The Siege

by Clara Clairborne Park

  Some such limiting principle seemed to lie also behind her tendency to stereotype her environment and activities. When Elly was three I could see no trace of Kanner’s prime symptom, the committent to the preservation of sameness. Elly had no routines then. But the symptom lay in waiting (it should be noted that Kanner did not always see his patients as early as three). It developed later, with the capacity for self-assertion — the pathological symptom accompanying what we take as a sign of health. When Elly was three and four, more withdrawn and less assertive, she would walk with me anywhere. At five she began to want to turn right or left at a certain corner, if we had done so before. At seven and eight — today — she will, if not opposed, reduce any walk to sameness. There is one path to take downtown, one for our return. If we pass a landmark where I have previously invented a game Elly has liked, Elly will repeat the actions even if I have forgotten them. If I have spoken words there, Elly will repeat them for me and cue my mouth to make me speak my lines. She is not unyielding about it; by introducing minor, tolerable variations I and, still better, others, are able to maintain some flexibility. She will now readily accept a deviation introduced for a reason — lateness, or a changed destination. But if I merely suggest that we walk home a new way, her anxious ‘no?’ vetoes it unless I decide to make it an issue — and if I do, the new option will probably be incorporated in the next walk. The commitment to an environment that can be kept track of remains.

  Recently Elly spent more than an hour making a series of pictures — twenty-one sheets of carefully crayoned paper, each displaying a large numeral, starting, of course, with zero. Upon the zero, inside it, a small figure sits. She is standing against the one. The numbers continue to twenty. In each of them the same figure stands or climbs or sits or hangs. Sometimes the figure is ‘Elly’, sometimes ‘girl’. Elly enjoys talking about them; she explains with delight, ‘Girl hang-uh seven.’ (The hanging figure’s hair, obeying gravity, hangs straight down.)

  A new series carries the process one step further. The body has disappeared and the girl has merged completely into the numeral. Only her schematic head remains.

  Girl into number. Elly, I fear, is a natural Platonist. Though she no longer lives in it, she prefers a world stripped bare of the adventitious accretions that to ordinary minds make it interesting and precious — a world reduced to its essentials of pattern, shape, and number. That preference can of course be seen, for her as for Plato, as a retreat, an abandonment of the real, disorderly world which causes anxiety and pain. Yet sometimes I think that to interpret it so is to miss the point. That golden baby circling its spot laughed aloud with pleasure. Elly’s delight is spontaneous and free. If it seems unnatural, that is because it is uncommon in young children. Joy cannot in itself be unnatural or unhealthy. Few of us share the joy Pythagoras musthave felt in his theorem, but we can all recognize it. Order in the world is something to take joy in — on this theologians and mathematicians agree. Elly’s joy is of extreme simplicity compared to theirs, yet I think it is of the same kind. I cannot be sorry it exists, only that it comes so much easier than the other, more human kinds of pleasure.

  Elly herself can end this chapter better than I can. We shall watch her as she plays with her new map, the one she insisted on getting as soon as she saw it in the college office. I saw no reason to bring it home, as she already had one posted, but we did, and with uncharacteristic effort she has found some tape and has put it up near the other. ‘42a,’ she says. ‘42a this map. This? This?’ I do not understand, but her insistence makes me examine the map and I perceive what evidently she has known all along. The maps look identical but they are not. Five or six buildings, perhaps, out of a hundred have been altered or replaced, necessitating a revised legend; 42a is a new addition.

  Elly continues: ‘Zero heating plant?’ I contradict; understanding her to mean ‘no heating plant’, I reassure her. ‘One heating plant, there’s the heating plant.’ But she goes on saying it. I do not understand why until she takes my pencil and herself writes in a zero by the picture of the building. Then I see that all the other buildings are numbered. Only the heating plant is not. ‘They forgot,’ I say, falling into one of our familiar frames. ‘They forgot!’ crows Elly, over and over again, eight, ten times in succession. I hear her, but my eyes are elsewhere, and I do not notice what she is doing. When I look up I see that she is laboriously printing, as the first item in the legend O HEATING PLANT. She miscopies, but she does not lose her cool. ‘They forgot!’ She erases, corrects. ‘Forgot!’ And we go down to breakfast, after one half hour of happy activity.

  After breakfast she returns to the map. Fascinated, she enjoys it, singing a little song. Now and then she tenses, shivers in a paroxysm of pleased excitement, but mostly she is relaxed, absorbed in the delights of notation, enjoying the relation between abstraction and reality. ‘Walk downtown?’ And in her mind she does. ‘Don’s cross-uh street! Buy six M-uh-M? Buy four Necco? Buy seven shoestring candy? Buy five gumdrop! Little gumdrop. Get out-uh candy store. Go bakery. Buy-uh two cookie. Get-uh one big cake. Get-uh lot-uh cupcake. Go drugstore. Get a tempacan [temperature = thermometer]. Elly too sick [she is laughing]. Buy three new bottle. No. Zero bottle. Buy eight candy box. Buy nine new gumdrop. Buy ten new candy box. Buy eleven star candy. Buy fourteen new Necco. Lot-uh new M-uh-M?’

  The hairs of her head are numbered.

  15. Now and Later

  Elly has been under siege now for six and a half years. What is she like today?

  Someone who saw her now for the first time and had no knowledge of her history would probably not think her autistic at all. Speech penetrates to the ears that for so long seemed not to hear; the eyes that saw not can now register the full variety of the world. The autistic isolation itself is much attenuated. Seeing her laughing and squealing with her sisters or enjoying the marshmallow game with her father, an observer might remark the immaturity of her affection but he would not think of her as a child particularly withdrawn. It might even be possible for him to hear her sense of community break through into words, as when, taking a hand mirror, she snuggles close, contemplates our two images in the mirror, and says ‘Mamma love you!’

  If he came when I was out he could see how she relates to someone who is not a member of the family — to the warm, understanding woman whose help makes it possible for me to get away at all. Mrs Gerry’s best qualifications are her own six children and eighteen grandchildren. She brings Elly surprises, lets her watch while she mixes and bakes, persuades her to pull her boots on, gives her firm and loving discipline when she gets out of line. Elly goes to stores with her, visits her at home. ‘Mrs Gerry ha’ colour TV!’ Like the live-in mother’s-helpers I can now do without, Mrs Gerry is another focus of Elly’s increasing capacity for affection.

  One no longer has to be a miracle worker to reach her; any friendly person who is at home with two-year-olds can do it. If you were to come to our house and wanted to get to know Elly,it could easily be done. She would indeed pay no attention to you at first, as she has come to expect that adults begin by talking in ways she cannot understand. So I would put her hand on yours to bring you into contact,[33] tell her your name, and from then on it would be up to you. If you roughhoused with her, or drew pictures or provided candy or took her for a ride, she would ‘relate’ to you as satisfactorily as you please, smiling, laughing, taking part in your games, even talking about them. If, however, you asked her hard questions, like what her name is, or talked in language above a three-year-old’s comprehension, she would lose interest. She would ignore you again — not look through you or beyond you, as long ago, but ignore you as any child ignores an uncomprehending adult.

  If you were then to turn your attention to me and we were to talk at any length she would become restive, then demanding. ‘Mama talk!’ she would complain, but her annoyance would go no farther into speech than that. It would express itself in undifferentiated squeals and creaky-door noises, in a crescendo of anxious, edgy
(but still ludicrously accurate) evocations of rock-and-roll, in tense and jerky dancing up and down, in awkward imitations of falling down — perhaps if it all went on too long, in crying. I would either terminate the conversation then or take a firm stand: ‘Sometimes I talk to you, sometimes I talk to other people.’ Elly would then retire, probably to her bed, and bawl, and after a while she would stop and I would hope everything was all right and that this experience would be, not a trauma, but in fact what I wished it — one more infinitesimal step towards the realization that she cannot totally possess even those whom she loves best.

  I am going to interrupt the narrative at this point. Where Elly is today can best be communicated, not by summary and interpretation, but by presenting a few glimpses of her as she has appeared in action at different times in recent months. The reader will be able to make his own interpretations — among them, no doubt, some I have not thought of — and judge for himself how far Elly has come and how far there is still to go-

  Elly is in her room playing with her dollhouse. Having picked up some of the scattered toys and books, I am sitting near her on the floor occupying myself with an interlocking gear toy. I am bored and quiescent. Elly is playing well, with little reference to me, but if I read she will find a way to bring my attention back and if I go away she will stop and follow me. I have learned that it works best to saturate her desire for community, to let her possess me completely for an hour or two; then when she has had all she can use she will be ready to do without me — for a little while.

  Now she is perching all the little dolls in a row on the doll-house roof. She has a lot of them — the conventional family and many extras. She moves the hinged roof and they all fall down. She laughs with pleasure; clearly, that’s why she put them up there. I suggest, without emotion, that they are crying, are hurt. She laughs some more, says ‘Can’t ha’ supper on roof!’ I agree. She begins to imitate, in a high falsetto, the sound of dolls crying, with excited amusement. Noticing my gear arrangement, she has an idea: ‘Doll go merry-go-round, feel better.’ She puts them all on the merry-go-round, one per gear, and they stop crying, ‘Wan’ be happy, yes!’ says Elly. One doll begins to cry again. Elly puts her back on the roof, again to fall. ‘Poor girl,’ she says, laughing.

  ‘Ride-uh-boat?’ She neatly sits them all in her pull-toy ark, a game I suggested some two weeks before. I had, in fact, suggested that the boat take them to the A & P, since Elly had remarked that they had no car and could not go. But I’ve forgotten this, and so I ask if they are going to the island in the ferry. But of course they are going to the A & P. They will continue going there, and the dolls will continue falling off the roof; new ways to play do not come easy. Yet they come, bringing with them two questions which are perhaps only one: why do they come at all, or why do they not come more often?

  A month later, Elly has another doll-house game. ‘Walk to A & P, get a bo’ll wine, drink all up!’ She picks up a tiny bottle from the doll kitchen and, making as if to uncork it, produces with her curved tongue a perfect pop. We both laugh, I with surprise, she with pride. She has been praised for popping with her tongue, but this is the first time the trick has had meaning. She begins to offer wine to the dolls. In a cheery chirp she anticipates their reaction. ‘Baby “no thank you!” Grandma drink all up! Teacher drink all up! Boy “no thank you!.’ I ask, ‘Elly, do you want some wine?’ ‘Elly “no thank you!” ’

  Elly’s dolls go to the hospital, they sit on the pot, they have parties. They do these things repetitively and in patterns, but still it is a pleasure to watch them. There are other ways of playing, equally cheerful for Elly but less so for the observer.

  It is Saturday. ‘Nice day,’ says Elly. ‘Vacation day.’ With a gaiety that seems particularly relaxed and spontaneous she begins to play: she is arranging objects on a tray — a doll, a puppet, some National Wildlife stamps, a plastic Indian, a hairbrush, a catalogue, two books, six assorted doll-garments. Happily she lays them side by side, patting each. ‘And shoe-and cloth’ — she covers them with a red handkerchief. ‘Pretty.’

  The arrangement is without meaning. The objects have no relationship in actuality. Fantasy would be hard put to it to provide one, and there is no sign of fantasy here. These are a set, in the mathematical sense, and Elly is pleased with it — the set of objects on this tray. At other times a rudimentary fantasy will give an arrangement an eerie social meaning, as when Elly sets out the letters on the scrabble board and informs us they are having a dinner party. Other games are even more discouraging. These we do not share. Daily Elly empties her toy-basket, pulls her books on to the floor, systematically dumps out every jigsaw puzzle in the house to sift the pieces through her fingers, as she sifts marbles, peanuts, even dolls. If I could always be playing with her, feeding her imagination and sustaining her attention, perhaps she would not play like that. But I cannot. Her play covers the whole range from utter sterility to the amusing surprises of the two incidents I described first. But such incidents, though increasingly frequent, are not typical. They exhibit the extreme of inventiveness and flexibility that Elly can as yet reach.

  Play has its surprises, and (so far have we come) conversation has them too.

  Elly says, ‘Elly three hundred!’

  I say, ‘Three hundred is too old, Elly will die.’ (This is a concept that will bear some work, since it is so far based exclusively on squashed mosquitoes. )

  Elly says cheerfully, ‘Too old, die,’ and mimes it. ‘Great big dead, too old! Carry me? Elly too tired? Elly three hundred, yes!’

  Elly has been talking a good deal about dirt recently — dog dirt, doll dirt, our dirt. It means faeces. We have accepted this, particularly since her fuzzy pronunciation does much to denaturize the word in company. But her speech is improving and she is, after all, in school. I want her to learn, even if she cannot understand, that dirt is not an all-purpose conversational gambit. So I say, ‘I don’t want to talk about dirt.’ Yesterday at dinner I had said the same thing. Elly remembers — not only what I said but where and when. She makes a supreme effort to imagine what not wanting to talk about dirt might entail. We are not at dinner now, but for her the words are still embedded in their first context and it is in that context that she must envisage what I might regard as suitable conversation. She says triumphantly, ‘I [equals, of course, “you, mother”] want to talk about corn muffin!’

  So slowly understanding grows, and even concern for others. ‘Becky eye pink. Need ointment.’ I recognize my own voice in the conventionalized tones of her concern. ‘Becky eye all better, Becky ha’ pink eye, yes! Don’t touch-uh-eye, make-uh-itch! Leave eye alone, Becky. Feel better, yes. Becky eye all better, yes. She hurt. Ow! Ointment in it. See? All better. Sore eye. Becky get sad. See, Becky eye itch. Look. Becky cry? No!

  Becky be happy! Becky sad? No! Becky put-uh-ointment in it.’

  And gradually the forms of social interaction are refined. Coming in from my day at the college I greet her.

  ‘Hi, bird.’

  ‘Hi, bird,’ she echoes.

  ‘Say “hi, Mama.” ’ (On second thought) ‘Am I your bird?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s all right, then you can say “bird” too.’

  ‘Hi, bird too.’

  This is Elly in her own home, occasionally frustrated and anxious (if she has decided that the number of those dolls is significant, there will be hell to pay if she loses one), but in the main gay, active, full of cheerful noises and cheerful words. But if you were to watch her outside it you would see something very different. Outside, children play, familiar children who have lived long in the neighbourhood. No such conversations take place with them. They play in ways Elly does not share. They pull wagons, ride tricycles, run in and out of houses for toys and equipment, organize tea-parties, snow fights, and hide-and-seek. Elly swings and swings, or eats snow, or plays with sand as of old, dribbling it from a spoon. I can get her to make cakes, but why should another child make the effort,
or accommodate itself to her rigidities? ‘You want to put icing on it, Elly?’ Anxiously Elly replies ‘No?’

  The children have learned not to talk to Elly unless I am there to act as interpreter — an interpreter not even of speech, but of behaviour. It is simply too hard for them. Sometimes there is a brief contact, as in taking turns on a swing. But where, either because of inability or shyness, neither party will take the initiative, there can be no real interaction. I am trying to encourage Elly to answer when a child says ‘Hi, Elly’. So far, I am encouraged — but the child is bewildered — if she echoes ‘Hi, Elly’, back.

  But here too there are mysteries. Elly can be contrary, and she knows how to tease. She will rarely greet someone she knows well, but on occasion she will rush up to some college boy she has never seen before and embrace him on the street. He, of course, is as embarrassed as I am, and Elly looks at us with mischief in her eyes. Or she makes — not often — a clumsy overture to another child, an overture that would have been reciprocated had she made it when she was two, to another two-year-old, but that normal children now find bizarre and frightening. It is hard to build sociality on these fitful and easily discouraged advances.

  Elly is now in the class for the educable retarded at our local public school. After three years with normal children, the private school considered it impossible to move her into even their extremely small first grade. Ironically, it was because she had made so much progress that they could not keep her. She was no more strange than she had always been, but as she has improved her strangeness has acquired a much higher visibility. Now that she can ‘act out’, she is no longer the silent child who took directions and caused no trouble, but a spring-tight, hyperactive little girl who uses her voice and her whole body to express the emotions, positive and negative, that are at length available to her. Newly at large in the world of feeling, she must learn to control it, and that without converting control into repression.