The cream cord spiraled on the Formica counter. My mom lifted me up as I held the receiver to my ear. My grandmother was on the other end, eager to hear what I had to say. I balanced the book on my lap, turned the worn pages with sage lettering and delicate drawings of a defiant rabbit, an angry gardener and a new jacket left behind.
The letters still swam, but I sorted them out, plucked each from the recesses of my mind: a pool of shapes and lines intersecting and crossing, curving around. Then I linked them together, like one boxcar to the next. I paused with each sound so they were connected but staccato, not quite cohesive.
I remember it being difficult, and then all of a sudden it wasn’t. Some synapse connected and I could read. I could make sense of the shapes strung together like Christmas lights. Like magnets they drew themselves together; like a baby babbling they sounded themselves out. I didn’t have to work at it anymore; it was automatic. Like breathing or the beating of the chambers of the heart: involuntary and subconscious. I only thought about it if I stumbled, skipped a beat.
My grandmother listened patiently as I read each page, pondered each picture. I later wondered if I was actually reading, if it was all a farce, if I simply memorized the whole thing, not knowing what memorization really was; it only came as the vaguest sense that maybe I was an impostor, deceiving my loved ones. I felt uneasy.
I still feel unsettled sometimes, like maybe I am an imposter in this life of mine, pulling a ruse over all those involved. My insecurities linger, from that five-year-old sitting on the counter, grandmother on the line. I wonder have I really achieved what I think I’ve accomplished, or is it simply an elaborate mimicking of all that I should know.