by Torey Hayden
Haa was not a good thing to have to keep saying over and over again. His intense work on the sound was causing him to hyperventilate. It made him sway with dizziness and occasionally he was forced to pause and let his head clear. I wondered as I watched him if he knew his breathing was making him feel like that or if he just thought it was the fear.
The fear was with us. Like a living thing, it sat upon his shoulders. He trembled. Sweat flowed in rivulets down through his hair and over his ravaged skin.
‘Haaaaa. Ha. Ha. Ha.’ Still there was no real sound to it, although it was very nearly a whisper.
The minutes passed. I sat, too, with my arms hugging my knees, my chin atop them. Haa, Kevin kept saying. My bad knee grew sore from sitting so long like that without moving but I was afraid to move.
‘Haaaaaaa. Haaa. Haa, haa.’
Over and over he repeated that one sound. He seemed to need to hear himself say it because he kept his head cocked to one side. He would say the sound and then his eyes would narrow in concentration as if he was appraising the quality of it. I wondered if he had forgotten what his own voice sounded like. Or how it felt to speak.
‘Haaa. Haa, haa, haa, haa, haa, haa.’
A deep breath.
‘Haaaaaaaaaaaaa.’ The sound became a real whisper for the first time and the breathiness went out of it. Kevin jerked up, hit his head on the table. He cocked his head again. ‘Haaaaaaaaaaa,’ he went in a whisper. ‘Hooo, haaa, ho.’ His brows knit. ‘Ho,’ he whispered again and listened to the quality of the sound.
Now it was all whispers. He continued to repeat the sound, varying the vowels. ‘Haaa, ho, heeee, huh, haaaaaaaaaaa.’ Then back to the breathy ha, ha, ha, ha before returning to the softer whispered noises. He could hear the difference. With an expression of intense concentration, he tried the two, the sound and the whisper, side by side. Back and forth between the two he went.
He was like a piano tuner tuning a fine instrument. Hugging my knees very tightly, I tried to make myself as small and unobtrusive as possible. This was not my place. I had nothing to do with what Kevin was accomplishing. I was, if anything, an interloper into this private interaction Kevin was having with himself. But at the same time, I was utterly fascinated. It was like being in someone’s mind, as if I had been given the privilege of actually being inside someone else, of seeing another person relating to himself in that personal, intimate way we discourse with ourselves.
‘Haaaaaaaaaaaaa. HaaaaAAAAAaa.’ His voice broke through. It startled him and he froze, every muscle going tense. Sweat dripped off his chin onto his shirt. Silence roared around us.
‘HaaAAA?’ he said tentatively and froze again. ‘HAA?’
‘HAAAA,’ in a real voice. ‘HAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.’
Kevin’s muscles remained tense, the outline of them rippling along under his T-shirt, standing out like Roman columns in his neck. But his concentration did not break. ‘Haa,’ he said aloud, listening to the sound. His voice was gravelly and hoarse from nonuse. ‘Ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha,’ he said in short bursts. Intense concentration kept his features puckered.
‘Ha. Ha. Ha. Ho. Ho. Ho. Ha. Ha.’ He sounded like a machine gun, shooting the words out in sharp staccato. ‘Huh. Huh. Huh. Ho. Ho. Hee. Hee. Hee. Ha.’
I stayed small and silent. I did not know if he had forgotten me or not, but it did not seem like the moment to call attention to my presence.
‘Huh. Huh. Huh. Huh. Hup. Hup. Haa. Haap. Haap. Haap.’ He experimented with new sounds.
All of a sudden the life went out of him. He gave a great sigh of weariness and dropped his head down on his knees in exhaustion. Then, like a tree falling, he just tumbled over onto his side and lay in a heap. Again he sighed.
I watched him.
He was exhausted. Every last bit of energy drained out of him. I was feeling a great camaraderie with him just then. His success did not have anything to do with me, but I felt very privileged that he had let me share it. I was smiling, without even being aware of it.
‘That was hard work, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘You must be dead tired.’
‘Ho,’ he said, and I could hear him repeat the sound a couple of times. ‘Ho, ho. I …,’ he said, ‘I, I didn’t … ho … I didn’t think I was going to do it. Whew. Whooooow.’ His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. ‘I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to do that again,’ he said softly from under his arms. ‘I thought I never could do it.’
On Sunday afternoon I had Charity over. It was the first time we had seen one another since the open house. I had planned to make a kite with her and take her down to the field at the bottom of the road to fly it. The wind was excellent for kite flying, and it was a beautiful autumn afternoon.
Charity was unimpressed.
‘What’s this for?’ she asked as she came into the kitchen. I had sticks and newspapers lying spread out on the table. I explained carefully, trying to make my own enthusiasm for the project contagious. I loved making kites, and it had grown to be a passsion when I had had my classroom.
‘What do you want to do that for?’ she asked earnestly. ‘You can buy kites at the store. You don’t have to make ’em, you know.’
‘It’s fun.’
‘Oh.’
I bribed her with a chocolate-chip cookie, and we set about cutting and gluing and tying tails. Charity was a little scruffier looking than she had been on the night of the open house. Although her hair was in braids, they obviously had been slept in, causing long strands of hair to escape. Toast crumbs and bits of jam clung to the hair by her face. Her forehead was still patched up with Band-Aids, one across the other in an X, like a pirate’s crossbones. She wore a faded T-shirt with an even more faded kitten on it and, up on the right-hand shoulder, a huge, glittery dime-store brooch. It had a big hunk of blue glass in the middle, surrounded by rhinestones. I commented on it.
‘Oh this?’ Charity asked, and went a little cross-eyed trying to see it. ‘My big sister Sandy bought it for me. See, she gave it to me. It’s an emerald.’
‘I thought emeralds were green. Maybe it’s a sapphire.’
‘Nope. It’s an emerald. A blue emerald. They’re betterer than green emeralds. Green ones are common. These’re rare!’
‘Well, yes, I’d agree with that,’ I said.
‘It’s real too.’
‘Really?’
‘Yup. It’s worth at least a million dollars probably. Only I’d never sell it. Sandy gave it to me and it’s a real, genuine blue emerald.’
‘Do you have other sisters, Charity?’
‘Oh yeah. I got Sandy, she’s twelve. And Cheryl, she’s ten. And Diana, she’s eight.’
‘Diana? I thought Diana was your Big Sister from the program.’
‘This is another Diana. This one’s my real, genuine sister. For real.’
‘I see. And that’s all? Are you the youngest?’
She nodded decisively. ‘Yep. I’m the very youngest.
When they got me, they stopped. ’Cause I’m the very best. They didn’t want any more after me.’
I could understand that. For a moment I became absorbed in getting paper to stick to the side of the kite, then I looked over. ‘Hey, wait a minute, Charity. I thought you said you were eight. If you’re eight, how come Diana’s eight?’
Charity looked flustered, but only for a fleeting moment. She smacked her forehead with one hand. ‘Oh, I goofed. Silly me. Diana’s nine. I forgot.’
‘Oh. I thought perhaps you were twins,’ I said, thanking God for not making two of Charity.
‘Yeah! That’s right! I forgot. We’re twins.’
‘But I thought you just said –’
‘Well, see, Diana’s the oldest twin and I’m the youngest.’
‘I thought you said she was nine, though. And you’re eight.’
‘Well, yeah, I did,’ she said, looking at me as if I were the one who was losing her marbles.
‘Are you sure you know what twins are, Charity?’
&n
bsp; ‘Of course I do. Do you think I’m stupid? I just forgot. I got a lot on my mind and I just forgot. Diana’s just the oldest twin and I’m the youngest. First her and then me. So that’s why she’s nine. And I’m going to be nine pretty soon too.’
‘Oh? When?’
‘Next August.’
‘But, Charity, it’s October now.’
‘Yeah, see what I mean? Any day now I’ll be nine.’
Clearly this was a conversation best to be dropped.
Later we walked down to the field to fly the kite. The wind was good and even Charity’s part of the kite held up well, despite its patches. Charity ran when I told her to run and stopped when I told her to stop and let the string out when instructed. When the kite was finally airborne, she sank gratefully into the grass and sprawled out. I sat down next to her.
She looked over. ‘How come we’re doing this?’
‘Because it’s fun.’
‘Oh,’ she said, quite interested. ‘When does the fun part start?’
‘This is the fun part, Charity.’
‘Oh, it is?’ Her forehead wrinkled. ‘You do this for fun?’
I was a little disenchanted with this kid. After all, it was my Sunday afternoon too. ‘Yes, I do this for fun. And I’m having it. Why aren’t you?’
Charity looked startled. ‘Well, I guess maybe I am,’ she said. ‘I just didn’t know it.’ And for the first time since she’d arrived, she fell silent.
Both of us lay in the grass and watched the kite. Charity rose after a while and walked around the field before coming back and settling down with me again. She chattered on constantly.
At the end of the day when I was preparing to take her home, she fished something out of her pocket.
‘Here.’
It was an unidentifiable wad about three inches across.
‘I brung this for you,’ she said.
I took it and thanked her. There was a piece of thin paper around it which I attempted to unwrap. Inside was a squishy, gummy-looking lump. ‘What is it?’ I inquired politely.
‘A piece of cake. Last Wednesday this girl had a birthday at school and she brang us all some cake. I saved it for you.’
‘Oh.’ That made me feel obliged to eat it and so I took a bite and tried to look like it was scrumptious.
‘I ate a little bit of it. Just there at the edge. But I saved you the most.’ She was smiling sweetly, her empty tooth sockets all showing.
‘Well, thank you, Charity, that’s awfully thoughtful of you.’
‘Oh, that’s okay,’ she replied and shrugged. ‘I tried to give it to our dog but he spit it out.’
Chapter Seven
Kevin spoke. In the way I had found typical of most elective mutes, he came back with full powers of speech – grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure – as if he had been speaking all along. In the very beginning, his voice was hoarse and gritty sounding from lack of use. We went through a truckload of throat lozenges and hard candies, trying to ease the roughness, but soon he became accustomed to speaking again and the soreness went away.
Kevin was not a hesitant conversationalist. For the first few days our communications were limited while he experimented with his voice. However, he was speaking easily before the following week was out.
Our conversations were none too brilliant in the beginning. After such an ordeal, I think one is inclined to expect profundity at the very least. Thus it was anticlimatic to have most of our conversations revolve around things like crossword puzzles or Kevin’s day on the ward or my work at the clinic. I couldn’t tell how much he was guarding from me because I just did not know him very well.
However, simply because we had conquered his lack of speech did not mean that we had solved all problems. We were a long way from it. His fear, for example, was still of the same magnificent proportions. The only difference now was that he could make occasional comments about it. But we remained trapped under that damned table. In fact, we seemed more firmly stuck under it than before.
I compromised on the table issue, by not always going under it myself. Instead, I pushed the chairs to one side and sat down on the carpet just beyond the table. This was more comfortable because there was more room and I didn’t have to hunch up. But it did not entice Kevin out and he would not talk to me if I got very far away from him. So mostly, I lay on the rug on my stomach, half of me under the table, half of me out.
Kevin was able to make me captive to others of his fears, too. For instance, one morning someone had left a box of old schoolbooks sitting on the empty bookcase in the room. It was a largish cardboard carton, and when I noticed it, I could see old readers and workbooks sticking out of the top but I gave no thought to it. Kevin, however, focused on it right off.
‘What’s in that box?’ he asked from under the table.
‘Some old schoolbooks, I think,’ I replied.
‘What kind of books?’
I don’t know. I didn’t look.’
A worried expression crossed his face. ‘Go look.’ He nudged me. ‘Go look for me. Tell me what’s in it.’
When I didn’t move, he became more agitated. His speech gave him a new power over me because now he could be sure I understood what he wanted. Sweat beaded up on his face.
‘There might be spirals in there,’ he said in a hushed voice. ‘On notebooks. There might be spiral notebooks inside that box.’
‘I don’t think so, Kevin. I think there’s just old schoolbooks.’
‘But sometimes there’s spirals on old books.’
‘No, I don’t think there are.’
‘There might be. You said you didn’t look. So you don’t know. There might be and you just can’t see them. They might be under there. Spirals might be in that box. Go look and find out.’
He could not concentrate. Once the terrifying thought had entered his head, he became obsessed with it. He knew those small, metal, spring like spirals were in there, lurking, waiting to shoot out and get him. All the little manifestations of fear began, the trembling, the chattering, the sweating, the shallow breathing. He wrapped himself up in a small ball way back in the safety of his table and rocked. Nothing I could say would relieve him. Tears welled up. His knuckles went white. And in the end I got up, took all the stuff out of the box, showed him all of it, just to prove that it was entirely safe with no spiral-bound notebooks to be found. Only then could he relax.
For the first few sessions after Kevin began to talk, I told no one. I’m not sure why. It seemed a secret trust for a while. But once his speaking began to take on all the proportions of normalcy and was no longer such a special achievement in and of itself, I started the usual procedures to generalize it to include other people.
Normally, I was able to quickly generalize an elective mute’s speech beyond the two of us. However, in Kevin’s case I soon realized that Kevin’s choice to speak had little to do with me, personally, and my techniques. Consequently, I had no ability to make him speak to other people. It quickly became apparent that I had not caused him to speak. Instead, he had simply opened his private world of one to include me.
And Kevin chose forthrightly not to speak to anyone else. That drastically narrowed the scope of our first victory.
It drove me mad for a while because I could do nothing. I had told Dana and the staff and Jeff what had happened, that Kevin was speaking to me, but try as I might, if Dana or someone else came into the small white room, I could not get Kevin to talk to them. I tried. There was war between us for a while. I tried my usual approach. I tried my backup techniques. I tried other methods afterward, which I had used with some success with other children. I tried other people’s recommendations, the things I read about in journals. When those all expired from overwork, I invented a few new techniques on the spot. In the end, I hoped to wear him down just by the sheer quantity of tries, if nothing else. But I didn’t. Nothing worked.
Nothing worked for a very simple reason, I suspect. Kevin wouldn’t let it. This was a
very different kind of battle than the one that first week. Then, it had been him and me against the silence. Not so now. It was Kevin against me.
Finally I gave up. It had grown to be a power struggle between us and nothing more. I don’t know. Perhaps if I had persisted I might have worn him down eventually. But if I had, the objective would have been tarnished. To dominate, I would have had to let the real objective fall to the wayside, stripped of its integrity. So reluctantly I gave in. When the days passed and I could not generalize Kevin’s speech to other people, I had to face defeat. It was miserably hard to back down, but for whatever reason, this apparently was not the time for it to happen.
Undoubtedly, the most irritating aspect of the lack of generalization was that I don’t think everyone believed me when I said Kevin talked to me. I took a terrible drubbing from Jeff. He was absolutely merciless for a while until I actually got angry with him over it. But with Jeff, no matter how irritating, it was pure jest. He knew that if I said the boy talked, he talked. However, the staff at Garson Gayer really got under my skin. They made half-joking remarks and clustered around the door of the small white room and grew very keen for tapes and recordings, so that they could hear for themselves. Everyone knew that under normal circumstances I did a lot of video-recording of my work. That I wasn’t doing so with Kevin seemed to only strengthen the likelihood that I was fabricating the entire thing. But I couldn’t record. There was no way to disguise a recorder in the bare little room and even if I could have, I don’t think I would. It would have been a kind of betrayal to Kevin, who feared the world beyond the door so much. Winning the power struggle with him or asserting my position with the staff shouldn’t be worth that much. So I just held my tongue, stayed out of earshot when I could and pretended not to hear the insinuations or feel them.
So, as the hazy days of October passed, it remained just the two of us alone under the table.
One of the most remarkable things about Kevin was his almost nonexistent personal history. Previously, I had always considered files a nuisance. They prejudiced people against kids before they even met. They were filled mostly with bureaucratic nonsense and the self-important mutterings of little gods. But nonetheless, all my kids had come with them in one form or another and I had always read them. Usually, the worse the kid, the thicker the file. One time I had a fourteen-inch-thick file in my cabinet for one ten-year-old. For Kevin, however, this was not the case, a very remarkable fact in light of his long history with the state.