Speaking With Tongues

Chapter Five

Chapter Five, The Temporariness Of Everything. Even Family.


Naturally, I felt much better when I woke up. Mornings always had that effect on me when I was younger. But I still remembered the way I felt that night, even though I didn’t really feel like that anymore, so I thought it’d be kind of funny when I went downstairs to eat breakfast and I said to my mom, “I’m not going to church anymore.”

Even though I didn’t really mean it or anything, I still got pretty annoyed with her reaction.

“What do you mean you’re not going to church anymore?” she said, all psychotic like I just told her I was creating an atom bomb in my room. She was cutting vegetables so she held up the knife as if she was threatening me with it. I’m sure she didn’t mean it like that though.

“What do you mean?” she demanded again.

I didn’t really mean anything by it, so I just sat down and ate breakfast quietly, then she continued her feverish cutting of vegetables and said, “You’ve been going to church since you were born. Don’t be ridiculous.” It was like saying “You’ve been going to school all your life. Don’t be ridiculous.” Maybe you just have to eventually stop at some point and graduate to other things, you know? Just because there’s no grad church, doesn’t mean you have to be stuck in church church all your life. I mean, sure, there are things you’ve got to be doing all your life, like if you’re born a girl then you’ve got to be a girl all your life, but this isn’t something you’re born with, it’s just something you do. My mother never understood that. For her, everything she did was some necessary ritual that made life, life. She really couldn’t function without watering her plants every morning at 6 a.m. or dusting the entire house every Saturday afternoon or going to church every Sunday. It’s not even funny.

I guess I never really had a problem with it all though, because, in obvious ways, I’m sort of like my mom. I mean, I like certainty and I like to have a certain pattern to things, so it was never really a problem for me to go to school five days a week and to church four days a week and to bed every night at the same time and to never have to change the time on my alarm clock. Those were the things life dealt me, so I got used to them and they made me happy. I didn’t know they made me happy though until they all slowly dissipated from my life, me being helpless to this. And this awareness of my helplessness eventually diminished my concern about it all, like a cancer patient with a poor prognosis might slump their frame in a ‘so be it’ manner.

Watching my mother chop her vegetables for her family, I was hit with the sudden realization that I had not much left to care about. I felt alone and I quickly became aware of my loneliness. You see, I have five older brothers, but like I said before, James is really the only one I actually talk to. Our family was always held together by the simple fact that it was a family. Us siblings were normal in our interactions in every way you’d expect; we had our healthy routine of word and fist fights. My parents clothed and fed us, made us attend school and church, and received our fear and respect of their spankings and reproaches. They expected of us only what they taught us, and knew of us only what they saw. We were like books that they read but never studied; a required reading. The only problem I ever had with my family was that nobody had a relationship with anyone. We were a functioning, dysfunctional machine, our cogs oiled by “please”s and “thank you”s but never “I’m truly sorry and I want you to know that I care for you” and “I love you”.

Peter, the eldest, sort of reminds me of Paul Bunyan, with his burly frame and coarse beard and the checker-patterned shirts. I’ve always suggested that he carry a hatchet around with him, but he’d never consent. He never said much of anything, and even though I just complained about nobody in my family saying much of meaning to one another, this was probably why I liked Peter second best, next to James. He’s quiet and likeable, like a cartoon bear, you just never really get to know the guy.