Recovering, Discovering, My Mother’s Voice

by Joan Leotta

 
My red Royal with its hard-to-press keys
was Mom’s graduation gift circa 1930.
She ceded it to me,
when I confided my desire to
become a writer.
 
Daily, (for some weeks),
I practiced pushing those keys
with two fingers, willing words
to spill out as easily as they
did for my mother.
Though technically I now
owned it, my mother was
still the Royal’s Queen, the
machine having long ago forgiven
the spill of fingernail polish
that still mar its cherry red glow.
 
On my graduation day
she gifted me an Olympia,
sleek , smooth, light—
plastic, not metal—easier
to press. My own finger
efforts quickly progressed to ten.
I packed away her Royal and
rarely thought about it
until, years after Mom
passed on, I set it up as a
decorative piece in my office.
A few years ago, I found
Mom’s high school yearbook
Where she revealed that  
she too, had wanted to be a writer.
 
We are moving again so
Yesterday I returned
Royal to its carrying case.
I looked at the ribbon. Pulled it out.
I’d pressed only a few words onto it
over the years, so most of what remains
on that inked cloth belongs to Mom.
Carefully I lifted out the red and black
spool. Time had eroded it, almost
erased the letters her fingers had
stamped onto it.
 
I held the ribbon high and
unwound it a bit, fancied
I could hear the letters marching
off the fabric, forming into words,
sentences, stories—soft, not distinct,
but yes, my mother’s voice.


* * * * *

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She writes and performs tales of food, family, strong women and has a one woman show as Louisa May Alcott. Internationally published as an essayist, poet, short story writer, and novelist, she’s a two-time Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee and was a 2022 runner-up in Robert Frost Competition. Her two chapbooks are Languid Lusciousness with Lemon and Feathers on Stone.