An Echolalia

by Celina Su

When I hear, for the very first time, all of my prepositions. O yeah, um, what I meant to say was.

Whither neurological or pathological, whither a stuttering. For her repetitions do not insist at the beginnings of her utterances; rather, her speech does not end, especially when the last consonant sounds a “voiceless” unaspirated stop. I read bilabial, alveolar, velar. She exclaims, The lion is wet-t-t-t.

When I obsessed over my inheritance. What have I inherited? My teenage self ruminated over linguistic barriers, dish rags in lieu of paper towels. Sickness as sin, that I caught a cold because I left for school with my hair still damp. The absence of an allowance, the lack, the lack, the excess, heavy accents. Name-calling, kneeling in front of a wall for hours, a temper and impatience. What I deserved. At least, only, verbally, then, gender fluidity and missing conjugations. The point, Celina, is that there are so many people smarter than me.

When, just a few weeks ago, she did not fall, she was always falling. All action in media res, present participling. But last week, she falled, and I finded, so that my actions holded no exceptions to the rule.

So I was caught off guard when, yesterday, I bumped into her stuffed animal toys, and she claimed and exclaimed that they fell, and that I fell them, that is, that I made them fall, that I felled them.

Between fluency and disfluency, between simple and progressive timelines, between her stuffed baby bear and the musical hippo, between a language and a dialect. An army of tanks, a flock of naval warships, a murder of central banks, a convocation of teachers, an aerie of bureaucrats.

When our neighbors compliment her outfit on the sidewalk, and she stares at them in return. When, three minutes and one block later, she whispers a reply, wishes them a happy day. Her toddling l’esprit d’escalier.

To command a final word. But just now, I realize that her echolalia is gone, after months of disfluency. Or perhaps it has wandered off, or taken a run. Instead, when I reach out towards her, feign an attempt to tickle her, she singsongs, Don’t touch my belly,/ belly belly button,/ button my jacket.

{ }

If there is no excess memory, only managed, if I have now forgotten to either seethe over or dwell in my inheritance.

My reflection in the mirror looks familiar enough, and my surroundings remain the same.

Yet, and I blink twice to make sure, it is as if I am walking besides myself, alongside the person I thought I was, have been.

Perhaps, in the middle of the night, I instructed myself to wake up and navigate my days swiveled a few degrees to the left.

My obsessions shift from those of a descendent to those of an ancestor.

This, like death, a shock of the sudden forever, sits down upon my chest.

When the breath continues. When we exhale, and utter. To bequeath. Each action I make to reverberate through seven generations-- I will fall, perhaps, in, or into, a future imperfect that she articulates. Not a manufactured memory, but a sensation, a theory of whose past.