Speaking in Tongues
1. The baby speaks English. Also, the baby speaks French and Spanish
and Italian. It’s all goo-goo, gaga stuff, only it sounds different
in each language. For example: le goo-goo-gaga, or la goo-goo-gaga.
(He doesn't actually add le or la to the beginnings
of sentences. That is I, adding it for instruction toward the sound
of the delivery.) His tongue is swollen with so many dialects. Has
trouble with German. Too guttural. Sounds like a demon, something
that crawled from the bowels of the earth when the baby attempts to
speak German.
My wife and I insist that he stops, but you know babies. They have
minds of their own. He waves his chubby arms about, spittle forming
around his rigid mouth, eyes agog, as if they were popping from their
sockets from the very force of the words he was trying to extract.
Should paint a little mustache on him, says I. My wife’s eyes
narrow, says that wasn’t funny. She is one-twelfth German on
her mother's side. My condolences, I say and shrug.
Regardless, the baby continues at it. We give up. Decide to be supportive
even if the nightmares thereafter are fully formed and in Technicolor.
The baby listens to German language tapes, watches German expressionist
films (most have no sound, I inform the baby, but he waves me away,
wide brown eyes never straying from the TV screen), eats bratwurst
and sauerkraut. Wants to indulge in the culture. Wants to wrap his
tongue around it, swaddle it in his mouth. By two, he’s got
it. Still sounds like a demon, though, just a more articulate kind.
My wife and I shine like parents do when their children partake in
promise. He quotes Friedrich Nietzsche and Franz Kafka, just like
all Americans when they finally grasp German. By six he’s teaching
German in school, to other kids.
Teachers furrow brows and cross arms. They fold their arms and level
blistering looks at the Child-that-was-a-baby. Teachers teach, kids
don’t, the principal says to us, in his office, which is packed
tightly with relics from years of presiding over budding minds. He
looks as stiff as a starched collar. My wife and I sit in orange molded
plastic chairs made for smaller bodies. Our knees come up to our chests.
We nod and assure the principal that we will leave the teaching to
those in charge.
Later, in junior high, he is president of the German club. Likes to
conduct in his bedroom to Wagner, waving his once chubby arms around,
arms that are now lean and sinewy, sprinkled with pimples and mean
little curls of hair.
The air in his bedroom is always thick with the smell of burgeoning
manhood.
2. Years pass, fill up with expunged possibilities. Child-that-was-a-baby
comes back, now a man.
Man-that-was-a-baby made good with his German tongue, became an ambassador
to Germany, lives in Berlin, shuttles back and forth between America
and Germany, switching from German to English and English to German
with an ease that is alarming. Fills our gaping hands with strudel
and chocolates. Says, Meine Familie, with a mouth that is much too
wide. Shakes my hand firmly. My father’s handshake. Kisses my
wife on the forehead. Was this our baby? my wife and I wonder. Were
we sure there wasn’t a switch made at some point, at the hospital?
You always read about that sort of situation. Our real son, somewhere,
out there, achieving at the average level that our family history
had dictated for so long. Nope. Actual son. Has my wife’s jutting
nose. My condescending chin. Someone else’s height, though.
He wears finely tailored suits. His body is acutely tuned; exercises
a religion that bulked him up with the gospel of psychical possibilities.
He’s been Berlinified.
Man-that-was-a-baby returns a few years later with a wife who is French,
not German, a fact which strikes my wife and I as odd. She has milky
eyes, a face packed with bright promise. A few years later, Man-that-was-a-baby
brandishes chubby babies of his own, two of them, twin girls, both
sporting emmetropic goodwill for anyone within their vicinity. They
know German as well. My wife calls them her little Fräuleins
even though Germans don’t even use that term anymore, even though
they consider it to be passé and condescending. She is one-twelfth
German on her mother’s side, my wife reminds me.
The years collect. My wife and I watch the twins emerge from the shadow
of their father.
3. Old folks home swallows my wife and I. I am becoming senile. Confuse
words like senile with penile. Example: I’m becoming penile.
My wife laughs when I confuse words, then she forgets what she was
laughing at. We are a pair, the two of us.
Pill bottles stack up on every flat surface in our little apartment,
a balustrade of brightly colored pills erected in a vein attempt to
dissuade the inevitable. Man-that-was-a-baby visits often. Divorced
nubile wife years ago.
Two girls grown. They no longer speak German like they did when they
were babies. They speak the mother tongue of their mother. Dropped
the German because they hate me, Man-that-was-a-baby tells us during
one of his visits. All they do is speak French when they are with
their mother, and they know English!
Should have learned French when I was small, Man-that-was-a-baby remarks.
Then I would know if my ex-wife is calling me an asshole. I ask Man-that-was-a-baby
to teach me German the next time he visits. Too late, he says. Won’t
stick.
I shrug, oh well. In the next year I loose track of my mother tongue,
so it’s all moot. Was it English, French, Italian or Spanish?
My wife can’t seem to recall either. Old folks home digests
my wife and I. I am becoming senile.
Confuse words like senile with sterile. Example: I’m becoming
sterile. We are a pair, the both of us. We mill about our apartment
in the old folks home, saying stuff like gaga, goo-goo. We attempt
to pry meaning from the words we are able to illicit. My wife cleaves
my mouth open wide with bitter-tasting fingers. She peers inside my
yawing split. What is it she is looking for? I wonder if she’ll
crawl inside at some point, slide down to my belly, find warmth and
safety there. Is that what she truly wants? Safety? Words that mean
nothing in any language spill upon the floor and we sweep them under
the rug.
We shuffle through the rest of our days, aware of nothing but our
capacity to keep moving.
Scott Brothers' short stories and humor pieces have been published in Pindeldyboz, Word Riot, The Big Jewel, and the Mississippireview.com. For more info visit: http://scottbrothers.wordpress.com.