It is a popular misconception that autistics can count hundreds of matches
in the blink of an eye and draw fantastic pictures. In reality, few are
like this and less than one percent fall into the idiot savant category.
Most are mildly to severely retarded and autistic. Some are autistic and
emotionally disturbed. Some have Ausberger’s Syndrome (a mild form of
autism) but exhibit behavior disorders and severe learning disabilities.

According to her charts and sheets, Eureka is severely autistic.

That’s it.

That’s all they can conclude. I look at her and notice only that her hair
is always braided in thick cornrows that stop just below her ears, and she’s
always dressed in jeans, a man’s collared shirt and a sweater.

She hardly
speaks, but what is more disturbing is that she doesn’t recognize or
acknowledge me.
I’ve been with her twice a week for the past five weeks, and she still won’t
say my name. As human beings we like to be acknowledged: ninety-percent of
our actions are motivated by the prospect of a reward, raise or compliment.

I’m sure Eureka knows me. I can see it in her eyes when I enter the room.
“Hi Eureka,” I say.

Eureka pulls her collar up over her mouth.

“Eureka,” Ms. Gambino calls.
“Say hello. Say hello, Eureka.”

“Hello Eureka,” she says, in a dim, brittle voice.

“No, Eureka,” Ms. Gambino says. “Say, Hello, Eureka.”

“Hello Eureka,” she says.

This isn’t the first time I’ve worked with students with echolalia, a
condition of constant echoing or mimicking that many autistics exhibit.
Eureka’s voice is soft, almost hollow. It’s sad. It’s as if everything she
says must travel a great distance before it reaches me. I often feel like
she’s talking to me from the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Though echolalia is named for Echo, the annoying nymph in Greek mythology
who wouldn’t be quiet and was condemned by the Gods to repeat other people’s
words, the students I’ve met with echolalia don’t mimic inanely like
parrots; they use it as a tool or defense. Dexter, whose cranium is so
swollen that he looks like he’s wearing a turban beneath his baseball hat,
has his own form of echolalia. He answers every question with a question of
his own.

“Dexter, are these words?” I ask.

“Words?” he asks, raising his eyebrows.

“Dexter, are these pictures?”

“Pictures?”

“Dexter, are these poems?”

“Poems?”

Kevin, a student I’ve worked with for two years, mimics because it’s the
only way he knows how to have conversation. He listens to what I say and
then waits. Whether I’m talking about Schopenhauer or butterflies, he
repeats what I’ve said as if the words represented his thoughts. He
presents the information as if he’s agreeing with me. In the same way that
I laugh at jokes I don’t find funny and agree with statements I don’t like,
Kevin says things he doesn’t understand.

“Yeah, yeah, pessimism, Ms. Fay. It’s all about pessimism,” he says without
having any idea whether pessimism is something he can eat or feel.

Eureka repeats so that we’ll leave her alone. Or maybe she does it because
she genuinely wants to give us the answer we’re looking for. She wants it
so much that she’s learned to lift her head, bob up like a diver coming up
for air and repeat whatever we’ve said.
During a lesson on personification, one in which I try to get the students
to imagine that they are leaves in a tree, I tried to get Eureka to say the
word ‘tree.’ I’d introduced her to the word ‘leaf’ moments before and she
wouldn’t let it go.

“Tree,’”I said, holding up picture of a tree.

“Leaf,” she said.

“No, Eureka. Tree.”

“Leaf.”

“No, Eureka. Tree. Tre-eee.”

“Leaf,” she said.

“Tree!” I said.

“Leaf!” Eureka cried, matching my enthusiasm.

Tomorrow it might change, but today trees and leaves were one in the same. A
tree was a leaf-tree, a tree with leaves. Why separate? What’s the
distinction? After all, every picture I showed her had leaves on the trees
so in a sense she was right. I couldn’t get her to call a tree a tree, but
she was happy to call a leaf a leaf and write about it.
After our leaf-tree debate was over, I talked to the class about haiku. I
drew a man on the board with a goatee and glasses and told them his name was
‘Coo.’ I asked them to say hi to Coo.
“Hi Coo!” I screamed.

The students said nothing. Danny stared out the window. Eureka adjusted
her collar and untied and retied her shoes.
“Say hi to Coo everyone,” I said. “Hi Coo!” I waved to the blackboard.

“Hi to Coo,” Eureka said. And so it went.
I asked the students to write the color of leaves on the first line, where
the leaf lives on the second line and something they love to do that doesn’t
have anything to do with leaves on the third line. By the end of the
period, Eureka had completed a three-line haiku called, “Leaf Tree”:

brown leaf

in the tree

jumping rope

II.

The word eureka, or heureka, is Greek for “I’ve found it out!”
Archimedes, the Greek mathematician, inventor and physicist, exclaimed this
word when he discovered how to test the purity of Hiero’s crown.

Supposedly
Archimedes had no idea how to determine whether the crown was made of silver
or gold. The chances were good that the worker they’d hired to make the
crown stole the gold and used silver instead (proving life hasn’t changed
that much in 2200 years), but Archimedes had to prove it.

He was perplexed
until one day he got into a bath and noticed that the water rose when he
stepped in. Delighted, he ran home naked shouting, “Eureka! Eureka!”

The students at 721K behave as differently from one another other as a group
of individuals can. They all have their habits and quirks.

When I tell
Jeffrey that it’s time to work, he immediately pulls up my sleeves. Then he
pulls up his sleeves as if he’s a worker in a factory or a farmer about to
go out and work the land.

Venus always shows me her shoes. Iris takes
time-outs in the hallway holding her doll, Iris.

Eureka is always searching for something. She’s looking for the right
answer or a way to get someone to take her outside. She’s nervously tapping
the desk, waiting for an activity to start. Sometimes she gets so anxious
that she jumps up from her chair, claps twice in mid-air and sits down
again.

She is always looking for a way to get “water, water, water.”

One of my favorite warm-up exercises is called, “Things Inside My Head.” We
generate a list of things that are inside our heads (our imaginations,
thoughts, feelings), and a list of things around us (tangible objects). The
distinction may seem simple to you and I, but the difference between
tangible and intangible things is difficult for them to grasp.