Erin Sterling
Frankie and Dash by Erin Sterling
Her real name is Francesca Lee Thompson, but everyone calls her Frankie. She’s tough-looking, with spiky black hair and a silver nose stud, but truth be told, she’s damn nice. She has a kid named Dash who doesn’t talk much and won’t look you in the eye, but he’s all right. He carries a small metal truck everywhere and sometimes he spins the wheels of the truck and holds it up to his ear to listen to the noise. Occasionally things make him upset and he’ll start screaming in an unnaturally high pitch. When that happens, he clamps his hands over his ears and rocks back and forth frantically.
Dash was how I first got to know Frankie. I was in Mrs. Ellis’s elective class on child development and one of our projects involved being paired up with a kid from the RR (the Reading Room, otherwise known as the Retard Room). I think it was the school’s attempt at integration—here was a chance for the normals and the specials to get to know each other. Personally, I think that’s bullshit, but whatever. Anyway, I got assigned to Dash. I would go to the room for a half hour a week, sit with the kid, feel awkward, and leave. On his “good days” (as the teachers put it), I usually had something to do—like getting him to match color words with actual colors—but on his “bad days,” he would sit silently and stare blankly in front of him. I would end up half-heartedly trying to start a conversation while really doodling in my notebook.
I didn’t get to know Frankie until the third week. Well, I did know her beforehand, but only as the friendly school janitor who hummed in the halls and seemed to have an endless supply of lollipops in her pockets for kids. I definitely didn’t know she was related to Dash. But on the third week I met with him, she came in the room, talked briefly with the teacher, laughed heartily at some whispered comment, and walked over to where Dash and I were working on a puzzle. I had been secretly watching her the whole time she was in the room because really, how often do janitors come in and chat with teachers, in the RR nonetheless? Not very often, I’ll tell you that. So when she came over to Dash and my table, I was confused, but tried to look cool.
“Hello, I’m Frankie, Dash’s mother. You must be Julie.” she said, extending her hand to me and smiling broadly.
“Really? You’re Dash’s mom?” I couldn’t get my eyes off her nose stud, so I looked down at the puzzle. “I mean, uh yeah, I’m Julie. I’m in Mrs. Ellis’s class. I’ve been working with Dash as, um, part of a project we’re doing.”
“Mrs. Hammond was telling me all about it. You know, I was just reading something…” Frankie proceeded to tell me about a developmental theory we had just read about for class. God, she was interesting. She told me matter-of-factly about autism (which it turns out Dash has, even though no one bothered telling me before) and theories surrounding it and implications for Dash. Then she asked me what I thought. After talking for about twenty more minutes, I realized I was late to class, so I thanked her and dashed off.
The second time she showed up, she asked me if I was interested in being a “mother’s observer” a couple days a week, meaning that I would come and hang out with her and Dash. She told me she wanted a “youth’s perspective, because sometimes we adults don’t know what we’re doing.” She couldn’t give me much money, but I agreed right away. It sounds weird, because seriously, what teenager wants to hang out with an adult and her autistic kid, but Frankie was different. You could just tell.
From then on, I hung out with Frankie and Dash every other day. Since she worked at the school, usually we walked home together after school. Always the same way. I got the impression that Frankie and Dash had been doing this ever since Frankie started working here. First through the park with the tall metal slide and rusty swing where Dash liked to be push exactly twenty times. Then on the street with a rose garden in one of the yards. If the woman, Debra Ann, was tending to her roses, Frankie would stop to talk with her and Dash would stroke rose petals on a yellow rose bush. I never knew whether I was supposed to keep an eye on Dash or join the adult conversation, so usually I did a little of both. After that was finished, we would continue on the street past the cemetery and imposing Catholic Church, and turn on the street with the 7-11 on the corner. Their apartment building wasn’t tall, but they lived on the highest floor—the fourth floor.
Sometimes we played card games, but mostly we just ran errands. Now, I always associated errands with being completely bored, like shopping for new dress shoes or something stupid like that. Frankie’s “errands” were different. We went places I didn’t even know existed. One day we went to the local art gallery, something I definitely didn’t think our dinky little town had. They were featuring modern art by local artists. I didn’t get what was so special about the pictures, but Frankie seemed to enjoy them. This was sort of awkward for me but sometimes she would stop at one and impulsively ask me, “What does that remind you of?” or “Who does that look like to you?” And usually I found that I did have something in mind. Even if it was something completely bonkers, Frankie would look thoughtfully at the picture as if she were truly considering the possibility. She’d ask Dash too, but usually he just stared blankly in front of him. At times like that, he really drove me crazy. What the hell was going on inside his head? I know that he was autistic and all, but I didn’t get it. I really wanted to warm up to him because of Frankie, but how do you do that with someone who lives in his own world?
One day, though, we went to the Humane Society and it was a blast. There was this room about the size of my (small) bedroom that had about a million cats in it. Well, maybe only thirty, but seriously, they were all over. Really adorable, but you could barely move without stepping on one of them. Anyway, Dash squatted down by one and started to pat it rhythmically. The cat immediately jumped up on his knees and onto his back. Dash started shrieking, which freaked me out until I realized he was just laughing. I had been playing with a kitten myself by dangling a string in front of her eyes, so I went over to Dash and dangled the string in front of his current cat. The cat pounced at the string and Dash shrieked. He looked at me and then reached to take the string from my hand. It was the first time he had ever voluntarily made eye contact with me. He sat there playing with the cats and string until I was sneezing so hard I could barely see. It turns out I’m allergic to cats, but seeing Dash in that cat room was worth it. While we were walking home, Frankie told me she had thought of getting a cat or dog for him, but the apartment where they lived wouldn’t allow it. I tried to ignore the hint of sadness that crossed her face.
On the days when we didn’t go anywhere, Frankie and I would just sit and talk. She always included Dash in the conversation, but he mostly just sat with his truck and spun the wheel. Or put a puzzle together and took it apart over and over again. She asked me a lot of questions—about my family, my interests, my classes, what I wanted to do with my life. I told her about my 26-year-old brother who lived with my dad and me in-between jobs because he kept on getting kicked out of apartments. She listened when I told her about problems with my friends, as stupid as they were.
“Give me a detailed description of what you think you’ll be like in fifteen years, Julie,” she said one day. I looked at her like she was crazy but she just looked back at me expectantly.
“Oh God, fine,” I finally said. “But you have to tell me if you turned out like you thought you would fifteen years ago.” She paused for a moment and seemed lost in thought, but then smiled in agreement. So I told her, sort of sheepishly, about my dreams to go into radio journalism and move to Australia and never get married. She raised her eyebrows at the marriage thing, but didn’t say anything.
“Ok, your turn,” I told her. She was silent for a moment.
“Well, things didn’t turn out exactly like I thought.” She paused again, but then started talking. Fifteen years ago she was at a community college, studying education and working a part-time job at night, when she met a guy. Typical story: girl meets boy, they fall in love, but it wasn’t quite like that. He was eight years older than her and mysterious. “He was always really vague about what he did—some sort of business thing I gathered—but all that mattered to me was that he was there. He told me I was the most beautiful woman in the world and bought me roses on a whim. Who wouldn’t want that? I guess I should have been suspicious about us when he was gone for days at a time, but that never occurred to me.” She looked at me, and continued. “I dropped out of school, moved in with him, and thought things were looking up. But he started to be gone even more than before, without telling me anything. And then I found out I was pregnant.” She paused. “He was gone within the week.”
“Ugh, the bastard.” I didn’t know what else to say. This was not what I had expected.
“Yeah, he was, but I got Dash out of it, right?” She smiled and looked over at Dash, who was stacking wooden blocks methodically.
The day Dash disappeared, I wasn’t scheduled to go to the RR or Frankie’s, so I was at home when she called me. I didn’t believe it—or understand it—at first.
“Julie, he’s gone,” she whispered.
“What do you mean? Dash? What happened?” I asked. But I only heard the dial tone. I ran to her house blindly, stopping briefly at the park where I looked around wildly, shouting Dash’s name. I ran up the stairs and pounded on the door.
“Frankie, let me in, it’s Julie.” There was no response from inside. I jiggled the doorknob. The door was open, so I walked inside. I was still out of breath.
“Frankie?” I looked around. She was sitting on the couch, looking blankly in front of her, and holding a small metal truck. Her face was pasty white and there were dark rings under her eyes. I had never seen her like that. She turned toward me slowly and I froze up inside.
“He’s gone, Julie, he’s gone.” She whispered, and crumpled. I didn’t know what to do, so I patted her back clumsily.
“What happened?” I asked. She told me, slowly, how she had been with him at the grocery store and while she was talking to one of the store workers, he disappeared. She looked around for a while, and then called the police. I tried getting more out of her, but she stopped responding, so I covered her with a blanket and left.
I went to the grocery store that I knew Frankie always went to with Dash and tried to imagine what Dash might have been thinking at the time when he disappeared. God, how does a kid just disappear in a grocery store? Especially Dash, one of the most unresponsive kids I know. The only thing I could think was that occasionally he latches onto things—like shiny metal objects, or spinning wheels, or repetitive designs. I looked around the store and out the window to see if I could see something that might have attracted him. I had ruled out the possibility of kidnapping, because honestly, who wants to kidnap a ten-year-old autistic kid from a mother who works as a janitor? The only thing that caught my eye were the mirrors lining the ceiling to catch for shoplifters, but that wasn’t helpful, so I went home.
Every day I tried looking somewhere else. I went to all the places I had been with Frankie and Dash and people were friendly and tried to be helpful, but no one had seen him. I even went to the police one day to try to give some insight into Dash, but they were totally unhelpful. They just told me they were doing everything they could. Yeah, right. I also visited Frankie’s every day, but she had become almost as unresponsive as Dash used to be sometimes. She didn’t seem to move from the couch, although I could see dirty dishes piling up in the sink, so I knew she was eating at least. I never stayed for very long—I mainly just told her what was going on with the search.
After about five days of her not doing anything and me unsuccessfully trying to find him, I exploded. “Goddammit, Frankie, do something. He’s your kid, for God’s sake, and you’re doing nothing. He needs you. One thing I learned from you—you don’t give up on people. And that’s what you’re doing. You could help, you know him better than anything, and yet, you’re staring at the television all day.” I looked at her for some glimpse of life—anything—but there was nothing. She just stared blankly ahead at the muted television. I ran out and slammed the door.
The next day, the phone rang. It was Frankie. She asked, in a somewhat shaky voice, if I was interested in helping her look for him. I was still kind of mad at her, but I was more relieved to hear her voice, so I rushed over to her place. She gave me a hug when I came in and asked me how I was doing, but then we got down to work. We went through all the places I had been (and some I hadn’t), systematically calling, asking if they had seen Dash, and then asking if they would put up a picture of him.
Two days later, Frankie got a call from the police saying, “We think we’ve found your child in a children’s home.” She called me right away and we went to the home together. Sure enough, it was him. Apparently, one of the people who worked at the home had seen a picture of Dash in her local supermarket, recognized him, and called the number immediately. The police think he probably wandered onto a bus, maybe attracted by the spinning wheels or following someone who looked like Dash, and got off in the city, where someone brought him to the shelter. It makes me mad that it took so long to find him, but at least they did. The event was big news back in town—TV cameras and everything. I’ve never seen Frankie look so happy. To get the press to cool down, she and Dash took a vacation for a little while, but when they returned, we got back into our routine. She’s pretty much more back to her normal self now—as normal as Frankie can be—although she’s definitely more cautious with Dash. He seems to have suffered the least scars from it. Maybe one day he’ll wake up speaking and make a million dollars for writing a book about it, but right now he’s still content with spinning the wheels of his truck.