(Content warnings: character death, colonialism)
My slumber breaks with the raging force of a tidal wave. Shapes and colours stretch and writhe as I am dragged back to the conscious world. This sleep was my longest yet.
When the shaking finally stops, I realize I don’t recognize this place. Everything is very white. Antiseptic. I’m reminded of the chemical factories where I used to find myself from time to time, flitting between the growls of demanding supervisors and the protests of exhausted workers. But this place is not like those factories. It is quiet.
Except for the man whose words have brought me here. His lips are unsure, shaping me with a garbled accent. But nonetheless, he has spoken me back from the void.
I study the arch of his eyebrows, the flecks of hazel in his eyes. Ah! I know this man. But the last time I saw him, he was just a boy with a chipped tooth and something to prove. Now, his face is lined with wrinkles. His hair is speckled with grey. And his eyes are wet.
He is looking down at a very old woman, her frail body resting on the bed in this hospital room. Her eyelids flutter as he speaks, but she has no strength to respond. The woman I recognize instantly. She was the last one I saw before my long slumber.
He calls for his mother again in that hesitant accent. The word is rusted with lack of use. But it grounds me. I finally break through the mistiness of my surroundings. I am no longer half-here-half-there.
There is a knock on the door before the man can say anything else, and a doctor walks in. He is broad-shouldered with a balding head of grey hair. The doctor starts to speak, and English appears. It is different from the last time I saw it. Rugged. Even handsome, in a wild sort of way.
You look odd, I say to English, and it laughs.
Things have changed. This is Texas, it tells me. Less rules than London.
London. I remember that place. The boy’s plane had stopped there when he left. I try to recall the moment. There was a payphone in the airport. Coins clinking into the payment slot. An electronic hum as the phone dialled. And that same word that the boy had spoken today. But that time, his mother’s voice had responded. There was strength in her then. She told him she was proud of him, not to worry about her. She would be alright back on the island. He told her he would send money each week, as soon as he made his fortunes in America. She said a prayer for his wellbeing. And then he glanced at the ticking clock on the wall and told her it was time to hang up. The fortunes he dreamed of had yet to manifest, and his coins would only allow them to speak for a couple of minutes.
I remember the receiver being placed back on the wall. And as I began to fade away, pulled back to the island village where his mother was crying for him, he looked down at the printed paper in his hand, reading from it reverently. It was the text of his admissions letter to a prestigious university in America, that wondrous place he thought of so highly. And that was when English had appeared beside me, becoming clearer, taking my place in the heart of the boy once and for all.
You have been with him since that day? I ask English.
Of course. His daughter speaks Spanish too, you know. Spanish and I are entangled quite closely these days. We converge all the time, especially here in Texas.
I have never heard of Spanish.
You wouldn’t have. English is dismissive. It is different since I last saw it, but that puffed-up arrogance remains. It is well-traveled, of course, converging with other languages in every nook and cranny of the world. All I have left is this man-who-was-once-a-boy, his silent mother, and the frayed tether with which he keeps me awake. I search for my island in the embers of existence, but my island has forgotten me. My island has had no choice.
She’s dying, you know, English reminds me smugly. He brought her here to try to save her, but it’s too late. What reason will he have to speak you once she’s gone?
I do not fear obsolescence, the way some of us do. Perhaps there was a time when I did. But I have come to terms with it. I was once vigorous, flowing over the tongues of thousands like a mighty river. Every speaker was my child. But now I am a mother who has watched all her children die or forget. As I gaze upon the barely breathing body of a woman that lies on the hospital bed, I see that I will have to endure that pain once again.
Of course, it has been many years since she last tethered me to this world. English knows this. English was there when she was diagnosed with the strange disease in her throat. English was there when she lost her ability to speak beyond an indecipherable babble. English was there in the pitying words of everyone around her. The nurse. The care centre director. Her fellow residents. English was present in every smirk, every exasperated sigh, every uttered condolence. The boy had not come back to see his mother throughout it all, but he had kept his promise. Every month, a packet of crisp bills arrived at her doorstep. When the sickness began to spread through her body, the packet bulged larger. But the boy she yearned to see never came.
The tether broke with the surgical snip of the sinews in her throat. The operation rendered her silent forever. And she lost the will to read her books. They lay unused, gathering dust in her overflowing bookshelves. I could not even exist between the inky letters of written words, as some do. And what use does the universe have for a language neither spoken nor read? The last thing I remember before waking up in this hospital room was a tear slipping down her sagging cheek as she grieved the loss of her voice. I don’t think she knew she was the only mourner at my funeral, but that is what it was. The death of a language.
Until this boy of hers brought me back here.
Well, it seems I have more important things to do than watch you die again, English smirks. The doctor gives the man a pat on his shoulder and departs the room. English saunters out behind him, leaving the mother and son in silence again.
I can tell he wants to say many things. He knows there isn’t much time left. She slowly turns her head, eyes fluttering softly with the last bits of strength she can muster. I know her. She wants to die listening to him speak, looking at him.
He tries to start a sentence but forgets the word for me. I wish I could tell him. It is right there, on the tip of his tongue, but there is a barrier I cannot break through. And then it trickles away. He tries another sentence, but this time, it is abandon that eludes him. He finally succumbs to repeating sorry, sorry again and again. I fight against the restraints of the single word, but it is futile. He has caged me in the few words he remembers. I falter and accept my fate. Here I will remain until I fade away for the last time.
Her last breath is unremarkable. Like every other breath, some oxygen goes into her lungs, some carbon dioxide comes out. Until she tries again, and something fails. Like a broken lever, she keeps trying to pull air inside again, but her body has decided to stop listening to her. There is a whine that escapes her lips, something like a strangled animal, and then she stops moving altogether. Her blood cells shrivel and pop, her muscles wither, and her brain flickers to darkness. He stares at the lifeless body for a moment, eyes wide.
Two minutes of silence pass and, even for me, who has existed for millennia, they feel eternal. The mist begins to claw itself back around me. I am ready now. I will join her in the there-that-is-not-here. Perhaps we will be able to speak once again.
But the man starts to cry again. The same godforsaken chant of sorry, sorry. And I resign myself to wait until this last son finishes his grieving.
He goes on for an agonizingly long time. Finally, the doctor and English return.
You’re still here. English is surprised. The doctor looks at the beeping monitor and clicks his tongue. He turns to the man with an empathetic sigh and gently begins explaining the procedures required to dispose of a body-with-no-life.
Not for long, it says. Cackles, really. We wait together, and it reminds me of the man and his mother moments ago. But English is not my child. All my children are dead. There is no love between us. English is my murderer. The one that was wielded by the sharp tongues of the colonizers while guns swung in their hands. It took the future generations, the children in the village herded into the missionary school like cattle. It killed the workers in the chemical factories, treated like vermin by the ruthless supervisors trying to drain them of every last ounce of profit. The woman’s husband was one of them. He was lost in a fire set by the lazily flicked butt of an Englishman’s cigarette. We had been content on our little island, me and all my speakers, until English arrived to establish its dominion. I’m not special. English did this to everyone. English is not my child. English is a scourge.
But before I can tell English that nothing lasts forever, the world slips away.
•••
My slumber breaks with the raging force of a tidal wave. Shapes and colours stretch and writhe as I am dragged back to the conscious world.
I am confused. I wonder if this is some new universe, some parallel dimension where our island was never discovered by the Englishmen, where I still thrive in the laughter of toddlers babbling their first words, the recitations of children in school, the jokes between farmers in the fields, the soft evening lullabies of grandmothers.
But no.
This is the same place.
A girl has brought me back this time. She is familiar-yet-unfamiliar. I have never encountered her before. And yet, there is something about the way her nose is shaped. The pattern of hazel flecks in her eyes.
She is concentrating, eyebrows furrowed tight across her forehead. Her finger bores into the pages of a worn book as she garbles out the word for grandmother. She sighs. I let her feel the urge to continue, the urge to keep me tethered here. I don’t know who she is, but she is my everything now.
The door of the room we are in opens, and it is him. The man-who-was-once-a-boy. He looks tired. His clothes have changed, but he has not aged. Very little time must have passed after the death of his mother.
His eyes widen at the piles of books spread out around the girl.
I found grandmother’s old diaries, she tells him, using the words she has just learned from the book splayed open in her lap, grounding me. I am no longer half-here-half-there. I realize she must be his daughter. And this room! I have been here before. It was the woman’s room! I am back on my beloved island! Her bookshelves, once filled with books she could not bear to read and could not bear to part with, are empty. Everything is scattered around the girl.
He points crossly at an untouched box of garbage bags. You were supposed to be cleaning this place, the man says. English appears as he speaks, perched on the windowsill to laugh at me as it always does. But the girl shakes her head.
I want to learn, she answers, holding out the book.
English cocks an eyebrow, surprised. Waste of time, stupid girl, it grumbles. But the girl does not yield, waiting for her father to help her. Finally, he sighs, joining her cross-legged on the floor. English lets out a choked cry as it withers away, banished from this room.
The man points at a word on the same page.
Mother, he says. This time, there is no hesitation, no frightened accent. The girl smiles at him and starts to sound out another word.
I hold these two children of mine close. I am their mother tongue, and I am alive.
