Free Daniel Isn't Talking by Marti Leimbach

Early Learning Centre and are very correctly moulded, though far less beguiling until Emily painted circus blankets on them all.
    â€˜Where is your husband?’ Veena asks. Remarkably, after the announcement of Daniel’s diagnosis, Stephen dropped us back at the house and went on to work. I have a meeting, he said. Try not to worry, he said. Take a pill if you have to, and let Veena look after the children.
    In this numbed, surreal post-diagnosis state, I could think of no objection. Except to the pills. I fed the toilet with them, then filled the vial with aspirin.
    Veena says, ‘I believe British imperialism to be a kind of genetic coding. Your daughter requests that I take her to India so she can ride an elephant like a royal person.’ She shakes her head, smiles. She smells of orange tea and has her hair braided down her back in a single, weighty rope.
    â€˜It’s the Dumbo influence,’ I tell her, ‘not the British.’
    â€˜Same thing,’ she says, tucking a lock of loose hair behind her ear.
    â€˜No, Dum bo ,’ I say. ‘The elephant.’
    â€˜Dumbo the elephant? What are you talking about? The child says she needs a palace.’
    We give the children lunch and Veena sets about sucking the dust from the drapes with the long hose of the vacuumcleaner. The whole of our downstairs is just one big room, so I follow her with her Hoover, keeping an eye on Daniel to see that he eats the food and doesn’t just roll it between his fingers. Over the noise I try to explain to Veena that Daniel is autistic, and that he is going to get worse unless we do something, but we don’t know what to do. Even as I say this it doesn’t seem real to me. It’s like being in one of those movies where they’ve discovered the world is going to end in ten days unless a solution is found. But there is no solution.
    â€˜What a silly you are,’ she says, aiming the hose. ‘Your boy is fine. It is only that he is a male and destined to grow up to be a male.’
    â€˜No, no, nooo ,’ I say. ‘As bad as that sounds to you – you, in particular, Veena – this is actually very much worse.’ I have a need to push the information at her, to press it into her and force her to take hold of it. It’s a feeling that will not go away and that, I believe, will visit me often and with everyone, guaranteeing the end of many of my friendships. Whispering so that Emily and Daniel don’t hear, I say, ‘He’s autistic. That’s what they’ve said. He will not grow up like a normal child. It is the worst thing that can possibly happen!’
    She shakes her head. ‘Where I come from,’ she says, ‘they burn women.’
    â€˜Vee na ,’ I say, begging with my voice.
    â€˜Eat something before you die,’ she tells me.
    But I cannot eat. I cannot sip the tea or even the water that Veena sets before me. It is a condition of my existence now that the simple, keep-alive activities of eating and drinking and sleeping are beyond me. I sit with my cheek against the wood of our dining table, my hands hanging down, my eyes half open, staring.
    Veena watches me for a moment, then shuts off the Hoover and comes to me, taking my hand. What I notice right away is how dry and small her hand is in mine. And how her eyes are so deep a brown I have to search for the pupils. And how sad she looks. I realise now that this is my fault; that I have made her sad by telling her what has happened. She looks across the room at Daniel, at Emily, and I register at once that she is thinking how it is worse for them. With a single confirmed diagnosis their whole lives are different. And then I see something else in her face. An awareness. A resolve. She lets go of my fingers and sits up straight, then says to me steadily, ‘I am a philosophy student and an Indian woman. This makes me a very dark person in many ways. Each day I see around me a world