little salt

 Little Salt studied the yellowing eye chart on the back of the closed door of the room at the Barrier Island Free Medical Clinic.

He practiced saying the letters in his mind, from Spanish to English, from English back to Spanish, until he could think them into a seamless line.

His mamí flipped through the pages of an old Life Magazine with an immigrant mother and child on the cover.

His abuelo stared at a watercolor painting on the wall of a heavy laden peach tree, the colors of the ripe peaches glowing brightly against the white walls of the room, and then clasped his hands in his lap and looked thoughtfully into them as if he were looking into the deepest parts of the earth.

There was a tap on the door.

A young doctor walked into the room.

“Buenos Dias, amigos,” she said. “Me llamo Maria. Como estas ustedes?”

She had eyes like his abuelo, deep and earthy brown.

She wore a white doctor’s coat, faded blue jeans and an old pair of red Converse Chuck Taylor tennis shoes.

“Well,” she began, “Let’s talk about Salito.

We looked over his brain scans and studied them very carefully. 

We didn’t find any organic reason why he doesn’t speak. 

The other tests on his ears, nose and throat came back normal, too. 

So all of the parts that help him speak are well and good inside of him.”

His mamí put her arm around his shoulder, held him close to her, and breathed out a long, slow, quiet sigh of relief.

“But we still haven’t answered the question,” continued Dr. Maria. “Why doesn’t Salito speak?”

She pulled up a chair in front of him, sat down in it, and leaned her face close to his face until her nose gently brushed against his nose.

“We’ve got to walk together down a path into a place where we can’t see and where we can’t hear,” she smiled. 

“The only person who can tell us why he’s not speaking...is not speaking.”

He smiled back at her and looked away from her eyes and down at her shoes.

Suddenly, he whistled the most beautiful song Dr. Maria had ever heard in her life.

They reminded her of the joy she felt as a little girl standing in the fields with her family on their farm in El Salvador.

At the same time, they reminded her of the sadness she felt as she worked day after day to help person after person who was just trying to make a better life in a place where it was hard to live because some people didn’t want them there.

The whistling brought a stillness and a quietness to the room.

After a while, his abuelo spoke.

“He says he does speak, but not many people understand him, I think.”

And it was true.