Yes, I sign automatically, then pause. I consider.
Seeing my face, Rhys puts his head to one side – like Rita does when she’s confused by something – and smiles. The pact.
I don’t know what to say. My mouth is closed, my hands are still.
Want to talk about it?
No. Yes. No.
OK.
A conversation in fragments
A table in the common room. Rhys sits sprawled over a chair, his limbs too long and languid to fit into it properly, and I am cross-legged on the table, facing him. Our hands are in constant motion, flitting up and down from the space in front of our faces and chests to the piece of paper we have between us. He is patient, prompting me with a gentle swing of his hand. And we begin.
So.
So . . .
You can go ahead. I’m ‘listening’.
I don’t know where to start.
Shall I ask questions?
Yes.
OK. HOW COME YOU DON’T SPEAK MUCH?
I was a childhood mute. I stopped talking when I was four, which was when I went to nursery. I just . . . didn’t speak. No one knew why. Big fuss.
You stopped speaking COMPLETELY?
Oh no. At first it was just in the nursery. I just clammed up. I’ve seen the notes my teacher made at the time. She says it was like I was a statue all day – no expressions, no voice. Like I was scared to do anything at all. I could still talk at home and to my family and friends. But then it started getting worse. First I stopped talking to anyone I didn’t know, like people in shops and restaurants, and then it was friends, and then it was anyone who wasn’t my immediate family. For a while I could only talk to my mum and dad when I was certain there was no one else around.
That must have been hard.
I don’t remember it in any detail. Most of what I know is what people have told me over the years. All I remember from the time is this kind of numbness.
So what happened?
I had to see doctors and speech therapists. I saw them for years, actually. We got loads of written materials about selective mutism. What my parents should expect. They had to get two copies of everything because they weren’t exactly on great terms at the time. They divorced when I was three.
Maybe you were trying to bring them together by not talking?
Look, I’ll answer any question you ask but don’t try and psychoanaylse me, OK? I’ve heard it all a hundred times.
Sorry.
It makes me really mad.
Sorry.
People always want to have the answer. Even now, after all these years. It’s like, don’t you think that we’ve all thought of every possible option already? We stopped waiting for a light-bulb moment a long time ago. It’s never going to come. Sometimes things just happen.
I won’t do it again.
So anyway. I was meant to be getting help but it was all a bit patchy, to be honest. I lived mostly with Mum at the time and I saw Dad at weekends. They didn’t agree how to ‘handle me’, or whatever. Dad wanted to follow what the guides said, like, to the letter, but Mum didn’t really have much patience for it.
What do you mean?
I don’t think she really believed that it was something that was happening to me instead of something I was doing. She thought I was doing it on purpose. Trying to make things difficult. I know it must have been frustrating, but she used to shout at me. She couldn’t take it when I wouldn’t talk to the rest of our family. Like my gran. Mum would be, like, ‘Are you trying to punish me?’ and then she’d cry.
What about in school?
I was meant to get one-on-one help, but my school was quite understaffed and underfunded – it’s actually been closed down since I left – and so I was just included in the SEN group.
SEN?
Special Educational Needs.
Oh. Did it help?
Well, it’s not like anyone was UNhelpful, but none of it helped. I just didn’t talk, but because I did all the work I think they decided it was easier to let me get on with it. They did try some of the things the guides suggested – there’s this technique called ‘sliding in’ – but it wasn’t getting results fast enough so they kind of gave up. I don’t want to make them sound bad, because everyone was so nice to me, and they really tried to make me feel like it was OK to just be, you know?
And I had Tem.
Your best friend?
Yeah. We’ve been best friends since we were tiny. There was a time when I couldn’t talk to her either, but that only lasted a few months. Literally. But Tem doesn’t care whether I talk or not, so there was never any pressure. And she NEVER looked surprised if I did talk. Everyone else used to watch me so closely . . . and if I did say anything they’d always make this shocked face that made me feel so . . . exposed. But with Tem it always felt normal. After a while she could read me so well she used to talk for me at school, like she was my interpreter. And that made things easier for everyone. By Year 2 I could whisper to Tem in school, and then over the next few years I could talk to her, then whisper to other kids, and then by the time I got to Year 6 I was almost normal. Very shy, but I could talk.
Where does BSL come in?