Somebody Somewhere by Donna Williams Read Free Book Online

group was very social. He had no trouble with touch and found my avoidance amusing or perhaps noninvasive enough to be safe. He kept coming after me. He was a strong swimmer and when he caught up with me he tried to clamber all over me.
    I froze, going underwater like a sinking deadweight. It wasn’t long before I realized that a swimming pool is no place to “disappear.” I swam away from him. The worker who was aware of my situation told him to leave me alone. I had a category for practical touch and could cope for short periods when it was necessary for safety or instruction, but this social touching was scary. In performance, touchis somehow numbing and devoid of self. Outside of performance, I found it sensorially and emotionally quite beyond me.
    Jack ran up and down the length of the pool. He looked like he wanted to jump in but couldn’t. He seemed really frustrated by not being able to win himself over. He continued to return to the edge and finally he put his feet in. Surprised at his own efforts, he seemed overwhelmed by the awareness. Fear overcame him and he ran away again.
    Jody sat on the top step of the pool staring into the pattern of waves she was making on the surface. The water she flicked in front of her face moved to a constant rhythm. The pattern and its consistency were lightly musical, each curl of water falling with a dainty tinkle. The glisten of the curling water was art itself.
    I thought about the cost of not existing, of “disappearing” and keeping the world in control. I reached my hand across and into the water pattern Jody was getting lost in and interrupted the pattern: war games. Sometimes you have to care enough to declare war. I was on the side of fighting to help her join “the world.”
    Jody glared at me lightning fast and busied herself again, her face now even closer to the pattern, attempting to get lost. She was fighting a war to keep “the world” out.
    Again and again we played these war games, until the war games themselves were as consistent and predictable as the pattern the water had made. Every time Jody glared at me, I looked calmly into her eyes and smiled as if to myself. I smiled only as I would to myself in a mirror.
    I took Jody’s hand and pulled her very slowly around on the step until she faced the rest of the pool. Her other hand continued to make her pattern and slowly she wound herself back to face the wall. Again and again, I pulled her slowly and silently around to face the pool. Each time I let her pull me back in the direction of the wall, too. I was determined she would be forced to experience herself as making a decision that affected what another person did.
    Who was on which side got lost in the pattern until the war itself didn’t matter—both sides belonged to Jody. Holding her hand Ipulled her gently outward into the pool. She pulled herself back, tapping herself wildly and looking down into the water with ever increasing intensity. I watched her experience her power to decide and to take control over her own actions and affect mine.
    I tugged her arm quickly. She seemed stunned momentarily out of her apparent self-hypnosis and glared at me with her war face. I looked calmly into her war face and smiled to myself. “Hello mirror,” I said silently.
    Back and forth we tugged each other. Eventually, of her own accord, she jumped off the step and into the pool holding my hand. She paddled a few feet or so—a terrified expression on her face—looking up at me as if for confirmation that it was all okay and that she would survive. Then she looked intently into the water and panic came over her. I tugged quickly on her arm and she looked up at me suddenly. There was a vague trace of a smile.
    I let her lead me back to the step. She stood on it tapping herself and surveying the monster she had almost conquered. And yet the monster was not the pool. The monster was autism—an invisible monster within, a monster of self-denial.
    Holding her