Week 8 of Serialization: Where Does My Autistic Son Belong? Chapter 8
In 2019, I published Where Does My Autistic Son Belong?. It chronicles my struggle with raising my adolescent autistic son, Sebastien, and my subsequent decision of setting a home for him in Bali. As part and parcel of A Mother’s Wish initiative (amotherswish.com.sg) to raise awareness about the need to learn treat autistic individuals with genuine respect and empathy, I am serializing the book on Medium, Chapters 1–7 :
CHAPTER 8
DIALLING “999”
(December 6th, 2015)
The painting Sebastien made before our clash on December 6th, 2015th…
On Sunday, December 6th, 2015, I called the police. It was somewhat anti-climactic, a non-event in juxtaposition against the history of Sebastien’s violent attacks against me. There had been many more episodes in which I should have called the police when I had been physically injured and felt frightened for my life. In fact, when I called the police, Sebastien had not injured me at all.
I had just reached a point when I no longer wanted to risk being injured anymore…
* * * * *
After all the drama from the second and third days of A Mother’s Wish holiday programme, there were no more episodes of self-injury or aggression from Sebastien. In fact, the baking activity on Friday (Dec 4th) was the best day of the programme, with all the participants engaged in the activity of making cookies.
Of course, just because Sebastien did not have any meltdowns did not mean that taking him to the activity was not fraught with tension. On the way to a familiar venue — a large and lovely home that belonged to a mother of an autistic adult son, Sebastien pulled all the car door handles of the parked cars on the street. None of us tried very hard to stop him. When he decided to stop and watch movers load a moving truck with an automatic loading contraption, we had to wait till they had completed their task, rolled up their ramps, and took off. It didn’t matter that we were late for the programme and all the other participants had gone ahead. Our only concern was that Sebastien did not lose it. After all that had happened, we had to make do with Sebastien the way he was. Essentially, Sebastien still felt like a ticking time bomb, to be handled with care, lest we triggered an explosion.
Careful not to repeat my mistake, I maintained an indifferent exterior when I had Sebastien to myself for the weekend. So when Sebastien took a long time to return in between laps during his skating expedition at the East Coast Park on Saturday, I didn’t comment. I didn’t know what he had been up to and I wasn’t going to pursue it. Nonetheless, the truce between us felt as taut as a string about to snap.
But the next day, Sebastien decided to break this truce on what should have been an easy morning expedition to walk out to the bakery and shop nearby to buy croissants and ciabattas for the special Sunday breakfast — our “ritual” save for the absence of Jerome. While we were taking the elevator, Sebastien came towards me and squeezed my neck with his hands. It wasn’t a hard squeeze; in fact, he was looking at me with a twinkle in his eye. Although my heart skipped a beat, I kept my cool and steely gaze, while telling him to “let go”. He held on for a second longer before letting go. The whole time, he maintained his glint of delight in his eye. I felt as though he was brandishing his power over me. It made me feel sick to be trapped in the elevator with him.
To regain some control over the situation and restore the dynamic between our relationship, I told Sebastien that I did not want him to squeeze my neck in the elevator, or I would cancel his usual afternoon outing in the neighbourhood. Every Sunday, Sebastien would sit without supervision for about an hour to eat his meal of organic rice cakes, cereals, fruits and salad near the red benches outside a big shopping mall. There would often be groups of friendly maids from Indonesia and the Philippines enjoying their Sundays off from work. Like Sebastien, they too were eating their meals and chatting away on the red benches. Although the maids would initially appear nervous when they saw Sebastien with his weird mannerisms of squinting his eyes and insistence on sitting on the ground in one particular spot, he had not once gotten into trouble during his time there. In fact, by the time we would come to pick Sebastien up, they would always be smiling warmly at us, commenting that Sebastien was clean and tidy in packing up his things. They would even offer him their picnic food, thus embracing him in their midst.
However, Sebastien chose to defy my warning and came at me again in the elevator on our way home. This time, he was even laughing away. Back in the apartment, I had to decide what to do. I could write it off as nothing because I was not hurt or I could take a stand against him. But I was so angry at him that I threw caution to the wind. I went for the latter without thinking through about how I was going to get through the rest of the day without Jerome’s support.
Bracing for an adverse reaction, I was careful. As I laid out Sebastien’s breakfast food for him on the living room table, I opted to take my own breakfast food into Jerome’s bedroom office, instead of eating with him. Then while he was distracted with eating, I wrote “Red Bench is Cancelled” on a piece of paper and left it on the ground, before returning quickly to Jerome’s bedroom office to lock it. Behind closed doors, I could hear him mumble “Red Bench, Red Bench”. I ignored him.
With this declaration of “war”, I had essentially trapped myself inside the room for the rest of the day. At the time, I thought that my greatest challenge that day would only come when it was time for him to go to the Red Bench, as the preceding activities that Sebastien typically did on a Sunday like sewing, Word Search, and watching iPad videos, were things that he could do independently. Thus, his day would progress more or less according to his routine without my participation.
When the hour came for Sebastien to go to the Red Bench, I held out against Sebastien’s repeated requests for “Red Bench”, bracing for the thumping sounds of his head-banging or the possibility that he would slam doors and drawers. To my surprise, he stopped asking to go to the Red Bench without resorting to any of those actions. From behind closed doors, I heard him going to the fridge to retrieve his food containers, which he had prepared the night before, and then eating his food without protest.
The scariest moment had passed without any incident! But I did not any feel more triumphant or confident. Standing up to Sebastien had not redressed the imbalance in our power relationship. In fact, as the day gave way to the night, and I realised that I had to come out from behind closed doors to retrieve his painting when he was done and prepare his Sunday pizza, Sebastien’s seemingly easy acceptance of his punishment felt eerie.
But I had to come out. If I didn’t prepare his pizza, I would be adding fuel to the fire of our conflict. So when Sebastien finished the painting and called me to retrieve it, according to the routine, I came out. As usual, Sebastien parked himself next to the sink, waiting for me to bring out the containers of paint water for him to pour away into the sink. I steeled myself to pass him each of the containers, counting them down. Finally, I gingerly removed the completed painting and moved it to the drying spot in the office bedroom.
So far so good…
“Mama, Red Bench!”
These words stopped me cold just as I was about to emerge from the bedroom to go to the kitchen to prepare his pizza. I picked up the big cane umbrella I had brought into the office bedroom for my protection before I stepped out again.
Sebastien was still standing near the sink of the bathroom. At this point, the containers were all washed and stacked tidily next to him.
With the umbrella in my hand, I found the modicum of courage to look him in the eye and stand up to him: “The Red Bench was cancelled. You were meany to mama in the elevator this morning.”
In a flash, Sebastien leapt forward and grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me into the bathroom. With his other hand, he slammed the toilet seat repeatedly, while barking “Red Bench Cancelled”. I was terrified of what he was going to do next. Sebastien had never pulled me into the bathroom like this to watch him slam the toilet seat. Typically, he did that when he was alone in the bathroom. I whacked at his arm that was holding my wrist with the umbrella. When he let go of his grasp, I ran into the kitchen and locked the door.
For a few moments, I stood there, gasping for breath. I could feel the adrenaline coursing through me. I felt a momentary high: I had gotten away from Sebastien without getting a single scratch on me! Now all that was left to do tonight was to prepare the pizza, which I could do behind the locked doors of the kitchen. At least, for the new few moments, I could nestle in the belief that I was safe.
Even though I was still trembling, I began my preparations of the pizza. I was grateful to have my hands busy with these systematic tasks of taking out the frozen pizza, unwrapping the plastic, and sticking it into the oven. While the pizza was being baked, I moved on to prepare his food bag for tomorrow. I needed to keep moving to still my fraying nerves.
But then I heard it — the unmistakable thumping of Sebastien’s head with his fist in between slamming the toilet seat cover on the toilet bowl. By instinct, I called out: “Stop banging the toilet seat, or people would call the police!” In response, Sebastien slammed it even louder. Even as my body flinched at the repeated slamming of the toilet seat, there was a part of me that felt thoroughly weary and resigned: it would not be the first time that Sebastien had created such a commotion. I could just stay behind the kitchen door, weather through the night, and get on with life, just as I had done all the previous times before.
So when the sound of the oven timer made the “clinking” sound, signalling that the pizza was ready, I carefully put on the oven mitt to pull out the piping hot pizza to lay it on the plate. I picked up the scissors to cut the pizza into eighths. But my hands were shaking. Even though I was enclosed in the kitchen, I was still troubled by the sounds of Sebastien hitting his head and slamming the toilet seat.
All of a sudden, I had an out-of-body experience, as though I was gazing at the shaking hands of someone else. That someone else was Sebastien’s mother who was deluding herself that all she had to do was to carry out Sebastien’s dinner routine and life would go on as usual. There was no need to make a big fuss about this situation.
But my trembling hands refused to cooperate. They wouldn’t allow me to escape from the situation. A voice in my mind spoke out with complete clarity: “Enough is enough, Kah Ying. It’s over.” I put down the scissors. It was pointless to pretend that I could get on with life as usual. Even if we did survive this terrible night, I would still have to face Sebastien tomorrow, as well as grapple with the prospect of punishing him for his behaviour tonight and deal with the consequences. Had Jerome been here, I could have cancelled the A Mother’s Wish holiday programme for Sebastien. However, without Jerome, I could not leave Sebastien on his own in Jerome’s apartment, while I carried out the holiday programme.
I sent a message to Jerome to inform him that I was going to call the police. There was a part of me, which wanted him to tell me to hold off on it. Instead, Jerome gave his “blessing” immediately: “Just do it.” He too seemed weary of everything.
With heavy fingers, I pressed “999” to call the police. And when I spoke to the emergency operator about the situation, my voice was eerily composed even when I got to the part about being afraid that Sebastien could hurt me. It was as though I was recounting about a situation that was happening to someone else, not me.
But when the emergency operator advised me to “get out of the house for my own safety”, it was a jolt that plunged me back to reality. I carefully unlocked the kitchen door to make sure that Sebastien was not in the vicinity. After stealing a quick glance at the bedroom area, where Sebastien was, I quickly unlocked the front gate, dashed out, and locked it again so that he could not come out. For a few seconds, I felt euphoric to have escaped from Sebastien’s grasp.
Out on the pavement, in front of Jerome’s condominium, I called Casey, my sister. Without hesitation, she told me that she would come over. Knowing that she was coming settled me down. I was grateful that I wouldn’t be doing this alone. As I stared blankly into the night, waiting for the police and Casey, not knowing when they would come, the reality of what I had done began to sink in. What have I done? I could have just waited out the night. I could have… After all, I had gotten away unscathed. To restrain my hysteria, I focused on my attention on the headlights of the cars turning onto the street.
When Casey showed up, she assumed a take-charge demeanour and tried to dispel my self-doubt by telling me that I was “doing the right thing”. That was when I realised that I could hardly speak; the voice that came out from my throat was breathless with anxiety and panic. It became abundantly obvious to me that I could not have gotten through the night. I was a basket case, bordering on the brink of a nervous breakdown. And by the time the police finally showed up, more than 30 minutes after my call, I was shaking like a leaf. It was Casey who spoke on my behalf, telling them about Sebastien’s history of attacks against me.
With shaky fingers, I unlocked the front door. The two police officers — a male and a female — stepped in before me. It almost seemed strange to feel safe once again in this flat, flanked by two police officers and Casey. Sebastien was lying on his back on the ground, utterly quiet and still. The picture was a stark contrast to what had gone on in this household before. I wished I hadn’t called these strangers into our autism universe.
However, when Sebastien saw the uniformed police officers, he scrambled to his feet quickly, his eyes alight with panic. This only stirred up the police officers who shouted at Sebastien as assertively as they could manage: “Sebastien, sit down!” He sat down immediately. Too caught up in their own fear about him, the police officers couldn’t tell that he was terrified. While the male officer kept a close watch over Sebastien, the female police officer immediately contacted the headquarters, calling for backup.
After being so frightened of Sebastien these past few days, it was strange to watch him without a tinge of fear. As he sat there in a cross-legged position, with his eyes drifting nervously to look at us, Sebastien looked like a frightened big child. What have I done by bringing these strangers into our life? I was wrenched with guilt.
“Mama, Red Bench! Sorry for me!” Sebastien shouted.
“Sebastien, quiet! Calm down!” The male police officer braced for action. It was clear that he could not understand Sebastien’s muffled pronunciation. Worse still, as the only male there, he was jumpy, panicking at every move Sebastien made.
I felt cornered between a rock and a hard place. There was no question that I appreciated the presence of the outside world in the apartment, which completely transformed the atmosphere. At the same time, their perception of him could be making things worse. Couldn’t they already see how cowed he was?
From a distance, I spoke to Sebastien, as gently as possible: “I know, Sebastien. Red Bench.” I wished that I could have turned back the clock to the morning and let his antics in the elevator slide. What have I done?
At that point, the female police officer who had been standing next to me asked, “What did he say?” I explained what had transpired earlier that day. It felt foreign and exhausting to introduce foreigners to the eccentricities of the autism universe where things that wouldn’t matter in the ordinary world could make or break a day in this one. How could they possibly grasp what I was going through with Sebastien and help me? Worst of all, now that the police officers were here and Sebastien seemed to be contained, I didn’t know whether I wanted them to leave or to stay. Thus, I remained stuck in paralysis.
“Mama, pizza!”
“What did he say?”
“He wants pizza. He usually has pizza at night. Can I give him his pizza?”
“Sure, sure…”
While Sebastien had his pizza, two additional police officers came and we had a conference out in the hallway.
“Look, he had not committed a crime. So we are not going to arrest him.”
This was when Casey intervened: “But she does not feel safe. The moment you leave, he could attack her. Her boyfriend who can handle him will not be back for another three days.”
I stood there, nodding my head, still stuck in indecision.
“In that case, why don’t you check him into IMH (the local mental hospital)? You can call an ambulance — here’s the phone number. We’ll stay until the ambulance comes.”
The decision was taken out of my hands. I could have said something, bade everyone good-bye and hoped that Sebastien would remain fine. But at that point, I felt too weak, swept along by a train of events that I had triggered, which had taken all my energy and will. But Casey sprang into action. After learning that the ambulance to transport Sebastien would cost a whopping $300 that had to be paid for by cash, she left to go to a nearby ATM.
That night, the ambulance would take an eternity to come. It was struggling to get through the traffic in the vicinity of Jerome’s house on a Sunday night. In the interim, Sebastien made a request for his next activity of the Sunday night routine, which was to do a simple homework that he could do on his own. I gave it to him. It was heartbreaking to see Sebastien writing away on his worksheet under the watchful scrutiny of the police officers determined to keep Sebastien at a safe distance from me. Sebastien was just persisting with his routine, even though there was nothing familiar about the evening. He was in for a rude shock. And for the first time, I would not be preparing him for it.
In fact, the police officers wanted to keep me out of the whole thing. The moment they learnt that the ambulance had arrived, the two female cops ushered me into the kitchen. They served as the perfect buffer for me, as I braced myself for the eruption of a commotion. However, all was quiet. Minutes later, Casey came in to inform me that Sebastien was cooperative, even allowing himself to be strapped onto the gurney. In fact, Sebastien almost seemed happy to go on the ride on a “bed with wheels”. What could have been a traumatising episode in Sebastien’s life actually went better than expected!
When I arrived at Emergency, I saw Sebastien for the first time, with two cloth strips tying his wrists onto the metal railings of the gurney, through a small window. I hesitated about going in, not knowing how he felt about my “betrayal”. Even then, I was terrified that his reaction towards me could be so fiery that those narrow cloth strips would not be able to hold him back.
“Mama.” Sebastien had seen me. He lifted his head and upper torso. I hesitated. But I saw that he was restrained sufficiently for me to go in. It was safe. From his tone of voice, I also sensed that he wanted to let me know that he was fine now and he wanted to go home. A part of me wished that I could just turn back time and take him home. Instead, all I could do was to reassure him as calmly as I could with a weak smile: “It’s okay, Sebastien. Just lie down. It’s okay.” But even I was not convinced by my own words. I did not know if anything was going to be okay.
At this point, a male nurse came in to tell us to wait outside to check Sebastien into the hospital. From a distance, I could see Sebastien trying to lift himself up again. There were stickers on the sockets in the room. When he couldn’t, he called out, “Mama, mama.” The male nurse came in to see what was happening. From Sebastien’s body language, I surmised that he was trying to explain to the nurse about the stickers. However, the male nurse who didn’t understand him just wanted Sebastien to lie back down.
There was a certain novelty in this situation. For the first time since his puberty, Sebastien could not physically set out to do what he wanted to do. He could not make me do it and there was nothing he could do about it. I almost felt giddy with delight that came with a sense of liberation from the tyranny of Sebastien’s compulsion. And there was something else… the feeling of safety. I lingered in the embrace of this feeling like a long-lost friend. However, my feelings of gladness for myself were tempered by guilt that I was experiencing my freedom at the expense of Sebastien.
“Don’t feel bad. You had to do what you had to do.” Casey, my bulwark of strength, who had accompanied me through this difficult process, tried to reassure me.
“I know.”
I wanted to say that Sebastien had it coming. He deserved what he was experiencing. But I couldn’t. Instead, once I felt safe, I was worried about Sebastien. I couldn’t imagine what he was going through. He had never stayed anywhere outside of the home, without Jerome and me. How would he get through the night? Breathe. One step at a time.
It was almost midnight by the time we checked Sebastien in. I wasn’t aware of all the time that had gone by — waiting for the police, the backup police, the ambulance, and the doctor at the Emergency. Being far away from the autism universe in which time was defined by the sequence of activities and routines that Sebastien went through and the appointments that he had for the day was disorienting. Typically, at 12 midnight, on a Sunday night, all of us would have been sleeping at Jerome’s house. Instead, Sebastien was lying awake in a cold hospital room, strapped to a gurney, under the glare of the fluorescent lights. I too was wide awake. It was really too late to turn back now.
At the check-in counter, we were confronted with a distressing situation. After taking the time to systematically go through all the different categories of rooms and their costs, the hospital administrator informed me that only Ward C — a space that was filled with tens of adult patients — was available. More expensive rooms with fewer patients in other wards were already full. It was hard to imagine Sebastien staying in such a ward for three days until Jerome’s return; even Casey was grimacing. However, without any alternatives, we decided that, at least for tonight, Sebastien would stay here.
“But he would not be tied down for 3 days?” I asked.
“Hmmmm. He is big. It depends on the staff at the ward, whether they think that they can handle him.”
I looked at Casey in alarm. Without saying anything to each other, it was clear to both of us that if he were going to be tied down the entire time, we would get him out. But again, this was something that we didn’t need to decide until tomorrow.
With the papers signed, two male nurses came in to push Sebastien to the ward, while Casey and I followed behind. Although I was trying to tell myself that it was okay for Sebastien to experience being cared for by others, panic set in. They didn’t know his routines. He needed to pee now. How was he going to pee, if he was tied down?
“He needs to pee.”
“It’s okay. We will put him in diapers.”
“Oh no, please don’t put him in diapers.” The last thing I wanted was for Sebastien to start peeing in diapers. Who knew what would happen if he started this routine?
“It’s just for tonight.” The male nurse spoke casually; he was just doing his job.
“No, he is not going to wear diapers. You have to find a different way.”
So they got a urinal bottle, drew the curtains around him, and helped him to pee while he was still restrained. With this little act of advocacy on Sebastien’s behalf, I came back to life. I was still Sebastien’s mother and I could still speak up for him. For a fleeting moment, I reconnected to a self that I could recognise. I was still his mother. Until that instant, I had felt like a limp doll the entire night, swept along by the sea of procedures that had to be followed from the police to the hospital. Their procedures created an automatic structure for containing the crisis in a tidy fashion. While these procedures allowed me to feel safe and free from Sebastien’s control, they also depleted my sense of power and control. Thus, amid these disempowering circumstances, this little “pee” victory offered the tiniest comfort to me, rekindled my identity as Sebastien’s mother, and assuaged enough of my guilt for me to go home with Casey.
* * * * *
That night, when I opened the door to the apartment, the place felt extremely quiet and peaceful. But Sebastien’s absence also left behind a huge void. It was hard to tell whether the void that I was feeling was inside myself or came from the empty apartment. This darkness felt safe but extremely sad and lonely. As I lay my tired head on the pillow, I took comfort in the fact that, for a change, I didn’t have to listen out for Sebastien’s head-banging…