Capítulo 3: Me talk pretty one day: Go Carolina
ANYONE WHO WATCHES EVEN THE SLIGHTEST amount of TV is familiar with the
scene: An agent knocks on the door of some seemingly ordinary home
or office. The door opens, and the person holding the knob is asked to
identify himself. The agent then says, "I‟m going to ask you to come
with me."
They‟re always remarkably calm, these agents. If asked "Why do I
need to go anywhere with you?" they‟ll straighten their shirt cuffs or
idly brush stray hairs from the sleeves of their sport coats and say, "Oh, I
think we both know why."
The suspect then chooses between doing things the hard way and
doing things the easy way, and the scene ends with either gunfire or the
gentlemanly application of handcuffs. Occasionally it‟s a case of
mistaken identity, but most often the suspect knows exactly why he‟s
being taken. It seems he‟s been expecting this to happen. The
anticipation has ruled his life, and now, finally, the wait is over. You‟re
sometimes led to believe that this person is actually relieved, but I‟ve
never bought it. Though it probably has its moments, the average day
spent in hiding is bound to beat the average day spent in prison. When it
comes time to decide who gets the bottom bunk, I think anyone would
agree that there‟s a lot to be said for doing things the hard way.
The agent came for me during a geography lesson. She entered the
room and nodded at my fifth-grade teacher, who stood frowning at a
map of Europe. What would needle me later was the realization that this
had all been prearranged. My capture had been scheduled to go down at
exactly 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon. The agent would be wearing a
dung-colored blazer over a red knit turtleneck, her heels sensibly low in
case the suspect should attempt a quick getaway.
"David," the teacher said, "this is Miss Samson, and she‟d like you to
go with her now."
No one else had been called, so why me? I ran down a list of recent
crimes, looking for a conviction that might stick. Setting fire to a
reportedly flameproof Halloween costume, stealing a set of barbecue
tongs from an unguarded patio, altering the word hit on a list of rules
posted on the gymnasium door; never did it occur to me that I might be
innocent.
"You might want to take your books with you," the teacher said. "And
your jacket. You probably won‟t be back before the bell rings."
Though she seemed old at the time, the agent was most likely fresh
out of college. She walked beside me and asked what appeared to be an
innocent and unrelated question: "So, which do you like better, State or
Carolina?"
She was referring to the athletic rivalry between the Triangle area‟s
two largest universities. Those who cared about such things tended to
express their allegiance by wearing either Tar Heel powder blue, or
Wolf Pack red, two colors that managed to look good on no one. The
question of team preference was common in our part of North Carolina,
and the answer supposedly spoke volumes about the kind of person you
either were or hoped to become. I had no interest in football or
basketball but had learned it was best to pretend otherwise. If a boy
didn‟t care for barbecued chicken or potato chips, people would accept it
as a matter of personal taste, saying, "Oh well, I guess it takes all kinds."
You could turn up your nose at the president or Coke or even God, but
there were names for boys who didn‟t like sports. When the subject
came up, I found it best to ask which team my questioner preferred.
Then I‟d say, "Really? Me, too!"
Asked by the agent which team I supported, I took my cue from her
red turtleneck and told her that I was for State. "Definitely State. State
all the way."
It was an answer I would regret for years to come.
"State, did you say?" the agent asked. "Yes, State. They‟re the
greatest."
"I see." She led me through an unmarked door near the principal‟s
office, into a small, windowless room furnished with two facing desks. It
was the kind of room where you‟d grill someone until they snapped, the
kind frequently painted so as to cover the bloodstains. She gestured
toward what was to become my regular seat, then continued her line of
questioning.
"And what exactly are they, State and Carolina?"
"Colleges? Universities?"
She opened a file on her desk, saying, "Yes, you‟re right. Your
answers are correct, but you‟re saying them incorrectly. You‟re telling
me that they‟re collegeth and univerthitieth, when actually they‟re
colleges and universities. You‟re giving me a th sound instead of a nice
clear s. Can you hear the distinction between the two different sounds?"
I nodded.
"May I please have an actual answer?"
"Uh-huh."
" „Uh-huh‟ is not a word."
"Okay."
"Okay what?"
"Okay," I said. "Sure, I can hear it."
"You can hear what, the distinction? The contrast?"
"Yeah, that."
It was the first battle of my war against the letter s, and I was
determined to dig my foxhole before the sun went down. According to
Agent Samson, a "state certified speech therapist," my s was sibilate,
meaning that I lisped. This was not news to me.
"Our goal is to work together until eventually you can speak
correctly," Agent Samson said. She made a great show of enunciating
her own sparkling s‟s, and the effect was profoundly irritating. "I‟m
trying to help you, but the longer you play these little games the longer
this is going to take."
The woman spoke with a heavy western North Carolina accent, which
I used to discredit her authority. Here was a person for whom the word
pen had two syllables. Her people undoubtedly drank from clay jugs and
hollered for Paw when the vittles were ready — so who was she to
advise me on anything? Over the coming years I would find a crack in
each of the therapists sent to train what Miss Samson now defined as my
lazy tongue. "That‟s its problem," she said. "It‟s just plain lazy."
My sisters Amy and Gretchen were, at the time, undergoing therapy
for their lazy eyes, while my older sister, Lisa, had been born with a lazy
leg that had refused to grow at the same rate as its twin. She‟d worn a
corrective brace for the first two years of her life, and wherever she
roamed she left a trail of scratch marks in the soft pine floor. I liked the
idea that a part of one‟s body might be thought of as lazy — not
thoughtless or hostile, just unwilling to extend itself for the betterment
of the team. My father often accused my mother of having a lazy mind,
while she in turn accused him of having a lazy index finger, unable to
dial the phone when he knew damn well he was going to be late.
My therapy sessions were scheduled for every Thursday at 2:30, and
with the exception of my mother, I discussed them with no one. The
word therapy suggested a profound failure on my part. Mental patients
had therapy. Normal people did not. I didn‟t see my sessions as the sort
of thing that one would want to advertise, but as my teacher liked to say,
"I guess it takes all kinds." Whereas my goal was to keep it a secret, hers
was to inform the entire class. If I got up from my seat at 2:25, she‟d
say, "Sit back down, David. You‟ve still got five minutes before your
speech therapy session." If I remained seated until 2:27, she‟d say,
"David, don‟t forget you have a speech therapy session at two-thirty."
On the days I was absent, I imagined she addressed the room, saying,
"David‟s not here today but if he were, he‟d have a speech therapy
session at two-thirty."
My sessions varied from week to week. Sometimes I‟d spend the half
hour parroting whatever Agent Samson had to say. We‟d occasionally
pass the time examining charts on tongue position or reading childish sladen texts recounting the adventures of seals or settlers named Sassy or
Samuel. On the worst of days she‟d haul out a tape recorder and show
me just how much progress I was failing to make.
"My speech therapist‟s name is Miss Chrissy Samson." She‟d hand
me the microphone and lean back with her arms crossed. "Go ahead, say
it. I want you to hear what you sound like."
She was in love with the sound of her own name and seemed to view
my speech impediment as a personal assault. If I wanted to spend the
rest of my life as David Thedarith, then so be it. She, however, was
going to be called Miss Chrissy Samson. Had her name included no s‟s,
she probably would have bypassed a career in therapy and devoted
herself to yanking out healthy molars or performing unwanted
clitoridectomies on the schoolgirls of Africa. Such was her personality.
"Oh, come on," my mother would say. "I‟m sure she‟s not that bad.
Give her a break. The girl‟s just trying to do her job."
I was a few minutes early one week and entered the office to find
Agent Samson doing her job on Garth Barclay, a slight, kittenish boy I‟d
met back in the fourth grade. "You may wait outside in the hallway until
it is your turn," she told me. A week or two later my session was
interrupted by mincing Steve Bixler, who popped his head in the door
and announced that his parents were taking him out of town for a long
weekend, meaning that he would miss his regular Friday session.
"Thorry about that," he said.
I started keeping watch over the speech therapy door, taking note of
who came and went. Had I seen one popular student leaving the office, I
could have believed my mother and viewed my lisp as the sort of thing
that might happen to anyone. Unfortunately, I saw no popular students.
Chuck Coggins, Sam Shelton, Louis Delucca: obviously, there was some
connection between a sibilate s and a complete lack of interest in the
State versus Carolina issue.
None of the therapy students were girls. They were all boys like me
who kept movie star scrapbooks and made their own curtains. "You
don‟t want to be doing that," the men in our families would say. "That‟s
a girl thing." Baking scones and cupcakes for the school janitors,
watching Guiding Light with our mothers, collecting rose petals for use
in a fragrant potpourri: anything worth doing turned out to be a girl
thing. In order to enjoy ourselves, we learned to be duplicitous. Our
stacks of Cosmopolitan were topped with an unread issue of Boy's Life
or Sports Illustrated, and our decoupage projects were concealed
beneath the sporting equipment we never asked for but always received.
When asked what we wanted to be when we grew up, we hid the truth
and listed who we wanted to sleep with when we grew up. "A policeman
or a fireman or one of those guys who works with high-tension wires."
Symptoms were feigned, and our mothers wrote notes excusing our
absences on the day of the intramural softball tournament. Brian had a
stomach virus or Ted suffered from that twenty-four-hour bug that
seemed to be going around.
"One of these days I‟m going to have to hang a sign on that door,"
Agent Samson used to say. She was probably thinking along the lines of
SPEECH THERAPY LAB, though a more appropriate marker would have read
FUTURE HOMOSEXUALS OF AMERICA. We knocked ourselves out trying to fit in but
were ultimately betrayed by our tongues. At the beginning of the school
year, while we were congratulating ourselves on successfully passing for
normal, Agent Samson was taking names as our assembled teachers
raised their hands, saying, "I‟ve got one in my homeroom," and "There
are two in my fourth-period math class." Were they also able to spot the
future drunks and depressives? Did they hope that by eliminating our
lisps, they might set us on a different path, or were they trying to prepare
us for future stage and choral careers?
Miss Samson instructed me, when forming an s, to position the tip of
my tongue against the rear of my top teeth, right up against the gum line.
The effect produced a sound not unlike that of a tire releasing air. It was
awkward and strange-sounding, and elicited much more attention than
the original lisp. I failed to see the hissy s as a solution to the problem
and continued to talk normally, at least at home, where my lazy tongue
fell upon equally lazy ears. At school, where every teacher was a
potential spy, I tried to avoid an s sound whenever possible. "Yes,"
became "correct," or a military "affirmative." "Please," became "with
your kind permission," and questions were pleaded rather than asked.
After a few weeks of what she called "endless pestering" and what I
called "repeated badgering," my mother bought me a pocket thesaurus,
which provided me with s-free alternatives to just about everything. I
consulted the book both at home in my room and at the daily learning
academy other people called our school. Agent Samson was not amused
when I began referring to her as an articulation coach, but the majority
of my teachers were delighted. "What a nice vocabulary," they said.
"My goodness, such big words!"
Plurals presented a considerable problem, but I worked around them
as best I could; "rivers," for example, became either "a river or two" or
"many a river." Possessives were a similar headache, and it was easier to
say nothing than to announce that the left-hand and the right-hand glove
of Janet had fallen to the floor. After all the compliments I had received
on my improved vocabulary, it seemed prudent to lie low and keep my
mouth shut. I didn‟t want anyone thinking I was trying to be a pet of the
teacher.
When I first began my speech therapy, I worried that the Agent
Samson plan might work for everyone but me, that the other boys might
strengthen their lazy tongues, turn their lives around, and leave me
stranded. Luckily my fears were never realized. Despite the woman‟s
best efforts, no one seemed to make any significant improvement. The
only difference was that we were all a little quieter. Thanks to Agent
Samson‟s tape recorder, I, along with the others, now had a clear sense
of what I actually sounded like. There was the lisp, of course, but more
troubling was my voice itself, with its excitable tone and high, girlish
pitch. I‟d hear myself ordering lunch in the cafeteria, and the sound
would turn my stomach. How could anyone stand to listen to me?
Whereas those around me might grow up to be lawyers or movie stars,
my only option was to take a vow of silence and become a monk. My
former classmates would call the abbey, wondering how I was doing,
and the priest would answer the phone. "You can‟t talk to him!" he‟d
say. "Why, Brother David hasn‟t spoken to anyone in thirty-five years!"
"Oh, relax," my mother said. "Your voice will change eventually."
"And what if it doesn‟t?"
She shuddered. "Don‟t be so morbid."
It turned out that Agent Samson was something along the lines of a
circuit-court speech therapist. She spent four months at our school and
then moved on to another. Our last meeting was held the day before
school let out for Christmas. My classrooms were all decorated, the halls
— everything but her office, which remained as bare as ever. I was
expecting a regular half hour of Sassy the seal and was delighted to find
her packing up her tape recorder.
"I thought that this afternoon we might let loose and have a party, you
and I. How does that sound?" She reached into her desk drawer and
withdrew a festive tin of cookies. "Here, have one. I made them myself
from scratch and, boy, was it a mess! Do you ever make cookies?"
I lied, saying that no, I never had.
"Well, it‟s hard work," she said. "Especially if you don‟t have a
mixer."
It was unlike Agent Samson to speak so casually, and awkward to sit
in the hot little room, pretending to have a normal conversation.
"So," she said, "what are your plans for the holidays?"
"Well, I usually remain here and, you know, open a gift from my
family."
"Only one?" she asked.
"Maybe eight or ten."
"Never six or seven?"
"Rarely," I said.
"And what do you do on December thirty-first, New Year‟s Eve?"
"On the final day of the year we take down the pine tree in our living
room and eat marine life."
"You‟re pretty good at avoiding those s‟s," she said. "I have to hand it
to you, you‟re tougher than most."
I thought she would continue trying to trip me up, but instead she
talked about her own holiday plans. "It‟s pretty hard with my fiancé in
Vietnam," she said. "Last year we went up to see his folks in Roanoke,
but this year I‟ll spend Christmas with my grandmother outside of
Asheville. My parents will come, and we‟ll all try our best to have a
good time. I‟ll eat some turkey and go to church, and then, the next day,
a friend and I will drive down to Jacksonville to watch Florida play
Tennessee in the Gator Bowl."
I couldn‟t imagine anything worse than driving down to Florida to
watch a football game, but I pretended to be impressed. "Wow, that
ought to be eventful."
"I was in Memphis last year when NC State whooped Georgia
fourteen to seven in the Liberty Bowl," she said. "And next year, I don‟t
care who‟s playing, but I want to be sitting front-row center at the
Tangerine Bowl. Have you ever been to Orlando? It‟s a super fun place.
If my future husband can find a job in his field, we‟re hoping to move
down there within a year or two. Me living in Florida. I bet that would
make you happy, wouldn‟t it?"
I didn‟t quite know how to respond. Who was this college bowl
fanatic with no mixer and a fiancé in Vietnam, and why had she taken so
long to reveal herself? Here I‟d thought of her as a cold-blooded agent
when she was really nothing but a slightly dopey, inexperienced speech
teacher. She wasn‟t a bad person, Miss Samson, but her timing was off.
She should have acted friendly at the beginning of the year instead of
waiting until now, when all I could do was feel sorry for her.
"I tried my best to work with you and the others, but sometimes a
person‟s best just isn‟t good enough." She took another cookie and
turned it over in her hands. "I really wanted to prove myself and make a
difference in people‟s lives, but it‟s hard to do your job when you‟re met
with so much resistance. My students don‟t like me, and I guess that‟s
just the way it is. What can I say? As a speech teacher, I‟m a complete
failure."
She moved her hands toward her face, and I worried that she might
start to cry. "Hey, look," I said. "I‟m thorry."
"Ha-ha," she said. "I got you." She laughed much more than she
needed to and was still at it when she signed the form recommending me
for the following year‟s speech therapy program. "Thorry, indeed.
You‟ve got some work ahead of you, mister."
I related the story to my mother, who got a huge kick out of it.
"You‟ve got to admit that you really are a sucker," she said.
I agreed but, because none of my speech classes ever made a
difference, I still prefer to use the word chump.
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