Voice Lessons
by Denise Dee
“We’ll take out her tonsils,” the doctor says to my mother.
“Wait” I say from the corner. They ignore me. “Then she won’t have all these sore throats.”
My body stays sitting in the corner, I float slightly above it saying. Yes I will. My throat is sore because I’m not allowed to cry. My throat is sore because it’s crammed full of feelings that are too big for a kid. My throat is sore because I’m choking on what I know is true, but am not allowed to say.
“Once we take her tonsils out, she’ll have maybe one sore throat a year. It will be a lot easier for you.” The doctor says.
My mother nods like you can buy easy. I shake my head violently, life isn’t easy and nothing is going to make it that way. And no, you weren’t cheated because your life is hard. Everyone’s life is hard. But she doesn’t believe this; she thinks she has been singled out for suffering.
I sit silent then, knowing that my tonsils will be taken. A small sacrifice. They can’t cut the chords to voice box, or larynx, or whatever it’s called. They can’t silence my questions. My tonsils are the closest they can get to removing my voice. Go ahead, I think take them; nothing is going to shut me up.
I wake up. There is gauze packed inside my nose. The inner cavities of my face are stretched wider than they are meant to be, and it hurts. There is some kind of tubing running from my nose down my throat like the tonsils it has taken the place of. It is plastic and I can not speak. Maybe the have inserted one of those Chatty Kathy pull cords so I can only speak when they want me to. Maybe there is a record in my belly so I can only say what they want.
The nurse comes to get me. The floor is cold. I put on my big old blue fuzzy slippers that look prehistoric and make my feet sweat. We walk down a long hall.
“Sit up on this” she says patting a padded table.
Once I’m on the table she tries to get me to lean back. No way I think remembering that mask that gassed and silenced me before the operation. They called it putting me to sleep, but my mind raced as my body stilled. No way. I start struggling. She calls in another nurse. They hold me by the wrists one on each side. The doctor comes in chuckling.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
I stay silent. I do not trust him. I can not see his hands for a minute, and then he holds scissors blades open near my throat. I can see he means to cut the tubing hanging inside my throat. It would be easy for him to slip, blood running down my throat.
“Hold still” he says shining a pen light in the cavern of my throat. There’s been enough exploring going on inside me already. I pull back my arm and slug him.
