The Diviners (26 page)
“We must put him upstairs,” his mother says.
“This is your fault,” his father says. They are not even thinking about the pale lady now, who has risen from the table and is walking toward the closet where the coats are hanging.
“What do you mean? Is it my fault that we do not have the income that we had because you have this mistaken belief that you are now an artist? That is not my fault. And I did not bring home a strange woman for dinner. I went to the store as I always do, and I brought home my son, as I always do.”
“You know nothing.”
The goldfish is wriggling on the floor like a comma trying to slip between two clauses. His father makes an angry gesture in the direction of his mother and then he goes to pick up the goldfish bowl. Jaspreet takes the goldfish into his hand and it is undulating, before he in turn is bundled up by his father. He goes under one arm of his father’s, and his father says, “Give me the fish.”
Jaspreet shakes his head.
“Give me the fish.”
Jaspreet shakes his head.
“The fish will die. Do you understand? Give me the fish or the fish will die. Do you want the fish to die?” Jaspreet is kicking, he is swinging wildly, but he will not open his fist with the fish in it. The women, his mother and the pale lady, are swarming around his father and they are telling him that he mustn’t hurt Jaspreet, and then his mother has caught him by the hand and she is prying open his hand with a fork because she can’t get his hand open, and the goldfish tumbles out of his hand and onto the floor, and he screams at letting go of the goldfish, and his mother shouts, “He killed the fish, you see? He killed the fish because of you. You made him kill the fish, and now we will have to buy another fish.”
“The fish cost ninety-nine cents! That’s how much you know about it!”
She takes Jaspreet’s legs, which are still kicking, and they carry him upstairs by his arms and legs, and his father says that they are going to have to put him in the room, as if Jaspreet doesn’t know which room that is, the room that they are talking about, but he does know, so he kicks and screams harder, because it is the room that doesn’t have anything in it, not a thing, it is just a room with nothing in it. The room scares him horribly, not because it has no lights. Well, it does have a light, which he cannot reach, but it has no television, and it has no fish, and it has no parents in it, it is just scary and quiet, and there is nothing to do, and he doesn’t like to be in there. Sometimes he is in there for a long time because he will not be quiet, and that is where they are taking him, of course. His father is complaining about how they are having to do this more often now that Jaspreet is getting older, and why is it that he is doing it more, is it because he is in America? Would he keep doing this if they were in India? Jaspreet’s mother will not answer him, and soon they have put Jaspreet in the room, which is just a closet, really. Jaspreet’s father is saying, “Jaspreet, you cannot ruin dinner. It is not fair to your mother, who worked very hard preparing the dinner, and it is not fair to me, because I brought home a guest, and you ruined dinner for the guest, and she came a long way from the city to meet you, and you made her never want to come to dinner at our house again. And every time that you do these things, you make us worry. We do not want to have to worry about you. You have to try to help us, rather than hinder us. Do you understand what we are saying?”
He is in the corner, and he is feeling bad at the way his father is talking, and he does not want to reply, nor does he want to say anything.
“Are you doing these things because your mother and I are arguing? Because we do not mean to upset you by arguing. We argue sometimes because we have known each other for many years, and that is what people do when they have known each other for many years. It’s nothing personal and I love your mother, and she is my most perfect friend and my ally. Do you understand?”
Here the parents of Jaspreet try to hug each other in a way that will prove what they are saying. But he is looking at the floorboards in the room that has nothing in it, which is really just a closet, and he is tracing the shape of his hand, palm down, on the floorboards in the room that has nothing in it.
“Many good things are about to happen. I believe this. And we will purchase a new fish. This is my solemn vow. Many good things will happen, and we will purchase a new fish, and when the weather is warmer we will go to the tops of tall buildings and look at the view from these buildings, and we will ride roller coasters, and we will watch the horses run at the racetrack, and I will take you to the Gurdwara, and you will learn to be a devoted son and a devoted Sikh. And we are going to shut this door now, but we are not going to lock this door. Do you understand? We are shutting the door and we are not locking it, and then on the other side of this door, I am going to be making up with your mother. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”
And then the door is closed, and the silence is big and scary. Jaspreet tries to keep the silence on the far side of the room, but it’s like a slow leak. The silence leaks into the room, coming in under the door first, pooling on the floor just inside the doorway, creeping across the floor to the corner where he sits, where he has rolled up his trousers so that the leak of silence will not get on the hems of his trousers. It is like the leak in the basement when the rain is heavy, and soon it will be all the way across the floor. And it will begin to get deeper. He likes the basement, and this is something he can tell himself in the silence, that he likes the basement, he likes the basement, he likes the basement, there are many things in the basement that are his friends. He likes the sound of the thing in the basement, which is a boiler. He likes that sound that the boiler makes, and he likes it when there are clothes strung up on a line in the basement. And he likes the bin full of old sheets and he likes the stacks of old magazines where he can look at pictures. He feels sure that these clothes strung up are like the other place that his parents talk about, their home, which he believes is a place with many colors strung up on lines, and in that place the houses are all full of cereal. That is what he thinks, because he is trying to think. He tries saying things, even though he does not like saying things, because it is too quiet in the room, and so he says
glue stick
a few times. He is just trying it out, he is trying out saying
glue stick
over and over, as if it is a question. Somebody must be listening at the door. Otherwise there would just be too much silence. He puts his ear to the floor because he wants to hear what is being said downstairs, but he is not sure that anything is being said. He will say things, he will try to say things, he will not be silent, and he will not make more silence in the world. He will say things. No one likes silence. He will do better, because his father loves him and his mother loves him and he will do better.
Finally, he pushes open the door, which is guarded by no one. And it is night! Night is beautiful! And everything in his house is where it is supposed to be! There is his parents’ room, and he walks on the carpet because he likes the feeling of the carpet in his parents’ room on the bottom of his feet. And then he goes across the hall and he goes into his room, in which there is a bed and a few banners of baseball teams because his friends at school have banners of baseball teams. He wants to be like his friends, doing the things that they do. He can hear a clock somewhere. He can hear the faucet downstairs. He can hear the distant sound of the television, which is the sound of his family, the sound of a television drifting is the sound of his household, and when there isn’t the sound of the television, then something is wrong. His mother is somewhere cleaning something. He goes to look out the window because what he sees when he looks out the window is other people looking out of their windows, and then he is part of the group of people who are looking. That is good, because the street is beautiful, and the sky at night is dark pink, until the sun comes up, and people are all looking at other people who are looking, except that he can see out the window that there is his father, and his father is walking up the street with the pale lady, and they are near the stairwell that leads to the elevated trains. On the first step of the stairs, his father leans down and he embraces the pale lady and then he puts his lips on her lips, and there is the sound of the television overheard from downstairs, and then there is his father, up the block, kissing a pale lady.
Dialectical examination of the subject known hereafter as the ‘ugly girl’ (UG) was performed on a certain day in May in an American suburb by trained dialectical experts from like socioeconomic demographics, according to participant-observer methodology. Speakers in this northeastern suburb, according to the trained dialectical experts, are undergoing a vowel shift, known as the ‘anomie-related vowel shift’ (ARVS), best reflected in the [a/ ä] transformation of
nah,
as formulated in reply to requests, e.g., Honey, will you please go and pick up some packages of chicken at the corner store?
Nah.
(See, for example, Stinson, et al.,
1985.
) The UG, according to the trained dialectical experts from the adjacent milieu, was unaffected by the ARVS, despite being identical in age, despite having attained, at the time of the study, the educational level of the eighth grade, along with the trained dialectical experts. A lack of participation in ARVS and in the linguistic engulfers noted by the dialectical experts, such as
fuck/ fucked/ fucker/ fucking,
in which the engulfer begins to muscle out other parts of speech (moreover, the
like
continuative marker, wherein a certain word is appended, without grammatical consideration, to a sentence wherever a pause is indicated), this lack of participation is evidence of marginalization and isolation within a linguistic community, by which reason the committee of trained dialectical experts determined that a meeting with the UG for purposes of study and exchange of sociolinguistic ideas was urgently needed. The UG, according to the committee, was described as diminutive and given to dress in the traditional garb of this community; viz., blue or black denim pants cut in such a way as to obscure the specific features of the lower half of her body, large hooded sweatshirt, in gray, into the marsupial pocket of which she continually thrust her hands. Face, open, gentle, but characterized by a certain sadness, according to at least one committee member (a characterization that, it should be admitted, is disputed by others, who themselves consider the UG simply ‘ugly’), with an unkempt hairstyle generally restricted in the community of the dialectical experts and referred to by them as ‘frizzy, corkscrewy,’ etc. Lips often downturned, which according to the dialectical experts could be a biological point of origin for the back vowels that have, in the case of the UG, skidded slightly forward until they are rather nearer to colliding with her grand mean, a shift that may be ordinary in topologies of distant southern locales and on audio recordings by gangster rappers but is not known locally and is therefore not considered appropriate by the experts in this study. The recording of the UG by the committee of experts (COE) took place on Fort Point Ave., a quiet thoroughfare, after disgorgement from a standard-issue American school bus, which was, despite its quaint exterior, a veritable stew of linguistic trends and fashions. Upon dismounting from the standard-issue American school bus, the COE approached the UG and, gauging her with a preliminary analysis of her fronting advancement, asked about her boots, the heavy black boots she was wearing. Her reply of ‘Get out of my way’ was not considered to have resolved the question of the boot, and its relation to Fashion Vowel Supremacy, or FVS. According to FVS and ARVS, certain vowels, especially ü, ?207-156?, and ÿ, are considered imperative markers of Linear Community Formation, and that the UG would neither respond using the word ‘boot’ nor would she comment on the ‘boots’ themselves, which subsequent researches have indicated were common military jump boots, was the first indication that considerable further study would be required. Proceeding down Fort Point Ave. toward Hillcrest Place, the UG was described as withdrawn and resistant, especially in view of tests being implemented by the COE, such as the test in which the UG is invited to sit and talk on the stone wall in front of the property owned by Dan G. and Audrey L. Harrison of Newton Centre, Massachusetts. The sentence adduced by the COE, of course, by way of invitation, was an attempt to draw out the
sit/ set
reversal, but there was no success in producing this reversal, nor in any other markers of AAVE (African American Vernacular English), such as the
pin/ pen
merger, etc. Did this lack of markers indicate a convergence of the COE and the philosophical and emotional and linguistic core of the UG? If so, why did the UG continue, throughout interaction with the COE, to present such an impervious exterior? When the COE asked the UG, ‘Don’t you like us?’ they were of course attempting a sneak attack with the
like
continuative marker, and it should be pointed out in this summary that the dearth of directly quoted dialogue does not rule out the fact of the
duh
continuative marker, as well as the related
d’oh,
or contemporary shame indicator. ‘No, I don’t like you all,’ the UG replied, avoiding the contraction
y’all
of Southern Vernacular English, which the COE claimed to have heard her employ on one or more occasions. In this instance, the reply ‘No, I don’t like you all’ was viewed by the COE as an example of noncompliance with the study. However, noncompliance toward figures of authority, especially in the ARVS and in the case of Narcissistic Adolescent Monosyllabism (NAM), as noted by Davidoff in the
eh
engulfer, indicates a kind of mobility retardation, most notably in the double positive
yeah yeah.
And yet often these kinds of noncompliance, according to the COE, are vital, engaged political strategies. Why then the surrounding and the beginning of excessive threat with respect to the UG, as though surrounding and threat on the part of the COE were legitimate types of academic inquiry? ‘Where is your neighborhood at?’ the COE demanded, mocking. ‘And who is your mammy?’ Thereafter giving evidence of knowledge of the wealth of terminologies in the racial-slur family, without asking, it should be pointed out, if these particular lexical units were either a) offensive, or b) simply disparaging. The slurs were, however, often deployed in the history of linguistic exchange between past panels of COE and past UGs. History is littered with misunderstandings. Persons may require terms like ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ in order to create kinds of solidarity that diminish the stress levels engendered by adversaries in adversarial conflicts. Of course, a change of venue for the inquiry was considered desirable by the COE, the new venue being, ideally, one understaffed by assistants or graduate students or nosy observers, a venue such as a forest or a vacant lot behind a chain store, which in this afternoon light would not have been well traveled, the better to get a clear picture of the resistance-elongated vowel, or REV, with the hope that isolation would result in the UG’s employing the antagonistic usage of adversarial slurs against whiteness, including neologisms and coinages used to describe any individual member of the COE, such as
boneys, nits, gruelies.
For this was the secret worry of the COE, namely that the UG, despite her melancholy and detached exterior, was from the true research and development wing of American language, knowing things that the COE did not and could never know. Was the UG from some special exotic other, some linguistic elsewhere? Whereas the COE itself was from the land of moribund linguists. If the UG would just be willing to collaborate on close personal rapport with the COE, then perhaps the differences between the two parties could somehow be smoothed over. This was the academic plan in terms of primary research, the plan favored by the COE. But let it be said here that the creation of a monolithic first-person plural on the part of the COE was an academic fiction. Because when one of these academics of national repute suggested the change of venue described above, then certain members of the COE, stressing academic differences, began to plead lateness of the hour. These sociolinguists began to have prior commitments to other quarterly publications, such as
Lawn-Mowing Today
and
Review of Contemporary Newspaper Delivery.
In any event, the COE dwindled, having completed the important harassment section of its study on this street, Hillcrest Place, and they therefore decamped to do their guitar practicing, leaving behind just the one member of the COE, the one with the worst skin, the one with the most unwashed hair, the one with the most harrowing situation at home, a situation much commented on by women of the neighborhood, with wringing of hands. The lone member of the COE ran wild in the streets, unencumbered by oversight. What to do with him? He was overweight and had hard-palate deformities, which of course affected his sociolinguistic picture. Here was the sole remaining member of the COE, bent on the disrobement portion of the study. Were it not for the sudden appearance of a second study subject, namely the older brother of the UG, no longer called the UG but now, instead, referred to by her pseudonym for the purposes of study, which was the pseudonym of ‘Annabel,’ the disrobement might have proceeded. But according to some secret code involving linguistic deviation and dereliction, ‘Annabel’ summoned this second subject, known simply as ‘brother.’ A tall, lanky figure, designed for the rescue of children, the so-called ‘brother’ happened upon the colloquy between the lone member of the COE and ‘Annabel,’ on Hillcrest Place. He was apparently in the process of returning from what was described as a ‘long walk.’ At first, the ‘brother’ thought nothing of it, thought nothing of the appearance before him of ‘Annabel,’ face composed in that perpetual frown of public school interactions, thought nothing of the overweight and unwashed COE, who indeed looked like an advertisement for rapists-in-training. The ‘brother,’ whose name was William, though he preferred the pseudonym ‘Tyrone,’ was aloof from all daily events on Hillcrest Place. He was, by all accounts, walking around on some astral plane, where his studies concerned the size of black holes and whether or not these emitted radiation, etc., home on vacation from graduate school, etc., and it is no doubt likely that he spoke a tone language, or a clicking language of the African plains, etc., or a Niger-Congo dialect, or Creolist dialect, or Gullah, and the COE member would not be able to understand him, nohow, and so now the COE member, who had previously managed to exercise such admirable academic restraint, was sorely afraid, for he recognized in himself the anxiety engendered by AAVE, especially as practiced by adult male speakers. It was a thing that excluded and belittled the COE member. He would henceforth go unrecognized because of AAVE, his immensity would go unrecognized. He would receive no funding from governmental agencies, which meant, it now became clear, that the COE member should get his ‘ass’ the ‘fuck’ off of their street, which meant that the COE would go skulking back up Hillcrest, to the chaos of his own home, after which the study was aborted, and the subject called ‘Annabel’ fell into a hug with ‘Tyrone,’ and thus came to a close another sampling of normative suburban behavior.