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“After many decades in the US…[exiles] still speak English with an accent, as though an accent didn’t betray just the body’s inability to adapt or to square away the details of a naturalization that should have been finalized decades ago, but its reluctance to let go of things that are at once private and timeless.” --Andre Aciman
I am home from school during the winter, and I have come to find that things have changed since I’ve left. I can’t find the forks anymore, and the plates have moved to another cabinet. My bed is gone; a bigger, better one has replaced it. I am annoyed by these slight changes—they unbalance me in my own home.
I am in the kitchen, searching for a knife when my mother tells me to call the travel agent for airplane tickets. I am annoyed at having to do her errand. I tell her, “Call them yourself! You’ve done it before.” She insists that I call. I become more annoyed at her dependence. Then she tells me, “I don’t speak like you. They’ll know.”
My back faces her, and for a moment, my throat closes up, and I am struggling to breathe. Tears well up in my eyes, and finally, I understand. I don’t need her to explain any further that her daughter does not have an accent. I don’t need her to explain that when she speaks, she is uncertain and unmoored—lost in her words. After thirty years of struggle, she is still afraid of her own voice, afraid of the consequences of her broken English and her accent, afraid of her life here in America. My proud mother would never admit this, but I understand.
I don’t speak like you. They’ll know.
I blink several times and swallow the closure in my throat. I do not face her, because I will break down if I do. But I ask her where the phone is, and dial the travel agent’s phone number through my tears. My fingers shake slightly, and I understand, finally, that through me, she can speak her story, she can voice her sorrows, she can realize that her escape was not in vain.
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