“Silence”
-Amanda Cary, 2017
When I was a little girl, I had three wishes.
I wished to never own a wire coat hanger, such crude and despicable things made only to wrinkle my blouses and irritate me beyond measure.
I wished for two children, one boy and one girl, who would never feel hungry or want for a single thing.
Above all else, I wished to marry the most beautiful man who ever lived beneath God, and that he would in kind marry me back. And this man would know how to gracefully love and speak to a girl who was deaf like me.
In this moment, though, all I can wish is that none of those things had ever come true.
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‘A splash of cream and two sugars for you. How about a blueberry muffin on the house?’
Her hands moved gracefully when she spoke to me as if she’d been doing it for years, but I’d seen her with the customers ahead of me. She wasn’t deaf.
'You sign? Very kind of you. You’re not deaf?’
'My older brother is deaf. It was the first language I learned to speak.’ She crinkled her nose to top a toothy grin. 'Do sign to me next time, sweetheart, and go ahead and ask for me if I’m not at the bar. Would you like that muffin?’
'Yes, please,’ I wasn’t sure how to reply, 'thank you very much.’
I’d only been visiting the diner for two days. My little Nanette had begun public school the week before, so my husband suggested I leave the house and “experience a bit of life,” in exactly those words, of course. Grey was kind to me in that way and pushed me to feel happy with myself. I always supposed most wives didn’t live with the sort of freedom he allowed me, so I took his suggestion.
The place was quaint, nothing to be particularly excited about. Black and white vinyl flooring and small wooden tables with spindly legs paired with straight backed wooden chairs. I would have chosen curved backs for the chairs if I’d had the chance, but it wasn’t my diner, so I sat and did not contemplate interior design any longer.
Everything appeared to be silent aside from a single white carnation standing as centerpiece atop the table, enlisting the help of a soda bottle to keep it tall, until a thin hand approached my shoulder and caused me a jump of sorts.
Light brown eyes much like the color of raw Mexican honey raised their eyebrows and stole the chair across from me. They smiled. Her teeth were unusually white, but her left canine layered itself over the rest. Her mouth seemed just a bit happier in that one spot than anywhere else on the rest of her face - her nose a crinkle as she grinned. She was pleasant enough, so I smiled back.
'Do you mind?’ She brought her own cup of coffee, black. 'It’s time for my break. May I ask you to keep me company? Everyone else here looks absolutely boring.' Amused with herself, her eyes widened before giving me a quick wink as she let the tip of her tongue catch in her teeth. A tiny nose once again shriveled into her top lip. She was indignant and cute. I nodded, and her hands spoke, 'What’s your name?’
'Marie,’ for the first time feeling insecure about my overly-common name, I winked back, 'boring, I know.’
That first day, we spoke for only twenty minutes. Her job behind the cash register was given to her by her father, which explained my own curiosities. It wasn’t often one would see a woman in her position, even more unlikely a woman seemingly in charge.
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Grey was waiting at our breakfast table with Nanette, bouncing beneath red ringlets and eager for a hug when I returned from my shopping that day. They were patiently pining for the gossip of a newly free-bird mother.
'How was it?’ He signed skillfully despite his usually clumsy fingers. He was a large and abrasive man - clunky but kind, calloused from working the dairy.
We met in a private school for the hearing impaired when we were both nine years old. We had what could nearly be considered an arranged marriage made by two locally prominent families who were lucky enough during the depression to keep some wealth. His mornings were spent milking, but our families made sure to leave us a substantial and comfortable existence. We wanted for nothing as a family of three, and he was a truly beautiful man.
'Lovely! Thank you for insisting I get some air, Grey. It really has been wonderful. I hadn’t noticed how cooped up I was feeling.’ I planted my lips on his cheek then retreated - our daily peck.
Gathering a five-year-old bundle of curls into my arms, I squeezed Nanette until she giggled her way loose.
'I missed you, Momma,’ she signed with the sweet, stubby fingers of most children her age, although it had no effect on her talent in doing so. Thankfully, she could hear perfectly well.
'I missed you, too, punkin nose.’ That nickname always warranted a squeezed nose and a kiss on the forehead, so I gave her just that.
I caught Grey’s eyes as he watched us fondly, but something foreign inside of me wanted him to look away. So I changed course.
'I almost forgot. I found this dress shirt for you, dear.’ Pulling a crisp, white-collared suit shirt from my shopping and laying it gently across the cream of the table top, I added, 'I made a friend, as well. Her name is Lillie. I think you would approve, darling.'
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When I was fifteen, I was given fantasies. I’ve never really known how to express that thought properly because they were not dreams I would have imagined myself. At least, I can’t believe I would have. Not now, not as a Christian mother and wife.
Before the summer of '39, Miss Gering left the boarding school for a period deemed as indefinite. I was quite fond of her, if not most fond of her when compared to the other teachers at the school. Before she left, she visited my room, and with a playful finger placed atop pursed “shhh” lips, she handed me a perfectly cubed rose-colored box just large enough to hold one pair of shoes.
'These are yours, now. Don’t let anyone know or they’ll take them away.’ She finished her sign with the same kindness she always did and left a young lady to her own mind.
Inside the box were small, paper books much like the short detective stories I’d read many times before, and inside those books were sex, love, infidelity, murder - demons and drama beyond anything I could believe people who weren’t written into a tale have ever experienced. I spent the entirety of that summer absorbed in a gritty human wilderness, abstract and littered with breasts and blood and passion and pain, and part of me never returned from that place.
Grey and I made love to one another nearly every night once we were married. He was sweet and gentle, and he touched me in every God-given place that I’d read a woman should be touched, but not even Grey could make me boil in such a way that those stories could. I accepted as an adult that those were simply fiction, and sinful as I was to have indulged in such things, I supposed it must have been my punishment to deal more practically in sex than I’d desired.
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The thing about being both deaf and also quite introverted is that you learn how to avoid people, particularly strangers who may feel the need to approach you and speak unwarranted.
I’d observed that the color blue was less likely to attract attention, and if I wore that as a very obsolete A-line dress coupled with flat white patent leathers, people had a tendency to look right over me without a second glance. My wardrobe, therefore, was completely filled with blue A-lined dresses hung neatly with wooden dowel coat hangers and white patent leather flats, aside from the few straggling garments Grey had given to me as gifts, as husbands are intended to do.
On that day, it was robin’s egg blue with a stark white cotton collar, as I was feeling more adventurous and talkative than usual. It didn’t seem a bad idea to put my rusty mouth to use for the sake of a healthy conversation, and I’d often reminded myself that I should have felt very blessed to have been given seven years of hearing in order to make it easier for me to do so without sign.
With the exception of Lillith, the diner was vacant when I arrived that morning. The rush of the working crowd must have cleared its way through early. Or perhaps I took longer to dress than usual.
Regardless of the reason, Lillie was waiting patiently for me with coffee and a blueberry muffin in hand. Three months of friendship, and she knew exactly what I preferred on Monday mornings, along with every other morning, and always greeted me with her silly crooked tooth standing front and center.
'How is that you haven’t yet been abducted by a ravenous, muffin-crazed, maniacally caffeinated man, Lillith?' She pouted in retort, and turned her cheek to me as per usual, gracefully accepting my apologies in the form of a neat kiss.
“That gig has been filled,” she spoke aloud as she set my breakfast on the bar, pointing towards the cafe’s kitchen with a thumb. 'How could you possibly forget Hal?’ She always referred to her father by his name, and she always laughed as she did - and I always imagined her laughter sounded as beautiful as it looked.
I loved watching Lillie speak to me. Her lips moved even more naturally than her hands, and her eyes played in unison with her mouth to a depth that I’d never noticed in anyone else. I’d always only read lips, but I often found myself watching the fine lines around her eyes as she carried on. She was earthy and playful and even tossed about some deviance that I found utterly charming. She had a habit of turning her face down as she smiled up at me, as if catching herself embarrassed. She made me feel powerful in some way that I didn’t understand, and I looked forward to this stirring in myself each and every weekday morning.
'I see you’re dressed rather loudly today, Miss Marie.' She’d previously inquired about my solid blue wardrobe and I’d explained, so a tease was in order concerning the brightness of today’s dress choice. I wouldn’t have expected a thing less from her.
'I was hoping it would help me get through this place without you gabbing my face off, but I’m starting to think nothing will do the trick. I just have to live with your incessant yapping, don’t I?’ Another pout, then a smile, then an odd pause that was very unlike her. I’d even begun to think I might have finally hurt her feelings.
“Would you mind helping me a little today, Marie,” she said aloud, making sure to grasp my wrist and look directly into my face, certain I didn’t miss a single twinge. She seemed concerned, “Hal has to leave early, so I’m by myself to clean up. Would you mind? Please?”
'Of course, madam. Do you intend to pay me?' Her sincerity was making me a bit uncomfortable.
“I do believe I’ve fully paid you and more with free coffee and muffins, but if you insist we’re fair here, I’ll be happy to give you kitchen duty every afternoon.” She lifted my left hand from my lap, and a kiss to my middle knuckle turned my belly backward, “thank you, Marie. See you in a few hours.”
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The next three hours passed over me as a haze that I couldn’t from myself from. Not a thought of Grey or Nanette or even scripture could revive me from this burning.
I knew exactly what Lillith wanted just as anyone else who could have been sitting in that chair in that moment - anyone else who could have felt her would have known. I should have run and never come back to the diner. I should have returned home to my picturesque family. The twined and invasive thoughts of doing such a terrible thing under the eyes of God - a betrayal of my sweet Grey - turned me filthy. Horrid. Disgusted with myself. Hot. Flushed. Electric. Pounding. I could feel nothing but racing waves washing over every inch of my body. Into my face, filling my toes. Between my thighs.
When I stepped into the diner, unable to sign, unable to smile, she was waiting for me with the empty cafe drapes drawn to full cream sheet - as closely as they could be pulled together. Her eyes as golden as I’d ever seen them, devilish as she walked towards me to lock the door, I noticed for the first time the softness at the dip of her neck - just where it met her collar bones - and that’s where I kissed first. Every time.
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The shower floor was cold enough to draw me in like an abyss, covered in vomit and my own fluids, but the release left me in a warmth that I welcomed with overwhelming gratitude. Had I known just how useful a wire coat hanger could have been to me at that time, I might have been friendlier to them. A razor to the wrist is much less forgiving and infinitely more permanent.
Grey made sure my funeral was heavenly despite knowing I would go straight to hell. Had I ever told him how I felt with Lillie, perhaps he would have understood that I had been dead since the day she left me standing alone. Had I not continued being his wife and fallen pregnant with our second child, she would have taken me with her, and he would have never been forced to find me like that, having poured myself down the drain.
Silence is overestimated by those who have been distracted by noise their entire lives. I have felt the ecstasy of a moan travel from a kiss to my toes, and I have seen a heart disassemble itself into pieces and disappear as it plead for reassurance I knew it would not receive from me. I have tasted the hatred on a tongue that loved me moments before she learned that I had been lying to her and would never give her what she wanted.
And in my silence, I was saved from the sound of my little Nanette - with her sweet red ringlets gone soggy and sickly, forced by her mother into a darkness she should have been years and years still innocent of - screaming as she watched me sobbing and naked in a world of my own, emptying the remnants of myself and of all the thoughts that I could stand to hear no longer.
Published via TheProse.com
