Silence of Circumstance

By Roisin Hannen

Sometimes silence is comfortable. A steadfast companion on a cosy night in. Something you search for after a long day, helping you sleep and calm down your whirlwind mind.

Sometimes it's needed, sometimes it's healthy.

This silence was suffocating. Overbearing and inescapable. The fifth member of our tight knit family. 

Dad didn’t like to talk about it, he thought talking about it made it real. He didn’t like to think about the problems, he had enough of him to deal with. This just made the silence worse. A  beast that could very well feed itself.

If you look very close to the house, it’s almost as if you can see it. Trail its pattern across the bumpy drywall, follow its journey through the crooked branches, and watch it weave in and out lived-in rooms. It's almost as if it made the building its own. 

I used to think that its place in our world was normal. That everyone had it, this force. There's just somethings that people just don’t talk about, I’d tell myself. Places you shouldn’t go and people you don’t know. People you can’t know. 

But the silence just kept getting bigger and bigger. It didn’t seem normal anymore. Especially not when the questions started. 

Subtle, they were at first. Snipping at the edges, never obvious. My sister couldn’t afford to be obvious. Scared it would crumble. 

“Mum,” My sister's voice would call through the house, quiet but undeniable, “what were your siblings like?”

“Very much like you and your sister,” Mum would reply tentatively, after a moment, “very much normal.”

That question was the spark. The spark to fire my sister's curiosity. For all my sister's fire, my mother was a blizzard. Dodging the questions with the grace of a dancer. To anyone else, it would seem as if she was winning. Maintaining her silence, not giving anything away. But to me and my sister, her mirror images in not only face but soul, knew the truth was otherwise. 

“Mum,” my sister would call, with now practised ease,“before Dad, were you ever in love before?” 

“I can’t remember,” replied my Mum with the flick of her hand. Her jaw tensed, as she continued to stack the dishes. Each porcelain plate in its set place. Tucked away safe in the Machnony cupboards.

“Surely you remember something Mum, I mean that's not really something you forget” my sister pushed, her fire taking control of her once again. Her position on the table was familiar, her home base in the battles for dominance.

“I don’t. Help your sister with the washing. Leave me be” and with that the battle was done. Finished but not won.

“You know she’s not telling us something, right,” my sister would muse as she followed me out into the sun-touched garden. 

“Of course I know that. I’m not actually stupid,” I remember saying. Putting down the worn basket on the grass. Letting its cracked edges graze against the black paint of the washing line pole.

“Wow touchy much.” 

“I don’t why you can’t just leave it alone. Maybe it's none of our business.”

“Of course, ” She scoffed. Leaning her back against the washing pole, discontent filling her pale face “her little princess coming to her defence once again. He’s our family too, we deserve to know.” 

“What do you mean he?” I questioned. Quickly placing the bundle of sun warmed clothes into the basket and leaning down to lift it against my side. 

To that I received a look. A look full of questions, of anger and disbelief. A look that said “You know”. A look that ignored and continued to ignore. Through all the little battles, and all leaks of information. Each time the silence would get so powerful you could almost feel it, I ignored that look. All the times my friends would ask questions I didn't know the answer to, that look would appear in my mind and again I would ignore it.

Like my father and mother before me, the silence was my castle. Maybe not one I chose, or one I built, but one I lived in nonetheless. I was not my sister, her fire didn't burn in me. I didn’t want to know, and yet like all things in this world, that is exactly what I got. 

It was a dusky New Years Eve when the silence finally broke. My sister was out at a party with her cool new friends. My parents, forever insular in nature, celebrated in a way that was undeniably theirs. Filling the house with music, singing the lyrics even when they were unfamiliar, and pouring out the dusty vodka that they so rarely got to enjoy.

I was called to join the festivities. Drawn in by the timbre of my fathers voice and my mother's gentle laughter. Nights like this held a certain magic that couldn't be replicated, a certain charm.

The conversation flowed freely, we talked about school and politics, which directors had the most powerful movies and the validity of religion. Dancing began, as it always did after the third drink. Laughable movements that lacked rhythm and beat but up for it in passion and joy.  And with it, the lonely brick house was alive. Every smile and jeer from its pale residents, a heartbeat could be heard through the wooden doors and beige doors.

At some point during the night, my father was drawn away from the cheer. Probably to take a phone call or admire his garden. I don’t know, he never told us. He never really liked to speak that much. In his absence,  a lull appeared. A lull in the noise and revolory, but not the joy. That could still be seen in the shine in mothers eye and smelled in her alcohol-touched breath. 

“I love you to the moon and back, princess, you know that right” said my Mum, her head resting against the back of the sofa, the brown woollen blanket spread across her legs.

“I love you more,” I replied from my position across the room, in the lounge matching her own. 

To that my Mum just looked, her face ripe with comfortable amusement.

“No you don’t, ” she replied quickly, black hair slightly swaying as slowly shook her head. 

A disbelieving laugh escaped my mouth, as I looked down at my shoes, always too awkward for conversations like these. 

“Don’t laugh at me, it's true. You’ll understand when you have kids. Nothing in the whole universe compares to it,” her hands coming up to emphasise her point. 

“Come here” my mother beckoned with a tap to the space next to her. Without a lick of hestion, I followed. I moved my legs across the room and settled next to her. My head on her shoulder, her arm around my waist. 

A silence appeared, but this time it was different. Comfortable and cosy. It seemed like an eternity, I was there, my mother's warmth seeping into my bones. The smell of her honeysuckle perfume overriding my senses. A perfect end to a perfect night, I thought. 

That was before the crying started. A subtle shake in the beginning, it began to grow. It was when the tears dripped on to my head and sobbing become unignorable when I said, 

“Mum, what's wrong?”

No reply was heard. I untangled myself from my mother's arms and turned to look at her tear stricken face. 

“Please tell me what's wrong,” I repeated, concern growing with every syllable. The sobbing continued, getting  more violent and messy. 

“Why did he have to go?” my mother gasped out between shakes. 

My sister's look flashed into my mind. I ignored it. 

“Who?” I all but begged her to answer. 

“I tried so hard to keep him, to take care of him. Why couldn’t I take care of him?”

To that I was speechless. I looked around the room looking for my father, my sister or anything that could help. Anything that could make it stop.

Suddenly, my mother sobbing slowed. Still there in the expression of her face and stream of liquid pouring out of her eyes, but gone was her inability for reason. She grabbed my hands and pulled them into her own. Her fingers caressing my own.

“Promise you won't go away princess,” my mother demanded. Her voice more determined than I had ever heard it. Filled with fire. 

“I won’t,” I reassured her, looking down at  our interlocked palms. 

“Not for anything in this whole world. Not for anyone,” she continued, the fire growing in her voice. Her eyes looked pained, as she mirrored the path of my eyes. Her mind seemed to be somewhere else. Somewhere far away for the beautiful night, the brick house and bitumen. Somewhere worse than the silence.

“Don’t let him take you away,” she choked out finally. With that sentence the sobbing picked up where left off, controlling her body with its violent heaves. 

“I promise,” I quietly replied, once again untangling limbs from hers. Moving back to my position across the room. I lied  on the couch and pulled a second blanket up across my body. I tried to fall asleep to the beat of my Mum's cries, tried to place the conversation into the recesses of my mind. Tried whatever I could to stop thinking about it.

My mother beat me to that sleep. Her last words, drawn out and dreary from its hold,

“Sometimes I can still hear him. His little giggle. Hear it slowly fade away” 

With that, something inside of me broke.. Ignorance was no longer an option, no longer a choice. For all my sister's fire, questions and curiosity, she wasn’t even there to hear it. Yet I had to. Oh how I wish I didn't have to.

Rest came slowly that night. After my father reappeared and tucked my mother's blanket in and retreated to his own room, after my sister stumbled in from her party and slowly made her way hers, after the rain finally began its fall. I was still awake to hear my Mums wistful sleep talking, still awake to hear her whisper,

“Mummy misses you baby, misses you so much.”