hear it from Kelle.” If I could play an instrument, I would breathe into it for him, the mouthpiece on my lips, embouchure. The mouth of a river.
I wanted to tell him that someone else always did everything better than me. My mother especially. I wasn’t allowed to use thekitchen or cook; I never washed a dish; the washer and dryer were off limits; I never cleaned anything. I lacked most practical living skills. White index cards with instructions littered the house, like “Do Not Touch” scotch-taped to the air conditioner. School was mine, books. Silence. I look at the doctor, his face that I can’t remember—the warm color, he wasn’t old. Sitting on his round silver seat, having rolled it to face me, skating to me. I feel thrilled again. That isn’t what he meant. My voice so far back, so unexercised.
I don’t know if I tell him anything, some stumbling awkward collection of words, or if I defer to my mother. But he’d asked me, my voice is the one he wants, irreplaceable. Inarticulate. It didn’t matter, the definition of who is best, who is most competent—whatever that is, it isn’t me. Right then, skill doesn’t determine who gets to talk. “I want to hear it from Kelle.” A spiraling inside my chest, low, below my heart, and upward, a dust storm, some energy headed toward my throat, my mouth.
He’s a military doctor, efficient, detached, fairly cold. I feel like something on a slide, a slab, when he looks at my body. But he knows it’s wrong to have another speak for me, at fourteen. At least he knows I have information about myself.
I don’t want to talk about them, all their talking around me, my circling down into a book in my lap. Going into that world, with the whirl of my family around me. The yellow pencil on the round kitchen table. And I don’t feel I have the power to pick it up. Sitting in the chair staring at it, unable to reach out. As if someone else has to hand it to me. The pencil could be across a river. I could be a cloud. An indicator for silence. Here are the cloud forests: a dinner at a long table with the family I saw during the summers. Lining each side. Someone speaks to me directly, asks a question from the other side of the table. The surprise of it opening my mouth. But no words come out. It’s different being askedto speak if I’m unaccompanied—even if I stumble, I can’t abdicate completely. But here I’m surrounded. A relative says, “Kelle doesn’t like to talk; we talk for her.” And she answers the person’s question. There is a little laughter, as if this was cute, rather than a sickness. The person’s question is probably if I like school or how old I am, and those are questions others can answer. But when another person speaks for me, it isn’t just relief I feel, it’s a falling backward into darkness, as if I’m a portrait, and they’re the living.
After Tommy died, when I was trying not to drink and failing, I starting going to a new meeting at a church in a quiet neighborhood, St. Richard’s. A big meeting with lots of people my age, young. Afterward, outside on a sidewalk or road, I walk with someone older who teaches some kind of class. He said, “You have no social skills.” He said it like “You have no clothes.” I want to protest. I think he means that I can acquire them, like learning to multiply, divide. But he looks at me like the El Paso doctor did, like something on a slide. The coldness makes it impossible to ask him a question, to ask for help. I have the sense that it would involve ropes and climbing, group activities with everyone clamoring for notice, to be seen. Competition. When I go back to drinking again, I can speak. The fear unlocked. When I drink, I need people and don’t hide it—it feels as if I’m joining the living, speaking. In El Paso, there are sky islands in the mountains above the desert—so isolated they make their own world. We drive out of there in snow, a camper chained to the back of the
I wanted to tell him that someone else always did everything better than me. My mother especially. I wasn’t allowed to use thekitchen or cook; I never washed a dish; the washer and dryer were off limits; I never cleaned anything. I lacked most practical living skills. White index cards with instructions littered the house, like “Do Not Touch” scotch-taped to the air conditioner. School was mine, books. Silence. I look at the doctor, his face that I can’t remember—the warm color, he wasn’t old. Sitting on his round silver seat, having rolled it to face me, skating to me. I feel thrilled again. That isn’t what he meant. My voice so far back, so unexercised.
I don’t know if I tell him anything, some stumbling awkward collection of words, or if I defer to my mother. But he’d asked me, my voice is the one he wants, irreplaceable. Inarticulate. It didn’t matter, the definition of who is best, who is most competent—whatever that is, it isn’t me. Right then, skill doesn’t determine who gets to talk. “I want to hear it from Kelle.” A spiraling inside my chest, low, below my heart, and upward, a dust storm, some energy headed toward my throat, my mouth.
He’s a military doctor, efficient, detached, fairly cold. I feel like something on a slide, a slab, when he looks at my body. But he knows it’s wrong to have another speak for me, at fourteen. At least he knows I have information about myself.
I don’t want to talk about them, all their talking around me, my circling down into a book in my lap. Going into that world, with the whirl of my family around me. The yellow pencil on the round kitchen table. And I don’t feel I have the power to pick it up. Sitting in the chair staring at it, unable to reach out. As if someone else has to hand it to me. The pencil could be across a river. I could be a cloud. An indicator for silence. Here are the cloud forests: a dinner at a long table with the family I saw during the summers. Lining each side. Someone speaks to me directly, asks a question from the other side of the table. The surprise of it opening my mouth. But no words come out. It’s different being askedto speak if I’m unaccompanied—even if I stumble, I can’t abdicate completely. But here I’m surrounded. A relative says, “Kelle doesn’t like to talk; we talk for her.” And she answers the person’s question. There is a little laughter, as if this was cute, rather than a sickness. The person’s question is probably if I like school or how old I am, and those are questions others can answer. But when another person speaks for me, it isn’t just relief I feel, it’s a falling backward into darkness, as if I’m a portrait, and they’re the living.
After Tommy died, when I was trying not to drink and failing, I starting going to a new meeting at a church in a quiet neighborhood, St. Richard’s. A big meeting with lots of people my age, young. Afterward, outside on a sidewalk or road, I walk with someone older who teaches some kind of class. He said, “You have no social skills.” He said it like “You have no clothes.” I want to protest. I think he means that I can acquire them, like learning to multiply, divide. But he looks at me like the El Paso doctor did, like something on a slide. The coldness makes it impossible to ask him a question, to ask for help. I have the sense that it would involve ropes and climbing, group activities with everyone clamoring for notice, to be seen. Competition. When I go back to drinking again, I can speak. The fear unlocked. When I drink, I need people and don’t hide it—it feels as if I’m joining the living, speaking. In El Paso, there are sky islands in the mountains above the desert—so isolated they make their own world. We drive out of there in snow, a camper chained to the back of the
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