Tension runs between the spellers like an invisible steel cable. When one rises to approach the microphone, everyone in the row feels the pull. Many are unconscious of the fact they are spelling along with each contestant. As their mouths form the letters, the effect is that of a choir of mutes accompanying every word.
From the third row, it is impossible for Eliza to see anything but the backs of other spellers’ heads. The tights Miriam picked out for her itch horribly. Eliza uses the relative privacy accorded by her seat to scratch.
Spellers can ask for word pronunciation, definition, etymology, and use in a sentence, but once they start spelling, there is no turning back. A misspoken letter is irreversible, the equivalent of a nervous tic during brain surgery.
The hardest to watch are those who know they have made a mistake. Sometimes they stop mid-word, the air knocked out of them. Even then they are expected to continue until the word is finished. They flinch their way to the word’s end, mere shadows of the child they were before the mistake was made. Finally, the misspelled word is complete, its mistaken A or extra T dangling like a flap of dead skin.
There is a pause, like the split second between touching the thing that’s too hot and feeling the burn. Then, the bell.
Ding.
It is the sound of an approaching bicycle, harmless as a sugar ant, but here it takes on atomic, fifties sci-fi proportions. Just as in the movies, its hapless victim stands immobile while the correct spelling, monstrous with huge, flesh-rending jaws, comes at them from the pronouncer’s mouth.
It is worst when the speller stands there, nodding like a spring-loaded lawn ornament. A couple times, the fatal moment functions like some kind of psychological glue trap: even after the pronouncer completes the word, the speller remains frozen in place. One boy stands with his hand in front of him, thumb pressing an invisible button on what appears to be an invisible remote control, willing the world to rewind.
Eliza begins to wish she were closer to the front. The wait is like the slow tic-tic-tic of a roller coaster climbing to its summit before the stomach-plunging drop. She would gladly trade the ability to scratch at her tights unseen for a shorter ascent, a briefer fall. She is most afraid that some fatal blockage will occur between her brain and mouth, preventing the word from emerging whole. She can hear it happen with other children. She can tell they know the word by the way they intone it, but then some kind of home accident occurs. The word trips over the edge of the tongue and plunges headlong into a tooth. A letter is twisted, I into E,T into P, or there is a pause and the last letter is repeated. Eliza knows it could happen to anyone, that possessing the right spelling is only half the battle.
By the time it is her turn, Eliza is ready for the worst. Instead, she gets ELEMENT. She practically sings the word into the microphone.
Aaron didn’t want to come but knew better than to say anything. There are certain times when it’s easier to go along with what his father says. When the words “as a family” are used is one of those times. Saul gets a look in his eye, like that of a dominant lion, that means either act like one of the pride or prepare to be attacked by the alpha male. Aaron is grateful for these irregular demands on his filial devotion. They reinforce the idea that the four of them are bound by more than a shared roof.
With that in mind, Aaron puts on his most attentive, brotherly face as he tries to discern his sister among the rows of preadolescents squirming in their chairs like insect specimens that weren’t asphyxiated before being pinned. He wants to be able to support his sister’s newfound spelling abilities. It’s silly, he tells himself. It’s immature. But he can’t help but notice the way Saul’s gaze has been fixed upon the stage ever since enough spellers were eliminated for Eliza to become visible. Even when it’s nowhere near her turn, Saul sits at attention, immune from the monotony of each round. The pronouncer’s voice, the heavy pauses as the children buy time at the microphone, the recurring requests—“Please repeat the word, please repeat the definition”—have no effect. Saul’s gaze is fixed on Eliza. He is looking at her the way a parent looks at an infant too new to be taken for granted.
Aaron remembers that look. He is six years old. Baby Eliza is fresh from the hospital. As Saul introduces Aaron to his new sister, he cannot believe anything that small could actually be alive. He grasps one of his sister’s doll hands and examines the tiny fingers. Aaron is not even aware of putting the finger into his mouth, of testing it with his teeth. His sister’s scream interrupts his reverie. Saul snatches the tiny hand away. Aaron is terrified, expects the bitten finger to fall off onto the table in a shower of blood, his fragile sister forever fractured. He can barely believe his eyes when the hand emerges whole, the skin unbroken, only a slight ring of indentations left by his teeth.
“NO,” his father commands, the menace in his voice a physical presence.
Aaron flinches, expecting reprisal. Instead, his father’s voice suddenly softens.
“Be gentle. Your sister needs your love. Look how small she is. She will never be as big or old as you. Will you help me look out for her? She needs us both.”
Aaron nods, his eyes large from the shock of his actions and his unexpected reprieve. Marvin Bussy and Billy Mamula are years away. He is still a boy who believes he has the power to protect.
A lot of time is spent raising and lowering the mike stand between contestants who have hit puberty and those still waiting to grow. Eliza wishes that those who didn’t know their words would just guess instead of stalling until they’re asked to start spelling by the judges. In the time it takes some spellers to get started, Eliza has spelled their word a few times, fought the temptation to just take off her tights, and repeatedly sung through the theme from Star Wars which, for some reason, she is unable to get out of her head.
Without realizing it, she has developed a routine. Three turns before her own, she blocks out the sounds of the bee and closes her eyes. Since she was very small, Eliza has thought of the inside of her head as a movie theater, providing herself with an explanation for the origin of bad dreams. Nightmares are rationalized away with the private assurance that she has accidentally stepped into an R-rated movie and needs only to return herself to the G-rated theater to remedy the situation. Using the mental movie theater construct, Eliza pictures the inside of her head as a huge blank screen upon which each word will be projected.
It doesn’t occur to her to be self-conscious about closing her eyes at the microphone. How else is she to see her word? Not having observed the others’ faces, she is unaware that most spell with their eyes open after a brief period of face-clenched concentration indigenous to constipation and jazz solos. Eliza opens her eyes only after uttering the last letter, the word inside her head as real as her nose and just as unmistakable. She has no fear of the ding. It’s not meant for her.
By Round 7, the words have gotten serious. Eliza has a moment’s hesitation with CREPUSCULE, but when she closes her eyes a second time, the word is there, waiting. After she spells it correctly, she spots her father in the audience when he is the only one standing during the applause. She considers waving but decides that it is too uncool. She tries a droll wink but is unable to manage the eyelid coordination and looks instead as if she has something stuck in her eye.
Though they haven’t spoken, Eliza has developed an affection for the speller next to her, an intense and careful girl whose numbered placard lies at an upward tilt because of her boobs. When the girl is eliminated with SANSEVIERIA, Eliza feels a loss. After the girl is gone Eliza avoids touching her empty chair.
Though Miriam is glad to be sitting here, a parent among parents, she cannot help but feel there is somewhere else she should be. Miriam knows this feeling well. It is rare not to feel the amorphous pull of some nameless, important task requiring her attention. She considers herself at her best when doing three things at once. The book she has brought lessens her sense of urgency, but Saul and Aaron are paying such single-minded attention to the bee that she feels guilty whenever she starts to read.
She is startled by the sight of Eliza onstage.