The Solace of Trees

by Robert Madrygin

  Despite the overall success of Amir’s homeschooling, there remained the question of his cultural and social integration into the society he had come to live in. In the weeks since the boy had come to live with her, Margaret and Amir’s caseworker had been having ongoing discussions about whether or not to enroll him in the local public school. They had met several times with local school officials and had been reassured by the administration’s open and responsive attitude toward the boy’s special circumstance. The regional elementary school, located near the larger, neighboring college town, was accustomed to accommodating children of diverse backgrounds. The school had both strong ESL and special needs programs that they felt would serve the deaf-mute boy’s needs.

  Margaret was torn. She felt a deep contentment in sharing the cloister of the boy’s silent world, their kinship growing and their communication clear despite the lack of words within which to frame the meaning of their relationship. A part of her would have been happy to continue in that peaceful, monastic silence. Yet she knew that Amir would be best served by entering the public school. A decision was made that he would begin attending the public school after the winter holidays, when the new semester began.

  As the winter solstice grew closer and the days ever shorter, the mornings Amir woke up late seemed to increase. At first, Margaret ascribed his tardy rising to the sunlight’s own belated arrival. But even when fully awake he seemed to be agitated and restless.

  “You look tired,” Margaret signed to Amir as she served him breakfast. “Sleep OK?”

  “Yes,” Amir replied, his fist bending at the wrist, raising and lowering lethargically in ambivalent reply.

  “Really?” Margaret asked.

  “Don’t know,” he signed in more truthful answer.

  “We’ll talk later. When you wake up.”

  “OK,” Amir assented.

  But Margaret’s foster son never seemed able to break through the languid, sleepy state he had woken with that morning. He showed little enthusiasm for the lessons Margaret had planned for the day’s study. Even the hour period of his nature study, when Amir would normally enthusiastically bundle up and head outdoors with his journal, was met with lackluster response.

  “Let’s stop,” Margaret signed, closing the Bosnian–English dictionary she was using for Amir’s language study.

  Without signing in response, Amir nodded his agreement.

  “You still look tired. Are you?” Margaret’s hands signed, speaking her question.

  “Yes, a little.”

  “Bad dreams last night?”

  “Maybe,” the boy signed, his open palms raising and lowering alternately one to the other.

  “You remember them?”

  “No,” Amir shook his head in reply, bringing his thumb and two forefingers together in sign.

  “OK. You rest. I’ll make dinner,” Margaret signed.

  That evening Amir ate a few mouthfuls of his dinner and spent the rest of the night absentmindedly leafing through the pages of an illustrated book. Feeling an unusual and heavy tiredness, he went to bed early. Sometime in the middle of the night Margaret was awakened from her dreams by a loud, continuous stream of sound that, when she was coherent enough to focus, she recognized as a shouting voice. It took her a few seconds more to realize that the sound was coming from Amir’s bedroom down the hallway.

  Switching on her bedside light, Margaret rushed to the boy’s room. Opening his door, she was able to make out the form of his body seized in convulsion, as though a strong current of electricity ran through him, while he shouted hysterically. Moving quickly toward the bed, Margaret turned on the lamp and checked to make sure Amir wasn’t biting his tongue or having difficulty breathing. Making a quick decision, she didn’t try to interrupt the seizure, but kept careful watch over him until the episode ended with Amir suddenly sitting upright in the bed, his eyes staring directly through his foster mother, as if they held no recognition of who she was or that she was even there. Strange, unintelligible words flowed out his mouth.

  After a few seconds, Margaret took the boy by the shoulders and slowly leaned him backward, toward a prone position, his body rigid and stiff. Still talking, but now in more of a soft mutter than a full voice, Amir’s eyes stared toward the ceiling. Margaret stroked his shoulders, calming him, then turned off the lamp and sat beside him in the dark. After a time the young boy’s eyes closed and his words ceased. Checking his pulse and waiting until his body relaxed, Margaret finally returned to her room. But there was little sleep for her that night. Her mind, caught in a shock of its own, ran through the startling event, trying to analyze the episode’s symptoms in an effort to calm her thoughts. It was almost certainly a psychogenic, non-epileptic seizure, the retired psychology professor told herself. There was no need to worry, no need to take emergency action, another voice said, trying to reassure her anxious mind. Maybe I should call Alice. No, it’s late. She’s asleep. She’ll only tell me the things I already know: keep a careful watch; if it happens again, be sure his airway is clear and he isn’t biting his tongue.

  But no amount of professional jargon or calming internal dialogue could ease the emotional disturbance that roiled within her or the worry that her foster son might suffer another attack. During the hours of her sleepless night a hundred thoughts passed through her head. Had the boy’s hearing returned as well? Had he heard himself speak? Would the shock of the episode so frighten him that his mind would block it from his conscious awareness?

  Amir awoke feeling confused by his dreams. He remembered that Margaret had been in them. Rolling over to look at the clock on the nightstand next to his bed, his ears were filled with a strange sensation: a soft, low rustling noise, the sheets shifting as he moved to see the time. It was a sound that would barely register within most people’s awareness. For the deaf-mute boy, however, hearing the sheets rustle was an experience of extraordinary proportion.

  Had his dreams followed him into waking? Or was he still in them? As he got up from bed, sounds continued to follow him. They pursued him as he walked over to his clothes and put them on, his senses suddenly finding an added dimension as the clothing touched his skin: legs into his pants, shirt slipped on over his head, socks tugged on over his feet, and feet slid into shoes—the sound of their movement confirming the weight and texture of their substance.

  He felt frightened walking down the stairs, hearing his shod feet touching the treads. In the kitchen, he poured himself a glass of water and was hypnotized by the gurgle of liquid. Then shockingly, he heard a voice. Turning around, he saw Margaret; she had entered the room behind him and was speaking to him. He saw by the expression on her face that she knew he heard her voice. A panic set upon him. It was only in secondary reaction that his brain recognized that the words she was speaking were foreign and he didn’t understand their meaning. Yet somehow, he knew what was being communicated.

  “I’m OK,” the fingers of Amir’s right hand spoke.

  “Good,” Margaret said, signing at the same time she spoke out loud. “Let’s eat breakfast.”

  From the reaction of his facial expression when she had asked, “How are you?” Margaret judged that Amir had indeed regained his hearing. With confusion and anxiety moving about the boy’s face like an errant bird trapped in a house, Margaret was careful to move slowly and keep to the routine she and her foster son followed every day upon waking, all the while trying to keep her own surprise and bewilderment of the previous night’s startling event at bay.

  Conventional wisdom would have one think that instead of being frightened, the boy should have been exuberant and celebratory. But the retired psychologist understood how his reaction might easily be the opposite. The war had taken everything that anchored the boy’s identity in the world: mother, father, sister—all of the love that had cradled him in his formation—community, friends, his understanding of what it was to be human. Now he had lost the last vestige of the only thing left to him from that time: his silence. After b
reakfast, Margaret phoned her daughter and Dr. Caron, both of them expressing great surprise at the sudden recovery of Amir’s speech and hearing and relieved to hear how quickly his condition had stabilized from the seizure. Dr. Caron rearranged his schedule and made an appointment to see Amir the following day.

  Sound came pouring into Amir’s head like a river threatening to overflow its banks. He felt tired and weak from the convulsion he had suffered only hours before. His mind wandered and time seemed to be passing as if in dream. After breakfast he and Margaret moved into the library to begin his day’s schooling. But instead of opening one of the books to begin his classwork, Margaret moved them aside. Their eyes met and she smiled. There was kindness in her face, and she took his hand in hers, holding his gaze for a few seconds before letting go and rising, some internal thought within her finding its decision.

  Margaret walked to the shelf where all of Amir’s study materials were stored. Next to the Bosnian–English dictionary were several cassette tapes and a small, portable player similar to the one Josif had used to accompany his imaginary drums, at the farm in Bosnia. Margaret looked at her foster son, a quiet question in her eyes. He had no idea what the tapes might hold, but he understood what she was asking. He nodded his head in affirmation, his eyes calm and clear, as if he was ready for whatever might come next.

  Margaret inserted the cassette into the player, Amir watching, his mind still unable to comprehend the fact that along with his ability to see the action take place, his ears were also able to substantiate the act as the tape clicked into place. Margaret pressed the play button, the sound of the turning tape soon giving way to the music of the plucked strings of a saz accompanied by a drum and the distant, enigmatic drone of a reed wind instrument, the voice of a male vocalist soon joining in. The unusual harmonies, low drones, and asymmetrical rhythms of the songs, played in minor key, sounded strange and exotic to Margaret’s ear. It was a collection of traditional Balkan folk music she had purchased on impulse when she had ordered the Bosnian–English dictionary. Although she couldn’t understand the lyrics, she felt the music deep within her body and emotion as the melody traveled from melancholy, to passionate expression, and then back. She saw that the boy was entranced, transported to a place of faraway memory.

  Amir could not believe what was happening. When he had awakened to the sounds of the day, in their immense and unceasing onslaught, he had been frightened. He had told himself that it was not real, but a dream that had followed him from sleep into waking. But now he was suddenly carried back to a world he’d thought gone forever.

  The Bosnian orphan sat transfixed as the music and language from the land of his birth brought forth memories associated with their sounds: images of mountains and hillsides colored in beautiful greens appeared before his eyes, scenes of villages marked by old stone buildings that felt as ancient as the earth they stood upon, their inhabitants going about a way of life so different from the place across the ocean where he now lived. Then he heard something so familiar coming from the tape that his mouth began to move of its own accord, his ears following the gentle melody of an old children’s lullaby he had sung in his village school. Amir’s lips and tongue moved in attempt to form words around a strange sensation coming from his throat: the crackling, dissonant chord of a lost, disoriented voice—a sound caught between breath and word, neither one nor the other.

  Margaret could see the struggle of emotion on Amir’s face—happiness, sadness, hope, and doubt merging in attempt to occupy the same space at the same time. When the song ended, Margaret turned off the machine. Looking at her foster son, Margaret spoke slowly, with great encouragement, the hope in her voice speaking as much to herself as to the boy. “Amir,” Margaret said, and then, in sign language requested that he speak it himself.

  At first Amir looked at his foster mother as if she were asking an impossibility, but then his voice sought to find itself. A noise began to emerge from his mouth…stuttering, misfiring, like an engine not wanting to start, until finally a word came forth. “Amir,” he whispered hoarsely. Shocked to hear the sound coming from his own mouth, Amir looked into his foster mother’s eyes and continued to speak.

  “Sta se dogilo?” he asked. “Ne razumijem.”

  So accustomed to the flow of their simple communication by the signing of their hands, the language of their bodies, and the gaze of their eyes, it took a second for Margaret to register that Amir was now addressing her by means of verbal communication. It was only in secondary reaction that she registered the fact that he was speaking to her in a foreign language she didn’t understand.

  “Sta se dogilo? Ne razumijem,” he repeated. Seeing the confusion on his foster mother’s face, he signed his words, “What has happened? I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t either,” Margaret said pausing, then repeating it in sign, “I don’t either,” the smile of joy on her face speaking more than her words or the movement of her hands.

  The sudden return of Amir’s speech and hearing seemed to herald a new and startlingly different situation in the Bosnian orphan’s care. That it had come about so suddenly and unexpectedly had caught everyone involved off guard. When they went to see Dr. Caron the following day, Margaret asked if there might have been some psychological catalyst to the event: the boy having come to live with her, the decision that he should attend public school, or even his first meeting with Dr. Caron.

  “The truth is, I don’t know,” the physician had replied. “I can’t completely rule out some kind of psychological reaction as having instigated the seizure. But the cause of the episode is much more likely to be neurological than psychological. The exact nature of the neurological function involved will likely remain a mystery. It’s a bit like a spring that’s become bound and at some point becomes unstuck, then snaps back into place. In this case we don’t know where, or what spring was involved. The good news is that it finally happened. That is fairly consistent with what we know of somatoform syndrome: the debilitated motor functions usually return to normal. You must be very happy.”

  “I am,” Margaret answered.

  “The recovery of his speech and hearing is very good news, but there are, of course, I’m sure you realize, other major long-term effects involved. It’s not over.”

  “Yes. Yes, I know,” Margaret said, the professional in her acknowledging the reality of all of the work still left to be done in the boy’s healing, while the maternal in her felt only happiness at the seemingly miraculous event.

  For the first few weeks after the recovery of Amir’s ability to hear and speak, Margaret was kept busy in back-and-forth communication with all of the parties responsible for Amir’s care. Between speaking with governmental agencies, school officials, and health professionals, she had little time to consider the longer-term symptoms Dr. Caron had cautioned her about. With Amir’s first day of school growing close, Margaret was kept busy with the small chores of preparing his transition from the sedate comfort of his homeschooling to the more socially vibrant, though challenging, environment of the public school. There were things to be bought—backpack, notepads, pens and pencils, scissors, a calculator, and school clothes.

  In the short time remaining before he would begin school, Margaret switched the focus of Amir’s English lessons from reading and signing to the spoken word. It felt strange to both of them that the expression of a newly learned word should now be coming from his mouth and not his hands. Even as he began to develop basic verbal English survival skills, he sometimes still asked a question about something he didn’t understand in sign rather than with his voice.

  The practical details of preparing for Amir’s entry into public school helped to distract Margaret from the anxiousness surrounding the recovery of his speech and hearing. There were, his foster mother knew, few social situations more difficult for a child to navigate than being the new kid in school, walking into a classroom for the first time and seeing all faces turning to stare in your direction.

&nbs
p; Amir’s first day at school felt excruciatingly long. The boy found himself retreating to an emotional survival technique he knew well: closing in and shutting off. His teachers, accustomed to the migrations of families in and out of the nearby university community, understood the anxiety and nervousness the new boy was experiencing and made efforts to ease his way. His second day at school was less intimidating than the first, and his third less so than the second, until, by the end of the second month, Amir told Margaret that she no longer needed to drive him to school each morning. He could, he said in very broken English, take the bus to school with the other kids.

  Chapter 16

  Standing in the doorway of her house, Margaret watched the large, yellow bus, the vehicle that would take her foster son on his first solo journey to school, come to a stop at the end of the driveway. Wrapped tightly in a thick cotton shawl, she fought the cold of the winter morning and the anxiety she chided herself for succumbing to, as if she were a young mother sending her first born off to begin his very first day of kindergarten. Sensing her eyes following him, Amir turned and waved, then mounted the metal steps that led him past the bus’s yellow folded door, where he disappeared among the silhouettes of small bodies framed within the windows of the vehicle.

  Margaret laughed to think that her foster son might be making the adjustment to his new school better than she was. The retired psychologist suffered no illusion concerning the difficulties the boy faced, though—not only in the transition of entering a new school in a new home and country far from the place of his birth, but also the added complexity of moving from a silent, speechless world, to one of hearing and verbal expression. Margaret was pleased that Amir appeared to be making a good start at his new school and seemed excited about the things he was learning, especially in the realm of his English-language skills. He came home from school every day now with a new word, a new sentence, and a new sense of his own power.