Finding a Voice (16 page)

I
wheeled Chris into the classroom, to the desk that was set up for him. His desk had to be one of the ones on the far right because the power outlet was on the wall nearest to his desk. It was one of the glitches that Chris and John and I were working on concerning Chris’s ‘tech’ as Chris and John called it. Without a power cord, Chris’s laptop never lasted long enough. But I had ensured that he wasn’t stuck at the back at least, even though that had been the English teacher’s first choice. We had had enough of the back of the room in art.

This was Chris’s first normal academic course without Florence. After Christmas, when I had begun advocating for him to attend more mainstream courses, English was the obvious first choice.

‘So what do you think of trying out English?’ I had asked him one lunch hour.

‘I speak English,’ Chris had replied, trying out yet another voice that John had set up for him. Chris apparently had not been happy to have any old male voice speak the words he typed with ever faster speed. He kept telling John that the
voice wasn’t right; it wasn’t him. Ever obliging, John would go away and return with more voice samples for him to try.

‘Ha, ha, Chris,’ I had replied, and then realised that he might be serious. The more Chris had been able to talk, the more I had come to see how little he knew about almost everything. His life had been limited to what had been brought to his vicinity since he was born, and not that much had been brought to him apparently.

‘I mean, taking a course about books and poems and plays.’

‘Books. Okay. That’s good,’ said Chris’s voice, taking longer than he would have liked. That was another thing he kept asking John to improve.

‘Well, and writing too,’ I added, going on to tease, ‘Maybe the teacher can do something about your atrocious spelling!’

I set up Chris’s laptop for him, making sure the inconspicuous dot on his forehead that acted as a signal so that he could use his eyes as a mouse, was securely in place. Then I hobbled to my own seat next to him.

My leg was still healing after eight weeks, but at least I was using a walking cast now, so I could go back to assisting Chris in Art and helping out more at lunch. Even when I had been on crutches I had spent lunch hours with him and there were often three of us now. Sarah had decided to join us for some lunch hours, when she didn’t have a rehearsal. It turns out one good thing had come out of her brief friendship with Lisa. Sarah had landed one of the main roles for the
play to be put on in the spring.

She liked to entertain us with her impersonations of certain of her fellow cast members.

‘Honestly, you wouldn’t believe how seriously some of them take themselves!’ she’d said the other lunch hour. ‘Sandra-Lynne, who by the way, will
not
answer to just Sandra, was, like “I’m sooooo exhausted from all the revision I have to do each night. I have soooo many more lines than all of you”.’

Chris had smiled the wide smile he used to reserve for me alone. I didn’t mind though. Sarah balanced our friendship out with her calm, accepting nature. She had been instantly comfortable with Chris – flailing limbs, big blue chair, and all. And when Chris was in a stubborn mood, or when bleakness overtook my vision, Sarah had a way of bringing us out of ourselves without either of us even knowing it. I’d thought having one friend was great; having two was heaven. It turns out three people can be friends after all!

Chris and I had arrived to class early, because he had insisted we leave the SE wing in plenty of time so there was no chance he would be late. He wanted his laptop set up and ready before the last bell rang. Now kids were pouring in noisily and I could tell that he was either excited or nervous because his arms and legs were moving everywhere.

‘Are you okay, Chris?’ I asked.

He tapped to the left with his head, indicating ‘yes’. Sometimes
our trusty old system for yes or no worked better than even the best of tech. It’s the system that Chris’s house staff still used the most when things were busy in the house, and even that was helping them to listen to Chris now.

When Chris had gone home from the hospital, before he knew he was going to get his equipment, they had made the same mistake I had – thinking to use symbols to help him communicate. He had refused of course. The next time someone sat down with our system he had given them an ‘earful’ – an even longer ‘text’ than the police officer had gotten.

It was the first thing I was shown when I visited Chris at his house. Alison had written it down on card – with corrected spelling and grammar – and gotten it laminated, so that any new people would know how he felt.

Don’t show me symbols. I won’t use them. I HATE using the picture exchange symbols. When I was eight I picked a car symbol. The teacher asked ‘Did I want a car ride? Did I want to go home?’ I WANTED to say I had seen the coolest 1960s Ford Mustang that morning, but I wasn’t sure if it was a ’68 or ’69 – could she show me a book where I could find out? The day I can say this with a symbol is the day I’ll use them.

True to our deal, I had spent more time at Chris’s house, and while I still thought it wasn’t a place I would want to live, I was starting to see that Chris didn’t mind it as much as I would have.

‘Do you want to watch this channel, Chris?’ Mary had asked after dinner the last time I had been over. She had wheeled him over to his routine spot by the television. When he had indicated ‘no’, she had flicked through nearly twenty more, with Chris saying ‘no’ to all of them, before I had interrupted her.

‘Maybe, Chris, do you want to do something else?’ I had asked, and he had indicated ‘yes’. ‘I’ll get your computer and you can tell Mary what you want.’

Mary’s slightly impatient sigh gave away just how happy she was to oblige Chris in the middle of a busy evening where kids needed to be bathed, lunches had to be readied for the next day, and medications needed to be administered. Some things were unlikely to change.

Still, the fact was that Chris needed people who could take care of all those kinds of needs. I had learned the hard way just how complicated his physical needs were. Chris had helped me understand how he felt one day at lunch, when I half jokingly criticised his home life.

‘Any great conversations last night or was it the cartoon channel as usual?’ I had asked.

He had frowned at me and then spent ages on his computer writing something, not pointing his eyes to the ‘speak’ icon until he was finished.

‘It’s not fair, Jo. I feel safe home. My body, it’s not easy. They know without asking what makes me more comfortable.
Even you don’t know that,’ Chris’s electronic voice, several versions of voices ago, had spoken.

Plus, I could see that his home staff did really care about him. They tolerated me hanging out and giving hints about how to treat him didn’t they? I had even been invited to go to Chris’s next group home planning meeting, which apparently was about discussing what things he might want to do or plan for in the next six months. It would be the first meeting where he would actually be able to tell everyone what he wanted.

The teacher came into class and had us take out the novel we were reading. Chris was joining the class when we were in the middle of a book, but I had prepared him for that as well, with John’s help. He had an e-format of the novel loaded on his computer, so that he could read it without anyone needing to turn the pages for him. He had read the whole thing already, even though he only had to read the first half.

‘Okay, so, Jason, will you pick up reading the first page of chapter eight please,’ the teacher said.

I tried to pay attention, but I had already read this chapter too. My mind drifted as Jason read. I smiled to myself, thinking back to Freddie, Mom’s community nurse, coming by the night before.

‘Hello!’ he had called out as he knocked and then bounced into the house without being invited. ‘How are my favourite girls?’

He always greeted us like this. I had come into the kitchen, just to see what he was wearing. I had never met someone with so many clothes, all of them brightly coloured and slightly wacky. Yesterday he had had on a pair of red flared pants and a matching red suit jacket. The topper was his purple bow tie, atop his only plain piece of clothing, his white shirt.

Freddie had started to come by our house when I was still in the wheelchair. His weird exterior had immediately put Mom at ease, and his easygoing sense of humour could soften even her most intense days. Usually he came by three times a week, but he had assured us both that he would come over more often if Mom hit a rough patch.

‘This is how it works, girlfriends,’ he had explained on his first visit, snapping his long, brown fingers. ‘My job is to bring the sunshine when the clouds get thick. How much sunshine you need, depends on how dark the sky is.’

Yesterday could have been one of the really dark days. I had come home to find Mom still in bed. Usually I would have spent the evening alternating between trying not to disturb her and worrying that I should be getting her up. Instead, I had just called Freddie and he had come over an hour later.

‘So where is that mother of yours?’ Freddie had mocked. ‘Shall I kick her lazy ass out of the bed?’ He had knocked on her bedroom door and then waltzed in.

And I had stayed right out of it. I hadn’t worried though. For some reason, Mom tolerated Freddie telling her what to do, when she needed it, where she would have gone ballistic if anyone else had attempted to do the same.

They both had emerged in the kitchen, Mom kind of groggy and Freddie full of life.

‘Now you sit down here, my dear,’ he had said to Mom, ‘and Jo and I are going to rustle up some dinner. I’m inviting myself over; it’s the only way a poor overworked civil servant like myself is going to get a break tonight.’

So we had ended up having dinner together, Freddie managing in his way to make us all laugh by the time he had left two hours later. It wasn’t perfect, it was never going to be perfect, but it was going to be interesting and maybe that was better.

‘Jo, can you pick up where Jason left off?’ the teacher asked.

I tried to skim the page to find where we were. I looked over at Chris who had the novel up on his screen. He minimised it and then wrote something quickly.

‘Page
103
,’ his voice said.

A few kids giggled, and the teacher opened his eyes wide in surprise. I smiled at Chris in appreciation and then turned the page in my book to begin reading.

It had taken awhile for Chris to figure out how to use the equipment that John set up for him. At first, it took him much longer to say anything, and he would get tired and
stop using it altogether. John kept coming in to school every few days though, tweaking his eye-controlled mouse, and helping him to figure out short cuts. The more John helped him, the more he was determined to practise until it worked. He still made lots of mistakes, and he was still asking for improvements, but every day his ‘tech’ was giving him more of a voice.

I would remember forever the first full sentences that Chris had spoken to me with his new voice. I had come in to have lunch with him, struggling to pull out a chair so I could sit down and set aside the crutches. Chris had just finished a tutorial session with John.

‘He’s dying to tell you something, Jo,’ Florence had said. ‘No one else apparently warrants a word until he speaks to you first.’

‘Okay, go ahead, Chris,’ I had encouraged, excited to finally hear Chris out loud.

He had taken a minute or so to position the cursor over the speak icon and so I had jumped a bit when the voice started to speak.

‘Thank you for my voice, Jo. I hope you will be my friend for a long time because I will have a lot to say to you. My first thing to say is, please, please, no more spontaneous trips. I was never in a river before and I don’t want to go again.’

I hadn’t known that you could laugh and cry at the same time before that moment. The thing I didn’t say that day, but
I will yet, is
Thank you for my voice, Chris
. I’m still finding it, but Chris helps me every day. See, my voice is hidden in the things I don’t say – and Chris has known that from the beginning.

I had felt I knew Chris before I ever heard him speak, but now, a couple of months later, I knew there was so much more of him to get to know. He was imagining so much for himself. This English class was only the beginning. He would have to prove himself again and again, but I knew he was stubborn enough to take on that challenge.

The class was over now, and so I got up to put Chris’s equipment away, before our slow hobble back to the SE wing.

When I looked up from unplugging his computer, there were three girls standing in a group, a couple of desks away. I had sat in class with them every week since September, but I had never really spoken to any of them. I self-consciously continued to put Chris’s computer in its case and slung it over the push bars of his chair.

There was some whispering and one of them stood forward as I went to back Chris out of the tight space his chair was in.

‘Excuse me,’ she said shyly.

‘Yes?’ I asked.

‘We were just wondering,’ she continued, ‘if it would be all right to say hi to him. I mean, the computer thing is so cool …’

I looked at Chris. His smile spoke louder than words.

‘Sure,’ I invited. ‘Meet my friend Chris.’