I had been briefed on her. She never made a sound or uttered a word. I was told that she understood ASL, and that when disturbed she would be hetero-aggressive. Otherwise her intellect seemed to be intact. She mostly wandered about minding her own business.
I spent my first day on the job watching her from a distance. She had this natural look of defiance that would be commonly referred to as Resting Bitch Face (RBF) today. She approached almost everything that came her way with the level of caution required to defuse a bomb. I had ASL flashcards in my left pocket but decided they wouldn’t be necessary.
It didn’t take long for her to notice that she was being watched by someone new. Hunter’s instinct, perhaps. She carefully put away a tray of plastic toys, some sort of puzzle game, and turned to face me. More like challenged me to a staring contest that she knew she would win.
I pulled out a writing pad and a felt-tip marker in bright purple from my backpack. In the biggest font size permitted by the surface area of my notepad, I wrote HELLO :) and flashed it at her direction. In the split of a second I caught a genuine smile that nobody had seen – then she turned and ran away.
There was this invisible bond between the two of us. We shared an understanding of the futility of words. And she was so young – the most pressing question in my head wasn’t “why”, but “what”. I read about children in conflict zones being trained and employed in combat but I could not begin to fathom the horrors of it when it was presented before my eyes. I had to admit I was not ready for the answers.
Invariably they called her a trouble maker. She caused a panic when she had, allegedly, jammed a pair of scissors into her left palm in the middle of an Arts and Crafts session. When I arrived on scene, she was calmly observing the blood dripping and pooling around her feet.
I walked her to the medical room, sat her down, and kneeled next to her. As I scribbled PLEASE DON’T DO IT AGAIN YOU’RE TOO PRECIOUS TO ME on my notepad I was, for the first time in my life, choking with tears.
Other staff members arrived and looked on, full of concern. This woman from discipline board was marking her disapproval with the tsk-tsk noise coming from her cock-sucking mouth while this middle-aged, flaccid man commented that we should notify her guardians ASAP and write a report to diffuse all responsibility in this incident. As I fought the urge to crush their windpipes, she looked up from her tiny bloodied hand to the onlookers and said “fuck off”, rather loud and clear but with complete nonchalance.
The woman, gasping in shock, exclaimed “Did she just use the f- …?”
I stood up and herded them off the scene.
“Please, give us some room. I have this under control.”
I locked the door behind me and gathered the first aid materials needed to address her wound.
I washed off the blood and finally saw that the cut was in fact not deep enough to suggest intentional self harm.
I looked up at her. She was batting her eyelashes at me.
“It was an accident. I’m sorry,” she said.
I nodded.
*****
