Boys in the Trees: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF Page A

point words and life were easy, and limitless, my stammer made me aware that life could also be tough. There was very little it would not affect about me. All of my future phobias borrowed energy and nerve endings from this thing that, at the time, I understood so little about. Lines were deepening between neurons creating pathways which were like a trench, growing deeper and deeper, more associated with embarrassment and low self-esteem. I waited for the stammer to arrive and almost always it did. I had no idea that over the next decade, all through my grammar and high school years living in Riverdale and then for two years at college, I would face the daily struggle to speak naturally or unself-consciously. I usually failed. During my time in lower school, various classmates would tease me mercilessly, either to my face or behind my back, not just for my stammer, but for the facial contortions and grimaces that accompanied it. Inside, I felt assaulted, broken, consumed with self-hatred.
    After school, I would come home and crawl into my mother’s arms and cry for hours. Friends of hers had given her advice about possible stuttering cures. One, which involved filling your mouth with marbles and talking, we never tried. But beginning with Little Women , my stammer created a bond between Mommy and me. She was the only one who understood the shame I felt, that was beginning to define me. Almost every day, I huddled in her lap, practicing my words, as she rocked and relaxed me. She also placed a hot-water bottle on my morning stomachaches—“your worry lump,” Mommy called the aching spot—which sometimes made it so hard to swallow I almost gagged. Sometimes, though, a word would roll off my tongue, pushing past my throat guards, undetected, a prison break of sorts. “See, darling, you can do it!” my mother would say, and I felt that my victory was hers. But just as soon as her excitement for me passed, my fearfulness would begin all over again. I had accomplished something. Would I be able to do it again?
    My stammer followed no laws or patterns, and it still doesn’t. Some days I could easily say a word beginning with a vowel, like August or owl , but hit a wall with comb or garden . Other days I could manage an s -word like store or Sunday , but a t -word, like train or toothpaste , defeated me. The next day, without warning, it was reversed, the t -words easy, the s -words petrified. H was always hard. If the phone rang, I couldn’t even say “Hello,” and so, like a lot of stutterers, I came up with accents, tricks, or techniques to tackle problem words in sidelong ways. One trick involved expelling all my breath as the phone rang and picking up the receiver pushing out a breathless “… ello?” Other days, feeling as though I were cupping a strong, queenly S in my throat, I answered the phone with assurance, and delivered a majestic “Simon residence.” No doubt this must have sounded ridiculous, but it gave me a small feeling of pride. Still, I spent every night worrying about the next day, and the range of excuses I could make: I had to blow my nose; I needed to go to the bathroom; a sudden bout of hiccups had come on. My worst fear was that my stammer would ruin my “timing,” and therefore ruin any anecdote I might be telling, or if I were answering a quiz or a problem, everyone would think I didn’t even know the answer in the first place.
    When I was around seven years old, I started writing a diary, with most of the entries about what I’d eaten that night for dinner. As the years went on, I started making up my own code language to deal with my stutter at school. I wrote once, “Please—I pray that when I have to read aloud in class I won’t famul.” Famul: a word I’d invented that meant “stutter,” designed to obscure its actual meaning in case a stranger happened upon the worn leather-backed journal I’d taken to hiding under my mattress, a word helpfully defined in a