I elbow him.
“What?” He is annoyed with me. I point to my mouth. To his mouth. To the words on the page. To my ear.
“You want me to read to you?”
Yes, idiot. Read to me.
He shrugs and begins to read. His voice is strong and sure, like the preacher’s. Not for nothing, I see, does Mr. Gillis praise his recitation. But when Darrel reads them, unlike Reverend Frye, the words are full of longing, not judgment.
“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.”
Darrel’s voice wavers on foot. I lower my sewing and watch him. He swallows and forges onward, angry and determined.
“He that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.”
He pauses and looks at me. His eyes are wet.
“You went into the hills to bring us help, didn’t you, Judith?”
I gaze at him. How does he know? How did he know Phantom was mine now?
He turns back to the book. “The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. . . .”
LXI.
Later, Darrel rests on his bed, while Mother measures out flour for tomorrow’s baking. I sit at the table, and by the light of a candle left burning there, I flip over several leaves, inhaling the musty paper smell, and trace my finger over a wide page of type. B, y. By. T, h, e, the. By the. R, i, v, e, r, s. Riv, ers. Rivers. By the rivers.
At this rate it will take me a week to finish one passage.
But something caught hold of me when Darrel read his words, about the sun and the moon and the hills. I saw pictures, I saw colors, I felt desire. I want to see and feel them again. Even if I can’t pronounce them in a voice like his, I can hear the words in my mind.
By the rivers, o, f. Of. By the rivers of.
The next word is long and daunting. B, a, b, y. Baby? By the rivers of baby? L, o, n. Lon. Baby and lon. Baby-lon. Then my mind supplies the answer, a word I’ve heard hundreds of times from the pulpit. Not baby, but babby. Babylon. City of captivity and sin.
By the rivers of Babylon. What happened there?
I will have to learn later, for Mother turns to wonder at what I’m doing. I glide away from the Bible and outdoors to the barn.
LXII.
Next morning, I rise early and have another go at the passage while Mother dresses herself. By the rivers of Babylon, I read, feeling rather proud. T, h, e, r, e. Th, I remember, makes its own sound, much like the one my half tongue makes whenever I’ve privately tried to make a T sound. Theer? There. W, e, we. There we. S, a, t, sat. It’s starting to feel easier. There we sat. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat, d, o, w, n. Do-uhn? Doon? Down.
Some words put up more of a fight. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down.
I look up to see Darrel watching me from bed, under heavy-lidded eyes.
Mother’s footstep stirs, and I reach for my dress and petticoats.
LXIII.
That afternoon I return to Maria’s. I pass by your house on my way into town, and I don’t even look, much, to see if you’re about. I have others to think of besides you. Maria receives me gladly. After more tea and bread with preserves, we sit stitching for some time.
Then she unleashes a thunderbolt.
“Why don’t you speak, Judith?”
My needle halts. I turn to look at her. Can she really be asking me this?
Her eyes search my face. “You can, can’t you? Somewhat? You said ‘book’ yesterday. Have you tried to say more?”
All I can feel is my heart pounding, and my mother’s warnings, and the dread of increasing the shame I already bear with my hideous sounds.
“Please don’t be angry with me,” she says. “I’ve been thinking about this a great deal. We need to find a way for you to talk.”
I abandon any thought of stitching. I purse my lips carefully around this sound. My voice cracks, like a sick person’s does.
“Why?”
Maria’s eyebrows rise in triumph. She reaches for my hand.
“Because I want to know you,” she says. “And others will want to as well.”
I feel perspiration rise beneath my shift. The sheer effort of such an explanation as I must now make is more, even, than when I tried to talk to the colonel.
“They . . . sshay . . .” I must think hard about each sound, how each muscle of my face and throat might now combine to form it. Years offer plenty of time to forget. “. . . I’hm . . . curshedth.”
Maria pours me a cup of tea, and I hide my mouth behind it gratefully.
“I know some say you’re cursed,” she says quietly. “Tell them otherwise.”
LXIV.
Walking home that afternoon, I practice quiet, little sounds that barely escape my mouth. Mmah, mmoo, mmee, mmay, mmoh. Bah, boh, bee, bah, buh. Puh, poh, pih, pah. My lips are thinking hard about each try. She’s half deaf, but even so I feel exposed when I come around a bend and encounter Goody Pruett hobbling along the path with an empty basket bumping against her hip.
“You’re out and about a good deal more lately, Miss Judith,” she observes, watching me sideways through her dark eyes. She taps her chin with a bent finger. “Now, what might you be up to?”
I pause and breathe while trying to think. I have as much right as anyone to walk this path. But she’s rattled me, for as ever she has seen right through me.
“You ever need something, you know how to find me,” she says. “You could do worse than to look to Goody Pruett for help.”
Lacking anything else to say to this, I curtsy. I don’t need help. She means well, and I like Goody well enough. At least she’s not afraid of me. But even if I could tell her something, I’d never trust secrets to that old gossip.
LX V.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. I have wept by a river for my homeland, too. A stream, more like. When I crossed it coming home after my years away.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
I have no harp, but I hung memories of Lottie and of a happy childhood in my willow by the river.
LXVI.
“With Darrel an invalid like he is now,” Mother says to me, “you know there’s more work than the both of us can manage. So I don’t know what call you have to be sneaking off to stare at a book when you can’t read anyway.”
LXVII.
“I’ve been doing some practicing,” Maria says at the next day’s visit. “Don’t laugh—I’ve been experimenting to see what sounds can be made without . . . a tongue. There’s—as I said, there’s no reason to dillydally about the truth, is there? Without a tongue. Do you lack all of your tongue, or only some? Open your mouth for me.” I’ve never encountered such a person, but by now I’ve grown used to her. I open my mouth and thrust forward what remains of my tongue. Too late I feel shy of my breath, my teeth.
She reaches forward and takes my jaw in her hands, tilting my head to angle it toward the light coming in from the window. She studies me like a doctor might, with eager curiosity and no sign of horror.
“There,” she said. “I believe you can regain at least some speech. And with practice, you can have a way to be understood. That would make all the difference, wouldn’t it? All the difference in the world?”
I don’t know how to feel. I am weary of having to choose my facial expressions the way others can choose their words. For those who wish to read my face, every movement on its surface becomes my shout. As with Abijah Pratt the other day, my only protection is stillness.
I push slowly and awkwardly through my answer. “I wonth everh shoun gootth.”
She searches my face, her eyes darting back and forth. Even she couldn’t understand me this time. Then she nods.
She has it.
“Who is to say that you won’t ever sound good?”
I tap my own breastbone angrily. I say so. And so would anyone else who values how elegant speech can and should sound.
“I think you should try. With practice, you can improve.” Her eyes lit up. “Leon and I visited with the Aldruses last night. They have the two little ones, of course, and I watched the youngest as she tried to speak. Her mother corrects her, and so she learns, and she will improve in time. Why not you?”
I hang my head. I am torn between desire to speak—to be heard, to one day speak to you—and despair. I will always sound like ruin, a destroyed voice, a broken mouth. Why not me? Because the little Aldrus baby has a round, pink tongue.
Maria clasps my hands. “You’re safe here, Judith,” she says. “Just try it. Please. Will you?”
Now I know why you could not—cannot, for all I know— resist her. She could coax honeybees out of their nests.
I open my eyes to hers, without my stillness veiling them. I nod.
She rubs her hands together. “Say something. Make any sound you can. Say ‘ah.’”
I feel self-conscious. I swallow to moisten my throat. “Ah.” I sound like someone with whooping cough.
“That’s right! Say it again. ‘Ah. Ah. Ah.’”
I oblige her.
“Slowly. ‘Aaaaahhh.’”
I say it slowly.
“There, now that’s better. You have a lovely sound. Don’t wag your eyes at me, I mean it. Now, try ‘oh.’”
She drags me through all kinds of sounds, soft sounds needing no tongue, harsh ones that can be made with lips, guttural ones that can be formed in the back of my throat. Mm. Wa. Ff. Ba. Ha. Pa. Err. Va. Gg. Ck. Ng. My lips are weary from the exertion. My throat is dry and tired.
Maria, however, is triumphant. She thrusts out her arms. “See what you can do?”
Her pleasure in me warms me. “Yesh,” I say. “Yesh, Maria.”
She jumps up and embraces me. Then Leon hobbles through the door on his crutches and wonders at us.
When I finally go home, I realize from the darkening skies that I’ve been there for almost two hours. Mother will be fit to be tied. My throat is tired. My tongue, such as it is, is sore from stretching. My steps are triumphant. I have a friend. When I spoke to her, I did not frighten her. I spoke her name, because she first spoke mine.
LXVIII.
Halfway home, almost to your house, I risk humming a tune. I don’t even need to open my mouth for that. The melody bounces in keeping with my step. It buzzes, tingling the roof of my mouth. I stop. Someone is following me. I’m certain of it. I venture on, then I stop again, and the footsteps stop, but when I resume there they are again. Loud enough to know they’re not trying to go unnoticed, yet when I look around, there is no one to be seen.
I shouldn’t have hummed. I increase my pace. Must be one of the older middling boys from the school. Darrel’s old classmates. Mather, maybe, or Hoss. Baiting the village mute is good sport, for she can never tell tales to your pa.
LXIX.
Evening chores, and I talk to Phantom and Person. First I practice the sounds. Gg. Ck. Ff. “Good cow,” I can say. “Phanhom.” They look at me strangely and shove at me with their noses.
I laugh out loud.
LXX.
Mother retires to bed, but Darrel stays up to read, and I sit up stitching his bag by the shared candlelight. When Mother is fully settled down for the night, Darrel wordlessly slides the Bible over to me. He even knows what page I am on.We exchange a silent look. Then he watches me read. He will not tell.
LXXI.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? I cry for the captives and their broken hearts hanging tangled in their harps in the willows by the riverside.
LXXII.
In the early morning, I rise before my chores need doing and walk out far into the woods, over crackling pathways of fallen leaves, to Father’s rock. The sky is purple, the sun only just peeking over the horizon. I look around; I am utterly alone.I stand on the rock, close my eyes, and sing. I sing a wordless song, ahs and ohs, to the melody of an old tune that Father taught me years ago.
At first the sound embarrasses me, and I peek around as if the trees might criticize. I squeak, I crackle. I run out of air before the sound has even begun. I swallow and breathe deeply and try again. Softly, softly. A little better now.
Let your body rest, Father used to say, when we would sing here. Put your whole body to sleep. Let only the music be awake.
The tune is a little sweeter this time. My breath lasts a little longer. But the cold air chills my throat.
Start slowly, softly. It’s almost as if I can hear Father teaching me. He was a fine singer at Sunday meetings. Everyone knew it. We looked to him to carry the tune.
I try yet again. My pleasure in the sound begins to tingle on my skin.
I close my eyes. I try to imagine my body asleep, with only the musical air rushing out and in. Again and again I sing, until the sound is limber, light, and pure. What is this thing inside me that can make such sound, after so long? How could I have let it be stilled?
I sing with my arms open wide, my eyes watching as the tree limbs stir in the morning breeze. My voice is nothing like my little-girl voice.
I sing a new melody, one that climbs higher. I remember the words, even though I don’t try them yet, for I want nothing to mar this moment.
O Love, in the Spring, thou art wondrous fair, O Love, let down thy golden hair!
O Love, in the Spring, will you marry me? O Love, will you always my true love be?
At last, I must stop. My throat grows tired again. I must do this more, when I can get away. I jump down from the rock that has become my stage and turn back to the path that will lead me home.
I find you standing on the path, watching me.
I clap my hand over my mouth and close my eyes. When I open them you are still there, caught in the sunrise, looking at me like I’m someone else.
I hurry past you and run for home.
LXXIII.
Morning chores are torture. I’m clumsy and slow; I keep forgetting what I should be doing. I fumble an egg and drop it on my boot, I bring in overnight logs instead of kindling. Mother grumbles, but I barely hear her. At breakfast I spread butter on both sides of my bread, and Mother squawks again. Darrel laughs out loud. It’s the first we’ve heard that sound in a long time.
My head is full of audacity: Maria’s teaching me to speak. My head is full of song, of notes that chime in my teeth. O Love, will you always my true love be?
My head is full of seeing you see me.
LX XIV.
There is a knock at the door. Mother wipes her hands on her apron and settles her cap between her fingertips. She squares her shoulders and pulls the door back. Light washes over her face and form, as if she’s greeting a heavenly messenger.
Your voice speaks.
“Good morning, Mrs. Finch,” you say.
Mother bobs her head in the smallest of curtsies. “Mr.
Whiting.”
I inch toward the wall, to be more in the door’s shadow
and to catch sight of you through the gap.
“How is Darrel?”
Mother presses her lips together and says nothing. Grace
for grace, Mother, for heaven’s sake. After all you’ve done for
us! I cringe at her rudeness.
And then you say, “I wonder if I might have a private
word with your daughter?”
LX X V.
There is only the sound of sun shining through the door. If I had a proper tongue it would be dry as salt.
LXXVI.
Without moving, Mother’s back becomes a stake. “A word with my daughter?” The slant on word is slight, yet its sarcasm stings. At our mothers’ knees we learn the music that turns words into kisses or curses.
Mother throws the door back toward the wall. I jump aside to avoid being struck.
“Come in,” she says indifferently. “She’s right here.” Nodding toward me, she returns to the table and her bucket of bloodstained bandages. She stirs them with a paddle and lifts them to drip.
Heart of mine, don’t fail me now.
You step inside.
You must stoop to pass through the doorway. Once inside, you straighten to your full height and fill the entire room. Your hat dangles in your hand, lined with the sweat of your face.
I make myself stand straight like Mother. I make myself step forward. But I can’t make myself reach out my hand to touch yours. Not with her here.
“I had hoped for a private conversation.” You speak to my mother but your eyes are on me.
“Secrets are as safe with me as they are with her.” Mother stirs Darrel’s cloths like soup. “Whatever you want to say, you can say right here.”
I could throttle my mother. I fear I may burst. Here you stand, come to call on me. Does it show that I’m shaking?
You look troubled, anxious, torn. How can you be unsure of yourself? If I were you I’d spend every moment reveling in my own skin. But apparently neither the trim of your thigh nor the brawn of your chest can help whatever troubles you.