No one will say how long ago
they stopped
talking or
even relaying phone messages,
but because we came 12,000 miles to
visit
they attend the banquet together.
She leaves suddenly with their kid
and
later at their place alone
the husband watches CNN-Asia,
turns his back on us, drinks, smokes
and phones
three times... Is she ever coming?
When she shows an hour later
he forces me and the kid on the couch
into practice conversation
before a huge aquarium of lumbering orange
fish
right beside the Asian anchorwoman's perfect English.
But the boy
never gets to speak:
each time he flounders, his father's tongue
spears each near-whisper
like a wriggling fish.
Then he yells at me: "Speak louder!"
(meaning,
so he can hear),
"and slowly "
(so he can
interfere).
He yells in all the answers the kid misses
like a middle-aged teacher's pet.
At
last the boy writes to me
in English with a pen and pad
(because it's easier to write and be
wrong
than to sound wrong instantly):
"My father likes drink beers."
Snatching it
up, his father shouts: " TO! "
and he glares at me
(meaning: Don't you agree? Shouldn't it be- )
while
correcting his son: "'My father likes to drink
beers.'"
I
have to tell him he's right again,
but I nod to my nephew's unstubbled
face
that I understand.
His affable
eyes do not plead-
he is so used to
this job he has had:
to explain and explain and explain his dad
without being able to say
a thing.
|