The Art of Making Money - Jason Kersten [15]
That seems like a young age for a kid to wash out, but Art did have two siblings who were even younger. Right about the same time he was bashing his way out of high school, his little brother, Jason, was getting in trouble for acting up in grammar school. Jason enjoyed none of Art’s academic advantages and had experienced even less stability. At ten years old, he was not only expelled from grammar school, but Malinda lost custody of him completely. The State remanded him to Maryville Academy, a boy’s school in Des Plaines, where he would languish until the age of eighteen and emerge with less education than Art.
Wensdae would fail to finish high school as well, but she would get a general-education degree. The only one of the Williams kids who never lashed outward, she would continue her interior battle, with consequences far more violent than any her brothers ever faced.
THE WILLIAMS KIDS were struggling with poverty, but there was another factor they had to contend with, one that haunted them in their own house. Art discovered it one day during his freshman year in high school after he forgot his key. Knocking on the front door, he called for his mom to let him in. He knew she was home because he could hear her inside, talking to someone. Malinda didn’t respond, which he thought was strange. To the side of the front door was a little opaque window to a utility room, and through the glazing he could just make out the form of his mother crouched in the corner. He banged on the window and shouted at her.
“They won’t leave me alone!” Malinda screamed back. She explained that she had gone into the utility room to look for supplies to build a spaceship, so she could escape them.
“Who won’t leave you alone?” Art asked.
“The little people,” she said. “They’re all over me, they’re driving me crazy.”
Art didn’t hear any other voices. He sat down beneath the little window, trying to talk his mom down and get her to open the door. He assumed she was on drugs, and figured they’d wear off, or if he could just calm her down she’d come out, but she didn’t. After an hour, a neighbor came out to see what was the matter.
His neighbor, a Puerto Rican single mother, tried to talk to Malinda, too, but she just kept yelling about “little people” and “leprechauns.” With no other recourse, and fearing for his mom’s life, Art and the neighbor finally called the police. Minutes later, while half the Bridgeport Homes looked on in curiosity, the CPD kicked in the door and an accompanying paramedic unit entered the apartment, sedated Malinda, and carried her out of the projects strapped to a stretcher.
She was diagnosed with bipolar schizophrenia. The bipolar disorder, characterized by massive mood swings, had afflicted her for years. It was almost certainly rearing its head when she was institutionalized following the episode at Uncle Rich’s. But schizophrenia, which typically includes hallucinations, intense paranoia, and the hearing of internal and often violent voices, was something frighteningly new. Although the cause of schizophrenia is most often genetic, recent studies indicate that a severe trauma to the head is also a trigger. Both Art and Wensdae flatly blame their aunt’s assault with the beer bottle for what they refer to as their mother’s “problem.”
After that first “leprechaun” episode, Malinda’s illness became a major destabilizing factor. Doctors prescribed her lithium, which was extremely effective at suppressing the symptoms—so much so that when Malinda was feeling really good she’d stop taking the medication altogether. Then it was only a matter of time before her brain realigned to its natural chemistry. When it did, the caring, affectionate, and fun-loving mother the children knew was replaced by a woman whose behavior ran on a roulette wheel numbered and colored with bad news.
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