Mrs. Anna English

Mrs. Anna English – Avital Malenky

Ms. Ellie Wall, MSc, HCPC registered:
She was the best, yet, strangest student, I had in a while. My course: "Sensory difficulties Children diagnosed with
ASD face daily, for Parents and Carers" was open to the public so I have seen my fair share of complicated people, but Mrs. English was a level above.
She wasn't dishevelled or unclean, and her behaviour was very polite. Mrs. English just seemed like a little old lady, a bit stiff
maybe, a bit distanced when you first met her, but still, just a cute little old granny. It was the way she spoke that alerted me of the first different
thing about her and that caught me off-guard and rolled me down a mental hill.
From her accent to her strange wording and cutting insights, Mrs. English was brilliant, almost scary in her genius.
She waited after every class to speak to me, having written everything I said down in her Notebooks. During the lessen she
also had time to arrange a list of questions and follow up remarks, requests further bibliography and making several remarks with insightful historical connotations that would oddly complement my knowledge and make my mind swirl. The first time
we spoke she left me in tears with a single remark.
"I ache, you see, for all the mothers who were far too late to join your miraculous course, Ms. Wall. Mothers who had
to watch their children wither and die in dark asylums just because they were born somewhat different. Far from being a Wall to me, My Dear, you are a window and a door to a world I yearn for."
And she was gone, into the night, leaving me with a head full of questions. Leaving me shook up and in tears, smoking a
lonely cigarette on a Tuesday night outside an old local school.
 

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Mr. Jacob Pane, Physician, St. Dymphna Abbey, House for
the insane:
Having followed the accounts of Young Master English since his arrival at the Abbey, I want to bring the things in writing
for scientific and historic sake. Beyond anything I will account for here, I am still a scientist and a physician. However, The Powers at work that may be in this case, I cannot explain with reason, and so bring for you to judge.
Young English was brought to our care ten years ago with little to no chance of discharge. However, this past month he
has been discharged onto his family's charge with my blessing. The only discharged patient from the Abbey I have ever seen in all my years as the
residing physician.
At the age of ten young English was already a big lad, and was brought in for violent and dangerous behaviour to himself
and his family. He has beaten the family servant girl bloody and was about to hit his own mother with a wooden cane. After this horrific incident, and being just barely restrained by his Father, Young was sent to The Abbey to be admitted.
The first few months only the Father came to visit the boy. He had paid the Abbey a large sum of money each month for the
boy's needs and came to make sure young English was well looked after. I asked if Mrs. English would come as the boy seemed to miss her, he would often cry "Mamma", his only word, repeating it over and over until he would
finally fall down exhausted and slept.
Mr. English commented he'd rather she not visit as she easily saddens herself. Since it was his decision to make I did not
press the matter.
There were a few months when no one came to supervise the boy at all and later that year it was only Mrs. English who came,
alone.
Mrs. English had informed me coldly that her husband had died and left all their fortune to their son and that she had been made
his legal guardian. Supporting documents to verify her claims were presented to me and all seemed to be in order.
Mrs. English, at her request, started seeing her son every day for several hours alone and mostly unsupervised. 
I have secured a doubling of the payments made towards The Abbey for young English and so happily approved her the visits
as a reward. The Bishop heard of my achievement and I was promoted, given a better room and a ten pound Raise to my Annum.
 

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Ms. Ellie Wall, MSc, HCPC registered:
It may have been another Tuesday, smoking and talking to Mrs. English after class, but this was the last night of the
course and by then I was looking forward to my after class talks to Anna more than the actual classes.
I knew it was going to be a goodbye, I just had no idea what kind of a goodbye it was going to be. I had already broke the law and many of my own rules for her.
At her request I brought the full list of books and papers I used in order to write the course, including the same list
from a dozen other courses I taught at other venues through the years. I made copies of everything I had and arranged it as easily as I could for her in a large black binder. Carefully packed was also a bag with as many Ritalin, Concerta or Adderall pills as I could procure legally or buy in the black
Market in the week that passed since she asked me for it.
I did all of this for her because the week before she finally told me who she was and why she joined my class. She told me
why she asked so many questions and what she intended to do with all that knowledge and illegal pills. Smoking our little sinful cigarette, the wise
silver-headed stranger I came to admire said to me:
"Imagine a woman, born some two hundred years ago. She is bright, brighter than anyone she knows, but she still can't
help her son who was born, sadly, a simpleton. Imagine this woman, after sadly losing her
unloving husband, finally discovering one night the secret of time travel.
Imagine further her happiness, her absolute joy, when she finds her son might not be a simpleton at all, that in this
fantastic future she found she could learn how to diagnose and treat her only son, who she had left behind her in an asylum, cuffed to a wall for his own safety, for ever scared and alone. And if you can imagine all that, Ms. Wall, can you imagine why I must go back?"
I never saw her again, but I hope to science she was able to help her son.
For whoever may be who reads my words in the future, I hope love concurred all.
Signed,
Ellie
 

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Mr. Jacob Pane, Physician, St. Dymphna Abbey, House for
the insane:
Mrs. English upon her return seemed to have aged a decade overnight. Having lost her husband and her only son a Patient in
the House, probably indefinitely, I pitied her to no end and saw her untimely aging as a sign of her woes. 
The visits she was so careful to keep each day were harming no one and so I allowed them to carry on. It was two years
before any change was visible in the boy but I was there that day when it happened. That first day when he asked, with a single word, having never spoken it before, for water.
"Water" he said. I confess I didn’t believe my ears at first. However, the boy said it again and again for
about 20 minutes and would not rest until I brought him a drink of water. The next day it happened again. Young English has never asked for anything in the past and would convey his hunger or thirst with moans and growls, beating objects continuously on the floors for attention.
From that day the changes in Young happened fairly quickly for such a simpleton. The staff's frustration with Young diminished
every day as he learned more words. The years passed and the child I once knew learned how to behave like a human being, leaving his animal qualities behind.
As Young was becoming less violent in the process, A discharge was becoming a viable option.
As his mother kept on visiting his hysterical Episodes subsided and the man he was started to come out of the simpleton.
I had never seen anything like it before or since and to this day I believe with all my heart that I have seen a Mother's Love
save a man from insanity.
Signed,
Mr. Jacob Pane, Physician."