VOX. Christina Dalcher

THIRTY-TWO

       THIRTY-THREE

       THIRTY-FOUR

       THIRTY-FIVE

       THIRTY-SIX

       THIRTY-SEVEN

       THIRTY-EIGHT

       THIRTY-NINE

       FORTY

       FORTY-ONE

       FORTY-TWO

       FORTY-THREE

       FORTY-FOUR

       FORTY-FIVE

       FORTY-SIX

       FORTY-SEVEN

       FORTY-EIGHT

       FORTY-NINE

       FIFTY

       FIFTY-ONE

       FIFTY-TWO

       FIFTY-THREE

       FIFTY-FOUR

       FIFTY-FIVE

       FIFTY-SIX

       FIFTY-SEVEN

       FIFTY-EIGHT

       FIFTY-NINE

       SIXTY

       SIXTY-ONE

       SIXTY-TWO

       SIXTY-THREE

       SIXTY-FOUR

       SIXTY-FIVE

       SIXTY-SIX

       SIXTY-SEVEN

       SIXTY-EIGHT

       SIXTY-NINE

       SEVENTY

       SEVENTY-ONE

       SEVENTY-TWO

       SEVENTY-THREE

       SEVENTY-FOUR

       SEVENTY-FIVE

       SEVENTY-SIX

       SEVENTY-SEVEN

       SEVENTY-EIGHT

       SEVENTY-NINE

       EIGHTY

       ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

       About the Publisher

ONE

      If anyone told me I could bring down the president, and the Pure Movement, and that incompetent little shit Morgan LeBron in a week’s time, I wouldn’t believe them. But I wouldn’t argue. I wouldn’t say a thing.

      I’ve become a woman of few words.

      Tonight at supper, before I speak my final syllables of the day, Patrick reaches over and taps the silver-toned device around my left wrist. It’s a light touch, as if he were sharing the pain, or perhaps reminding me to stay quiet until the counter resets itself at midnight. This magic will happen while I sleep, and I’ll begin Tuesday with a virgin slate. My daughter, Sonia’s, counter will do the same.

      My boys do not wear word counters.

      Over dinner, they are all engaged in the usual chatter about school.

      Sonia also attends school, although she never wastes words discussing her days. At supper, between bites of a simple stew I made from memory, Patrick questions her about her progress in home economics, physical fitness, and a new course titled Simple Accounting for Households. Is she obeying the teachers? Will she earn high marks this term? He knows exactly the type of questions to ask: closed-ended, requiring only a nod or a shake of the head.

      I watch and listen, my nails carving half-moons into the flesh of my palms. Sonia nods when appropriate, wrinkles her nose when my young twins, not understanding the importance of yes/no interrogatives and finite answer sets, ask their sister to tell them what the teachers are like, how the classes are, which subject she likes best. So many open-ended questions. I refuse to think they do understand, that they’re baiting her, teasing out words. But at eleven, they’re old enough to know. And they’ve seen what happens when we overuse words.

      Sonia’s lips quiver as she looks from one brother to another, the pink of her tongue trembling on the edge of her teeth or the plump of her lower lip, a body part with a mind of its own, undulating. Steven, my eldest, extends a hand and touches his forefinger to her mouth.

      I could tell them what they want to know: All men at the front of the classrooms now. One-way system. Teachers talk. Students listen. It would cost me sixteen words.

      I have five left.

      “How is her vocabulary?” Patrick asks, knocking his chin my way. He rephrases. “Is she learning?”

      I shrug. By six, Sonia should have an army of ten thousand lexemes, individual troops that assemble and come to attention and obey the orders her small, still-plastic brain issues. Should have, if the three R’s weren’t now reduced to one: simple arithmetic. After all, one day my daughter will be expected to shop and to run a household, to be a devoted and dutiful wife. You need math for that, but not spelling. Not literature. Not a voice.

      “You’re the cognitive linguist,” Patrick says, gathering empty plates, urging Steven to do the same.

      “Was.”

      “Are.”

      In spite of my year of practice, the extra words leak out before I can stop them: “No. I’m. Not.”

      Patrick watches the counter tick off another three entries. I feel the pressure of each on my pulse like an ominous drum. “That’s enough, Jean,” he says.

      The boys exchange worried looks, the kind of worry that comes from knowing what occurs if the counter surpasses those three digits. One, zero, zero. This is when I say my last Monday word. To my daughter. The whispered “Goodnight” has barely escaped when Patrick’s eyes meet mine, pleading.

      I scoop her up and carry her off to bed. She’s heavier now, almost too much girl to be hoisted up, and I need both arms.

      Sonia smiles at me when I tuck her under the sheets. As usual, there’s no bedtime story, no exploring Dora, no Pooh and Piglet, no Peter Rabbit and his misadventures in Mr. McGregor’s lettuce patch. It’s frightening what she’s grown to accept as normal.

      I hum her to sleep with a song about mockingbirds and billy goats, the verses still and quiet pictures in my mind’s eye.

      Patrick watches from the door. His shoulders, once broad and strong, slump in a downward-facing V; his forehead is creased in matching lines. Everything about him seems to be pointing down.

TWO

      In my bedroom, as on all other nights, I wrap myself in a quilt of invisible words, pretending to read, allowing my eyes to dance over imagined pages of Shakespeare. If I’m feeling fancy, my preferred text might be Dante in his original, static Italian. So little of Dante’s language has changed through the centuries, but tonight I find myself slogging through a forgotten lexicon. I wonder how the Italian women might fare with the new ways if our domestic efforts ever go international.

      Perhaps they’ll talk more with their hands.

      But the chances of our sickness moving overseas are slim. Before television became a federalized monopoly, before the counters went on