Mark Dunn - Ella Minnow Pea

If not, God help us all.

With love ,

Your cousin Tassie

PS. Neither I nor Mother will be able to attend your party on the 7th. Nollop “Im”-Pass is mired again from last week’s heavy rains, and the Littoral Loop has yet to be reopened following the early summer inundata. (I would avoid the Littoral Loop, in any event, as it is, while scenic, the longest distance between two points known to man.) And please understand my unwillingness to trespass upon the Pony Expresspath; the sprinting Pony brother-couriers are Mercury-swift these days, and I would prefer that my obituary not read, “She was ingloriously run over by a fleet-footed fourteen-year-old.” If I am to have any choice in the matter, I would choose a less pedestrian death, thank-you-very-much.

PPS. You will notice that with the exception of the use of the letter “Z” in the anserous term “vocabu-lazy,” the affectionately familiar “Cuz,” and the mischievously manufactured “bezide,” the letter is employed nowhere else in this missive. My point stands on principle: to choose to use the letter if I so wish it, or to choose not to; such is my right — a right now to be eradicated by stroke of High Council pen. And with that, I cloze.

[Upon the Minnow Pea kitchen table]

NOLLOPTON

Sunday, August 6

Dear Daughter Ella,

I am going to the hobby-shop to pick up more ceramic mix for my miniatures. I should be home in an hour or two. I have decided to narrow my latest venture from the fashioning of dissimilar vessels (the familiar tiny urns, pitchers, and amphoras which have sold so well at our recent town craft bazaars) to the exclusive molding of diminutive moonshine jugs. You might remember my telling you and your mother that Mr. McHenry of Charlotte, North Carolina, has promised to buy all the jugs I make for his American Doll House Supply Company. (And with the decline in available carpentry work around the island you know how much we can use this money.)

You may remind your mother should she return before I do that while I am out I will pick up mixed nuts and assorted beverages for tomorrow night’s party. I will also bring something good for us to eat for dinner this evening.

It will not be fish.

I have apparently grown just as tired of the piscivorous diet as have you and she. Praise God for the abundance of loaves and fishes during these belt-tightening times; just leave us the loaves and take away all them fishes!

With love from your father ,

Amos

NOLLOPTON

Monday, August 7

Dear Cousin Tassie,

I write this letter literally minutes from the cusp of midnight. I trust that having read it, you will put quick flame to it for it will have been received after the onset of this peculiar prohibition, and I do not wish to place you or your mother in any jeopardy whatsoever, for I understand there will be no moratorium, and no lenience shown any offender over the age of seven. (Why the cut-off here, I do not know, yet any child eight and older who speaks or writes a word containing the letter “Z,” it is my understanding from the proclamation, will receive the same penalty as would an adult. Children seven and younger, however, may bizz and bazz to their heart’s content. Ah, to be a child again!)

I wish that you could be here. It has been an odd gathering — a warm confluence of kindred souls — yet in terms of the pervasive atmosphere, conversely, even perversely funereal. I would like to have had my dear cousin at my side as we approach the fateful stroke-and-chime. Reluctantly do we bid farewell to Mistress Z, embracing her warmly, heartily, as if determined never to let her leave our side. In spirit-most-festive do we attempt with all our intellectual muscle to name as many words as we are able from the pool of those we will soon be forbidden to use. Such a very long list we have produced — a list which will soon and sadly be curling black in the Pop-crafted salad-ceramic enlisted for its incineration.

My Uncle Zachary will henceforth go by his middle name, Isaac. His jocular carpenter-mates Buzz and Zeke ask that they now be called, respectively, Lil’ Tristan and Prince Valiant-the-Comely. (Zeke is actually applying for a legal name change!)

No longer may we speak of the topaz sea which laps our breeze-kissed shores. Nor ever again describe azure-tinted horizons sheered by the violent blazes of our brilliant island sunrises.

Hundreds of words await ostracism from our functional vocabularies: waltz and fizz and squeeze and booze and frozen pizza pie, frizzy and fuzzy and dizzy and duzzy, the visualization of emphyzeema-zapped Tarzans, wheezing and sneezing, holding glazed and anodized bazookas, seized by all the bizarrities of this zany zone we call home. Dazed or zombified citizens who recognize hazardous organizations of zealots in their hazy midst, too late — too late to size down. Immobilized we iz. Minimalized. Paralyzed. Zip. Zap. ZZZZZZZZZ.

Crazy.

Crazy.

Did I say crazy?

The books have all disappeared. You were right about the books. We will have to write new ones now. But what will we say? Without the whizz that waz.

For we cannot even write of its history. Because to write of it, is to write it. And as of midnight, it becomes ineffable.

As of five seconds from now.

As of now.

The clock chimes twelve.

Goodbye*!

I have such a ghastly headache. I believe I’ll go lie down now.

Love ,

Your cousin Ella

The quick brown fox jumps over the la* y dog

NOLLOPVILLE

Tuesday, August 8

Dear Ella,

I received your letter. I read it and destroyed it. I’m sorry I couldn’t be with you. As your family’s parties go, I’m sure it was a memorable one, although the hovering pall must have sent folks home a little earlier than usual.

They shut the library down today. By day’s end workmen had it totally boarded up. I spent much of the afternoon helping Rachalle box up items to transfer to the supply cabinets of Mother’s school. Her second graders wore such heart-tugging looks of confusion when the principal confiscated all of the textbooks. Mother spent much of the school day in halt and stammer lest she speak the proscribed letter and find herself brought up on charges. It makes teaching so difficult, she tells me — having to spell out each word in her head before speaking it, to prevent accidental usage, while attempting to deliver a lesson without benefit of any textbook whatsoever! (Mother is having only a slightly better time of it than Mrs. Moseley who, having fallen victim to chronic aposiopesis in the morning, spent the bulk of the afternoon seated in silent defeat behind her desk, while her restless third graders improvised games of catch with a variety of show-and-tell items.)

Mother said her own pupils wanted desperately to talk about what had just occurred.

Many are forbidden by their parents to discuss the matter at home, so great is the fear of where such discussion may lead. She said that she took the coward’s way out and would not permit discussion in her classroom either. It is gone, she tells the children. They must think no more of it. We must all learn to accept its departure.

“And yet, deep inside,” she tells me, “I am angry and rebellious.” “In my head,” she tells me, “I am reciting what I recall of my niece’s last letter, allowing the illegal words to baste and crisp. I cook the words, serve them up, devour them greedily. In the sanctuary of my thoughts, I am a fearless renegade. Yet in the company of the children I cringe and cower in a most depreciating way.”