Speaking
Kim Merrill
Excerpted from memoir “Red Girl Jumping”
I pull her into my closet and tell her who I am.
Little One. That’s my name. I’m you from years ago.
She doesn’t want to remember. I ask her, can I talk? Say what you forgot? She shakes her head. No. I lift my hand to touch her. I tell her that I’ll whisper.
Then she nods, frightened.
* * *
I like to hide in closets. I don’t like to exist. If I have to talk I pretend I’m an echo. In the closet I hide in back. I tie up Daddy’s laces. I put my hands in toe shoes. Mommy doesn’t dance now. She still keeps the shoes. I hear her voice from the closet. I hear Daddy’s too. Whatever I touch in the closet makes me not exist.
When I walk to kindergarten I pass a path through woods. Devils and monsters use the path. I run it once on a dare. I don’t like the path. I like swings. I walk to swings after school. I climb the metal pole. I sit up high on top. I’m not allowed to sit there. I can sit in the cloth seat. I can aim for the top of trees. I can leap and fall in the dirt. I can lie on my back and watch the sky. When I’m dizzy birds fly backward.
Daddy comes to get me. He hangs me on a monkey bar. He pokes a thumb in my privates. I like that don’t I. Don’t I. My hands get cold on the monkey bar but I’m a strong little thing. I go to the sky with birds. I have a beak. I eat a worm. I fly backward. After I leave the sky Daddy lifts me up. He puts me on his shoulders. I grab his forehead happy. He tells me I’m safe. Don’t worry. He skips a bit to scare me. At home he holds my ankles. I get spun real fast. I scream when the carpet nears my face. Do it again! Fly me! Mommy says watch out. Time to stop right now. At bedtime he tells stories. Pirates and headless ghosts. Dire doom is everywhere and the stories end on the plank. To be continued. Finish it now! That’s me and Jim and Eliza. We whisper together in bed. We dream of falling in water. Oceans full of pirates. Sharks who swallow kids.
Once we drive to Nebraska. Mommy’s daddy and mommy live in a house with a porch swing. Mommy’s daddy was a mailman. Now he has false teeth. He claps them at us. You git out! Grandma says he’s jokin’. Don’t you mind that man. Grasshoppers are poison. That’s what the false teeth say. If their juice gets on your skin you die a poison death. Jim and Eliza and I sit by an open field. Grasshoppers jump. The whole field jumps. We’re afraid to cross. We hold each other’s hands. We run it fast and live. Now we know. Now we know. Jokes can be a lie.
Mommy flattens pie crust. To make the dough she squishes butter in her hands. Her mommy in Nebraska uses hands. That’s the way. Not two forks. When she puts crust on a pan the edges hang over. She trims the edges with a knife. I can take the trims. I mold stars of dough. I sprinkle cinnamon on. My stars come out of the oven and race across the pan. I eat a star. I tell Mommy about the thumb. Why does she call it my private part? Daddy says it’s his. Mommy slaps my face. The star breaks in my mouth. Nothing’s real. I’m not real. I don’t like to exist.
Daddy says I do. Daddy says I exist so much I make him do things. Things I really like. I like it don’t I. Don’t I. I like to be a bird. I like to fly in the sky.
* * *
Daddy wears a gown with a square on top of his head. He gets a rolled-up paper. People clap when he gets it. Words get printed on paper. Paper makes them real. I start to look at words. I take them in the closet.
After the rolled-up paper we move. Daddy’s a teacher now. The name of his school is only letters. U and C and L and A. We live in a house that grows from a hill. Pepe next door has a goat. I ask for a goat. No goat. I can get a dog. At the dog place the dogs all bark in cages. One dog doesn’t bark. She’s black-and-white with floppy ears. Those are my favorite ears. In the car she sits in my lap. The name on her tag is Susie.
Susie lives on a leash outside. When she’s not on her leash she’s in the house with Jim and Eliza and me. We tie her to piles of indoor things we want to watch fall down. Eliza puts a bone near her mouth. Jim makes the tower of things. When she goes for the bone everything falls down and we do it again. We love Susie. She never bites or snaps.
One day she’s gone. Her leash is all chewed up. Every day after school I yell out Susie’s name. I know she’s up the hill. I know she’s caught in branches. At night I cry in my bed. I want to die. I want to be Astro Boy. I sit up in my bed. I can be Astro Boy. Astro Boy is a cartoon who has jets in his feet and two pointed black spikes for hair. I wet my hair. I make it two points. I run and blast off. I fly up over the hills. My eye beams see the tree tops. I use all my power. I send a message to Susie. Come home! Come back! Run! The next day she runs down the hill. Her breath is hot. I see her ribs. Her tongue is lapping fast. I put my face in her fur. I can’t believe. I leap inside. Astro Boy is magic. Now I’m magic too.
* * *
I’m not magic every day. Maybe once a week. I keep the magic secret. If anyone knew my power I’d be eaten alive.
At school Miss Fern holds up a picture. Chagall. There is a cow that floats in a face and a person in the sky. She asks if the picture can be real. I think the picture is a dream that’s real. I want to raise my hand. I can’t. Miss Fern holds me like chalk. I powder. Leave white dust. I fly out windows. Hover. Touch my beak to the pane. I see chalk children. I see me. Pale. Shaking hand. Miss Fern taps me at recess. You can be my helper. New friends will go to your desk. New friends who are not my friends line up at my desk. I tell them what I know. I know three plus five. I know reading. I know holding a pencil. I don’t tell them what else I know. I know I’m a girl with the body of a bird at the window. I know Astro Boy can’t save my sister Eliza. I know Chagall can’t. Eliza is strapped to tables. She is having her skin pricked. She is living in a whiteness. There are walls. Rules. Doctors. Children are not allowed to visit the hospital. It’s dangerous. If it’s dangerous why is Eliza there? Mommy doesn’t know. No one knows. Eliza is trapped in a whiteness because she woke up and couldn’t move. She couldn’t walk. She couldn’t lift her head. She could whisper I’m frozen. My magic sends her safety thoughts. Come home! Come back! Run!
My magic doesn’t work. Every night Mommy comes home from the hospital saying no news. Daddy makes friends with people who feel sorry for us. One man brings a bucket of fried chicken. We don’t eat bucket chicken. We eat vegetables. I tip the bucket to rain the crumbs and the man who brought them laughs. Then he touches my hair.
Magic makes me twirl. Magic makes me dance. Magic makes me lie on the floor for Daddy’s friends. Magic makes them drink. Magic makes them water me like a plant. Magic makes them push me up and down. Magic makes them laugh. Magic makes Mommy stay at the hospital. Magic makes her not see. Magic makes a blue van pick me up. Magic makes the blue van drive me to a mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Magic makes a large swimming pool in the mansion. Magic makes everyone swim naked. Magic makes girls and grown-ups swim together. Magic makes a round bed. Magic makes a man come in. Magic makes another man. Magic makes another man. Magic makes a camera watching. Magic makes a man take us to a cliff. Magic makes the man tell us to say we went horseback riding. Magic makes the man say he will cut off our arms and legs and throw us over the cliff into the ocean if we don’t say horseback riding. Magic makes me forget.
Then one day Mommy says Eliza can come home. The doctors don’t know why she froze. No one knows. When Eliza comes home she’s quiet. I want to hug her. I want to eat her. I want to tell her how hard I cried for her. I don’t. Our family is jokes. Books. Don’t-say-it.
* * *
At the end of school Miss Fern tells Mommy I can skip third grade. Fourth grade is giants. They’ll rip my arms off and say fe fi fo fum. I hold my breath till I can’t. Then I blow out the breath and it makes a wave that washes to another side of the world where Daddy gets a Fulbright. The Fulbright pulls us out of Los Angeles. It is true magic. I will go to third grade in Andernos, France.
Before we go I learn Je m’appelle Kimberlie and Ou est la ou le _____? Also Ecole, Chat, Chien, and Lundi-Mardi-Mecredi-Jeudi-Vendredi-Samedi-Dimanche. We ride a boat for five days. It has a deck with chairs on it. When I stand on the deck I see pirates underwater. One has a knife in his mouth. He puts a finger on his lips. Shhhhh. Don’t tell. I like pirate stories but I don’t want to walk the plank. I look around the deck. Maybe they’ll choose the lady in a wheelchair. She’s old and won’t mind. But what if they want kids? For easier chewing? Jim walks up behind me. Time to eat. Come on.
We sit at a round table in the children’s dining room. There is a tablecloth and heavy silverware. A waiter with a towel over his arm serves hot food. When he lifts the dome I see a pirate hook. I blink. I see an omelet. I understand the sea. Things live underneath. People bob on top. I want to be an octopus. I want to dive to the bottom and hit the murk. I want to shoot out ink.
* * *
In Andernos the ocean is near. We walk to salty flats. There are bubbles of clams and crayfish. Muck that sucks your feet. I’m careful on the seaweed. Seaweed covers holes that lead to a deep lair. In the lair are blood-sucking octopuses who live on dead pirates. They like pirates but their favorite food is English-speaking kids. I am careful on the seaweed because Eliza and Jim and I are the only English-speaking kids in the town.
If I do get sucked in I will speak French. I know more words. Croissant. Pain Chocolate. Gribouille. Gribouille means I’m stupid. The teacher says gribouille. We call her Madame. Gribouiller is the verb of gribouille. Gribouille means scribble. In Andernos we sit at wooden desks for two people. On the top corners of the desk are two wells of purple ink. We dip pens in. We write letters that go straight up and down instead of slant. We practice strings of each letter on lines in our cahiers. If the ink pen blobs it shoots purple spiders on the page. These are gribouilles. They are very bad. I get called gribouille. When it happens I get tears in my eyes. I stare at the dirty neck of Pascal in front of me. He doesn’t care about gribouilles. He laughs when Madame hits his head.
* * *
Daddy gets fat eating pastries. After school he meets Jim and Eliza and me at the creek on our way home. He brings paper and folds boats. We float them on the creek. I push mine with a stick and drown an entire family. The old men who play Bocce ball don’t hear the cries. After the creek is the pastry store. We buy éclairs. We say Gluttony is a sin we gladly commit. At the Andernos house the Seven Deadly Sins hang in picture frames. I pass Gluttony-Sloth-Wrath Greed-Pride-Lust-Envy as I climb the stairs to my room. In my room is a bed with a dark headboard. The headboard is huge and carved. When I have to fly backward and then forget I dive through the carved dark wood. I wander in a forest. I peck carved wood with my beak.
The house is full of dark wood. It creaks with sound but is not haunted. I know this because I check. I open every drawer. I lift the Deadly Sins. I punch through all the pillows. I tell Eliza and Jim we are safe. They look at me like I’m gribouille. They know they’re safe. They know it. In their classroom they have a teacher who speaks some English. In their classroom they’re not alone in a sea of bobbing words that make no sense. I was Miss Fern’s helper. I never made mistakes. If I did I scratched them out. I had a pink eraser. I can’t erase gribouilles. I want to use a pencil! I scream this in the kitchen. Mommy says calm down. I’m having a big adventure. Someday I’ll look back.
I do homework from the Ecole grammar book. Daddy helps. We sit against the dark headboard. I hold the open book. Underneath a noun is a red square. Under a verb is a blue triangle. Under an object noun is a green circle. A red square does a blue triangle to a green circle. I start to see that words do the same thing in French as they do in English. A sentence is a string. Words are sounds. Words are alive. One day at school I understand everything. I write stories in French. I have no gribouilles. I have Bon! Tres Bien! Charmant! I am in French heaven. I twirl berets. I suck Gauloises. I fall into soft baguettes.
* * *
In Andernos third grade isn’t important. Our parents take us out of school before the year is done. Madame tells the class to write Au Revoir in big letters. I say goodbye to Pascal and my desk mate. Goodbye makes me sad even when I’m happy. I’m happy to drive around Europe with Mommy and Daddy and Jim and Eliza. We stay in campsites. Mommy and Daddy count the seconds while Eliza and Jim and I race to set up the blue tent. We get fast pushing the metal sticks into dirt. In the backseat of the car I make up friends for Eliza and Jim and me. I bend my fingers into shapes. There’s Duck. Mad Duckter. Horse. Crocodile. Dog. Rabbit and Bent-Ear Rabbit. These friends live in a magic land where animals speak to kids but not grown-ups. Grown-ups are so gribouille they don’t know the land can be reached by jumping into a gutter. You shut your eyes and when you touch the bottom of the gutter you swim through clear water until you get to Duckburg. In Duckburg the animals love you. My knuckles get sore when they talk. In my best story there is an evil committed by the Mad Duckter. He scares everyone so much they won’t go to his castle. But Duck and Rabbit have grande valeur. They crash into the laboratory of the Mad Duckter and learn he’s not evil. He is misunderstood. He has a brave heart but his Mad Duckter laugh gives the idea he’s insane.
Our parents sit in the front seats with paper maps. There are pencil marks on famous cathedrals. To Eliza and Jim and me the cathedrals look the same. When the car stops we say No, another cathedral? I look at the gargoyles. They stick out their tongues and their eyes bulge. One of them blinks. He is not evil. He is misunderstood. The gargoyle begs for help so I sneak him into the car. He crawls over the front seat. He grabs the steering wheel. He opens his wings of rock and knocks our parents unconscious. Eliza and Jim and I have to hitchhike by ourselves. In Paris we climb the Eiffel Tower with our bare hands. We go hand then hand then hand. That’s the way through fear. You think about each bar and not the space between. Under my skin I am steel. I am made of metal knives that slice through dire doom. I am a surgeon. I cut the sky. I fly through the slit. Stitch it.
* * *
There’s a closet behind the sky where everything goes dark. I like to hide in closets. I don’t like to exist. She’s a grown-up now. She cries when she hears me say this. Grown-ups shouldn’t cry. I use my finger to wipe her cheek. She takes my hand and squeezes. Steel inside the bones. Blisters on my palm.
about the writer
Kim Merrill is a playwright whose plays have been produced regionally and off-off-broadway. Her work has received an Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award (2009), EST/Sloan commission (2007), Playwrights First Award (1998) and Pilgrim Project grant (2001). Her play “Finding Claire” is published by Dramatists Play Service, and her short play Tasha Walks is available on www.Playingonair.org, with Marsha Mason and Steven Boyers performing. Her prose memoir Red Girl Jumping, from which “Speaking” is an excerpt, has received residency support from The MacDowell Colony (2017) Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2018) and Helene Wurlitzer Foundation (2019.) She received her MFA from Columbia University and lives in New York City.