pupils of Jadie’s eyes dilated, and for the first time she let slip the expressionless mask. A look of incredulity crossed her features.
Lowering my head like an ostrich in need of chiropractic help, I stuck my neck out and peered upward into her face to see her fully. I smiled. “You don’t quite believe me, do you? Did you think you were all alone in feeling like you do? Did you think nobody knew about these things?”
No response.
“It’s scary, isn’t it, being all alone, not being able to tell anyone how you feel.”
Again, the very faint nod.
Again, I smiled. “Aren’t we lucky that you and I are going to be together? I’ve helped all those other children. Now I’m here to help you.”
Her eyes grew watery, and for a brief moment, I thought she was going to cry, but she didn’t. Instead, she clutched her unbuttoned coat closed, turned tail, and ran, shutting the classroom door firmly behind her.
Over the lunch hour I set up the painting easel and mixed several pots of tempera paints. Within minutes of getting back into the classroom, Jeremiah discovered the paints and busied himself stirring the colors together. I separated him and the paints and then went off to catch Reuben, only to come back moments later and find Jeremiah painting lunchboxes. This distressed Philip immensely, as his Superman lunchbox was now a pale shade of mud brown; so I sent Jeremiah back to the sink with the lunchbox to wash it before the paint dried. The potential for mess created by combining Jeremiah, a sinkful of water, and a paint-covered lunchbox was not something I had fully appreciated until that moment, and by two o’clock I was making the acquaintance of Mr. O’Banyon, the janitor, and his mop bucket. Compared to the morning, however, this was an improvement.
After three weeks of substitutes, it was only fair to expect the children to be disrupted and disruptive. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy coming in midyear and trying to recreate order. I’d appreciated that fact when I accepted the job. Jadie, Philip, and Jeremiah, however, seemed to take one more new face in their stride. Reuben couldn’t. Nothing I did all day long managed to orient him to any meaningful activity. Most of the time he was up, dashing in broad circles around the classroom. When finally persuaded to sit down, he constantly rocked and flicked his eyelashes with his fingers.
Philip made an effort to join in during the afternoon. He liked the easel and paints and enthusiastically slopped bright blobs of color over piece after piece of paper. “Red?” I’d say encouragingly. “Orange?” This made him grunt something back in reply, although goodness knows what.
“That’s baby painting,” Jeremiah said, as he passed the easel. “Man, boog, that’s not even a picture. Want me to show you how to paint something real?” He snatched the paintbrush out of Philip’s hand. Picking up the container of black paint, he dipped the brush in and began to draw a long, black line over Philip’s blodges of color. Indignant at this interference, Philip howled.
“Jeremiah,” I cried, abandoning Reuben to halt what I feared would turn into real trouble. “That’s Philip’s painting. Now give him back his brush. You’ve already had your turn.”
“Jesus, lady, I’m just going to help the little booger. Look at this, it ain’t even a picture. And you sure ain’t teaching him how to do it right.”
Philip had begun to dance in frustration, trying to grasp the brush from Jeremiah’s hand. Jeremiah, both bigger and more agile, kept it just out of reach. Black paint dripped everywhere.
“Give it back,” I demanded.
“Want me to teach you how to make Mr. T?” Jeremiah offered suddenly. “You ought to like that. He’s a black guy, just like you, only he’s a big booger. You gonna be a big booger someday? Yeah? I bet you are.” He put his free arm around Philip’s shoulder in buddy-buddy fashion. “But you know something I can never figure out about you black people?” Jeremiah continued, as Philip, charmed by his attention, wrapped an arm around Jeremiah’s waist. “I can never figure out how come the blackness just sort of wears off your hands. How come that happens? Look much better to me, man, if you was black all over.” And with unexpected swiftness, he began painting Philip’s palm black and then continued right on up his shirt sleeve.
Philip howled again. I separated the two boys, sending Jeremiah off to the “quiet chair” I’d placed just outside the cloakroom door and explaining he needed to sit there until he could keep his act together.
Jeremiah was not enthusiastic about this imposition on his freedom and got up immediately, shouting and swearing, I physically replaced him and was then obliged to stand over him for the fifteen minutes or so it took him to settle down. Even then, he muttered crossly under his breath, “Man, lady, you’re gonna regret this.”
Jadie might as well have been a ghost. No one spoke to her, looked at her, or even acknowledged her presence in the room. And this attitude was mutual. Jadie went about her business with absorption, but she gave no indication that there was anyone else in the room besides herself.
When it was Jadie’s turn at the easel, she painted an elaborate picture of a white house with a blue roof. Beside it grew a lollipop-shaped tree and in front was a peculiarly shaped figure, rather like a bell with legs coming from it. It had yellow hair flowing down the sides, so I took it to be a person, probably a girl. The painting was small, covering only the bottom third of the paper. She made a strip of blue sky at the top and added a shining sun. This left the middle largely blank.
“I like that,” I said, when she’d stepped back to view it. “You’ve used a lot of colors. Who’s this?” I pointed to the figure.
“Man, lady, don’t you take no hint?” Jeremiah shouted. “She don’t talk. You been told that already. So don’t go hassling folks about what’s wrong with them. How’d you like it, if people kept getting at you for being so dumb? You can’t help that, can you?”
“Thank you for your thoughts, Jeremiah, but I’m talking to Jadie just now.”
At that moment the recess bell rang. Jeremiah shot out the door and Philip scampered after him, leaving me with Reuben and Jadie. I realized I should have been hustling out the door after them, either to catch Jeremiah and bring him back for a more appropriate exit or at least to supervise his departure, but I didn’t. I stood a moment longer to see if anyone would reappear in the doorway or if any horrible noises would signal disaster. When nothing happened, I glanced over at Reuben, self-stimulating happily in the far corner, and then back to Jadie. Pointing directly to the figure on the painting, I asked again, “Who’s this person?”
Silence.
“Who’s this?”
Still silence.
I knew I had to work quickly now to keep the silence from growing potent. My research had yielded a highly successful method of treating the most salient symptom of the elective mutism syndrome—the refusal to speak—and it was both simple and efficient. All that was needed was for someone unknown to the child to come in, set up expectations immediately that the child would speak, and then provide an unavoidable opportunity to do so. Consequently, as a new teacher, I was in an ideal position to get Jadie to speak, but I had to do so right away before we’d established a relationship that included her silence. I also knew that to provide the “unavoidable opportunity,” I had to be persistent, clinging like a terrier to my question, and not let the inevitable wall of silence deter me.
“Who’s
