Issue 22 - 1992

Coe Review • Issue 22
And you make your finger say Point point point, and the marcie
takes your finger from her mouth and says the No! You want to touch
the marcie mouth, the hard round words. You want to take the words
in your hand and put them in your pocket with the masticated plastic
soldier, the stray pink barbie slipper, the broken crayon. But the
marcie says the No! No stella! You’re a bad girl and nobody likes
you. Now go to bed now! Now go to bed now!
At night the grandma sleeps in the blue room, strapped to the
crooked bed with the car straps, her eyes wide open sometimes.
They are very hard clear eyes, eyes eyes, and the moonlight through
the curtains talks in her room, but the grandma says nothing. And
you say nothing back, wearing your soft pink pajamas. The marcie
asleep in your bedroom, mother and dad asleep in theirs. You touch
the grandma and she opens her big black mouth. Her thin hand
touches you, grabbing. And you listen to the words in the grandma’s
head, like the words underground in dad’s shelter. Spiders and
glistening webs across the grandma’s window, tiny bugs blurring
and buzzing. The grandma sees the bugs too, the moon and the night
and you. And the grandma’s veiny hand grabs your pajama top tight
and you can’t get away. And then you whisper And then you whisper
And when the grandma’s eyes close again, you return to your bed
and dream of dad’s shelter underground, where words echo and
resound, hop and crawl. If only you could reach them.
Some days you don’t go to school and mother takes you to
the doctor and his gleaming silver tools on a clean white cloth. And
you say the grandma words and the doctor puts a mirror in your
mouth. And mother says She tried to point yesterday. She pointed at
the yard and tried to say something. An ess word I’m certain. When
einstein was five he couldn’t even tie his shoes, and little stella can
tie her shoes. Mother shows you your shoelace and pulls, and so you
fix it. And the doctor says Cognitive development, aphasia,
phonetic, lexical and syntactic, langue and parole. And then mother
takes you home to the yard where dad sleeps on the unsprung porch
sofa, and then she goes away again.
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