A New Language

Photo by Daniel Fatnes on Unsplash

“Who wants to zoom to the North Pole with me? We’ll skate on glaciers and dance the polka with polar bears! As soon as I’m better. I promise.” Mom looked at each of us, then lay back on the grass, her short brown hair cushioned by the clipped lawn. She pressed her thin, bare arm over her eyes and, after a moment, dozed; she was always tired. The whole family was on the ground beside her, my older sister and brothers on her left, pulling at blades of grass, and me to her right, just sitting. Dad rubbed her feet. It was a warm, fragrant Sunday, Mother’s Day. I had cut out a heart from red paper to make my first card.

I couldn’t imagine what it would be like at the cold North Pole, but I was ready to go find out. I looked across the lawn at my grandmother. She sat in her wooden chair in the shadow of the house, her hands folded in her lap. Her dark dress was buttoned up to her neck; her short white hair ruffled in the breeze. I thought how much she and Mom looked alike. She gazed at us out in the sunlight. After a moment, she shook her head, stood, and went inside.

Later, in the kitchen, Grandma handed me the broom.

“Your mother was foolish to promise the North Pole,” she said.

She turned away, grabbed a towel, and scrubbed the table. “Foolish,” she whispered.

“Yes, Grandma,” I said. As I swept, I wondered, what do polar bears do in the springtime, on a warm day like today?

She turned back to me and said, “Your father knows that, and so should all of you, at this stage.” She wasn’t mad. She sounded tired, like Mom.

On the way home I asked from the back seat, “Is it foolish to dream about skating on the North Pole and making friends with polar bears?” Dad sighed. He reached over from the driver’s seat and rubbed Mom’s shoulder. She turned to face us all squeezed together. She winked at me and said, “Mister man, what is foolish is thinking anything at all is foolish.” One of my brothers poked me and my sister danced her fingers across my back.

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Mom went into the hospital in the middle of August and died two weeks later. Then my siblings went back to school, Dad went back to work, and I was sent to live with Grandma.

She told me stories, like when Mom was a little girl, they would dance together across the kitchen every night to eat at the same table we were sitting at. But we never talked about what had just happened, or about Dad or my brothers or my sister, or about when I’d go back home.

I didn’t know how to ask. I did know how to sweep the kitchen, and I learned how to empty the trashcan. Mostly I sat in the living room making believe bits of dust were snowflakes. I tried to remember home, all of us swirling around like warm breezes then sweeping together into a single gust, Mom laughing and leading us out into the sunshine.

Grandma slept every day at one up in her bedroom. I stayed in the living room and sneaked cartoons without the sound. I switched off the TV when I heard her starting down, the stairs creaking as she paused on each step. One day, when she reached the landing, I had gone to the window and was looking out across the lawn. I was imagining Mom in her red jacket spinning on a shiny glacier, a polar bear skating big circles around her. Grandma asked what I was staring at. I told her.

“Your mother couldn’t skate,” she said. “She wanted to but we didn’t have skates for her. Come away from the window.”

After that, I went upstairs to sit in my room while Grandma slept. It was smaller and neater than the room I shared with my brothers, just a bed, a chair, a table. I would have napped, but I couldn’t keep my eyes closed. Instead, I tried to imagine life on the North Pole. What does the cold wind feel like when you’re skating with a polar bear? But it was too still in the room; there wasn’t any air. Grandma resting next door seemed to make even the birds outside hush.

Dad called every Sunday morning. My brothers and my sister would all shout hello. The first week, I yelled back — hello! — but Grandma put a hand on my shoulder. “There’s no need to shout,” she said.

Weeks later, I was elated when she told me they were finally coming to visit, on a Sunday in December. I planned how we’d run around the yard and jump into piles of fallen leaves. We’d talk, and I’d find out what school was like and I’d tell them how bored I was. And I’d ask, could I go home with them?

The day finally came. I opened the door when they were still in the car at the curb. Dad hurried up the walk and hugged me. My brothers and my sister blew right past us into the house.

“Behave,” Grandma told them. She made tea and talked to Dad at the kitchen table, their voices low. My siblings made a tent of their coats on the couch and hid and giggled inside. I sat on the floor in front of them, listening, trying to join in. But they whispered in a dialect I had forgotten, or maybe it was their own new language. They were like kids you play with on vacation who you meet once and never see again. When they left, they ran across the lawn to the car, like the wind was chasing them. Without looking back, they drove away.