Out of The Ordinary

Lumbering up to me, his body bigger than I remembered, we embraced in a momentary bear hug.

"Hi Mom," he said, handing me an origami bouquet of flowers he had made out of colored construction paper.

We made our way to a makeshift table in the hallway where we set up our chessmen ready for a duel. His mind was sharp. We had played chess ever since he could move the pieces.

"How's it going?" I asked.

"Not bad," he answered holding out his scarred fists so that I could pick a black or white queen determining who would move first.

The long corridors, with a mat on the floor at night, had been his home. He could look out through the iron-screen-covered windows for a glimpse of the seasons as they passed. He was missing another summer. His skin was pale. He hadn't been outside the building in three months. The yard's twelve-foot fence did not meet the C.C.R.B. (Closed Custody Review Board) criteria for 'security'. And so Adolescent Unit 40 B was beginning the arduous process of putting up what they dubbed the "Marcel Memorial" ö a thirty-foot knuckle wire, chain link fence with the required coiled barbed wire at the top.

Usually, I could only stand the place for an hour at a time. The staff was friendly but the walls closed up on me and I longed to feel the sun and see the wind rustle the leaves on the big maple trees outside. Each visit he would share the progress he had made on the cat and mouse book he was writing, show me his latest juggling skills (four balls)

and new origami creations, we would play a game of chess to the end, talk a bit in between moves, and then I would excuse myself.

This time I planned to stay at the 'guest cottage' and not turn around for the two-hour trip home until morning. I paid my dollar at the main office and received a key with number six written on it and a map of the general area. I decided to find it while there was still some daylight.

I navigated around the massive buildings. There were jails, hospitals, child and adolescent units. A sculpted, castle-like building with a tower from the 1800's caught my attention. With narrow windows behind iron bars, it had housed thousands of patients and prisoners at one time. Now, with the shift to residential care, it served mostly for offices during the day. In the twilight, amidst the manicured gardens, it gave me an eerie feeling. I couldn't help wondering who had looked out its windows.

It was a world in itself. Marcel had told me how he traveled underground through tunnels to get to the dentist. Every twenty feet there was a metal gate. A train track ran along the middle. It used to take the laundry up to the women's prison where it would be washed and sent back. Security cameras peered out from the walls. He was fascinated with the secret passages. It was akin to some of his video games: full of mazes, passwords, locks and keys.

Behind the peeling, yellow architecture from another time was a vacant neighborhood. The cottages, illuminated by a dim street lamp, were large old houses. Finding number six, I unlocked the door, pushed it open, and found my assigned room. Upon inspection, it was clear that I was the only one there. The furniture was shabby and a bit dusty. The kitchen had some pots and pans. People had left food in a gesture of hospitality to the next visitor. I made myself a cup of tea and tried to make myself at home but couldn't. The place had a life of its own. Despite the fact that I could lock my room, I could not fall asleep on the crinkly plastic covered pillow and mattress. I laid there in the dark with my senses awake to every creak, waiting for the morrow.

I thought about Marcel and how he got to the Oregon State Hospital: the skirmish outside his classroom, the plastic paintball gun, the arraignment without the 'victim' to testify, but mostly him: glamorizing it, making the most of it.

The small, behavior oriented Lane School wasn't working for him from his point of view or theirs. Everyone was looking for a solution or an out. He was tired of doing the reams of busy- work and the teachers were tired of him walking out. He cried in exasperation that he would never be able to achieve the goal of coming out of this placement, instead he was convinced that each level led to another lower and deeper level from which he could never come out.

We met with a 'New Opportunities' representative, Lucy, and were considering some changes based on his strengths. After two years on a waiting list, we were looking forward to putting in effect what had been thus far out of reach. We met with Lucy in our home and a meeting was scheduled to meet with his teachers to make some substantial changes: a computer class, a basketball hoop for practicing, half a day of school at CATS- an alternative hands-on bicycle shop.

When a classmate turned around in class and said, "I'm going to beat the shit out of you" to the kid sitting behind Marcel, he thought the comment was aimed at him. "Huh, what's up?" he responded, bringing the teacher's attention to him. Losing a level and sent out in the hallway, he started thinking of how he could retaliate. A passing classmate suggested, "Take his watch". Shawn had brought in a brand new Rolodex that day. So, in a style not too unusual for Lane students, Marcel waited for Shawn to come out of class, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and said, "Give me your watch!" There was speculation as to whether there was a pencil in his hand incidentally or being used as a weapon, aimed at Shawn's neck. The only witness never saw a pencil at all. Marcel said he didn't know what was true anymore. By the time the police came, the boys had worked out the dispute. Marcel was taken to Skipworth and because he was so cock sure that his mother would simply come and get him, as she had once before, it was decided that he would spend the night there even though they were filled to capacity.

Things might have ended here. Instead, visibly agitated, he went back to school the next day and on the bus ride home bragged to a fellow rider about owning a gun. In his determination to convince the disbeliever, he asked the bus driver to wait while he ran in the house and produced a plastic paint ball gun that a friend had stored in our garage. The terrified bus driver drove away and, still shaking, reported the incident back at school. When the police called saying that they were coming over to investigate, Marcel threw the plastic paint ball gun on the floor breaking the handle and cried, "Why did I do that!" But it was too late. This, with his record of 'burglary' (entering his friend's landlord's empty apartment and escaping through a screen, when they heard the landlord on the scene) and shoplifting, led to a more serious assessment. He had a record and was deemed a danger to society.

When the scheduled meeting with the teachers came up, there were two extra guests: Mary, a probation officer and Marion a parent advocate (aside from Lucy). I felt our chances were good because we had an alternative plan, but Marion advocated for a more restrictive setting. She had never met Marcel before but it was all Mary had to hear to take him then and there to Skipworth.

He spent five months at Skipworth, the old juvenile hall, next door to the notorious Kip Kinkle. The boys were not allowed to lie on their bellies and talk to each other under the doors but Marcel said you could talk through the walls anyway. The long hours of isolation concerned me but he was eventually able to check out some books. His reading skills went up from a fourth to a tenth grade level. He read the Bible several times over and by his own accord became a Christian. Previously he would not believe what he could not see. When he did not have access to books, he and his younger friend Pat adopted some ants and a spider and whiled away the hours building them little houses with scraps of paper they snuck into their cells along with morsels of food from dinner until they were caught and had to stop. When his release came five months later, he would be allowed two hours the first time he came out. He ran to touch the grass. Everything was exhilarating. The second trial run was a little overwhelming. By the third venture he wanted to go back to the comfort of his cell before his time was up! When I mentioned his apprehension to his probation officer, she released him three days earlier than planned! I picked up a forlorn fourteen -year old standing in the parking lot holding a paper bag with his belongings, wary of the world and wanting already to turn back to the comfort of his cell.

Marcel's great discomfort prompted me to go to his probation officer's supervisor. (She was away on vacation.) I begged him to help Marcel with a more gradual transition back home before he felt compelled to do something drastic. Reluctantly he was taken back in and sent to the Looking Glass Evaluation and Treatment Center, to help de-institutionalize him. Things seemed to be working out well with all the outings until his comment, "I feel like doing a Kip Kinkle on you", spoken in frustration to a peer alarmed the young, well meaning staff at Looking Glass. "We don't know him well enough to determine if he means it", said a good-natured man with his hair pulled into a short ponytail. He assured me that he really liked Marcel but preferred to err on the cautious side and sent him back to Skipworth. The attempt to ease him home backfired. To make matters worse he had already run away from this placement, hopped a train back to his old refuge-Skipworth- only to be returned with strict instructions not to return. Now he was back in their lap.

The Register Guard was full of articles on school violence. The massacre at the Thurston high school in our neighboring city was on national television. Measure 11 proponents of the 'one strike and your out' legislation were having a hey day. Security was tightening at Skipworth and plans were in motion to make a new state of the arts edifice to insure the safety of the community first and secondarily to reform our misguided youth.

Instead of coming home, as planned, he was sent to the Oak Creek Corrections Facility. Five such cookie cutter fortresses had been built within that year and were up and running in the state of Oregon. This one, on the outskirts of Albany, was an hour away. It was almost Christmas and there was to be a two- week black out period, which meant no visits or phone calls.

The first letter, written in pencil, said he wished he had tried harder to make the transition home. There were no individual cells; instead there were dorms with 30 boys to a unit. He drew a picture of the layout with explanations of what happened where. But what stood out most was that he didn't know whether he would make it home alive! He made it sound like he was with a den of thieves who had nothing to lose anyway.

Anxious to see him as soon as I could, I called and made arrangements to come up and visit him on the first visiting day after the required blackout period. It was the day after Christmas and it had been his first without the family. His brother and sister leaped into the car with a small allowable gift, determined to celebrate with him. When we arrived at the site, a guard in uniform told us we were not on the visiting list and could not see him that day. We had apparently not spoken to the right person. He apologized but made it clear that there wasn't anything he could do about it. I felt hopeless on the outside of this prison, as unable to go in, as Marcel was unable to come out. Discouraged and disappointed we asked the guard to let Marcel know we had come. He promised he would.

It was clear from this that it was a place of hierarchies and arbitrary rules. I wondered how it would affect Marcel on the inside. Right away it was established that only one person could give me information about him and this was to be Pam S., his case manager. She seemed warm and friendly and this was encouraging but as time went on it was obvious that she was bringing second hand information. I could never get a sense of him when she brought her reports, just facts: he talked back to a staff member, he threatened someone in the bathroom, or he threw paper airplanes all over the room. In the meantime he reported back what he felt were the injustices and it seemed that the stories from the two camps never fit together.

When a spit- ball was discovered under his mattress he lost his difficultly gained level and after despairing, stopped caring. When all was lost he gave up trying and kept acting out. "Slamming", the practice of taking down an out of control youth is a common occurrence at Oak Creek. For lack of other forms of entertainment, the kids seemed to get a rush from being taken down this way and earned peer recognition.

Stories abounded about a Vietnam vet staff that had broken a boys arm as if it were kindling. We knew someone who had died in a youth corrections camp in Arizona. He had come over to our house once and hidden my friend Monica's handbag in the bathroom after taking ten dollars out of it. We walked over to tell his mother's sister-in-law, whom he was visiting with his mother. He was sent back to Sacramento, his hometown, on a Greyhound that same night. But whatever he had done otherwise did not merit him being found dead in his own excrement with multiple bruises on his body in the hands of a corrections camp. His mother was paid thirty thousand dollars to keep the story quiet and because she so desperately needed the money, she accepted the bribe.

Knowing these stories did not make it easier to hear that he was spiraling downwards and spending days on end in isolation. The psychological barriers that kept me from knowing what was really going on frustrated me. One visiting day, Pam was away and I was able to speak to a staff person. Here I found the understanding and the compassion that I had missed! Here was someone who knew him firsthand who had been there when things happened. Because the system wasn't working for Marcel, the staff had devised their own internal 'underground- railroad' from one shift to the next. The tall blue-eyed middle-aged man shared how he appreciated Marcel and his own frustration when Marcel despaired and was beyond taking in the advice to not let the little things get to him.

Mark, a councilor, spoke candidly to me of the shortcomings of the place. McLaren, in Portland, had a pool and movie house built into their corrections system as a method of reward. But here the rewards were leaving the unit to clean toilets or wash dishes. When Marcel lost his level, he felt it wasn't worth getting it back! His response or lack of brought him to the attention of the in house psychiatrist. Marcel says the doctor asked him what kind of a drug he wanted. Did he want something to make him feel happier or more relaxed? He chose Ritalin and right away it became a bartering tool amongst the boys. He could cheek his meds and trade them for stamps or other desirables on the unit. This led to further reprimands for making poor choices and more sitting out for long hours with nothing to do and no contact with the group of boys that he had now bonded with.

He felt powerless to get out of this situation by following the rules. When he heard of children going to other places, such as the state hospital, it sounded like being on vacation in comparison. You could play video games, watch movies, and enter an easier level system with rewards. He figured out how he could get himself there. Someone said you'd get sent there if you said you heard voices. That is what he reported.

The in-house psychiatrist started him on an anti-psychotic drug and sent him up for further evaluation. After three days, Marcel admitted that he had lied about the voices and was sent back to Oak Creek where in another bout of isolation he bashed his fists against the wall and screamed to no avail He threatened to drown himself in a toilet bowl and to stop his ghastly screaming when they had him pinned to the floor, the staff on duty splashed toilet water in his mouth. When he made a gash on his arm with paint chips from his bed, he was sent back to the hospital after being stitched up for further evaluation. This time they kept him longer. It is a matter of course that psychotropic drugs are used in the adolescent ward and he was put on a cocktail of anti depressants, antipsychotics and a new drug for his recently developed 'anxiety'.

The mental health professionals decided that he did not have a conduct disorder. Maybe a little mischievousness but not a conduct disorder. They decided that the Oak Creek Corrections Facility was not an appropriate placement for him and refused to send him back. On the other hand the C.C.R.B. made it impossible for him to join in on community activities or go outside until the taller fence was completed.

Here in limbo he awaits an opening in a less restrictive setting approved by both the C.C.R.B. and the hospital staff. He will be 18 in November and this changes the placements available to him, as he will be considered an adult.