ON FORGETTING HOW TO SPEAK MANDARINEileen Huang (2017) My second grade teacher pries my throat openand forces me to say the word pillow. Say it,she says, pill-ow. Pill. Pill, like somethingthat can cure my un-american illness. And I say backpell-ow. The way my parents say it. The laughter in the roomchokes me-i can’t speak without the vowels stilling the air,without the syllables strangling my tongue. At home,I practice saying it in front of the mirror, pillow, pillow, pill,pill, like chanting the words to a song that I don’t know by heartbut I know that the English language is so rigid-shapeless, an ocean without wax or wane, onlyright or wrong: You can’t speak half-ying yuand still be full American. You can’t say leggings like leggywhat my mother does before the ladyat the mall yells at her to speak English, please-my mother who says Easter like Esther, who doesn’t knowshe from he sometimes, we shop for anything thatcan pare the skin off our bodies, for a knife to cut off our mothertongue, and sometimes, Mandarin flows back to me inscraps of burning paper, in the lines of that song on the radio whosechorus is the only part I remember that ancient poemthat my mother once recited to me：举头望明月，低头思故乡。I am beginning to think Mandarin is a myth：They say in China my mother spoke as if her Mandarin could cleavevalleys through mountains, could steal waves from the oceans. In Chinamy mother commanded language as if it were an infantryand she was so large with words that everyone called her goddess. In Americamy mother is shrinking, is brandishing silence as a shieldand everyone calls her chink—I know that language is disguise,and the more Mandarin I forget the more American I become.,tongueand trust me, i’m so good at forgetting: I scrape sonnets off myto seem more American. As a child, I stopped talkingto see if that would make me an AmericanI silence my mother so that I am an AmericanI am eighteen years old and I still don’t know how to speak–but I know that language is a weapon,that I can hold it to my parents’ throatsto force them to speak American, please, to stretch their o’sand lower their e’s, to quell the rapid waterfall of Mandarinthat threatens to burst from their mouths butMother, even after all these years, I am still so bad at EnglishSometimes I say soot like suit. Sometimes I don’t saywords I can’t pronounce. Sometimes I mistakea lost language for a dead thingconfuse silence for fluency. Sometimes, I returnall the skin to my body and still feel lessthan whole. Once. I stood in frontof the mirror and said pellowpellowpellowto bring the dead girl back. Last night,I tried writing my Chinese name until I realized thatI had forgotten where to place each dash,where to bury each bone of a language I once knewMother, if a language dies and no one is around to mourn it,does it make a sound? I am trying to pull the silent thingsout of my mouth. Mother, do you remember when grandfather died an ocean awayWhen you handed me the phone to speak to my relatives,and I didn’ t know how to say: i’m sorry?I thought of you, how sometimes I hearthe poems you’d sing to me：举头望明月，低头思故乡(Looking up, see the moon. Looking down,remember the home I’ve lost.
