Torey Hayden - Beautiful Child - The story of a child trapped in silence and the teacher who refused to give up on her

Bob grinned with rather evil relish. “I see you have everything in hand, so I’ll leave you to it,” he said and vanished out the door.

“I’m not sitting with him. He’s crazy,” Billy said and grabbed his stuff from the table. “I’d rather sit with the Dalmatians. Come here, you guys. This here’s our table. That ugly kid can sit alone.”

I grabbed Billy’s shoulder again. “For now I think everyone’s going to sit alone. One person per table. You sit here. Zane? Are you Zane? You sit here. Jesse, there. Shane, over here. Okay, these are your tables. And your chairs. So remember where they are, because I want your bottoms glued to those chairs unless you have permission to be somewhere else.”

“Glued on?” cried Billy and leaped up. “Where’s the glue?” He was over to the bookshelves already, rummaging through a basket. “Got to glue my bottom to that chair.”

“Billy, sit down.”

“But you said ‘glued on.’ I’m just doing what you said.”

“Sit down .”

With a cheerful smile, he sat. “We got whole tables to ourselves?” he said. “These are our tables?”

“Yes, those are your tables.”

“Wow,” he said and smoothed his hand over the wood surface. “Cool. My own table. Wonder where I’m going to put it when I get home.”

“ Billy !”

“Is there only going to be four of us in this here class?” Jesse asked.

Suddenly I remembered Venus. The bell had rung, and she wasn’t in the classroom.

I crossed to the window. Venus was still on the wall, but below her was Wanda, arms reaching up. Gently she lifted Venus down. I saw them approach the school building.

Wanda came all the way up to the classroom door with her sister. She was a big, ungainly girl, at least thirty pounds overweight, with bad acne and straggly hair. Her clothes were wrinkled, ill-fitting, and noticeably smelly.

“Hello,” I said.

“Her come inside now,” Wanda said in a cheerful manner. “Come on, beautiful child. Time to go to school.”

Venus looked up at me with a full, open gaze, making unabashed eye contact. I smiled at her. She didn’t smile back; she just stared.

“Here.” I offered my hand. “Shall I show you to your table?”

“Her no talk,” Wanda said.

“Thank you for your thoughts,” I replied, “but now it’s time for Venus to be in school.” I kept my hand outstretched to Venus. “Time to get started.”

“Her no come to school.”

“I don’t think you go to school, do you, Wanda? But Venus does. Come on, sweetheart. Time to find your seat.”

“Go on, beautiful child,” Wanda whispered and put her hands on Venus’s back. She pushed the child gently into the room.

“Good-bye, Wanda,” I said. “Thanks for bringing her. Do you want to say good-bye to Wanda, Venus? Shall we say, ‘See you after school, Wanda’?”

“Bye-bye, beautiful child,” Wanda said. Then she turned and ambled off.

“Beautiful child” was not the epithet I would have given Venus, now that I had a chance to look at her up close. She was neither clean nor well cared for. There was the dusky cast of worn-in dirt to her dark skin, and her long hair hung in matted tendrils, as if someone had tried to make dreadlocks out of them and failed. Her clothes were too big and had food stains down the front. And like her sister, she smelled.

“Okay, sweetheart, you can sit in this chair.”

“How come you’re sitting her at the Dalmatian’s table?” Billy asked. “How come you don’t make her sit with that ugly black kid. You should put all the black kids together.”

“Actually, Billy, we don’t sort people by color in here, so I would prefer it if you stopped going on about it,” I replied. “I’d also prefer it if you’d stop saying ‘Dalmatian.’ He’s not a dog. He’s a boy and his name is Zane.”

“My name’s Shane,” the boy said in an annoyed tone. “And you shut up, stupid kid.”

“I’ll tell you who’s stupid!” Billy shouted angrily. “You want me to punch your lights out?”

Before I knew what was happening, Billy lunged at Shane.

But no quailing from Shane. He lunged back. “Yeah! I wanna beat your head in!” he shouted. “I’m gonna pound you to a bloody little zit on the sidewalk and then step on you!”

“Yeah!” Zane chimed in. “Me too!”

And I was thinking, Gosh, this is going to be a fun year.

I was pathetically glad to see Julie when she showed up at one o’clock. The morning had been nothing but one long fistfight. Shane and Zane, who were six, had arrived in the classroom with a diagnosis of FAS – fetal alcohol syndrome – which is a condition that occurs in the unborn child when alcohol is overused in pregnancy. As a result, they both had the distinctive elflike physical features that characterize fetal alcohol syndrome, a borderline IQ, and serious behavioral problems, in particular, hyperactivity and attention deficit. Even this glum picture, however, was a rather inadequate description of these pint-size guerrillas. With their manic behavior, identical Howdy Doody faces, and weird, out-of-date clothes, they were like characters from some horror film come to life to terrorize the classroom.

Jesse, who was eight, had Tourette’s syndrome, which caused him to have several tics including spells of rapid eye blinking, head twitching, and sniffing, as if he had a runny nose, although he didn’t. In addition, he obsessively straightened things. He was particularly concerned about having his pencils and erasers laid out just so on his table, which was not a promising road to happiness in this class. The moment the others realized it mattered to him, they were intent on knocking his carefully aligned items around just to wind him up. Also not a good idea, I discovered quickly. His obsessiveness gave Jesse the initial impression of being a rather finicky, fastidious child. However, beneath this veneer was a kid with the mind-set of Darth Vader. Things had to be done his way. Death to anyone who refused.

Compared to these three, Billy seemed rather tame. He was just plain aggressive, a cocky live wire who was willing to take on anyone and everyone, whether it made sense or not; a kid whose mouth was permanently in gear before his brain. Permanently in gear, period.

I’d been forced to more or less ignore Venus over the course of the morning because I was too busy breaking up fights among the boys. She didn’t appear to mind this inattention. Indeed, she didn’t actually appear to be alive most of the time. Plopped down in her chair at the table, she just sat, staring ahead of her. I’d offered some papers and crayons at one point. I’d offered a storybook. I’d offered a jigsaw puzzle. Admittedly, all this was done on the run, while chasing after one of the boys, and I’d had no time to sit down with her, but even so … Venus picked up whatever it was I’d given her and manipulated it back and forth in a sluggish, detached manner for a few moments without using it appropriately. Then, as soon as I turned away, she let it drop and resumed sitting motionlessly.

Once Julie arrived, I gave her the task of refereeing the boys and then took Venus aside. I wanted to get the measure of Venus’s silence immediately. I wasn’t sure yet if it was an elective behavior that she could control or whether it was some more serious physical problem that prevented her from speaking, but I knew from experience that if it was psychological, I needed to intervene before we developed a relationship based on silence.

“Come with me,” I said, moving to the far end of the room away from Julie and the boys.

Venus watched me in an open, direct way. She had good eye contact, which I took as a positive sign. This made it less likely that autism was at the base of her silence.