Beautiful Child: The story of a child trapped in silence and the teacher who refused to give up on her

“I’m going to tell you something very special,” I said. “A secret. Do you like secrets?”

She stared at me blankly.

I put on my most “special secret” voice and leaned toward her. “I wasn’t always a teacher. Know what I did? I worked with children who had a hard time speaking at school. Just like you!” Admittedly, this wasn’t such an exciting secret, but I tried to make it sound like something very special. “My job was to help them be able to talk again anytime they wanted.” I grinned. “What do you think about that? Would you like to start talking again?”

Venus kept her eyes on my face, her gaze never wavering, but it was a remarkably hooded gaze. I had no clue whatsoever as to what she might be thinking. Or even if she was thinking.

“It’s very important to speak in our room. Talking is the way we let others know how we are feeling. Talking is how we let other people know what we are thinking, because they can’t see inside our heads to find out. They won’t know otherwise. We have to tell them. That’s how people understand each other. It’s how we resolve problems and get help when we need it and that makes us feel happier. So it’s important to learn how to use words.”

Venus never took her eyes from mine. She almost didn’t blink.

“I know it’s hard to start talking when you’ve been used to being silent. It feels different. It feels scary. That’s okay. It’s okay to feel scared in here. It’s okay to feel uncertain.”

If she was uncertain, Venus didn’t let on. She stared uninhibitedly into my face.

I lifted up a piece of paper. “I’d like you to make a picture for me. Draw me a house.”

No movement.

We sat, staring at each other.

“Here, shall I get you started? I’ll draw the ground.” I took up a green crayon and drew a line across the bottom of the paper, then I turned the paper back in her direction and pushed the tub of crayons over. “There. Now, can you draw a house?”

Venus didn’t look down. Gently I reached across and reoriented her head so that she would have to look at the paper. I pointed to it.

Nothing.

Surely she did know what a house was. She was seven. She had sat through kindergarten twice. But maybe she was developmentally delayed, like her sister. Maybe expecting her to draw a house was expecting too much.

“Here. Take a crayon in your hand.” I had to rise up, come around the table, grab hold of her arm, bring her hand up, insert the crayon, and lay it on the table. She kept hold of the crayon, but her hand flopped back down on the table like a lifeless fish.

Picking up a different crayon, I made a mark on the paper. “Can you make a line like that?” I asked. “There. Right beside where I drew my line.”

I regarded her. Maybe she wasn’t right-handed. I’d not seen her pick up anything, so I’d just assumed. But maybe she was left-handed. I reached over and put the crayon in the other hand. She didn’t grip it very well, so I got up, came around the table, took her left hand, repositioned it better and lay it back on the table. I returned to my seat. Trying to sound terribly jolly, I said, “I’m left handed,” in the excited tone of voice one would normally reserve for comments like “I’m a millionaire.”

No. She wasn’t going to cooperate. She just sat, staring at me again, her dark eyes hooded and unreadable.

“Well, this isn’t working, is it?” I said cheerfully and whipped the piece of paper away. “Let’s try something else.”

I went and got a children’s book. Putting my chair alongside hers, I sat down and opened the book. “Let’s have a look at this.”

She stared at me.

It was a picture dictionary and the page I opened to was full of colorful illustrations of small animals driving cars and doing different sorts of jobs. “Let’s look at these pictures. See? They’re all in a bus. And what are they? What kind of animals are they? Mice, aren’t they? And there’s a police car, and look, one of the policemen is a lion. What kind of animal is the other policeman?”

She stared up at me.

“Here, look down here.” I physically tipped her head so that she’d look at the page. “What’s this other animal? What kind of animal is he?”

No response.

“What is he?”

No response.

“What is he?”

No response. Absolutely nothing. She just sat, motionless.

“Right here.” I tapped the picture. “What kind of animal is that?”

I persisted for several minutes longer, rapidly rephrasing the question but keeping at it, not letting enough silence leak in to make it seem like silence, taking up the rhythm of both sides of the conversation myself, all with just one question: what animal is that?

Bang! I brought my hand down flat on the table to make a loud, sudden noise. It was a crude technique but often a very effective one. I hoped it would startle her over the initial hurdle, as it did with many children, but in Venus’s case, I was also interested just to see if it got any reaction out of her. I hoped to see her jump or, at the very least, blink.

Venus simply raised her head and looked at me.

“Can you hear that?” I asked. “When I bang my hand like that on the table,” I said and banged it suddenly on the tabletop again, “can you hear it?”

“I sure can!” Billy shouted from the other side of the classroom. “You trying to scare the shit out of us over here?”

Venus just sat, unblinking.

Leaning forward, I pulled the book back in front of me and started to page through it. “Yes, well, let’s try something else. Let’s see if we can find a story. Shall I read a story to you?”

Eyes on my face, she just stared. No nod. No shake of the head. Nothing. There was very little to denote the kid was anything more than a waxwork accidentally abandoned in the classroom.

“Yes, well, I have an even better idea. What about recess?”

She didn’t react to that either.

Chapter Three

“All right,” I said, pouring myself a cup of coffee in the teachers’ lounge, “joke’s over. What’s wrong with Venus Fox?” I looked pointedly at Bob.

Bob took a sip from his mug. “That’s what you’re here to tell me, I believe.”

“So far I’m still working on whether she’s alive or not.”

“Oh, she’s alive all right,” Bob replied.

A moment’s silence intruded. Julie was making herself a cup of tea over by the sink, and she turned to look at us when the conversation paused.

“My first impression is that she’s deaf,” I said.

Bob took another swallow of his coffee.

“Has anyone had her tested?” I asked. “Because it would be a shame to put a kid in my kind of class, if she’s actually hearing impaired. I don’t sign well at all.”

“She was sent to an ENT specialist at the hospital last year,” Bob replied. “Apparently they had such a hard time testing her that they ended up giving her an ABR.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Auditory brainstem response,” Julie answered.

“It’s a test that tells whether the brain is registering any sound. The test measures the brain’s response to sound stimulation, so you can determine if someone is hearing, even if they aren’t verbal.”

“And?” I asked.

“And she seems to be hearing fine.”

“Oh,” I said and a faint sense of dismay settled over me. After working with her, I’d become so convinced that Venus’s problems stemmed from hearing loss that I’d felt I pretty much had a handle on her. We’d make arrangements for hearing tests and off she would go for the appropriate equipment and, eventually, the appropriate classroom. I looked around, first at Julie, then back at Bob. Really, I hadn’t expected that answer.

One of the other teachers, a third-grade teacher named Sarah, looked over. “I think what we’re going to discover with Venus is that she just doesn’t have much. Up there, if you know what I mean.” Sarah touched her temple. “Venus looks blank because, basically, she is blank. It’s a family thing. Every one of the Fox kids. They’re all…” Her voice trailed off and she didn’t finish the sentence, but then she didn’t have to. I knew what she was saying.

Bob sighed. “I’m hoping that’s not going to be the case, but no, it’s not a bright family.”

Noise of a tremendous commotion on the playground began to filter in through the window. For just the briefest moment all the teachers in the lounge paused, alert, before going to the window to see what was happening.

I didn’t bother with the window because I knew immediately it was one of mine. An identifying factor of disturbed children, I’d discovered, was the uninhibited scream. Ordinary kids could yell, shout, or squeal loudly with delight, but by six or seven, they’d been pretty much socialized out of screaming in that peculiarly high-pitched, desperate way. Not so my kids. So, I didn’t bother peering out the window. Setting down my coffee, I zipped out the door and down the hallway to get to the playground.

There on the far side beneath the spreading sycamore trees were the two playground supervisors, prying kids apart. Recognizing Billy’s brightly colored shirt amid the fray, I sprinted across the asphalt.

As well as Billy, there was Shane (or Zane) and – the two teachers were battling to separate the kids, so I couldn’t immediately tell who the third one was – Venus!

Venus, all right. Venus, as a virtual buzz saw of arms and legs, whizzing fiercely at Billy. More shocking yet, it was Venus who was making most of the noise. And what a weird noise it was – an eerie ululating sound, so loud and high pitched that it made my ears hurt. She kept at it, screaming and thrashing, until she broke free of the teacher’s grip and threw herself viciously at Billy, who already had a bloody nose. The other teacher was holding on to both Billy and Shane; but when Billy saw Venus coming at him again, he pulled himself free and started running. Venus went in hot pursuit.

I took off after the two of them, as did Julie, who had just come out of the building, as did Bob and another teacher. We were like the characters in the children’s story “The Gingerbread Boy,” all chasing one after another after Venus, who was after Billy. When Billy reached the wall at the end of the playground, Venus cornered him and started to pummel him with unrestrained fury. She wasn’t ignorant of us bearing down on her, however, because the moment I came within touching distance, Venus scurried up and over the wall.

Spiderman, indeed, I thought. With a not-too-graceful leap, I hoisted myself up and over the wall too, leaving Bob and Julie and the other teacher to scrape what remained of Billy off the pavement and put him back together.

Venus had the advantage of knowing where she was going while I did not. She bolted out through the underbrush, cut across someone’s backyard, and ran down the alley. I pelted after her, doing the best I could to keep up with her. She was surprisingly lithe when it came to getting over or under things, but I had the longer legs. About half a block from the school I finally outran her, catching her by snatching hold of the material of her dress.

“Stop! Right there!”

She tried to jerk away, but I had a good hold of the fabric. With my other hand, I grabbed her arm.

For a moment we just stood, both panting heavily. Venus had scraped knees but otherwise looked none the worse for her altercation with Billy. She eyed me carefully and there was a lot more life in her glare than anything I’d seen earlier.

“This isn’t how we do things when you are in my class,” I said and secured my grip on her arm. “Back to school we go.”

She dug her feet into the grass.

“No, we’re going back to school. It’s schooltime. You belong there.”

Venus was not going to cooperate. There seemed no alternative but to pick her up and carry her back. Realizing what I was trying to do, she exploded into a furious array of arms and legs, hitting and kicking. As a consequence, we made very slow progress getting back to the playground. The total distance was about two blocks and she made it impossible for me to carry her for more than a few yards at a time before I had to set her down and get a better grip. Finally Bob came to my rescue. Seeing me struggling up the street, he joined me and took hold of Venus’s other side. Together, we frogmarched her back into the building.

Venus hated this. The moment Bob touched her, she began to scream in her odd, high-pitched way again. She struggled, screamed, struggled more.

Finally we managed to get her into the school building and all the way up the stairs to my classroom. Bob, between pants, said, “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, putting you way up here.”

Once we reached the room, Bob let go, but I kept hold of Venus’s arms. Julie was in the classroom with the other children and they all watched us warily. Bob, seeing the situation was more or less in hand, bid good-bye, closed the door, and left me to sort things out.

There wasn’t a lock on the door, so I told Julie to stand in front of it. Hauling Venus across the room, I tugged out the chair assigned to be a “quiet chair” with my foot. I plopped her in it. “You sit there.”

She screamed and struggled. I held her in the chair.

“You need to stay here. Until you can get control again and not fight, you need to sit here.” Very cautiously I removed my hands, expecting her to dart up and run for the door, but she responded just the opposite to what I’d anticipated. The moment I let go, Venus immediately fell silent. She slumped forward in the chair, as if she were very tired.

“In this room we do not hurt others. We don’t hurt ourselves. That’s a class rule.”

“That’s two rules,” Billy piped up from his table.

“That’s one rule, Billy,” I said fiercely. “The rule is: we do not hurt. Anything.”

“Not even flies?” Billy asked. “We’re not allowed to hurt flies in here?”

Julie, recognizing a flashpoint situation when she saw one, quickly intervened, ushering Billy over to join the other boys, who were working with clay.

I turned back to Venus, who remained sitting in the time-out chair. She was watching me carefully, her heavy, hooded eyes so unreadable as to be virtually vacant.

“I’ll set the timer for five minutes,” I said. “When it rings, you may get up and rejoin us.”

Putting the ticking timer on the shelf in front of the chair, I backed off carefully, half expecting her to make a bolt for the door when my back was turned.

Not so. Venus didn’t move.

The timer rang. Venus still did not move.

“You may get up now,” I said from the table where I was working with Jesse.

No response.

I excused myself from Jesse and went over to her. “This is the quiet chair. It’s for when you get out of control and need a quiet moment to get yourself back together again. But once you’ve calmed down, you don’t have to sit in the quiet chair anymore. Come on. Let’s get you started on the clay. We’re making pinch pots. Have you done that before?”

Venus gazed at me. From her look of total incomprehension, I might as well have been speaking Hindi to her.

I put a hand under her elbow and encouraged her to rise from the chair, which she did. I guided her over to where we were all working with the clay. “Here. Sit here.”

She just stood.

Gently, I pressed her shoulder with one hand to get her to sit in the chair. I pulled out the adjacent chair and sat down. Picking up a ball of clay, I showed it to her.

“Look, what’s this? Clay. And see? See how Jesse’s doing it? You just push your thumbs into the ball of clay…”

Her eyes didn’t even move to the clay. They stayed on my face, as if she hadn’t even heard me.

Did she hear? It seemed hard to believe. I’d come across a lot of kids with speech and language problems in my time but none so unresponsive as this. Was this ABR test really accurate? Could there be some kind of failure between the brain and the ears that they hadn’t noticed?

I rose up. “Come here, Venus,” I said. Which, of course, she didn’t. I had to go through the whole rigamarole again of getting her up out of one chair and over to another part of the classroom. Guiding her to the housekeeping corner, I sat down on the floor and looked through the toys. My sign language was rusty and what little I did remember seemed primarily to be signs for abstract concepts like “family” or “sister,” but here was a concrete word I knew. “Doll,” I signed and held up a baby doll. “Doll.”

Venus watched me, her brow faintly furrowed, as if she thought I was doing something really odd.

I signed again. “Doll.” I made the sign very, very slowly.

Reaching over, I lifted her hand. Putting it on the doll, I made her fingers run over the plastic features of the toy. Then I endeavored to make the sign with her fingers. I held the doll up. I signed again myself. “Doll.”

The last twenty minutes of the school day passed thus. Venus never responded once.

At last the end-of-day bell rang. Julie escorted those who went by bus down to their rides while I saw out the ones who walked home. Then I retreated to the file cabinets in the main office to have a better look at the children’s files. I pulled out Venus’s and sat down.

Julie came in, carrying mugs of coffee for us both. She took out a chair on the other side of the table and sat down.

“Well, that was an experience,” she said.

“I’d like to think this is first-day jitters and everything will settle down.” I looked over. “Has that happened with Venus before, do you know? Have you seen her attack kids before?”

A pause, a hesitancy almost, and then Julie nodded. “Yes. Truth is, I think that’s more why she’s in this class than because of her speech. Last year they ended up having to keep her in during recesses because she does nothing but pick fights.”

“Oh great. Five kids, all with a mission to kill.”

“Kind of like being in the OK Corral in your room, isn’t it?” Julie said rather cheerfully.

I looked up.

“Didn’t you notice all the cowboy names? Billy – Billy the Kid. Jesse – Jesse James. And Shane. And Zane. And everything’s shoot ’em up.” She laughed.

“I don’t remember any cowboys named Venus.”

“Well, not cowboys,” Julie said. She considered a moment.

“Her name doesn’t fit,” I said.

Julie gave a slight shrug. “Neither does the kid.”

Venus’s file made depressing reading. She was the youngest of nine children fathered by three different men. The man who fathered the four eldest children, including Wanda, had been committed to the penitentiary for grievous bodily harm, had been released, had robbed a bank, had been jailed again, released again, and finally died three years later while in detention on drug-dealing charges. The second man, who fathered the next two children, had beaten Venus’s mother so severely when she was pregnant that the baby was stillborn. He was convicted of abuse toward three of the children, released, then later charged on animal cruelty for throwing a puppy onto a freeway from a bridge. The third man fathered the remaining three children, including Venus. He had a string of burglary convictions and other crimes related to drug and alcohol problems, but had also been charged with pedophile activity. He was currently out of prison and living elsewhere, as he’d been banned from having any contact with the children.

Venus’s mother had a long history of prostitution and had been in and out of detox centers for drug and alcohol abuse. She now lived with seven of her nine children, three of whom had been officially labeled as mentally defective, and all of whom had been in one form of special education or another. The eldest, a son a year older than Wanda, was now in prison. A fifteen-year-old son was in a juvenile detention center. The next eldest daughter, who was seventeen, had suffered a seizure while in police custody the previous year and was now brain damaged. Two other children, boys aged nine and twelve, were mentioned as having serious communication problems and were receiving speech therapy.

There was actually very little in the file that was specific to Venus herself. I think the general opinion was that by including her family history, Venus’s problems were self-evident. There were no notes on pregnancy or birth complications, nothing to denote whether or not her early development was normal. She had first come to the attention of the authorities when she reached age five and was registered for kindergarten. It was noted at this time that she was almost totally silent and, in general, very unresponsive. Except on the playground. Except when challenged or threatened. Then Venus seemed to call on an inner strength of almost comic book proportions. She screamed. She shouted. Some people even thought she swore. The idea would have seemed almost laughable – silent, unprepossessing seven-year-old girl metamorphoses into vicious little killing machine – if I hadn’t witnessed it for myself.

I flipped the file shut.

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