If Renato is autistic, what is the world?

I met a five-year-old boy my two-year-old daughter adored. He was running around the park, and the other children chased him like a frantic game of cat and mouse. However, this time, it wasn't a game at all: they were chasing him, violently shouting and throwing stones at him in a desperate zigzag pattern. For the first few seconds, I thought they were doing it because he was black, which immediately alerted me. I immediately realized that wasn't exactly the case. There was a different motivation, albeit just as bad or worse.

It was a group of four or five children slightly older than the runaway boy, though physically smaller than him. I didn't notice who started what, since, until I noticed the "chase," I was playing in the grass with Madalena, my daughter, who was pouring water from a bucket into a puddle. The boy, with his feet crossed and lungs in his mouth, approached us, looked at Madalena, and, without further ado, sat down next to her, like someone who's found what he's looking for. I glared at the pursuing boys, and just as I was about to say something to them, they ran away, shouting, "Don't come back, you latecomer!"

I looked at the pursued boy, now near us, and noticed that, besides being completely covered in dirt, his arm was covered in scratches that were still bleeding. I asked him if he wanted help and if his parents were around, right after Madalena instinctively offered him the bucket of water: perhaps she also noticed the boy's poor condition, as, strangely, he wasn't even crying. In fact, he showed no emotion befitting such a situation. Faced with the boy's silence and apathy, which I attributed to the fright caused by the other idiotic children, I renewed my attempt at communication: "What's your name?" And, with the question still in the arc of a worried interrogation, a woman who, upon arriving, hadn't noticed me or Madalena, came running from one end of the park and pleaded: "Renato, you can't do that! People get scared of you and treat you badly! Please don't ever do that again!" Renato was the name of the boy who was hurt and chased by the other kids who had then returned to the slide as a group, happy and content with each other. I was becoming increasingly disturbed by all of this, and Madalena continued to try to get the boy to accept, once and for all, the water he had always refused.

"Renato doesn't speak. He's autistic on the very high spectrum! Sorry, we'll leave you alone. Sorry!" I was a bit flustered, speechless, the woman hurriedly tried to lift him up, but at that precise moment, the boy, almost miraculously, decided to accept Madalena's bucket. He looked at her face and was completely serene as the dirt from the earth drained from his skin in the finally accepted water. He seemed at peace, protected, and calm, washing himself away from a strange and violent world. For a few minutes, he played with pebbles on the ground, while the woman cleaned the wound on his arm and answered questions any human-humanized person must ask in such unexpected circumstances: Does he go to school? How does it get around there? What does it look like for his parents? Does anyone help? And other questions that the now-lady, and no longer just a woman, answered between grimaces of smiles that are actually eternal, disguised tears.

The woman concluded her explanations by saying that Renato would start school in September, without special education, alongside the "normal" children, precisely the ones who had been harassing him just minutes before. She was scared and thought everything could go wrong. They insulted him profusely, attacked him, and treated him as if he were a silent, fleshly object. Renato was everything to her, while everything around them, always just the two of them, was violent toward Renato. Tears welled in my eyes when the woman, perhaps because of my helpless shame in humanity, decided to stop crying and say, with conviction: "But you're strong, aren't you, Renato?" And Renato, who didn't answer nor seemed to understand the question, looked at Madalena, my two-year-old daughter, and stood up. He seemed to thank her with his eyes as he, without discerning reason, pulled the woman, this time, closer to a fountain in the park.

The boy knew my Madalena wasn't just any Madalena. And I knew I had to do something. I went over to the pursuing boys, Renato's future classmates, and said, "Hey, drunks, do you know who that boy's father is over there? Yes! That's right! He's the sackman! Be careful what you're doing out there: you'll end up back there and there'll be no more fun!! Got it!?" Then I said goodbye to the slide, a ruffian with a full soul, with a sense of mission accomplished. Immediately afterward, I held Madalena close to me, in a hug that truly comforts only the one who gives it, and I wished she would always be just a simple Madalena, like the hundreds, or thousands, or billions of others, and nothing more... Real humans suffer greatly in an increasingly less human world! For this reason, perhaps they are clearly on the verge of extinction. Or already extinct, even! I don't know. I know Renato gave me strength. It's all for him and for those who never had, nor will have, the privilege of having a voice! Everything! Justice, truth, everyday life, the future, everything!

That boy, with his small mouth but a giant heart, deserves to have this story known. After all, there are infinite Renatos deep within us. Persecuted and insulted, searching for their eternal Madalena, who has only one name: love!