Not Speaking

56 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW DAVID KELLER NOT SPEAKING Growing up, my family didn't seem much for violence, no one in our yard or anyone we knew ever screaming 'But dammit, I love you,' or 'Hit me, go ahead, hit me.' Still, certain disturbances work at me, left buried out back like birds found under the picture window each spring by the house I'd always thought of as filled with conversation over meals. One sister did hit a boy the school reported, with a music stand, an act too overt to speak of; she became unsure of what she wanted to say, adept at slamming doors during dinner. Something in us eluded my mother in bitter flashes, then her acid tears: my sister's thumb broken during a spanking or my sixth-grade rage at my father that all he could play was tennis. Nothing of hers was accounted for, like the earlier marriage she finally first spoke of to me at nineteen as if it were meant to explain why she took up piano, later the cello. Once from his Old Testament calm my father stung me with 'You bastard,' then retreated from the incident, its cause lost now, to the research where he submerged all mention of his early life. KELLER 57 Silent, probably horrible, afraid of anything about to burst forth I was the first, certain of resembling that mildness his best quality, to leave without a fuss. Now at a distance we are the silent Indians of the books I tried to emulate, sure of success, who never blush, showed pain or any hint of what's there. Trying to speak on the phone of love we worry at our inability, pause, hang up. Mother, I should have slapped you to help calm, ease myself and you. Then we might have talked. ...