Mute

First Place Winner

By Sean Lanigan

del.ico.us | digg it! | reddit!

print | email | 0 Comments

Mom always sautéed our chicken dinner in too much beer – Bass Ale or Harpoon – so by the time us kids finished eating, we'd be looking at each other funny. Colby once fell over in his chair, and we all laughed. Alexis would jab her fork around the table in a threatening manner if Mom didn't serve dessert. Harley told rambling stories about his day at nursery school, never just getting to the point. Bukowski, our old sheepdog with nappy gray hair covering his eyes, would stand with his paws on the table until Mom tossed a piece of chicken on the floor. I was eight then, the oldest, and never spoke, had been a mute-by-choice for three years. Whenever I though of something to say, I immediately became fearful it wouldn't be what I meant, and it caused me to stutter incredibly. You'd be surprised at how much you could get across by shaking or nodding your head. Sometimes I'd use a pen to write a message on my palm. I filled journal after journal with things I planned to say one day – notes on Mom's cheerful singing, Colby's thumb-sucking, Bukowski's impending death – and kept them hidden under my mattress.

Our father took the time and energy to make the four of us, and then left for the Canadian Rockies with a woman named Bebe. Each Christmas they sent a postcard with a picture of a snow-capped mountain, and addressed it "To our Darlings." Darlings must have been her word, because all I remember of my father was the tattoo of a skull on his bicep and eyes so dark they looked black. Whenever Mom got mad at us she'd say if wanted a different mother, Bebe was available.

One night after dinner, Mom gathered us in the living room and sat us in a row on the couch. She looked tired. She worked at the town library, and often we'd have to hang out in the children's section while she finished her shift. I taught Alexis how to read there, using a method that was like playing Pictionary. The children's librarian, Mrs. Jonstone, would sometimes complain to Mom that she felt like a babysitter who wasn't getting paid. On the couch, Harley was beginning to not off, his head resting on my shoulder.

"This," Mom said, waving a sheet of paper, "is a letter from a Canuck lawyer hired by your father. It says he wants you guys to move to Canada. That he and Bebe are more fit to raise you." She put her knuckle in her mouth, and I couldn't tell if she was concealing rage or sadness or what. "Well?" she finally said.

Harley lifted his head. "Is Canada cold?" he asked.

"Forget it," Mom said. "Go get ready for bed."

Later that night I woke up to pee, and the light was on in Mom's bedroom. I put my ear to the door and heard gasping and sobbing. I knocked. Silence. I opened the door and found Mom sitting on a chair with cuts up and down her arms, her hands clasped together between her knees, blood dripping neatly into a pint glass on the floor. She looked up at me, her face gloomy and wet. I went to the kitchen, frantic, and got a pad of paper.

"Just say it," she said to me, as I prepared to write. "Tell me."

What would I say? I'd tell her that we didn't want Bebe, or the Canadian Rockies and its snow-capped mountains. I'd say beer-soaked chicken was our meal, even if it made us tipsy. Mom's eyes pleaded with me to speak. But I couldn't.

I ran back to the bedroom the four of us kids shared, quietly lifted my mattress and pulled my journals. In Mom's bedroom, I kneeled beside her. I put the notebooks in her lap, and opened the top one, my scrawled penmanship scribbled furious across the page. With on of my hands, I covered a wound on her forearm, hoping to slow the bleeding. With the other, I urged her to begin reading, so she could understand.