NOVEL SNIPPET: SCRIVNERS

I saw an article once about a girl with Echolalia who couldn't speak. She would thrash about and bang her head and only repeat phrases back to her parents. She'd flap her hands and slap her face in frustration that they didn’t understand. Then, one day she found a computer and started to type words: “chocolate,” “Starburst,” “Lemondrop.” She, her name was Kelly I think, spoke on her terms--after all what is the point of language if it cannot get you sweets? She spoke through written word, and eventually explained that her brain was inundated with the minutia of her five senses. Her brain took a thousand pictures every time she glanced at someone's face. She felt her clothes were itching her constantly, and heavy, so heavy. Every tiny little noise crawled up her spine and rang in her ears, reverberating incessantly until she could not do anything but beat the air against its assault. Sensory overload caused her verbal silence.

That is why she could only repeat the echoes of what she heard—they echoed so loudly she had to throw them back at the world. She could not make the gaps in her mind wide enough for the story-words to come out through her mouth. But banging on the keys of the computer helped her create space enough to slip herself out of that interior.  Oddly, from the outside, Kelly appeared mad while she typed her letters to the world, hunched over the keyboard, rocking back and forth, slapping one hand against her chest while the other madly typed. Written language helped people understand that she was not mad; she just couldn't tell aloud the stories the way we do. Stories that give us gaps for meanings like time, geography, identity. Stories that may or not may not be true—but that certainly aren't madness. 

My brother has a similar condition: Echolalia. At least, that is part of what he has, a symptom of a larger issue. In the 80’s we didn’t know that mercury-flavored word: autism.  They mistakenly called Durward’s condition “schizophrenia” or maybe “mental retardation” while staring at us over clipboards.

As a child, I wanted so much to love him. But I hated his constant need. I don’t hate him now. In fact, I’d argue he saved my soul and the souls of a lot of people. If we have souls. I like to think we do.

I saw another article about other children with disorders like Ward. They would sit with “transcribers” who would hold the child’s elbow, and like magic! AHA! The child could speak fluently through the computer. Families paid thousands of dollars to the false notion that their loved one was simply trapped inside a body that would not behave. Sadly, a few years and hundreds of thousands of dollars later, those families learned. The “transcribers” were the ones typing for the kids. That, yes, a fraction of those children were freed by keyboards and now able to “speak” through computers, but these scrivners were no Bartlebys. Most of them were frauds. Most of those parents had spent life savings to be shammed either purposefully or unconsciously by transcribers who were saying what they thought these kids wanted to be said. Kids like Ward are in there, somewhere, but computers cannot free them.  

Ward doesn’t really “speak”. He echoes back to me what I say: “Durward, do you want to go outside?”

“Outside?”

“Where is your shoe?”

“Shoe!” But I told stories for him, like the transcribers. I filled in the gaps for him. I said I loved him, because that is what good little girls do.

And I was a good little girl. 

Eventually the story I thought I was telling became true so then...was it ever really a story at all?