Chapter 4 part 3

Mrs. Harris looked at the other officers and then back at Steven. 'How old is your sister?'� she asked.
'She's 10,'� he said.
'And she can't speak or hear?'� Mrs. Harris asked.
'No, that's not what I said; I said that she does not talk to people because she does not want to, and that she does not listen to people because she does not want to. She only talks and listens to God, because she is going to have his son.'�
Mrs. Harris looked at the other officers and said, 'I don't know what is going on here, but let's go get this girl. However, do not do anything to scare her. Let me handle her. If she's 10 and cannot speak or hear, then we will be going to the hospital instead of the foster care home.'�
They went down the hall to the door of Mary's room. They fully expected to open the door and find a poor little girl who had been mistreated in some horrible way, a girl that was so traumatized that she could no longer hear or speak. Mrs. Harris slowly opened the door so she would not scare the child if she were awake. The light was on, and Mary was standing in the middle of the room facing them. She was fully dressed in a light blue dress. She had her hair combed and pulled back into a ponytail. She was holding three books with her left arm and had a small suitcase sitting on the floor by her right hand. It was obvious that she knew they were coming and she was waiting for them.
'Mary,'� said Steven, 'are you okay?'�
She did not speak a word, but slowly studied each face of the four strangers who had entered her room. She stared deep into each of their eyes. It was as if she were deciding their very fate. It sent a chill down Officer Taylor's spine. He did not know why, but he knew this girl was different; as her brother had said, she was special.
Mrs. Harris took a step forward and knelt down to be at eye level with Mary. She could feel Mary's eyes penetrating her very soul, at least that would be what she would tell the reporters several years later when asked of her impression of Mary the first time they met.
'Do you know your name, child?'� asked Mrs. Harris.
Mary did not answer but looked closely at her face and the faces of the strangers in her room. She then saw Steven and a tiny smile spread across her face.
Mrs. Harris tried again, 'Can you tell me your name?'� Still Mary did not answer.
'Mary,'� Mrs. Harris said, 'is your name Mary?'�
But Mary did not speak. Then Mrs. Harris reached out her hand and said 'Mary, you are going to have to come with me now.'�
Mary looked at Mrs. Harris's outstretched hand. She looked up at her and reached out to take her hand. Mary spoke for the first time in over a year. She spoke in a voice that was wise beyond her age. A voice that you wanted to listen to. A voice that made you want to know what she was saying. 'God told me that tonight people would come for me, some would want to love me, some would want to hurt me, some would be afraid of me. Which are you?'�
Mrs. Harris did not answer her. She turned to Officer Taylor and said, 'Call the hospital; tell them that we have a little girl whom we need examined before we can place her in foster care.'�
She turned back to Mary and said that she would never do anything to hurt her, that she was only there to help her in any way that she could. But Mary did not hear her; she had already slipped back quietly into that private world that only Mary and God understood.
'Mary, Mary,'� Mrs. Harris spoke softly, realizing that something had changed in the girl's manner, 'Mary, can you hear me?'� she said.
Steven spoke, 'She can't hear you now; she has gone back to be with God.'�
Mrs. Harris turned once again to Officer Taylor and said, 'Call the hospital back; tell them we are bringing in a young girl who is in some sort of trance and we need the best that they've got to be waiting for us.'�
They put Mary in one police car to go to the hospital and Steven in another to go to a foster home that had agreed to temporarily take him in until a permanent home could be found in a few months. Mrs. Harris noticed that Mary had turned her head to look through the window of the police car at Steven.
'Let Steven go with Mary,'� said Mrs. Harris; 'it might calm her down, having familiar people around her.'� But it was not Mary that needed calming down, for some strange reason; it was Mrs. Harris and the police officers.
At the hospital, Doctor Ken Moore met Mary. The doctor was one of the best head trauma men in the business. He was just finishing up his rounds when one of the interns told him of a little girl in some sort of trance was being brought to the hospital by the police. The doctor was tired, but he thought this might be an interesting case study. He was writing a book on head injuries and did not have anything about an injury that would put the patient into a trance. So it was that the doctor was not staying because he was a Good Samaritan, but because he thought it might help him sell more of his books.
When he first saw Mary, she was staring straight ahead and did not acknowledge anyone. Mrs. Harris told the doctor that, according to what she knew; Mary would go in and out of the trance, that she had not spoken for at least a year until tonight. And even then she only said one sentence.
'There is one other thing, doctor,'� said Mrs. Harris, 'apparently, she and her whole family think she can talk to God.'�
The doctor was looking at Mary, but he shifted his vision to Mrs. Harris. 'What did you say?'� he asked her.
'She talks to God,'� she replied.
'How long has she been talking to God?'� asked the doctor.
Mrs. Harris looked at Steven, and he said, 'Since she was six.'�
'How old is she now?'� he asked.
'Ten,'� Steven replied.
So, the doctor thought aloud, 'She has been going in and out of trances for the last four years. Is that right?'� he said, looking at Steven.
'Yes, sir,'� the boy said.
'What does she do when she is out of the trance? Does she play dolls or hopscotch or jump rope?'� asked the doctor.
'No, she reads stuff,'� said Steven.
'What kind of stuff?'� questioned the doctor.
'The bibles and holy books of all the religions of the world,'� stated Steven casually.
The doctor looked over his glasses and said, 'You mean that she looks at all of those books?'�
'No, sir! She reads them and she understands what she is reading. She told me once when she was like eight and still talked a little,'� said Steven, 'she said, people always interpret the Bible to mean what they want it to mean, at that very moment. However, she told me that the Bible means, what it means, nothing more nothing less.'�
'Amazing,'� said Doctor Moore. 'If she can comprehend any of those books, she is far advanced for her age. But I doubt she really understands anything about what she is saying or reading.'�
'She does too!'� shouted Steven. He was defending his sister in the only way he knew how.
'Mrs. Harris,'� said Doctor Moore, 'where are her parents? I need to have a long conversation with them before I can begin to treat Mary for these hallucinations of hers.'� Mrs. Harris looked at the doctor somewhat confused, saying, 'Nobody told you, doctor; they died tonight in a train wreck. Mary and Steven are orphans. They have no living relatives, so they will become wards of the state. So, doctor, if you are thinking of a big fee, you can forget it. There will be no money for treatment. She will probably end up in an insane asylum.'�
'That's too bad,'� spoke the doctor; 'I probably could have helped her. But with no insurance ' well, the state asylum is a very well-run hospital. I will sedate her for tonight and will look in on her in the morning. I will give you my report about her condition after I see her tomorrow.'�
Doctor Moore spent very little time with Mary; she would not react to any of his tests. She would not speak. She acted as if she could not hear when being asked questions. Because she was still in a state of mind very much like a trance, Dr. Moore jotted down on her medical chart: Mary Carter, a ten-year-old white girl, is for reasons unknown, existing in a trance-like state of reflection. She responds to no stimuli: light, audio, or physical touch such as pinpricks, heat, or cold. That was it; just twenty minutes was all it took.
Mary, a minor with no known living relatives, was assigned to the Mobile, Alabama State Institution for the mentally insane, which went by the lovely name of Sweetwater Creek Center. Her bother Steven was shipped off to a foster care home and was adopted six months later by a nice middle-class family in California. He wrote Mary a letter once a week for the next four years. She never wrote back.

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