I won’t say anything more, then. I’ll let you form your own opinion.”
Comprehending, I nodded.
A pause.
“So tell me about the mutism,” I said.
“It’s absolute. In all the time he’s been here, I’ve never heard a single word out of him. In fact, he almost makes no noise of any kind. He does speak at home. He just won’t speak here in front of anyone else.”
“So what have you tried?” I asked.
Martina shrugged. “To be honest, not much. He’s only four. I’ve had other kids with these kinds of problems. Usually, like him, they’re only children. Or firstborn. They come in really shy and frightened and feel a bit besieged by all this new activity. Normally, I just give them time and eventually they do settle in and start talking.”
“So you’ve had experience before with elective mutism?”
She nodded. “I’ve been teaching preschool almost twenty-five years now. You see all kinds. I can remember this one little girl. Her name was Stormy, of all things. Which was quite a misnomer. Tiny, pale, mousy little thing, and she wouldn’t say a word. Would hardly breathe. She sat all folded up on her chair, and you could just tell she was overwhelmed. Her mother was really shy as well, so I think it was a family trait. And yeah, she was totally mute, just like Drake. Wouldn’t say a thing. It must have taken six months or more with her. But we just stayed patient and finally she started.
“So this is what I told Drake’s family,” Martina continued. “Just give him time. He’ll settle in. But Christ, that grandfather. Nothing is good enough for that man. Nothing happens fast enough. He runs his life like it’s a business. In fact, I think he’d like to run everybody’s life like a business, and I’m quite sure he does at home. He’s absolutely fixated on ‘meeting targets,’ on everything ‘being within normal guidelines.’ That’s the whole reason they brought Drake into this program. To ‘get him to meet normal guidelines.’ I mean, hell, what’s that when it’s at home? There’s huge latitude when you’re talking ‘normal’ at age four. But obviously, whatever we’re doing, we’re not doing it well enough, because now you’re here. He didn’t even have the courtesy to inform us, to give us a chance to review the situation. Just bang. ‘Time’s up. You’re finished.’”
“So you don’t really think Drake’s mutism is a problem?” I asked.
Martina shrugged. “I dunno. I wouldn’t want to say at this point, really. I don’t see the point of giving him that kind of label. If it were my kid, I would have just left well enough alone, because he’s doing really well in all other respects. So I would have just given him time to grow. He’s a young one. An August birthday. I personally wouldn’t start him in kindergarten this year, which, of course, is what they want to do when fall comes. Yes, he is definitely bright enough. No question of that. But what’s the hurry? The rat race will still be there. So I’d say, ‘Here, sonny, play another year.’ I think that’s all he needs.”
“What’s with the stuffed toy?” I asked.
“Ahh. That’s ‘Friend.’ That’s what we’ve named it; I think just because you always tend to say, ‘Where’s his friend?’ Drake doesn’t call it anything, of course. Or if he does, we don’t know about it. But if you want to see him get distressed, try taking Friend off him.”
“It’s a little … big, isn’t it?”
“Tell me about it. And it goes absolutely everywhere. To lunch. On the playground. To the toilets. Now, that’s fun! I say, ‘Let’s leave Friend out here so he doesn’t get dirty while you go potty,’ and I might as well be saying, ‘I’m going to cut Friend up into little pieces and stuff him down this toilet while you’re in there.’”
I grinned. “Wishful thinking?”
Martina grinned back. “If I tell you we actually got stuck in one of the toilet cubicles one day because of Friend, you’ll get the picture. Just some places that you, a kid, and a three-foot tiger can’t go.”
“So what’s your take on Friend?” I asked. “Security blanket?”
“Oh, no, Friend’s much more than that. He’s a proper friend. You know. The kind you have to set a place for at the table. Drake is an imaginative little boy. We’re handicapped, of course, not having him say anything, but you can tell when watching him that he’s ‘talking’ to Friend. And he’s quite insistent that Friend be given his own paintbrush or crayons or cracker at snacktime. My guess is that Friend is more than just a security blanket. I suspect we’ve got a very intelligent, creative child here, and Friend’s the only one with access to his world.”
After lunch I was to spend half an hour of individual assessment time with Drake. I was shown into the room where the youngest children in the program – the two-year-olds – met, because they only came in the mornings, so the room was empty in the afternoons. It was a lovely room, bright and spacious, painted pale green and white, with a generous number of attractive toys. I was concerned that these would distract Drake, making him uninterested in one-to-one work with me, especially as he himself would be tired by that point. However, I needn’t have worried. He entered willingly with Martina and when she introduced me, he happily sat down in one of the small chairs beside me at the table. Well, he and Friend.
He was a very attractive child. Indeed, he was more than attractive. There was about him a cherubic beauty. Porcelain skin, delicate little Cupid’s-bow mouth, sparkly brown eyes with lashes so long they fell in the “to die for” category. He was like one of those dolls-for-adults, those “collectors’ pieces” that are never meant to be played with. His girlish haircut contributed to this rarified aura.
And he was a very charming child. Looking up with wonderfully smiley eyes, as he sat beside me, his expression was of eager, almost squirmy anticipation, like a happy puppy. It made me feel just as eager.
“Hi, my name’s Torey, and know what? I’ve come here today just to see you! You and I are going to do some interesting things together.”
More excited squirming, more gleeful smiling.
“And look. I’ve got a box all full of fun things for us to do. Shall we open it and see?”
Drake didn’t try to open the box himself, but he looked at it with anticipation. I reached over and pulled the box toward us. This was the “bag of tricks” I traveled with when I went to assess children or work with them in schools. The container had originally been a presentation box for a gift of fruit, and as the fruit had had to travel by carrier, it was sturdily made. It was low and flat with a lid that lifted off. Inside I kept a whole assortment of things I thought might be helpful in encouraging children to talk – puppets, paper dolls, plain and colored paper, a whole collection of different pens, pencils, and crayons in a smaller box, some stickers, a couple of picture books, a Richard Scarry’s word book, a joke book, a coloring book, a paperback full of puzzles, two Matchbox cars, a family of dollhouse dolls, an old, broken Instamatic camera, some plastic animals, some plastic soldiers, and whatever “clever” things currently had my fancy. At the moment it was a “fortunetelling” fish, which was really no more than a piece of plastic that flipped around when warmed by the heat of the hand.
I took out the Richard Scarry book. This was a favorite of mine, simply because there were so many pictures in such variety that I could do an infinite number of things with them.
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