Free How to Read an Unwritten Language by Philip Graham Page B

she needed to hear: “I dropped it so you wouldn’t go to the next slide. I knew you were in a hurry, but I wanted to look at this one a little longer. It really interests me. I’m sorry.”
    Her open mouth echoed the statues on the screen, and then she let out the long breath of an exhausted runner. ‘And have you seen enough now?” she asked.
    I gave the statues one last regretful glance. They had no voices I could hear. “Yes, ma’am.”
    â€œThen let’s go on, shall we?” But she stood for a long silent moment before clicking on the next slide.
    *
    I stood at my bedroom window that afternoon as the sky darkened in the distance, the twilight spreading into a deep underwater blue. Then the whales’ haunting call-and-response rose up inside me, long, enticing songs flowed from the open mouths of those Indian statues. Yet however carefully I listened, their language remained elusive, and I pressed my forehead against the window, felt its cold seep into my skin until I heard Father announce from the kitchen that dinner was ready.
    It was the usual hushed affair, bowls passed politely among us as we spoke softly, filling Father’s silence with our reports of what we’d done in school: Laurie’s math problems, Dan’s recess.
    â€œWe listened to whale songs today,” I offered.
    â€œGood,” Father said, nodding. “Good,” he repeated, and somehow the subject was closed. I returned to the slab of meat loaf on my plate, chafing at Father’s indifferent approval. It was the only intimacy he could give us, and it wasn’t enough.
    After the dishes were washed, Dan took off, despite the growing cold, for his evening wanderings up and down the block. Laurie and I spread out newspapers and sprawled on the living room floor with her art kit—our occasional quiet time together. Laurie preferred creating watercolor faces, filling in their primitive circles with pink cheeks and red lips and wild dark eyes, while I worked at my own awkwardly rendered scenes: a house floating on still, deep-blue water; clouds nestling inside the back of a station wagon; a flock of birds asleep on a couch.
    As usual, Father sat in a corner and hid behind his newspaper, and I could see from the headlines that it was filled with tales of woe far worse than what our family had lived through. Perhaps reading such stories gave him bitter comfort, but tonight I wanted to tempt him away from that wall holding off the rest of the house. With a few indirect suggestions I managed to lure my sister into painting something that I thought might appeal to Father—a garden. Across the page she spread outlines of fat-petaled flowers on spindly stems, squiggly ferns, and trees that looked like giant lollipops. When it was time to fill them all in, Laurie’s brush hesitated over the paint set’s tiny trays of blue, green, brown, orange, yellow.
    â€œHey, Dad,” I called out, “you’re the expert on flowers. Laurie’s got a whole garden here—what colors should she use?”
    Without even a grunt of complaint, Father set the paper down and crouched beside us. “Well, green for the stem, of course. Here, honey.” He guided Laurie’s hand, and they filled in a few petals until she protested, “No, not all yellow, Daddy. I want blue and red too.”
    â€œFine,” he said, drawing his hand back. “Paint away. You kids seem to be doing fine without me.” Then he stood and returned to his newspaper.
    Her face scrunched in disappointment, Laurie began smearing jagged brushstrokes of color across her picture, a rainbow gone amuck.
    â€œWait,” I whispered, applying my brush, and I showed her how those flowers could be turned into flying saucers, their green stems an otherworldly exhaust.
    Father shook the paper as he turned a page, a ripple like a wave, and again those beckoning whale calls seemed to speak inside me,