The Child Who Never Grew (nonfiction)

by Pearl S. Buck

  A car stopped and a group of young girls in their teens, all children in the school, mounted the steps and crossed the porch. They greeted the headmistress very properly and she returned their greeting. I saw her watching them sharply.

  Suddenly she called to them, “Girls, stop!”

  They stopped, half frightened.

  The headmistress said in her clear, peremptory way, “How often have I told you to hold up your heads? Go back to the steps and walk across the porch again.”

  They obeyed instantly while she watched.

  When they had gone into the house she turned to me with a complacent explanatory air. “It is part of my work to teach the girls how to enter a room properly and how to leave it. Feeble-minded people always walk with their heads hanging—it’s characteristic. I have to break them of it.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “These girls all come of good families, people in society,” she explained. “The parents don’t want to be ashamed of taking them about.” She laughed half contemptuously. “Why, I even have to teach them how to hold a hand at bridge and look as though they were playing!”

  “Why do you do it?” I asked.

  “I have to make my living,” she said honestly enough.

  We parted on that, but I knew that I would never send my child to her handsome institution. I wanted to find a man or woman who thought of the children first. Of course we must all live, but it is amazing how easy it is to find bread when one does not put it first.

  That experience taught me thereafter to look for the right person at the head of the institution. I knew that the employees would be no better than the head, therefore the head must be the best. I ceased to look at equipment and housing. There must of course be space for play, and ample sunshine and fresh air. I rejected the extreme north country because the season outside was so short. My child had been used to a semi-tropical air and much outdoor play. But beyond space and a minimum of cleanliness and care, I began to look for the right people, people who were warm and human.

  I might say here that since I was not resident in my own country I belonged to no state and therefore state institutions were not easily open to me. Moreover, they had long waiting lists, and though I visited them, most of them were overcrowded and the children lived in strict routine. Oh, how my heart suffered for those big rooms of children sitting dully on benches, waiting!

  “What are they waiting for?” I asked my guide one day.

  “They aren’t waiting for anything,” he replied in surprise. “They’re just sitting. That’s all they want to do.”

  “How do you know they wouldn’t like to do something more?” I asked.

  He evaded the question. “We get them all up a couple of times a day and make them walk around the building.”

  But I know the children were really waiting. They were waiting for something pleasant to happen to them. Perhaps they did not know they were waiting, but they were. I know now that there is no mind so dim that it does not feel pain and pleasure. These, too, were human beings—that, I perceived, was the important thing to understand, and many of those who cared for them did not understand it. The children who never grow are human beings and they suffer as human beings, inarticulately but deeply nevertheless. The human creature is always more than an animal.

  That is the one thing we must never forget. He is forever more than a beast. Though the mind has gone away, though he cannot speak or communicate with anyone, the human stuff is there, and he belongs to the human family.

  I saw this wonderfully exemplified in one state institution. When I first visited the place it was an abode of horror. The children, some young in body, some old, were apparently without any minds whatever. The average mental age was estimated at less than one year. They were herded together like dogs. They wore baglike garments of rough calico or burlap. Their food was given to them on the floor and they snatched it up. No effort was made to teach them toilet habits. The floors were of cement and were hosed two or three times a day. The beds were pallets on the floor, and filthy. There were explanations, of course. I was told that these children could be taught nothing, that they merely existed until they died. Worst of all to me was that there was not one thing of beauty anywhere, nothing for the children to look at, no reason for them to lift their heads or put out their hands.

  Some years later I went back again. I had heard there was a new man in charge, a young man who was different. I found that he was different, and because he was, he had made the whole institution different. It was as crowded as ever, but wholly changed. It was like a home. There were gay curtain at the windows and bright linoleum on the floors. In the various rooms the children had been segregated, babies were with babies, and older children with their own kind. There were chairs and benches and the children sat on them. There were flowers in the windows and toys on the floor. The children were decent and even wore pretty clothes, and they were all clean. The old sickening smell was gone. There was a dining room, and there were tables, on which were dishes and spoons and mugs.

  “Are the children now of a higher grade?” I asked the young man.

  “No,” he said, smiling, “many of them are the same children.”

  “But I was told they could not be taught.”

  “They can all be taught something,” he replied. “When they can’t manage alone, someone helps them.”

  Then he showed me the things they had made, actually little baskets and mats, simple and full of mistakes, but to me wonderful. And the children who had made them were so proud of what they had done. They came up to us, and though they could not speak, they knew what they had done.

  “Has their mental age gone up?” I asked.

  “A little, on the average,” he replied. “But it isn’t only mental age that counts with them—or with anybody, for that matter.”

  “How did you do it?” I asked.

  “I treat them as human beings,” he said simply.

  When my search ended it was at another place where I found such a person. Without looking at the buildings or the grounds, I knew when I entered the office and shook hands with quiet, gray-haired man who greeted me with a gentle voice that I had found what I wanted. Of course I did not decide upon impulse. I told him about my child and what it was that I looked for, and he listened. There was something in the way he listened. He was sympathetic, but not with effort. He was not eager. He said diffidently that he did not know whether I would be satisfied with his school, but we might look around. So we did look around, and what I saw was that every child’s face lit when he came into the cottages, and that there was a clamor of voices to greet him and call his name—Uncle Ed, they called him. I saw he took time to play with them and that he let them hug his knees and look in his pockets where there were small chocolates—very tiny ones, not enough to spoil a child’s appetite. He knew every child and his seeing eyes were noticing everything everywhere. He greeted the attendants with courtesy and when he made a suggestion—that Jimmy, for instance, should have a lower chair upon which to sit, and so the legs of the chair he liked best could be cut off to suit—the attendant was quick to agree.

  The buildings were pleasant and adequate, but not nearly so handsome as some I had seen. The atmosphere was what I felt. It was warm and free and friendly. I saw children playing around the yards behind the cottages, making mud pies and behaving as though they were at home. I saw a certain motto repeated again and again on the walls, on the stationery, hanging above the head’s own desk. It was this: “Happiness first and all else follows.”

  The head smiled when he saw my eyes resting on the words. “That’s not just sentimentality,” he said. “It is the fruit of experience. We’ve found that we cannot teach a child anything unless his mind and heart are free of unhappiness. The only child who can learn is the happy child.”

  I knew enough about teaching to know that this is a sound principle in any education. It was comforting and reassuring to find it the corne
rstone here upon which all else was built. I said to myself that I would look no more.

  Upon a September day I bought my little girl to the place I had found. We walked about to accustom her to the new playgrounds and I went with her to the corner where her bed stood. I met the woman who was to be her attendant, as well as the superintendent of girls. The child clung to my hand and I to hers. What went on in her little mind I do not know, but I think some foreboding was there. We had never been separated, and the time was coming when there must be a separation almost as final as death. I would come back to see her often, and she could come sometimes to see me, but the separation was there, nevertheless. We were to be parted. Even though I believed that it was best for her safety that she find her permanent shelter here, the fact that she would need lifelong shelter was the primary cruelty.

  In the afternoon of that day which was so dreadful in its passing the head asked me to come to the assembly hall. The children were all to gather there for some music. In his kindness he asked me to sit on the platform with him and to speak to the children for a few minutes about Chinese children. Some of them, he said, would understand.

  There are moments which crystallize within an instant the meaning of years. Such a one came to me when I stood on the platform of that room and saw before me hundreds of children’s faces looking up to me. What heartache loomed behind each one, what years of pain, what tears, what frightened disappointment and despair! They were here for life, prisoners of their fate. And among them, one of them, my child must henceforth be.

  The kind man at whose side I stood must have discerned something of what I felt, for when he saw I could not speak he told a little story and made the children laugh and I was able to go on again. I think I never tried more earnestly to interest an audience, never had I put myself so wholeheartedly into any effort as I did that half hour of talk with those children. I could not say what was in my heart. I could not tell them I understood their lives better than I understood anything else, because I had lived through such a life. I had to tell small childish things that they could grasp, and my reward was their fresh laughter.

  After it was over, the head took me aside alone and talked to me gently and gravely. I have never forgotten his words. “You must remember,” he said, “that these are happy children. They are safe here. They will never know distress or want. They will never know struggle or defeat, nor will sorrow ever touch them. No demands are made upon them which they cannot meet. The joys which they can appreciate they have. Your child will escape all suffering. Will you remember that and let it be a comfort to you? Remember that there is a sorrow worse than one’s own—it is to see a beloved person suffer without being able to help. That sorrow you will never have.”

  Many a time since then when I have thought of the child and the waters have seemed to close over my head, I have remembered those kind and wise words. As long as the child is happy, am I not strong enough to bear what is to be borne?

  I left her there and, following the request of the school, I did not visit her for a month. The head believed that a full month was needed for the new roots to be put down, and to see the parents delayed the necessary process. They would tell me, he promised, if anything went wrong. So I tore myself away, leaving her for the first time in our lives.

  Of that month I need not speak. Any parent like me will know the doubts that beset me. To leave a child who cannot write a letter, who cannot even make known in words what she feels and needs, seemed to me at times the height of cruelty. These times came in the night, and only the thought of a future with the child grown old and me gone could keep me from hurrying to the nearest railway station. Ah, well, there are many who know such hours in the night!

  It would be pleasant to say that when I went back to the school at the end of the month I found the child happy and well. This was not true. Her distraught little face, her pitiful joy at seeing me brought back all the doubts again and I was ready to pack her trunk and bring her home.

  The elderly matron stood looking at us. “She has been quite naughty,” she said gravely. “She has not wanted to do what the other children do and she has cried a great deal. We have had to deal with her.”

  “Deal with her?” I asked.

  “Yes. When she ran out of the house we had to restrain her.”

  “She is used to freedom,” I murmured. “And of course she was running out to look for me.”

  “She cannot run outside alone,” the matron said, “and she must learn to obey. When she learns, she will be happy as the others are.”

  Protest was thick in my throat, but I choked it back. “I will take her out for a little walk,” I said.

  As soon as we were outside and alone she was as happy as a songbird again, but she clutched my hand as though she would never let it go. I went in search of the head. He was there in his office and he welcomed me and spoke to the child. She seemed to know him and not be afraid of him, and this meant he had been to see her himself.

  I began at once. “I think I cannot leave her here,” I told him. “The matron says that they have had to restrain her, whatever that means. But surely they understand that a little child like this cannot suddenly be happy without the home she has always had. She has never been among strangers. She cannot understand why her life is completely and suddenly changed. Do the children have to be forced into a routine? Must they walk in line into the dining room, for example?”

  This and much more I said. He let me say it all while his eyes were kind upon us.

  “It is not possible for your child to live here exactly as she has in your home,” he said when I had finished. “Here she is one of many. She will be individually cared for and watched and taught, it is true, but she cannot behave as though she were the only child. This will mean some loss of freedom to her. This loss you must weigh against the gain. She is safe here. She has companionship. When she learns to fall in with the others in the small routines that are necessary in any big family, she will even enjoy the sense of being with the crowd. She has to learn, you know. But rest assured that she will be taught only those things which she is able to learn and nothing will be forced on her that is beyond her.

  “Try to think of what she will be a year from now, five years from now. Try to consider justly whether this place is the right one for her home. Don’t lose a larger value in some small present dissatisfaction.”

  I said, “It is so hard because she doesn’t understand why it is all necessary or that it is for her good.”

  “None of us really understands why,” he said in his same gentle voice. “You do not understand why you have had to have the child like this at all. You cannot see that there is any good in it anywhere.”

  I could not indeed.

  “You cannot shield your child from everything,” he went on. “She is a human creature and she must bear her little share, too, of what is common to all human life.”

  Much else he said and I sat listening and the child sat content by my side. When he finished I knew that he had done what he meant to do—he had helped me to find strength to think of the child’s larger good.

  I stayed with her for only a day because they said it would be better not to stay too long the first time. Then I went away. I shall never forget as long as I live that I had to pull her little arms away from around my neck and that I dared not look back. I knew the matron was holding her fast and I knew I must not see it, lest my courage fail.

  Years have passed since that day. I came to live in America, not far from her, and I visit her often. She is used now to my coming and going, and yet even now there is the brief clinging when I leave. “I want to go home,” she whispers again and again. She comes home sometimes, too, and is filled with joy for a few days. But here is the comfort I take nowadays. After she has been at home a week or so, she begins to miss the other home. She inquires after “the girls,” she asks for some toy or musical instrument or record that she left behind. At last almost willingly she goes back again, after making s
ure that I am coming soon to see her. The long struggle is over. The adjustment has been made. When the wakeful hours come in the night I comfort myself, thinking that if I should die before I wake, as the old childish prayer has it, her life would go on just the same. Much of the money that I have been able to earn has gone into making this security for her. I have a sense of pride that she will be dependent on no one as long as she lives, and whether or not I live I have done all that could be done.

  I realize that many parents cannot be so fortunate as I have been in being able to make a child secure. Some of them have come to me with children like mine and have asked me what to do. They have told me that they have little money or that they have other children and what there is must be divided. The helpless child cannot have everything, however the parents’ hearts are torn. They are right, of course. Speaking coldly, if it is possible to do so, the normal children are more useful to society perhaps than the helpless ones.

  And yet I wonder if that is so. My helpless child has taught me so much. She has taught me patience, above all else. I come of a family impatient with stupidity and slowness, and I absorbed the family intolerance of minds less quick than our own. Then there was put into my sole keeping this pitiful mind, struggling against I know not what handicap. Could I despise it for what was no fault of its own? That indeed would have been the most cruel injustice. While I tried to find out its slight abilities I was compelled both by love and justice to learn tender and careful patience. It was not always easy. Normal impatience burst forth time and again, to my shame, and it seemed useless to try to teach. But justice reasoned with me thus: “This mind has the right to its fullest development too. It may be very little, but the right is the same as yours, or any other’s. If you refuse it the right to know, in so far as it can know, you do a wrong.”