1My little sister is six and couldn't talk - before Ririko had turned four it was couldn't talk yet, now it's just couldn't talk.
When she's really happy or really sad or sometimes for no reason at all, she'll get a sentence out - like God has reached down and touched her mind. But otherwise, it's restricted to single words and "mmmmMm!", or "K-kk-assn!"
The doctors had sat down with my parents and pointed to charts with hard foreign words and medicine, mentioning something about paternal age and possible abnormal serotonin levels - but they might as well have been speaking English - all they heard was "mental shortcomings" and signed off from the conversation. Overnight, she transformed from their daughter into a dreaded anchor they would carry for the rest of their life. They were mathematicians; nothing in their pure and comforting numbers had prepared them for something like this.
After school when I go to pick her up from the day care, her eyes find me - she squeals, wiggles free from her too-small seat and rushes to the door. The carer looks up – (her eyes are tired - too tired for her age) - she greets me warmly, says she played very nice today - she even shared her stuffed rabbit with another boy.
I want to apologise to her, her colleagues know, she knows - I know that she shouldn't be here - she turns seven in August and then Ririko will really have to go somewhere else - but I keep my mouth shut and bow deeply to her.
I want to understand her. I want there to be a solution. At this point, I would settle for knowing how to properly phrase the problem - when Ririko looks at you, she can smile with all the force behind the emotion, show you a painting or a book or a pencil she lodged into a toy truck - but the words would be "Muh...! Meme, n-n-naaah...!" and I suppose that's happiness but it feels like applying meaning to static. So when I don't/can't fully understand the problem I settle for trying to provide a solution that would fix something I do understand.
"Ririko-chan, have a look at this," I take her exercise book and flip to the last page, "Can you count the balls?"
When she sees the book she gets excited – she likes this game because it always ends in chocolate or candy if she could get it right and also when she doesn't, because I'm a bad behaviourist.
"Uhm!" I see her count them with her stubby little fingers. "One! Two! Three! Threeee! Three!" She shouts the number at the top of her lungs after she goes back and forth between her fingers and the page.
"How many squares are there?"
"None—one!" She spots one after her mind finishes making up its mind. "One one one!" She claps her hands together and beams.
When we first started I was astounded – incredulous at how bad she was at this. Often, she'd simply blurt out something nonsensical – noise, or a name – as if the only pattern she could discern was response to my voice.
But after half a year we had gotten somewhere, past simply counting shapes into puzzles like this –
"Ririko," I draw a point, then a line, then a triangle, "what comes next?"
"Three!"
"No, try again, what shape comes next?"
"Fff—four!" She looks down and counts the shapes with her fingers.
It's the right pattern but the wrong thinking – like getting 2 times 2 by adding the numbers together. She keeps shouting four but her fingers are tracing a square – she's thinking but her mind doesn't want to play.
"Not 'four', what are your fingers doing?"
"Free!" she shoves her fingers into my face.
"Watch your finger." I trace her finger on the page next to the triangle.
"One, two, three, th—"
"Four—what?"
"Ssss—" her mouth resists the sound, she looks confused, her fingers show her one thing but her mind doesn't process it – processes against it –
"Count with me," I draw a square with a pencil, "One, two three, four, what?"
"For!"
"Four—"
Before I finish she grabs the pencil and scribbles out the line and the point with enough force to rip through the pages.
"Urglg! Yip!"
"Stop! Give me that-!" I rip the pencil out of her hand. "Why did you do that?!"
She looks up at me, her face falling and her lip trembling as she realises I am angry, and then God comes down and touches her and—
"No! Brother, the pattern is wrong – two dimensional lines and single dimensional points do not have sides—"
It hits me like a freight truck - I am absolutely blown away by the sheer fluency - and simultaneously furious that the first time she strings together a sentence, she does so in order to school me and my stupid math puzzle –
I almost lose it.
Almost.
This is her. She lives in harmony – everything makes sense within her own frame of reference, but then she sees people talking. They control their environment with words, they can stop shouting or yelling or hitting with talking. She copies mother's voice – her words and mannerisms – because she knows she can control me with them.
It's not like Ririko is trying to piss me off – this is just the way it is. Moments of pure, free, clear messages mixed in with the static. And – just like a radio – if you keep fiddling with the knobs and hitting it, eventually it'll just stop working at all.
But I don't think that at the time – I'm just too angry and frustrated and tired to figure it out. I only see things my way, the way a teenager can't see past the twenty year old mark - but I see a lifetime of taking care of an almost person – a wonky radio, which is why when they say 'you're a good brother' I reply 'until the day I'm not' and say it with absolutely nothing inside of me.
Instead, she sees everything on my face – frustration, anger, pain – and she wells up – my little sister, the little girl that I love with everything I can give her – she tried the words, found a pitch perfect quote from mother – and she thinks it didn't work–
That's not what happened – she tried, I failed.
Without knowing exactly what happened she holds onto my shirt and cries, "s-s-sorry! Mmmm—ssss!"
Something breaks inside of me and by instinct I know I've done something wrong; I hold her close and tell her it's not her fault, I was very sorry to have yelled at her, I'll get her stuffed rabbit – we can play together without the book for a while.
And that was very, very excellent talking – it makes me really happy when you talk like that. So let's get Mister Rabbit and some chocolate and play until mum and dad come home and talk some more about animals and math.
She looks at me and her face splits into a huge grin, my lovely mystical sister. She takes her stuffed rabbit and mushes it into my face, giggling excitedly and for a moment I think as long as she can stay like this and I can just get the hell out of her way, she'll be happy.