"So, what's your favorite flavor ice cream?"

The anticipated eerie silence continued. Miranda sat Indian-style on the bunny brown floor, rolling clay into amorphous clumps and smiling at each one. Occasionally, she looked up at me with her oak-colored eyes, but never uttered anything---not even 'Hello.' In fact, even though she was already five years old, she had never said anything at all in her life. 

"Those pieces of clay are the color of chocolate," I pointed out and then plopped down beside Miranda, Indian-style as well. She nodded. "Chocolate," I repeated. She nodded again. "But they're not the color of vanilla ice cream." She shook her head. "Or strawberry ice cream, either." She shook her head again and finished another clump. Miranda must have understood what I was saying; she understood what all of her teachers and classmates said, she just never responded. 

Sometimes I wondered if Miranda even realized that she couldn't speak. She could obviously hear other people's voices and she saw other peoples' lips move. Did she ever ask herself why she never opened her mouth and emit a sound? 

The only sound I had ever heard her make was a whimper. She never laughed like the children her age so often do. Even now, as she patted her pieces of clay together, she did not laugh at their funny shapes. I tried the typical bathroom joke that always wins over little kids: "That clump of clay is the color of doggy poo!" And still she did not giggle. A hesitant smile slinked across her lips, but nothing more. 

"You know," I began, "Maybe if you talked to your clay, it would turn into a pretty color, like pink! Bright pink!"

Miranda stopped rolling her clay for a second, seemed to entertain the thought of owning pink clay, then decided it wouldn't make clay-rolling any more fun, and returned to sculpting additional clumps. She was content with her poo-colored ones. I snatched a clump up from the floor and starting tossing it in the air. Miranda froze.

Up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down...

"MINE!"

I gasped. The clump of clay bonked me on the head, flattened its side in the process, and then landed on the carpet.

"You j-j-just s-s-spoke!" I yelped. Miranda scooped up the clump of clay and blinked at me.

"Mine," she repeated, clearly as any possessive child does. "Mine."

"Miranda! You did it again!"

"Of course!" Miranda said as she collected all her clumps of clay and stood up. "It's the most important word."