Eight
One night, while cleaning the kitchen after dinner, she’d ventured a complaint to her mother.
Everyone in the family skirted around her stuttering like the subject was radioactive.
They all adopted a blank, patient look on their faces when her voice would snag, as if they’d never noticed before.
What’s happening over there? How interesting!
When she confided to Honey how she struggled to read out loud in French class, hoping Honey might finally offer help, she could see her mother’s shoulders strain against her cotton blouse, the set of her mouth descend.
Honey rinsed off her soapy hands and said to Fern, “I have an idea.”
“You do?” Fern was surprised. Honey only liked to hear good news, to talk about things that made her happy and proud, preferably both, when it involved her children. Fern and Honey were often at odds.
“Right before it’s time to read in class, say to yourself, quietly, three times, ‘Come Jesus, help me. Come Jesus, help me. Come Jesus, help me.’” She smiled at Fern, pleased with herself.
“I—I—I—don’t think that’s going to work, Mom.”
“Have you tried it?”
“No, I haven’t tried inviting Jesus into French class. I didn’t know he was available on command like I Dream of Jeannie.”
Honey turned away and started scrubbing the bottom of a pot. “I’m trying to help here, Fern.”
“I know.” Fern did know. This was Honey’s idea of “helping.” To suggest something supernatural, something so off-the-wall Catholic that completely excused both from any personal responsibility.
The first time she’d brought up seeing a speech therapist, a few years ago, Honey had looked at her like she’d asked for a cigarette and lighter. “For what!” she’d said, affronted.
“To help with my stuttering.”
“Nobody notices you stutter. You have to take your time, Fern. Go more slowly!”
“Mom, everyone notices. And going slowly is the problem.” That was the day at the end of eighth grade when David Saunders signed her little handmade autograph book, a pile of pages stapled together with an elaborate hand-decorated cover that all the girls had made the final week of school.
He wrote in big red letters on top of the second page: “F-f-f-f-ern. I h-h-h-hope you have a g-g-g-g-good summer. S-s-s-s-orry, I c-c-c-couldn’t resist.” She’d flushed with humiliation and wanted to cry because how could she ask anyone else to sign her book after that?
They’d read what David Saunders had written, and what had been treated for years by her teachers and closest friends as implicit would become explicit.
Out of the question. She couldn’t even muster the nerve to confront David over his most egregious sin, that pathetic dope: She didn’t stutter on consonants! Only vowels.
She’d been so looking forward to high school, to a new building with a whole new set of teachers who wouldn’t have already had a dozen conversations about Fern’s speech.
But plenty of girls from her tiny Catholic elementary school class had matriculated to the same medium-sized Catholic high school and on the first day of the first class, when she’d had to stand and introduce herself and tell the class a little something about her interests, Jenny Grecco, her main female tormentor from eighth grade, had started the cough.
Eh, eh, eh, every time Fern started to speak.
She stopped believing in new beginnings that day. Her life would follow her wherever she went. She stuttered, she weighed too much, she was the only member of her family who wasn’t beautiful or athletic. They were fluid and she was granite: Fern, fat and faltering.