Parading the caged child

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     The flashing lights of emergency vehicles led the parade. Fire trucks, police, and even a few of the menacing dark green military-style guard trucks surrounded a single trailer with a large cage secured to the platform.
     Inside the cage sat a thin, wiry boy. He had just turned eleven years old. A padded helmet had been placed on his head, obscuring most of his features. But his eyes could be seen, surrounded by little tufts of blond curls. His expression was difficult to read.
     He sat in the corner with his back against the bars, his arms at his sides. Each wrist was wrapped in a metal cuff and attached to a chain. He was able to move his hands, but only enough to stand or sit.
     Armed guards walked alongside the trailer, watching the child and the crowds. It was unclear who they were concerned about. The child turned his body towards the bars he had been leaning on, and looked into the dark, blacked-out windows of the truck that pulled the trailer along. His body went limp, and he pressed his helmeted head against the bars.
     His parents were there, huddled together under a tree. No one was around them. There was an invisible divide that kept the crowd at a distance. When the boy looked up and caught sight of his parents, it was clear that his eyes were filled with tears.
     He stood. He moved in the direction of his parents, but the chains caught him and jerked him back, revealing the metal cuffs that were also on his ankles. He roared, dropped his head and slid to the floor of his cage.
     His mother’s face was a silent scream. She watched intensely. When she moved instinctively toward her son, the father held her back. She turned to him, knowing she could do nothing, and buried her face in his shoulder. He pressed her sobbing body closer to him.
     The father stood, his chin up as if it were the only thing keeping him upright. His eyes squinted against the flashing lights, the people staring and the armed guards surrounding his son.
     The boy looked up at his father, his eyes at first pleading, then flashing with anger.
     The trailer stopped. The boy stood. His parents held their breath.
     A woman came up to the mother. The mother turned her face into her husband’s chest and the woman walked away. This was the woman who had betrayed her. The group of ‘friends’, who when the tragedy happened wanted to hear all about it, tried to understand and support, but it was this woman who had retold the story to others. Embellishing, sharing details, misconstruing. And now the people, here at the parade, had made a final judgement. The boy, making everything worse with his rage, only reinforced the false beliefs.
     The mother and father had been asked, ‘Was he a difficult child?’ The answer was complicated, and no one waited for it.
     Yes, but the advice given… I now see was, it was, barbaric. The mother thought this, but never said it out loud.
     Advice was given. Lock the child alone in a room when he became difficult. No matter what, he was not to be let out until he calmed down.
     The child’s tantrums had always looked like rage, and it wasn’t until a revelation hit them many years later: the boy, alone and confused by the nature of others, lived in a world that didn’t make sense. That is terrifying. People did not behave in reasonable ways.
     Pulling the child from the wreckage of the locked room, he was spent, tired and weepy, and so were the parents.
     ‘You mustn’t let him have his way,’ was the advice. ‘You spoiled the child.’
     But the parents knew they had not.
     The teachers said, ‘He’s defiant’
     The therapists said, ‘He is dangerous.’
     The first time he was dangerous was because he had yelled. Yelling was dangerous.
     ‘He must follow the rules.’
    ‘It doesn’t matter if he can’t, the problem is he won’t, and therefore he must have privileges taken away from him.’
     The privilege of affection and attention was removed.
     The privilege of belief was withheld.
    The child was defective and deserved nothing. He must earn even the slightest bit of trust.
     The trailer jerked forward and knocked the boy against the cage as it began to move again. The pace was slow. People pointed. Many sidelong glances swept over the parents.
     It was unknown where the trailer was headed or when it would finish its journey.
     The boy found his mother’s face and yelled, ‘Why won’t you help me?’
     The mother, breaking free from the father’s hold, ran to the trailer. ‘I love you, I’m sorry. I’m trying to help you… but you… you…’
     ‘I hate you, go away. I never want to see you again,’ the boy cried.
     The crowd gasped. He was a monster.
     ‘Please!’ the mother cried. ‘Stop. You are making it worse.’
     The boy turned his back to her.
     There were many interviews with the boy, analyses, professional evaluations, but it was late now. The parade had traveled down the road. The boy was left with the deep scars that rendered his skin tight and unmovable, the mother with weeping wounds and the father’s resolve crumbled in a slow pile at his feet.
     The friends and neighbors pretending it never happened, the woman still talking about things she does not know, oblivious to the pain she invokes.
     The boy, after having more privileges removed, and more analysis, and a heaping dose of scorn, was let out of the cage.
     Time passed and the boy now spends his time alone in his room, the door closed, trying to feel the ground beneath his feet. He studies human animals, but not too much; they cannot be regulated and therefore are too dangerous. So he limits his exposure, trying to keep as much control over things as possible.
     The abused animal who bites can learn not to bite, but can he be trusted to never bite again? Or perhaps it was never the animal who bit that should be feared, but the ones who cornered him, who never bit at all.

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