Speaking in Tongues
by Daniel R. Snyder
I swear, my girlfriend, just a few minutes ago, she
was speaking in tongues. I’m not kidding. Maybe I should tell you
something about her first. She’s a small girl, blonde, kind of
pretty, but in a way that no one would notice unless they’re looking
for it. Sometimes she’s hard to see, like she’s not even there.
Or maybe it’s because I’m not really noticing her.
You see, Angelina, she’s not really my girlfriend. Not really.
She’s more of an amusement, just to keep the loneliness away. I don’t
even think I like her that much. There’s times I think that she’s
crazy, crazier than me, anyway. At least I don’t hear saints and
spirits talking to me like she does. I don’t hear anything at all.
She’s doesn’t get along with her neighbor across the
street. She says it’s because he’s owed her a hundred dollars for more
than a year now and refuses to pay it back. She’s like that-- she’ll do
anything to help someone out. She’s kind, generous, giving, loving,
forgiving, and sometimes I think I hate her. She doesn’t hate me. She
says she loves me. Go figure. I don’t think she hates the guy across
the street. I don’t think she has the capacity to hate anyone,
but she’s disappointed with him. After all, she’s poor, single, two
brats that I like even less than her, and the welfare checks never go
that far, so she could certainly use the money. But that’s not it,
really. The guy across the street, his name is Steve, and he’s a friend
of her ex, the father of her kids, who’s living somewhere in the next
town and doesn’t pay child support, and since Steve won’t tell her
where to find him, well, she’s angry. She’s just thinking about her
kids. She’s always thinking about somebody other than herself, and it
kind of pisses me off sometimes, but I think if I put my mind to it, I
could understand it.
It’s the speaking in tongues part I don’t
understand. Let me explain exactly how it happened. I was inside
watching TV, nothing in particular, something stupid really, but it
didn’t matter because I was drunk again anyhow, so I would have been
just as easily entertained by the toaster. Her two brats, Lee and
Michael, six and four, were busy on the beat up rug in front of the TV
playing Legos, when I started to hear this yelling outside. Not that
uncommon of an occurrence in this trailer park. Seems that someone’s
always getting drunk and yelling, or cheating on someone and yelling,
or scamming someone on a drug deal and yelling, and the only odd thing
about it was that I thought I heard her voice. It was strange.
I’ve never heard her yell in the few months we’ve been together, if you
can call it being together. She thinks we’re together, but honestly,
I’m just here.
So anyway, I hear her yelling and swearing, which I’ve
also never heard her do, and then Steve, he’s yelling too. I finish my
beer and walk to the collapsing junk filled screened porch and look
outside to see that he’s standing across the street, and she’s on her
little patch of weeds she calls a front lawn, pointing her finger at
him and yelling. I don’t want to get involved in it.
Steve, he’s a scary looking guy. Rides a Harley,
tattoos from head to foot, muscular, high on crystal-meth most of the
time, and quite honestly, I don’t want to mess with him. As long as he
stays on his side of the road and she stays on hers, I want to just
leave it be. If they start getting close to each other, I might feel
the need to play savior and rescue her, but quite honestly, I’m not
that good at being noble or heroic, and mostly I’m worried that this
speeded-out Steve guy might kick my ass, and so I stay on the front
porch behind the safety of the rusty screen door where I’m pretty sure
he can’t see me.
That’s when it happened. These weird sounds start
coming out of her mouth. Not words, not English words anyhow. I’m
pretty sure she doesn’t know any foreign languages, so I’m not sure
what it is. So, anyway, she’s standing there and screaming this
gibberish and pointing her finger at him. The noise coming from
her mouth is louder than you’d think a quiet little person like her
could manage, and then Steve, he gets this really weird look on his
face, and then it almost looks like he might be scared because he
stops, mid sentence, mid profanity, and just stares at her.
She stands there for a few seconds, breathing hard,
not really looking at him, not really looking at anything, and I’m
afraid that right now if I looked into her eyes, they’d be rolled back
in her head like she’s possessed or something. Maybe
she is. Who knows? It’s possible I suppose. She’s religious, big time.
She’s Catholic and she’s got all these weird little statues of saints
all over the house, and she knows what each one of them is for. This
one is the patron saint of lost causes, this one is the patron saint of
broken hearts, this one is the patron saint of drunk agnostics, and
this one is the patron saint of crazy non-girlfriends speaking in
tongues. I should break up with her, but I know I won’t. I never do.
I come here every day after work because it’s hot
and there’s a swimming pool. I always get drunk, but she doesn’t seem
to mind, and I don’t really mind it either because it makes it a lot
easier to have a conversation with her. I can’t talk to her about
anything worth talking about because she’s really stupid. I mean not
just uneducated because she’s a high school dropout, I mean stupid like
a board. She doesn’t know anything except what they tell her in church,
what she reads in the Bible, and what the voices say. That’s
enough though. No room for anything else. With all that stuff
bouncing around in her head, if you shove a piece of knowledge in one
ear, something falls out the other. Honestly, if I wasn’t drunk all the
time, I think I might feel guilty for using her like this. But I don’t
know. Maybe she’s using me too. I’ve repaired a lot of stuff around her
house, and I bring food. I’ve even paid bills for her. Seems like
a small price to pay for not being alone.
We have sex a lot, which is usually pretty good.
She’s pretty open minded about the whole sex thing because she thinks
she’s in love with me. I’ve never told her that I love her, and I know
I never will. There’s some lines that even I won’t cross. I’m just
hanging around until she breaks up with me, the way I always let it
happen. It’s better that way. At least it will be her choice, and she
won’t feel bad about me dumping her. It’s not exactly a kindness, but
it’s the best I can do.
But still, the speaking in tongues thing is getting
to me. As she walks into the house, I’m just a little bit, well, not
frightened, but a little weirded out. Her eyes aren’t rolled back into
her head like I thought they’d be, but her face is red and she’s
breathing hard and she’s crying and there’s snot running down her face.
This is one of those times when I wish I didn’t see her, but I can’t
help noticing it. I don’t want to talk to her, so as she approaches, I
back up and go back into the living room and then over to the small
kitchen and grab myself another beer from the rusted refrigerator. Now
would be a really good time to break up with her, but like I said, I
know I won’t.
You see, I’m just no good at being alone. Everybody
does something well, like for me, it’s using people, and everybody does
something badly, and for me, that’s being alone. Never been good at it.
As far back as I can remember, I’ve always had someone with me. Of
course, there’s those times shortly after a breakup while I’m looking
for another girlfriend, but I never let those last very long because
being alone hurts. Big time. It’s weird. Most of the time I don’t
even want to talk to them, don’t want to do anything with them except
maybe have sex. Mostly I just like the way it feels to have
somebody with me. During those times between girlfriends, I listen to a
lot of TV. Not watch, I just keep it running all the time so I
can hear voices. Makes me feel like I’m not alone, at least a little
bit. I’ve been lucky--the times I’ve spent without a girlfriend have
been fairly short.
So anyway, she finally walks into the mobile home
and goes over to her kids and sits down with them cross-legged on the
floor and starts to play Legos with them like nothing happened, like
just a minute ago she wasn’t possessed by some kind of demon. She
glances over her shoulder at me, wipes the snot off her face on the
back of a sleeve and smiles, and then starts to build with her kids.
That’s fine with me. I don’t want to talk about it, and besides, I
don’t think she’s bright enough to play Legos and have a conversation
at the same time. I finish the beer and grab another. I’m hoping,
maybe, if I keep drinking like this, that I’ll kill enough of my brain
cells that I won’t feel the need to try to think about anything
anymore, won’t even have the ability to do it. Sometimes I think that
it would be really nice to be stupid and not know you’re stupid, so you
don’t have to worry about anything, like being alone.
The only thing I’m a little bit afraid of is that
maybe if I get too stupid, I’ll become like her and get possessed by
demons or saints myself, and I really don’t need that. I’m pretty sure
I have enough demons that I’m fighting with anyway, and I don’t need
any more. I sure don’t need any Catholic demons. I fought with the
Protestant ones, exorcised every single one of them until I was
completely alone.
It’s supposed to be kind of a lonely thing, not
having God in your heart. That’s what preachers say at church, anyhow.
They say it leaves you with a big empty hole in you somewhere.
Maybe they’re right. Sometimes I think that maybe if I patched it
up with God, I wouldn’t need the girlfriends. Maybe I could be alone
with myself.
I don’t want to do that quite yet though. Sometime
maybe, but I’m not ready. Still, this speaking in tongues thing, it’s
got me thinking. I don’t know what she said, haven’t even got the
foggiest clue, and yet, there’s something she said out there that I
think I might understand, just a little bit. I know she was yelling at
that Steve guy, but somehow I think she was really talking to me, like
the words coming out of her mouth that were supposed to move across the
street decided to do a u-turn.
So, I’m looking at her playing with her kids, and
suddenly I think maybe I like her a little bit. It’s a strange
thought, and then suddenly the beer buzz is going away, but instead of
opening the new one, I set it down and lean against the kitchen counter
and watch them play. They look happy, and I think that it’s absolutely
the most wonderful thing in the world, and then I suddenly start to
feel really bad about what I’m doing here.
Maybe one of the little statues is talking to me. I
don’t know. Maybe I’m just listening to myself for a change, but I can
tell there’s something going on, and I don’t know what it is, and I
don’t know if I’m going to like it, but I think I’m going to walk up to
her and break up with her, and then I think I’m going to go home to my
apartment and not turn on the TV, and then I think maybe I’ll sit in
the quiet for a while, and just listen.
Originally Published in Controlled Burn
© 2003 by Daniel R Snyder
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