In Short – Issue 3 (Spring 2025)
May 31, 2025
“Dragon Wood” by Camellia Paul
When I Am Six, I Speak in Tongues
By Amy Cipolla Barnes
because my Mama wants me to. I’m standing on a dining room chair. She’s coaching me in a loud voice because I haven’t been listening closely enough. My upcoming Sunday performance must be convincing.
“Say the Spanish words,” she repeats. “I know you know them.”
I see her brown belt, tight in its belt loops, but slightly unbuckled as a shiny winking warning.
I say the words I know in long slurs of gato, bano, seis, rose, hola, azul, tres, four letter words that feel like swearing. She coaches me like a religious drill sergeant.
More
Faster
More
Faster
My younger sister hides under the kitchen table, singing nursery rhymes. She knows no Spanish because she’s not in school yet. My mother knows no Spanish because she refused to learn in El Paso. My father knows a lot, but he stays at work in Juarez until 8:00 p.m. so he doesn’t have to listen to my mother’s English.
Once I string together the Spanish words I know like little mariachi band buttons in my mouth, I’m sent to bed. I can still feel each word as I try to sleep, running my tongue over them, deceptive words that are big white lies or maybe, small fibs. Blanco. I add that word to my planned Sunday morning line-up.
I don’t sleep much because I know lying is a sin. Lying in church must be a bigger one.
My elementary school Spanish teacher is an unwitting dupe in my mother’s plot to trick the church and receive earthly praise. I think about asking my teacher if I’m bad at learning words. It’s cooking day in class, and she hands me a warm tortilla. I eat it as fast as my bumpy mouth will allow. My mother only makes sourdough bread, heavy on the sour. The tortilla feels like a skinny fib of a bread. I wonder if my teacher’s children speak in English tongues at their church. I admire her loose dresses with belts made of soft fabric.
My younger sister is already blessed because she has ice blue eyes that match her ice blue dress and blonde Jesus’ blue eyes, too. She doesn’t get to eat warm tortillas at 10:00 a.m. though.
On Sunday, when the pastor calls for anyone with a word of prophecy, I sink in the pew but my mother pushes me to the aisle. It’s too late anyway; I have many tongue words buttoned in my mouth that must come out.
I stand on the stage and chant my basic Spanish vocabulary. Everyone in the church has their eyes closed. Except for two people. My mother is coaching me like I’m in a beauty pageant. My eyes are open, too. In my mind, I can see my Spanish teacher watching lies stream from my mouth.
I throw myself on the floral church carpet.
“She has been overcome.”The pastor says as he carries me to the pew where my mother’s face is stuck between shame and glory, waiting to see what he says. I don’t remember. I hide under my pale pink Easter coat. I must have done something good because we get ice cream on the way home.
On Monday, my Spanish teacher gifts me a Spanish/English dictionary. I keep it next to my bible, the one with gold letters on the front. I underline the cuss words in the dictionary and whisper them to myself when we sing too-long hymns or my mother’s belt escapes its loops.
Amy Cipolla Barnes (she/her) is the author of three collections: Mother Figures (ELJ Editions, 2021), Ambrotypes (Word West LLC, 2022), and Child Craft (Belle Point Press, 2023). She has words at The Rumpus, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Citron Review, Spartan Lit, JMWW Journal, No Contact Mag, Leon Review, Complete Sentence, Gone Lawn, The Bureau Dispatch, Nurture Lit, X-R-A-Y Lit, McSweeney’s, -ette review, Southern Living, Cease, Cows, and many other sites. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, included in Best Microfiction 2025, long-listed for the Wigleaf Top50 in 2021-2024, and included in The Best Small Fictions 2022. She’s a Fractured Lit Associate Editor, Gone Lawn co-editor, Ruby Lit assistant editor, Narratively Chief Submissions Reader, and reads for The MacGuffin, The Porch TN, and CRAFT.