Navigating Authoritarian Power in the United States

Fieldnotes: Spiderman

“I want to kill myself” I hear him say. I look up and see him extended across the top of his school desk. His head rests on his arms, his face turned toward me. I look into his eyes. He looks away. I cross the 5 ft between us and stand next to his desk. He has not moved. I watch the other children line up at the door under Mrs. Arbiter’s instructions and note how quiet Spiderman’s (self-selected pseudonym) delivery was; no one else seems to have heard him. I peer into his 8-year-old face. He looks up at me. I search his eyes and expression for understanding. Have I understood what he has said? Has he understood what he has said?

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As the oldest boy of three younger siblings, Spiderman helps his grandmother shop for the family and his mother care for his brother and sisters. His father works second shift cleaning classrooms and emptying trashcans at a nearby university. His mother works at a local factory. Spiderman’s family of seven lives in a four-bedroom apartment in a public housing project, South Prairie. Greenland, the regional co-sponsorship and refugee services organization, placed most Burundians in South Prairie when they arrived via Kenya from camps in Tanzania.

In the small Appalachian city where they live, the bus line to South Prairie only runs from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Burundians who live in South Prairie and work second shift can get to work for US $1.50, but they cannot get home. Many walk or ride bikes the five miles to town. Without English and without money, Spiderman’s father can neither take a driver’s license test nor buy a car. Biking to work along rural roads without shoulders or sidewalks, he leaves mid-afternoon before the children are home from school and returns after midnight. Reunited at the day’s end, Spiderman’s mother waits to share dinner with his father. Nights are long at Spiderman’s house. The mornings are draped with exhaustion.

During the day, Spiderman and his younger brother and sister attend a public elementary school with eight other Burundian children who live in South Prairie. Every Thursday afternoon and sometimes on the weekends, we (Allison and Jessica) spend time with Spiderman, his brother and sisters, and the other children. As English as Second Language (ESL) tutors, we try to help with English and the translation of the rules and expectations of U.S. public schools. When the weather is nice, we read and play outside on an open hill. Often, the boys climb the large oak tree at the top of the hill. We make art projects and demystify homework when we can. Some days are better than others.

We are volunteers at the school, too, where Mrs. Arbiter instructs Spiderman, 2 additional Burundian students (Hulk and Happy Princess), and 10 other students in a third-grade classroom. In her room, there are 2 seven-desk islands. Spiderman and Happy Princess share one island with 5 other students. Hulk studies at the other island with 6 other students. Most days, at least one desk is empty in the room. Rarely, it is Spiderman’s, Happy Princess’ or Hulk’s. Mrs. Arbiter had Hulk as a student, the year before this one. She retained him and notes with pride the progress he has made with her during their second year together. We have learned from our conversations with her that she does not plan to do the same for Spiderman. She believes he belongs in special education. As explanation of her support for tracking him from her classroom, she offered, “Some children don’t make it to college.” However, we know that Spiderman completes his math work at grade level and makes consistent progress learning English. We know, too, that he misses his second-grade teacher. In the mornings before school begins, often he is in her room.

At Red Valley Elementary School where we are always both participant-observers, ethnographers perhaps, and volunteers, we see and hear the effects of everyday schooling on children. Burundian students are asked not to communicate in Kirundi (their first language); their teachers instruct them to speak only English. Siblings are not allowed to visit each other in their classrooms or speak to one another when they pass in the hallway. Teachers chastise their students for making any sound as they walk to and from their classroom; students must change classes and walk to lunch silently. Friends are not allowed to walk side by side; they must walk in a single file line. Outside, students are not allowed to climb trees; they must climb only on the playground equipment. In the classrooms, the dominance of English and everyday practice of schooling frustrates Burundian children. Classmates are not allowed to help each other; the students must complete their work on their own (Anders, 2011; Lester & Anders, 2013; Mariner, Anders, & Lester, 2012; Mariner, Lester, Sprecher, & Anders, 2011). The days are long.

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“I want to kill myself.” Have I understood what he has said? Has he understood what he has said? Half-moons, deep and dark encircle his eyes. They mark the late night returns of his father from second shift. I meet his gaze. “I hope not,” I say. “I like you very much, Spiderman.” I watch to see if Spiderman has heard me. He moves slowly and unwinds himself from the top of his desk. He leans against it and watches Mrs. Arbiter as she orders the children in a line in front of the door. “Straight line! No talking!” Brittle commands cascade down the line to the last spot. Spiderman has taken his place there. He sways back and forth unhurried in the wait to step forward behind his classmate. I keep watching him. He knows I am watching him. I wait. Mrs. Arbiter issues forth her commands again. He turns to look at me. His classmates begin to move through the door and into the hallway. Mrs. Arbiter evaluates the procession from the doorway. As Spiderman reaches the door, he turns and offers me a smile.

There is no relief in Spiderman’s smile. I felt grateful for the trust he extended to me in the moment he spoke to me. But mostly, I felt dread. A few weeks before, we had begun these exchanges and sometimes he would not respond at all after speaking. Whether or not he understood what he has said, we did not know. What we did know was that he had shared the same wish with his second-grade teacher, and that his family was worried. They were asking for our help.

“When Structural Violence Takes Its Toll”: A Move to Allegory

Examining the influences of our biographies, communities, histories, and geopolitical locations on our work as ethnographers is not a new idea (e.g., Behar, 1991; Berry, 2011; Gemignani, 2011; Kleinman & Copp, 1993; Murillo, 2004; Noblit, 1999; Pillow, 2003; Scheper-Hughes, 1995; Weiner-Levy, 2009). We write this piece not as a first of its kind, but instead as a contribution to the ongoing conversation about why such engagement is important. We represent the following allegory as a response to particular reflections and analyses we developed about our relationships to Spiderman, his family, his teachers, his medical treatment, and the community in which we all lived.

We spent 4 years engaged in ethnographic work in Riverhill, a predominately White and monolingual town in Appalachia. For 3 years, we volunteered as English tutors at South Prairie. Over time, we interviewed teachers and administrators in Riverhill County Schools and served as classroom volunteers at Red Valley Elementary School where eight Burundian children were enrolled. We interviewed staff and directors of Greenland, the co-sponsorship and refugee services organization that resettled Burundians in the area, and local community co-sponsors that the organization recruited. We initiated focus groups with Burundian adults and parents, and, eventually, held community forums on issues of education (Lester & Anders, 2013; Mariner et al., 2012).

Our relationships with White, professional community members shifted over time, as did our relationships with Burundian children and families. To maintain access to White institutional spaces in Riverhill, we often performed neutrality to White community members. Our whiteness marked much of our access. What happened in white spaces, in particular, Red Valley Elementary School, and Global Elixirs, the health care system, to which Burundians had access, eventually made such performances unbearable. The creation of the allegory that follows stemmed in part from these tensions and our personal investment in trying to make sense of them.

The work we took up was informed by postcritical ethnography (Noblit, Flores, & Murillo, 2004). Working from the histories of critical theory and interpretivist theory, Noblit et al. (2004) argued that the production of multiple knowledge and realities need not foreclose opportunities to critique power. Postcritical ethnography, in contrast to critical ethnography, eschews claims to objectivity and encourages researchers to work against their own authority as critics (Noblit, 2004). As such, postcritical ethnographers practice recursive reflexivity (Anders, 2011; Anders & Lester, 2011; Pillow, 2003) and pursue complex and multiple representations.

The allegorical representation that follows is informed by our analysis of power in the institutions Burundians were forced to navigate, in the public schools the children attended, the health care system to which the Burundians had access, and the public housing project where many of the Burundians lived. Specifically, we produced the allegory from four formal interviews, more than 90 informal interactions with Spiderman’s family, two meetings with Spiderman’s mental health counselor, one meeting with his psychiatrist, and over 500 hr of community engagement with Burundian children and their families. We completed in vivo, descriptive, emotion, and axial coding to analyze our fieldnotes and interviews, paying particular attention to issues of power (Saldaña, 2009). We followed our coding with an interactive interview (Ellis, Kiesinger, & Tillmann-Healy, 1997) about the research process, the dynamics of our research team, our relationships with community members, and Burundian children and families we had come to know. From the interview, we completed an unmediated co-constructed narrative (Ellis, 2004), which we transcribed and coded as well.

We knew Spiderman was suffering, and we did not want Spiderman to take his own life. We sought help of our own volition and at the request of this family. Yet, in many ways, our knowledge ended with what we witnessed unfolding in their lives. In our pursuit of support for a child we had grown to love, we observed White professionals engage in bureaucratic and rhetorical battles to claim impermeable righteousness in scientific knowledge and in the saving of Spiderman. When we began to represent these battles in our ethnographic work however, the words fell flat on the page. They sat too still as a case of, just another example of findings. Leaving thematic analysis behind, we turned to narrative analysis and finally allegory (Bell, 1992; Clifford, 1986; Mead, 2001; Noblit, 1999).

Perhaps the two most significant contributions to the actual production of the allegory were a newspaper story about what it was like to be trained as a psychiatrist in the early 1990s (Carlat, 2010) and an image of a pharmacy circa 1900. The newspaper story offered some insight into the decision making of Spiderman’s psychiatrist, which until then had defied explanation (Farmer, 2005). The image of a pharmacy circa 1900 arrived unbidden during a long drive after a week of meetings with one another, Spiderman’s family, our translator and collaborator, and health professionals at Global Elixirs. The pharmacist in the image was White and male. He stood behind a tall, wood counter. Behind him were large glass cabinets full of medicine. The man stood as a gatekeeper, and this gatekeeping was dangerous. The image was static and ominous, and we forced ourselves and Spiderman’s family into the image to cultivate an imagined alternative. What we envisioned was a romanticized gathering: The pharmacist now sat next to Spiderman at a round table on the other side of the tall counter in the open space of the pharmacy. We sat at the table with Spiderman’s family, and his teachers, and we listened to what Spiderman had to say. We knew this gathering was not a possibility. And in that admission, we began constructing a story that might address what prevented it from being so.

When studying systemic inequities in contexts of education, researchers have represented in compelling ways the devastating consequences of contemporary policies and practices generated by institutions and structures inside and outside of public education (Patel, 2013; Valenzuela, 1999; Willis, 1981). As we worked, we questioned whether our representations of inequity and its consequences hid or even implicitly denied the depth and layers of suffering that accompanied Burundian resettlement in the United States. As Farmer (2005) has noted, the denial of the real origins of suffering “serves the interest of the powerful” (p. 17). There were feelings we had about our own experience in the process that seemed untranslatable, and there were issues we wanted to address that were not neatly tied to data points. Our interpretations of the non-Native, whitestream, and racist institutional norms that school and health professionals reproduced to maintain authority and power in the school and in the only health system to which Spiderman and his family had access revealed unadulterated condemnation (Grande, 2004; Urrieta, 2005).

Denigrating the choices and practices of professionals in both spaces was emotionally appealing but pedagogically limiting. The vilification of the professionals and their choices narrowed and bounded our understandings in ways we resisted (Crenshaw, 1995). That storyline only seemed to be teaching a rule: “Don’t do this.” We feared that such a message would reproduce a monolithic narrative of a villain and a victim, flattening the dimensionality and complexity of trauma and suffering (Krumer-Nevo, 2011; Tamas, 2011). How could we humanize community members who seemed to forsake the practice of healing children? Who had introduced harm instead, and altered the very identity and everyday experience of a child placed in their care? How might we write in a way that might invite new ideas and tactics (de Certeau, 2011)? We knew that the elements affecting the treatment of Spiderman reflected not only his placement in a public school and his access to a particular health care system, but also the cultural, ideological, racial, and emotional hegemonies to which we were all subject (Gramsci, 1992; Sedgwick, 1993; Zembylas, 2007). We had hundreds of pages of fieldnotes, and devastating analysis, but the human suffering we worked to understand and represent seemed to defy explanation.

Farmer (2005) argued, “Structural violence takes its toll in ways that seem to defy explanation” (p. 28). So, we turned to write alongside Farmer’s (2005) argument, “if we hope to understand, and thus prevent, human rights abuses” (p. 16), we must analyze power and infrastructure. Not being satisfied with reporting our findings as usual, we coupled Farmer’s emphasis on the analysis of structural violence with allegory. For us, then, institutionalized power intersected with history, geography, and race in particular ways in our work and we pursued a representation that complicated those intersections.

Our Dreams and Our Hearts

Once upon a time in the blue mountains, by the running waters of Storm Creek, a small group of people, who for the most part looked like one another and thought like one another, lived cheerfully in the comfort of being like one another. For as many generations as anyone could remember, they lived at the edge of a valley between the banks of Storm Creek and the wilderness of the blue mountains. Each morning under the shadows of the summits they busied themselves to stay warm, and each evening in the alpenglow of the setting sun, they gathered to tell stories of the Year of the Golden Harvest and the Great Levee Team.

Most of the people of the town were Surveyors. For centuries, the Surveyors had tasked themselves with managing the town, its people, and the valley’s resources. Using the finest calculations they could devise, they planned the town’s future. Among the Surveyors were Master Surveyors. These were all men, and included many great-grandfathers, who spent their time apprenticing the grandsons of the town. The Surveyors encouraged their children to work hard to become a Master Surveyor’s apprentice. In the town’s courthouse, schoolhouse, great hall, pharmacy, farm sheds, smokehouses, and on the playing fields, the Master Surveyors taught their apprentices the finest calculations they could devise.

At the beginning of each new season, the town gathered to celebrate the Year of the Golden Harvest and the Master Surveyors of the Great Levee Team, for the Surveyors on the Great Levee Team had saved the town from devastation. Many years ago, the Great Levee Team had saved the town forever from the seasonal rising of Storm Creek.

Every year, western storms plunged into the valley, and the rising of Storm Creek threatened the town’s crops. Some years, the storms lasted many moons and all the crops were lost. The town’s Surveyors, using the finest calculations they could devise, tried to predict which storms would last all season but to no avail. During the years when the rains fell unremittingly, the Surveyors would gather to measure the continuous rising. Paddling across the southeastern plain, they would measure the rise. Passing over their fields they would watch their harvest sway like reeds in the water. With only foraged food during the winters that followed a season of flooding, many of the town’s children and elders died. Grief and fear settled in the town during these years and grew with the winds of the next western storm.

Wondrously, in the Year of the Golden Harvest everything changed. That winter, a group of Surveyors gathered and pledged to save their families and their valley from the great western storms. Using the finest calculations they could devise, they mapped and measured for five fortnights. After which, they revealed their plan to build levees to protect the crops and save the town from hunger. And indeed, they did. That year, the harvest was the most bountiful any of the elders could remember. To honor, the members of the Great Levee Team, the town bestowed upon them the title of “Master Surveyors.” Each season of each year that followed, the success of the Great Levee Team and the bounty of the Golden Harvest were celebrated. Over time, the highest accolades and most heartfelt compliments offered in the town became those that honored the finest calculations one could devise. In the courthouse, schoolhouse, great hall, pharmacy, farm sheds, smokehouses, and on the playing fields, young Surveyors competed often for such praise.

Now there were others who lived in the town, too—the Travelers—though there were not nearly as many Travelers as there were Surveyors. Travelers lived in many towns and learned to survive in the wilderness of the blue mountains and in the red sands beyond. They knew well from their ancestors how to cross the wilderness with the moonrise and how to navigate the river through the southern valleys. In the wilderness, they shared food and shelter and taught one another to carve and thatch by moonlight. At night, they slept under a canopy of silver shells miles away from the lights of the valley towns. As they traveled, they traded their crafts for sustenance and shelter. Some Travelers carved bowls and tools; others wove baskets and blankets; and a few pressed cloth and paper from the bark of the Snow Trees in blue mountains. Among the Travelers were Storytellers who wove both legend and lesson, absurdity and delight for their fellow Travelers. They crafted tales to caution and comfort, and for company and memory. Traveling demanded observation and practice from the Travelers. Translation they found was tricky business and took patience. Telling stories helped them remember their travels and exchanges. The Travelers celebrated their storytellers. Often they sought their guidance and translation of things they did not understand. The Storytellers offered their tellings for those seeking to understand and invited others to do the same.

In the town, the Travelers traded their skills and wares for shelter and food. Sometimes, they stayed with other Travelers; sometimes, they stayed with Surveyors. Although rare, when Travelers and Surveyors shared time together, each learned the wisdoms of the other. Occasionally, Surveyors ventured into the wilderness of the blue mountains with Travelers, and once in a while Travelers would settle permanently in a town.

Three years after, the Fierce Storm in the red hills beyond, a large group of Travelers settled in the town. When the Travelers arrived, they sought to understand the seasonal commemorations of the Great Levee Team and the Golden Harvest and the prestige offered to the Master Surveyors. In each place the Travelers had lived, they had worked hard to understand the land, the animals, and the people they met. Sometimes, what they learned was fruitful, other times, it was complex, and still others, it was dangerous. In this town, in the southern valley, the Travelers observed the ritual of congratulations and noted the pride they heard among the Surveyors when they recounted the finest calculations they could devise. After a short time, the Travelers learned to recognize the anticipation of the seasonal celebrations. However, even after studying the Surveyors carefully, they did not understand their jubilee.

Passing a young Surveyor preparing one afternoon for the evening’s seasonal commemoration, a Traveler stopped to ask about the festivities. The young Surveyor responded, “Our commemorations are remembrances of how the Master Surveyors on the Great Levee Team used the finest calculations anyone could devise to protect our crops and save our town forever from the seasonal rising of Storm Creek.” The Traveler nodded and wished the young Surveyor luck with this work.

The Travelers, eager to learn about the town, continued to watch young and old Surveyors practice the finest calculations they could devise in the courthouse, schoolhouse, great hall, pharmacy, farm sheds, smokehouses, and on the playing fields. As they watched, they saw other Travelers from north and east of the blue mountains trying to learn about the town, too.

“I am trying to understand this town,” a father shared one evening.

I can see that the Surveyors meet often and talk; that at the courthouse, schoolhouse, great hall, pharmacy, farm sheds, smokehouses, and on the playing fields they try to determine who or what will be successful, but I do not understand the continuous celebrations.

“It is confusing here,” a grandmother shared,

I tried to tell a story of a bowl I was trading for food. I carved it in the red hills beyond, but the young Surveyor buying it told me he had already heard my story. But he had not. “We have arrived recently,” I explained, “and I have not met you. How do you know my story?”

He said, “We all know the story of the Fierce Storm in the red hills beyond and the Travelers’ flight across the borders into the blue mountains.”

“But my story is not the story of the Fierce Storm in the red hills beyond. The Fierce Storm is only part of my story,” the grandmother said.

The woman’s young granddaughter took her hand. “He wanted just your bowl, grandmother.”

“Not your story, grandmother” the woman’s young grandson said.

“Who does not want a story?” the grandmother asked.

The Travelers were quiet. They did not know an answer to the grandmother’s question. Finally, speaking again, the grandmother asked the other Travelers from north and east of the blue mountains if they would help them understand the Surveyors and the town.

“We don’t know if we can,” the other Travelers responded. “But perhaps,” they offered, “we can learn this place together.”

And so, the group of Travelers met much like the Surveyors; but unlike the Surveyors, they did not meet to make plans for the town’s future or to prepare for the town’s celebrations. The Travelers gathered to craft and to story. As the seasons passed, they shared their lives together in the town and called upon one another for help when the town’s courthouse, schoolhouse, great hall, pharmacy, farm sheds, smokehouses, or playing fields disoriented or discouraged them.

At the same time, the Surveyors continued to busy themselves with the finest calculations they could devise. The commemorations celebrating the Great Levee Team and the Golden Harvest renewed the Surveyors each season. With reverence and commitment they predicted crime and rehabilitation rates at the courthouse, graduation rates at the schoolhouse, and wins and losses down at the playing fields. In the pharmacy, they produced assessments of ill health and formulated restorative elixirs, in the farm sheds and smokehouses, they calculated planting patterns and seasonal yields, and in the great hall, they designed the town and valley’s future in tidy dioramas they displayed.

One afternoon in late fall, a young child of a Traveler felt unwell. When he told his older sister, she asked, “What’s wrong?”

Holding his head he said, “Sometimes the thunder is so loud I cannot hear.” His sister watched him closely. He shut his eyes. “And the dust so thick I cannot see.” Although she knew that the great western storms were many moons past and that gales of dust were in the red hills beyond, the boy’s sister believed him. She looked into her brother’s eyes and when he opened them, she saw that they were wide and sad.

“You sound unhappy,” she said.

“I do not want to be here,” he said.

The boy with his sister told their parents and grandmother about the thunder and the dust. The boy’s father grew quiet. He had heard the thunder and seen the shrouds of dust even though the great western storms were many moons past and gales of dust were in the red hills beyond. He knew of many Travelers, young children and adults, haunted by the Fierce Storm they had endured in the red hills beyond. And there were nights when he roared at his family over small things that he wondered if their flight from the Fierce Storm had been too much for any of them to endure.

In their small gathering room, the boy’s grandmother pulled him to her and the two sat together as the boy’s father told stories of ones he knew who survived the hauntings of the Fierce Storm. Calmed by his grandmother’s embrace and his father’s stories, the boy fell asleep. Over the next five fortnights, the family spent many evenings in the same way. Most nights, the boy fell asleep.

In the afternoons, the boy’s mother and grandmother watched him when he returned home from school. If his eyes grew wide and sad, they knew the thunder and dust had returned. Some afternoons he held his head against the thunder and shut his eyes against the dust. One day, the boy returned home with a letter from Surveyors at the schoolhouse. The letter stated that the Surveyors were “concerned” about the boy’s “progress” in school. They wrote that some mornings he held his head and closed his eyes instead of finishing his work. He could not close his eyes instead of finishing his work they explained. They warned that if he could not “participate in activities and learning at the schoolhouse he would have to study all the books of the great hall another way.” The next day, the boy’s grandmother along with other Travelers in town journeyed into the wilderness of the blue mountains for medicine. Although many Travelers and Storytellers in the blue mountains helped to gather indigenous plants with the boy’s grandmother, over the years, some of the ways of earth healing had been lost. The Travelers and Storytellers showed them what medicine they had been using for the thunder and the dust of the Fierce Storm. The grandmother stayed four nights in the blue mountains listening to the Storytellers share their medicine and studying the teachings of earth healing. When she returned to the southern valley, she carried with her native plants, stories, and salves she had made for the boy.

After many nights of many stories, and another letter from school, the boy’s father, mother, grandmother, and sister took him to the town’s pharmacy. At the pharmacy, one of the most successful young Surveyors was an apprentice of a Master Surveyor. There, Surveyors produced assessments of ill health and formulated restorative elixirs. The elixirs formed a tower on the shelves behind the pharmacy’s counter.

When the boy’s family entered the pharmacy, the boy’s sister pointed out the elixirs to him. A gliding ladder tracked into a long wood rail above the tower rested behind the young Surveyor. Although the boy followed his sister’s gaze to the tower of elixirs, he did not speak. As the family approached the counter, the boy slowed his step. The tower of elixirs rose high above him. The boy looked through the open door to the sunny street and back again at the tower. Quietly, he cried. His grandmother, mother, and sister reached to comfort him. The young Surveyor, hearing the boy, turned around and faced the family. He stood on a platform behind the counter and so looked down at the Travelers as he spoke to them. The boy’s grandmother moved to the center of the counter and stood opposite the young Surveyor. Placing a large tower key on the counter, the young Surveyor asked what was wrong.

The boy’s grandmother shared, “He is laughter and rain, sunshine and moonlight, blue mountaintops—”

“—and green valleys of smiles,” his sister added.

His mother said, “and, at times, he is unwell.”

As they spoke, the young Surveyor turned the tower key with his fingers. The boys’ sister noticed the way the young Surveyor held the key, almost tenderly she thought, like the way her grandmother held her.

“He is our dreams and our hearts,” the mother added.

The boy’s sister looked again at the key and into the young Surveyor’s eyes. The young Surveyor looked at the boy whose tears fell down his face. He turned to the tower of elixirs behind him and unlocked a drawer below the first shelf. Taking a large book from the drawer, he placed it on the counter. He opened the book, and the Travelers could see lists of the town’s illnesses on its pages. The illnesses had been dated, counted, and measured in columns and graphs. At the bottom of each page were predictions. Gently and efficiently turning each page, the young Surveyor moved to a section used to enumerate a new patient.

Looking at the boy’s parents, he asked, “How long has your son been ill?”

The boy’s father said, “He is not ill every day.”

“He is least ill at night when we share stories together,” the boy’s grandmother said.

“I am trying to assess the onset of symptoms or illness,” the young Surveyor said. “What was the date his illness began?” he asked.

“It may have been during our years in the red hills beyond,” the boy’s father said. Tersely, the young Surveyor asked, “And when was that?”

“We were there many years,” the boy’s mother said.

“Which began when?” the young Surveyor asked.

“You must know that there is disagreement in the red hills beyond over the beginning of the Fierce Storm. The year is disputed. The Storm built over a number of years after many changes and unrest,” the boy’s father said. The young Surveyor closed his eyes and opened them again. The boy’s sister did not like that he did so.

“If I do not know the onset and duration of the boy’s illness, I cannot help you,” he chided.

“Five fortnights ago, I could not see his green valleys of smiles,” the boy’s sister offered.

“And the duration of his symptoms?” the Surveyor asked.

The Travelers were quiet for they did not know. Sleep followed the evenings of embrace in the arms of his grandmother and in the stories of his father. The young Surveyor grew impatient. “The duration of the symptoms?” he asked again. They were not sure what to tell the young Surveyor. During the day, the boy was at school. The boy saw the young Surveyor’s impatience and worry on his grandmother’s face.

“Some days, I cannot hear for the thunder here,” he whispered, “and I cannot see for the dust.”

“Young Traveler, there is no dust in the valley of the blue mountains, and the storms will not come for another season,” the young Surveyor countered. The boy did not speak, for he did not mean the red dust that clung to his clothes in the red hills beyond nor did he mean the thunder that came with the rain each year from the west. The young Surveyor looked at the boy’s father and mother. He was waiting. The boy’s sister grew fearful that the young Surveyor would not help them.

“The dust is from the red hills beyond,” the boy’s sister said.

The young Surveyor ignored her and looked at the boy’s father. Nodding the father said, “Yes, it is the dust from the red hills beyond.”

Exasperated, the young Surveyor rebuked, “There is no dust in the valley of the blue mountains.”

Angry at the tone, the Young Surveyor used with her father, the boy’s sister disputed, “I have seen the dust rise from the valley floor and enshroud him. He closes his eyes against it!”

“Please,” the boy’s mother said, “he is our dreams and our hearts.”

Reaching for her granddaughter and grandson, the boy’s grandmother explained, “Young Surveyor, sometimes after a Fierce Storm dust returns.”

Elder Traveler, there are no recorded dust storms in the valley as your granddaughter and grandson must know from studying all the books of the great hall at the schoolhouse. Surveyors study all the books of the great hall in school. I studied all the books of the great hall in school. I can assure you there are no records of any dust storms in the valley, [the young Surveyor corrected].

“The dust comes unbidden,” the boy’s father said. “It assails sight and sound.”

“It shows no regard for geography,” the boy’s grandmother explained.

“You are incorrect,” the young Surveyor said adamantly. He did not speak again.

Rising on her toes, so she could reach across the counter, the boy’s mother shared which afternoons she could remember watching her son travel away from her to battle the thunder and dust. Making swift notations as the boy’s mother spoke, the young Surveyor began to fill columns in the book, calculating a diagnosis. Longing for relief for their son, grandson, and brother, the family watched quietly without disturbing his work.

Pouring over his tabulations, the young Surveyor finally marked a corresponding elixir for his diagnosis. Swiftly, he turned and bowed to open the tri-fold glass doors of the cabinet that held the tower of elixirs. Light smattered across the pharmacy in an array of blue, violet, and green. Small rainbows peppered the wood floor. Kicking off from his platform and gliding with the ladder across the shelves, the young Surveyor climbed three rungs and took hold of a single pristine beaker. It was the size of small gourd and blue. Smiling, he descended the ladder and instructed the father on the dosages. The young Surveyor noted the transaction in the book and handed the elixir to the boy’s father. “The Master Surveyor will note your debt,” he explained. As the family departed, the boy’s sister looked back at the young Surveyor to thank him, but he did not see her. He was looking at the tower.

On the way home, the family shared their hopes for the abatement of the thunder and gales and their prayers for a return of the boy’s laughter and rain, sunshine and moonlight, blue mountaintops and green valleys of smiles. As they walked, the boy’s grandmother noticed that her grandson’s eyes were bright and playful.

Not long after the family’s visit to the town’s pharmacy, the boy’s mother and father, grandmother, and sister noticed his stillness. Sitting in the afternoon sun with his friends, the boy no longer held his head but nor did he move. He rarely spoke. Sometimes he would drift to sleep in the sunshine. They listened cautiously for distant thunder and watched carefully so that dust would not blind him from their sight. The boy’s stillness frightened them and they looked expectantly into the boy’s eyes. But the boy’s eyes were not wide or sad. Nor were they bright and playful. In the fortnight that followed, the family noticed their son’s stillness did not change. They had not heard thunder or seen dust for many days, nor had they experienced his laughter and rain, sunshine and moonlight, or blue mountaintops and green valleys full of smiles. One afternoon, the boy returned home with a letter from Surveyors at the schoolhouse. They were “concerned” they stated about the boy’s “progress” in school. Some days, they wrote he barely moved and rarely spoke. Other days, he would drift to sleep. He could not sleep in school, they explained. If he could not “participate in activities and learning at the schoolhouse he would have to study all the books of the great hall another way.” Not understanding the boy’s stillness or his day sleep, the family gathered with other Travelers to seek answers.

One Traveler from north of the blue mountains shared that sometimes the elixirs pharmacies dispensed in towns had unintended effects. The books of the great hall she said would have documented this if it were so. A small group of Travelers went to the great hall and studied all the information they could find on the boy’s elixir. They found that the elixir was not recommended for children at all and that its unintended effects included difficulty speaking, stiffness, lethargy, and sleepiness.

With the other Travelers, the family returned to the town’s pharmacy the next afternoon. When they saw the young Surveyor, the boy’s parents asked, “What has happened to our son’s laughter and rain, sunshine and moonlight, blue mountaintops and green valleys of smiles?”

The young Surveyor opened the tower drawer with the key and placed on the counter the book that listed the town’s illnesses and corresponding elixirs. He opened the book to the page that enumerated the boy’s symptoms and condition and compared it with the others that had been counted, measured, and predicted. Placing the tower key on the page to mark his place, he asked, “Has the boy demonstrated symptoms of sadness? Has he been closing his eyes or holding his head against his imaginings?”

“He has not,” the boy’s father said.

“Well then, the elixir appears to be working,” the young Surveyor said.

The grandmother said, “In the afternoon sunshine when he is with his friends he barely moves and rarely speaks. Sometimes he falls asleep.”

“The Surveyors at the schoolhouse sent a letter home stating that he falls asleep during lessons,” the boy’s mother offered.

The young Surveyor looked from the Travelers to the book and said,

Travelers, who never stay too long in any town, you are not Surveyors. You do not know how to count, measure, and predict. I have prescribed for you an elixir that corresponds to the boy’s symptomology. He no longer has those symptoms.

“But, Young Surveyor,” the boy’s mother said,

if he drifts to sleep at school, he cannot participate in the activities and learning at the schoolhouse, and his teachers have warned that he will have to study all the books of the great hall another way. Could one of the effects of the elixir be sleepiness? Is there another elixir that might work that will not make him sleepy? We have read in the books of the great hall that this one is given often to adult Surveyors and Travelers.

“Are you an apprentice with a Master Surveyor at a pharmacy?” the young Surveyor hurled at the boy’s mother. The small group of Travelers fell silent under the young Surveyor’s anger and sarcasm. The boy’s mother caught her breath in her throat afraid to exhale. The young Surveyor looked condescendingly at the boy’s mother. Under his gaze, she looked at the floor.

The boy’s father stepped toward the counter. “You know she is not,” he said. “She seeks medicine for our son. We have come to you for help. This elixir has changed our son.”

“I have given the boy medicine. Are you suggesting it is not working when your wife has reported that it has?” the young Surveyor taunted. The boy’s father felt confused. Why would the Surveyor not help them find a better elixir? There were so many from which to choose. They filled the tri-fold cabinet. The tower of elixirs rose above them all.

The Traveler from north of the blue mountains stepped forward to join the boy’s father.

No, they are not suggesting that, young Surveyor, but you know of the consequences if the boy continues to take this elixir. He will fall asleep. If he is asleep he will be unable to participate in the activities and learning at the schoolhouse. They will push him out and he will have to study all the books of the great hall another way, [the Traveler countered].

Leveling his eyes at the Traveler, the young Surveyor exclaimed,

I am in touch with the schoolhouse, and the Surveyors teaching the boy believe he is sleeping on purpose in order to miss reading the stories of the valley. His teachers say he falls asleep at the same time every morning. They report that he wakes just as reading the stories of the valley ends.

The Traveler turned quickly to the boy’s mother, “When do you give your son the elixir?”

“In the morning, just before school, as the young Surveyor instructed,” the boy’s mother answered.

Young Surveyor, if sleepiness is an effect of the elixir and the boy takes the elixir at the same time every morning and falls asleep at the same time every morning, could not the elixir contribute to his sleeping during the morning lesson, reading stories of the valley? [the Traveler asked].

The young Surveyor looked down at the book. “I am removing myself from this case. If you do not want an elixir from the tower you do not have to have one,” he barked.

“Surveyor, my son needs medicine,” the boy’s mother cried. Reaching toward her son and daughter, she whispered, “Our children are our dreams and our hearts.” The young Surveyor ignored the boy’s mother, took the small blue beaker from her hands, and placed it on a low shelf behind the glass tri-fold doors.

“If you will excuse me, I have other patients for whom I must prepare,” the young Surveyor said. And then, the small group of Travelers watched in disbelief the young Surveyor busy himself with paperwork.

Reluctantly, after many minutes passed, they left the pharmacy. Gathered in the sunlight outside, they decided that they should seek the help of the Master Surveyor of the pharmacy. Knowing the young Surveyor was angry, the boy’s mother and father cautiously returned. When they asked to speak to the Master Surveyor, the young Surveyor refused their request.

The Master Surveyor has taught me how to count, measure, and predict using the finest calculations he could devise. I follow the interpretations of his diagnoses in this book. The Master Surveyor is a descendant of the Great Levee Team and has cured Surveyors for five decades in this town, [he explained].

“My prescription is based on his calculations. If you want my help, you will take the elixir I prescribe.” He took the beaker from the behind the glass tri-fold door and placed it on the counter.

We want to help our son. I am worried about this elixir and the Surveyors at his school. Perhaps there is another way? If you heard about the experiences of others from the red hills beyond—many live nearby in the blue wilderness, [the boy’s mother shared].

I am not interested in the opinions of Travelers. Nor am I interested in the ideas of your Traveler friends. I have the information I need from the Master Surveyor here, and I have the reports from the Surveyors at the schoolhouse. I suggest you refrain from discussing your son’s treatment with Travelers who have not studied with Master Surveyors. Neither they nor their ideas are welcome here, [the young Surveyor said].

Looking outside at her children in the sunlight and then back at the young Surveyor, the boy’s mother pleaded, “But we miss his laughter and his eyes bright and playful.” Watching from outside the boy’s grandmother saw the boy’s mother begin to cry. The boy’s grandmother quickly crossed the wood floors of the pharmacy to stand beside the boy’s mother.

“This is only medicine you will offer us?” the boy’s father asked.

“This is the medicine,” the young Surveyor said.

“And my grandson’s laughter and rain, sunshine and moonlight, blue mountaintops and green valleys of smiles?” the boy’s grandmother queried. The young Surveyor did not respond. “Will this the medicine to return him to us? To himself?” she asked. The young Surveyor did not answer.

The elixir stood between them in the silence.

“Our children are our dreams and our hearts,” the boy’s father said, “whether they are Surveyors’ or Travelers’, whether they live in this town, or in the wilderness of the blue mountains or in the red hills beyond.

“They are our dreams and our hearts,” the boy’s grandmother said.

The young Surveyor stood unmoved.

The boy’s father looked at his wife and mother, and his children outside in the sunlight. Quietly, he said, “We must go.” The boy’s mother turned toward her husband and took his hands in her own. She met his gaze and pleaded with her eyes. She dare not speak again before the young Surveyor.

The boy’s father took the elixir from the counter and left. As they crossed, the Pharmacy’s threshold, the sunlight faded and rain began to fall. Mist covered the town. The young Surveyor did not seem to notice as he made notations in the book. He wrote, “Traveler treatment resumed.”

Days passed, and then months, and the Travelers watched the western winds build and the rain strengthen. Mist cloaked the valley and the boy’s stillness returned. The Surveyors did not seem to notice the mist, the wind, and rain and instructed the Travelers not to worry. The Travelers watched the changes with dread. One evening, the boy’s family passed a Master Surveyor on their way home. The boy’s father greeted him and commented on the mist and the wind and rain. “The western storms are no longer a thing to fear,” the Master Surveyor said, winking at the boy. “Do not worry. We have the levees now.” Assuring them the Master Surveyor added, “The Great Levee Team, using the finest calculations they could devise, made sure we would all be safe.” The Travelers did not speak. They knew differently. They knew the finest calculations could take away dreams and hearts.

An Afternote

What we do not know were the motives behind the decision making that produced a prescription for Spiderman for a drug reportedly designed for the treatment of psychosis and schizophrenia, and not depression. What we do know is that the involved professionals deployed a strategy of exclusive communication routes between themselves (Foucault, 1995), one that was hidden from Spiderman’s parents until we asked during an appointment with his psychiatrist if drowsiness at school could be a side effect of the drug prescribed. We know that when we asked this question, Spiderman’s psychiatrist removed himself from the case and told us to leave Global Elixirs. When Spiderman’s parents returned to Global Elixirs, the next day to request copies of their son’s medical records, so that we could help them find a different health care provider, they were given an ultimatum by Spiderman’s psychiatrist. They could continue working with their advocates, us, and find help elsewhere, or cease all communication with us regarding Spiderman’s medical treatment and return to treatment at Global Elixirs. We know that Spiderman’s parents feared the White authority at Global Elixirs and Red Valley, and, ultimately, wanted help and support for their son. Threatening Spiderman’s parents with an ultimatum meant the foreclosure of parental participation in the decision-making process about their own son. Such foreclosures limited the possibilities of support for Spiderman. Ultimately, the medical professionals fortified their authority through their refusal of service, though temporary, and reified technical knowledge at the expense of a holistic assessment. Scott (1999) warned us that we must do more than understand the history and logic of “commitments to high-modernist goals” (p. 341). We must study the deleterious effects of such commitments and where they intersect with authoritarian power. Although our aim here in the construction of an allegory was to do both, this representation is not a final representation, and we invite you as the reader to take up alternative interpretations as well.