breathing and still have nothing to say to them—or anybody else.
From the smallest of gods—the god of dust, who is also the largest, for dust is everywhere—to the oldest of gods, the wise and gnarled oak, who suffers much to bend his branches down for a small child—one has learned this silence, and this is why the words won’t, can’t come. It really is too bad, for one would like to please Mar and Far now that one is more than six and one has been given everything, as they say, but to break this contract with the gods, even if it were possible, would mean shutting the case of the world upon itself with all its bright colors inside—snap—and then only darkness within.
Not to speak is the charm that holds the world in place.
They say a god lives in the church down the hill—but one has never felt its presence when dragged within on Sundays; the place is too clean and the picture-book windows sealed too tight for any god’s survival. The man reads from a book with many gods, though he says they all have just one name. Or maybe three. Anyway, he’s a liar, one can tell from the way he shakes hands with no squeeze at all. Oh, someday soon you’ll be the loudest singer in our choir, won’t you? Even the lilacs in the vestibule shake off their dew with laughter.
Only a phase, concerned aunts and uncles have said, swooping down with sweets and treats, but one-two-three specialists have agreed: cause probably not congenital, larynx perfectly formed, nasal passages perhaps constricted by a slight excess of cartilage, while the maturation of the uvula… After which aunts and uncles nod and smile while their eyes drift away. Mar and Far know whatever the world has said is not sufficient, however, and take as evidence certain words they think they’ve heard murmured during unwary sleep, when even the gods have left and no one, not even parents, should be listening.
Perhaps, said someone behind a closed door or just a shadow upon frosted glass, perhaps, and yet, unlikely to be improved…
Words exist enough in books, of course, and generous aunts and uncles have given far too many—you really must stop—but of course those are unspoken words, charms which when recited cause magic, and are therefore, however beloved, very dangerous words, even when Mar has snuggled up close on the bed. Don’t be afraid, they’re all pretend—but one knows she says this only because she’s pulled down night along with the window shades. What, you want the windows open? The stories are about gods who perished long ago and myths and other fairy tales remembered only by books—that is, stories of the real world which one’s bedside globe insists lies beyond this bedroom, this garden, and this small town down the hill with its church clock and noisy children who have no names. Mar alone is allowed to speak the words in books, for if Far did, the ten-thousand voices in the ten-thousand leaves of the giant oak might awake from their slumber and shout in unison, in a quaking tumult: Silence! One type of magic doesn’t like the interference of another, and only Mar has a voice soothing enough to appease these temperamental gods. She still holds one on her lap to read to, though one is becoming much, much too big! and the books are also becoming heavier, with fewer pictures, more words. These make one happier still. Anyone might think Mar and Far would appreciate this—for aunts and uncles have been so attentive and so proud that we have such a little smarty—but they didn’t, for the thicker the books and the longer the words, the harder to watch their child mute before such wonders. You must be able to say it to understand it! Far’s moustache said once in anger, while Far’s cool gray eyes looked over Mar’s shoulder and down into a pool of words, and all the leaves on the silvery oak tree in the garden below the bedroom window shook.
Later, when night crouched just at the foot of the bed and the whole world became possible outside the yawning windows, their only child would stare into the dark, and the dark would whisper from within the walls about that other life one was threatened with daily now, where little boys and girls must go to the school far beyond the hill to learn to be grownup, that is, old the way they—Mar and Far and aunts and uncles—were, old and always having to talk in order to believe, always having to say what other people wanted them to say. The world outside the window, whispered the dark, was winter and killing snows that smothered Mar’s garden; the world outside the window was summer’s silencing heat that stilled even the shrillest insect. And beyond that world, the dark insisted, was nothing but utter whiteness: a pallor of snow, a parched summer.
Doctors may be kind and doctors may even be pretty, but they’d come and they’d go with no real answers—until at last the prettiest and kindest doctor of them all took faith in Mar and Far’s fading optimism and held out three playing cards in her elegant brown hands, one right after the other, encouraging a vocal response, any sound at all. But the card showed a bright red trike and the murmured answer was bubba bubba, and another showed a sulking dolly in a polka-dotted pinafore, and the mumbled answer was brrap brrup, and another showed a jolly elf inside a rainbow bubble, and the muffled answer, barely audible, was bup bubbub. At last she fanned the deck across the table, and though she continued to smile out of her beautiful brown face, something inside her gave up with a faint sigh, as surely as the others… and as always, it was a kind of victory, though it really would have been nice to please Mar and Far at last, for they had been so good, so patient.
The tonsils are gone? Adenoids, too? Certainly done a bit too young, but no harm in it, most likely. Pretty and Kind let go of one’s chin and stared into the stern face of the office clock. She did know someone else, she said after a full spin of the second hand, someone so far away—she demonstrated by spreading her arms, as if one were a baby or simpleton—someone, she explained, who comprehended ancient mysteries in clear, clean, modern ways—not her exact words, but everyone’s understanding of them. Even if there is no cure, she added, we’re more than just the words we can speak, aren’t we? Mar and Far cast each other exasperated but hopeful looks and agreed with the smiling, all-knowing doctor, though of course it would be very expensive, they all repeated aloud, trying not to look down, across the table and its lovely scattered tractors and trikes and cakes and dollies and elves, into their child’s far too solemn eyes.
Sometimes Far’s mustache would curl up as he caressed the smooth blue underbelly of the bedside globe. Here, he might say, tracing a line from one pink or yellow island to another, is where they used to color in all sorts of funny dragons. Like in your books? And here—patting an empty ocean—I think this is where the Garden of Eden was, until the dragons gobbled it up. Like this! And then he’d try to tickle one’s own belly, but nothing could force a laugh. It was absurd, to think they’d have to fly over such dangerous places. And then Far would switch off the light inside the globe.
The future is like an endless book with blank pages which they—Mar and Far and aunts and uncles and all the rest so much taller than oneself—write in constantly to make things come true. The writing is in indelible ink; it can no more be rubbed out than the past, and so the future must be obeyed just as even the giant oak, though mightiest of all gods, must obey winter’s command to throw down all its leaves. So it was no use stamping one’s feet, no use breaking apart one’s favorite toys bit by bit with teeth and nails when the summons came: a future as certain and as black as India ink. Besides, as usual after a while they will take away one’s remaining toys and place them on the highest shelf, as if the closet had any use for them.
One has so many aunts and uncles, and they seem to multiply at parties—nearly interchangeable except that aunts smell so fresh and sweet and uncles somehow sweeter still, like cherry tobacco in a pipe; and their neat beards have soft whiskers that don’t scratch when they kiss, while lipsticked aunts when they kiss seem always to be on the verge of disintegrating into mere powder and perfume. They of course must always make it public, quite loudly so even the children down the hill might hear, how well they understand, how very sympathetic they are. As if they were talking about a child who had died, not one they have encircled in the garden. But —and here they m
ight pause, palms to flowery breasts or fingers caressing beards—maybe something dear sister or dear brother had done was, well, wrong. Had there never been just one little trauma? Had dear sister nursed too long or perhaps not long enough? Had dear brother been too unsparing of the rod or had he used the strap too frequently? Not to imply anything, of course—and here there would be a chorus of certainly not, absolutely not! from both parents and their siblings. It was all too maddening, as if one were an idiot or hadn’t ears at all to hear.
None of that would matter this time, of course, of course—for the next day would bring the shiny silver plane so like a toy plane and then up—up, up!—they spoke as if to a very small child indeed—above the fluffy clouds the three of them would go, to a magic land across the big wide ocean, where miracles happen just like they do in nursery rhymes. This one already knew —poor misshapen Jack had chattered about it every time the handle was cranked just the right number of times; when provoked, Jack would tell the future, for he could never keep one of its secrets for long in