THE GIRL WHO SPOKE PIG LATIN
BY the boy named SEAN HOADE
I have seen her in a frenzy of activity, almost standing
still: Her fingertips shake as she adjusts the salt shaker on the
table a touch, a touch, a touch ... too far. A touch the other way.
Her eyes fix on the shaker as she bumps it an angstrom to the
left, an angstrom towards her, an angstrom away. Her lips
purse as sweat beads above them. There is nothing about the
shaker that would seem to invite the ritual, in which she taps it
into line with the pepper shaker and the bleached oak napkin
holder for ten, fifteen minutes at a time. If we are going somewhere, her adjustments speed up, and the sweat that covers her
face seems to etch dark circles under her eyes as she hurries,
rushes to finish the job before I become impatient or angry.
Before I tell her to stop and pull her from the table, which she
watches with desperation as I lead her out the door, the items on
the table begging to be placed in line, the way they belong, the
way they need to be. She was so close, they say. Just one more
tap. One more. One more.
My wife does crazy shit with her hands all day, sometimes right in plain view, sometimes hiding so I won't notice.
Touches a doorknob, turns just enough to touch it with the other
hand, all five fingers, quick as you please. I have yelled at her
in public places to embarrass her, slapped her hand before she
could make it with the other hand, but it does no good. Her
round eyes shrink back into her head and she can't make a
sound, but I know that if I turned my back for a second, she'd
touch the doorknob and sigh with release like a junkie after his
fix. Just like a junkie-the next door she came to, the next fix
she'd need.
.._.
36
ANALECTA
She picked up a Reader's Digest and saw something she
thought sounded like her, the latest medical solution in search
of a problem. This led to her going to support groups and dragging me with her. No one should misunderstand me: I'd do
anything to help my wife, the same as I'd want her to do anything to help me if I was in legitimate need of help. But the
people at these groups were oddballs, sickos, people who
washed their hands until they bled, or slipped out of the house
in the middle of the night to scrub streets clean of battery acid
or some such nonsense. All my wife does is touch stuff with
her hands, over and over and over. Hardly a life-threatening
situation. I took her home and we went to bed. I comforted
her. I could feel her hands moving as she touched the headboard, but I let it go. She was no weirdo exercising until she
passed out. She was just my wife.
Then came the Pig Latin.
I had noticed she had a little twitch sometimes, which she
usually shrugged off to hiccups or chills or something. Sometimes she'd wrench her neck a little bit, like she was cracking it
to avoid a headache. She said she used to do this when she was
younger, ten or fifteen years ago, in her pre-teens. The same
way she'd feel something would go horribly wrong when she
didn't make the salt shaker line up with the other stuff on the
table, now she felt this uncontrollable-that was the word she
used, uncontrollable-urge to twitch, to jerk, to make odd little
sounds at the end of her sentences.
"It's a nice day," she'd say, then add quietly so I almost
couldn't hear, "Ay-day."
I'd nod or mumble something supportive, watching her
from the comer of my eye. There would go the hands. Touching, touching, touching. Jerk, jerk, jerk.
"Honey, what the hell is wrong with you?"
"Nothing." Turning away, really softly: "Othing-nay."
"Cut it out."
ANALECTA
..
.-
37
"Sorry," she'd say, and I could see her mouth tighten and
her cheeks redden as she resisted saying anything else. She
touched her chin with one hand, then the other, all ten fingers
grazing her skin like a piano player's hands going through the
scales.
"If you don't stop that shit, I'm going to make you stop."
"It's out of my control," she'd say. "It's my problem."
I rustle my newspaper in my authoritative way. "Well,
it's fast becoming my problem, so stop it before I find a solution."
"It's a brain problem," she said, then goddamn if she
didn't whisper, "Oblem-pray."
I slammed my paper down on the table, making her
jump. "You want to see a fucking oblem pray, darling? You
want to see somebody out of control? Let me watch you touch
something in that fucked-up way just one more time-let me hear
you mumble that Pig Latin shit once more today-and I'll give
you something out of control."
I hadn't moved from my seat, but she had shrunk back in
hers. Her cheeks were fire. Her hands hovered in the air like
live wires waiting to touch down. Then, at her waist, I saw her
side buckle in just for an instant, and pooch out again. The
twitch.
I didn't say a word. I got up and slowly walked over to
my wife, who was a stone, knowing she had pushed me too far
with her "out of control" act, mumbling, twitching, touching. I
stood directly in front of her, then eased my backside onto the
table. I picked up the plastic salt shaker and pepper shaker and
held them in front of her.
Her eyes shut for a moment, then opened.
I slammed the shakers together. They broke in my hands,
showering the carpet with white and flecked brown. "You want
to clean that up, don't you?"
She didn't move. No twitching, no touching, no mumANALECTA
bling.
"Make it right? That's what you want to do, isn't it? Put
everything in a row just right. Or something horrible will happen."
"Something horrible has happened. I didn't do it right,"
she said, and I could just make out her lips shaping ight-ray.
"You don't understand-it's out of my control."
"Sounds like it's in your control, but you fuck it up. Why
don't you give it up? This is insane."
"No-I've got to-2' She moved toward the broken shakers on the floor.
"Give me your hands."
My wife placed her ten fingers in mine. I jerked them
back as hard as I could and felt five, maybe six, distinct snaps.
She screamed and fell to the floor, next to her beloved items
she'd fix and play with all day.
I picked my keys off the hook, and gently lifted my wife
up. "Let's get to the hospital, baby. They'll fix you up. Couple
of weeks, no touching-cold turkey, right?" I gave her a smile.
Some things were in our control after all.
On the way out, her elbow grazed the doorframe. She
halted in my arms and swung her other elbow to touch it.
"Baby, you do that again, and your arms are next, you
know that?"
Her cheeks were drained of color. She knew.
ANALECTA
.-...
39