Somebody Somewhere by Donna Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

hand we went through the tug-of-war on the step again. She again decided to jump off. She was shaking violently and continued to try to get lost in the surface of the water for safety. In its bottomlessness she could find nothing but a source of further panic. In her fear, she became ill.
    I continued to tug her out of her blind panic, and eventually she remained focused upon me as we paddled around the pool. As we came around again in the direction of the steps, Jody was smiling to herself in full view of the two workers sitting by the edge of the pool. Her eyes were alive.
    —
    It was the end of the first day at the school. Parents came for some of the children. A bus came for others.
    The bus driver ran the respite house where I’d been offered the work. She looked surprised to see me and looked at the worker who’d hired me with the same surprised look. Perhaps she wondered how I could possibly manage to work with such “difficult” children?
    In some ways they were right, but these children were far less difficult for me to comprehend than many so-called normal children would have been. Was it possible that part of the reason these children seemed incomprehensible was simply because many people didn’t know what it felt like to be like them?
    Out of the blue came a few more days’ work and an offer to come to the respite house and talk to the parents.
    The extra days were outside the school, working with a twelve-year-old boy named Michael. He had to be picked up from home. Going to Michael’s house with the worker who’d hired me, I was afraid of his parents’ reaction. An autistic person working with another one would have been the last thing possible on their minds. Few people knew or imagined any autistic person to be that capable. Michael’s parents turned out to be gentle, genuine, and caring people. They had five children altogether, including another of Michael’s brothers who was also autistic.
    Michael had a charming personality. He was big and as jolly as a nonverbal autistic person can be. Though his movements were big and loud, he had an air of gentleness and understanding about him.
    As a child I had been echolalic and had had difficulty learning the purpose and significance of language. Michael didn’t use spoken language at all. He had a vocabulary of several signs, mostly to do with his favorite topic and obsession—food.
    Michael arrived at the school’s holiday program he’d been accepted for. It was run at a regular local school and Michael was the only autistic child there.
    Michael stood out from the other children. They were several years younger than he was and the fact that he was a very big twelve-year-old walking on the tips of his toes didn’t help him blend in. Nevertheless, he seemed happy enough to be there.
    Some of the other children were curious about Michael and why he had someone with him. They had only one teacher supervising the lot of them. I introduced them to Michael and tried to help them understand why he didn’t speak to them and explained that he, nevertheless, understood them.
    Michael walked around watching the children playing in smallgroups. They threw balls to him. The balls hit him and dropped to the ground. The children called him over. Michael stood frozen to the spot.
    I helped some of the children play simple games with him. I showed them how to build their games up step by step so he could understand them without floundering in the overwhelming pace of change.
    I handed a ball back and forth with Michael, who seemed to be torn between shyly enjoying himself and trying to “disappear.”
    I clapped and asked for the ball. Michael responded by letting it go. It rolled along his legs where he sat and rolled toward me. Nothing too deliberate. Nothing too direct. Can’t let the mind know anybody’s home. Can’t afford the cost of overload. Can’t risk the void of shutdown.
    Step by step the game had been built up to the point that Michael was