More smiling. Her cheeks hurt sometimes after one of their epic texting matches.
Mauve
See you soon. XO
She pocketed her phone, took her coffee to the bathroom, and started getting ready for work, not at all sure where the day would take her. But it didn’t matter. Jason was in Sugarville Grove for the entire month of December.
One month. It would fly by. She knew this. At the end of their time together, he would leave to return back to his real life. And she would stay in hers. Tragic and true. And there wasn’t a thing she could do to change it.
On the wayto the elementary school, she drove through the main part of town where the shops were decorated for Christmas with garlands wrapped around the lampposts, lights strung between buildings, a banner in the town center with the date for the annual tree lighting. Every once in a while, she imagined being stuck on a set of a Christmas movie. If only she was theheroine in a romance movie. Then maybe she wouldn’t be in love with a famous actor who had no intention of ever settling back down in Sugarville Grove. He’d left at eighteen and rarely returned, despite his aunt and uncle and cousins who still lived here, pillars of the community.
She pulled into the school lot, gathered her tote bag from the passenger seat, and headed inside through the side entrance near the kindergarten wing. There was no mistaking smells of floor cleaner and school lunch. Scents of school that hadn’t changed since she was a kid. A paper snowflake garland hung crookedly above the water fountain, and someone had taped a hand-drawn Santa to the door of the supply closet.
Although she had her own office in town, she had a designated space at the school—a converted closet with a low table, two child-sized chairs, a portable mirror, and shelves stacked with picture cards, puzzles, and games. The space was so small, she and Reese often joked it was a hovel for elves.
She flipped on the lights and set her bag on the table. Her first client of the day was six-year-old Ollie Chambers. Ollie had immediately captured her heart. Maybe it was his big, soulful brown eyes, or the way his hair was always earnestly combed. He’d been with her since September but had shown little improvement. Regardless, Mauve knew she could help him. It would just take time.
For most of their appointments his mother brought Ollie to Mauve’s office. However, given the severity of his speech condition, she had asked to work with him for an additional session every week. Because both his parents worked, it was easier for them if she saw him at school, so that is what she did. His teacher had readily agreed that he should miss part of the day in the classroom so that he could work with Mauve. She’d said to Mauve that the child was far ahead of the rest of the classacademically. He just couldn’t tell anyone about it because he didn’t speak.
Ollie had childhood apraxia of speech. His brain knew exactly what it wanted to say, but the signals didn’t make the trip to his mouth the way they were supposed to. The issue was the coordination between thought and articulation and the sequencing of sounds that most people performed without a second thought. For Ollie, every syllable had to be built from the ground up.
As his teacher had said, it wasn’t a problem of intelligence. In fact, he seemed to notice and understand more than other children of his age, perhaps because he didn’t speak. More time for listening. She had often thought a few adults she knew could have used a lesson from Ollie.
Progress was slow. There had been a lot of hard sessions. Ones that left her emotionally exhausted afterward, as if she were the one trying to form words instead of sweet Ollie. But when a sound that had been locked inside him finally broke free? Magic. The kind that stayed with her long after the sound was finally uttered.
Ollie arrived a few minutes later from his first grade classroom and gave her a friendly wave. At first, he’d been terribly shy, but, over a few sessions, she had drawn him out, rewarded with his tentative smile.
“Hi, Ollie. How are you today?”
He gave her the thumbs-up as he took a seat across from her.
“Okay, let’s do this thing.” Mauve set the mirror between them on the table so he could see himself.
They started with sounds he’d already mastered, building a foundation before they pushed into harder territory. She learned early on that, with apraxia, one didn’t sprint. It was more about layering, sound by sound, syllable by syllable, repetition afterrepetition, until the motor plan took hold and the mouth learned what the brain already knew.
She held up a card with a picture of a ball.
“Buh,” she said, exaggerating the way her lips came together, watching him in the mirror positioned between them. “Your turn.”
He pressed his lips together, his forehead creasing in concentration. “Buh.”
“Oh, that’s so good, Ollie.”
They moved through a series of bilabials, which were sounds made with both lips. Next, they tried some combinations. Ba-ba. Bee-bo. She used tactile cues when he got stuck, gently touching the side of his jaw to help him feel where his mouth needed to be. He accepted the touch without flinching. That had taken a few sessions.
About fifteen minutes in, she slid a card with a picture of a boy across the table.
“Okay,” she said. “New one. He.”
Ollie looked at the picture. His mouth opened slightly, then closed. She could see him searching for the motor sequence. The only way she could think to describe it to those who didn’t suffer speech difficulties was to say it was like feeling around in the dark for a light switch you know is there but can’t quite find.
“Hh—” He stopped. Tried again. “Hh?—”
The sound was there, breathy and thin, but the vowel wouldn’t attach.
His face tightened. He pushed the card an inch away from him.
“That’s okay,” Mauve said. “You got the start. That H sound was right there. We’re going to come back to this one. It’s a tricky sound because your mouth has to stay open and the air has to do the work. But you had it started. That’s the hardest part.”
