Читать книгу The Styx - Patricia Holland - Страница 12

Everyone seems to think the worst of disabled people. If they don’t get normal feedback, they think you’re dumb. Mentally, I can process information fast—far faster than other kids, I reckon. And I can read minds. Faces tell me what people are thinking. Faces jump from their skin and bones and shout every tiny emotion at me.

“How are you today, darling?” The voice is usually jaunty, but the eyes are always dead. The smile is dead.

“Have you been a good girl?” A self-conscious laugh, sometimes a pat of my head, and they feel satisfied: they take pleasure in their kindness.

“Thank God that part is done,” they think.

“How totally revolting, ugghhh,” the slight pursing and micro twitch of the lips says.

Then the dead smile swings to someone else and a light switches on. Their eyes dance in the relief of someone normal. At least I increase the joy they feel with each other’s company.

I can read it all. The most miniscule flicker of malice, contempt, lust, love is written in bold capitals across their faces. These things scream at me, and sometimes make me scream. Inside.

It’s called Rett Syndrome, my syndrome. Back then, when I was little, some people considered it the most extreme form of autism. It’s got to be one of the worst disabilities to have. It makes Asperger’s or even the most dysfunctional alphabet disorder seem mild in comparison. Rett is severely physically debilitating and painful. If you’re lucky it leads to death, usually suffocation during a bout of pneumonia; but if you’re unlucky, you live on and on and on and on. Interminable days of suffering. Interminable days of neglect, boredom, frustration, despair.

Some people get lucky and get drugged. If you scream and flail enough, you can get them to drug you; usually to shut you up, sometimes to put you out of your misery. Rett Syndrome means mental and physical torture for everyone involved. And it grows. Regresses you further and further, every moment, every day, every year until your teens. Then it stops, slows at least. Sometimes reverses. A bit. If you live long enough. Boys with Rett are lucky. They never get born.