Only sometimes, when she is flustered, as of course she is flustered now, she no longer it seems can control her speech and what slithers out is some horrid hybrid, neither the language that is hers nor the language of America. She has become disoriented, and knows it. Neither her feet nor her tongue are any longer firmly anywhere. She never gets things right over here – is always out of kilter, shaking hands when she should have embraced, embracing when she should have shaken hands, saying too much or too little, unable to gauge status, relationships, implications.
