The girl who listened began with geese. Because she was born in spring their loud arrival heralded hers, but by September all her friends were flying south and she heard for the rest of her life in all voices only endings, farewells. She lay on her back as still as she could and listened to her mother’s stories of going away. The Genesis list of au revoir; Moses on the lam; Noah and all the animals, the lamb with the key, poor Satan and the end of time.
Dear Emma, your grandmother is going away soon and you will never see her again, she is my mother and I came out of her tummy just like you came out of my tummy and one day . . . well never mind that now . . . it is time to listen to what she has to say before she leaves. Dear Emma, these are your older brothers and they need all our help to get started in the world, and I still love you but will have to spend a lot of time with them and, look there’s Daddy going to work! Dear Emma, off you go down the steps, go play with the big children on the beach before they go to school, and your cousin? Just ignore him, he’s just teasing, go on, wave bye-bye to the sun, stay away from the waves, they want to take you to Neptune’s Cave. Dear Emma, kiss Daddy, he is going to live with his graduate student in a snake pit and will visit you on weekends. Dear Emma, I won’t tell you again, this is the last time, I’ve had it up to here, don’t cling! you are always underfoot!
Flap flap flap. Honk honk honk.
The girl who listened to everything felt safe in vehicles, and travelled the world in perambulator and wagon and wheelbarrow and tricycle and school desk and library carrel, with and to and from her mom, smiling at everyone and then laughing, and a smile would hook a smile, a laugh would wake a laugh as pleasing as a pigeon coo. Listen. Those are mice feet; that’s a crow; that’s footsteps. That’s a disposal unit; that’s a sucker truck; that’s a jet. Each crackle and scuff told her she had all the time in the world to practise words, round and fluid conversations in her head.
Because one day a boy would come, a poet explorer done with his travels, a boy with a mysterious illness, and he would be so familiar and he would give her long unhurried sentences as they crossed the Atacama, Patagonia, the Serengeti, the Rift Valley, the Gobi, Archangel on the Dvina, Tasmania, the Ghats, Bhutan, and the Olympic Peninsula, places whose names would wrap around her, impenetrable, words to hold her and catch the attention of passing hunters and gatherers pausing to tie their horses and camels and oxen and goats to stakes in remote outposts in order to converse as they traversed the plain from cities to villages.
It would take years and all her time and energy, but she wanted more than anything to find the perfect listening stance to hear such words and names, and although she did not at first recognise her long-lost cousin when he stood before her and spoke, she closed her eyes and listened, and found him, and finding him, she found it, the way to be in the speaking universe. Breath, breath, breath. Basket of ducks, basket of geese, destined for market. A herd of wild ponies. A dog backed into an alley. Her foremost self leapt. It was him! She was his! This was possible! And then she was running, running, never stopping for more than a heart-thundering breath. The Tao of Running, Zen of Track and Field, her feet slap-slapping winter sidewalks and red-gravel circuits. It was him and she was skinny, hard, muscled and through the applause she would only smile and bow, smile and bow. Her background chorus of tragedy, last days, cellular exile, still sang in her blood, but now Greek was Latin, Latin was French, French was English.
Dear Emma, the desert is not empty, but he has come a long way and you only get to say the briefest hello. And these quickly erected buildings? These scaffolds, libraries, universities, museums and galleries, factories and collieries? Don’t trust them, don’t believe in them. They will crumble, and you will be under the sun again. Dear Emma, this is Charles. He is possible. Speak a perfect greeting. Do not stop listening and do not get fat.
Slap slap slap. Honk honk honk.
All sounds as last words. All thoughts as warnings and instructions. Charles!