Daniel Isn't Talking by Marti Leimbach Page B

shapes into his lap. He’s so delighted. Discs he can eat. He takes them in his hands without looking at me, stacks them neatly and licks the surface of each in turn as though instilling his own mark.
    â€˜What about me?’ whines Emily.
    Emily! Of course! I grab a biscuit from where it rests on Daniel’s thigh, which is covered in crumbs now, and she makes a face like she might cry.
    â€˜He licked it!’ she moans. So I grab another, and then the first one drops, breaking into pieces at my feet. Emily stares in horror, then looks up to Daniel to see if he’s noticed, to see if he’ll start to scream again. But he doesn’t scream – thank God – and Emily accepts the next biscuit I give her, though I think it may have been licked, too. Out of the corner of my eye I see other customerswatching us. They may have been watching the whole time or maybe just this last bit, where I indulge what they imagine to be a spoilt child with all the biscuits he can hold. I stare back at them. I think, Damn you, you have no idea . Gradually, they turn away as I try to sweep up the broken biscuit with a tissue, stuffing it now into my coat pocket. Oh, this is pathetic. I just want to go home, but I cannot, because of course I have to pay for all this shopping, which means somehow I have to get through the queue. I can only hope I have enough biscuits to do so.
    And that is when a woman in a bright green coat walks up to me with a smile. She has a halo of greying hair, soft eyes behind thick plastic frames. She wears stylish earrings and lipstick but no other make-up. I am used to people making comments about my kids – or rather about Daniel – and I prepare myself for what she might say. I just wish I was in a better frame of mind to hear it. That I had some witty or insulting remark I could make back. But my throat is full of pepper and my eyes feel like they are boiling. I just want to run. If she’d get out of the way now I might do just that. But instead she stops before me and looks at Daniel, then me.
    â€˜He’s lovely,’ she says.
    There’s a beat of silence between us. Her eyes lock with mine. I shake my head back and forth, feeling a pressure in my skull as though a dam is breaking.
    â€˜He’s not lovely!’ I splutter. I am crying now, crying in front of this stranger, in front of the whole shop. People are looking, then turning away. ‘He’s not lovely at all!’
    â€˜Mummy!’ says Emily, holding me around the thigh, her face tilted toward mine, puzzled. ‘You’re not crying,’she says, and it is a statement not a question, as though she is calling it into being.
    â€˜He reminds me of my boy,’ says the woman. She has a whispery voice, expressive eyes. She seems so desperate to tell me something. I have to listen, though really I’d rather she just left, too, like the other shoppers who have the good sense to abandon this aisle. She says, ‘You know, at McDonald’s he used to go around all the tables and take one bite – just one – out of every burger he could get his hands on. People just … well. I thought they’d kill us!’ She laughs now, steps closer to me. ‘And once he was having such a tantrum in the car that the police pulled us over because they thought he must be being abducted.’
    I rub my eyes on my collar, look up at the ceiling, at the signs that tell you the contents of aisles, at the long strips of overbright lights. My head is throbbing like a wound. I look at Daniel, who is getting increasingly upset because he cannot hold all the biscuits he insists on holding. Some are crumbling; some are falling to the floor.
    The lady says, ‘He wouldn’t go into a public lavatory. The hand dryers just threw him.’
    I nod, look down. I know what she is telling me.
    â€˜I had to take my husband with me whenever we went into a public place, especially one with