by Nicole Trope
‘Her books had been put back on the bookshelves too, and now there’s nothing in there that looks like her. She liked the books stacked in blocks of colour in front of the bookcase. I used to buy books for her only for their covers. I specifically used to look for covers that were in a single colour like red or blue or yellow. I was so angry about the books being put on the shelves, but I just didn’t have the energy to find out who did it and knew it would do no good. I’m unlikely to forget who she was and how she was, anyway.’
‘How was she, Anna?’
‘She was . . . she was Maya,’ says Anna, and realises that as she says this that it is the only way to describe who her daughter was. ‘There are no typical ways for a child to be autistic, Walt. To start with, it’s a spectrum. I met some children at Maya’s school who were so ordinary, so normal, that I resented the fact they were taking up a place and, of course, those sorts of kids usually moved into mainstream schools quickly enough, but not Maya.
‘Maya was extreme. She was severely autistic. It took almost two years of different doctors for us to get a definitive diagnosis. I took her to our paediatrician first, and then to a child psychiatrist, and then to an occupational therapist, and then to an audiologist and then an ophthalmologist. No one wanted to make a definite diagnosis, although by then, she was old enough for everyone to agree that there was something wrong. Maybe no doctor wants to be the one who dashes a parent’s hopes and dreams.
‘At first, when she was still a baby, I could see every doctor I went to thinking I was simply a neurotic mother, that I was watching my child too closely. Her paediatrician even suggested that I was suffering from post-partum depression. “Sometimes a lack of sleep and a huge change in lifestyle can make a woman think that she sees things that aren’t there,” he told me. “Maya is highly strung, and I can see that she is a little delayed, but we want to be wary of making knee-jerk diagnoses.” But the difference between Maya and her peers got bigger and bigger, and, finally, the doctors started to see what I was seeing.
‘Everyone we went to would run a whole lot of tests with Maya, and then they would sit Keith and me down at the end of the appointment and say something like, “Well, I do see some issues here.” I remember how my heart used to skip a beat every time that happened. It was an awful feeling, and every time we left another doctor’s office, I would look at Maya and think, “Her speech is severely delayed,” or “Her cognition is poor,” or “Her fine motor skills are lacking.” I felt like I was eventually seeing a collection of problems, rather than my child, and because of that, I think I hated every doctor we went to see.’
Cynthia comes back into the room and sits down. She has reapplied her lipstick and put on a dash of perfume. She brings with her a smell of open spaces and flowers, and Anna thinks about a walk on the beach—something she has not done for years. Maya didn’t like the feel of beach sand, and even when Anna was alone, she never went, because the beach was far from Maya’s school and she was always afraid that a call would come, summoning her back.
As Maya got older, the calls from the school came more and more often. Maya had, at first, been well behaved at school, but the older she got, the worse her behaviour became. She would attack the other children on a regular basis. There were other students who could also become violent but, for the most part, the teachers seemed to have them under control. The problem was that none of their strategies worked with Maya. She would wonder over to a child working through a puzzle and slap him or her across the face, and when the teachers tried to discipline her for her behaviour, she would tantrum, falling on the floor, kicking and screaming and biting, and pulling hair and punching anyone who tried to come near her.
‘We think she wanted to have a go at the puzzle and she just had no idea how to communicate that,’ they told Anna.
‘We’re working on it,’ they said.
‘It’s getting harder to have her in the classroom,’ they began saying.
‘She’s become extremely disruptive.’
Anna was often called to come and get her, especially as she got bigger. Maya’s teachers had bruises from their interactions with her, just like Anna did.
She doesn’t let herself think about the final phone call from the school, the one that came right before the accident. It doesn’t matter now.
‘I can go to the beach now,’ she thinks. ‘I can go for a day or a week. There is no reason for me to be home anymore.’ The thought is terrifying and thrilling at the same time.
‘Go on, Anna,’ says Cynthia. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt.’
‘I was talking about Maya, about trying to find out what was wrong with her. You know, I felt like such a fucking failure, like I had somehow messed up the one thing that every woman was supposed to be able to do. There were days, many days, over the course of her life when I didn’t understand my child; didn’t like her, even.’
‘Sorry, Anna, you didn’t like her?’ says Walt.
‘Oh, oh God, I didn’t mean that. I mean, I just . . . I just meant that some days were really hard. Caro tried to help. She came over to my place all the time because she knew that then I could control Maya’s environment. Once Maya started walking, it was difficult to keep on top of things. Whatever I did, she would follow me and undo. I know that most kids do things like that. They like to take the washing out of the basket and the pots out of the cupboard and then put everything back again, but Maya would throw things and rip things . . . she tore into books like she hated them. When she was older, she liked books for their covers, but when she was about two, it was almost like she had to destroy them. One of her therapists suggested that she didn’t like the smell and feel of them. I took all the books away and put them up on a high shelf, and then I caught her trying to climb up the bookshelf to get them. I had no idea what she wanted. Now I know that she was just trying to find a way to communicate with me, but then it felt like I was raising a one-child army of destruction.’
‘Anna, I know that you need to explain this and I’m going to let you do that, but it does feel like we’re getting fairly off topic,’ says Walt. ‘The night of the accident is our main concern.’
‘Yes, yes, the night of the accident. I know, I know.’ Anna does know. She understands why she is sitting in a room with two detectives but she doesn’t want to talk about that night. She knows that eventually she will have to discuss what happened, but in the back of her mind, she thinks that if she can just keep talking and talking, then, eventually, the detectives will give up and send her home.
‘Do you know what I felt when I finally had a diagnosis for Maya?’
‘What?’ asks Cynthia, because Walt is looking down at his notepad. Anna can see he is getting frustrated with her but trying to keep his cool.
‘Relief. I was so fucking relieved that I knew what was wrong.’
Walt sighs and leans back in his chair. ‘Anna, please . . .’ he says, ‘we really need to get to that day. It’s important that we hear from you about that day.’
‘Walt, I think we can just let Anna talk.’
‘Cynthia.’
‘Please, I really don’t want you two arguing because of me. I’m getting there, I really am. I need to explain who she was. I don’t know why I have to do that. Perhaps it’s because no one will actually talk about that anymore. When Keith spoke at her funeral, he talked about her being creative and having an infectious laugh. He said she loved movies and her friends, and I wanted to get up and shout, “No, that’s not right. That’s not who she was.” She wasn’t creative. She would take a whole box of crayons and draw lines, one after the other, again and again, until she couldn’t move her arms anymore, and sometimes the picture that resulted would have a kind of beauty but it wasn’t as though she were trying for beauty. And she didn’t have any friends at school. There were kids she would play next to, or learn next to, but she never got past that. Most of the kids at her school were scared of her, anyway. I would drop her off and watch them move away from her, in cas
e she was in the mood to pull someone’s hair, or bite or kick. When Caro brought Lex over, Lex would try and talk to her, would ask her to play pretend or to play with dolls, and mostly Maya would ignore her but sometimes she’d look at her as if she didn’t understand what she was. When she got older, she liked to watch a DVD about space. I don’t know what she was seeing—maybe the colours or the way the planets were lined up—but she loved that DVD.
‘One day, when the girls were around six, Lex and Caro came over for tea. Lex sat next to Maya and watched the DVD about space, but when it got to the end she didn’t want to see it again and said, “This is boring,” and she got up and ejected it from the machine. Maya went . . . went absolutely crazy. She grabbed Lex’s hair and pulled it, and screamed and screamed. By the time we’d managed to get the two girls apart, Maya had pulled out a whole handful of Lex’s hair. It was awful. Caro started crying and that made me cry and, of course, Lex was crying, but Maya was just screaming. I think it was probably the last time Caro brought Lex over but she didn’t stop coming herself. She understood about Maya, she really did.
‘We found a wonderful school for Maya, and I spent most nights researching diets for autistic children and new therapies for autistic children, and how to handle an autistic child. Keith and I both threw ourselves into that world. I think we thought . . .’
‘You thought?’ says Cynthia, leaning forward. Anna can see that Walt isn’t really paying attention anymore. Perhaps he is thinking about being at the gym, or about the beer he’s going to have after work, but he seems to believe that none of what she is saying is relevant to what happened. Cynthia is interested because Cynthia is a mother, and Anna can see that she knows how easily Anna’s experience could have been her own.
‘I think we thought that she could be cured, that she would get better, that there was a key we would find that would unlock our daughter, and we just needed to look hard enough. I suppose that’s stupid.’
‘Understandable,’ says Cynthia.
Anna bites down on her lip. She wants to say, ‘What would you know about it?’ but knows the words would be aimed at the wrong person. She has heard every platitude in the book, every well-meaning piece of advice, every piece of information from an auntie’s friend’s friend who’d read of a cure. She’s heard it all and she never wants to hear any of it again. Never, ever again.
‘Understandable, but silly, really. If there was a way to cure autism, it would be headline news all over the world. I’ve read some freaky things on the internet by parents who say they’ve cured their child but I don’t think they mean children like Maya. There were very few children like Maya, or maybe I just never met any of them because their parents, for the most part, kept them at home, hidden away, so they couldn’t harm other children. I spent a lot of time at home with Maya, just trying to keep her calm.’
‘That must have been so difficult,’ says Cynthia.
‘Not difficult,’ says Anna. ‘Impossible.’
She sees the detectives exchange a look but she doesn’t care. She wraps her arms around herself and repeats the word.
‘Impossible.
‘Impossible.
‘Impossible.’
Chapter Ten
Caro touches the back of her neck and finds that her hair is wet. It is boiling in the interview room but both detectives look calm and cool.
‘I really think I’d like to go home,’ she says.
‘Caro, it would really help if we could get to that day, and then we can end the interview. You don’t have to go into detail, just give us a general overview of what happened—what you think happened,’ says Susan.
It sounds easy enough and Caro thinks that if she said she was done talking, then there would be nothing they could do to keep her at the police station, but there is also a bit of an edge to Susan’s voice, something Caro has not heard before. Susan wants this information and Caro is not sure how far she will go to get it, how long they will keep her here, and if they would—if they could—simply place her under arrest to keep her here.
She drinks the last of her Diet Coke, feeling the cool drink settle in her stomach.
‘Maya is . . . was autistic,’ she says. ‘Most people know what that is nowadays, especially since that idiot doctor who linked vaccines with autism, but I know a couple of autistic children and they’re nothing like Maya was.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Along with most of the usual symptoms of autism, Maya was mostly non-verbal and she had a temper. She wouldn’t just get upset and throw a fit, she would rage. When she was little, it was okay because Anna could control her. I saw it happen a lot when I used to take Lex over there. Lex and Maya would be playing next to each other, and Lex would touch something, or move a certain way, or say something that upset Maya, and she would just go off. She would start screaming, and then she’d start kicking and pulling her own hair. It was fairly scary to watch, and I learned that the minute it started, I had to grab Lex out of the way. The last time I ever took Lex over there, I wasn’t quick enough and Maya ripped out a whole chunk of her hair. Lex was terrified of her after that, so I never made her come with me again.
‘When Maya was two and three, and even until she was about seven, Anna would grab her and hold her tight, really tight. Some would say too tight, but if Anna managed to hold her, and whoever else was around put on the sleep machine that made this hideous static noise, then Maya would calm down fairly quickly. At the end of any one of her tantrums, Anna would be completely exhausted and Maya would simply go back to doing what she’d been doing like nothing had ever happened.’
‘That sounds pretty intense.’
‘It was. It was heartbreaking to watch. Anna spent all her time trying to make sure that Maya stayed calm. If she’d had a good day the day before, then Anna would spend all the next day trying to make sure that it went exactly the same way—right down to the clothes Maya was wearing and the food she ate. Once Maya started school, it got even worse.’
‘Even worse? Surely having her at school made things easier for Anna?’
‘Maybe not, Susan. It meant that Anna couldn’t control her days—am I right, Caro?’ asks Brian.
‘Yes, Detective Ng, you’re right. Anna would pick up a fairly calm Maya from school, but once they got home, all hell would break loose. It was like Maya had to get out all her frustrations from school and the only person to take them out on was Anna. She started hurting Anna, really hurting her. She didn’t mean to but she did.
‘We used to meet for coffee some days, just before school pick-up, and Anna used to sit hunched in her chair, sipping coffee with her hands shaking. The problem was that the bigger Maya got, the more difficult it became to calm her down. She started hitting Anna, and not just hitting her—kicking her, scratching her, pulling her hair. By the time she was ten, she was doing real damage. It was hideous. Last year, Anna went to the hospital twice in a month—once, because Maya pushed her into a wall and she swung her arm out to protect her face and broke her wrist, and then again, because Maya pushed her down the stairs at home, and she twisted her ankle so badly, she thought she’d broken it. She was always covered in bruises. “I’m a victim of domestic abuse,” she used to joke but it wasn’t Keith who was hurting her. It was Maya.’
Both detectives are quiet.
‘Couldn’t anyone help her?’ asks Susan.
‘No, not really. Children aren’t supposed to hurt their parents. Isn’t it usually the other way around? I don’t think anyone knew what to do, because Maya was so young and because it couldn’t be explained to her, no matter how many ways they tried.’
‘Sometimes,’ says Brian, ‘we do see cases of children lashing out at their parents. It usually happens when a parent has been abusive towards the child and the child finally gets big enough to fight back. Do you think that may have been the case here, Caro?’
Caro fights the urge to stand up and yell, ‘You take that back!’ at Brian.
Instead she sa
ys, ‘You have no idea how off base you are. Anna would never have hit Maya, never. I watched her feed Maya lunch once and it took her seventeen tries just to get her to take the first mouthful. I would have gone insane, but once Anna knew that Maya was autistic, she tried to stay calm all the time. She never yelled at her, never even raised her voice a little bit, and when I asked her how she did it, she said, “It would serve no point. It’s my own anger and frustration, and I’m angry and frustrated with her condition, not her.”’
Caro doesn’t tell the detectives that sometimes she found Anna a little too calm, almost as if she was zoning out. Her hands would repeat actions, and she would say the same thing again and again, but her eyes would be glazed. Caro put it down to Anna coping the best way she knew how. Now, she’s not so sure.
‘Wasn’t there a way to control the temper tantrums?’
‘I think calling them tantrums is . . . is minimising it,’ says Caro. ‘They tried different drugs and techniques. They tried everything, really, but sometimes Maya would just explode and then there was nothing for Anna to do but ride it out.’
‘It sounds like you were pretty involved with Anna and her family,’ says Brian.
‘I was. We’ve spoken practically every day for the last ten years; except for the last two weeks, when we haven’t spoken at all.’
‘Anna is saying that you were drunk the night of the accident. Now, before you get upset, I just want to explore why you think she’s saying that,’ says Susan.
‘She knows that I drink. I’m the perfect scapegoat.’
‘Did you often drink around Anna? Did she know the extent of your drinking?’
‘We spoke all the time, Susan. I knew about every step she took with Maya, about every up and every down, and she knew about me as well. She knew about all the miscarriages, about the lost babies. She came to see me in the hospital each time and she knew that a few days, and then some days, and then most days, and then every day, I needed a drink to help me through the rough patches. I’m not excusing it, I’m not explaining it. It just was and . . . is . . . what it is.