Out of My Mind

For five years, Melody has attended Spaulding Street Elementary School, where she is surrounded by kids who “ignore kids like me” (28). She is in a special program with other children with disabilities; she expresses her discontent with a program that doesn’t advance them or even move them into a new classroom every year. Melody thinks the teachers are mostly friendly, but clueless about kids like her.

In the overly bright, childish classroom—“I’m almost eleven years old, and if I have to look at puppies in paradise one more day, I think I’ll puke!” (30), Melody declares dramatically—the children are taught group activities from teachers and therapists. Melody talks about a few of her classmates who are also confined to wheelchairs, such as pretty Ashley who can’t use her limbs, and Carl, who is overweight but can hold a pencil and write his name. Maria is a friendly girl with Down syndrome, Gloria has autism, and Willy makes odd noises all the time. There is also Jill, a girl who cannot walk normally due to injuries she suffered in a car accident, and Freddy, who uses an electric wheelchair to zoom around the room.

Melody has a tray that serves as her communication board. It has the alphabet at the top, a row of numbers, and common nouns, verbs, adjectives, and important phrases. She is upset that these items are so juvenile and elementary; she feels, “It’s no wonder everybody thinks I’m retarded” (37), a word she despises. Melody compares being at school to being caged with no way out and no way to tell anyone.

This chapter focuses on Melody’s neighbor, Mrs. Violet Valencia, otherwise known as “Mrs. V” Mrs. V is a large, tall woman who wears brightly patterned clothing and whom Melody compares to a tree. The neighbor begins helping the Brookses when they need someone to watch Melody until they get home from work. Mrs. Brooks and Mrs. V worked together at the hospital, where Mrs. V worked specifically in the kids’ cancer ward and the kids’ burn unit.

Unlike the other adults in Melody’s life, Mrs. V makes no excuses for her and pushes her to improve, starting with learning how to roll over on her own and reach for items. Melody appreciates Mrs. V’s eccentricities, such as feeding dessert before dinner and letting Melody drink soda. With Mrs. V’s help, Melody learns to crawl across a room as well as how to safely fall out of her wheelchair. At school, Melody still can’t communicate with words, but Mrs. V decides to help with this challenge as well.

One afternoon at Mrs. V’s house, she shows Melody a television documentary on Stephen Hawking, a famous scientist with ALS who cannot speak without technological assistance. When Mrs. V compares Hawking to Melody, the young girl agrees, but only to a point. She repeatedly hits the “talk” word on her communication board when Mrs. V asks her which she would rather, to talk or walk. To help Melody express herself more succinctly, and in a more age-appropriate way, Mrs. V creates a new communication board.

The new board “got filled with names and pictures of people in my life, questions I might need to ask, and a big variety of nouns and verbs and adjectives” (44) to allow Melody a wider range of communication. As her thumbs are controllable, which she notes with some irony, she uses them to point to what she wants to say. Eventually, Melody uses the floor to push the words on the cards together to form sentences, which she compares to “stringing the beads of a necklace together to make something really cool” (47). Melody uses these opportunities to showcase her sense of humor and make Mrs. V laugh.

Mrs. V also treats Melody to the joys of experiencing life, delights that are often kept from Melody out of misplaced concern for her well-being. Mrs. V takes Melody outside, teaches her about clouds, and carries her out into a rainstorm so she can feel the warm rain on her face.