He stands with his face to the wall.

Mumbling something that sounds like, “the cat’s meow,” he scribbles invisible letters on the pale blue paint up near his ear with the forefinger of his right hand. The late afternoon sun comes in the kitchen window over the crowded table and illuminates his blue shirt and wrinkled gray trousers.

We ignore him. That’s what we always do when he’s having one of his episodes. We just sit on the couch and keep our eyes on the TV as the news program comes and goes between the loud commercials and annoying soft-drink jingles. We ignore our only son because we don’t know what else to do.

Seven years ago, when Leroy was halfway through his eleventh year, the episodes began. And at first Henry would sometimes whip him hard because he thought the boy was being disrespectful. Leroy lived eleven years without ever having any spells, and then they just started up. And they would come on him without any warning at all. It might be in the middle of a meal, or while he was out playing football in the backyard with the neighborhood boys, or (God forbid) while Henry was cursing him for getting another “D” in math, or even once while he was drinking a glass of milk.

From the very beginning it was the same. When he has an episode, Leroy’s eyes will sort of glaze over and his arms will just go limp for a few seconds, and then he will be off in that other place for a while. Sometimes it lasts for a few minutes, and sometimes it might go on for an hour or more. In the beginning, Henry tried several times to whip it out of him, not understanding that the boy couldn’t even hear him or feel the pain while he was having a spell.

I remember the last time Henry ever raised his hand to whip our son. No doubt it was over something Leroy had done wrong, some all-important rule the boy had forgotten, some terrible trespass against his father’s law. Just before the belt struck the first blow, I saw Leroy’s face relax. His arms sagged a little, and then he slumped forward onto the chair that he had been holding onto and started humming a childhood tune.

Henry got really mad then at the lack of respect he thought he was seeing. He struck the boy with the belt again and again, each time harder than before. Leroy’s continued lack of response only made things worse. Finally, I had to step in and grab hold of the Henry’s hand. He glared at me for a second or two, his sweating face dark red with rage. He sputtered, “Get out of the way, Sally, or I swear I’ll…” Then his eyes focused and he let me take the belt from his hand.

Together, we tried to pull Leroy up straight, but he wouldn’t let us. He just seemed to lay there, limp as a dishrag. But whenever we tried to move him, he resisted. About a half hour later, he simply woke up and went into the kitchen and sat down to do his homework.

The next day, Henry and I took Leroy to see Doc Gaston. We told him about the night before and about the other episodes. He sent us to see another doctor, a specialist in the middle of the city. And then we had to take him to see several other doctors. They all ran their tests. All of them charged us a lot of money. But in the end, they couldn’t do much about the episodes or tell us exactly what caused them. They couldn’t tell us if the episodes would ever go away.

We had to keep an eye on him whenever we went to the beach. His teachers had to be informed and told what to do if anything happened at school. He was not allowed to play football or basketball for the school. They said the insurance companies wouldn’t cover anyone with his condition. When he was sixteen, Leroy was not allowed to drive a car like the other boys. If he ever had a spell while he was driving, the car would just keep going until it hit something, because Leroy would not be there to control it until he woke up again.

I sit and watch the TV, not seeing my son’s shadow on the wall. Nor do I see the small trickle reflecting the bright sunlight on Henry’s sunburned cheek. He always cries when Leroy has an episode. He always tries to hide it from me and from everyone. I know he blames himself for Leroy’s condition. The doctors assured us that there was no convincing evidence to connect any of the boy’s whippings with the tiny miss-firing going on inside his brain. But Henry was never convinced. He lost his son. His only son. I know Henry. He’ll always believe that he’s somehow to blame.

I have my own ideas. I’ve been to the library a lot in recent years. I read every book they had that said anything about the kinds of things that effect the brain. I also had the clerk order in lots of books from other libraries all around the country. I’ve called doctors and specialists in New York and Chicago and Los Angeles and Houston. Henry never complained about the phone bills. I’ve learned a lot about birth defects caused by things that mothers do when they’re pregnant.

I’ve got my own ideas about what could have caused Leroy’s condition. But nobody knows for sure. And so far, nothing anyone has done has made any difference in our son’s life.

So we just sit here on the couch and watch TV, waiting for Leroy to wake up again.

Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him…” (the Gospel of St John 9:1-3)

©2005 Jim Sutton