“Not sure,” said Alice.
“Nick-son, Nick-son,” repeated Aldah.
“Could they have named their son after President Nixon?” That was her father’s voice.
“I could ask him,” said Alice. “It didn’t seem strange to me.”
“They sure are small, aren’t they?” said her mother.
“Compared to us, most people are small,” said Alice.
That made her father chuckle, but Alice figured he was probably chuckling to keep the conversation from getting into awkward territory where their daughter would turn on them and accuse them of who-knows-what. Alice was in no mood to accuse them of anything. So far the conversation had kept them away from the truly awkward matter of her mother storming out of church. Let me dwell in calm waters for the rest of the ride home, Alice thought.
Beside her, Aldah clenched her pink-stained handkerchief. Pink peppermint stains marked the corners of her lips. Alice unwrapped the wadded-up bumper sticker, took Aldah’s stained handkerchief, and rewrapped the bumper sticker around it.
“Stop,” said Aldah when they came to a corner that did have a stop sign.
“Very good,” said Alice “Now watch for the ‘Slow’ sign on the next hill.”
“McDonald’s.”
“No, that’s not McDonald’s. That mailbox says ‘Duh-Duh-Dykstra.’”
“Cheerios.”
“You’re being silly.”
Aldah giggled, then laid her head against Alice. “Nap,” she said.
Aldah laid her head onto Alice’s lap, but before she could sleep they were home to the Krayenbraak farm. Her mother had the oven set so that her one-dish meal was ready. Her father opened with prayer, and then the language of grim silence began. The stale kitchen air was filled with the gibberish of hogyard smells assailing the odors of a hotdish embellished with Hamburger Helper. The dry joints of the old oak table asked incoherent but shrill questions when Alice’s father put his hand down firmly next to his plate. Her mother throttled the slim saltshaker when she picked it up, and then, in movements that were uncharacteristically quick for her, she shook the life out of it in a seeming effort to resuscitate the comatose hotdish.
Alice took small bites, wanting her mouth to be free to utter real words in case she would suddenly have to come to the defense of the Vangs, but it was Aldah’s presence that spoke most clearly. She was the canary that went down into the dark well of their family’s misery, into the mysteries of the turmoil they tried to deny with silence but which came out sideways, in murky or twisted distortions of what they really meant to say. Alice’s parents probably knew their own feelings, but they had never practiced a language that would express them. Aldah didn’t have the language either, but when she pulled her head down into her shoulders, her message of distress should have been clear to everyone. The corners of her mouth sagged, and her eyes grew dim. The voice of her whole body said, “Stop. Just stop.”
Alice’s mother finally did break into actual speech with her usual sense of bad timing: “We are worried about Aldah. She’s shutting down more and more.”
The trouble with her mother and with the dreadful words that often did bubble out of her mouth was that she was often close to the truth. This may have been one of those moments. If Aldah was a canary measuring the toxins in the atmosphere around the table, she was, as her mother cruelly pointed out, shutting down. She could sit like a frozen icon of something no one could explain.
But after her mother’s comment, Alice had to wonder: was Aldah absorbing their moods and showing them what they looked like, or was she developing a new problem? Alice was only two and a half when Aldah was born so she had missed Aldah’s early health problems. Alice remembered that Aldah was taking digitalis as a child, and she had terrible ear infections. Alice remembered the screaming and how Aldah held her little hands over her ears. She was a wobbly kid and could hardly walk when Alice started school. By the time Alice was a teenager, her mother had given up on Aldah. Alice hadn’t. She did some reading and knew that their family wasn’t alone in this journey. Alice would crunch up zinc and selenium and pretend to put some in a glass for herself and some in a glass for Aldah. When Aldah saw her older sister drinking hers, she’d drink too. She’d do anything that she saw Alice doing, so long as Alice smiled at her first. She would have walked over a cliff behind Alice if Alice smiled at her first.
Her parents went on talking about Aldah as if she weren’t there. Aldah gave no hints that she was listening or that she understood. Alice knew better: Aldah heard and understood every word. Even her father spoke as if Aldah weren’t there.
“Maybe it’s time,” he said.
“I think so,” said her mother.
“We’re not specialists,” said her father.
“There’s state money,” said her mother.
“I know,” said her father. “I checked that out.”
Aldah picked at her food, then reached for the sugar bowl and sprinkled two teaspoons of sugar over the Hamburger Helper. No one stopped her.
The discussion, such as it was, dropped off a cliff. Her father said a quick closing prayer that asked for strength and for the forgiveness of their sins. It was one of his autopilot prayers, predictable and brief. He stood up. Her mother stood up too while Aldah went on eating. They evidently weren’t going to talk about Aldah any more—they weren’t going to talk about anything. Alice could hear the unspoken message that trickled down through the generations: Zeg maar niks. Don’t say anything. It was away of dealing with problems by keeping your mouth shut.
When her mother walked outside to the screen porch after closing devotions, Alice followed her, leaving Aldah alone to digest the sugary hotdish and what had been said about her.
Alice stepped into the porch to find her mother sitting in a metal lawn chair. Alice stood off to the side, not close—but she was there. No matter how much her mother repulsed her much of the time, Alice took the first step in making amends. She had come to smooth things over, to find that little window of hope to connect with her mother, but she kept a good four feet distance.
“Are you still worried about Aldah?”
“Aldah is beyond worry.”
“Mother.”
“The farm is beyond worry. The world is beyond worry.”
Her mother looked relaxed and tense at the same time—like a petrified rag doll.
“Not everything is lost,” said Alice. “Dad said cattle and hog prices could go up. You have to believe that something good could happen.”
“For somebody who thinks she’s so smart, you can’t even see the elephant that’s stepping on your toes.”
“Please stop. I came out here because I was worried about you.”
“The only person you worry about is yourself.”
“You just walked out of the kitchen. That’s not like you.”
“How would you know?” said her mother. “Just how would you know what is like me?”
“Why can’t you ever believe me?”
“Okay, you were worried about me.”
“I was. So what’s going on?”
“I was just thinking.”
“Okay. About?”
“About you. About your father, about Aldah, about us, about the world. About the grand arcs of history, about the miniature dramas of family, about the futility