Free Daniel Isn't Talking by Marti Leimbach Page A

falling about like a stumbling drunk. They hold prisoners of Muslims and say they are not racists. They let the white skinheads terrorise the blacks and say they are not racists. I have come to this country as an escape from my own, worse country, where people are still considered untouchables and where it is known that boys are kidnapped and castrated and made to live as eunuchs. I am sorry, dear Melanie, but you are a white woman living in a white paradise. This is not the worst thing that can happen.’
    â€˜Untouchables?’ I say.
    â€˜Gandhi tried to rename them Children of God, but they call themselves the Dalit , which means depressed.’
    â€˜Veena, I’m depressed.’
    She nods. She has heavy glasses that slide down her boxy little nose. She breathes in deeply, then lets the breath go all at once. ‘I understand,’ she says. ‘But right now he lives, and so do you.’
    Strangely, Veena’s words are a comfort to me.

6
    Our house is tiny, fourteen feet wide, two levels. It used to be the garage to a very grand house next door. It has a small garden stocked with ornamental roses and tons of lavender. In the summer the bumblebees, big as mothballs, hum outside the window. I love that the plaster is smooth and cool even in August. That in the winter, when you wake up, the air smells like frost and it smells like coal. To me, our house seems palatial, a miracle in the middle of this dense city. When we first moved here, shortly after Daniel was born, I used to lie in bed with the two children and look outside the windows, where the float glass is different in each of the panes so that the tree branches don’t appear to align correctly, watching as the sun fired the sky with colour. Stephen got dressed for work and we spoke in hushed tones so as not to wake the children. I liked to watch him get dressed. He’s tall, with enormous presence. Barrel- chested, big wrists, broad hands, thick neck. I looked at our perfect babies, sleeping one on either side of me, and my handsome husband and I thought nobody has everbeen so lucky as me. No one has ever been so content with what she has.
    But I didn’t know what I had. You see, Daniel seemed completely normal. You might think that a baby with autism gives you some warning so you won’t love him quite as much as you do your normal child. Maybe he doesn’t cling to you or hold his arms round your neck, or laugh when you give him piggyback rides or reach for the swing seat. But he did all those things. I was Daniel’s trampoline and his hammock; he made my hip bone his seat and opened my heart with his laughter. There are hundreds of pictures of Daniel sliding down a slide at the playground, stomping puddles with his new wellies, riding his toy train, putting on the eyeglasses for Mr Potato Head and dancing. The change is gradual; the symptoms devious in the way they come and go. You don’t love him any less because he doesn’t speak to you. Or when he cannot seem to get the hang of the new garage and all the shiny new cars you buy him, or has no interest in the games you try to play. When he won’t let you touch his head, let alone wash his hair, or when he cries almost all day and you have no idea why. You don’t love him any less – you just think you are failing.
    Stephen will not talk to me at all about him. He goes to work early, comes home late, retreats into his laptop and is unavailable for comment.
    â€˜This, what you are doing here, is not helpful,’ I tell him. I am lying face down on the couch while he sits at the other end, poking his keyboard, answering emails.
    After a very long while he says, ‘If you knew there was something wrong, why didn’t you get help?’
    â€˜So it’s my fault?’
    â€˜I asked why you didn’t get a doctor. Sooner Obviously, you knew .’
    And now I wish he’d go back to not speaking to me. Email somebody in Hong Kong or