All in his face, and hers: that danger so great that it forces this ban. There is no threat greater than extinction in closeness. The threat that drove the voice of a century out of doors. The threat of all singing. We do not fear difference. We fear most being lost in likeness. The thing no race can abide.
She remembers everything, all that must come to them. The sound is everywhere in her. Now it’s right in her range: my country, thee, thee. She knows this boy. He’s fighting to bring himself into being, willing them the way on.
“The bird and the fish can make a bish. The fish and the bird can make a fird.” He chants the words, raps them, a cantering, desperate rhythm. A continent rising. Syncopated pitches in time. All he wants is to go on playing. All available combinations. Go on singing himself into existence, starting up my piece, my song.
That fierce, haunted beat shakes the white man loose. He, too, places the boy. Who else? What else? The inevitable enters him with the full force of discovery. “The bird can make a nest on the water.”
My mother looks out on the long space spreading in front of them. “The fish can fly.” She drops her eyes and colors deeply.
“You are blushing,” my father exclaims. Already learning.
“Yes.” My mother nods. Agreeing, and worse. “Yes. We have this, too.”