I've been reading with Sam H in the
Helping Hands Centre in Belfast for almost a year. Like the other people in our
small group, Sam meets with me weekly as part of a Lloyds TSB funded shared
reading project. We read stories, poetry, books - literature that is deep
enough to make us think. We've read Shakespeare, MacNeice, Smith (Stevie and
Zadie), Dickens and Edward Thomas, to name a few. I read everything aloud
stopping often to chat about what we're reading and to share the varied
meanings it - and the chatting - generates.
When we talk, we discuss what the texts
might mean; for us they are not existential, decontextualised black and white
marks, but rather, they are reflections, invocations, reconstitutions, even, of
lives that often intersect with our own. So we appreciate these stories, not
just for their literary and linguistic qualities, but more importantly, for
what they mean for (and to) us, and what we feel when we read and explore their meaning
potential. We learn, too. Always something about, and from each other, and
crucially, about ourselves. It's an incredibly powerful experience.
Currently, we are reading Mark Haddon's The
Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night Time. The story is Christopher Boone's, a
teenager with Asperger's syndrome, who takes things literally and for whom
metaphors are a kind of lie. He doesn't like his food to touch and won't eat
brown things. Physical contact is rebuked and sometimes violently reacted to.
Consequently, his world is, as my group put it, 'locked'; his perception of
concepts, things and emotions is for the most part inaccessible to others; his
dad and his teacher, Siobhan, come closest to understanding him.
Yet, this story is not just Christopher
Boone's. It is the story of Sam H, locked in reality in a prison cell, most of
his 26-year sentence spent in solitary confinement, 53 days on hunger strike,
rendered 'emotionally empty' by bullish prison officers, hitting back by not
communicating and becoming, instead, an elective mute. This story, is Sam's
story.
Like the others in our group who are
trying to find their way back to something that is both a semblance of, and
better than their past lives, this story cuts across their own. At times, and
perhaps more directly, it is the story of Sam's brother - understandable to few (mainly Sam) and understood to even less - for
Sam, it tells of his brother's (and his own) frustration at the barriers to
communication.
We have reached the part of the story
where Christopher learns that his mother, whom he believes to be dead, is
actually alive and living with an ex-neighbour in London. This prompts a surge
of negative opinion that centres on the mother’s motivation for leaving and the
father’s motivation for keeping it from Christopher. Up to this point, the
group are - at best - derisory about the mother, particularly Sam H. Poignantly, Tom, a young guy of about
seventeen, offers a kind of rationale for the mother’s departure; 'maybe she
couldn't cope with him and that could be why she had the affair and left'. We
talk all of this out and acknowledge a difference of opinion in the group about
the mother. Sam H believes her to be 'selfish', Sam M considers what may have
'drove her away', and at one point, a view is espoused that 'the da may have
hit her' as it is recalled that he struck Christopher earlier in the story. A
few 'Mmmms' follow this and Sam H emphatically intones 'He did that, yes, but
he was trying to protect him [from discovering his mothers death was faked]',
he said. 'You would do anything out of love'. We sense without it being said
that Sam H is thinking about his own 'anything' - the years he spent in prison
for the crime that he maintains was carried out 'to protect my son'.
But then we read the letters Christopher
finds in his dad's wardrobe. They are letters addressed to Christopher and they
are from his mother (he knows this before he opens them because of the childish circle over the ‘i’).
His 'dead' mother. With almost childish honesty (both in form and substance), they
relate, in part, her struggle with motherhood. As we read
along with Christopher, something, almost imperceptibly, happens when we get to
this:
“And then you and me had that argumant. Do
you remember? It was about your supper one evening. I’d cooked you something and
you wouldn’t eat it. And you hadn’t eaten for days and you were looking so
thin. And you started to shout and I got cross and I threw the food across the
room. Which I know I shouldn’t have done. And you grabbed the chopping board
and you threw it and it hit my foot and broke my toes [...] And afterwards, at
home, your father and I had a huge argumant. He blamed me for getting cross
with you. And he said I should just give you what you wanted, even if it was
just a plate of lettuce or a strawberry milkshake. And I said I was just trying
to get you to eat something healthy. And he said you couldn’t help it. And I
said well I couldn’t help it either and I just lost my rag [...]
And I couldn’t walk
properly for a month, do you remember, and your father had to look after you.
And I remember looking at the two of you and seeing you together and thinking
how you were really differant with him. Much calmer. And you didn’t shout at
one another. And it made me so sad because it was like you didn’t really need
me at all. And somehow that was even worse than you and me arguing all the time
because it was like I was invisible.
And I think that was
when I realised you and your father were probably better off if I wasn’t living
in the house. Then he would only have one person to look after instead of two.”
Sam M shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He
says nothing. Syd barely voices a 'wow', but we catch it. It is Sam H who
breaks the silence - at first, with a few words I can’t understand. He is
trying to say something and for the first time in a year, I see that the text
is openly affecting him. ‘See that’, he says, ‘that’s...’ and his voice trails
off. Sam M gets up and goes to the other end of the room and turns his phone
over in his hand a few times before coming back to his seat. Syd remains where
he is, going over and over the lines. Suddenly everyone speaks at once and I
can make nothing out. Then Sam H. confidently proclaims, 'I was wrong about
her. I judged her. All this time...I thought she was a s***, but she's not.
She's the opposite. Look at this...' He draws our attention to the letter and
reads aloud (I look up, almost expecting to see him standing, but he is not):
“We [Christopher’s mother and father] had a lot of argumants like that. Because
I often thought I couldn’t take any more. And your father is really pacient but
I’m not, I get cross, even though I don’t mean too. And by the end we stopped
talking to each other very much because we knew it would always end up in an
argumant and it would go nowere. And I felt realy lonley”
‘It must have been really difficult for
her’, Sam H says. ‘And the da doesn’t seem to be giving her much support. You
can’t do that on your own. And if he gets on a bit better with the da, then she
must have felt that’. At this point, Sam M interrupts, ‘she felt a failure -
she thinks he did everything right for his son but never really supported her -
that’s gonna make her feel crap’. Although Sam H is nodding in agreement, I can
see that he is thinking about something else. I ask him. He takes his glasses off, puts his book
face down on the table and says in a confident, but quiet voice, 'I'll tell you
something...THAT...is the first time in 30 years that I have felt emotion.' As
I look at him, I can see the beginnings of tears in his eyes. But he was
smiling. ‘She sacrificed herself in a way, because
she thought it was for the best. Look - (he points to the lines) “And it made me so sad because it was like
you didn’t really need me at all.” Now that’s putting your kids first.’
We talked a bit more about this before
Fleur Adcock’s ‘For A Five Year Old’, brought the session to a poignant,
thoughtful close:
A snail is
climbing up the window-sill
Into your room,
after a night of rain.
You call me in to
see, and I explain
That it would be
unkind to leave it there:
It might crawl to
the floor; we must take care
That no one
squashes it. You understand,
And carry it
outside, with a careful hand,
To eat a daffodil.
I see, then, that
a kind of faith prevails:
Your gentleness is
moulded still by words
From me, who have
trapped mice and shot wild birds,
From me, who
drowned your kittens, who betrayed
Your closest
relatives, and who purveyed
The harshest kind
of truth to many another.
But that is how
things are: I am your mother,
And we are kind to
snails.
As is normally the case in most of my
groups, the personal stories become shared issues, brought to life through identification
with the fictional characters, events, places, a word, even. I didn't know
about Sam's brother before reading this book with him. Nor did I know about
Sam's experiences in a Belfast prison. I had no idea of his claim to be
emotionally empty before we read together. Yet all of these deeply personal and
troubling issues found a means of articulation through the book. For Sam, as
for most people in our groups, the stories and poetry offered a way of saying; 'it changes the way you think about things'. When the saying gets too much, too
overwhelming, we divert our attention to the catalyst for the shared experience
- 'so, about this kid's dad, then', Sam or Tom will say. And so it goes.
The
following week, Sam H, self-proclaimed emotional vacuum, chatted excitedly to
me as soon as I arrived. ‘Patricia, I have been thinking about that woman all
week. How much she did for her son.’ ‘Who?’ I asked. ‘You know, Christopher’s
mother!’ came the reply. So… about this ‘no emotion’.