of those built between the wars. Everything about it was ramshackle. Paint peeled from the window frames. The latticework around the front porch was broken. Large patches of grass in the front yard were worn away, leaving a battered tricycle mired in the mud. But when Mr. Ekdahl opened the door to greet me, I was led into a large room, warm and neat.
They were a wholly undistinguished-looking couple. Jadie’s mother was small and drab, with mousy hair and badly chapped hands. She’d made a clear effort to appear attractive, apparent in the eye makeup and styled hair, but they had an aging effect. I knew she was probably near my age, but she had the aura of an older generation. Jadie’s father had pale Scandinavian features. Thin almost to the point of gauntness, he looked worn out, like the winter-beaten buffalo grass slowly disintegrating in the prairie wind.
Jadie’s five-year-old sister, Amber, was there, too, and I was struck by the fact that this was one of those odd cases where the children were much more attractive than one would have been led to believe, seeing the parents. Amber was quite unlike Jadie in some ways. Her hair was fair and much less curly than Jadie’s, making her look more rumpled than ratty. Although her eyes were blue, they were a cloudy gray-blue, not the pure color Jadie’s were, but Amber, too, had the long, dark lashes, giving her the same look of infant sensuality. She remained in the room with us, a naked doll in her arms, and watched me guardedly. Jadie, however, made herself scarce. I heard the familiar sound of her shuffle in an adjacent room, and Mrs. Ekdahl said something about her minding the baby. Whatever, Jadie never even appeared to say hi.
Jadie’s parents were clearly ill at ease with me. They got me seated in a big chair, a cup of coffee in my hand, and then they just stared. I explained a bit about who I was and talked about my own background and my work with children like Jadie, in hopes this would break the ice some. I said how glad I was to have her in my class, how gentle and cooperative she was, and what good academic work she was doing. They sat together on a long brown vinyl couch, which had decorative stitching in the shape of a horse’s head on the back, and said nothing.
After ten minutes of this, it occurred to me that whatever else might be contributing to Jadie’s problems, a certain amount might simply be a familial trait. I endeavored to make conversation and ended up talking to myself, as no one else ever spoke. Mother, father, and daughter all sat motionless and mute, managing not even so much as a nod in my direction. Finally, I gave up and fell silent myself. Nothing happened. For three or four minutes, we all just sat.
“You can make that chair go back,” Mrs. Ekdahl finally said.
“Pardon?” I asked.
“That chair, that one you’re sitting in. It’s a recliner. If you want to get yourself more comfortable, you just lean back some more and it lays out real nice.”
“Oh. Thank you. I’m quite comfortable now, though.”
“Do you want some more coffee?”
“No, thank you. I’m fine.”
“You sure? No trouble. We got the pot on and it makes ten cups. We only just been drinking it, so there’s plenty more.”
There was pathos in all of this, and it left me feeling more uncomfortable and out of place than ever. “I’m fine,” I said, “but thanks. What I want to talk about … Jadie …”
They looked at me.
“What do you think about Jadie’s problems with speaking at school?”
“Nothing,” the mother replied, her voice soft.
“Nothing?”
“Don’t see it’s a problem. Leastways, it isn’t one for us. She talks fine at home. Sometimes she won’t shut up.”
“Oh? Can you tell me about such times?”
“She gets silly,” the father offered.
“In what way?”
He shrugged. “Just silly. Jumping around. Her and Amber.” He smiled at the younger girl, who ducked her head.
“Does Jadie talk then?”
“Yeah, all the time. Shouts. Says silly things.”
“What do you do then?” I asked.
“Tell her to stop. Tell her you don’t go jumping on the couch, ’cause she’s going to rip it. She’s already ripped it here, see?” He pointed to a place patched with what looked like duct tape.
“And tell her to stop talking dirty,” Mrs. Ekdahl added. “She does, sometimes. Shouts these filthy words and then Amber hears them.”
From my experience with Jadie in the classroom, I was finding all this very difficult to imagine.
“She picks them words up at school. From the big boys on the playground. And then, if she really wants to get you mad, she says ’em, ’cause she knows we don’t talk like that in this house,” Mrs. Ekdahl said.
“And does she usually stop when you tell her to?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” Mr. Ekdahl said. “Sometimes not.”
“What do you do then? Do you spank her?”
“No,” he replied indignantly. “I don’t think it’s right for a parent to hit their little children. We don’t spank our girls. We just take away privileges. Mostly, when she does those things, I send her outside. Tell her to go yell out there.”
“I see.”
Silence followed. I regarded the parents; they regarded their hands. “So, you feel Jadie’s problems with speech aren’t anything serious?”
Mrs. Ekdahl looked over. “It’s just shyness. Jadie don’t get on real good with outsiders, that’s all. She’s always been that way. Both girls have. Just like their family best, that’s all.”
“Well, the other thing … the way Jadie walks. What are your thoughts on her posture?”
“Oh, that, she can’t help that. She was born that way,” Mrs. Ekdahl said. “See, I had this real hard time getting her out when she was born. She was stuck in the wrong way, had her face like this.” She gestured along the front of her abdomen. “So she came wrong. I had to have forty-two stitches in me afterwards, and the doctor said things might not be just right, because she didn’t get enough air. That’s because she was stuck in such a long time.”
“Oh,” I said in surprise. “I hadn’t realized that. Nobody’s mentioned birth trauma to me.”
“We just got to be patient with Jadie,” Mrs. Ekdahl said. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her. She’s little and she’s shy, but that don’t mean there’s anything really the matter with her. She’s good at her work. She always has good report cards, so I think we just got to be patient.”
I went home from the meeting in a state of confusion. This new bit of information fogged over my previous conclusions. Jadie did speak now. She had responded classically to the intervention method I’d developed to treat elective mutism, which lent weight to the evidence that hers was psychological, and surely someone, somewhere, would have noted the likelihood of brain damage in her files if
