VOX. Christina Dalcher

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ I thought.

      “For every ten words after that, the charge augments by a tenth of a microcoulomb. Get to half a microcoulomb, and you’ll feel pain. Reach a full microcoulomb and”—he paused and looked away—“and the pain becomes unbearable.” He took my left hand in his own and checked the number on the counter. “Whew. One ninety-six. Thank god you didn’t keep talking. Another few words and you would have hit one microcoulomb.”

      Patrick and I had rather different ideas of what “unbearable pain” meant.

      He continued while I held a bag of frozen peas to the circular burn and kept my eyes trained on the closed door of Sonia’s bedroom. The boys were in there with her, at Patrick’s insistence, no doubt making sure she didn’t speak. No one wanted a repeat performance of the Electrocuted Female, not when a five-year-old was cast in the lead role.

      “I think what happened is this, babe. I think you were going so fast, the device couldn’t keep up.” There were tears in his eyes now. “I’ll go talk to someone about it tomorrow morning. I promise. Christ, I’m so sorry.”

      It took only a second’s worth of imagination to see my little girl blasted from her chair, no idea why she was hurting, to turn my bowels into liquid fire. So I went about it the Pavlovian way, focusing on the reward, as if I were training a dog, all for the greater good, I thought at the time.

      Now, in the middle of this odd nonconversation at our dinner table, I realize I needn’t have bothered.

      Sonia’s tears have started, falling into her plate of untouched meat loaf and potatoes like fat raindrops.

      “Did something bad happen at school today?”

      A single nod. Up once, down once, like an exaggeration. I can fish out of her whatever secret she’s holding.

      “All right, baby girl. There, there.” I’m stroking her curls, trying to get some calm into her while all I want to do is scream. “Did someone say something to you?”

      The tiniest of moans escapes her lips.

      “One of the other girls?”

      Now her head moves right, then left, under my hand. So not one of the students.

      “Teacher?” I catch her eye—just a flicker from me to Steven. And I know. “Steven, your turn to clean up, okay?” I say.

      He gives me the Look.

      “Please,” I say.

      I don’t expect it to work, but a softness comes into my son’s eyes, and he picks up the plates, careful not to stack them before they’re rinsed. He makes this little bow, an insignificant thing, but I can’t help seeing Reverend Carl Corbin and the way he swept out his hand this afternoon, offering me a place to sit down in my very own living room.

      Offering, I think, and words tumble around in my head like Scrabble tiles. Officious. Official. Offensive. Off. Off with her fucking head.

      The twins join Steven’s cleanup parade without too much objection, and Sonia and I are left at the table.

      “You all right, darling?” I say. Then I place a hand to her forehead. A moment ago, my girl was sweating like a gin and tonic forgotten on a porch in July; now she’s settled down a bit. Not sweating, but far from a cool cucumber.

      This is the worst of all of it. This, right now, watching Sonia track Steven, watching her grow more calm with every step he takes toward the kitchen. It’s the worst, because now I know what Sonia is really afraid of.

      I don’t speak, only cock my head toward the place where Steven is rinsing bits of ground beef and potato off plates, humming some old tune.

      And she nods.

      Steven was eleven when his only sister arrived—almost old enough to be a father himself, if only in the biological sense. He had a way with her, kept her distracted and happy, changed the crappy diapers without more than a “Hey, Mom, this is some crappy nappy!” Few tweens learn baby sign language, but my eldest son was one of them. By barely older than a year, Sonia had the signs for her entire world down: eat, drink, sleep, dolly, and—her all-time favorite—go poo. Steven dubbed this particular gesture, often accompanied by the spoken words, a translation of some primitive language, a system so arcane that no one, not even Dr. Jean McClellan, would be able to piece it together.

      He launched into a tune so grotesquely bastardized I didn’t know what to think. Patrick nearly spilled his morning coffee at the sound of Steven singing.

      There were the Police and their doo-doo-doo-da-da-da—or however it goes; there was that Lou Reed piece about how the “colored girls” sing “do-do-do”—ultra-racist now, but it was Lou Reed and he could get away with all kinds of shit back then; there were those Motown bands and those white people who wanted to sound like they were a Motown band and there was every other songwriter in the modern world who stumbled over a lyric and ended up filling the space with something that rhymed with the kiddie word for defecation. And, finally, there was my own son crooning along to the entire musical canon from Brahms to Beyoncé, replacing each and every word with “poo.”

      The memories make the present doubly hard, but, finally, I say it.

      “Did Steven come to your school today?”

      A nod.

      “Do you want to tell me about it?”

      No. She does not.

      “Story, then?” I say.

      I let her go off to her bedroom, my lackluster reminder to brush her teeth following her from the dining table, down the hall, to the bathroom she has for herself now that the twins are of that age when separate peeing quarters become important. Patrick’s door doesn’t so much as squeak on its hinges when Sonia runs by it.

      I take everything out on Steven. Maybe this isn’t the best parenting tactic, but I’m furious.

      “What happened at Sonia’s school today, Steven?” I say after sending Sam and Leo off to the TV room. They’re eager to go, mostly because, without their older brother, they get a few minutes alone with the remote.

      Steven shrugs but doesn’t turn from the sink.

      “I’d like an answer, kiddo,” I say, and I press his shoulder, forcing him to turn.

      It’s only now that I see the small pin on his collar, about a pinkie’s worth wide. Inside the silver circle, on a white field, is the single letter P in bright blue. I’ve seen this before.

      The first time, it was on television during that ridiculous segment where three Bible-thumping women in twinsets tore Jackie Juarez to shreds. Not a week later, I saw it decorating one of Olivia King’s church dresses when she knocked on my door asking if I had an egg to spare.

      It’s supposed to be a symbol of solidarity, I guess, this quiet blue P worn by both men and women now. Olivia’s daughter, Julia, has one, and sometimes I’ve seen it when I’ve been at the grocery store or at the dry cleaners picking up Patrick’s shirts. I ran into Dr. Claudia, my former gynecologist, in the post office, and even she had one, although I suspected her husband had more to do with Claudia’s choice СКАЧАТЬ