Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe Summary

The chapter opens with the narrator confessing that the story about the trip to Los Angeles for Moon Orchid to confront her husband was told by her brother to her sister, and then her sister told her. The narrator compares her brother's bare, factual story to her designed one. The narrator's mother cut her tongue, the frenum, when she was a child. The narrator does not recall the incident, but her mother openly tells her she did it so the narrator would not be tongue-tied. The narrator compares her tongue with other children's tongues, but cannot see a difference.

The narrator states that she has difficulty talking. In kindergarten when the narrator was supposed to begin learning English she became silent and describes her voice as being broken. The narrator also painted black...