THE TURQUOISE PEN

ICING ON THE CAKE

Noël R. King

La Tonya Darnell loved to read, but not just anything. Her specialty was reading in foreign languages. She would pick up a book on the Russian state, written in Russian, and she would know exactly what all those funny-looking characters meant. She claimed that, when she read books, newspapers, and magazines in other languages, it seemed to her to be no different from reading in English.

"What’s the big deal?" she would say. "I just don’t get it. What’s so hard about reading this stuff? It’s all the same to me."

And so it was, as hard as that was for the rest of us to believe, much less fathom. I once gave her my birth certificate to read, and she did, right like that. I myself cannot even read it—it is in Latvian, and I know nothing about that language even though it is supposedly my mother tongue.

And just the other day, when we went to a movie together, she awed me with her insight into the Chinese plot, which was much different from what the English subtitles had led me to believe. I must say, life with LaTonya was fraught with great understanding.

Now, what I just told you is pretty incredible, but at least it is well documented that many people can and do understand more than one language (I personally do not happen to be one of them). But I am going to tell you a little secret here because I am bursting to tell somebody—anybody at all, actually: LaTonya’s gift "translated."

"Well, of course," you might say. "Silly," you might add. "That’s what you’ve just been telling us."

But, no, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that her gift for, well, regular languages extended to other languages, ones that I did not even know existed.

For example, LaTonya could tell you in detail what her heart told its blood vessels just before it sent them on their way out into her body ("Watch out!" "Go easy, there" "You’ll be fine, just fine"). She said she constantly heard the jabbering, and even found it somewhat comforting. At the same time, she understood the gist of all her other body parts talking to each other (muscles to bones, kidneys to gall bladder, nose to ears, and so forth).

Oh, but it went far beyond her body, too! When she came home from work and unlocked the front door to her house, her key welcomed the lock and vice-versa. Her pillows at night talked to her hair. Her knees talked to her mattress and even whispered sometimes over to the windows (she had bruised her knee once something awful on a windowsill).

There are so many more examples I could tell you about! In fact, I could spend only a few days at a time with LaTonya because I would fill up too fast with information when I was with her. I would have to go home afterward and let it all spill back out.

Rocks are good for that. They are used to being spilled on. So I would go sit at the edge of this rock quarry near my house and let all that information roll right on out of me until I felt just right again (namely, empty).

And now I am going to go have some chocolate cake because it helps me when I eat after telling a story like this.

—As circumstances warrant, through her Turquoise Pen column Noël R. King, Reston, Virginia, reports on strange and wonderful things, including gifts of translation like La Tonya’s.