Torey Hayden - Silent Boy - He was a frightened boy who refused to speak – until a teacher's love broke through the silence

God, he was ugly .

A moment of hopelessness washed over me as I looked at him. Stepping aside, I allowed room for him to pass. Relief flooded his features and he dived past me and under the table.

The chairs went up, seats facing outward, backs tight against the table. I stood watching while he fashioned his cage. He was not shutting me out. He smiled pleasantly at me and gestured in a friendly manner, and I knew it was not me that he felt so compelled to protect himself from. The disquieting fact was that there was no one else in the room, nothing but the walls and the pale sunlight.

I pondered how to work with him, whether to sit on the floor outside the makeshift barricade, as I had in the mirrored therapy room, or whether to join him under the table. After another moment of indecision, I dropped down on my hands and knees and crawled under the table too. He welcomed me with a pleased smile, moved over to make room, of which there wasn’t much, until we both sat hunched together like gnomes in the semi-darkness.

We were only inches from one another. He smelled rather gamey at that distance, and so I just sat for a few minutes, accustoming myself to the lack of light and the cramped space and the odor. Kevin began to rock slightly, his arms clasped tight around his knees, his chin resting atop. He stared at me without wavering.

Well, now what? I really was feeling awfully pessimistic at just that moment. Leaning out, I pulled my box of materials into the cage with us. Taking off the lid, I searched through it for the book we had been reading.

It’s scary, I said to Kevin as I dug through the junk in the box, to start talking when one has been silent so long. But the easiest way to start is to jump right in.

There were other kids, I said, whom I had worked with, who hadn’t been speaking either. I told Kevin about them, of how they had felt before they’d started talking again, of how scary it was the first time and how sure they’d all been that they couldn’t do it. But they could. Every single child had been able to talk in the end, I said, and nothing bad had happened to any of them for it. There was nothing to be frightened of. They all were, because that was the way it felt in the beginning, but there actually was nothing to fear in the end. It was just a feeling.

I spoke in a slow, easy voice, letting it reek with confidence. I lounged back to the extent one could lounge back while sitting under a table with a large fifteen-year-old, so that he could see how relaxed I was, how certain I was of success.

Opening the book, I feigned great interest in it, looking at all the illustrations and I kept talking, oozing self-assurance like a car salesman. Then I laid the book on the carpet. What we’re going to do, I said to him, is have you read to me. Let’s start here.

Kevin looked at me in alarm.

‘Right here, I think,’ I said. ‘I read those chapters yesterday, so we’ll have you start right here. Chapter Seven: The Tide Goes Out.’

Kevin grabbed my arm and shook his head violently. His eyes were dilated wide with horror.

‘Yes, I know. It’s not something you’re used to doing. But that’s okay. Nothing will happen. And everybody’s a little afraid when they first get started. That’s natural.’ I tried to sound very casual, as if this were a most usual thing. Kevin, however, knew it to be highly unusual. He had the look of a frightened horse, that wild, whites-of-the-eyes expression, with his head turned to one side.

Smoothing the pages out, I pointed to the first word. ‘We’ll start with just this one word, okay? Forget the rest of them. Just look at this one. What is it?’

He rocked a little harder and the table shuddered.

‘Here, look at it. This one word. Give it a try.’

Kevin regarded the page. He still had his frightened-horse look. Bringing a hand up, he rubbed his forehead and then pulled his palm down across his face, dragging it out of shape. Then tentatively, he put one finger under the first word.

Seconds passed.

‘What is that word? Look at it. What is it?’

Kevin took a deep breath.

‘The first word is always the hardest one. After that, it’s a cinch. You’ll see.’

He started to rock again. I could hear his breath coming shallowly, the fear rattling up through his throat.

‘Only that first word. That word. How does it start? Come on. Get that word.’

Kevin was taking me seriously. He was going to try. Bringing his other hand down, he ran it along the perimeter of the book, then stopped it to steady the page. Cautiously, as if the book might leap up and nip him, he bent over it until he was hunched almost double. In the gloom under the table, that movement obscured what little light we did have on the page.

He took another deep breath. All the while I kept urging, kept talking to keep the silence at bay. I didn’t want him to hear the silence and know it was stronger than I was.

A third big breath, shakier this time. He lifted his hand and wiped the sweat off on his shirt front. A wet stain had been left where his finger was on the page. Frantically he tried to erase it, and when he couldn’t, he glanced over at me to see what my reaction was. Then he put his hand back over it to cover it.

He needed another minute to rock. It was not easy to do in his hunched position and the whole table shook.

‘Let’s go. Let’s have a try.’

He opened his mouth. No sound, not even a breath.

Seconds drew into minutes. He closed his mouth again.

My constant patter continued. Come on, come on, come on. Let’s go. Let’s try.

Again Kevin began taking breaths in preparation. His mouth opened and closed like a fish’s as he would get ready to try and then lose courage. He started to tap the word with a finger, and that small steady, penetrating sound soon filled up the space around us.

‘Have a go. Come on, Kev, you can do it. I know you can. This is just the way it happens, give it a try.’

A funny noise joined the cacophony of taps and tries. Kevin’s teeth were chattering. At first I had to sit back a little to identify the sound, and that made him look over at me. I could see them chatter. I smiled. Kevin lurched back over the book again with determination. He had begun to believe me. He was going to get that word.

Sweat beaded on his upper lip. His hands shook. Big, dark circles dampened his shirt under his arms and down the center of his back, and the smell was incredible. Still he opened and closed his mouth in abortive tries. He made big, wide circles with it, as if trying to stretch it into working order.

Minute after minute after minute was filled with his grimaces and with my nonstop patter until I felt like we were caught in a time vortex. Kevin undoubtedly thought we were caught in hell. The cords of his neck were taut. Veins stood out at his temples. His face was crimson.

I could hear the mechanical respirations of the black-and-white clock on the wall. Leaning out from under the table, I looked up at it. Twenty–three minutes had passed.

The aide would be returning soon. In an attempt to startle Kevin out of this nonproductive cycle he’d gotten trapped in, I whacked the floor with the flat of my hand. Often enough that worked with other children and we would leap right over the first word. But not this time. Startled, Kevin only bumped his head on the underside of the tabletop. Rubbing it tenderly, he bent forward and attacked the word anew. He brought a hand to his mouth and tried to force his lips into the shape of the word. The word was ‘every’ and soon it required both hands to stretch his lips back into the shape of an e . Sweat dropped from his face down onto the page. The ever-present sound of his teeth chattering echoed in our enclosure.