Free Finding a Voice by Kim Hood

term. Just like ‘crazy’ was never supposed to be used; it was ‘psychiatric illness’, as if using different words wiped the craziness clean away.
    ‘His label, Jo? Everyone has one here, and reams of reports dating all the way back to when they were born.’ Mr Jenkins tried to move on but I stood still, waiting for the answer.
    ‘Chris’s label is Cerebral Palsy. He didn’t get enough oxygen when he was being born. It affected every part ofhim profoundly, including his brain.’
    ‘Does that mean he can’t understand anything I say?’
    ‘Does it matter? He’s happy with you, Jo. You just keep doing what you’re doing, and Chris’s sweet personality will keep shining through. We don’t value people on the basis of their IQ around here.’
    I wasn’t sure if it mattered or not. It wasn’t that I thought less of him if he wasn’t able to understand much, and Mr Jenkins had as much as said he couldn’t. It was just that I found myself telling Chris things that I never told anyone. Mostly it was
because
I didn’t think Chris understood much that I felt that I could talk to him. But there was a small part of me that longed for him to be the friend that finally understood me.

    It seemed that Mondays were going to be Dr Sharon days. Only the time was different from the last week.
    I arrived into Dr Sharon’s empty little room fresh from lunch with Chris, happy to be missing P.E., but not sure what I was going to talk about.
    ‘So?’ Dr Sharon asked, her stillness so starkly opposite to Chris’s movement, yet almost equally silent. Why was it so much easier to fill the silence with words when I was with Chris now, and yet not have a single word to speak to this counsellor, when the whole point was to talk?
    ‘Well,’ I started tentatively, ‘thanks for making that lunch time thing happen.’
    Dr Sharon smiled.
    ‘It sounds as if it were you that made that happen.’
    I couldn’t disagree. In this one area of my life I felt in control of something for the first time ever.
I
could make Chris smile.
I
was guiding his hand to create abstract paintings.
I
had conquered my fears of something new and that was leading to this new feeling of belonging, or at least the beginning of it.
    ‘I guess so,’ I agreed. ‘The funny thing is, I think I’d want to help Chris even if I wasn’t there just because…’
    I shrugged. I didn’t want to talk to Dr Sharon about my trouble with practically everything. I had to admit that she had taken me seriously
and
she had been able to help me. I felt I probably could trust her, and she just may help me in more ways. Still, it wasn’t easy for me to share how I felt about anything in my life. I just wasn’t used to talking to people about anything that was real, or important or true.
    So I used the forty-five minutes to talk about how much I was enjoying working with Chris. But then, I suppose that this
was
real, and important, and true.

    The next morning Grandma and I had our first ever fight. It was over the clothes of course.
    On Monday I had dutifully worn the corduroy pants and blouse she had given me. The last two yet-to-be-worn outfits included skirts, and I just couldn’t make myself put on either. I had always felt so awkward wearing any kind of dress or skirt, and Mom of course had never made me wear one.
    Instead, I slipped on my most comfortable pair of jeans and the cool t-shirt I had excitedly purchased in the summer, knowing it was exactly in style.
    I noticed the usual bowl of porridge and a cup of tea when I walked into the kitchen. Grandma was already sitting down drinking her own cup of tea. I sighed.
    ‘To do good to the ungrateful is to throw rose-water into the sea, I notice,’ Grandma quoted.
    ‘It’s just, I don’t even eat breakfast before school.’
    ‘That’s when your mother is here. We eat breakfast together.’ Every bit of life with Grandma had to be her way. No negotiation.
    ‘Oh.’ I could never find the courage to disagree