Page 75 of Genuine Fraud
“I lost my accent.”
“What?”
“I replaced it.”
“How?”
The guys at the gym where Julietta worked were old. They only wanted to talk about reps and miles, weights and dosages. And they were the only people she ever talked to. Neil, at least, was young. “When I was nine,” she told him, “one day I’d had—let’s call it a bad day. Teacher telling us to be quiet. Yelling atmeto be quiet. ‘Shut up, little girl, you’ve said enough.’ ‘Stop, little girl, don’t hit, use your words’—andshut upat the same time. They squash you. They want you to be small and silent.Goodwas just another word fordon’t fight back.”
Neil nodded. “I always got called out for being loud.”
“One day, no one came to pick me up at school. Just—nobody came. The people in the office called and called my house, but no one picked up. This after-school teacher called Miss Kayla, she drove me home. It was already dark out. I barely knew her. I got in her car because she had pretty hair. Yeah, stupid, to get in a stranger’s car, I know. But she was a teacher. She gave me a box of Tic Tacs. While she was driving, she talked and talked, to cheer me up, you know? And she was from Canada. I don’t know where in Canada, but she had an accent.”
Neil nodded.
“I started imitating her,” Julietta went on. “I was curious why she talked like that. She saidgazinstead of gas.Abootinstead of about. That’s called Canadian rising, by the way. It’s a vowel shift. And I made Miss Kayla laugh, doing the accent. She told me I was a good mimic. Then we got to my house and she walked me to the door.”
“Then what?”
“Someone was home all that time.”
“Dang.”
“Yeah. She was watching TV. She hadn’t thought to come get me. Or she couldn’t. I don’t know. It was messed up, either way. She hadn’t bothered to pick up the stupid phone, all those times the school called. I pushed the door open and walked in. I said, ‘Where were you?’ and she said, ‘Be quiet, don’t you see I got the TV on?’ And I said, ‘Why didn’t you pick up the phone?’ and she said, ‘I told you to be quiet.’ Just anothershut up and don’t fight back.So I got myself a bowl of dry cereal for dinner and watched the TV next to her. We had been watching for an hour or more when this idea hit me.”
“What?”
“TV gives you an education in how to talk. Newscasters, rich people, doctors on those medical dramas. None of them talked the way I did. But they all talked like each other.”
“I guess.”
“It’s true. I figured: learn to talkthatway, and maybe you don’t get told to shut up so much.”
“You taught yourself?”
“I learned general American first. That’s the one on TV. But now I do Boston, Brooklyn, West Coast, Lowland Southern, Central Canadian, BBC English, Irish, Scottish, South African.”
“You want to be an actress. That it?”
Julietta shook her head. “I’ve got better things in mind.”
“World domination, then.”
“Something like that. I gotta figure it out.”
“You could definitely be an actress,” Neil said, grinning. “In fact, I bet you’ll be in the movies. A year from now I’ll be like, wow. That girl Julietta used to stand at the Chanel counter and cake on free makeup. That girl let me talk to her every now and then.”
“Thanks.”
“You need to get some nice clothes, Miss Julietta. You got to meet some big-money guys who’ll buy you jewelry and pretty dresses. Talking like the television is one thing, but right now, it’s all tracksuit, gym shoes, cheap-looking hair. You’ll never get anywhere like that.”
“I don’t want to sell what you’re selling.”
“Let me hear you talk Brooklyn,” said Neil.
“My lunch hour is over.” She stood up.
“Come on. Irish, then.”
