The Language Inside (41 page)

but it turns out that Wednesday

is Gram and Gramps’ last dinner with us

before they return to Vermont

and I’m supposed to come straight home

after seeing Zena

I beg

offer to get up early

for a farewell breakfast

tell Dad and YiaYia I’ll be back

in time for dessert

but there is no getting out of this one

Samnang can come here
Dad says

when I explain the pizza plans

I think on that

but say

never mind

it’s okay

Wednesday I take the bus to the Newall Center

since Samnang has a gymnastics team meeting

and will be late

Zena’s not in her room

so I grab the letter board I prefer

not the one hanging from her chair

and an aide tells me she’s waiting

in the library downstairs

where she is

but so is another woman

leafing through a magazine

Zena spells that it’s
o-k

but I feel strange

without privacy

I read Zena a mermaid poem

by Kim Addonizio

from the point of view of a mother

watching

dreaming about

and thinking of

her fifteen-year-old daughter

I say I was searching for mermaid poems

but more than the mermaid

I really liked the metaphor

of the girl’s face as a lure

that pulls the mother

from her darkness

next I read aloud the one

by Naomi Shihab Nye

about the mother who tells the daughter

               you know you’re going to die

               if you can no longer make a fist

I look at Zena’s hands

clenched immobile atop her always folded arms

and tell her
you’re fine—you’ve got good fists

I tell her I like the line in this poem about

the girl grown up

still lying in the backseat as an adult

behind her questions

I tell Zena I chose these poems

because they had a mother and a daughter

one poem from each perspective

and in each the mother or the daughter

is the other’s lifeline in a way

and because of her window poem

about the family posing for a photograph

and because of meeting her daughter on Sunday

but then the woman across the room

the woman who’s been leafing through magazines

startles us by saying

I had two sons—

if I’d had a daughter

she’d come see me

I nod, say
well . . . 

and ask Zena if she’d like to write a poem

about being a mother or a daughter

or a mermaid or whatever

and Zena looks up

and I ask the woman with the magazine

if she wants a piece of paper

to try a poem, too

but she says
no, no

I just have sons

and even though I explain

that she can write a poem

about her sons

or about being a mother

or being a daughter

she still says
no

I just have sons

I ask Zena if she wants to use

the computer attached to the chair

but she insists on the letter board

so I go down the list of colors

and start spelling Zena’s poem

which doesn’t have a title yet

letter by letter

word by word

Zena spells

like this poem was just

sitting in her head:

    
my stroke beached me like a whale on hot sand

    
come home! my daughter called and called

    
but I couldn’t answer and finally she swam away

    
by the time I could look up to talk

    
and tell her to lean over my face

    
so I could feel the tickle of her hair

    
she no longer felt like my daughter

    
come back! I called and called

    
but she swam away

    
with my sister

it takes several minutes

staring at Zena’s words

for me to comment

Sarah was raised by your sister?

Zena looks up

and I try to grasp

Zena’s losses

               movement, speech, her child

I ask how old Sarah was

when Zena had her stroke—

she looks up at 6

I suck in my breath

try to imagine Sarah growing up

with her mother in the care center

what about your husband? Sarah’s father?
I dare ask

l-e-f-t
she spells

2 m-o-n-t-h-s a-f-t-e-r

I try to hold my tongue

but can’t help saying
jerk!

and Zena looks up

but it’s great that Sarah comes to see you
I say

n-o-t o-f-t-e-n
Zena spells

then adds

m-o-s-t-l-y o-n-l-i-n-e

online?

well, that’s good! isn’t it?

and as I recite the colors and letters

Zena spells

s-e-q-u-e-l

s-h-e s-w-a-m b-a-c-k

w-i-t-h f-a-c-e-b-o-o-k

and this cracks me up

and Zena looks up

five times in a row

then the woman with the magazine

says her younger son was on a swim team

and won a medal in the backstroke