Native Tongue

by Suzette Haden Elgin, Susan Squier

  And now he and Thomas had managed to bring off a very efficient little bit of action here. All in one swoop, they’d gotten rid of Nazareth and the annoying reminder she would have represented, they’d arranged to keep Aaron in the house and fathering more infants—something that would have been impossible otherwise—and they’d settled the matter of a suitable husband for the luscious Perpetua. Aaron knew that in spite of Thomas’ facade of objections he must be pleased; this was the sort of thing the man considered an efficient example of household management. He had been damn near smiling when he told Aaron to go ahead and notify the Chornyak attorneys. Aaron felt that they were damn clever, he and Thomas . . . he was only sorry that there was no way he could brag about this little coup.

  Clara saw him come up the stairs from his meeting with her brother, and read the smug satisfaction on his face correctly, but she wasn’t quick enough with her “Aaron!” to stop him as he went rushing out the door. It was clear to her that the two men had been willing to let Nazareth do what she wanted: it was also clear that Aaron had forgotten all about the fact that his wife was waiting for the decision. Unless perhaps he, or Thomas, had sent her a message directly?

  Thinking hard, she didn’t hear Michaela until her name had been spoken twice, and even then she jumped.

  “You’re too tired, Clara,” Michaela observed. “You’re asleep on your feet.”

  “No . . . I was just thinking. And worrying.”

  “Can I help?”

  Clara explained, and Michaela touched her hand lightly.

  “I’m on my way to Mr. Chornyak’s office right now,” she said, “to ask him about a new medication for your father. If you want to come along with me, we could bother him together . . . safety in numbers and all that.”

  “I’m not afraid to speak to him alone, my dear,” Clara said. “That’s not it. I’m just trying to get my bad temper under control before I do it. I’ll wait until you’re through.”

  “Well, I am afraid to go alone,” Michaela declared, “because the medicine I want costs almost three times as much as what your father’s been taking; so please come with me out of Christian charity, Clara. He won’t carry on so if he has to split the thunder and lightning between us.”

  Clara looked at her, and Michaela could see by the glint in her eyes that she wasn’t fooled by the easy chatter, but she said only, “All right, Michaela,” and went with her without further comment.

  And of course, as Clara had suspected, neither of the men had thought to send Nazareth a simple yes or no. Much less the news that she was about to be divorced.

  “Thomas!” Clara had been shocked. “Dear heaven, Thomas . . .”

  “What, Clara?”

  “I mean that. . . . It’s just. . . .”

  “Clara, will you please quit stammering and sputtering and speak your piece? Nazareth doesn’t care a thing for Aaron, never has, and you know it as well as I do. What’s the problem?”

  Clara was helpless, and felt both helpless and absurd. There wasn’t any way to explain it to him. It had nothing to do with whether Nazareth cared about Aaron Adiness. It had to do with first undergoing that explicit demonstration of how little she was worth to the men, when they refused the money for the breast regeneration; and it had to do with then undergoing the mutilating surgery itself; and it had to do with the way a woman was treated in the public wards, especially a linguist woman; and it had to do with the pain and the grief that Nazareth would be feeling right now; and it had to do with what it would be like for her, on top of all the rest, to be told causally, by wrist computer, “Oh by the way, Aaron’s divorcing you—thought you’d want to know.”

  She could have made him understand, of course, if she’d had hours to spend explaining it to him. Thomas was a shrewd judge of the effects of language upon others, and he was—despite the silly exchange between herself and Michaela—never an unreasonable man. But there was no way to make him see it quickly and efficiently, and Thomas had no patience with long rambling speeches about subjects he had had no interest in in the first place. He was staring at her, and Clara knew that he was annoyed, and she felt as if she were going to strangle. I’m getting old, she thought, and I must be losing my wits along with my other youthful charms.

  “Clara,” said Thomas, “I know you’re fond of Nazareth. But it was Nazareth who asked to go directly to Barren House, you know—it’s not as if Aaron had tried to send her there. I assure you, I would not have allowed him to do that, Clara. We are only doing what Nazareth, herself, asked for.”

  “I know that, Thomas.”

  “Then I truly do not understand why you are so upset.”

  Michaela stepped smoothly into the widening breach, certain that Clara would welcome the help.

  “Mr. Chornyak,” she said, all deference and propriety, “I think what’s worrying Clara is that Nazareth must just hear this news by wrist computer, without even a human face attached. Just that little tinny noise, saying that she’s being divorced and good riddance to her, if you see what I mean.”

  “I don’t see what you mean,” Thomas answered. “She detests her husband, she doesn’t want to come home, and she’s being told that she doesn’t have to put up with either husband or Household for even one more day. It seems to me that she should be dancing in the halls. But as long as the two of you understand what you mean, it really doesn’t matter whether I do or not. I have never pretended to be an expert on the emotional notions of women.”

  “Yes, sir,” Michaela said.

  “Well? Have you and Clara got a solution to this dreadful difficulty that I’m too thick-headed even to perceive?”

  “Mr. Chornyak, I need to see the hospital anyway—I should have gone over there long ago. I might need to send one of my patients there sometime, and I should at least be familiar with the place. Unless you have some objection, sir, I could take the message to Nazareth and have a look around the facilities at the same time.”

  “I have no objection at all, Mrs. Landry,” said Thomas. “If you have the free time, and you feel it’s advisable, by all means go ahead.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Michaela said. “And I have just one other item to talk to you about before I go, please.”

  While Michaela was quickly outlining to Thomas the advantages of the new medication that justified the expense of its purchase, Clara slipped away without saying anything more, her gratitude written plainly in the set of her head and shoulders and the shaping of her hands.

  The hospital was ugly, but then hospitals always were. Michaela had never worked in a luxury ward among the wealthy, but always in places like this. She paid very little attention to its looks, concerned only to make sure that it was clean—and it was. And she was equally unimpressed by the sass from the nurses.

  “Either tell me at once, without any further nonsense, where Mrs. Adiness is, or I’ll call Thomas Blair Chornyak and tell him that you’ve misplaced her,” she told them. “Perhaps with his personal assistance we’d be able to locate her.”

  “Well, there’s no need to be unpleasant!”

  “You’re wasting my time, nurse, and your behavior is beneath contempt. You are here to serve, not to obstruct healing, and whether you happen to fancy a particular patient or not should not be your concern. Now take me to Mrs. Adiness.”

  She was as skilled at genteel tongue-lashing laced with aristocratic venom as she was at listening to boring stories; it was one of the skills that the marital academies assumed a woman might need if she married into a wealthy family where human beings were still employed as domestic servants. The nurse recognized the tone without difficulty, and had had no training in defense against it . . . she came bustling out from behind her narrow counter, flushed and pouting, and took Michaela to Nazareth’s bed without asking any questions about the possible source of the authority in that voice.

  “There,” she announced, pointing. “There she is. Somebody to see you, Mrs. Adiness.”

  Michaela stared at her fixedly
until she turned and flounced off, muttering about ingratitude and who did people think they were anyway; and then she turned to look at Nazareth.

  “Mrs. Adiness,” she said courteously, “I’m Michaela Landry, the nurse that your father employs for Barren House. I’m ashamed to use the word ‘nurse’ after that specimen, but I promise you I’m not here to demonstrate the depths to which my profession sometimes manages to fall. I don’t think we’ve met except in passing. . . . How do you do, Mrs. Adiness.”

  She extended her hand, and Nazareth took it briefly, saying, “Yes, of course, Mrs. Landry, I remember you. It’s very kind of you to come by.”

  She looked bruised, Michaela thought. If it were possible for someone to carry bruises of spirit and mind as well as body, she would be carrying them. Thin, ugly thin . . . a bad color, the characteristic unhealthy look of the cancer patient . . . and that skewered knot of hair. Even here. Poor thing.

  “Mrs. Adiness,” she said, “it’s all right for you to go on to Barren House from here; they sent me to tell you. And your father asked me to come and help you. . . . He didn’t want you to have to make the trip by yourself.” It was an easy lie, and it cost her nothing; she made a mental note to tell Thomas that she’d said it. And it ought to have been true, because this woman most certainly was not well enough to have left the hospital by herself and made her way to Barren House all alone. From the taut look of her she would have done it, and without a word of complaint, but she had no business making an effort of that kind. Or any other effort. Michaela wanted her tucked into a comfortable bed and under her care, and she wanted it fast. And as for the news about the divorce, she would pass that on after she had this woman comfortable, and sheltered, and away from prying eyes. Not one minute before.

  “Mrs. Adiness. . . .”

  “Please, Mrs. Landry . . . call me Nazareth. I would prefer it.”

  “As you like, ma’am, and you might consider calling me Michaela if that’s not awkward for you. Now, can you dress and get your things together while I arrange for a cab?”

  “A cab?” Nazareth was astonished. “The robobus goes right by here.”

  “Is that how you got here?”

  “Of course,” Nazareth answered, and added, “And I don’t have any money.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “Money of your own?”

  Michaela smiled. “It’s one of the few benefits of being both widowed and a nurse, Nazareth. My brother-in-law is my legal guardian, but he is required to leave me part of my salary since I don’t live in his home. I don’t have very much money, but I can manage the price of one short cab trip.”

  “I can’t let you spend your money on me,” Nazareth objected immediately, and Michaela laughed at her.

  “All right,” she said. “You are the lady of the house, and I am the employee, and I’m not about to cross you. I’ll get the cab for myself and let you take the bus, and I’ll be at Barren House before you. It will be so much nicer that way, not having to be crowded in the cab.”

  She was utterly surprised when Nazareth only nodded, as if that made perfectly good sense, and she sat down at once on the edge of the other woman’s bed, careful not to jolt her as she did so.

  “Oh, my dear,” she said, not caring if she seemed disrespectful, because this was mute pain that she faced and tending pain was a function that she was not able to set aside for the sake of good manners, “I didn’t mean that! Of course not! And I will not let you go to Barren House in any other way than under my care, and in decent comfort. Please understand that, and forgive me my jokes . . . I only meant to make you smile, Nazareth.”

  Nazareth only looked at her and said nothing at all, and something in Michaela gave way, some knot she had not realized was even tied inside her. “You’re very tired, Nazareth,” she went on, “and you need care, not clever conversation. I’ll get the nurse to help you dress.”

  “Please, no!”

  Michaela was firm, and there was steel in her voice. “I promise you, my dear, that nurse will be as gentle and as tender with you as if you were her newborn and beloved child. You have my word on it.”

  “You don’t know. . . .”

  “Oh, but I do know! I most assuredly do know. And I promise you. She will come, and she will be respectful, and she will be kind, and she will treat you with flawless attention. She will not dare do anything else—as for what she may be thinking, that is her narrow little twisted mind, and you are to ignore that as you would ignore any other deformity. For politeness’ sake. And I will get the cab and take you home.”

  “I’m not a child, Michaela . . . you don’t have to. . . .”

  “Don’t talk! Hush. If you were a child this would be much simpler, because I could just pick you up and carry you, whether you kicked and screamed or not. But you’re taller than I am, unfortunately, and I’m going to have to have some help—must you make it even more difficult for me than it is?”

  She hated saying that, because all her impulses were to treat this hurt one tenderly, but it was exactly the right thing to say. The idea that she was causing trouble for the nurse sent to fetch her stopped Nazareth’s objections immediately.

  “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Landry,” said Nazareth. “Please proceed.”

  Please proceed! Such a funny, awkward woman, and what a very hard time she must have had with her whole personality akimbo like that . . . and that swift, ever so correct “Mrs. Landry!” Putting her in her place. Her dignity would see her back to Barren House, Michaela thought, and that was far more important than anything else right now.

  Chapter Twenty

  Then consider this, please: to make something “appear” is called magic, is it not? Well. . . . when you look at another person, what do you see? Two arms, two legs, a face, an assortment of parts. Am I right? Now, there is a continuous surface of the body, a space that begins with the inside flesh of the fingers and continues over the palm of the hand and up the inner side of the arm to the bend of the elbow. Everyone has that surface; in fact, everyone has two of them.

  I will name that the “athad” of the person. Imagine the athad, please. See it clearly in your mind—perceive, here are my own two athads, the left one and the right one. And there are both of your athads, very nice ones.

  Where there was no athad before, there will always be one now, because you will perceive the athad of every person you look at, as you perceive their nose and their hair. From now on. And I have made the athad appear . . . now it exists.

  Magic, you perceive, is not something mysterious, not something for witches and sorcerers . . . magic is quite ordinary and simple. It is simply language.

  And I look at you now, and I can say, as I could not say three minutes ago—“What lovely athads you have, grandmother!”

  (from “The Discourse of the Three Marys,”

  author unknown)

  Nazareth went to Barren House bruised, as Michaela had seen that she was, and numb. The news that she was being divorced hardly penetrated that numbness, so that by the time she became aware of it any chance that it might cause her discomfort was long past. But after a while, under the competent hands of the women, she began to let that numbness go, and she realized that she was like someone who goes home at last after a lifetime of exile.

  No more Aaron; he avoided her, and when he could not avoid her he was overpoweringly polite. No more being alone with him, where he did not feel obliged to be polite. Her children only a few steps away, and the little girls routinely here at Barren House in any case. And a kind of freedom. She would never have to bear a man’s eyes upon her scarred body. She would heal, and she would add to her usual clothing the garment with the false and foolish breasts, and she would go out to work as she always had; and no man would ever see her naked, or touch her body, again. Not even, so long as she was conscious, a doctor. Not ever.

  She wandered about Barren House at first, absorbing it as if she had never been there before, luxuriating in the voices of the women, gloryin
g in the bed that she could have all to herself without the snoring bulk of a man always waking her, always crowding her against the wall. It was luxury; she had not anticipated that it would be, because she hadn’t known what it was that she lacked.

  Finally, when Michaela agreed that it was time, the women told her about the woman-language called Láadan, and explained the nonsense called Langlish. Nazareth sat and listened to them in amazement, saying not one word until they were finished, and then she said, “You women. You women and your fairy tales!”

  “It’s true!” they protested. “Really, Nazareth . . . it’s true.”

  “All my life you’ve told me that the tale of Langlish was true.”

  “That was necessary,” Aquina retorted. “We are a better judge of what’s required than you are.”

  “And now, after a lifetime of lying, you expect me to believe that you are suddenly telling the truth?” Nazareth shook her head. “Go away with your bedtime stories,” she jeered, “tell them to the little girls. Along with the unicorn and the bandersnatch and the Helga Dik! Leave me in peace.”

  “Nazareth,” Susannah chided. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “Should I?”

  “You know you should. We’ve been waiting for so many years to show you this—I’ve grown to be an ancient crone able only to cackle and hiss while I waited. And now you won’t let us show you.”

  “Show me, then,” said Nazareth, who loved Susannah dearly. But she could not resist teasing Aquina. “Aquina,” she asked, “does it have one hundred separate vowels, this Láadan?”

  “Oh, you’re impossible!”

  Nazareth chuckled at Aquina’s disappearing back, and Susannah told her again that she should be ashamed of herself.

  “I am,” Nazareth said, with great satisfaction. “I’m so very ashamed I can hardly hold my head up. Now show me.”

  “It’s down in the basement,” they warned.

  “Of course. With the tub of green bubbling slime that you sacrifice a virgin to every Monday morning. Where else would it be? I can walk to the basement, I’m not crippled—lead on, please.”