Myles

Myles was the third child I interviewed at Ballybaile. He had a very bright smile and I wrote in my notes that he wore a brightly colored woven wristband—I commented upon it and he nodded.

It was not an uncommon situation. Many women in the estate were not married and their families consisted of children fathered by different males. I had been told that one of my questions, one that asked, “Who lives in your house?” was not a sensitive question to ask. Many families would be suspicious that a question such as that was structured in such a way as to give officious social workers access to information. It was a question that was considered intrusive. I did not ask it. I did ask Myles where he lived and if he could tell me about his family. He tells me he lives with his step-dad now and has two brothers, one 17 and one 4, and two sisters, one 12, and the other a baby. He says that their dads are not his dad. But his dad doesn't live with him anymore. The interview changes when I ask if anything has ever scared him. He looks up and quickly says that he is scared of dying. I repeat that, “of dying?”

L. R. Is there a special reason? Do you know anyone who has died?

M. Yes. My best friend's father, Donald George. My best friend is David George, but I haven't seen him for a long time. I don't know where he is.

L. R. Why is that?

M. I don't know. They just came and took everyone away.

L. R. Did that happen recently?

M.

L. R. Can you tell me what happened?

M. Well, I think that his friends killed him—they called him out in a lane and they just shot him. That scares me too—how would you know, I mean he was a good man, he was a real dad. When my dad moved away, he said, “Don't worry Myles, you can come over here and go fishing with us. I need another lad.” And I went over there all the time and we did all kinds of things together. David was my best friend and I loved his dad. And his friends came for him and called him out... how could I ever trust a friend now, if his friends did that to him?

L. R. I see. Were you able to see your friend and tell him about how you feel and that you are sorry his dad died?

M. No. I just went to bed that night and everything was fine. But, in the morning he was dead and they were all gone.

L. R. Do you know where?

M. No.

L. R. Did you ask your mother?

M. She just said I shouldn't think about it.

L. R. Do you think about it a lot?

M. Yes. I try to imagine what it is like.

L. R. What, what do you try to imagine?

M. What it is like to be dead?

L. R. I see. What do you do or imagine when you do that?

M. Well, I wake myself up very early in the morning, before anyone else is up and I lie very still [he stretches out his legs] and I put my hands over my ears [he cups both hands and places them over his ears] and I shut my eyes tight [he does] and I lie like that for as long as I can. I try to imagine what it must be like for him. And that I can keep him company.

L. R. For him?

M. For Mr. George.

L. R. Do you tell anyone this?

M. No.

L. R. Did you ever ask your teacher, or did you ever tell her you were worried about dying?

M. I asked her about dying but she said I should think about living and getting on with things.

L. R. What about your mom?

M. She's pretty busy with the new baby and she just says I should get on with it.

L. R. Do you go to church?

M. No, not really.

L. R. Do you, do you think that maybe he is in heaven?

M. I don't know. I just am scared because I have to die some day and I wonder what it is like and...

L. R. Well, for just now I have an idea, but would you mind if I mentioned to your teacher that you are feeling sad about your friend and his father, and if I mentioned it to Mr. Desmond, maybe he could find where the family went, would you like that?

M. Okay.

L. R. But, for today, I'd like you to try something for me, something that you can imagine. Will you try something?

M. What?

L. R. I want you to do something today, just a little thing that you would think would have made Mr. George proud of you. Just something little that you would be glad that he knew about, something that you might tell him. Like doing well in class or doing well in sport, or taking care of your little sister well...

M. And?

L. R. And, in your mind, I want you to concentrate on what you did and why he would be happy and then I want you to imagine that you could put that in a box and wrap it up.

M. With nice wrapping, paper and ribbons?

L. R. Yes, if you like. Then send it to him.

M. Send it to him? Do you think he’d get it?

L. R. I’m sure he would. And, I want you to find me tomorrow and tell me about it. Okay?

M. Okay.

Immediately after the interview I questioned the principal, Mr. Desmond, for cor­roboration. He confirmed that Mr. George had been shot in a sectarian incident the pre­vious November. The principal followed up on what happened to the George family. Two days later he came to me with amazing information. Mr. George had indeed been shot as reported. The account had been written to appear as if he had died. In fact, one of the bullets was lodged dangerously close to his heart, making an operation terribly risky. The family had been moved out immediately and Mr. George taken to a major hospital in another community. The authorities did not want anyone to “know” that Mr.

The day after the interview with Myles, he came up to me beaming; he had done what I suggested, and he knew Mr. George had got “it” and he could send him other things. Also, the principal, Mr. Desmond, and his teacher had talked to him and he said he felt better. I told him to tell his teacher or Mr. Desmond when he starting thinking or felt sad.

Myles had not been given counseling—he had not been considered affected by the incident as he had not been a member of the immediate family. He was peripheral to the violence, someone who lived across the street from it. There was no venue for psycho­logical services for a child who lived across the street, for someone so outside the mem­bership of what a typical family is considered to be. But, Myles considered himself a member of that family. He had reauthored (Bakhtin 1986) an effective self as a son of a “real” father. He told me “a dad” lived with “a mum,” a “real dad” married the mum. Mr. George was a real dad, and Mr. George had incorporated Myles into his “family” when Myles’ father moved away.

Myles’ coping strategies were interesting. He began questioning adults as to what happened. Answers were not forthcoming, perhaps perceived as difficult or beyond the understanding of a nine-year-old. He was admonished to “get on with,” to go about the business of his life, but he had recast his life after its first disruption and had re/incor­porated it into his new desired family system. The “real” son, David, was not only bio­logically connected to his father but bound by the public, socially prescribed civil and re­ligious ceremony of marriage, not common for that community. David is the child that public gaze would recognize as having “lost” his father to violence, and whose grief, if it was openly demonstrated, would be sanctioned as valid. People, or “the others,” could recognize that child as having sorrow and perhaps rage.

The space that Myles occupied was an imagined or symbolic placement of desire. He could keep company with a man he thought was dead, and be loved and give love—he could demonstrate the loyalty he felt to Mr. George early in the morning lying in his bed with his eyes shut and his hands over his ears. His grief could function in the inner plane of his choosing—a place he could make and powerfully situate himself beyond the ad­monitions of his mother or his teachers. He did not so much displace his feelings as re­place them, re-situate himself in a world beyond the control of events and other people. It was a space/place that he could envision and structure himself. He was the one who crafted time and propelled himself into a space of caring. He knew the best time in “real world” time to be beyond the comment of family or others who did not recognize his need. He could perhaps tolerate actual time and actual events because of his ability to transcend these and attempt to build himself into knowledge that was otherwise unavail­able to him.

Soja (1996: 5) discusses the concept of thirdspace, a place of creative restructuring, of “othering,” a place of extraordinary “openness... where geographical imagination can be expanded to encompass a multiplicity of perspectives.” Myles, through an acci­dent of a question opened his carefully crafted plane of longing, his thirdspace plane of interaction. His daily world could then be reappraised, his daydreaming, his “loss of en­thusiasm” be reinterpreted and symbolically relocated to a level of interaction where adults witnessed a child experiencing loss and disengagement on a tragic level.

It is interesting how few people in that narrative were considered “a part” of the event. The practice of social recognition and social gaze avoidance is one of the issues in this incident and in many places where violence is seen as an on-going phenomenon. The only people “near to” that episode that Myles' community seemed to grant connected­ness were the immediate family. Counselors did not come into the school to discuss David's disappearance with other children or teachers. The nearness of violence did not enter into the household discussion that Myles heard or related by any means other than as a silencing—a stillness beyond the understanding of Myles—a silence that bewildered him and left further commentary as somehow a comment on the questioner as not being right, not stiff upper lip, not “getting on with it,” “not our business.” It becomes almost immediately a literal and figurative distance. It can also be seen as a measure of the dan­ger that people anticipated. It certainly positions commentary as dangerous and as extra­neous. It creates and sustains a placement of mystery and fear where friends may not be friends and where community is reduced to individual holders of power, obscured and empowered by silence.