The medical form was missing one signature and has to be resubmitted. I wait.
One last approval form from a school official has to be turned in. I wait.
I realize I’ve been waiting for this thing all my life.
Finally, finally, finally, on the Wednesday before Christmas, the Medi-Talker arrives. I need no other gift.
When I get home from school, Mrs. V tells me that she hurried to my house when she saw the UPS truck pulling up in our driveway. She signed for the package and brought it to her house for safekeeping. The huge brown box sits there taped and secure. And it is addressed to me!
I wiggle and squeal and insist we open it right away. I can feel one of my tornadoes coming on. Spastic City, here I come!
“Calm down, Mello Yello,” Mrs. V says, placing a hand on my shoulder, but I can’t relax.
Open! Open! Open! I tap.
“Well, your mom knew you’d be impatient,” Mrs. V says, “so when I called her to say it arrived, she told me it was okay for us to open it.”
I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack watching Mrs. V carefully open the edges of the box. She lets me pull at the brown paper inside. Then, under about a mile of bubble wrap, there it is. The Medi-Talker. Smaller than I expected, it’s only the size of my wheelchair tray, but it’s sleek and shiny and cool to the touch. It is like a butterfly ready to unfold its wings.
Boy, oh, boy. I can’t wait to try it.
Mrs. V plugs it into a wall outlet to charge the battery, then pulls out the huge booklet of directions. “Whew!” she says. “This will take a year to read and understand.” She flops down in a soft easy chair with Penny on her lap and begins to read.
And I begin to wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, when I just know I’m going to explode, I wheel over to the table where the Medi-Talker sits.
I’ve seen the kids at school play video games they’ve never seen before, and I’ve seen them program their phones and computers without touching a book of instructions. So I take my right thumb and push the on button. The board whirs and glows, and then a welcome message appears on the screen.
I push another button, and a voice that sounds like an Englishman with a really bad head cold blurts out, “Welcome to Medi-Talker!”
Mrs. V jumps up from the couch. I shriek with joy. “It looks like you’re way ahead of me, Melody. Not that I’m surprised.” She sets Penny down. “Now let’s see what this machine can do!”
I feel like Christopher Columbus bumping into America. It had been there all the time, but he was the first one from his world to find it. I wonder if his heart had beat as fast as mine is.
We quickly discover that the Medi-Talker has more than a dozen levels, all easily reached with just one button. So on level one we program in the names of everyone I know—my name, all the members of my family, kids and teachers at school, my doctors, the neighbors, my parents’ friends, and, of course, Mrs. V. On the second level she insists we add all the vocabulary words we’ve been collecting on our multicolored three-by-five-inch flash cards.
Type, save. Type, save. Mrs. V’s fingers fly as she keeps adding words for me. Lots of our vocabulary words are already in the machine’s memory, but she gives me more. More. More.
Nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives—thousands of them—as well as a cool sentence-maker that is located on another level. We can prepare hundreds of phrases and sentences and get to them with just a touch.
Have you heard their latest song?
That’s what’s up!
How did you do on the spelling test?
Ordinary words. Normal conversation. I’ve never had that. Awesome.
Another level is for numbers and even computation—I’ll be able to do math now. Maybe I won’t tell the teachers about that one.
And there’s a level full of corny jokes and silly sayings, with room left for us to add more. Another level plays music! I can connect the device to a computer and download any song I want. I can’t wait to search iTunes. Maybe I can ask Rose which songs are hot.
Rose! I can actually talk to Rose now!
We stop programming after a while. Penny needs to be changed and kept occupied. But I’m much too excited to rest.
So after Mrs. V gets Penny set up with her dollhouse at the foot of the couch, we add even more words and phrases. Finally, she stops typing and says, “Would you like to try it out?”
The room is absolutely quiet. I stroke the edge of the machine softly, then push two buttons.
“Thanks, Mrs. V,” the computer’s voice says.
She blinks real fast. I do too. She reaches for a tissue. We both need it.
Mrs. V tucks the tissue into her pocket, then begins reading again from the instruction manual. “Hey, listen to this!” she says. “With that connector cord, you can also save longer things you want to write—like stories or poems—on the computer!”
“Wow,” the machine says.
Mrs. V nods in agreement. “This is going to be fun. But you’re gonna need lots of practice to make it say what you want, kid.”
She’s right.
Many levels have been left blank for users to input their own information—words, sentences, phone numbers, even pictures. Information can be typed directly into the machine, or it can be downloaded from a computer. It’s a little overwhelming.
“We can design this to fit you, Melody,” Mrs. V tells me. “This will be your world, so let’s take our time and make it exactly what you need.”
I am so happy—I almost feel like hugging the machine, but that would look silly. Instead, I name it. That’s probably pretty dumb, but sometimes it’s good to have something that nobody else knows but you. I’m not going to type the name into the machine, because it’s personal, but in my mind I’m going to call the Medi-Talker “Elvira,” after that song I like. Yep, my heart’s on fire for Elvira!
While Mrs. V plays with Penny for a while, I continue to explore what Elvira can do. One of the first changes I want to make is the hello message and the voice that speaks it. The computer-produced greeting sounds really fake. But the machine offers several female voices to choose from, as well as a bunch of different languages.
I pick the voice called “Trish.” She actually sounds like a girl, not a grown-up. I wouldn’t mind sounding like her if I could talk.
“Bienvenue,” Trish says in French. I know that means “welcome.” I push the button for German and she says, “Willkommen.” I even find something that sounds like “Foon ying” when I touch the button for Chinese.
I stop for a minute and stare at the board. It has never occurred to me that there are kids like me in Germany and China and France who need a machine to help them talk.
Mrs. V returns to me and helps me change the original welcome message from the very mechanical-sounding “Welcome to Medi-Talker” to Trish’s voice saying, “Hi! I’m Melody. Talk to me!” I can’t wait to take it to school and introduce my new computer to everybody there. I wonder what Rose will say.
By now both Mom and Dad have called to check on how we’re doing, how much progress we’ve made. They’re both anxious to get here and see the device for themselves, so while we wait, Mrs. V suggests that we just keep programming it, adding more and more. She thinks I should practice using it for a couple of weeks before taking it to school. I don’t really want to wait, but I have to agree with her that this is going to take some time. I want to be able to use the system to talk like ordinary kids. Sort of.
So we return to words—I want to input thousands of them: Notebook. Marker. Homework. Assignment. Test. Positive. Negative. Fingernail. Nail polish. Outfit. Backpack. Purse. Scared. Excited. Purple.
Then we type in more phrases—hundreds of them: to the mall, from a distance, in the middle of, as a result, the reason why.
Lastly, we get to some sentences—dozens of them: What time is it? What’s up with that? You crack me up. I’m so excited.—before the doorbell rings.
When Dad and Mom come in to pick us up, Dad is rea
dy with his camcorder. His hands are shaking a little. “Show us how it works, honey,” he says.
I can’t believe Dad is making a video of me saying my first words. It’s almost like when he filmed Penny’s first words—well, not really.
I type very carefully and push the button to make the machine speak.
“Hi, Dad. Hi, Mom. I am so happy.”
Mom gets all teary-eyed, and her nose gets red. She is looking at me all soft and gooey.
When I think about it, I realize I have never, ever said any words directly to my parents. So I push a couple of buttons, and the machine speaks the words I’ve never been able to say.
“I love you.”
Mom completely loses it. She bubbles up with tears and grabs Dad. I think he might be sniffing back a couple of tears himself.
But he has recorded it all.
CHAPTER 16
I wait until after the holiday break to take the machine into school. I have practiced with Mrs. V every single day of Christmas vacation. Learning how to push the right buttons, how to switch smoothly from one level to another, how to make contractions. I had to figure out how to say isn’t instead of is not, or there’s instead of there is. It was hard. I kept messing up, but Mrs. V wouldn’t let me quit. I didn’t want to.
So on that first Monday back, Elvira is the star of the day, making me the center of attention. And not because of something embarrassing I did, like throwing up or spilling my food, but for something really cool instead. Unbelievable!
Even the teachers seem impressed. “Watch out, world!” Mrs. Shannon announces when she sees me in the hallway. “Melody is ready to rock, y’all!”
I grin, push a button, and a song from the latest teen musical begins to play.
“Girl, you really got it goin’ on! Music and everything!” Mrs. Shannon starts sashaying down the hall in rhythm to my music. I crack up.
In room H-5, Maria is glued to me all morning. “Cool beans, Melly-Belly,” she keeps repeating. “Cool beans. Can I play?” She wants to touch the glowing lights and shiny buttons, but Mrs. Shannon steps in and distracts her with a new computer game she’s loaded on the classroom machine.
When Catherine comes in, just before the bell for language arts class, I’m ready for her. She’s wearing a green plaid shirt, a blue skirt, and orange knee socks. I planned the first thing I wanted to say to her, so Mrs. V and I had programmed it in ahead of time. I push a button and smile. “Let’s go shopping.”
Catherine gasps, then laughs so hard, she almost can’t catch her breath. Then she runs over to me and hugs me. “I’m so happy for you, Melody! You really needed this! And, yes, we’re gonna have to find a day so you can teach me some fashion sense!”
“We need hurry,” I type in. I am in a great mood.
“You’re a coldhearted woman!” Catherine declares, still laughing. “But for now, let’s get you to your inclusion classes and show off this cool new machine!”
I shiver with excitement. When I roll into Miss Gordon’s room, as usual, nobody looks up, except for Rose, who flashes me a smile.
But then I turn the volume up real loud and I push a button: “Hi, everybody. I have a new computer.”
Heads turn and voices whisper.
“They make computers for the special eddies?”
“It talks? Mine doesn’t do that.”
“You don’t need yours to talk!”
“It sounds weird.”
“So do you.”
“What could she possibly have to say, anyway?”
But Connor jumps up, his shaggy blond hair flopping into his eyes, and says loudly, “That’s awesome, Melody!”
And because he’s one of the popular kids, and probably the biggest and tallest kid in the fifth grade, I think because he gives his okay, the rest of the students decide to leave it alone.
Well, most of them. Claire, who was the first in the class to get her own laptop and who makes sure everybody knows it when she gets a new iPhone or a Wii game, sniffs and says, “That sure is a funny-looking computer! But I guess it’s perfect for a kid like you.” She and Molly exchange looks. I swear they think I am blind.
Miss Gordon, who looks like she wants to squeeze Claire like an empty toothpaste tube, tells her, “Claire, I don’t allow rudeness in my classroom. Now sit down and hush!”
But even Claire can’t dim my good mood. I push another button for a sentence Mrs. V and I prepared ahead of time. Somehow I knew I would need it! The machine says, “I talk to everybody now—Claire, too!”
I see her scowl, but everyone else laughs. They all want to touch the machine or push a button or try to operate it, but Catherine keeps them away and lets me do all the demonstrating.
I go to the green level—the jokes. “Knock, knock!”
“Who’s there?” several people reply together.
“Isabel,” the Medi-Talker says.
“Isabel who?” the kids surrounding me reply.
“Isabel out of order? I had to knock!”
Everybody laughs at the silly joke with me. Even though my arms and legs flail out and I drool a little as I laugh, it is the first time in my entire life that I feel like I’m part of the group.
I wish I could click a save button so I could play this moment over and over and over again.
I type in, “Today is Monday. It is cold,” then push a blue button on the machine. It whirs a little, then, like a tongue sticking out, a thin sheet of paper erupts from the side of it. Printed on it are the words I just typed.
“Whoa!” says Rodney, the champion video game player in the class. “It’s got a printer! That’s too slick!”
Miss Gordon nods with encouragement as Catherine passes the printout around so everyone can read my words. Then Catherine tells the class, “Melody’s Medi-Talker is a combination computer, music player, and speech device. It’s got HD, high-tech guts, and it’s designed to rock her world and connect you to it. Take the time to listen to what she has to say.”
Claire raises her hand.
“Yes, Claire,” Miss Gordon says, a look of warning in her eyes.
“I’m not trying to be mean—honest—but it just never occurred to me that Melody had thoughts in her head.”
A couple of other kids nod slightly.
Miss Gordon doesn’t raise her voice. Instead, she responds thoughtfully: “You’ve always been able to say whatever came to your mind, Claire. All of you. But Melody has been forced to be silent. She probably has mountains of stuff to say.”
“Yes. Yes. Yes,” I make the machine say.
I give Miss Gordon a smile of thanks, then I show Rodney and Connor a video game that came with my Medi-Talker. I doubt if I’ll ever be fast enough to play Space Soldiers, but it’s nice to know it’s there. Rodney could probably master it in a hot minute.
Miss Gordon checks out the various levels and looks impressed. “What a huge vocabulary you have now, Melody!” she says to me. “I know you feel like a ton of bricks have been lifted from you.”
I nod. “Way cold,” the machine says loudly. Oops! I meant to say Way cool. I feel my face getting warm as I hear Claire and Molly snicker.
But Rose pulls her desk close to my chair. “This is so awesome, Melody,” she says softly, and I let her touch the shimmery keys.
“Oh, yes,” I reply. Then I look at her. “Friends?” I type.
“Friends!” she answers without hesitation.
“Happy,” I type, then I tense. I hope I won’t do anything stupid like knock something over with excitement.
Rose is looking intently at me. “I can’t imagine what it must be like to have all my words stuck inside,” she finally says.
“It sucks!” I type in.
Rose chuckles. “I feel you!”
CHAPTER 17
As I’ve been getting used to using Elvira over the last month, life at school has been almost pleasant. Almost. I can ask Connor about a TV show that came on the night before or tell Jessica that I like her new shoes. br />
It’s been snowing—just flurries—almost every day. Late one January afternoon I typed, “I hope we have a snow day—no school.” Everybody agreed. For once, I got to speak for the class.
I can answer questions in class lots better with Elvira to help me. For the first time, instead of “pretend” grades that teachers would give me because they weren’t quite sure if I knew the answer or not, I get real grades recorded in the teachers’ grade books that are based on actual answers I’ve given. Printed out and everything!
But at recess I still sit alone. It’s been too cold to go outside, so we sit in the far corner of the overheated cafeteria until it’s time to go back to class. None of the girls gossip with me about some silly thing a boy has said. Nobody promises to call me after school. Nobody asks me to come to a birthday party or a sleepover. Not even Rose.
Sure, she’ll stop and chat for a minute or two, but as soon as Janice or Paula calls her to come and look at a picture on a cell phone, Rose will say, “I’ll be right back!” then skip away as if she’s glad she has a reason to cut out on me.
I just smile, hope I wasn’t drooling, and pretend I didn’t notice. After a few minutes of faking it, I push the button for the sentence “Go back to H-5,” and Catherine and I roll back down the hall.
One afternoon near the end of January, Mr. Dimming announced, in a voice that sounded like he’d been chewing on dry toast, “Instead of regular class today, I think we’ll have a practice round for the Whiz Kids quiz team.”
Everybody cheered because, otherwise, we would have had a lesson on the Sahara Desert. Talk about toasty and dry!
Every year our school sends a team to the Whiz Kids competition. The local rounds, with teams from elementary schools all around the city and county, are held downtown at a hotel. Last year our school got to second place in the whole district. The principal was so proud, she bought pizza for the entire school, even though the team was only for grades four, and five and six.
The first-place teams from across the state go to Washington, D.C., for the nationals. It’s televised and is a really big deal.
Rose scooted her desk closer to mine. “I was on the Whiz Kids team last year,” she told me.