Silent Boy: He was a frightened boy who refused to speak – until a teacher's love broke through the silence. Torey Hayden
side to side of the padded cell, knocking himself against the walls, bouncing off, falling into them again. His movements were woozy from the medication or perhaps just from sheer exhaustion but he kept at it. He was still screaming, although it was just a banshee cry now, thin and reedy and keening. His eyes were closed, his head back as he staggered around. With his hands he clawed at his face and his chest, as if to rip them open.
I stood at the window but stared instead at the grain in the wood of the door. It felt eerie to know I had the power to frighten somebody that much. One of the aides came up beside me. She said nothing but stood very close to me and I could feel the warmth of her body, while still not touching her.
‘He’s psychotic,’ she said. She spoke gently, as if they were comforting words, and I suppose she meant that they should be. My own emotions were in an awesome state. They pressed outward against my ribs and chest and upward until they almost forced tears into my eyes. I wanted to cry without really understanding why. I wasn’t disappointed by what had happened. It was natural enough. Nor was I depressed. I had no special expectations of this boy. In fact, I don’t think my emotions were even over Kevin, himself. But I was so near to tears. My arm hurt. I was tired and feeling very vulnerable. The single thing I wanted most just then was for that unknown aide standing next to me to put her arms around me. I needed comfort. I could not even give conscious thought to what was hurting so much inside of me. It was too deep, too complex for words.
Finally, I had to leave. I couldn’t wait any longer. That perhaps was the worst of all, having to leave Kevin like that. But there wasn’t any choice. I would be late as it was for my next commitment, and Kevin’s siege showed no signs of abating. So I left him there alone in his padded cell, alone with his fear.
The next day Kevin did not come. I sat in the small white room, waiting. Finally an aide arrived to tell me Kevin would not be there. When I asked why, the aide said he was ill. I asked if I might go up and see Kevin. The aide couldn’t see any reason why not.
I had never been in Kevin’s room before. It was a small cubicle in a larger dormitorylike room, Garson Gayer’s attempt to give each child some privacy. They felt themselves quite progressive in this matter and advertised it in their brochure.
Kevin lay on his bed, his back to the door, when I entered. I glanced around the small space. It was as bare as our little white room.
‘Kev?’ I said softly, in case he was still going to be frightened of me. He had been or still was weeping and he had his hands over his face. It was a heavy, silent kind of misery. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I ran my hand along his arm. ‘Kev, it’s our time together. Don’t you want to come down?’
He shook his head.
I leaned against him to see his face. ‘Look, Kevin, I know things didn’t work out so well yesterday. Things went wrong. But that’s the way of things. They do go wrong sometimes. But it doesn’t matter so much. We’ll get over it.’
He shook his head again. I could see the tears running down along his fingers as he continued to cover his face from me.
‘Sure they will. Right now it doesn’t seem very much that way. It feels like the whole world came to an end, doesn’t it? But it hasn’t. I’m here, aren’t I? I wouldn’t have come back, if I hadn’t wanted to. But I do. Because I like being with you so much.’
Kevin did not respond.
I tried again, telling him things would be all right and that I was all recovered from what had happened the day before. Kevin did absolutely nothing but lie there with his hands to his face. I feared perhaps he had decided to stop talking to me.
‘Kevin, won’t you come down? We only have half an hour left. Come on. Get up and come down and we’ll do crossword puzzles together. You like crossword puzzles. Okay? All right?’
He refused to budge. He refused to move, to respond, to even look at me. After another five minutes, I rose. Another day, I said. We’d try again another day, another time.
On my way out of the ward, I stopped at the nurses’ desk to get Kevin’s chart. Because he was institutionalized, I was obliged to record all my activities with him on a running chart. I took the chart and went across the hall to the staff room. Sitting down at the table, I opened it and began to write.
Kevin appeared in the doorway. I was alone in the staff room. I sat at the table amid the chaos of dirty coffee mugs and notebooks of staff activities and tons and tons of loose paper. He simply came to the door and stood until I became aware of someone watching me and looked up.
The ravages of the previous day showed on him. His face was swollen all up one side. He had bruises everywhere. I smiled when I saw him. ‘Hi.’
He said nothing.
I looked down at the chart, back at him. The silence between us was fragile, the way silences often are after arguments, in the aftermath of great anger. Except, for me at least, there had been no argument, no anger.
Kevin stared at me.
I fingered the pen I had been writing with.
The silence breathed between us.
‘Can I sit down?’ he asked me.
I nodded and indicated a chair across the table from me. He came into the staff room, pulled out the chair and sat down.
Again the great, lengthening stillness, like cotton over a tender sore. I bent and began to write again. Kevin came to the staff room to see me after I had left him in his room. He sat in a chair rather than on the floor. He does not appear to be afraid.
Out beyond the room were the noises of the ward. Aides and other kids moved around. Nurses chatted. I lived in mortal terror that someone would walk in on us, demand to know what Kevin was doing in an off-limits place like the staff room and destroy the fellowship between us which was so carefully weaving itself back together in the silence.
Kevin crossed his arms on the table and laid his head down.
‘Is the Thorazine still making you sleepy?’ I asked.
He nodded.
I went back to writing.
‘You know what he did to me once?’ he said, as much to the silence as to me.
‘No. What?’ I didn’t even know what he was talking about.
‘I used not to eat my oatmeal. It was the only thing in the whole world I used not to eat. My mom, she used to make it for breakfast. Every day she made it. Then he’d tell me to eat it. He’d make me sit at the table and stay there until I ate every bit. And if I fussed, he went and got more.’
I said nothing, not daring to.
‘If I didn’t eat it and I had to go to school or something, he’d save it for lunch for me. And once, this one time, the oatmeal got to be about two days old. It made me sick to look at it.’
He paused, drew a breath. I was so scared someone was going to interrupt us.
‘He grabbed my hair and pulled it until I opened my mouth. Then he stuffed it in. Well, I sicked it all up again, right there at the table. I couldn’t help it. It had mold growing on it. It was awful. But you know what he made me do? He made me eat the sick.’
I continued to write.
‘It was the only thing I never liked to eat. I ate everything else. I made a special point to eat everything else. But I guess it didn’t matter very much.’
‘It must have made you awfully mad,’ I said and looked up. Perspiration had made huge stains on his shirt.
‘He made me mad all right. He made me want to kill him.’ Kevin looked at me. His eyes narrowed. ‘And I will someday. When I get out of here. He won’t be