Read A Thorn in My Pocket: Temple Grandin's Mother Tells the Family Story for Free Online Page A

only to prove he’s right. Long ago his money talked to me; it seemed like a romantic largesse out of Scott Fitzgerald. I didn’t know then how it could be used to pinch life into the sharp, angled cursive that I recognize now, upside down in the notebook in front of the doctor.
    Please God, what has Dick written? Did Dick send that notebook to Dr. Meyer? And has she sent it on to this doctor? Did Dr. Meyer tell this doctor about my request for a marriage counselor? My own handwriting is schoolgirlish and will never have the strength to hold out against those tight bands of cursive. Dick has also taken to writing me accusing letters and leaving them on my side of the bed. He lifts words out of my mouth and reshapes them to his own argument.
    “Yes, that’s what I said,” I say, trying to defend my intention, “but that’s not what I meant.”
    The doctor looks down at Dick’s notebook. His lips are pursed. I wait for his sibilant words. My heart thuds. The veins in my hands swell up with shame. I hold still, hold very still as I’ve learned to do. Stare at my swollen hands and watch like a rabbit out the corner of my eye. The doctor has only to flash his badge; expertise is my enemy. I fear its flick lash and brace myself like a child called into the principal’s office.
    “It is autism. Infant schizophrenia.”
    Dick picks up the doctor’s words and runs with them. Face tight, eyes stern, mind racing along the same old kenneled intention, he gives himself permission to name his child “unacceptable.”
    Just as quickly, comes the doctor’s backtracking denial. “I didn’t say that, I said she manifested autistic symptoms.”
    Too late, the words have escaped. Loosed from their human code, they’re already metastasizing. I sense danger but don’t see how to fight it. I know the good man Dick wants to be, but I also know his impatience with any argument but his own. Most of all, I know his commitment to rules and authority: “If somebody will just tell me what to do,” he says repeatedly, “I’ll do it.”
    Now the words have told him what to do. *

    The next time I see Temple’s doctor, I’m alone. He’s had a session alone with Temple. He tells me that Temple has been psychotic, an infant schizophrenic, but that now she’s convalescing and has become a neurotic.
    Like the rest of us?
    The doctor looks at me as if he smells something faintly unpleasant, and names me an hysteric. “Oil and water don’t mix,” he says. “There is no teamwork between an obsessive like your husband and an hysteric.”
    I’m not sure what “hysteric” means and am afraid to ask. Later, I learn that in Victorian terms, it means a woman who is too much the individualist; in Freudian terms, it’s a woman who wants a penis. Not knowing either definition, not even sure what he means by “obsessive,” I show no reaction; I smile tentatively, hoping to please him, praying he has the solution, the key, the formula. It’s like a spy scene. What does he want from me? What am I supposed to know that he’s looking for?
    Was I depressed when she was born? he asks. No, I answer, then try to explain that Dick doesn’t have very many friends. He says that’s “quite suitable,” he knows many men like that. He purses his lips. How many friends do I have?
    I try to think. Finally, I say, “three close friends in the winter, two where we go in the summer.”
    He approves of this. “One should not have too many good friends.”
    Does “too many” mean shallow? I don’t know. Much later, I learn this is the first test, and I’ve passed it.
    I try to convince myself that I like this doctor, but we don’t smile; we don’t joke. I have no medical experience with psychiatrists, so I don’t know if jokes are allowed. I think of an old boyfriend, also a psychiatrist, who used to love jokes. I know the doctor knows this man and doesn’t like him, hasn’t liked him since the two men interned together. Now he questions me