Silent Child Read online

  She just thinks we’re playing a game, I told myself then. Deep down, didn’t I really know this was not the case?

  It was not until the day when we decided to picnic on the beach that I finally began to face up to the fact that I needed to talk to a professional, someone more senior than my health visitor and speech therapist. Not to friends or my partner’s family, who just wanted to reassure me that Sonia was perfect – which of course she was. But there was no getting away from the fact that she was different to other children and it was why she was different that I needed the answers to.

  * * *

  It was two years ago when we woke to one of those bright, warm, sunny days that all of Ireland welcomes. After one glance out the window at a cloudless sky, Patrick and I decided it was the perfect day for taking a picnic to Barley Cove. It was those beaches and coves that made Patrick long to return to Ireland – it’s also the perfect place to bring up children. Because it was a weekend, we knew the cove, with its safe, shallow estuary, would quickly become crowded with young families so we wasted as little time as possible, throwing food and soft drinks plus those important bottles of sun lotion into our chiller bags.

  On arrival, we were lucky enough to find a secluded sunny expanse of sand. Blankets and cushions were laid out, a large golf umbrella positioned to give us shade and sun cream rubbed carefully on all three of us. Once done, cold drink in hand, I leant back against a boulder and began to relax while Patrick started building a sandcastle for Sonia.

  ‘Come on, Emily, give us a hand here,’ he said as he began to construct a wall from what seemed like a million grains of sand.

  ‘Just a moment,’ I replied, glancing at our daughter. ‘She looks a bit hot, doesn’t she? I’ll take her sandals off, she’ll be cooler then.’ Bending down, I removed them. That was the first summer Sonia could walk unaided and Patrick and I smiled as we watched her take her first hesitant steps on the beach. Smiles that disappeared the second the screaming began.

  This was not just crying which I could divert her from. I knew from the way she was standing, mouth wide open, arms flailing the air, it was the start of a full-blown meltdown. I also understood straight away that it was the touch of the sand between her toes that had caused it. Kneeling beside her, telling her everything was going to be all right, I used my fingers to brush it gently away from those tiny gaps between each toe. But no matter how often I repeated this process until every grain of sand was gone, with her face turned up to the sky and her body rigid, she continued screaming.

  From the amount of head turning that day, such a scene on that beach was clearly never witnessed before. I just hoped none of the people there had also been in Tesco when Sonia had her previous meltdown. The amount of tutting from women I had heard that day made me want to shout at them. Remembering the glares of disapproval received then and the remarks overheard about bad parenting, I was convinced this time we were minutes away from mobile phones being pulled out, numbers for social services being looked up.

  For once, even Patrick looked helpless. Still, he had not been in the supermarket with me that day, nor was he the one who had dealt with Sonia’s early outbursts when her hair was shampooed. He had never been present before when she had a public meltdown. All I could do was sit back on my heels and wait for the screaming to stop. Which it finally did once her strength deserted her. With heart-breaking sobs, she sank to the ground. Time stood still, all I was aware of was her distress. Nothing else mattered – not the stares, not my worry, just my daughter as I crouched beside her, whispering all the soothing words I could think of until at last, she was quiet. For a moment I was relieved, thinking it was all over, until, ignoring me, she curled into a tight little ball and, bending over her, I saw her eyes were both vacant and unfocused.

  ‘No, don’t touch her,’ I told Patrick sharply as he leant down, arms outstretched, ready to scoop her up. Because I knew, didn’t I? She had retreated into a sad, lonely place. Everything around her had simply disappeared from her vision and until a feeling of safety was restored, she would not be able to leave it.

  I think I must have held my breath. Like my daughter, I was almost oblivious to anything happening around me. I knew at least one woman had approached, offering help – something I left my partner to deal with. I just wanted to take Sonia in my arms, whisper to her that she was already in a safe place, but I understood that day I had to wait for her to return to us in her own time.

  It seemed like hours passed before blinking, she sat up and I was able to hold her, but once home, we agreed it had only been just over ten minutes.

  Patrick looked wretched.

  ‘I had attacks like that when I was little,’ I said haltingly.

  ‘You never told me.’

  ‘No, I managed to control them when I was older and then I just blamed them on what was happening in my life.’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing like that happening in hers, is there? Come on, Emily, she might have inherited a lot of you, but not your memories!’

  No, there wasn’t anything like that. And I had to accept that she had not copied my behaviour this time. OK, I too had always hated the feeling of grass or sand beneath my feet, but not enough to have the reaction my daughter had. I knew then that I had finally run out of all the excuses I used to explain her behaviour. Patrick was right, she was not just copying me. That was the first thing we agreed on. The second was that we needed to see someone in the medical field who specialised in children’s behaviour.

  ‘I’ll talk to our doctor and I’m certain he will recommend someone suitable,’ I said with as much positivity as I could muster.

  A plan I put into action the following Monday.

  * * *

  When I blurted out all my concerns to my GP, he looked hardly surprised.

  ‘Yes, it sounds as though she does take after you, Emily. I think now would be a good time to get her professionally assessed.’

  Not that he said exactly what she was to be assessed for. He mentioned a clinic, which he assured me was very good, and he would do a referral letter, make the appointment and get back in touch with me.

  So that’s that, I thought, about to rise to leave. But oh no, he still had a whole barrage of questions for me.

  ‘So, you have an honours degree in English and French,’ he said eventually, ‘but what about your Maths?’

  My mind shot back to being in senior school and the teachers’ disbelief as to how I came to my answers.

  ‘Every one of my Maths problems was correct, except I could not write down how I worked out the answers. I mean, numbers just flew into my head. It was as if all on their own they could add, subtract, divide and multiply so fast I could never catch them, an explanation hardly ever believed back then. My teachers were always annoyed with me. They kept saying I must know how I came to the right answer, but I never did really.’

  The doctor smiled when I explained that to him as if he completely understood.

  ‘So, you failed Maths not because your answers were wrong, but because you could not explain how you came by them? In layman’s terms that means your brain works as fast as a computer and unfortunately the school did not recognise the reasons you gave them, but then the higher end of the autistic spectrum is often not recognised during childhood.’

  That was when I came to the realisation that it was no longer my daughter he was showing an interest in. And how I learnt that I was autistic. Now, you would have thought I could have worked that out for myself, wouldn’t you? I mean, there’s quirky and there’s different. But then with all the labels my parents pinned on me with harsh words and threats, being autistic had not been one of them.

  * * *

  The doctor explained both my and my daughter’s fear of the touch of certain things, such as water, grass and sand, was known as sensory processing problems. In other words, to us it was painful, while to others, pleasant or just mildly irritating.

  ‘Luckily,’ he added in his reassuring voi
ce, ‘schools are now far more aware of how autism should be dealt with than they probably were when you were at school. Nowadays, most teachers have an understanding of the problems it can cause and are specifically trained to deal with them sympathetically.’

  ‘You mean problems like meltdowns?’

  ‘Yes, meltdowns and all the other ones as well.’

  ‘Well, it’s a long list! I suppose it’s a good thing that I have the same problems as her, only not so extreme, isn’t it?’

  I could almost read the doctor’s mind, saying, Well, that’s one way to look at it. Instead, he continued to ask me questions.

  Questions I wished he would leave well alone.

  ‘Tell me,’ he went on, pen poised over my medical notes in front of him, ‘how did your mother deal with those problems – like washing your hair, for instance?’

  That question caused one of my locked filing cabinet drawers to fly open and there was my mother, hairbrush in hand, a less-than-sympathetic expression on her face, tugging and pulling at my tangles while I screamed out in pain.

  ‘If you don’t stop that noise now, I’ll shave it all off!’ she threatened as she gave my head an impatient thwack with the stiff and sharply bristled brush. Now the one thing you have to know about people with autism is that they find it difficult to lie so it took some effort to look my doctor squarely in the face and say, ‘Oh, she just took her time. We managed.’

  ‘And how about the issues with food?’

  As if on cue, the moment the word ‘food’ left his mouth, another drawer labelled ‘Unhappy Mealtimes’ shot out. There I was, sat on a hard chair, my head only a little higher than the top of the shiny dark wooden table. On the white plate in front of me was a chunk of red meat. I could see the blood oozing from it and knew what would happen if I managed to force a piece into my mouth: I would gag and gag until my throat stung with the burning vomit rushing from my stomach. There were those two voices ringing in my ears: my mother’s harsh one, telling me if I dared chuck up my food again, I could clean it up myself and the other, a male one, laughing before he told me to just imagine it was a chocolate ice cream on my plate.

  ‘Then you can swallow every bit down,’ he announced mockingly.

  There was my young self between a rock and a hard place, having to decide which was worse: eating the disgusting bloodied meat and gagging, or being hit before being sent off to bed.

  ‘Oh, she didn’t take much notice, Doctor,’ I manage to croak out.

  ‘Mmm . . .’ was his only reply as he shot me an appraising look. Something told me he did not believe me.

  ‘And how about school, how was that for you?’

  ‘Good,’ I replied. ‘I did well in classes and was popular.’

  Well, that was not altogether true either, was it?

  Chapter 2

  If those drawers began opening as I sat with my doctor, they just about hurled themselves at me afterwards – and not in any particular order either. There were times when the reflection that stared back at me from the mirror was not my adult self, but my unhappy younger one when she was the same age as my daughter is now, though with her furrowed brow and tear-filled eyes, there is little resemblance between Sonia’s happy smiling face and mine. My younger self’s expression showed all too clearly her bewilderment as to why her mother was angry with her most of the time, while her father made no bones about wanting to avoid his small daughter as much as possible. With her lack of self-worth, she believed it was because there was something inherently wrong with her. She was different, wasn’t she? The young Emily knew that because her cousins told her repeatedly that she was – she just didn’t understand why that was (later, I was to stop being so weird).

  It was, I knew, the questions that the doctor had asked about eating that had made that drawer, labelled ‘Eating Punishments’, spring open. That red meat came into my vision, as did the image of me spewing it up onto the floor. Once open, my mother’s shrill voice echoing down through the years followed me wherever I went: the bedroom, the bathroom, the lounge and even the garden. There was just no escape from hearing the words that had once disturbed me so much – ‘Bad, you’re bad! I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve being burdened with a child like you. You’re disgusting! Don’t you sit there thinking I’m going to clear up your mess.’ With that, she stomped out of the room to return with a wad of newspaper, a cloth and the pail almost full of very hot soapy water: ‘Now, this floor better be clean when I inspect it, do you hear me, Emily?’

  Well, I could hardly help but hear her – every word was ringing in my ears. Not that she waited for an answer before she told me to get myself off to bed as soon as I was done there.

  I could see her, my younger self, knelt on the floor, cloth in hand, scooping up her own vomit while trying desperately not to be sick again. And then I think of Sonia and how Patrick and I handled her having an upset stomach, only a week earlier. She had caught a nasty bug that was doing the rounds. I had sat her on my knee while I gently stroked her back and then without warning, spurt after spurt of projectile vomiting hit my shoulder, landed on the couch and trickled down her clothes. Her face crumpled with shock and we could see tears were not very far away.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said quickly, ‘let’s get you cleaned up.’

  Between us she was soon consoled, hands and face wiped clean, a new nightdress slipped over her head, and then, still telling her it was not her fault, I cuddled her until her eyes started to close drowsily.

  ‘Come on, sweetheart, time for bed,’ I whispered before carrying her into her bedroom.

  Two scenes: same subject, no similarity. But then Patrick and I have produced a happy child who knows her parents love and understand her. I made a promise when she was born that she would grow up with the confidence that I myself was denied.

  A happy thought entered my head then. It was during the summer of 2017 when Sonia and I were walking on a path and her tugging at my hand made it clear that she desperately wanted to walk not in the middle but right on the edge of the path and I saw that it was a different colour.

  ‘OK,’ I said, moving to it, and together, we played a game of staying on the line between the two shades. She shot me the widest smile then, a smile that said, ‘You get me, Mum, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ my returning smile and a quick squeeze of her hand told her. As a kid, hadn’t I tried to do the exact same thing? On pedestrian crossings I sent my cousin mad when walking to school as I jumped over the dark sections – I only wanted to touch the white markings. Nothing bad would happen to me that day if I did, that was what I would tell myself. Though I rarely managed to succeed for my hand was yanked hard as whichever cousin was lumbered hissed at me to stop acting strangely.

  Strange it might be, but I still have those thoughts – that’s OCD for you.

  Chapter 3

  It is those comparisons that allow my sneaky inner voice to pester me with questions. What would you have been like now, had you been cared for like Sonia is? Would you have had those fears that won’t go away? And the nightmares that wake you up in a cold sweat, when behind your lids you either almost walk over a cliff or find yourself a prisoner in a room without windows or doors? Would they have even visited you? Wouldn’t you instead have shut your eyes and drifted off into a dreamless, blank space?

  And then that voice tells me to get a grip. To stop blaming myself for being the reason my father turned away each time I tried to get his attention. All right, the voice says, he knew you were different and didn’t like it, but as he was an adult and you were only a child, who really was to blame? Well, it wasn’t you, was it?

  And what about your mother, do you still think her cruelty was your fault? That woman who used words like a bayonet, jabbing and jabbing until she was satisfied that she had sufficiently hurt you?

  And here’s the question you have to deal with: do you believe that if none of that had happened, you would have been a different person? The answer t
o that, I’m sure, is yes. Wouldn’t I have been the confident student, the confident young woman and the confident mother I have pretended to the world that I am?

  Angry with myself for allowing negativity to enter my mind, I push aside the waves of sadness that threaten to engulf me almost as quickly as those questions came into my head. For God’s sake, Emily, count your blessings, why don’t you? Think of the present and the future and don’t dwell on the past. Now is the time to take charge. Open up those drawers yourself, one at a time. Deal with what’s inside them and, once done, put them away again. After all, you have two little girls who need you. Not to mention a partner who has accepted everything about you, so just confront your past and deal with it. Because if you don’t, as your daughter grows, you will keep seeing yourself at her age. And then what will happen? Those drawers will keep flying open and you’ll be a mess. And that’s no good for anyone now, is it?

  How I wished that voice would just shut up, but then we never want to listen to the truth about ourselves, do we?

  And will they stay closed then?

  If you have dealt with them, they will.

  So, open the one labelled ‘My Mother’s Family Before Him’ first. What’s inside there is happy, isn’t it?

  Chapter 4

  Before you meet him in my pages, I am going to introduce the family I used to have. Because I want you to see them as I did, then you will understand what it was that I lost.

  * * *

  Of course, the very beginning of my story is not fixed firmly in my mind, but over the years some memories have managed to resurface, others I put together from scraps of conversation I managed to overhear.

  My parents’ home was in an area where wages were low and the crime rate was high. Despite that, up until I was five, I saw that world as a friendly place. Not even when my mother and I moved to another flat in an even poorer area, where every weekend the wails of police sirens filled the air, did I change my mind. In fact, I took very little notice of my surroundings there, mainly because most of my time was spent with Mum’s family. There was my widowed grandmother, a short, plump figure, with dark hair turning grey and those large blue eyes that I have inherited, my two aunts, Lizzy and Maria, who were younger versions of their mother, a couple of uncles and an assortment of cousins of both sexes and all ages. Apart from my parents, I was surrounded by people who loved me and I in turn adored them.