My pastor told my mother I’d “enjoy another group more” while I stood beside her, waiting for my turn.
Our church had taken $5,500 to help children like me join in.
I asked whether I’d broken a rule.
Then Mum brought our binder to the service, and somebody stopped us before she could open it.
I wanted to stay because the next game was the game I’d finally learned.
Leaving meant I wouldn’t get to try it with anybody.
Mum’s fingers closed around mine before the pastor finished talking.
But it had started a month earlier, with a bench.
Christy moved me there while everybody else pushed their chairs away for games.
“Wait here, Roman,” she said.
I asked how long.
“Until we’ve finished the running.”
The bench faced a cupboard, so I had to turn sideways to see.
I kept my feet underneath it because I thought somebody might trip.
Nobody came for me.
I was nine, and I had Down syndrome, and I understood what waiting meant.
Usually, somebody told you when it was over.
That Thursday, Mum found me there with my coat already zipped.
“Did you get too hot?” she said.
“Christy said to get ready.”
Mum bent down to undo my coat, but I held the zipper.
I wanted her to ask about the bench first.
We’d gone to Millbrook Chapel for five years, and I knew which games needed running.
I knew which ones didn’t.
My favourite needed a beanbag and somebody willing to throw it back.
I always rubbed its corner before my turn because a seam scratched my finger.
Mum called it my beanbag inspection.
I told her somebody had to do it properly.
Before all this, we took a smiling picture together in the classroom before the group started.
I made her crouch because I didn’t want another picture of her chin.
I liked that picture.
After the bench, Mum called Christy while I was still beside her.
“Was he hurt?” Mum said.
Christy’s answer came through the phone.
“Of course not, Briana. That’s what we’re trying to prevent.”
Mum asked whether I could play the games without running.
“We have to think about SAFETY.”
Mum rubbed my sock where it had twisted around my heel.
She told me they’d work something out before the next meeting.
I believed that part.
My dad had left when I was three, so Mum usually handled things herself.
This time I kept asking what Christy had worked out.
Mum hadn’t heard back.
The next Thursday, I put my coat on the bench myself and went toward the teams.
Christy held her arm across the gap.
“You can be our WATCHER.”
I asked when watchers changed over.
She pointed me back.
I waited through the beanbag game with my hands ready between my knees.
Nobody threw it my way.
When Mum collected me, I asked her whether watching counted as being on a team.
She stopped fastening her bag.
“Who told you that?”
I told her exactly what Christy had said, including the bit about being helpful.
Mum wrote to Theodore that evening and read her message aloud before she sent it.
She asked what I was allowed to do.
His answer came before school.
Mum read it while I pulled my sleeve straight, then read it again when I asked.
He said they cared about me and the group was SHORT of helpers.
“Does he need you to help?” I said.
“I already offered.”
On Saturday, Felicia stopped beside us at the supermarket checkout.
Mum asked whether Noa still liked the group, and Felicia pushed her shopping forward without answering.
Then she turned toward Mum.
“You need to hear what Noa told me.”
Noa was ten, and she remembered things adults said even when they wished she wouldn’t.
She came over that afternoon with her mother.
I sat beside Mum because it was about my Thursday, too.
Noa pulled her sleeves over her hands.
“Christy told us to leave Roman alone.”
Mum asked when.
“After she moved him beside the cupboard.”
I said I’d thought everyone was waiting for the game to finish before talking to me.
Noa shook her head.
“She said you needed SPACE.”
Then Noa told Mum about the boys who copied how I said the answers.
I’d heard them.
I’d tried saying the words faster, but that made my tongue catch more.
“Did Christy hear?” Mum said.
Noa nodded and kept pulling at her sleeve.
“She told us to get on with the game.”
Mum’s thumb stopped moving against my wrist.
I wanted Noa to finish, even though Mum asked whether I wanted to go upstairs.
“I was there,” I said.
“I know you were.”
“So I want to hear.”
For the next eight days, Mum spoke to thirteen parents, and I stayed for the calls.
She asked permission before recording anything, and sometimes a parent asked whether I was listening.
Mum told them yes.
One parent said Christy had called the bench my quiet place.
“I didn’t ask for quiet,” I said toward the phone.
Mum let that stay in the recording.
Another parent said they’d thought Mum had REQUESTED that I sit out.
Mum pulled the phone closer.
“Who told you that?”
Christy’s name came back.
We found the participation policy on the chapel’s website, and Mum helped me read the longer words.
It said children should get help to take part.
I asked which part meant the bench.
Mum printed it.
Then she printed a grant ledger showing $5,500 for support in the children’s group.
The spending column still showed NOTHING used.
“Could that pay somebody to throw the beanbag?” I said.
Mum covered the bottom of the page with her hand.
“It could pay for help.”
We put the pages in clear sleeves inside a ring binder, and I pressed each sleeve flat.
I wanted to carry it, but Mum said she’d hold it until we needed it.
Then Theodore stopped us after the next Thursday meeting.
He spoke to Mum while I stood between their elbows.
“We think he’d enjoy another group more.”
Mum asked who had decided.
“The leadership has discussed what’s best.”
I tried to remember whether I’d thrown anything too hard or stepped across a line.
“Did I break a rule?”
He bent toward me then, with his hands resting above his knees.
“Nobody’s cross with you.”
“Then can I play?”
He stood up again.
At the next weekend service, Mum carried the binder, and I carried nothing so I could hold her hand.
My legs stopped in the entrance, and I sat down before I meant to.
Mum crouched beside me.
“We can go home.”
I shook my head because I still wanted somebody to answer my question.
We went inside together.
During announcements, Mum stood with the binder pressed against her stomach.
“I NEED AN ANSWER,” she said.
Theodore lowered his paper, and Jacqueline caught his sleeve.
Christy moved toward the exit.
Mum got her thumb beneath the binder cover before Felicia rose from the fifth row.
“Don’t open that yet,” Felicia said. “I found something on the shared drive.”
She brought her phone to me, with a document open and her finger beneath its date.
“Roman, this was written before you ever joined.”
The collection plates
The page on Felicia’s phone said “Thursday Games: Seated Circle.”
Beneath that were instructions and a photograph too small for me to make out.
The date was six years earlier.
I put my finger under “seated.”
“That means sitting down.”
“Yes,” Felicia said.
Theodore came down the steps before she could make the photograph bigger.
“That drive contains old material. Let me see what you’ve found before we draw conclusions.”
Felicia kept her phone.
Mum held out the binder so he could read the page at the front.
He took it, closed it, and set it beside the collection plates.
Our binder made a louder noise than the plates.
“We’ll discuss this properly after the service,” he said.
Mum reached past him and picked it up.
“We tried Thursday.”
People turned around in their seats. Some looked at Mum.
Others looked at me, which was worse because I didn’t have anything ready to say.
I pulled Mum’s hand down until she bent.
“Do I have to stand here?”
“No. You can sit beside Noa.”
I wanted Mum to come too.
But then Theodore would go back up the steps, and our question would go home with us again.
I sat beside Noa.
She moved her feet so I could get past.
Nobody had to tell her twice or find some money first.
Christy stayed by the door.
Theodore held his paper against his chest.
“There are children here,” he said.
Mum turned the binder toward him.
“One of them has been asking you a question.”
The scratchy corner
That Sunday, while Mum opened the rings, I reached into her bag for the beanbag.
She’d brought it back after fixing the seam.
Christy had given it to her at Thursday’s meeting, before Theodore spoke to us.
Mum could still mend things for the group. I just couldn’t use them.
The new stitches lay flat. I ran my finger over them twice.
Noa held out her hand, but I kept it a moment longer.
The game I’d learned had three things to remember: look at somebody, say their name, then throw.
I sometimes threw before the name came out.
At home on Saturday, Mum had sat opposite me on the floor.
“Briana,” I’d said.
“Mum will do.”
“It’s your name.”
“Only when you want something expensive.”
I’d thrown it while she was laughing, and she’d missed.
We’d agreed laughing wasn’t a reason to cancel somebody’s turn.
Now she rested the binder against the end of our row.
“The children already play this seated,” she said. “Roman knows that game.”
Christy came away from the door.
“We change activities according to the group.”
“Then change this one.”
“We can’t promise a particular game every week.”
Mum hadn’t asked for every week.
I opened my mouth, but Noa touched the beanbag.
“Your stitching’s better,” she said.
“Mum did it.”
“I know. You sew like you throw.”
I pushed her shoulder with mine. She pushed back.
Jacqueline came down from the front and stood beside Theodore.
She helped with the children’s room before meetings, and she kept the spare key.
She’d opened that door for me so often that I knew the key with the square top.
“The room’s available after this,” she said.
Theodore shook his head.
“I won’t have the service turned into a dispute.”
Mum turned to the parents behind us.
“Then tell me when you’ve agreed to hear us.”
Nobody answered straight away.
Christy put her hand on the binder.
“Before this goes any further, they need to hear my side.”
Three minutes
Christy stood beside our row that Sunday, with her hand still on the cover.
Mum slid the binder out from under it.
“Tell them.”
Christy looked toward the back.
“I’ve given years to this group. I have responsibility for every child, and sometimes decisions have to be made quickly.”
One of the mothers who’d spoken to us stood up.
“You told me Briana wanted him sitting separately.”
“I said we were working with his mother.”
Mum shook her head.
Christy kept talking.
“A conversation can get shortened when somebody repeats it. I’m sorry if anyone took the wrong meaning.”
The mother stayed standing.
“You said his mum had asked.”
I knew that voice.
On the recording she’d stopped halfway through a sentence and started again because she wanted Mum to get the words right.
Mum touched the sleeve that held her written account.
“May I read what you told me?”
“Yes.”
Theodore stepped between the row and the aisle.
“We don’t need to read private conversations to a congregation.”
“It was my conversation,” the mother said.
He looked at Jacqueline.
She didn’t move.
Mum read only the part about Christy saying I’d needed to sit apart. Then she stopped.
Christy pulled at her watch.
“He was settled on the bench. He wasn’t upset.”
“I had my coat on,” I said.
Every head near us turned.
I wished grown-ups could listen without doing that.
A whole row of faces was harder than one.
Mum crouched beside my chair.
“Do you want me to say it?”
I shook my head.
“I thought we were going home.”
Christy leaned toward me.
“You did very well waiting, Roman.”
My fingers went into the place where the beanbag seam used to scratch.
I hadn’t wanted to win at waiting.
Mum stood.
“You put his coat on him before the games ended. You told the children to leave him alone. You told another parent I’d asked for it.”
“We had a busy evening.”
“You’ve had several.”
Theodore held up his hand.
“Three minutes, Briana. Then we’ll continue.”
Mum looked down at the binder, at all the sleeves I’d flattened.
“Three minutes for a month?”
People shifted along their rows. Somebody near the back said she could wait.
Christy turned toward that voice.
“There are things about managing Roman that you haven’t had to deal with.”
Noa stood beside me.
“He was ready when we started.”
Mum’s hand
Noa stayed standing that Sunday until Felicia came beside her.
“He had his hands like this,” Noa said.
She held them open in front of her stomach.
“Christy told us to start again from the other end.”
Christy turned to Felicia.
“I don’t think the children should be put in the middle of this.”
Felicia put her arm around Noa.
“She chose to stand up.”
Theodore looked at Mum.
“And Roman? Does he understand what you’re asking him to take part in?”
Mum’s fingers pressed against the binder rings.
I wanted to answer before she did, but my first word wouldn’t come.
Theodore waited with his eyebrows lifted.
That made it worse.
I tried again.
“I want my game.”
“We understand that,” he said.
He looked away before I could say the rest.
Mum sat beside me and put the binder on her knees.
“Perhaps we should finish this without the children,” she said.
I turned toward her.
She pulled my hand into both of hers.
“Just for a little while. Jacqueline could take you and Noa into the classroom.”
“You said I could stay.”
“I know.”
“You said it was about my Thursday.”
Her mouth opened. Nothing came out.
Theodore nodded at Jacqueline.
“That would be sensible.”
Mum had heard him say no to me. She’d written it down.
Now she was going to send me out before he answered.
I pulled my hand free.
The beanbag dropped between my shoes.
I couldn’t bend far enough with everybody standing close, so I left it there.
“Don’t make me wait in another room.”
Mum put the binder on the chair and covered her face.
I hadn’t meant to make her cry.
I wanted to take the sentence back, except I still needed her to hear it.
She lowered her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You can stay.”
Theodore opened his mouth.
“He can stay,” she said again.
Jacqueline sat on the end of the next row.
Felicia sat too, but Noa remained beside me.
My game had been easy in our living room.
Here it had made Mum cry and stopped the service.
I reached for my coat.
Mum didn’t stop me. That was almost worse.
“Would you like to leave?” she said.
I pushed one arm into the sleeve.
My hand came out the lining gap instead of the cuff.
I hated that coat just then.
Noa picked up the beanbag.
She put it on my empty chair.
The classroom door
Theodore waited while I pulled my arm back out that Sunday.
Then he said the part I’d been afraid of.
“For the present, Roman won’t attend Thursday meetings. We need time to decide whether we can meet his needs.”
Mum stood so fast that the binder slid.
Felicia caught it.
“You told us you were short of helpers,” Mum said.
“I offered. Other parents have offered.”
“This morning shows why we need distance from the situation.”
Christy stood beside him.
Nobody was pretending I could play next Thursday now.
I put my coat across my knees.
I didn’t want it on, and I didn’t want anyone to take it away.
Mum opened the binder to the money page.
“Five thousand five hundred dollars. For help in this group. Nothing spent. What are you waiting to buy?”
Theodore looked toward the collection plates.
“That money has to be used responsibly.”
“For what?”
“We won’t settle funding arrangements in an argument.”
A father stood near the back.
He’d been on one of our calls too.
“Then you should have answered her before Sunday.”
Christy faced him.
“Are you offering to take responsibility if something happens?”
He sat down.
That frightened me more than Theodore talking.
The man had stood up for us and then disappeared behind the head in front of him.
Mum put the money page flat against her chest.
“We aren’t asking you to promise nothing will ever happen. We’re asking you to let him join a game.”
Theodore turned toward the front.
“We’ve heard you.”
He walked up one step.
I got off my chair.
Everyone had been talking for so long that my mouth felt dry.
I picked up the beanbag and carried it to the aisle.
“Theodore.”
He stopped.
I held it out.
“Can I show you?”
“Not now, Roman.”
“It doesn’t take long.”
“This is a service.”
I lowered my hand.
He still hadn’t said anything I could fix.
If I’d thrown too hard, I could throw softly.
If I’d stood in the wrong place, I could move.
There wasn’t a place he would tell me to stand.
Mum came beside me.
“We’re going,” she said.
I turned toward the door to the classroom.
Through its little window I could see the cupboard.
Jacqueline stood in front of that door.
“Theodore,” she said. “You played it sitting down.”
The chairs in the photograph
Jacqueline stayed by the classroom door that Sunday while Theodore came back down the step.
“That isn’t relevant,” he said.
Felicia held up her phone.
“It is the game in this document.”
Mum stopped with her hand on my shoulder.
“Show us.”
Felicia came to me first, the way she had before everybody started talking.
She made the photograph bigger.
People sat in a circle. They were grown-ups, and one was Theodore.
His foot rested on a little stool.
The beanbag was in his hands.
I touched the screen beside it.
“That’s ours.”
“Yes,” Jacqueline said.
The instructions underneath said to sit close enough to pass instead of throw if somebody needed to.
The words were short. Mum didn’t have to help with many.
Theodore’s name was at the bottom.
“Your ankle,” Jacqueline said.
“You couldn’t stand for the games afternoon. You asked us to bring the chairs in.”
“It was a different occasion.”
“You wrote it down so Christy could use it with the children.”
Christy stared at the photograph.
Felicia scrolled to the next page.
Beside the game name, somebody had typed, “Keep this version available each week.”
Mum put her hand over her mouth.
I looked from the phone to Theodore’s feet.
Both were on the floor now.
“Did you have to go to another group?”
“Roman, that’s not what we’re discussing.”
“Who threw it to you?”
Jacqueline lifted her hand.
“I did.”
I took the phone closer. The beanbag had the same dark corner.
Theodore held it properly, with both hands underneath.
“You got a turn,” I said.
His paper bent in the middle.
“The adults understood the changes we were making. We could assess what was appropriate.”
Mum lowered her hand.
“You changed the game for yourself.”
“We made a temporary arrangement.”
“For him, you changed the child.”
Christy started talking, but I couldn’t follow her sentence.
There were too many words about managing and responsibility.
I put the phone back in Felicia’s hand.
Then I went to our row and dragged my chair into the aisle.
It made a horrible noise. Usually Mum would tell me to lift it.
She moved the next one herself.
The empty place
I put my chair opposite Noa’s that Sunday.
She sat down without asking what I was doing.
Jacqueline brought another chair. Felicia moved hers beside Noa.
Mum sat beside me, with the binder on the floor where nobody could take it without stepping over her feet.
There was an empty place.
I looked at Theodore.
“You can sit there.”
Christy came toward the circle.
“We cannot make decisions based on a demonstration.”
I held the beanbag against my stomach.
“Noa.”
I looked at her, waited until she held out her hands, and threw.
She caught it.
That was the whole thing I’d been trying to do for weeks.
Noa didn’t clap. She said Mum’s name and threw it to her.
Mum missed because she was wiping her face.
The beanbag landed under her chair.
“That still counts,” I said.
“I hope so.”
She picked it up and passed it to Jacqueline.
Theodore remained standing beside the empty place.
Jacqueline held the beanbag out to him.
“Sit down.”
He sat.
She said his name, then threw it gently.
He caught it against his paper.
Nobody said he was too slow.
I put my hands out.
He looked at Christy.
“Roman,” he said.
The beanbag landed in my lap.
I kept my hands around it.
Mum reached down for the binder.
“Now answer him.”
Theodore rubbed the fold in his paper.
“Clearly this particular activity can be managed. The broader programme is more complicated.”
The father near the back stood again.
“Then you manage the complicated parts. You don’t send him away.”
Christy turned toward the parents.
“I won’t be spoken to as though I don’t care about these children. If you believe you can do better, you’re welcome to try.”
Felicia stood.
“I’ll help Thursday.”
Mum stood beside her.
“So will I.”
Other parents got up. The father came into the aisle.
Christy looked at him, then back at Felicia.
“I didn’t mean you could just take over.”
“You asked,” Felicia said.
Theodore stood from his chair.
“Christy remains the group leader until we agree on a replacement.”
Jacqueline put her hand on the back of his chair.
“Then I won’t unlock the room for her.”
He stared at his wife.
She kept her hand there.
“The parents can run Thursday together. Briana offered weeks ago. You told her no.”
Christy reached for the binder.
“I want to see what you’ve written about me.”
Mum opened it but didn’t hand it over.
“Did I ask you to put him on that bench?”
“I’ve explained that.”
“Did I?”
“No.”
“Did you tell the others I did?”
Christy looked toward the mother who’d spoken first.
“I said we were trying to give him what he needed.”
The mother shook her head.
Christy pressed her lips together.
“Yes,” she said. “I said you’d asked.”
Mum sat down.
I hadn’t known how much I wanted to hear that word until she said it.
Christy took the classroom key from her pocket and held it toward Jacqueline.
“If this is what my work means to you, find somebody else.”
Jacqueline took it.
Theodore reached toward his wife’s hand, but she closed it around the key.
Then Mum put the grant page on his empty chair.
“Every dollar stays with these children.”
He began another sentence about decisions.
The father pulled his chair into our circle.
“Make this one here.”
Thursday at four
Before we left that Sunday, Theodore sat with the parents and put the money page on his knees.
I sat beside Mum.
Noa and I passed the beanbag under our chairs while the grown-ups worked out Thursday.
Theodore tried to put Christy’s name beside the planning.
Felicia crossed it out.
“She gave back the key.”
“She knows how the group runs.”
“So does Roman,” Mum said.
He tried to put himself beside it instead.
Jacqueline shook her head.
“You can come when the parents invite you. You don’t decide who belongs.”
He looked around the circle. Nobody helped him.
Mum pointed to the $5,500.
“All of it for support. Paid helpers, so nobody has to keep begging for a spare adult.”
Theodore wrote that down.
Then he said, to the parents who were still there, that I hadn’t broken a rule and hadn’t been removed from Thursday’s group.
Mum made him say the other part.
“Briana did not ask for Roman to be seated away from the activities.”
The mother who’d been told otherwise nodded.
I rubbed the repaired corner between my fingers.
On Thursday at four, Jacqueline opened the classroom door.
Felicia stood inside with Mum and two of the parents from the circle.
The bench was still beside the cupboard.
My feet stopped.
Mum waited with me.
“Where do you want your coat?”
I pointed to a hook beside Noa’s.
Mum hung it there.
Felicia showed her the support page before the meeting started.
The first helper hours were written against the grant.
The amount paid that afternoon would be $100.00.
Mum ran her finger down the page, then put it back.
Nobody asked her to leave me while they decided.
Noa came to the door.
“You’re choosing first.”
I looked past her.
The chairs made a circle, and there was one gap.
I carried my chair into it.
My name
That Thursday, I chose the seated game.
I could have picked something else.
Felicia showed me the choices, and I took time over them because I didn’t want anybody saying I’d just picked the first picture.
Then I chose the beanbag.
Mum stayed near the wall.
Once, when I looked toward her, she started to come over.
I held up one finger.
She stopped.
I needed a moment to get Noa’s name ready. I knew her name.
Sometimes knowing and saying took different amounts of time.
Noa held out her hands.
I said it.
The beanbag went too far to one side.
She leaned and caught it anyway.
“Good catch,” I said.
“Good throw.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Next one, then.”
There was a next one.
And when somebody dropped it, Felicia told them to pick it up and carry on.
Nobody went to the bench.
At the end, she let me keep the beanbag for the week.
I was choosing the opening game again, and I wanted to practise with Mum.
Christy wasn’t there. Her key hung from Jacqueline’s hand when she came to lock up.
The planning page had the parents’ names on it.
I carried our binder this time.
Theodore waited outside the classroom.
He looked at the beanbag tucked under my arm.
“I hear you had a good afternoon.”
“Yes.”
“That’s what we wanted for you.”
Mum came beside me, but she didn’t answer for me.
He bent a little.
“Perhaps you and I can tell everyone we sorted it out together.”
I moved the binder higher against my chest.
“I asked. You said no.”
Then I walked past him with my beanbag.
If this stayed with you, send it to someone who knows how much one proper turn can mean.
Stories of painful boundaries and family betrayals continue in “My Son Folded My Purchase Papers Beneath His Napkin” and “My Mother Asked Me to Leave My Door Unlocked”. For another tense family moment, read “My Mother Took the Key to My Son’s Room”.
