Читать книгу Silent Witness - Kay David - Страница 3

Dear Reader,

When I was in the first grade, I stopped talking. This will come as a surprise to those who know me now, but it is the truth. My family moved in the middle of the school year, and after I joined my new class, where I knew no one and didn’t really want to know anyone, I decided I would no longer speak.

My mother and father accepted the news with the same equanimity they gave almost every crisis in our household. No one got hysterical or rushed me to the doctor or even made a big deal out of my silence. I talked at home, you see; I just wouldn’t say anything at school.

As the weeks went past and I continued my boycott on words, my mother, God bless her soul, sensed my loneliness. Every day in my lunch box I would find a note from her. As I ate my ham sandwich—always on white bread with the crusts cut off, please—I would read her letters.

Looking back, I ask myself, how did she have the time? My sister was in high school then, my brother in diapers. Surely she had more important things to do than write her stubborn seven-year-old love letters.

If you were to ask me why I did what I did, I wouldn’t be able to explain, but by the end of that school year I decided to talk again. Thirty years passed before I learned other children do the same thing, and now there’s even a name for the condition. It’s called Selective Mutism. Strangely enough, all the articles I’ve read tell parents not to panic or make a big fuss. The experts say it will pass in time and it generally does.

When I sat down to write Silent Witness I knew I wanted to tell the story of a child who chose not to speak. In my book, Kevin has a much more traumatic reason to stay quiet than most children, but in a child’s world, everything is relative.

I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Kay David