Double-Voweled: An Experiment

Abstract

Double-Voweled: An Experiment Alyse Bensel (bio) Phyillis Ardella Ness Bensel (1936–1965) ABSTRACT Flesh is the first literature. –Tracy K. Smith, “History” Pain is private and there is no easy way to put it on display that does not have a titillating quality. [...] nevertheless, there is something to be said for recounting the truth of what was done and also for opening yourself up to the pain of knowing it. –Kathryn Neurnberger, “The Invention of Fire” But women become dead women every minute and always have, so I’m more surprised the whole world is not on fire every minute, that everyone hasn’t felt like they could die. –Anne Boyer, “The Dead Woman” INTRODUCTION The vowels in my grandmother’s name elide, a y followed by an i, creating a digraph. Together, double-voweled, they make the same sound. The i is omitted in the newspaper, later autocorrected by algorithms and software in search engines, its only presence on her gravestone. A difficult spelling, its full sequence is an octave of vowels surrounded by her birth and death dates. Along with the documents that claim her life as tragic ending, the listing for her grave has forgotten the i. Here I, granddaughter, investigate Phyillis’ name and her movements, including her posthumous effects within a particular familial population. This experiment does not subscribe to the what if theory or attempt to resurrect the dead to speculate if she had lived. The only possibilities here are in the how of her death. HYPOTHESIS Hypotheses can never be truly proven. Instead they must be supported by evidence, of which there are scraps, dust motes floating in the corners of your vision. You must have a hypothesis prior to conducting [End Page 28] an experiment, but what is done is done. Astrophysicists have not yet built elaborate and untenable portals through space and time. We all move through what gravity gives us, which leads me to the following: When inside a moving automobile, a car of unknown weight and height, a body will project at a certain speed when that vehicle collides with another moving vehicle, this one known to be much larger and heavier compared to one occupied by a mother and her four young sons. Since we know seat belts were not standard with vehicles or required by law in 1965, the bodies inside must have moved in different ways depending on how the vehicles collided, another unknown, and their relative speeds, also unknown. Due to the various unknowable variables and factors of this experiment, it is hypothesized that all that will be left of Phyillis is her name misspelled in the evidence, her gravestone the exception. PROCEDURE 1. Walk to the outer rim of whichever town you are currently living in to a graveyard—you will find one, as the dead outnumber the living. Go to the oldest section, farther back, down or up a hill, shaded by conifers, and decipher the worn headstones, noting birth and death dates. Analyze the ages for patterns: here was war, a pandemic, the spikes in both old and young a matter of fact and history, a public grave, recorded death, the end of anonymous falling into dampened sound. 2. Determine her resting place, if she was lying beside the driver’s side door or thrown under the still braking asphalt truck, if she was propelled through the windshield during the collision or after the second collision with the telephone pole, or if the car even made a second impact. Look up the intersection as it exists today: three corners of brick row homes, one corner a playground. There are seven telephone poles in total. Calculate the sudden stop in motion despite the red traffic light. Find a splinter jutting from your toe after dropping a drinking glass in the sink to note its trajectories. No time to mouth a warning, as its belled body will break. You pray you will find all the pieces, sharp glinting edges stowed among the floorboards. 3. Watch old public safety announcements. The dummy family lurches forward in their seats upon impact, the airbags deploy, the windows shatter, the car crumples. A slow motion drama–look, see...