Dialect

[catelin]

She is a tangle of accents and drawls from too many places as a kid. When she laughs, he hears New Orleans. When they fight, it’s the red dirt girl from her grandmother’s farm. Shopping brings out the Valley Girl; and when she’s sad, his heart breaks at the trace of Appalachia that clings to each resigned word. When she’s gone, he sits and watches the news every morning from Atlanta. He doesn’t listen to what they say so much as how they say it, and he wonders how it is that people learn to sound like they are from nowhere.