Speak

You don’t speak. You have never spoken, and you never will.

You would love to speak; you have always wanted to speak. You have always wondered what your voice sounds like. You have always wondered what the voices of your mother and father sound like, and your brothers. You have always wondered what it would be like to sing; you wonder if you would be any good. Your third grade music teacher played a song for your 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 your class who lived down the street from her, had said that he saw the people in dark suits come for her in the dead of night and drag her into an unmarked van parked outside of her house by the 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.

You lie in your bed, bored out of your mind as you stare up at the crown molding. The sound of a basketball pounding against the pavement echoes outside your window, the only sound in the world. You decide to go watch the game. You flip your legs over the edge of the bed, shifting your weight onto your feet as you rise. You need to get away from the desolate silence of your home. As you exit your room, you see your 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 you as he stares down at the text thoughtfully. You knock on the doorframe and wave, and he shoots you a crooked smile before returning to the text. You amble down the stairs past the fresh blue and white floral wallpaper, running your hand down the smooth wood of the dark oak banister as you descend.

You enter the pale blue kitchen, the color reflecting in your eyes; your mother looks up from the sea foam green oven and smiles at you, 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 black and white checkered floor below. You smile back with a wave, and she nods in understanding. She holds up five fingers to show you when dinner will be ready, and you nod as you walk past the radio as you head for the plain white front door of your home.

You bounce down the steps, looking across the street to 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 you swear you can 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 people in black suits. Disagreement would not be tolerated.

You walk down the street, no destination in mind. A haunting silence lingers as you 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. You follow the leading line until it finally ends when you come to a construction site. The noise of metal grinding against metal fills the air, and you 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 your trance; you 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 by vocalizing 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 you and everyone else know that the people in the dark suits will come for this worker in the middle of the night, just like they did for your third grade teacher. You know that it is best to get away from this man; staying by his side is a stigma. Yet you stay, the two of you looking at each other helplessly.

A tall man with tan skin and sympathetic eyes places his large hands gently on your bony shoulders, steering you back towards the street. He faces you when the two of you are safely away from the injured man, looking at you with a knowing intensity. You have gotten good at understanding looks; everyone has. Nonverbal communication is all that you have. You can tell by the way that this man looks down at you in a fatherly way that he has kids your age. You can tell that in his pregnant silence he is encouraging you 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. You 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 for him. You hang your head in sadness, continuing on down the street. You wander for a while, losing track of time. When you finally look down at your wristwatch, you realize that you will be late to dinner. You turn and run for your house, fences blurring by in a white streak as you rush to make it to the table in time.

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

“It’s too damn quiet in here!” you find yourself saying. Your family all whip their heads up, staring at you with mouths open and eyes wide. Your mother jumps across the table, the knees of her long dress landing in the casserole as she quickly covers your lips with her hand. Tears bubble up in her eyes, and she looks at you with pure devastation. She keeps her hand over your mouth, placing the other one against the back of your head to silence you. You push back your 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.” Your mother’s head is flying back and forth as she shakes it, wordlessly begging you to stop. She jumps off the table, running over and throwing her arms around you in a loving and protective embrace. You wrap your arms around her waist, holding on tightly to her. Your father and brothers look on, still and speechless as statues.

“I love you Mom,” you tell her. “I’ve wanted to tell you that for so long. It feels so great to say it.” She buries her face in your 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 war. But it’s also keeping us from expressing our good thoughts and emotions. We’ve all become robots. And I hate it!”

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

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

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

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

“Mom, you…”

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

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

“Neither can I.”

The two of you sit and talk, knowing the people in dark suits are coming but not knowing when. Neither of you care; you are mother and child, having for the first time a conversation that you would have been able to have every day had the law of silence never existed. There is not a moment of silence in your conversation; no pauses for breath or not knowing what to say. The two of you must fill every precious moment with words, for they are your last moments. And you both are more than happy to pay the price for those moments.

At 1:37 in the morning, your bedroom door opens. Four people in dark suits stand there, and you and your mother rise up willingly, your mother taking your hand as the two of you walk out into the hallway with your heads held up high. Two of the people walk in front of you, the other two behind. Your father and brothers stand in their doorways as you slowly parade past, their eyes filled with sorrow. Your father holds your youngest brother close, a large hand clasped over your brothers’ tiny mouth to keep sobs from erupting as he watches his mother and older sibling being taken away forever.

“Where will they take us?” you ask your mother.

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