Speak

I don’t speak. I have never spoken, and I never will.

I would love to speak; I have always wanted to speak. I have always wondered what my voice sounds like. I have always wondered what the voices of my mother and father sound like, and my brothers. I have always wondered what it would be like to sing; I wonder if I would be any good. My third-grade music teacher played a song for my class once. She wrote on the board that she felt Ella Fitzgerald had a voice that was far too beautiful to be silenced along with the rest of the world. She had not returned to work the next day. Bobby Platz, a kid in my class who lived down the street from her, had said that he saw the men in dark suits come for her in the dead of night and drag her into an unmarked van parked outside her house by her rose bushes. They came quickly and silently, as if they had never been there. The new teacher who replaced her made sure to follow the rules and stick strictly with instrumental songs.

I lie in my bed with my long hair cascading down the side of my bedspread, bored out of my mind as I stare up at the crown molding. The sound of a basketball pounding against the pavement echoes outside my window, the only sound in the world. I decide to go watch the game. I flip my long legs over the edge of the bed, shifting my weight onto my feet as I rise. I need to get away from the desolate silence of my home. As I exit my room, I see my eldest brother sitting in his room across the hall, a schoolbook propped open in his lap. His dark hair is combed neatly over as he swings his freshly polished shoes back and forth, the collar of a yellow dress shirt poking out from under his blue vest. He does not notice me as he stares down at the text thoughtfully. I knock on the doorframe and wave, and he shoots me a crooked smile before returning to the text. I amble down the stairs past the fresh floral wallpaper, running my hand down the smooth wood of the dark oak banister as I descend.

I enter the pale blue kitchen that reflects the color of my eyes; my mother looks up from the oven and smiles at me, wiping her hands off on her lace-lined apron. Enamel canisters filled with baking necessities such as sugar and flour line the counter behind her, the lid of the flour canister open with a bit of the flour spilled on the checkered floor below. I smile back with a wave, and she nods in understanding. She holds up five fingers to show me when dinner will be ready, and I nod, walking past our radio as I head out the front door of my home.

I bounce down the steps, looking across the street where the sound of the basketball had come from. The two brothers who live in the yellow house with the white shutters and the matching white picket fence stand facing each other, faces as red as their hair and checkered shirts untucked. The younger one throws the ball at the other, hitting him square in the chest. The older brother takes a step closer, and I swear I see steam coming out of his ears. Their mother runs out, a whirlwind of fury as she drags them both by their ears back into the house. It was a close call; if they had gotten into a fight, they would have been sure to have been reprimanded by the government. Disagreement would not be tolerated.

I walk down the street, no destination in mind. A haunting silence lingers as I move across the smooth cement of the sidewalk past a never-ending line of white picket fences. Everything looks perfect, except that it’s not. I follow the leading line until it finally ends when I come upon a construction site. The noise of metal grinding against metal fills the air, and I look on in fascination as sparks fly off from various spots on the building’s skeleton. Suddenly a stout construction worker cries out in pain, breaking my trance; I join the other workers in running over to him, looking down at his bleeding foot. He has accidentally stepped on a nail, and it has pierced all the way through his foot; a fatal accident. Not for the injury, but for the crime he has committed in showing his pain. Fear shows in his eyes as he looks from person to person. Everyone slowly backs away, returning to their work as if nothing has happened. Tears silently stream down the man’s face; he holds in the pain, struggling to resist the need to use his vocal cords to further express his anguish. But I, along with everyone else, know that the men in the dark suits will come for this man in the middle of the night, just like they did for my third grade teacher. I know that it is best to get away from this man; staying by his side is a stigma. Yet I stay, the two of us looking at each other helplessly.

A tall man with sympathetic eyes places his large hands gently on my shoulders, steering me back towards the street. He faces me when we are safely away from the injured man, looking at me with a knowing intensity. I have gotten good at understanding looks; everyone has in this world of today. Nonverbal communication is all that we have. I can tell by the way this man looks down at me in a fatherly way he has kids my age. And I can tell that in his pregnant silence he is encouraging me to forget about the injured worker. Nobody will remember him tomorrow. That is what happens to people who speak; they simply cease to have existed at all. I nod at the man, and he turns back to his work. The injured man has resumed his work as well, working harder than he had been before as though it will change the inevitable fate that has already been set in stone. I hang my head in sadness, continuing down the street. I wander for a while, losing track of time. When I finally look down at my wristwatch, I realize that I will be late to dinner. I turn and run for my house, fences blurring by in a white streak as I rush to make it to the table in time.

When I enter my house, my parents and brothers are already seated around the table. I move to my empty seat as if trying to pretend I had been there all along. My family looks up wordlessly. I send a look of apology to my mother, and she motions to me to take my seat. My father stares at me sternly as I smooth out my long skirt and lower myself into the chair, and I know that I am treading on thin ice. I must be sure to be on time for dinner from now on. My mother motions toward my plate, and I hold it up as she cuts a slice of casserole and places it on my dish. She smiles at me as I pull my plate back, and I smile in return. We all eat in silence, as we do every night, heads down and staring at our plates. I remember reading in history class how families used to speak to each other at the dinner table. It sounds nice; I wish I could speak to my family now. I wish I knew my family better. I wish that we were close, that they didn’t all feel like strangers to me. That my brothers and I could be friends. I wish that I could ask them about their days and tell them about mine. I wish I could just speak. Speak. Speak.

“It’s too damn quiet in here!” I find myself saying. My family all whip their heads up, staring at me with mouths open and eyes wide. My mother jumps across the table, the knees of her long dress landing in the casserole as she quickly covers my lips with her hand. Tears bubble up in her eyes, and she looks at me with devastation. She keeps her hand over my mouth, placing the other one against the back of my head to silence me. I push back my chair, slipping out of her grip.

“No Mom, stop. I want to speak. I want to be heard. I want to know what my voice sounds like, and I want you all to hear it.” My mother’s head is flying back and forth as she shakes it, wordlessly begging me to stop. She jumps off the table, running over and throwing her arms around me in a loving and protective embrace. I wrap my arms around her waist, holding on tightly to her. My father and brothers look on, still and speechless as statues.

“I love you Mom,” I tell her. “I’ve wanted to tell you that for so long. It feels so great to say it.” She buries her face in my shoulder, stifling the sobs that her emotions threaten to release. “I know that this is supposed to be a silent world in order to keep the peace, to keep difference of opinion from causing chaos and another war. But it’s also keeping us from expressing our good thoughts and emotions. We’ve all become robots. And I hate it!”

I gently push my mother away, spinning on the heel of my foot as I bolt for the stairs. I take them two at a time, slamming the door shut behind me. I stretch out across my bedspread. I lie there as the minutes slowly tick by on the hands of my clock. The silence resonates through the house, the only sound my father and brothers moving up the stairs and preparing for bed. At one point I hear the small footsteps of my youngest brother stop outside my door, but before he can enter the larger footsteps of my father come to wordlessly steer my brother to bed. I am a lost cause, and my father knows it.

“Goodbye,” I whisper to them. The clock strikes midnight, and I hear a knock at my door. I approach the door, pulling it open to slowly reveal my mother.

“Come in,” I invite, thrilled at the feeling of vibrations in my vocal cords. She steps in, kitten heels clicking across the floor as she moves to sit on the end of my bed. I stand there, looking at her. She gazes down at the stains on the skirt of her dress. I join her in staring down at the dried casserole as though entranced by it.

“I love you too,” I hear a soft voice say. I look up in surprise to see my mother beaming at me with an unexpected radiance. “I’ve wanted to say that for so many years.”

“Mom, you…”

“I know, honey. I know.” She motions for me to sit down next to her. I sit down, and she puts an arm around my shoulders in a gesture of affection. “They should be coming for us any time now.”

“I’m sorry, Mom. But I just couldn’t do it anymore. I can’t live like this,” I tell her as a lump rises in my throat.

“Neither can I.”

The two of us sit and talk, knowing the men in dark suits are coming but not knowing when. Neither of us care; we are mother and child, having for the first time a conversation that we would have been able to have every day had the law of silence never been set into motion so many years before. There is not a moment of silence in our conversation; no pauses for breath or not knowing what to say. We must fill every precious moment with words, for they are our last moments. We are both happy to pay the price to have this moment.

At 1:37, my bedroom door opens. Four men in dark suits stand there, and my mother and I rise willingly, my mother taking my hand as the two of us walk out into the hallway with our heads held high. Two of the men walk in front of us, the other two behind. My father and brothers stand in their doorways as we slowly parade past, their eyes filled with sorrow. My father holds my youngest brother close, large hand clasped over my brothers’ tiny mouth to keep sobs from erupting as he watches his mother and only sister being taken away forever.

“Where will they take us?” I ask my mother.

“I don’t know,” she replies. “But anywhere is better than here.”