Finding a Voice

by Kim Hood

  What could I say with both of them smiling at me – one with open warmth, one with a malicious grin?

  ‘Okay.’

  There was just enough time for Sarah to plunk a bright striped scarf on top of my science books before the warning bell for third period rang and I headed for my locker to fetch my sketch pad for art.

  As I walked into the drama room I scanned the small groups sitting together here and there. Sarah and Lisa were sitting in the back row of seats with their heads together in serious conversation. Sarah jerked upright when she saw me come in. She smiled, but it was a forced smile, seemingly for my benefit rather than coming from the heart. My heart started to pound. Something didn’t feel right.

  ‘There’s poor Jo,’ Lisa said with an overly-dramatic concerned smile as I approached.

  ‘Why?’ I asked suspiciously, but I was pretty sure now that I knew what Lisa was alluding to. So much for the new beginning. So much for any chance of having a real friend in Sarah.

  Everyone in elementary school had known about my mom’s coping problems. Right from my first day in school Mom had branded herself as bizarre. Instead of fussing over me, helping me to find my coat hook and passing comments with the other moms, she had left me standing shyly at the door to the kindergarten class and had marched over to the bookshelf. She had grabbed three books off the shelf and headed straight to the teacher with them.

  ‘These have got to go,’ she had stated, even though the teacher was kneeling down trying to coax a small boy to let go of his death grip on his mom’s leg. I remember looking around and seeing that I was the only kid not standing with her mom. The teacher had stood up, confused.

  ‘Pardon?’

  I don’t remember what exactly Mom said about the books – something about all the kids in the books having a mom and a dad, but whatever it was, it was loud enough to make everyone stop and look at her. It was the next thing she said that I remember most.

  ‘She has no dad. There is no dad.’ And she didn’t just say it, she shouted it. The classroom had gone from noisy confusion to dead quiet in a second.

  Mom – tall, with her curly hair springing around her head, her long floral skirt frayed on the bottom – had just stood there, not caring that everyone was staring at her, still holding out the books. For the first time I saw what everyone else saw. She didn’t look like the other moms, she didn’t talk like the other moms, she didn’t act like the other moms and from the scared expressions on the kids’ faces, and the way the moms pulled their kids closer, I could see that might not be a good thing.

  After that, even if the kids had forgotten my mom’s weird behaviour, their parents never stopped their vigilant lookout for craziness. Play dates with me were definitely discouraged. And that incident had happened when Mom was well.

  I was pretty sure that Lisa had just shared some of these memorable times with Sarah, but I wasn’t prepared for her next comment.

  ‘Isn’t Sarah a sweetheart, giving you that scarf? I’ve got lots of clothes I was sending off to charity if you want to come around to my house to look. We know how hard it is with your mom the way she is.’ Lisa looked at Sarah conspiratorially. Sarah opened her mouth and then shut it without a word.

  And I bolted. I just stood up, my lunch bag hit the ground, and I ran.

  It was a long way home. My school was on the edge of the city about ten kilometres from the suburb we lived in. I could have waited for a city bus. There was a stop not too far from the school, but I just wanted to get away from the awfulness of the day as soon as possible. So instead I just kept running and walking until I came to my road and then I turned off down the little path to the river, the path to safety.

  It was never going to change. I was never going to be known as ‘Jo’ without the attachment of ‘with the crazy mother’. I expected this from Lisa. But it hurt a whole lot more to see Sarah gossiping about my mom. I’d let myself hope that she was different.

  I should have been going straight home. I couldn’t help but go to the cabin though. As soon as I opened the creaky, old door I felt better. I looked at my watch and it was only just before two. I could even start a small fire in the old fireplace and have an hour or so feeding sticks to the flames. With any luck I’d be able to show up at home on time and hope that the school hadn’t phoned Grandma.

  I put my hand in my pocket, searching for some paper to start the fire with. There was the pamphlet again. I brought it out and looked at it. Hi, I’m Chris.

  I thought about the kids I had met the day before, about how they had all greeted me with big smiles. It was easy with them. It was too hard trying to fit in with kids like Lisa and Sarah. They were never going to let me forget that I couldn’t fit in, would never fit in.

  I decided right then that I would go back to Mr Jenkins and tell him I could start with Chris tomorrow. No more lunches in the main school. And – I was going to beg him to help get my timetable changed so that I had art with Chris instead of science in Block H. There had to be a way. I never wanted to see Sarah again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The next morning I was back at the secretary’s desk before the first bell. Luckily she connected me to Mr Jenkins before I lost my nerve. I didn’t realise my hand was shaking until she passed me the phone.

  ‘What can I do for you so early in the morning, Jo?’ he asked.

  ‘I was wondering if I could start coming today for lunch, instead of waiting until Monday.’ I held my breath waiting for the answer.

  ‘Don’t see why not. Anything else?’ He’d made it easier for me to ask the next question.

  I let the breath out, remembering the words I had practised.

  ‘Well, I was kind of wondering if there was a way I could get out of my science class so that I could go to Art with Chris.’ I crossed my fingers that he didn’t ask why.

  He didn’t.

  ‘It might be a puzzle, but this early in the term I’m sure I could pull some strings,’ he said. ‘Chris will be delighted.’

  In all of my thinking about never wanting to see Sarah again, I had kind of forgotten about Chris. Now, back in the Special Education wing I felt nearly as nervous as I had the first day. What would Chris be like? What if he didn’t like me? I’d kind of committed myself to spending a lot of time with him now.

  Mr Jenkins had met me at the door again and as we walked he told me about Chris.

  ‘Chris can’t talk. We’ve tried a few systems to help him communicate, but nothing seems to work. He can’t walk or control many of his movements. He has muscle spasms and occasionally he has epileptic seizures – we’ll get you trained up to recognise these.’ I wondered if there was anything he could do. I wasn’t sure I was prepared for this. The kids I had met before seemed – not as complicated.

  ‘We find that when he’s in the lunch room with everyone he has a lot more difficulty eating, so we’ve been trying having him eat in a quiet room. But even on his own it may take him the whole fifty minutes to eat. We’ll show you how to feed him.’ Was this the ‘teenage stuff’ the pamphlet had talked about? I knew I was completely inept at fitting in with regular kids, but I was beginning to panic about what I was getting myself into with Chris.

  Mr Jenkins must have seen my panic because he stopped and pointed to a picture on a bulletin board. Unlike the rapid spiel he had started with, his next words were quiet and measured.

  ‘This is Chris at a baseball game last year.’ There was the same boy from the pamphlet, with a cap on and that same lopsided grin. ‘My eighteen year old son helped us out on that field trip and spent most of the time assisting Chris. It was the first time I’d really seen him smile.’

  I just looked at him. What did this have to do with me?

  ‘It may be a lot about helping Chris with things he can’t do, but what you can certainly do, that I can’t, is make him smile. Believe me, I’ve tried.’

  Still I felt confused.

  ‘How? What can I do?’

  ‘Nothing special. Ju
st be a normal enough kid and talk to him. For some reason that’s the key to Chris’s smile.’

  So I didn’t run away, though my heart was pounding fast when we came to the room Chris was waiting in.

  ‘Chris, Jo. Jo, Chris. And Florence, Chris’s aide.’ Mr Jenkins had resumed his whirlwind pace. ‘Florence will show you the how to of lunch with Chris and then she is heading back to me to help out with Amanda. ‘All right, Flo?’

  And he was off.

  The boy in front of me was in an enormous wheelchair. It seemed to take up most of the small room we were in. His head was cradled in what looked like a semi-halo of blue neoprene. There was an equally blue bar holding back each of his shoulders and a belt that strapped in his chest. The whole contraption was somehow tilted back so that he looked like he was in a big reclining chair. With all of the restraining bits, his arms and legs were still free and all four of them were flailing wildly.

  ‘He’s a bit excited to see you, aren’t you, Chris?’ Florence almost cooed the last part, as if talking to a baby in a high-chair. ‘Watch out for this one, he likes the girls. You still have to eat your lunch though. There’s a good boy.’

  I had never felt so self-conscious in my life. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to say anything. Mr Jenkins had said I only needed to talk to him. I didn’t know if I could talk like this.

  ‘Hi, Chris.’ Surely I couldn’t go wrong with greeting him. I sat down in the empty chair at the table.

  ‘Ok, Chris. Let’s show Jo how you eat, ok? And no funny stuff today!’

  Chris had a big terry towel bib on. Florence had what looked like a big baby spoon in one hand and a tea towel in the other. Chris’s limbs had settled down, but when Florence raised the spoon to his mouth they started up again and she had to manoeuvre the spoon around an arm into Chris’s open mouth. It didn’t all make it in and with the tea towel she wiped away the bits that ended up on his lips. My eyes travelled to the dish of food in front of the aide. Some sort of stew, I guessed. It too was in a bowl more fitting for a toddler.

  I hadn’t asked Mr Jenkins any questions and now suddenly I had some, but I didn’t think I should ask them in front of Chris. Could he understand me? Was he like a giant baby or was his brain ok? What should I talk about?

  After two more spoonfuls of food, intermittent with, ‘there’s a good boy’ and ‘good eating, Chris!’ Florence handed me the spoon. I half expected to hear ‘go on, there’s a good girl!’ but Florence’s voice returned to a normal intonation.

  ‘It’s that simple. Just dodge Chris’s limbs if you can. Don’t worry though, sometimes you can’t and we’ve all had to clean some food off the walls from time to time!’

  I took the spoon and tried to follow the way Florence had fed Chris. My movements felt far too tentative and awkward though. I was sitting too far away and couldn’t reach around Chris’s tense arm that jutted toward me. After two attempts I stood up and managed to get most of a spoonful of mush into his mouth and then gingerly wiped the rest away with the towel, trying to avoid touching the boy’s arm.

  ‘Good. You’ve got the jig of it,’ Florence said. ‘Ok, Chris. Can I trust you with this young girl?’

  I felt my cheeks burn with embarrassment – more for Chris than for me. I just wanted the aide to leave. I felt I wouldn’t be so self-conscious in feeding Chris. And I wouldn’t have to talk in this sickly sweet way that felt so … wrong.

  When the aide left, the boy looked at me with that big smile I had seen in all the photos.

  ‘I don’t know that I’m so good at this,’ I said, half to myself.

  I thought of the alternative – hiding from Sarah and Lisa, feeling sick and mortified.

  ‘I’ll try though.’

  I was silent as I somehow got most of the food into Chris over the next twenty minutes. In that quietness the boy’s limbs gradually slowed down. I gave him the last spoonful and sat down, looking at my watch. Still ten minutes until the end of lunch and there was no sign of anyone coming back.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘Did Mr Jenkins tell you my name was Jo?’

  I remembered that he had. Another stupid thing to say – if he even knew what I was saying.

  I looked at the boy. He didn’t smile again, but his eyes were meeting mine.

  I realised that this was the first time I had properly looked at him. I’d spent the whole time concentrating on the job of getting food into him, and somehow not seeing him. Mr Jenkins really had to think harder about the photos he used in his pamphlets, because instead of the geeky hair and clothes I’d expected, Chris’s jeans and trainers were both brands everyone wore and his hair was pretty normal too.

  He looked at me again expectantly.

  ‘I’m hiding out here you know.’ It just slipped out. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I mean, you might be expecting someone fun and normal. But I’m a bit of a screw up.’

  I sat for another minute, not sure what I should say in the silence.

  ‘I don’t have any friends. I don’t even know how to have friends. My mom isn’t exactly a role model in normalness. And the worst part is, everyone knows it. She doesn’t care if she’s weird. And I don’t really either, most of the time. But everyone else does, and they’re afraid I’m as weird as her. I thought it would be different this year. I got all the right clothes. I take the bus to school, so nobody needs to know about my mom. But it doesn’t matter.’ For some reason it seemed easy to just keep talking.

  ‘But you know, I guess that’s for the best. I kind of have enough to do at home. See, my mom isn’t just weird. She’s on medications and stuff.’

  I looked over again. The boy was completely quiet – no movement. And his eyes were firmly on mine. Was he listening? I felt like I was truly seeing him now, not just his wheelchair. He had these incredibly deep brown eyes and his stare was intense, like he was listening like nobody had ever listened to me before. It wasn’t exactly like the wheelchair and his body all at weird angles disappeared; I was still pretty uncomfortable with him. But his eyes kind of opened a window to who he was under all of that. Chris, this was Chris.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I walked into the hospital lounge with twice the confidence I had the last time. It felt like it was a month since I had been here instead of only a week ago. I wasn’t afraid of this hospital wing anymore. I’d seen stranger over the last week in the special education wing and I was starting to feel comfortable with it.

  It was going to be good to see Mom. I needed to get away from Grandma. In the last week and a half I had been given almost no choice in any aspect of my life. It didn’t feel like a break from the responsibility of watching out for Mom anymore. It was more like being treated like I wasn’t capable of even watching out for myself.

  Instead of feeling like I was being taken care of in a special way, a motherly way that my own mother could never quite achieve, I was feeling imprisoned. Besides, I wasn’t a kid anymore.

  But Grandma was still treating me like one and it was getting harder to be the kid that she expected me to be. This morning was the perfect example. I had wandered into the kitchen at 10a.m., surprised that I had been allowed to sleep in. Lined up on the kitchen table were piles of clothes. As usual, Grandma was busy in the kitchen, head in the oven, rear end stuck up in the air.

  ‘Morning,’ I had mumbled as I opened the cupboard looking for some sugar-coated cereal before yet another bowl of porridge was plunked down in front of me.

  ‘A bit of a treat for you on the table, Jo,’ Grandma had stated, while she carried on with her kitchen work. That was her way. She presented criticism or disappointment in the same matter of fact manner as a compliment, or this – a present.

  I had approached the present tentatively. I wasn’t sure what I would find, but I didn’t think it could be good. There were four complete outfits compiled on the table in four separate, impossibly straight piles. I had picked up each item and tried to carefully lay them back as neatly as they had been.

&nbs
p; To be fair to Grandma the clothes weren’t awful. It was more that each outfit matched so exactly and they were just that slightly bit out of style that anyone would notice because they were so new. Plus everything was either frilly or a cut and material that demanded to be crease free. I knew that there would be no getting out of wearing them though.

  ‘Thanks, Grandma.’ I had tried to sound excited, but my voice had come out too high and too flat. If Grandma had noticed, and I was pretty sure she had, she hadn’t shown it.

  ‘Get a move on then. We’ve a half hour drive to the hospital and it won’t do to be late.’

  So here I was, in the least uncomfortable, least glaringly out-of-date outfit. In retrospect I thought I should have chosen the worst, as nobody here would notice or care what I was wearing. Tomorrow I would have a tougher decision as to which I would have to wear to school.

  An hour of escape from Grandma wasn’t the only reason I wanted to see my mom though. I wanted to tell her about my week. Not the bad, beginning bit. I never told her how bad school usually was for me. Mom had enough bad to deal with without taking on my problems too. I wanted to tell her about Chris.

  She wasn’t sitting in the familiar green plastic chair this week though. Today she was standing right under the television that was perched near the ceiling in the corner. She was staring intensely at it, watching some sort of news show.

  When I touched her arm in greeting, Mom never took her eyes from the screen. She shook my touch off as if it were an annoying fly.

  ‘See that?’ she shouted, pointing vehemently at the screen. ‘They’re at it again. Attacking people’s right to knowledge!’

  ‘Hi, Mom.’ I tried again to connect with her. ‘I’m really glad to see you.’

  I wanted to be able to hug her, to recapture that warm embrace we had shared the week before. Here was the mom I knew though – not the pretend mom I had somehow convinced myself I would meet. This mom didn’t give out hugs lightly.

  She was gearing up for a rant. I could tell. She always was when the finger started pointing. If I could only shift the focus, maybe she would be interested enough to listen to me today.