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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chance to enjoy a caring relationship with an adult. I had participated in the program before but had given it up when I was teaching because I didn’t have enough time. Now without a class of my own, without my usual daily fix of rascality, I’d decided to rejoin.
The woman was calling to tell me that they had matched me with an eight-year-old Native American girl. She apologized for not being able to get hold of me sooner because that evening they were holding an open house for the new participants. She hoped very much that I’d be able to make it on such short notice.
She was a scruffy-looking little kid, a bit on the chubby side with grimy chipmunk cheeks and two Band-Aids on her forehead. She wore patched blue corduroy pants, a pink-striped polyester top covered in fuzz balls and a red cardigan with the top button buttoned. Her hair was in two long, fist-thick braids. And I suspect she had more teeth missing from her mouth than were in it. So she hissed like a snake when saying S’s and she sprayed.
‘You my Big Sister?’ she asked as I wandered into the room. We both had name tags on. Hers was upside down. I turned my head to read it. Charity Stands-On-Top.
‘Yup. I’m Torey.’
She gave me a big, toothless grin. We sat down together on one of the long benches. I had a glass of cherry Kool-Aid and two cookies in my hands. Charity had obviously been imbibing already because she had a bright red mustache.
‘Is one of them cookies mine?’ she inquired politely. It hadn’t been. I suspect she had probably already had her quota but I gave it to her anyway. Another huge, face-splitting grin.
‘So, well then, what you gonna do with me?’ she asked, and put the cookie whole into her mouth. ‘Where you gonna take me? My other Big Sister, Diana, she used to take me to the movies. You gonna take me to the movies?’
‘Maybe,’ I said.
‘Well, then, I got to have popcorn – buttered popcorn – when I go to the movies. And a big-sized Pepsi. Or maybe Coke. That’d be okay too. And one of them big suckers that lasts long. And a box of jelly Dots. Diana, she used to buy me all of them things. Every time.’
‘I see.’
‘She used to buy me other stuff too. You gonna buy me stuff?’
‘What sort of stuff?’
She shrugged. ‘Just stuff,’ she answered ambiguously and eyed the remainder of my other cookie. ‘Good stuff,’ she continued when I offered no comment and no cookie. ‘You know. Not clothes or anything. I ain’t a poor kid. You don’t have to go buying me no clothes. What I need’s good stuff. Like once, Diana bought me this Tonka truck. You know. One of them real big ones that you can sit on and dig up the yard.’
‘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?’
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