Your world series is finished

Tonight I found a tape called "Russell's Noises". I've had it for years — probably I borrowed it from my parents' tape collection in junior high with the intention of filling it with metal songs from the radio (all my childhood tapes ended up with the tape-over-the-tabs treatment, 'A Disney Christmas' becoming the repository of a 45-minute nonstop commercial-free block of Winger, Poison, Warrant, and Ratt). Or maybe I just hoarded the tape, as I did so many books, tapes, and pictures through the years. My parents' photo albums all have sticky spaces in them from where I lifted photos, pinning them to the walls of my room and, eventually, taking them with me across the country when I left home, mingling them with my own photos.

I'd apparently never listened through all of "Russell's Noises", probably not since I was a child...maybe never. I see why. The first ten minutes are slow going. My father's low, steady voice and my chirpy but precise squeak start hopefully: my mother is out of the house, and the one-year-old Russell has been making noises all morning.

We turn on the tape recorder, and he immediately falls silent.

For about ten minutes we try to coax Russell to talk. He emits a few 'aaaahh-UH!'s, but is mostly uncooperative. At one point my father says "Oh wise Russell, what do you have to say?" I take up this phrase and repeat it throughout the tape, working it into songs, always uttering it in the most exact, rhythmic way, turning it into a five-year-old mantra.

Then Russell begins to cry. We quiet him down, and then the tape is given over to mumbling for several minutes. My father loses interest and/or hope, but I continue to drag the tape recorder around after Russell for the next hour, instructing him to speak.

There are several moments of dead time: my mother comes home, I go to the bathroom, she asks us to play somewhere other than in the bathroom.

I've transcribed some of the latter section of the tape. I do all the talking here; at times I speak for Bill (whom I'd never heard of until this evening). At one point my talking turns into a song. Russell's babbling is also audible throughout. I've transcribed the questions without question marks, because my voice never raises at the end; I sound eerily robotic, speaking in the same measured, contractionless tone throughout, emphasizing every consonant. I don't know if I really talked this way, or if I was being extra-formal for the benefit of posterity:

Russell…
Mom told you not to go back there.
I’m not back there, so why are you.
Get away from there.
Russell...
Please get away from there.
Russell, get away from there.
I do not want you to do anything back there.
You mustn’t; you keep ringing the bell.
Oh wise Russell, what do you have to say…
Do you have to talk or do you have to do something else.
What do you want
What do you want to do
Oh wise Russell doooooo
What do you have to do (song begins here)
And I am going to get that book from you hoo hoo hoo hoooooo
I got it away from Russell so woo hoo hoo hoo hoo
He keeps collecting books
And I take them away from him
He is only one year old
and he-eee can walk.
So if yoooooou want to
be a girlllllllll
you must be good;
but if you want to beeeee a boy
when you’re a baby
you must be bad.
So wheneverrrr you must come and say
Where is Russell
He is a boy
Has he been wa—
acting bad
if he has, he is a boy,
if he hasn’t, he is a girl. (song ends)
Sorry, but he is doing something else, which is piling books up for his world series.
I’ll try to stop him.
Can you do something.
Bill, can you do something.
Bill, can you get Russell away from there.
(me, in Southern accent) O-kye.
Stop breathing so hard into the microphone.
Bill…
O-kye.
Russell… your world series is finished.
You mustn’t.
Bill, can you stop all this.
O-kye.
Bill, I meant stop talking like...that.
Okay. I’ll talk in my regular voice.
Stop breathing so hard.

And so from an early age I exercised my innate need to tell Russell what to do.

"Mustn't"??!?

I want to know where those gender roles came from. Did I establish on my own that boys are bad and girls are good, simply because I had exactly one model for each? Did I pick it up from a book I read? Did my parents tell me this?

And who was Bill? I'd never met a Southerner when I was five. How did I get an imaginary friend who faked a Southern accent?

Russell asked our mom if she remembered the tape, and she said "Yes, vaguely. Dad and Eva tried to make a tape of your noises, but I couldn't hear you because Eva was bossing you around the whole time".