The Grandmaster's Granddaughter

I used to dislike it when my grandparents visited our house because their presence disrupted my routine, and because they made the house loud with the world of words they created, but all that changed during one of their visits when I was eight. During that visit, while I was in the living room playing with my toy dinosaurs, Grandpa set up his chess set-he apparently had been something called a ‘grandmaster’. I put down my toy dinosaurs and went over to look at the board that he had set up. Grandpa smiled, said something to my parents, and then showed me how to play chess. We began to play, and a whole new world came to life between the two of us.

Grandpa and I played chess many more times during that visit, and then after my grandparents left I played chess with myself. I could create whole worlds on the board like Grandpa taught me. Sometimes Dad played chess with me, too, but he could not understand me like Grandpa could. I came to look forward to my grandparents’ visits so that I could play chess with Grandpa. When we played, I understood Grandpa and he understood me.

A few years after that visit, my parents and I went to New York City. I did not like New York City at first, because it was too loud. Then Dad brought me to a park there. In the park, I saw tables with chess boards and people playing chess. There were a lot of people playing chess there, more people than I had ever seen playing chess before. I smiled, began to flap my hands and jumped up and down. Dad brought me over to a table with one man sitting at a board and said to the man, “This is my daughter, April. She is autistic and non-verbal, but she likes to play chess and she can play with you if you’re ok with that.”

The man said, “Sure” and I sat down at the table to play chess with him. As we began to play, I chose my moves carefully. He said, “She’s good. Does she play in tournaments?”

Dad said, “She does not play in tournaments, but she plays chess with herself all the time at home.”

We continued the game. He played chess differently than Grandpa, but I still understood him, and he understood me. Like with Grandpa, we created a world between us, away from the world of words.

Over the next few years, my grandparents continued to visit sometimes. Grandpa would bring me his old chess books, and after my grandparents left, I looked through the chess books. The books were full of words, but they did not need to have them. They had pictures and chess notation, which Grandpa taught me during one of his visits, and with that they could put a chess game inside a book. I played the games from the books on my chess board, and the worlds from inside the books came to life.

As the years passed, Grandpa grew old. He slowed down as if he were approaching death, and the people in the world of words became concerned about him, because he could not speak in the same way that he could before. When we played chess, however, he came to life. I understood him, and he understood me, and I understood that the people in the world of words did not need to worry about him. If they could have played chess with him, they would have understood him and stopped worrying about him.

When I was eighteen, I moved to a new house, a special kind of house called an institution. It was a quiet house, mostly separate from the world of words, but also from the world of chess. Katy, the lady who took care of me, did not know how to play chess. There were other people at the institution, too, but I did not see them much and I never saw any of them play chess. I still had my chess board and the chess books that Grandpa gave me, so I played chess by myself and played the games from the books over and over again. Once a week, my parents visited, and I played chess with Dad even though he did not understand me and I always won our games. Grandpa visited a few times during my first few years at the institution, and we would play chess then, but then he stopped visiting the institution so I could not play chess with him any more.

One day my parents came and took me to visit a different institution, one where Grandpa had moved to. My parents took Grandpa in his wheelchair to a table where they set up a chess board so Grandpa and I could play chess. I played chess with him, but it was different from the other times that we played. He could not play chess like he used to. He did not understand me like he used to. I won the game quickly, and he did not want to play again. That day, I understood that it was all over and the Grandpa I knew was in the past. I understood that in that moment, he really was approaching death.

A few weeks later, Katy brought a computer into my room and set up a live stream of Grandpa’s funeral. No one had brought me to the funeral because they thought that I could not care about any people. They were wrong; I had cared about Grandpa, but they could never understand the relationship I had with him. I watched the funeral even though it was just words. They should have played chess at the funeral, but those people could not have understood him like I did.

I miss Grandpa a lot, but in a way, he is still alive. Every time I play chess-whether it is with myself or in the places Dad sometimes takes me to play chess-part of him comes alive on the board because he taught me how to play chess and I play chess like he did. Because of Grandpa, I can speak. Chess speaks in a way that people stuck in the world of words will never understand.