Twilight Children (15 page)

I popped the tape into the cassette recorder immediately and sat down at my desk. The tape was scratchy, as if it had been played often, but it was clear enough. First there was Lucia’s voice, soft and maternal-sounding, chatting in the way one does with small children. She was speaking in English, but she didn’t sound very confident. There was also a very faint nervousness to her tone that made me more convinced than ever that she did not normally speak in English to Drake. Two or three minutes of tape spent listening to her talk about animals and noises animals make. Lucia imitated several herself. I could hear the presence of another person in the room, but no one else spoke. Then came a hesitation. It grew long, leaving me with nothing but the static of the tape.

Then Lucia started to recite a nursery rhyme.

Hickety, pickety, my black hen,
She lays eggs for gentlemen;
Sometimes nine
And sometimes ten,
Hickety, pickety, my black hen
.

Immediately a little voice joined in.

At first Drake spoke in unison with her, and it was hard for me to hear what he was saying. They continued repeating nursery rhymes together, reciting three or four common ones.

“Now,” Lucia said, “‘Dance to Your Daddy.’ Can you do that one?”

And a little voice alone started saying,

Dance to your daddy,
My little babby;
Dance to your daddy,
My little lamb.
You shall have a fishy
In your little dishy;
You shall have a fishy
When the boat comes in
.

Lucia responded animatedly, “You know that very well! Good boy! Can you sing that now? You know the tune. Here, I will sing it with you.”

This wasn’t a nursery rhyme I was very familiar with, and I had never before heard the rather haunting little tune that went with it. Lucia and Drake sang it together, and then she said, “Can you sing it now yourself for me?”

He sang alone. He had a soulful little voice, almost as if pleading for the fish in the rhyme. It was unexpectedly skillful singing for such a young child; he held the tune well and made the words plain.

And the tape ended.

That was all there was. Only one nursery rhyme said and then sung alone. No conversation. No interaction beyond saying the rhymes together and getting him to recite the final one on his own.

Hmmmmm
.

All I could determine with any certainty from the tape was that he could, indeed, speak. His voice was clear and strong. He spoke with an American accent. The words were well enunciated and said in a manner that gave them correct meaning. In fact, even during the song Drake gave meaning to the words. This indicated that, unlike children with autistic spectrum disorders, he not only understood the communicative value of words but that he was also capable of using them appropriately. The tape didn’t tell me much else, however.

I played it again.

And again.

And again.

Trying to garner every little bit of information from it I could, I played the tape so many times over that the little tune lodged in my brain and dogged me the rest of the day.

He
did
speak. That was a vital confirmation. Moreover, he spoke clearly, with no trace of a speech impediment or bilingual accent. He gave appropriate meaning to the words as he said them. He did not sound shy. Although he didn’t speak until asked to do so, he did not hesitate once he was asked. He complied immediately. Nor were there any untoward pauses or silences.

Nonetheless, I found the tape unfulfilling. Perhaps this was because I’d assumed it would be conversation, which would allow me to get so much more from it, or perhaps it was simply because it left me with more questions than it answered. If Drake could speak this well, why wasn’t he doing it spontaneously? Even on the tape with Lucia, there did not appear to be any spontaneous speech. Why? How had such a young child come to be so silent, especially when he did not seem to have the anxious or withdrawn personality normally associated with such silence? Drake was in all other respects such a charismatic little guy. He always made joyful efforts to socialize with the children on the unit, the other staff, and me on every occasion. So what was going on here? If he spoke without hesitation when asked by his mother, why was he refusing to make even the faintest vocal sounds with me, with his schoolteachers, with even the other members of his family? How could he, on one hand, be a warm outgoing child who interacted so enthusiastically, and on the other, so determinedly silent that not even an audible laugh escaped him? Something didn’t add up here.

I
n preparation for our next session together I had set out on the table the papers with the columns of feelings that Cassandra had so carefully done. However, when Cassandra came in, she immediately said, “I don’t want to do that.” She dismissively flapped her hand at the table.

I pulled out a chair to sit down.

“I want to play pterodactyls,” she said. “Like we did last time.” Before I could say anything, she had leaped up on top of the table, stamping her feet meaningfully near to my fingers.

“All right,” I said and shuffled the papers back together to put them safely out of the way. “But remember there are rules. I won’t let you hurt me or yourself. And when I take out my medal here, the area around me becomes a pterodactyl-free zone.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Cassandra said glibly.

“No, I want you to hear me, Cassandra. I don’t want you to say later, ‘I don’t remember that.’”

“I
do
hear you,” she replied. “Can’t you tell? I’m looking right at you. So are my ears. I can’t hear you more than that.” She grimaced. “You’re so uptight, you know. You got to have everything your way.”

“So how will we play? I asked. “What shall I do?”

Cassandra had turned sideways when I was talking about the rules. For a moment she was staring downward at the table, but now she looked at me out of the corner of her eye without turning her head.

“You’ve wrecked it,” she said. “I don’t want to play anything now. I don’t like you, you know that? I don’t want to do stuff with you. You’re stupid!”

“You feel angry because I interrupted your plans by reminding you of the rules?”

“Why do you think I want to play some stupid pretend game anyway? Only babies do stuff like that. You can’t make me play that.”

My first instinct was to refute what she was saying. I certainly hadn’t been trying to make her play the pterodactyl game. I held back, however. This was less due to some august psychological technique than simple confusion. We seemed to have switched sides very quickly, and I wasn’t sure how this had occurred.

A moment’s silence passed between us.

“Well,” I said at last, “if you don’t want to do that, let’s work with these.” I picked up the feelings papers again.

“I’m not going to do anything in here. You can’t make me. You can’t make me stay in here if I don’t want. I can call the police on you.”

“Cassandra, you seem upset today. Can you tell me why?”

“I’m not going to stay in here.”

“You don’t want to stay in here. I hear you saying that. You have very strong feelings about having to stay with me today. You wish you could leave. You want that so much you wish you could call the police on me, so that I would be forced to let you leave. I do hear you saying those things. But can you help me understand why you feel like this? Because our problem at the moment is, this is your time with me. Even though you have very strong feelings about staying, you still need to stay in here.”

“You’re trying to lock me up!”

“Can you tell me what is so upsetting right now?”

She cried out. It was a furious, frustrated cry accompanied by clenched fists and a truly enraged expression, but she didn’t move from where she stood beside the table. Indeed, she seemed to have rooted treelike, all her muscles gone so taut as to gnarl around her bones.

Bewildered, I watched her.

A moment passed. Two, three. I’m not sure how long this was in minutes. Only a few, I’m sure, but it felt longer.

Then, still standing, she began to wet herself.

This caught me completely unawares and I didn’t react for a moment.

Cassandra looked down at herself. She didn’t show any particular embarrassment or even surprise at what was happening, nor did she appear to make any effort to stop. Instead, she spread her legs and continued to urinate through her clothes.

My first coherent thought was that she was unwell. Perhaps she had developed a urinary infection or was coming down with the rather nasty flu making its way around the children’s ward. This would account not only for wetting herself but also for her difficult mood.

I came over and put my arm around her shoulders. “Are you feeling okay?” I asked.

She looked up at me with an oddly uncomprehending expression on her face. “Seizure” flashed through my mind. While teaching, I had had children with epilepsy who lost bowel and bladder control during the process of grand mal seizures. Cassandra was obviously not having a grand mal seizure, but the fleeting vacancy in her expression was reminiscent of that odd, out-of-sync look that accompanies some seizures.

“Are you okay?” I asked again.

Cassandra recovered herself quickly. She said in a very little-girl voice, “Babies come out of your wee-wee place.”

Not anticipating this comment at all, I was caught unawares yet again by this kid. I had my own blank moment just then.

So Cassandra spoke again. “Babies come out in your wee.”

“Babies come out of their own special place,” I said. “While this special place is down between a woman’s legs, it’s not the same place as urine comes out.”

“Urine. You-rine. I say ‘wee.’ Wee-wee. We, we have babies come out.” She pointed saucily to me and to herself.

“I’m thinking we need to go get some cloths and clean this up,” I replied. “Urine doesn’t belong on the floor. Someone might slip.”

“You might slip. You might fall on my you-rine and die. You’re thinking we need to get some cloths. I’m thinking you might have a baby and it will come out in your wee.”

To be honest, at just that moment, what I was
really
thinking was that a psychiatric unit was a pretty appropriate placement for Cassandra.

I had misgivings about taking Cassandra out onto the unit to help me to find cloths and a bucket, because she was being so unpredictable. I wasn’t too sure about having her help me clean the mess up, either, because I was concerned it might overstimulate her, as there seemed to be a sexual association with wetting herself. Nonetheless, there was still enough practical, real-world teacher in me to want her to connect her actions with their natural consequences. So out we went.

Being a hospital, we didn’t have the kind of mop-and-bucket ordinariness that had always been part of the schools where I’d taught. Here any mess was responded to by full-time cleaning staff ever ready with their antiseptic scrubs and special equipment. It took some dedicated searching to locate something we ordinary mortals could take back to the therapy room.

Cassandra was unexpectedly compliant. She didn’t speak at all while we were out on the unit, but followed meekly and did as she was told. I took her first to her room so that she could change her clothes. Afterward she came with me to the dayroom, where she accepted and carried cloths and disinfectant while I ferreted out latex gloves and a bucket. We returned then to the therapy room.

“Here are the things you need to clean the floor,” I said.

I expected her to rebel or, at the very least, respond with her brash, negative comments. She didn’t. Cassandra pulled on the gloves, then knelt with the cloths and straightforwardly cleaned the urine up from the floor.

When she had finished, she rose to her feet and let the cloths drop into the bucket with a heavy plop. Continuing to stare into the water, she said without looking up, “Do you like me?”

“Yes, I like you,” I said.

“Do you really like me?” She raised her head then and met my eyes.

“Yes, I really like you,” I replied.

“Then why do you make me do this?”

“Because urine doesn’t belong on the floor. Someone could slip and hurt themselves. So if you have been unable to get to the toilet in time and, as a consequence, wet your pants, it is necessary for you to clean it up.”

She frowned. “I didn’t wet my pants.” Her voice wasn’t defiant but rather simple and clear-cut.

I regarded her.

“And if that was pee on the floor,” she said, “I’m going to tell my mom you made me touch it. She’ll call the police on you, because that’s dirty. You shouldn’t make kids touch stuff like that.”

“Cassandra, yes, you did wet your pants. I don’t know what’s going on here that makes you say you didn’t, but I was here, too. And yes, you did wet your pants.”

Cassandra looked down at herself, but of course, because she had changed clothes, her pants were dry. She looked back up at me with an incredulous expression, as if I had made it all up. And, indeed, for just that moment, everything felt hideously surreal to me, as if her version might be a possibility, as if we’d stepped into some kind of mirror world without my noticing.