silent treatment

I was almost seven when I stopped talking . . . . it's not like I never said a word. I answered if spoken to, responded if called on in class, and poured my heart out to Harvey, my teddy bear, but other than that, I didn't speak. There was nothing to say, and nobody to say it to.

The things I felt like saying weren't allowed. Things like - "You are all a bunch of liars." "You are not my mother." "I hardly know you, why are you moving into our house?" "That's not the way mommy did it." "I need my mama." I promised I would be good. I promised I would be strong. I couldn't talk about how I felt. It didn't matter how I felt. And so, since I couldn't say anything nice, I just didn't say anything at all.

I remember the grown-ups whispering about how sad it was, how tragic. I remember church ladies volunteering to take me for ice cream - people whose names I didn't even know, my mother's friends sending their own kids out of the room while they painted my nails, the teacher walking me halfway home from school. All of them met with my same stony silence, my empty blue eyes asking wordlessly, "What do you want from me? What will make you go away?" And as they left (they always did) shaking their heads and whispering to each other, I would smile - a tiny victory smile at how pathetically weak they were. I was not sad or tragic - I was stoic and strong - quite possibly the toughest, most stubborn second grader on the planet.

But sometimes I wonder, what would have happened if my teacher had walked me all the way home, or if my mother's friends would have tucked me into bed one night, or if it took longer than 15 minutes to eat an ice cream cone . . . .maybe nothing, probably nothing, but maybe I would have cracked, maybe it would have been alright to miss her, maybe what happened 8 years later, wouldn't have happened at all.