"So. I have been thinking."
"About the thing you said in bed. That time."
"I don't—there were a lot of things said in bed. I say many things in bed. I'm very chatty before sleep. You know this. You've complained about this."
"Not before sleep. The other time. When I asked you how to say 'you are heavy and your elbow is on my hair' in Belarusian. And you stared at the ceiling for a very long time. And then you said one word."
"You called me a toilet."
"I didn't—you weren't supposed to—I thought you wouldn't understand."
"Vbyral'nya. Ukrainian has this word also. It is almost same word. You called me a toilet and hoped I would not notice."
"I panicked. You asked me a question in bed and your face was right there and I forgot every Belarusian word I have ever known. Which is not many. Which is the problem."
"I should know more. I should know my own language. But I don't. I think in Russian. I dream in Russian. When my mother sends me those videos from Minsk, she speaks Russian because that's what we spoke at home, that's what everyone spoke, Belarusian was for Sunday school and grandparents and—and I sat in that classroom for years memorizing verb conjugations and hating every minute of it and now I can't even come up with a sentence in bed without panicking and calling you a toilet. You understand Belarusian better than I do and you're Ukrainian. You just—you just knew the word. Like it was nothing. And I had to stare at the ceiling for forty-five seconds to remember the word for toilet."
"It was not forty-five seconds."
"It felt like forty-five seconds. It felt like an hour. I was lying there trying to think of anything in Belarusian and my brain was just—empty. Completely empty. And then the only word that came was prybiral'nya and I thought 'he won't know this one, it's not the same in Russian, he probably thinks I said something romantic.' And you did. You just went 'hm' and fell asleep. And I lay there awake for another hour feeling like the worst Belarusian in the world."
"You are not the worst Belarusian in the world. Lukashenko is the worst Belarusian in the world. You are maybe fourth. Fifth."
"It is a little comforting. You are behind a dictator and several generals. This is respectable placement."
"Why do you understand Belarusian better than me."
“I do not understand your language better than you. I understood one word. One. Because it is almost the same word in Ukrainian. We share eighty-four percent of our words without trying. We did not earn this. It just is. You could have said prybiral'nya to a Russian and they would not know it. You said it to the only person in Montreal who would understand without trying. This is not me being good at Belarusian. This is not you failing. This is just geography.”
"It feels like a moral failing."
"Then I have a moral failing also. I cannot roll my R's."
"When I was small. In Kyiv. I could not roll my R's. Little Yuliya with messy braids. Bad at being a girl. Also bad at alveolar trills. My father thought it was funny at first. He called me his little foreigner. Not cruel. Just amused. But still. He sent me to a speech therapist. She had a metal rod with a little ball on the end. She put it under my tongue. It was cold. She moved it back and forth. Back and forth. She made me say трактор. Tractor. Over and over. R-r-r-r-r. Like a little machine gun. I sat in that room every week for a year drooling on my shirt while a woman pushed a metal ball under my tongue. And it did not work. I still cannot roll my R's. I have a tap. Sometimes I substitute. My father stopped laughing. He never mentioned it again. But I know he noticed. He wanted me to sound like I belonged. And I could not give him that."
"You roll them annoyingly well. Like a purring cat. Like you are showing off."
"I'm not showing off. It's just—it's just how I talk."
"I know. I am saying. You have something I do not have. You can do something with language that I failed to learn even with a metal rod and a year of practice. And I am not jealous of you for this. I am just saying. You are not the only one who lost something.”
"You never told me about the rod."
"You never told me about Sunday school."
"I hated the speech therapist. She smelled like cabbage. I still cannot eat cabbage without thinking of her."
"That's—that's terrible."
"It is inconvenient. Cabbage is in many things.”
“No, I mean—all of it. The rod. Your father. Being made to feel like a foreigner in your own language. That's terrible. And I—I called you a toilet. I had the chance to say something in my language, something real, and I called you a toilet.”
“You called me a toilet because you panicked. I could not roll an R because my tongue would not cooperate. These are not the same thing. But they are both things. Things that happened to children who are now adults. And you are still here. Still remember prybiral'nya even if it was the wrong word. Even if it took forty-five seconds."
"It wasn't forty-five seconds."
"We could help each other. You could teach me to roll my R's. I could teach you Belarusian."
"You don't speak Belarusian."
"I understand one word. That is more than you had in bed. We start there. We build. Like partnership. Small steps. Compact steps."
"You want me to teach you to roll your R's."
"You roll them like a cat. Like a very pleased cat. It is annoying. I want to be annoying also."
"You're already annoying."
"Then I want to be annoying in a new way. With alveolar trills."
"That's—that's not—you can't just decide to learn a sound you've been failing at since childhood."
"I learned to live in a body that was wrong and then I learned to live in a body that was broken. I learned to speak English without particles—articles. I can learn one sound. Especially if you teach me."
"...I don't know how to teach."
"You will figure it out. You learned to lift me without dropping me. This is smaller. Less dangerous. No one is dropped."
"Then we are bad at it together. This is also partnership."
"You are crying. Your face is wet. That is crying."
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