Cate LeBrun
I wear headphones at the park so the other moms won’t talk to me. No: I’m embarrassed to talk to the other moms, my tongue the bloated dart of a shy gopher, cowering. Attempting to molt. I listen to audiobooks or podcasts or pretend to listen. I lack enough German to be considered functional so I nod like a stage actor, a smile fixed and hanging on by its sensitive teeth. I’ve forgotten what it is to make talk small, the shaking palm of words sweaty and extended — Mein Deutsch ist sehr klein, I used to apologize, my German is just so small. I fold myself into the exact dimensions of my pining lack until I’m small, too.
I grasp at hints in accents, eye contact that might indicate a warmth the weather instantly scolds. Then I eagerly ignore both. One of the moms, shining black curls in drips down her coat, calls to her twins in Spanish, nails the punch line of a joke she’s telling in German (I’m convinced it’s very funny), then lets me know in English that it’s totally fine if my baby plays with the bulldozer. As long as he likes, she winks.
Jealousy burns the same way lonely does, the white-hot balloon of skin. Underneath: tender, the weeping raw of shame.
***
Ich komme aus den USA, I say. I never say. I say that I’m American, when they ask, sometimes.
Right, they nod, already aware. Right.
Correct. Genau. My ineptitude so obvious its cultural — do they extend this to the way I parent, my permissiveness, my slow hands when my son bolts down the slide ass-first, catapulting into the recent, pooled memory of an explosive rain shower? They gape when their babies tumble, they scoop and rock. They carefully remove fallen snack apples from tiny snacking hands. My son chugs sand from the mouth of a green shovel, achieving an aspirational flow state, then whispers a foreboding NOOOOOO while pointing to himself. He stalks the kindergarteners’ backpacks, hunting for friendship, circling again to admire the one that looks like a spatchcocked Lambchop. When he plops down in the mud, screaming because I won’t let him grab the baby doll in the fur-laden stroller, I can only agree. The doll is the right amount of scary-cute. I squat and rub his back, singing “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” his favorite hymn, and he sings “Please”, which translates to Sing it until we do the bye-bye thing.
My son tells the park adults when the swings are free, about lawn mowers and also, sirens (the park is next to a hospital). He is fluent in every language, despite a repertoire of six discernable English words, including Momma, Dad, Nana, Pop, ow, and no. Noooooo.
***
Before bed, I Duolingo with my legs propped up on the wall. I usually avoid the speed matching challenges because I lack emotional fortitude. After my third attempt at this unit’s matching, my husband starts singing something — I can’t remember the word for back of the train (hinten), can’t find it in the matching column. I yell at him to stop, stop. Stop. The crying is involuntary.
***
A few weeks ago, the wind a pleasant exhale: I meet another park mom, Italian polishing her words into ovals. The weight and size of warm eggs. I take my headphones out and learn that she’s studying to be a psychologist. Her daughter pats my son’s scalp as if to say, This is a good pumpkin, I’ll take this one.
When I go back a few days later the park is flooded, parents and pigeons and tiny people. The mom is there, her baby tapping the play structure approvingly. My ears are open and willing. I smile and compliment her daughter’s new purple coat. She nods curtly and walks away, speaking with a blonde woman, their voices quietly shutting doors. I’m still not sure what language it was.
***
I don’t need conversation with the park moms. Really, I’m clinging to the last months at home with my son, before I return to work and he trades our mornings at the park for a cool, skewered-animal backpack. No: I’m burrowing into these few months, dissolving entirely until I become them, the reflection of sky in the ass-deep pond at the end of a red plastic chute. Birdsong buried in the trees, my son pointing, What’s that sound? What is it? I translate for him, my tongue holding itself to everything.
Cate LeBrun is from the Pacific Northwest. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Doubleback Review, The Wild Umbrella, and Sundog Lit. She lives in Austria with her husband and kids.
Instagram: @caterose2
Featured photo by Carsten Kohler (Pexels)
