Silent Boy: He was a frightened boy who refused to speak – until a teacher's love broke through the silence

‘Oh. I see.’

‘Her name was Diana. Did I tell you that? What’s your name again?’

‘Torey.’

‘Oh yeah. I forgot. That’s a weird name. Where’d you get a weird name like that at?’

‘It’s from Victoria.’

‘Oh. That’s an even weirder name.’ Charity looked me over in a very appraising manner and I felt like a piece of livestock at an auction.

‘I thought you’d be prettier,’ she said at last.

Not knowing exactly how to field that one, I just shrugged.

‘You got funny-looking eyes. Why are they that color? Do you wear contact lenses?’

‘No.’

‘Diana did. She was practically blind. And they kept falling out. Once they dropped right out and we had to look all over the floor at Woolworth’s on our hands and knees and then this guy comes in and he goes CRUNCH!’ Charity fell about with laughter. I finished my Kool-Aid.

‘You don’t got much to say, do you?’ she said to me. ‘You got a funny voice. Is that why? Are you embarrassed? Where did you get your funny voice at? Is something wrong with it?’

‘I don’t think so. I was born with it.’

There was a long, long pause while Charity regarded me further. Then she shook her head with resignation. ‘You really aren’t very interesting, are you?’

I could hardly have described Charity that way. Full of cheeky arrogance and a surety about herself that was intimidating, Charity was convinced she owned the world. Five minutes with her and I knew that. I also knew that if Charity had been the first kid I’d ever met, I’d probably not have chosen a career working with children.

I supposed she was a street kid, wiser at eight than I’d be at eighty. She had that streetwise air about her, the confidence that shifting for oneself gives. Yet she was terribly disarming with her chubby cheeks and her Band-Aids and her huge, gaping grin.

‘So,’ she said, her mouth full with a cookie she’d charmed off the refreshments lady, ‘what do you do when you ain’t here?’

‘I work. With kids.’

‘Oh? What kind of kids? Where at? Do I know ’em?’

‘I work at the Sandry Clinic.’

‘Ohhhhhh,’ she replied with a wise nod. ‘Them kind of kids. What’s the matter with your kids? They jump up and down? My brother jumps up and down and he wets the bed. He went to one of them places once. But you know what? It didn’t do no good. He still wets the bed.’

‘That happens sometimes.’

‘So what they like, your kids? What do they do?’

I told her about Kevin. I would hardly have expected myself to, but I did. I told how this boy had lived in a treatment home all these years and how he hadn’t talked in ever so long a time. I told how we sat together under the table and tried to read. The strength of Kevin’s fears came back to me, and I tried to describe to Charity what it had been like being with him when he was so afraid.

Charity was leaning forward, her chin in her hands. She listened carefully. ‘Why do you go to work with him?’ she asked.

‘Because that’s what my job is.’

‘He sounds weird to me.’

‘He is weird. But that’s okay. I don’t mind that.’

‘Can I meet him sometimes? Will you take me to meet him?’

‘Maybe. Someday maybe.’

‘He’d talk to me. I’d say, “Kid, you don’t have to be scared of me. I’m just a little kid.” Then he’d talk to me.’

‘The trouble is,’ I said, ‘we don’t even know if he can talk. Maybe we’re trying to make him do something he can’t really do.’

‘How come you don’t know?’

‘Because we don’t know,’ I replied, feeling a little exasperated. ‘That’s how come.’

A look of disdain crossed her face and she leaned back on the bench. ‘You’re silly. That’s the silliest thing I ever heard.’

‘What is? Why?’

‘Well, how come if you don’t know, you don’t ask him? How come you don’t just say, “Kid, can you talk?” Then you’d know.’ She smiled affably. ‘How you supposed to know, if you don’t ask?’

Chapter Four (#ulink_0a3400ff-94d7-5bbe-b69d-a33d0486d185)

The staff behind the front desk at Garson Gayer were beginning to recognize me. They called Hello to me from behind their glass partition as I came past. When I went in the back room to get a cup of coffee, I could hear one woman tell the other who I was: Zoo-boy’s therapist. Come to try and make him talk, she said, and I could tell from her tone of voice that she didn’t think it would happen. I hung up my jacket and went on down to the small white room. I didn’t even have the secretaries fooled.

Kevin and I had no more success this second try than we had had the day before. The only variation was that the tears came sooner. Over his pimply cheeks, down onto his chin they rolled to drip off onto the book where he would rub them out furiously with his fingers, leaving big smeary blobs on the paper. However, never once did the tears deter him. He kept trying. Long after I was ready to give up, long after the whole enterprise took on a dreary, somewhat perverse mood, Kevin kept trying, kept laboring away to get cooperation out of his voice and his mouth and his heart. And he kept failing.

The hell was not Kevin’s alone. It had fast become mine as well. I felt as trapped in his fears as I did in the table-and-chairs cage. There was an odd, deviant feel to his efforts because, while he tried so hard, futility was draped over us as tangibly as a cloak. I could not shake it off. Like Sisyphus rolling his huge stone to the hilltop, Kevin continued to struggle but with the foregone conclusion that regardless of the effort, the stone would go rolling back down again. That was the perversity of it to me, that he could appear to try so hard and still emanate such hopelessness.

Every muscle in my body grew rigid. I had a headache from clenching my teeth too tightly. My own voice faltered. I had urged and coaxed and cajoled until even coffee could not lubricate my throat enough.

Kevin trembled. His shoulders shook. Even his head shook. I could hear fear-torn breath come through chattering teeth. And all the effort was in vain.

Finally I put my hand over the book. Our time was nearly up. ‘We’ll try again tomorrow, okay?’

He regarded me wistfully. His chin trembled a little more.

‘We’ll get it done, Kevin. Don’t worry.’

But clearly he did.

‘Kevin, I want to ask you something.’

He watched me.

‘Can you talk? I mean, can you? Are you able to?’