She hadn’t put down the grocery bags when her boy finally began to talk. She hadn’t even closed the door. He stood there sure as the pope and pointed at her with sticky fingers. Apo, her little Nicholas said. He looked at the ceiling, and his eyes were shut. Apo tou nun epi ton hapanta. It sounded like a song. It sounded like the martial arts movies Gary liked to watch. She dropped her bags at the sound. She let them fall to the kitchen tiles, and the eggs broke and seeped through the paper.
More than two years she’d waited for him to speak. She’d checked all her parenting books and wrote in her journal, and she waited for a syllable, for any sound at all. The Binghams’ little girl was putting whole sentences together. She was singing along with the TV, and people said not to worry. Boys can be slow that way, Holly. He’s not a talker but look how he walks. Look at his sturdy legs. They only made her more nervous how they tried to comfort her. She worked harder to coax the syllables out. She talked to him while she pushed his stroller along the streets. She pointed to the maples and the mountains and bulldozers on the street. She asked him questions, and he looked at her with those shiny eyes and his mouth made a perfect pink O. She answered her own questions and talked some more, and she sang even though her voice was awful. At night while he slept she whispered things into his ear. With Gary’s long hours and only her voice in the house, she was getting a little strange. She wondered more than once if she was helping him. But now her boy was standing there, and the words were coming out in a jumble.
“Look at you,” she said. She went to him and knelt. She didn’t touch him or reach for him. Better not to scare him.
Sebastou, he was saying now. Sebastou Germanikou, and a little bubble of spit formed in the corner of his mouth. It didn’t sound like Spanish, though the gardeners shouted every afternoon just outside his window. It didn’t sound like any language she knew, but it didn’t matter because he was making sounds. Thirty months of silence in the house and now her boy was trying to tell her something. Soon he’d be talking like Emily Bingham and all the other children who toddled in the park. He’d be pestering her for toys. He opened his eyes, those dark eyes that were nothing like hers and they weren’t like Gary’s either. He clenched his little fists and smiled.
His arms went tight sometimes when the words came. His eyes rolled back in his head. All those words, all those musical sounds. Their boy said them with conviction, and none of them made sense. Gary who never frowned and never worried had started to pace the floors. He hadn’t looked this anxious since taking the bar exam. “It’s like The Exorcist,” he said one evening. They were standing in the kitchen, and Nicholas was babbling in his chair. “We’ll need a busload of priests to straighten him back out.” Gary tugged at his spiky black hair. He made jokes when he was nervous. It was no different from a twitch, but still it wasn’t right. She lifted Nicholas from his chair and carried him to his crib because she didn’t want him to hear what his daddy was saying. She was mad when she loaded the dishwasher and when she wiped the table clean. It wasn’t until Gary touched her hand that she began to cry.
They went together to the doctor. Even Gary had to admit it was time. Their pediatrician sent them to a psychiatrist and that doctor sent them to somebody else, and everyplace they went the doctors used the same words. ADHD and expressive vocabulary delays and phonological disorders. They talked about autism, all of them. They talked about its wide spectrum, and these words meant nothing when she saw her sweet boy’s face and how his fingers curled around hers. He wasn’t even three yet, and the specialists took blood samples and family histories and scanned his brain, and it looked like a watercolor against that black screen. It looked like a butterfly caught in a bowl.
The speech pathologist sent him to a young therapist who frightened him with her bulging blue eyes. There were toy trucks and bouncing balls and stuffed bunnies along the shelves, and he began to cry as soon as the therapist touched him. He wailed like a child being whipped. His arms went stiff again. He arched his back and shouted in his special language, and he didn’t stop not even when Holly came running. He panted against her cheek.
A professor named Anastas had heard about her boy. His cousin was an X-ray technician who’d listened to Nicholas sing. The professor came to visit just before Christmas and sat in their family room. Holly held Nicholas on her lap. He rocked back and forth and talked in a low low voice. He was in his dream world again. He didn’t even notice this stranger who leaned in close to hear.
“It’s Greek,” Anastas said. The light reflected against his glasses so Holly couldn’t see his eyes. “It’s Greek the way it must have sounded. He pronounces it with tones.”
Anastas was too excited to drink the coffee Holly had poured. He stood up and sat back down. He tugged at the threads along his cuffs where his sweater was coming unraveled. It lost its tones over the years, he explained to Holly. Two thousand years ago it must have sounded something like Chinese. That’s how Nicholas was talking. Like someone come from a time machine. He was reciting inscriptions. He was reading from letters that soldiers wrote. Greek soldiers in Egypt who wrote back to their wives.
“He’s not reading,” Holly said. “My boy is only two, and he’s just talking. He’s making up sounds in his head.”
“The soldiers’ letters are down in Tennessee.” Anastas reached for his laptop. He shook his head as if to clear it. “They keep the papyrus in special rooms. The archeologists didn’t know at first. They thought the letters were worthless. They were looking for gold and glass and pottery and not some scribbled notes.” Anastas shook his head again. “They burned the papyrus for that sweet smell. That’s why there’s only a few left. A few when there were thousands.”
“We’ve never been down South,” Holly said. “Nicholas was born right here in the Springs.” He was born at Penrose Hospital, and all the nurses said they’d never seen a better baby. Almost nine pounds and his eyes were already clear. They shone like the moon on water.
Anastas was setting up his recorder. He was opening up his laptop and untangling the cords. “He’s a miracle. And it’s not just Greek I hear. There are other languages, too.”
“You need to leave,” Holly told him. She pulled Nicholas closer to her chest. “You won’t be recording him today.”
She wasn’t polite when she held the door. She didn’t take his card. And though she needed to make dinner and the dirty laundry was mounded in front of the machine, she held Nicholas for hours that afternoon. She turned on the lights on the Christmas tree and rocked him until he slept. She sang to him. Sleep, little boy, sleep. Your father’s tending sheep. Your momma’s shaking the tree and all the dreams fall deep. She sang, and his little face went slack. She thought of burning paper, of smoke wisping round, and all the traces those people had left. They’d lingered for two thousand years, and with the strike of a match they were gone. She nuzzled her boy in the crux of his neck. She breathed in his sweet smell.
Greek, Aequian, and Etruscan. Dacian. Elymian, Faliscan, and Ligurian. There were so many more. Messapic, Minoan, Oscan, Umbrian. And more still. The names belonged to other planets and other worlds. They belonged to craters on the moon. The professors came to listen, and Gary let them in. It’s for science, Gary said. It’s for their research, and she tried not to be angry. He was looking for his son, that’s how she thought of it. His son who sat all day and rocked in his chair. Who didn’t play with the trucks they bought him, who didn’t listen to music or clap his hands or sing. This was his way of keeping something when everything else was lost.
•
Healers came, too, and believers in reincarnation. Serious men in suits who tracked snow into the house. Women who wore beads and let their hair go long and gray. Gary listened to them when they talked about children who spoke languages from other lives. Who’d lived a thousand years before and remembered what they saw. It happened on the Pentecost, he said. That’s just how it went. The Galileans spoke a dozen different languages so the visitors could understand. They spoke languages they’d never heard because that’s how God wanted it. He talked about taking Nicholas to church, to have him feel the Spirit. He wasn’t working long hours anymore. Most days he didn’t go into the office. His cell phone was never charged.
He started studying ancient Greek. He bought some used workbooks and struggled with the letters. I’ve never seen a language like this before, he said. It’s even worse than law school. He wrote in his notebooks and learned the words for father and mother and son, and Holly made him coffee. She kept quiet because what was there to say. If those professors couldn’t reach him with all their expertise, then what hope was there for Gary, who’d almost failed college French.
He crouched before Nicholas when he was ready. He held his sheet of paper and cleared his throat. “I’m not so sure about the grammar,” he said. “Guess we’ll just have to see.”
“Ego eimi sos pateras.” He spoke loud as a preacher. “Pa-te-ras.” He thumped his chest to emphasize each syllable, and Nicholas opened his eyes.
“Pou ei?” He reached for his boy’s wrist. Where are you? “Pou ei?” Gary asked again, but Nicholas wasn’t listening. No, Nicholas was starting to rock again. His head tilted to the side.
Gary read the rest of his notes. He’d written all sorts of questions for his boy. Questions and explanations and things to calm him down. Your name is Nicholas. And here is your mother. She loves you. When are you coming home? He said these things in Greek and sometimes he stuttered and had to begin again, and Nicholas closed his eyes. He slept in his little chair.
“It’s a start,” Gary said. He pushed himself up from the floor. “He heard me that first time. Did you see? Did you see how he paid attention?”
“Yes,” she said, “yes. I saw it all,” and Gary looked contented. He whistled a little under his breath. He opened his Greek grammar books and started where he’d stopped, and it looked like random scribbles from where she was. It looked strange and familiar both. He’d learn all the languages right up the tree, she could tell from the set of his jaw. He’d go backward in time to the beginning. Climbing up to catch his boy, who would always fall away.
She gave Nicholas an orange to hold, and he reached for it and smiled. Gary was waiting in the car outside, but she didn’t try to hurry. Nicholas loved going to the grocery store. It calmed him even on bad days. He loved the fruits and the fine water mist from the sprayers. He swung his legs back and forth in the cart, and twice she had to straighten him out again and make sure his belt was latched. She picked some ears of corn. The beets looked good, and she filled up two bags with them so she could make a salad. Gary needed more vegetables. He spent too much time inside. His skin had gone from walnut to ivory, and the capillaries showed below his eyes. She needed to cook more often and clean up the house. She needed to put away the toys.
She was pulling a plastic bag off the dispenser when Nicholas dropped the orange. It rolled underneath the cart, and before she could pick it up he reached for her wrist and squeezed. He tilted his head. He looked at her and tightened his hold, and the expression in his eyes was something like surprise. He looked around the store. At the dented carts and the Easter lilies that were arranged beside the door. All the people in their muddy shoes, all their tired eyes. A little girl with red hair ran between the aisles. He looked at her and the ribbons in her braids and the way her dress swung around her knees. He squeezed harder and dug his nails into Holly’s skin.
An older woman pushed her cart alongside them. “Excuse me,” she said. “I need to get by.” She was holding a folder full of coupons.
Holly didn’t move, and she didn’t answer. She stayed where she was, but Nicholas let her hand go anyway. He rolled back in his metal seat, and what she had seen in his eyes, whatever it was, had gone away.
“Nicholas,” she said. “Come back to me.” She set his hand around her wrist and held it there. Who knew the things he saw. His eyes were dark when he was born. Dark and without end. He’d looked right past her in the birthing room. Like a tiny astronaut or an ocean explorer. When the nurses set him in her arms, his fingers had curled around her thumb but only for a moment. He pulled away and raised his fist toward the ceiling as if to show her something. Look, he seemed to say, look at what you’re missing, and she was certain then that she’d known him always and that he’d always be a stranger.
“Nicholas,” she said again, “listen to your mama.” She unbuckled the straps in the shopping cart and pulled him to her shoulder. “There’s nothing for you there,” but even as she said it she wondered if it was true. She rocked with him against the shopping cart. She stroked his curly hair.