“I didn’t understand that there was anything different about Megan until it was time for me to go to school. That’s when my parents figured out I was different, too, just not in the exact same way.”
I swallowed and twisted my fingers around each other.
“I guess I thought I would go to school with Megan. She went three days a week, and when she went, Dad would work from home or something while mom took her there. I kind of remember people talking about me starting school, and I just assumed I would attend the same school as Megan. I had it all worked out in my head. I was a little shocked on the first day when mom put us both in the car and then preceded to drop me off somewhere else.”
I let out a humorless laugh.
“Okay, shocked isn’t quite the right word,” I admitted. “I went ballistic. I never really had a breakdown before then because at home, there was already a very strict routine for Megan, and I just fit into it. It was the first time something unexpected happened to me. I screamed and I kicked, and I trie
d to bite the teacher, generally freaking Mom out. Mom’s freaking out made Megan freak out and…well, it was a mess.”
“I can imagine,” Mayra replied softly.
“Mom had to call Dad, who had to leave work to come and get me. I didn’t go to the first day of school, and Dad took me home, and we talked about it a lot. He told me what was going to be there and everything. The next day, he drove me to school and walked me to the kindergarten room. I managed to last about all of ten minutes after he left, which is when I ended up in the corner screaming. That was my first real panic attack.”
“Holy shit,” Mayra said with a sharp breath.
“Yeah, it wasn’t pretty, I guess.” I took a deep breath. “I saw a bunch of doctors then, and Mom was really upset. She kept saying I wasn’t like Megan at all—that she knew I was different from my sister. The problem was, she didn’t have any normal kids to compare us to. I would talk for the most part, just not the same way other kids my age did.”
I stopped talking for a minute and tried to figure out what I was supposed to say next.
“She thought you were okay,” Mayra said. “It must have been really hard on her to hear that you weren’t.”
“It was,” I said with a nod. “Megan didn’t talk at all until she was four, and then she only talked about clocks and time. They knew there was something wrong with her early on. Mom always thought I was all right.”
“Because you’re on a different part of the…what is it? The autism spectrum?”
“Yeah.” I remembered I was really supposed to be talking about Megan and tried to focus a bit more. “Megan gets upset when people touch her. I mean, really upset. I can tense up when I’m not expecting it, and it makes me kind of uncomfortable, but Megan screams and cries if you try to hug her or something like that. She doesn’t like new people either. It takes her a long time before she’ll let someone unfamiliar be in the room with her.”
“What does she do?”
“She usually just curls up on a chair and won’t acknowledge anyone,” I told Mayra. “Sometimes she gets more noticeably upset. She’ll start doing the same thing over and over again, like rocking back and forth.”
I felt myself tense up a little bit, and I glanced at Mayra sitting next to me. She was just looking at me with her head tilted a little to the side.
“Animals tilt their heads to expose their necks,” I said. “It’s a sign of deference.”
“What?” Mayra asked, obviously confused.
“Sorry.” I shook my head at myself. “Sometimes I just say random shit.”
We were quiet again for a minute, but Mayra didn’t break the silence. She just waited for me to go on.
“When Mom got sick, and we had to move Megan to the institution in Cincinnati, she pulled out most of her hair.”
“She what?” Mayra asked.
“She pulled her hair out, one strand at a time,” I confirmed. “She wouldn’t stop, no matter what they did. Eventually they had to keep her sedated when she went to bed.”
“Oh my God,” Mayra murmured.
I swallowed and waited for a minute before I heard myself say something I wasn’t planning on talking about at all.
“I’ve done stuff like that, too.”
“You pulled your hair out?” Mayra gasped.
“No…I, um…” I stopped, wondering if I really wanted to go there and decided I probably didn’t. My voice dropped. “Other stuff…I don’t want to say.”