Silent Boy: He was a frightened boy who refused to speak – until a teacher's love broke through the silence. Torey Hayden
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Kevin’s appearance and hygiene were areas for some definite overhauling, and as we grew more comfortable with one another, I mulled over methods of approaching it. However, before embarking on any wild schemes of improvement, I wanted to enlist the cooperation of Dana and the Garson Gayer staff who supervised the rest of Kevin’s day.
We were in a team meeting when I brought it up. I pointed out my reasoning on the matter, that it would make him more pleasant to be with, that it would reduce people’s negative image of him, that it would eliminate some of the prejudices surrounding this boy because he looked so retarded and disturbed when, indeed, I would not be surprised to find his IQ quite close to average, and that undoubtedly it would improve Kevin’s own self-esteem, since no one likes to think of himself as ugly.
These were reasonable objectives, I said, if we all worked together. Certainly, there must be a physician affiliated with Garson Gayer who could prescribe treatment for his skin. There had to be state money coming in for a clothing allowance. When had his eyes been tested last? And his hair … well, I inquired politely, could we give Zoe a vacation from that task for just a little while?
Here was an area where I met unexpected opposition. Or rather, apathy. Dana said forthrightly that she had been looking at Kevin for so long that she’d gotten used to him. Not too much under there anyway. He never would be Mr America. No, I agreed, and I didn’t expect a Mr America. But there was no reason for him to look like something off the back ward at the state hospital either. Someone at the table shrugged when I said that. He shrugged again when I looked at him. Why bother? he said. That time would come soon enough.
Dana had another counter, one which I couldn’t so easily dismiss. Why get him new clothes when he refused to wash or even change without a struggle? They’d be ruined in a few weeks. How would you get him to a dermatologist or an opthalmologist when he wouldn’t leave the building? Why put him through all that hassle when he didn’t care?
How did we know he didn’t care? I bet he did, I said, and my voice sounded weak in my own ears. We didn’t know. Kevin seemed quite happy in his filthy, unkempt state. He certainly never remarked on it to me. Maybe it didn’t matter. So, for the time being at least, I gave up that effort. Maybe I just realized what everyone else there had known, even though it wasn’t said. What did it matter to a kid like Zoo-boy? Where was he going anyway?
The other issue was less easily dismissed. Fear.
Fear lived with us like a third party. It had a life of its own. It ruled us; it tyrannized us. I came after a while to think of it not as a part of Kevin but as a separate entity. It bullied him and it bullied me. And try as we would to overcome it, if we ventured too far – whap! – it drew us up sharp like misbehaving puppies on leashes. Kevin would immediately be reduced to a shivering, quivering, teary mass and the next time he would be terrified to try whatever had frightened him the time before.
The fears were funny things – funny-odd. I never knew from one day to the next what things might evoke fear in him. Like the spirals on the notebooks that he’d imagined were lurking in that box. Or door hinges. He could go berserk with terror over a squeaky door hinge. Or squeaky chairs. I became a master at improvising squeak-stoppers. I used everything from pencil lead, ground fine between my fingers, to lipstick. And smells were terrifying. Sharp, pungent odors frightened Kevin and odors are an almost impossible thing to get away from. More than once I resorted to carefully stuffing bits of cotton up his nostrils so that he would not be able to smell some infinitesimally faint odor in the room.
After a point I felt like a squirrel on a treadmill. Yet, how ever bad it might have been for me, no doubt it was much worse for Kevin.
‘Sometimes, I lay in bed at night,’ he said to me one day. ‘You know how it is when you’re in bed and it’s dark. They leave a light on in the hallway but we can’t have them in our rooms after ten o’clock. And it makes shadows. That light in the hallway does, and regular things, they stretch all out. I lay there and I look at them and I think, you know, these are just regular things. That’s just my desk. Or that’s just a chair. But they don’t look that way then. They look like something else.’
He turned to glance briefly at me. His voice, as always, was very soft. When Kevin spoke, it sounded more as if he were talking only to himself, half aloud, and not to me at all. It was always in such a quiet, almost dreamy manner – the way my thoughts sounded when I heard them inside my head.
‘They look the way people look,’ he said. ‘You know, people you thought liked you who suddenly you know don’t really. The chairs and desk and stuff, they change in the darkness. Like people change. And I lay in my bed and I think, you know, this is the way the chair really is. The way it looks in daytime, that’s just a foolie. It looks that way to make me think it’s all right. But it’s an ugly thing, a chair at night is. And I know even in the day that it’s ugly underneath. It will be ugly again, when I’m alone with it. When it’s dark. The chair’ll be ugly.’
A small silence came between us. Morning sun bathed over me and I was warm.
‘I’m scared of chairs,’ Kevin said. When I said nothing, he glanced at me. Then down at the floor where he fiddled with some unseen thing in the carpet. ‘I try not to be scared of things. I try to fight it. But I’m not good at it. It’s everywhere at once. It’s like fighting the night.’
November came. Without the holidays to mark the passing of time as they did in school, the days and weeks got away from me and the months could pass softly without my ever remembering when one started and the other one ended. The sharp sunny days began to fade and grow gray and fitful. All the summer’s leaves were dead in the gutters and the final peace was made as the world lay down in winter.
Kevin and I kept at our work. Somewhere along the line, thirty minutes just wasn’t enough, and I extended my time with him to an hour. I couldn’t easily afford it with the other kids at the clinic, and it meant I had to work into the evening because I was still coming to see him every day. Kevin continued to talk to me and to no one else, although we had laid that problem to rest for the time being. All in all, it was a quiet period, spent sharing little moments.
We were coloring. Kevin had a thing about coloring, and I didn’t mind it because it was relaxing and it was the mindless sort of activity I found best for allowing us to talk without its being apparent that was what we were doing.
I had brought us one of those huge posters from the discount store which one colors in with felt-tipped markers. This poster depicted a spaceship out among the stars.
Kevin was coloring the crew at the window of the rocket and I was doing the sky because it was large and boring to color, so Kevin didn’t like it. I was not especially enamored of it myself.
‘You know,’ I said after what seemed like an interminable amount of coloring, ‘I’m not so keen on doing this either. I wish I had a broad-tipped marker instead of this one.’
‘Well,’ replied Kevin matter-of-factly, ‘you have to do it.’
‘We could split it,’ I suggested, looking at all that was left.
There was a long, long silence as Kevin stared at the poster. I saw his knuckles go white as he gripped the pen harder. His breathing tightened. They were the same old signs, and I glanced around the room quickly to see what could possibly be frightening him.
‘No, you have to do it,’ Kevin said. His voice was low. The muscles along his jaw tensed.
I stared at him because I could see his fear coming up on him but I didn’t know what was causing it. Then I looked back at the poster, thinking perhaps I could distract him from the fear.
‘Why don’t we just leave it blank? There’s too much coloring. I could do the stars instead and outline them in black. Then they’d stand out good.’
‘No,’ he said very quietly.
I looked at him. He looked squarely back at me. Fear had dilated his pupils but there was an intensity behind them that I did not recognize.
‘What’s going on, Kevin?