She seemed wordless. A voice that sputtered sound and wheezed itself out. Nothing said. She tried to say many things. Bowl, was a favorite. Seemed like a wide thing to say as if saying it would open years ahead of her, spilling at the sides futures she couldn’t imagine. Bowl brought things with it. Her son said it quite a lot now. Bowl. Spoon. More. Done. He used to say only More. But with Bowl came Spoon andDone. He was working on a few others, she could tell. Words that meant something. Words that brought food, warmth and entertainment. Magic words.
She spoke regularly to her husband, mother, sister and two friends. And also to the cable man. The cable was often going out and the young boy would make the sounds to bring it back. She would hear them, from across the room and venture another phone call to the cable man.
She would say, “He just needs his cartoons is all. We go to the park and read and for walks, but he enjoys his shows.” The man would not hear her. She was only non-words. She thought of asking him if he had children. If he had shows to watch. If he had nothing but stillness on a screen after a few blinks of light and fuzz. But she had no words for it and instead said, “yes” she would wait for it to come back on. Call back later. Yes, no longer a magic word.
To her husband she said, “cable went out” and he thought she said: my life is no longer my life and it is all your fault and the seed you brought with you and the way you whittled me into a nub of myself, so ignored it lost its pulse. Pulse-less nubs. He thought she said these things, but she did not. She said, “the cable went out” and nothing more.
The boy threw his arms about and his face rushed with blood and when he used his words saliva built up behind his gums and spilled in front of his teeth and out of his mouth. When he said Mine for the first time, he slapped his thighs with his pudgy hands and toppled forward. He meant it and she almost held back the blanket he wanted … just to see hisMine again. And again.
Outside she talked to her neighbor-sometimes-friend from the north side of the street and with her friend-sometimes-neighbor on the south side of the street. These two she talked to as the children toddled and drooled around. The mothers discussing the things that fill up a day. The children empty of their keepers. Mine yelled the woman’s little boy.
He said it again, all blood and breath. His plump hand raised above his head. The little fingers thick, unbending, almost unbendable. She thought of her father’s hands, how when he was old they looked like they might splinter if touched, but when younger—how quick and solid they were. His hand. His handprint—a welt spread wider by the splay of those unbendable fingers. The boy’s hand came down, not a finger caught on the air below it. A proper smack to the head of the child nearest him.
Mine, the boy said. The neighborfriends oblivious.
The mother did not see a reason to correct him.