St-St-St-Stuttering Stacey

Chapter Two: The Monroes

           Comments and Feedback always appreciated! Here's Chapter Two.

           Josh slowly rose from his seat at the end of my hour long speech therapy session, and closed my patient file before placing it back in the filing cabinet in the corner of his small office.

            “Well Stacey,” Josh said as he turned around to face me again, “you’re making progress, I can tell you that, but it’s still not as much as I would like to be seeing after all this time.” I nodded, Josh was right. It’s been nine years since this terrible stutter of mine began, nine years since that day in the cafeteria, and I still couldn’t get my words past the lump.

            “I-I-I-I kn-kn-ow, J-Josh.” I forced out in reply. Usually, I would have replied with a simple nod of my head, or written my longer answers down, but Josh always encouraged me to talk. So for an hour twice a week for the past three years, while I had my sessions, I made myself speak whether I wanted to or not.

            Josh smiled, “Okay then, Stace. I’ll see you on Thursday. And remember to at least try to speak more when you’re at home, your parents are worried about you and just want to hear you voice.” He said in a gentle, yet apprehensive tone.

            Again I nodded, but I felt like screaming at him. I’ve heard variations of that same speech countless times before- by Josh, my parents, my teachers- but it’s not as if I wasn’t trying. I wasn’t like I wanted to have this stutter, that I wanted my parents to worry endlessly like they have been for years, ever since they finally figured out that I developed a stutter.

           Since I was always so quiet to begin with, it had taken a little over a week before anyone realized why I was speaking even less than before. In the end, it was yet another teacher-parent meeting that resulted in regular appointments with the elementary school’s speech pathologist. Earlier that week I had been called to the office to have a “chit-chat” with a woman named Dr. Beverly Mooney. She was an older, thin woman, probably in her early sixties, and had short blonde hair that was streaked with grey and styled in a tight bun at the base of her head. When she smiled at me, her peach lipstick-stained lips pulled back to reveal a white, denture smile. In her modest beige skirt suit and expensive gold jewelry, she reminded me of my aunt Judie who was a cut-throat lawyer with an abrasive personality and a cackling laugh; I instantly disliked Dr. Beverly Mooney. My “talk” with Dr. M. - as she had instructed me to call her- was an hour long evaluation of my rapidly deteriorating speaking skills, and by the end of it, it became glaringly apparent that I had developed a stutter.

            So two days, a phone call home, and a set of concerned parents later, I sat at my desk after school as my teacher, Mrs. Braden, and Dr. M. explained my speech impediment to my parents.

            “Mr. and Mrs. Monroe,” Mrs. Braden began in a gently, placating tone, “this is Dr. Beverly Mooney. She is the school’s speech pathologist, and after Stacey’s increased reluctance to speak recently, I recommended that she conduct a diagnostic evaluation of Stacey to assess her situation, which is the reason behind this meeting.”

            I silently watched from my desk as my parents glanced worriedly between each other and then toward me, before turning back to Dr. M. and Mrs. Braden.

            My father laid a comforting arm over my mother’s shoulders and pulled her closer to him as he asked the question that was on both my parents’ mind. “Well, Dr. Mooney, I assume you have a diagnosis for us?” he rubbed his hand along the top of my mother’s arm, “What is it that is keeping Stacey so silent?”