Brood Mimicry

It has been 90 days since my son came home. It's been 97 days since his mother died. The boy is 10 years old, it's been 90 days since I found out I was a father.

I knew a girl once, the boy's mother. She was, well she was different. We grew up a few streets apart. She kept to herself mostly, her entire family did. When she stopped coming to school there were murmurs about her father's ailing mental health. Teenagers are cruel, so most of that was, I guess children being, cruel. I saw her again my 1st year of college in a bar back home during the last week of summer break. We knew each other a bit, and I was quite shocked to see her so I went up to her and we spoke, she was a bit shy at first but after some time we got on quite well. I woke up in her bed the next morning and that was the last time I saw her. I went back to school and you know what they say about "the rest". I suppose she told her someone about the paternity because I received a call from social services, I went back home and it checked out. The paternity test was positive but unnecessary, the boy looked exactly like I did at his age. He had nowhere else to go and I was his father so I took him.

The transition is testing to say the least, you see he found her, the boy. It was just the two of them and he found her, hanging. A little boy found his mother, dead. The only thing she wrote on the note didn't even make sense. The note read "He might be a cuckoo". That was it.

I took time off work the first few weeks. I figured it would be good for us both, get to know each other, get him acquainted with his new reality and mine, and work through his trauma together. The trauma counsellor also thought it would be for the best. Initially the boy was withdrawn, he spoke very little if ever, couldn't sleep through a night. I have to admit I have no idea what I'm doing, I just try to let him know that I'm there and I'm not going anywhere. I can't imagine what it must be like for him, to lose your mother in such a horrific way. Then to live with a total stranger who says he is your father, who was never there your entire life. I knew it would be an uphill battle but this was my life now.

Something strange happened the first week of the second month. I woke up and he was standing at the foot of my bed, just standing there, just watching me. I was absolutely freaked out and asked him what was going on. He smiled! The boy smiled for the first time since we had met and he spoke to me. He said he wanted to go out, I was overjoyed! I jumped out of bed and changed my clothes. There was no time for a shower, I didn't want the talking to stop. We headed to the park and we were just talking. He was, he was happy, he laughed, he ran around, he played with the other kids, he was just like the other kids. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. When he got hungry he came to me and we went to the mall and we got pizza and headed back home. We must have spoken about a thousand different things. He told me about his friend from back home, I told him about my friends who were excited to meet him, at the end of the day I tucked him into bed and he slept! He slept through the night. It was a good day.

When I woke up the next day, I went to his room to wake him up, I was excited, another day with my son, I wanted to take him fishing like my father and I used to. When I got there, he was up but something was different, when I walked in he looked at me, then looked away, no smile. In fact he didn't speak to me at all. No matter how much I tried, when I asked if he was hungry he only nodded. I was disappointed but I didn't want to show him that. While he was having breakfast I called his counsellor, I tod her about the day before and how engaging he was, how he smiled and laughed and today, it was as if we had taken 10 steps back and he had retreated back into his shell. She told me that was natural, that I should expect some days to be harder than others. She suggested I get the boy a notepad, so that he could communicate with me in a way that felt safe. And so after breakfast we got ready and headed to the mall, I got him a notepad among other things. I explained to him what the purpose was and he seemed to understand it because the very first note he handed me after I suggested we go to the park again read "I want to go home". It was another quiet day, we went home and no matter how much I tried, he didn't say a word.

This continued for the next few days, one or two sentences every now and again but mostly he kept to himself and kept quiet. Before bed one night, I recalled how happy he looked that day at the park, how he played with some lady's dog and I knew what i had to do. When the counsellor came to see him the next day I went out and came back with a puppy. When I presented it to him, he smiled and I felt victorious. He and the pup were nearly inseparable. I was glad he had a friend, even if that wasn't me, I always tried to make sure he knew I was there.

Over the next few weeks I received more and more notes all over the house. And there were more happy days, where he spoke to me and we laughed and played. But just as many days where he kept to himself. I realized he used the notes more when he wasn't up to talking to me, "the hush days" I started calling them. Straight forward things just letting me know what he wanted to do, I wanted to be more engaging so I told him to let me know over the course of the day what he wanted for dinner and I would find a note in the kitchen somewhere with a request and so I would oblige.

The past few weeks I have been finding notes that didn't make sense. "Stop hurting the puppy", "I don't like the park", "Mom didn't like it when you bite my nails". I called in his counsellor when I found one that said "You killed my mom". My heart was broken, he thought I was responsible, How do I explain to him that I had no idea he even existed? How what that even make anything any better. The counsellor spoke to him and she told me he told her that he doesn't think I'm the guilty party, he didn't blame me for it. That didn't really make me feel any better, but it wasn't about me. She had a theory that some of those notes were directed to himself, he perhaps felt responsible for his mother's death. She said this was natural for children who's parents commit suicide.

I won't lie, it was overwhelming. This boy, my son, who one moment seems like any other kid, and at others can't stand to be touched. Who can sleep through the night and other nights can't stop screaming.

I have to dedicate my time to him, so I took off work again. There have been more and more notes that didn't seem like there were meant for me. The notes are getting darker and darker, "Stop hurting me", "Your father loves me". I am at my wits end. I haven't been getting rest, the emotional stress is insurmountable. So I started doing research on trauma and it's effects on children. I found an article that laid out the things I was going through with my boy. How it was like night and day, like he was two different boys and how these boys have been talking to each other, tormenting each other. Could this be it? This Dissociative Identity Disorder? Could this be what his mother's note meant? "He might be a cuckoo".

Could there be another boy inside my boy?