How to Read an Unwritten Language (2 page)

These past few weeks I'd brought my remaining objects to the park one-by-one, set them on this bench, and left them behind: the half-scissors, the single earring in the shape of a straight-back chair; a tiny plastic TV; and a nest of twigs and leaves with a clay bird nestled inside. Beside me sat my last object, a battered tape recorder and its fateful tape. Three times I'd brought it here and tried to release it, three times I brought it back home. If I knew how to find within me what would let it go, then today might be different
.

So I waited, and took in the shadows at my feet, cast by the leaves of a nearby pin oak tree: spiky hands that grasped at each other. Beside them, a cluster of birch leaf shadows took the shape of dark water cascading over invisible rocks
.

Steps on the gravel path announced a woman walking at a crisp pace, waves of dark hair at odds with that buttoned-down gray jacket and business skirt. But this was more than mere hurry: her steady gait seemed to keep her one step ahead of something unseen
.

As she drew closer she stopped, took an elastic band from her jacket pocket, and ran her hands through her hair, gathering it into a single braid. I gaped at this uncanny echo of the story behind a single shoelace that I once owned. But this was a secret performance, the only audience herself, and somehow that innocent grooming would mark an impending defeat
.

“Excuse me,” I called out, glad I wore no watch. “Do you have the time?”

“No I don't, sorry,” she said, her hands held in mid-air. Then she waited, her face a mixture of curiosity and caution that surely mirrored my own, and she stood there as if expecting me to recognize her
.

But I'd never seen her before, and she broke the brief silence. “I don't know the time, but … I still might be able to help. It's the middle of May, the twelfth? Well, based on those colors,”—she pointed to sinuous hints of purple and orange in the sky—“I'd say we're cruising toward sunset. That would make it about 7:15.”

She still stood there, inclined to linger, expecting something from me. But before I could ask her how she'd learned to convert the sky into hours and minutes, she returned to her hair with that elastic band. So I reached for the tape recorder beside me and pressed the play button, to see how she'd respond, if at all, to the man's desolate voice that rose in mid-sentence, speaking strangely moving phrases in an Asian language I knew almost nothing about. Drawn again to words whose cadences I'd once virtually memorized, I almost forgot I was sitting on a park bench
.

Suddenly awake—from a nightmare, perhaps, or even some budding premonition—I slipped from my bed and stood in the dark hallway before the half-open door of my parents' bedroom. They sat beside each other in the soft light of their night tables, pillows propped up, Mother reading a magazine while my father balanced the checkbook, deposit slips and canceled checks lined in neat rows on the blanket. With the whisper of a sigh, Mother plucked a single long strand of hair from her head and added it to a little dark pile that looked as if it might come alive and crawl away.

My body fairly tingled with the need for whatever comfort they might be able to offer, yet I found I couldn't speak or allow myself to draw their attention. They might as well have been miles apart, though their shoulders nearly touched. While Father brushed his hand over the familiar tight knots of his curly hair and my mother pursed from habit the slender lips of her narrow face, they seemed too little like themselves—more like amateur impersonators relying on lucky physical resemblance. I padded back to bed, unwilling to accept my uneasiness, but before long I understood that this had been my first hint of a secret shifting in my family, a shifting that would lead to so many dislocations.

I awoke that morning to a window lined with achingly delicate strands of frost, a cold view that begged for further snuggling under warm blankets. But I had to shepherd my younger sister and brother out of bed so Father wouldn't call up to us his well-worn list of why we were lazy.

We might have been born compliantly on schedule—I was eleven, Laurie nine, and Dan seven—but we descended the stairs to breakfast in our own particular way: Laurie's hands sleepily strummed along the rungs of the banister, releasing a resonant wooden music; Dan stopped behind her a moment to shake those rungs, pretending he was imprisoned; and I followed, nudging when necessary so we'd all arrive downstairs on time.

Father hadn't returned from his trip to the stationery store for the Sunday paper, and we found Mother sitting at the kitchen table without her usual mug of coffee, her hands oddly cupped together.

“What's for breakfast, Mommy?” Laurie asked.

When she didn't glance at us, didn't move, Laurie repeated her question.

Mother's hands flattened on the table and she sighed. “Oh, I'm not a cook, dear. Why don't you fix something for yourselves?”

My sister stubbornly pointed a finger at her stomach. “We're hungry, Mommy.”

“So am I, honey, but I just don't feel like a cook today.”

“What
do
you feel like?”

“I don't know … I feel like somebody else, maybe.” She attempted a weak smile, but her tired eyes so defeated her that Dan tried initiating a tease, chanting, “Mommy's somebody else, Mommy's somebody else.”

Mother managed a laugh. Emboldened by Dan's success, I asked a question that forever after I've wished I never asked: “Well, who
are
you?”

“Oh, I don't know … a friend of your mother's.”

“If you're her friend,” I said, “then how come we never met you before?”

Mother smiled sadly. “It's never too late for introductions—”

“So what's your name?” Laurie asked.

“You can call me Margaret.” Then, peering at us quizzically, she asked, “And what are your names?”

We introduced ourselves, pleased with this new game.

“We're hungry, Margaret,” Laurie announced again. “What's for breakfast?”

“I told you dear, I'm not a cook. And since your mother isn't here, you'll have to fix your own breakfast.”

Disappointed, we stared at the cupboards and drawers as if we believed they might open themselves and offer us the necessary ingredients.

“Oh, I suppose you'll need a little help,” Margaret said. She stood and opened one of the drawers. “Here, Dan,” she said to me, “take this spatula.”

“I'm Michael,” I corrected her, enjoying this pretended clumsiness at learning our names.

“Oh, that's too serious a name for a boy your age. Take the spatula, Mike.”

Michael did sound serious. That's why I liked it. But for the moment, I could see, I'd have to be Mike. I held the spatula and then flipped it jauntily in the air, as I thought a Mike might do.

“Now, what is it you'd like to eat?”

“Pancakes,” Laurie said, and I nodded. Pancakes were fine, though how could we possibly make them? Dan loitered by the kitchen doorway and stared out at the backyard, angry at Margaret for calling me Dan. He turned and faced her. “You
are
our mommy.”

“No dear, you're mistaken, though we do look alike. But I certainly wouldn't mind having a fine little boy like you. Wouldn't you like to help and get the eggs from the fridge?”

For a moment Dan hesitated, then his stubborn face softened. He walked across the kitchen to the refrigerator and Margaret turned to Laurie. “Well, honey, what kind of flour do you want to use?”

“White.”

“Oh, whole wheat is better for you.”

We didn't say anything. Mother had never used whole wheat flour before; we didn't even know there was any in the house. Perhaps this woman before us was Margaret, and not Mother.

“I like white,” Laurie said.

“If you add a little whole wheat flour, it'll taste better.”

Laurie didn't reply, looking to me for support. I shrugged and flipped the spatula.

“How many eggs, Margaret?” Dan called out.

“Two will be enough, dear.” She turned again to Laurie. “Well?”

“I'd like white … with some whole wheat.”

Under Margaret's directions, Dan cracked and beat the eggs, then mixed them with the milk. Laurie sifted the flour while I heated the pan and watched the butter bubble.

“Careful,” Margaret said, “don't let it go brown.”

I lowered the heat. Dan and Laurie, miraculously cooperative, took turns pouring the batter onto the hot greased pan, and I flipped over each irregularly shaped cake. And so, in our mother's absence, we had our first cooking lesson.

When the pancakes lay waiting on our plates, we passed around the maple syrup, one by one pouring it over our portions as if this were the most solemn act in the world. Taking small, cautious bites, we discovered that those pancakes actually tasted good. Margaret ate a bit too and praised our cooking. “If your mother were here she'd be so proud!”

We heard a car pull into the driveway. We sat still before our empty plates, listening to the car door slam and then the muffled rattling of keys. At the
whoosh
of the opening front door Margaret said, “Let's put those plates away, Daddy's home.”

We stared at her. Margaret was gone, and now Mother led us to the sink as Father entered the room, the heavy Sunday paper tight under his arm. He watched us lined up, handing the plates to Mother, our faces still sloppy with syrup, and he smiled, surely pleased by our industry, by this postcard of a happy family. Yet we said nothing about our private game, which from the very first seemed to exclude him.

Father pointed to me. “Hey guy, we have some shoveling to do.”

Wiping my face, I nodded and wished the futile wish that this was the last time in my life I'd ever have to dig paths through snow. Mother bent down to kiss me good-bye, and instead of trying to wriggle away I offered my cheek and held her. “Good-bye, Margaret,” I whispered. Then I quickly turned away, for I didn't want to see her reaction. Something about this game unnerved me: was she Mother, pretending to be Margaret, or was she Margaret, pretending to be my mother?

*

Keeping to the sidewalk's thin path through the latest deep snowfall, I walked home late from school, having lingered in the library for a social studies report on Brasília, a strange, monumental city surrounded by a rain forest that even in black-and-white photographs seemed to seethe with green life. Now, gazing up at the trees' bare branches, I longed for leaves, for spring's distant warmth.

A car horn rang out, and I turned to see Mother at the wheel, easing over to the curb behind me. She rolled down the window: Laurie and Dan sat scrunched together on the front seat beside her—a treat seldom offered—and, though she never wore such things, a blue scarf covered Mother's unruly hair. She was someone else again. “Hey, kid, want a lift?”

“No thanks,” I replied, coolly regarding my brother and sister. “My mother told me never to ride with strangers.”

She laughed. “You're a good kid. Toodle-loo!” Waving the tail of her scarf like a handkerchief, she drove off, and Dan and Laurie turned around in their seats and made foolish faces at me.

What's your name?
I almost called out, but the car had already slipped around the comer, disappearing behind a snowbank. Angry that I'd been left alone for being so safety-minded, I turned in the opposite direction and thromped through the deepest drifts I could find until icy chunks encrusted my pants. My shoes damp and socks thickened, I eventually found myself at the edge of a mall's slush-stained parking lot, thoroughly chilled and farther from home than I'd planned on.

When I finally returned and peeled off my stiff clothes, I could hear the faint sounds of Mother in the kitchen, now herself again and preparing dinner. I sneezed, and Laurie and Dan ran up to let me know what I'd missed: a woman named Dot had driven them to a stationery store in a distant neighborhood, buying them comic books and all the candy they wanted. I nodded, noting without comment that they hadn't saved me a single goodie. Worse, Mother hadn't saved a thing for me either, but then she'd been Dot, hadn't she, and I'd been merely a cautious stranger.

By evening a soupy congestion forced me to suck in raspy breaths, and Mother wrapped me under extra blankets in bed and hovered over me with a reassuringly familar fluster. The next morning she kept me home from school, offering me hot raspberry tea laced with honey, and I luxuriated in my fever and aching limbs as I listened to Laurie and Dan being hustled off to the bus stop.

When I woke from a sweaty nap she even served me my favorite meal—chicken broth and crackers, cheese wedges, and ginger ale—but after lunch she was almost businesslike when she held out a spoonful of thick and bitter medicine. She shook her head quizzically at whatever I said, until I realized she knew no English. I tried communicating in elaborate sign language, which delighted her, and just when I managed to wheedle out her new name, Rosario, the phone rang.

“Adios,” she said with a grin and what seemed to me to be the right accent, her drawn-out o so richly foreign.

She returned with the thermometer, speaking English and herself again, and the shocking thought occurred to me that my mother lived a secret life at home while we were away at school, improvising these characters to fit her changing moods.

*

As if the bare trees' green buds sprouting into bright waving leaves were a surrounding inspiration, Mother flourished too, displaying surprise after surprise for the three of us: Marcie the policewoman, who always wore a long-sleeved blouse to hide her scar from a bullet wound; Tina, a dancer famous for her flying leaps, who huffed through stretching exercises in the afternoon, trying to coax us from the canned laughter of the reruns we watched on TV; Valerie the photographer, who specialized in groupings of potatoes, onions, single-pint milk cartons, and reconstructed egg shells that she called Family Portraits. But Mother was never Gladys, the name Father called her.