The child was screaming. Again. And she could tell by the way his screams echoed that he’d been put outside again. In the alley.
It was dark in the alley, and overgrown with weeds, littered with rubbish and sometimes needles.
She stood by her back door, listening. Every now and then she heard him shriek, “Mummy, let me in,” but the door to his house stayed shut.
The sound of his screams frayed at her edges. She pulled her cardigan closer and hunched her shoulders. She wanted the sound to bounce off her, but it soaked in, like blood into an old sheet.
She opened her back door. The screams were louder; they pulled her outwards, towards the fence, making her stumble on the broken footpath and bang her head on the clothesline arm.
The old fence was made of palings hammered onto a frame. The nails protruded, as if the wood was squeezing them out, a millimeter at a time. Her fingers touched the rough palings, caressing the splintered edges, as she listened.
His screams had subsided into loud sobbing. He knew, and she knew, that he wouldn’t be allowed back inside until he’d been quiet for at least five minutes. Maybe longer, if his mother was on the phone or in the shower or watching a good TV show.
She pulled one paling aside. The window opposite blared with yellow light; the kitchen with its dark brown cupboards was empty. Dishes piled on the sink and benches, a container of margine and a dirty knife lay on the laminate table.
The boy stood next to the door, as if to make sure his sobbing carried straight into the house. Why didn’t he stop? Why didn’t the mother come?
It was pointless wondering. It was always the same.
She pulled the other two palings away and bent sideways, struggling through, catching her cardigan on a nail and pausing to carefully unhook it.
The boy stared at her, but kept sobbing.
“Hello,” she said.
The sobbing died down into crying. Crying was much better.
“I’ve made hot cocoa and biscuits,” she said. “Do you want some?”
His eyes widened but he didn’t reply.
She held out her hand. “Want to come and visit me for a while?”
He kept crying. Why did he keep crying? Didn’t all children like hot cocoa and biscuits? What was the matter with him?
She stepped forward and he shrank back against the door. He kept crying.
“I won’t hurt you,” she said crossly. “I just want to help. Don’t you want nice hot cocoa?” She grabbed his hand. “I’m your friend. I live over there, behind the fence.”
He shook his head and tried to pull his hand away. He began the ungodly shrieking again, all of a sudden, as if the noise was in a bottle inside him and he’d popped the cork.
She felt a shriek of her own surge up her throat and let him go, clapping her hands over her mouth. The shriek came out as a stifled howl.
She reached out and shook him hard. “Look what you made me do!” Then she scrambled back through the fence, panting, gasping, ripping her cardigan on the nail, staggering across the yard and into her house, slamming her door hard. She sank to the floor, held her breath, listened. Silence.
“Good boy,” she said.
Sherryl Clark writes fiction and poetry, as well as books for children. Her blog is at http://www.sherrylclark.blogspot.com/.
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12 Responses to “THE SOUND OF SILENCE • by Sherryl Clark”
Comments
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March 8th, 2008 at 6:45 am
Chilling. I felt propelled to the end.
March 8th, 2008 at 7:51 am
Why do I like this story so much?
March 8th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Maybe it’s just me but I don’t know waht happened…
March 8th, 2008 at 9:52 am
I don’t know what happened either, but it scared me whatever it was. It’s one of those stories that leaves you wondering all day what it meant and rolling around all kinds of possibilities in your mind. Thanks alot, Sherry!
Well written.
March 8th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Deeply disturbing. It’s hard to be the neighbor of abusers. There’s nothing you can do.
March 8th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Having had time to digest this story I’m thinking that the neighbor knew the child next door was being abused. She was used to the crying and knew full well it was happening again. Her anger welled in her when she tried to help the boy, but couldn’t. It was her inability to help that caused her to shake the boy. When she went back to her home and the crying stopped it was not that the abuse was over it was that the silence let her forget it for awhile.
March 9th, 2008 at 4:24 am
I had another read and I think that the betrayal of trust in shaking the boy adds much to the abuse and of course it takes away the moral high ground and allows us to see the true motivation here which is not concern for the child but a desire not to be made to feel involved.
I think I get it now.
March 9th, 2008 at 10:27 am
…and perhaps her abuse was the worst - that silence after the shake could be for a reason - she’d injured him badly.
March 13th, 2008 at 2:46 am
Loved this story. Like the rest here, I too kept wondering what happened and that’s what makes this story so chilling. May be it’s best kept that way? Heh.
Thanks for the story!
March 15th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Thanks, everyone. I do like stories where you are not told everything and have to think about it afterwards, so I’m glad I managed to achieve one of these myself!
March 18th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
I liked this story despite its painful content. If the boy had suffered in silence and, if she still knew of the abuse, maybe she’d have not bothered to involve herself. What the eye doesn’t see and all that.
March 31st, 2008 at 12:57 am
[...] The Sound of Silence [...]