How I Found My Voice

Jeanie and I—because we were not even minor players, hardly Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—found that though we thought ourselves stars, we, in fact, had a lot of time on our hands. But as we were under seven, it was a magical time. It was a group of many when just Jeanie and I played in the grassy circle beneath the apple trees. It was a magical time as we had made believe conversations with casts of characters. Bypres Fongton, Mr. Meany and Mr. Hicks were my own particular inventions. Bypres and Mr. Hicks lived on top of the weather vane at the pool house and Meany traveled between, stirring up arguments and sometimes he would even make terrible trouble for Ha Ha Ginzberg, Jeanie’s imaginary friend who got to be so famous for her perfect funny name, that someone wrote her into a story in the New Yorker. But for the most part, they as a team, and with us as their team players, fought off moths, found forbidden gardens, fended off bees, and insinuated themselves into the darkness of the drawers filled with secrets belonging to just about any member of the extended family. They also judged contests of singing, dancing and somersaults and in general ruled over all the apple trees and the hundreds of acres that extended beyond the orchards and the grassy circle and all the way to the copper beech and the sycamores, the maples and the elms. They would ring the air with little bells of mischief as they choreographed their flight between the trees to the stars and back again through our night-time windows. Nobody’s dreams went unanswered those nights as our little chaps carried out even our most imaginative demands.

Then one morning, word was sent that we were wanted in the cast of Helen’s production of Little Women. Of course. We were the perfect girls and the perfect ages to make up the cast. Our stage was the whole front of the play barn and we had three big white sheets that made a billowy curtain. The audience was “out there” and we were “in here.” Jeanie, who was to play the part of Hannah, the maid, would have to say only one line: “will you have hash or fish balls, gurrels?” But I would play Amy and have by far my largest speaking part in any family play: twenty-five lines. The kind of recognition I had dreamed of.

Rehearsals commenced, costumes were conceived and a stage constructed in our big red barn. This production would not be like our last one, The King’s Breakfast which was more or less like a glorified reading. No, this was “theater” pronounced with sunglasses and insouciance. Memorizing our lines, slinging them like the fruit in the trees, was effortless and crazy fun. Then after some lingering days, Helen Gaspard called us to the stage without our scripts.

We gathered in our wet bathing suits and no shoes. Suntanned and slightly nervous (for her) Joey, playing her namesake Jo, said with haughty control: “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.” Lucy, my middle sister, playing Beth, delivered with shy charm and a very freckled nose: “It’s so dreadful to be poor.” And then my line, as Amy: “I don’t think it’s fair that some children have so much while others have nothing at all.” As I tried to speak this line, a snake that had been hibernating near my oesophagus, grabbed at and strangled the beginning of each word. As the word “fair” struggled to live, the serpent constricted its passage and as if deprived of air, I balked two or three times at the ‘F’ before the word emerged ravaged and in need of oxygen.

This was the unhappy and astonishing birth of my stammer or at least my first gripping self-conscious awareness of it. My sisters and cousins, if they noticed this—and I can’t imagine they didn’t—must have been puzzled by the strange new guttural utterances. They likely imagined they were temporary and didn’t even consider to do or say anything about it. This would fade and disappear—like scratches, bruises, and babysitters.