The following short story was inspired by the painting above by Theodore Gericault. The figure is meant to be an insane woman; in my art history class we examined the nuanced ways in which the artist portrays her insanity without blatantly giving this away to the audience. I wanted to write a short story from the perspective of someone mentally challenged. I wanted to get inside their head and psyche the way this painting forces the viewer to see through the insane woman’s lens. Anyway, enjoy!
-Tula
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Clock Faces
first grade:
She called it ‘lello,’ substituting the ‘y’ for a softer ‘l’ when she pronounced the name of her biggest fear. Lello described everything bad. Lello made her afraid and nervous, made her fall victim to fits of hysteria that no one could explain, least of all her poor, anguished parents. The symptoms started at three years of age, they told worried acquaintances and nosy neighbors. It’s just another color, another shade of the rainbow. Her tender, six-year old ears had heard the same empty reassurance over and over. She wished she could apologize for her irrational fear of the color lello. She even tried to get better, to smile at lello cars as they passed her on the car ride to school or include a lello highlighter pen in her lilac pencil case. She dreamt of riding the big, lello school bus to class with her peers. But lello made her heart quiver and her muscles tremble: lello made her cringe, cry and, sometimes, collapse into an exhausted, traumatic heap. No one could name her phobia, or trace its cause. Instead, they called her ‘scaredy-cat’ and ‘lilly-livered.’ No one ever called her by her name.
second grade:
“Call me Doctor Phearson,” he said, “I’m going to help you.”
She watched his face, his olive skin, and decided maybe this old man could make the fear go away. The color lello wasn’t the only source of her fits and seizures anymore; talking to strangers, hearing foreign languages and wearing socks all made her distressed to the point where her body had a nervous reaction. At school they called her ‘jitter-bones’ and ‘fainting-spell.’ They never called her by her name. Her poor, anguished parents pulled her out of school and brought her straight to this office, which smelled of salty bleach, and under the care of Doctor Phearson. Now, he leaned in so close she could see his nose-hairs vibrate with each exhale. He was too close. The proximity overwhelmed her. Fear leapt in her heart. She slapped Doctor Phearson clear across the right cheek. He immediately took four steps backwards, a strong expression on his face that had no meaning to her; she never understood facial cues,
“Ah. Hm. I must have gotten too close,” his voice was calm, as though he were analyzing a science experiment. No one ever treated her like a normal girl, “I’m sorry if I made you feel afraid. I understand a lot of things make you feel that way. But you’re not alone; there’s a school for children like you. Children who interact and respond differently.” She stopped listening.
third grade:
The arch she drove through each morning read New Way Elementary in big, squishy letters. Were it not for this obvious reminder, she wouldn’t have noticed the change of school. Nothing much changed except the car ride to school, which now took thirty minutes rather than five. She kept her eyes shut tight, squeezing her eyelids together until she saw little geometric shapes in bright red hues; this way, she didn’t have to watch the unpredictable rush of traffic and the occasional flash of a passing lello vehicle.
In the halls they called her ‘new girl,’ or they ignored her altogether. She preferred the latter. Still, no one called her by her name. She had no friends. But here, at New Way, no one made any friends at all. No one knew how. Some children spent recesses muttering nonsense rhymes in the corner, while others repeatedly licked shiny objects or threw tantrums.
She took strange classes that taught her to learn numbers by tracing them with her fingers and to understand people’s feelings by looking at the lines on their faces. She was learning to control her fear; she was taught to use the correct pronunciation of the word ‘yellow,’ and to breathe deeply and count to ten when faced with the horrifying shade. Next, she’d work on her other obstacles. That was the word they used. Obstacles. No one ever named them for what they were; no one ever called them mental defects.
fourth grade:
Each tiny, round object got its own sacred name upon joining her extensive collection. Boxes of buttons filled her shelves and drawers, inoffensive and reliable, welcoming her home after each exhausting day at New Way. She spent her afternoons counting these buttons into groups, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9… fingering their smooth surfaces and predictable undulations as she sorted. She imagined certain buttons got along better with others of the same size or color; she wasn’t afraid to keep yellow buttons anymore, but these abided in their own box on the top shelf, rarely revisited. The yellow buttons didn’t get names or button-baptisms like all the rest, either. Otherwise, her collection thrived and grew. At lunch she searched for the circular treasures, hoping to spot one that had popped off a sweater-vest or tight skirt. Finding one button on any given day felt like Christmas. Two was impossible. Eventually, however, these occasional findings weren’t enough. She began to pick the buttons off her own clothing. Now, her closet consisted of altered clothing or zippers and clasps only. Her mother kept a box of safety pins in the kitchen drawer to fondly fix her daughter back together when she emerged from her bedroom in the morning wearing droopy clothing and a proud smile; mother was never angry with her fragile, fragile daughter.
fifth grade:
Anger was a waste of effort, anyway; she couldn’t understand the emotion. Facial expressions, social cues, basic forms of communication, simply don’t make sense to her. She’s almost 10, and she hasn’t made progress. We’re beginning to think her condition has far more social repercussions than most children here. As if her special school and button-less clothes hadn’t set her apart enough, now she’d been cited as even weirder than the weirdest kids in the state. She began to see these differences herself. In class she’d learnt that a raised voice, sounding forceful and stern, meant anger or command. She’d studied photos of ‘narrow eyes’ and ‘furrowed brows’ too, in an attempt to memorize the facial cues that accompanied discontent. However, when it came to real conversation, she couldn’t maintain focus. All the moving parts of the face – pillowy folds of skin, flitting shadows caused by sweeping lashes, the swelling and shrinking of the inner eye – consumed her full attention, overwhelming her ability to interpret sensory information. Nothing made sense. How could emotions stem from this mechanical surface, made up of pieces in motion, like clockwork? The doctors assured her poor, anguished parents there was a scientific name for the strange, dysfunctional way her brain worked. The medical community just hadn’t found it yet. They liked to ask her questions, flash yellow images before her eyes, invade her physical space, eek out a reaction. Some days, she felt like a guinea pig. Most days, she felt anger. Never did she feel like an ordinary girl.
sixth grade:
“Your name is ‘Brave,’ because that’s what you are,” she spoke to the small, black form atop a sturdy branch. Though she spent most of her hours at New Way or in Phearson’s office being observed and analyzed, the majority of her eleventh year seemed to pass right here, in the backyard. She got drunk on thick, rich sky and endless clouds. She photographed her favorite moments: finding an acorn by a snail, a sole red leaf on a bush of green, a crushed, aluminum can on the crack where her yard met the cool grey of the sidewalk. Of course, her best friends lived around these parts. She spoke to them, because they didn’t speak back. She liked that. She found nothing imposing or offensive about mutes and expressionless creatures; like buttons, she could rely on them to listen and comply, their relationship a blank canvas for her imagination to scrawl upon. And now she’d found Brave. He sang for her every morning without fail, like a human best friend might loyally bring soup each day during a period of illness. She admired this commitment, the way Brave chose to return to her gridded, suburban community when he could instead explore the far west, or even Canada, she fancied. She dreamt of becoming intrepid like a bird, brave like Brave.
seventh grade:
Even her family didn’t refer to her by name. Perhaps they preferred not to draw attention to her presence. Maybe they felt bad for her poor, anguished parents, deflated like anorexic ballerinas from a dozen years of confusion and devastation. Mother, in particular, stood close by her daughter at family reunions, ready to apologize for any strange outbursts like an embarrassed teen stuck with a drunken friend. Disclaimers, reassurances, false smiles. You never can quite tell with her. Haha… she didn’t mean it. Everything gets her a little flustered. The words stung. She was a burden, a nameless presence, a research project, without a voice. She wanted to scream ‘sorry’ or ‘what do you want from me’ or ‘No, it’s you. You fluster me. All of you. You with your faces like blank clocks and your theories and pointless vocal intonation and your empty reassurances.’ But the words hid away in the back of her throat when she opened her mouth, a nervous lump.
She trusted in very little, knowing most was complexity and confusion. In turn, she trusted few people, family or not. Of those few, she trusted her cousin. One day, this cousin grabbed her elbow, making her shriek. Her cousin laughed. Her cousin smoked a cigarette. If the girl felt fear from the physical assault, it dissipated with the feathery smoke, like those endless clouds had, for a moment, come down to earth. She watched the wisps with the eyes of a hopeful fiancée watching the horizon for a boat’s return. The silver ripples graced the air, dared to venture into the sky. The smoke, like birds, was brave. She wished she could be more like smoke, more like birds, or more like her cousin. She dreamed of one day grabbing someone by the elbow, even though the idea made her tremble. Later, she stole some buttons off her cousin’s sweater.
eighth grade:
“Autistic. That’s the scientific name,” Doctor Phearson’s nose-hairs quivered excitedly as he spoke the words. Her mother was trembling at about the same frequency as those tiny nostril fibers. Her poor, anguished parents had wet eyes. Finally. Everyone seemed to be saying this, or thinking it. Autistic wasn’t her real name, she acknowledged, but somehow she knew the label differed from those she’d encountered over the years at school. Autistic was the explanation, the apology, the ‘help’ Doctor Phearson had initially promised.
The term did release her. When they heard Autistic, people understood; they had the right expectations of her now, and they knew that it was the world that was unexpected, not her. They asked to see her button collection, kept their distance when they spoke to her and offered pink pitchers of lemonade rather than yellow ones. Her cousin moved next door, Phearson’s suggestion, and they looked at the sky together. Cousin always smelled like smoke, but this odor was comforting and predictable. Cousin met Brave, too. Her poor parents no longer lived in anguish, wondering why? and how? and other questions that are larger than life. The two of them scraped up enough funds to buy her a pet bird that she set free the same day. Everyone made smiling expressions when she did that. They built a birdbath together, where fowl flew in and out all day. Autistic made things easy and breezy, just like the to and fro of brave, winged creatures.
She dreams about birds and lello and New Way, but she also dreams about the future. She knows what death means, and she knows what ‘early-death-due-to-autism’ means too. She imagines a lilac gravestone, one that says her real name in big, squishy letters. She wants her other name there too, just underneath, the one she admires because it set her free: Autistic. She wants to be buried with buttons, surrounded by birdsong and Cousin and her two parents wearing smiling-clock faces.
– Tula
Les Envisagers 