Twilight Children: Three Voices No One Heard – Until Someone Listened. Torey Hayden
appreciating a chance to get away from the city for the day. It was late winter going into spring and the weather was gorgeous in that heartbreaking way of a dying season. The snow was gone, the landscape gray and brown, and yet there was an expectancy to it, a nascent joie de vivre. Moreover, I loved driving itself and the freedom and solitude of being on the open road.
I reached the preschool just after eleven, which gave me about forty-five minutes to observe Drake in his class. Martina, Drake’s teacher, greeted me in the school office.
“We’ve been expecting you,” she said cheerfully. “We’ve had at least five phone calls this morning.”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “Really? From whom?”
“Mr. Sloane. To see if you had come.”
“Drake’s father?”
“No, Mason Sloane, Drake’s grandfather. We all call Drake’s father ‘Walter.’ Mr. Sloane is his father.” She laughed. “It can be even more confusing than that, because Mr. Sloane always refers to his son as ‘Watty,’ while Walter’s wife calls him ‘Skip.’” Then a friendly grin. “But ‘Mr.’ always refers to the old man.”
“And he’s been calling? Here?”
Good-naturedly, Martina rolled her eyes. “Welcome to Sloaneville.”
Drake was not at all what I’d anticipated. His macho soapopera name had put me in mind of aristocrats or over-sexed mallards. When I first saw him in the classroom, however, I didn’t even realize Drake was a boy. Not only were his features soft and feminine, but his hairstyle was a girl’s. At least in my book. He was blond with thick, shiny, straight hair, and it was cut in what I could only describe as a bob. And not even a “Dutch boy” bob. This was a long, shoulder-length bob with well-trimmed bangs of the sort you might see in pictures of boys in medieval times. I had not seen any boys look like this lately, however. Even back in the 1960s and 1970s when there was a certain vogue for long-haired boys’ styles, they were not the court-of-King-Arthur fashion this boy wore.
Drake also defied the stereotypic personality of an elective mute. In my experience, the majority of children with this disorder were shy and withdrawn. Drake, however, was participating joyfully in a rollicking singing and dancing game with the other children. He wasn’t singing, of course, but he was having a high old time joining in with the movements, his actions open and uninhibited.
At least pretty much they were “open and uninhibited,” because that was the other unusual thing about him. He was not dancing alone. Accompanying him was an enormous stuffed tiger, which he clutched tightly around the neck with one arm. It had brilliantly hued orange-and-black stripes, a merry, almost cartoonish face, a big fluffy white belly, and was formed into a permanent sitting position. And quite honestly it was almost as tall as Drake was.
Taken aback by this Prince-Valiant-meets-Calvin-and-Hobbes combination, I just stared.
He was fun to watch. This kid had megawatt charisma. The other children in the class were unfazed by his silence, his odd name, his crazy hairstyle, or his having a life-sized tiger for a sidekick. They actively sought his company and included him in everything happening. Drake responded to each overture with enthusiastic charm. Indeed, he responded just as eagerly to the teachers. I observed him focusing well, listening attentively to instructions, following directions easily and cheerfully. From everything I observed that morning, Drake was a happy, well-adjusted little character.
After the children left, I joined Martina for lunch in the teachers’ lounge. “He’s certainly not what I expected,” I said. “I’m going to admit right here that seeing him in the classroom, I wouldn’t have identified him as having the level of problems he apparently has. What’s your take on all this?”
“Have you met the family yet?”
“No.”
She raised her eyebrows meaningfully. “Well, 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