I can spot her yards away: Her exquisite skin and straight shiny butterscotch hair streaked with fading burgundy that whips in the bone-chilling wind. The way she trudges solidly, wearing what seem to be the same jeans I usually see her in, paired with one of three wrinkled t-shirts and no jacket. Startlingly malachite eyes are unfathomable except when a matrix of the knowing imp sparks its sheen, then submerges into a private space where perhaps everything and nothing exits. Sometimes I glimpse into that void when least expected; I see beyond the mirror, into somewhere I should not be. I see you.
Heather’s zone of cool smooth stone doesn’t feel like reflection or hidden thought; it’s more as if she has tuned out or is plotting the next excuse to escape a class, or to spurt random, confident comments that have nothing to do with anything in particular, but carry personal meaning and weight from the depths of an inner world.
High-functioning autistic? Gifted “enrichment-placed student”? Labels don’t fit and I don’t want to know them. I take her mystery as it comes. It is what it is. And because of this, I cannot even imagine her inner thoughts. Her boundaries are impenetrable, unpredictable, a rainbow of personas. Sometimes I feel pictures, fleeting colors of her vacillating moods, the bright bird of her intelligence.
Heather occasionally makes comments that I am not sure to believe: that her room is a closet in an old trailer, and she sleeps on a blanket, that she is marrying Taylor, on whose lap she sits for awhile in art class.
In any class she sits apart, yet comments loudly, often off-topic, or spurts an opinion that has no relationship on the class discussion. When she does this, I see the spark of the imp, knowing its ability to manipulate reality. What is Heather saying this time? Why is she saying THAT? Other students seem to tolerate this without judgment, though on closer observation I see that their behavior would really be called ignoring. Heather is not there.
During a Socratic Circle discussion on character, the boy leading the group becomes visibly peeved when Heather, sitting back from the circle near a wall, interjects several intelligible comments, then announces that her new baby niece was “born with character” because she was laughing when she came out of the womb. You are not allowed to say anything unless you come over to this circle! he retorts. Group faces gaze at her with kabuki expressions of nothing. Having had her say, Heather leans back in her desk and balances it on two legs against the wall. Mona Lisa smile. Later she crawls to a cramped area near the circled desks and drinks a bottle of blue Gatorade.
Heather’s math work is impeccable, done quickly if she feels like it. She calls out, I’m done! when she finishes her test, which is wrinkled and covered with doodles. She slams both palms on the desk. Bam! So what are we gonna do now? Can I go outside? She goes outside.
Heather, where are you?
Fleeting moods emerge, surprise. One day she pops up next to me and puts her arm around my shoulder. Later she passes me along the corridor between classes and I am nobody she knows. Hey! Heather yells across a courtyard when she sees me come up the front steps one morning. Later I am once again nobody during an entire class.
I think I understand her behavior because I share the need to surface when I feel like it, and swim deeply when I need to, although over many years, I’ve had time to perfect my art so that it is more subtle. Also, I do not have Heather’s courage. Is it courage or a brain blip or a combination of both? It takes courage to be different and not care. I really don’t think she does care, despite the show of bravado when she chooses to slide up to the surface and be seen. My concern is that the not caring will prevent her from blossoming, will someday whither her unique view of the world to cynicism, when the innocence passes.
Heather, I think you would understand Emily Dickinson’s observation:
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?