Saving Elijah

Elijah and I ventured out to the supermarket. He'd always ridden in the cart but this time he wanted to walk alongside me, which he did in his awkward gait. When we came to the cereal aisle he walked right up to a tall, obviously pregnant black woman looking at the cereal boxes.
    "I like Sugar Pops," he told her. "What does your son like?"
    She looked down at him and smiled. "I don't have a son."
    "Yes, you do." He pointed to her belly. "He's in there."
    She stared at him for a moment, then looked at me and laughed.
    "He's right. The doctor told me last week I'm having a boy."
    When we got to the meat aisle, Elijah wanted to ride in the cart. I got him settled in, then noticed Tammy Pearl, selecting a chicken. She turned away.
    "Hello, Tammy," I said.
    "Oh, hi. Did you get my card?"
    "Yes, thanks."
    "Hi, Elijah. I'm so glad you're better." She patted him on the head.
    He patted her on her arm. "Are you better?"
    She looked puzzled. "I wasn't sick."
    Elijah closed his eyes.
    "Is he all right?"
    "He's fine, Tammy." I moved past her, sorry I'd even said hello. "What are you doing, Elijah?"
    He didn't respond, kept his eyes squeezed shut.
    "Elijah?"
    Finally he opened his eyes. "I close my eyes, Mommy."
    "I know you closed your eyes. Why?"
    He turned to the case full of shrink-wrapped meats and pointed.
    "What?"
    He kept pointing.
    "What in the world are you pointing at, Elijah? The steaks?"
    He nodded and closed his eyes again.
    Oh. Once they'd weaned him back to real food at the hospital, beginning with Jell-0 and liquids and finally working up to meat patties and chicken stew, he'd refused to eat any kind of meat at all. Back home, he ate everything else but kept leaving his portion of meat untouched on the plate. "Doesn't taste good," he said when I'd asked him why.

    *    *    *

    The following week, Elijah went back to Miss Stanakowski's class, and I resumed my practice. Before Elijah got sick I had a nice part-time practice, thirty patients, including the seven women in my Tuesday night women's group. By the time I came back to work after a hiatus of nearly six weeks, I'd lost five. Two decided to terminate, two decided they liked the colleagues I'd referred them to better than me, and Danielle O'Connor, the new referral whose husband was using her as a punching bag, never called Grace, the colleague I had referred her to, and never called me back either.
    When I got to my office, I reviewed my notes for the morning's patients, called Danielle and left a message letting her know I was back at work if she wasn't seeing anyone else. When I hung up, I felt better than I had in a long time.
    My first patient arrived right on time, Zandra Leeward, a comically exotic name for a stocky college dropout now working as a secretary in a local law firm. Her problem, she told me during our first session, was that a paralegal in the office was sexually harassing her. Her definition of harassment? He'd brought her a rose on her birthday and asked her out to lunch.
    It turned out that Zandra had never had a relationship with a man, sexual or otherwise. "It's not for me," she said. When I asked her why, she said, "Well, just look at me. I'm uglier than homemade sin." She certainly wasn't pretty, but uglier than sin was a little strong.
    I was not surprised to learn that the source of this wretched self-image was dear old mom, a beautiful, successful fashion model, now dead. The interactions she described with her mother were so harsh they almost made Charlotte look good. When Zandra told me back in December that I didn't look anything like her mother, I knew she was beginning to trust me. That was where we had left it before my world stopped.
    In for our first session after my hiatus, Zandra seemed angry and I finally asked if she was angry with me. She denied it at first, but about midway through the fifty minutes she said I had left her "high and dry." I usually got this reaction from patients once a year, around vacation time. But my absence had come as a surprise to Zandra, without warning.
    "I'm very sorry," I told her. "It couldn't be helped."
    "Where were you?" She started to cry. "I needed you. Ray Johnson called me at home. He asked me out on a date!"
    Back when I was a new therapist, I found this very hard to deal with, having people so dependent on me, when I barely knew what I was doing. Unfortunately, it's not until you have a better idea what you're doing that you begin to get used to the dependence.
    "One of my