed to each of my children, wordlessly took his or her hand, even the ones in wheelchairs, and danced with them. Then he came over, and held his hand out to me. "Oh, I don't know how to dance, Billy" I said. But he insisted. He would not leave. He stood there, with his hand out. "Dance" he commanded. So I took his hand, and tried my best to match his careful dance steps! Pretty soon we were both laughing heartily. I was very impressed with his kindness, in giving each and every child a dance, over and over. We did this many times thereafter. I got movies. It was a side of Billy that we did not see any other time.

  Every Sunday, I held Sunday School for my children, as my son Travis was dying, and we could not go to church during those years. We would all sit in a circle in the huge living room, and each of my children had a book I had made them, of colored construction paper. There were Bible verses we were working on memorizing on several pages, and the words to my childhood hymns, one on each of the rest. At the end, a chart where they could put a sticker, if they had sat quietly, and cooperated. Every Sunday, everyone got a sticker by the time Billy lived with us. I always put a chair in our circle, and told Billy that was his chair, if he wanted to join us. That's all I said.

  Every Sunday, first we chanted the month's Bible verse five times together, to help the little ones memorize it. Then I read them all a short and simple Bible story, so even my three, four, and five year olds could understand. Then it was singing time.

  I had made a tape of each one of these songs, by painstakingly finding them on other tapes, and putting my special ones together. At singing time, I would put on the tape, and the music would start. Billy would be standing in the doorway, arms folded across his chest around his ever-present clipboard, frowning, but silent. My children and I would sing every song, turning the pages together, so that the children who could not read were in on it too, and the ones who could read, could learn the words by reading while they sang. Each page was a different color, so the ones who could not read were always peeking to see which color page it was supposed to be this time. And everyone sang, whether they knew the words or not, and whether they could carry a tune or not. After all, the Bible says "make a JOYFUL noise unto the Lord" and this was exactly that. Sunday School was a joyful time for me as well, because even though we could not go to church, and even when we did, most of us had to stay in the van, because there was no class for them, this was a praise and worship service that blessed us all.

  One Sunday morning, of all things, after months of standing in the doorway, scowling, Billy uncrossed his arms, walked in, went to the chair we always had sitting there for him, and sat down! He came in during the singing, so no words were spoken, since no one could talk - on the tape, each song followed the last with only a second's pause. I can't remember if he ever tried to sing. We tried not to stare, because if attention was focused on him for anything at all, even positive attention, he would leave. But from then on, he came in, and sat down with us the whole Sunday School hour. And I made him a book, and he VERY MUCH enjoyed getting his sticker! In fact, he wanted his sticker FIRST! And my dear children let him. We had private talks, you know, about trying to help Billy know about God. I explained to them why he was not required to help, and about how he was a very sad person. We were all in on the desire to show Billy God's love, by our own kindness.

  Well, one day, after many months had gone by, as we finished dinner, and every child who could help, automatically began to help clear up, Billy uncrossed his arms, put his clipboard down, and helped clear the table! We were all astonished, but no one said anything, fearful of breaking the spell. We smiled at him. Afterward, as he was heading for his room, I said "thank you Billy, that was very kind of you, to help!" No answer.

  However, for the rest of the year he was with us, he would volunteer quite often, and help a little while. I asked him if he wanted his name on our work chart. He did. So I put his name on the work chart on the frig., with everyone else's. I asked him what he would like, for a job. He changed his mind now and then, and I would change the job on his chart each time. He helped carry people's clean dry clothes to their rooms, he cleared the table, he mopped the floor, he vacuumed. Never very long, and not with great precision, but what was important to me, was that he was helping. The reason I was so glad, was that it was quite probable, that this was the first time in his life, that Billy actually felt proud of himself. He REALLY loved choosing a color of star to paste on the box on his chart, indicating that he had done his job! He began to smile at me, when I thanked him. I began to thank him when he started the job, "Oh boy! Here you are! Thank you Billy!" and afterward too. He began to allow me to give him a quick hug.

  He did not smile often. This is the only good picture I was ever able to get of him. I took it while he was running, chasing the girls with shaving cream, back in the beginning!

  One peaceful afternoon, when nothing at all was happening, and Billy had seemed in a peaceful mood for hours, he came up behind me with a rope, stuck it around my neck, and tried to strangle me. I discovered that when someone is behind you, and you are in this condition, you are quite helpless. At that moment, I knew he could no longer stay with us. He stopped before I lost consciousness, but that was the end of Billy in our family.

  God works in mysterious ways. I am so glad that our time with Billy was only one year. But I also pray that his future has been, and will continue to be good. I also hope and pray that something of God sank in, and was understood, in Billy's spirit.

(C) 2004 Rosemary J. Gwaltney

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