Inspired Writer Contest Top 20
At Least the Voice Still Cries
A Memory of Choosing Nothing
“You look… better,” she says.
I shovel more Chinese food into my mouth and slowly nod. Her eyes search my face for confirmation. I keep chewing. I watch her reconsider asking how I feel.
“It’s the best of the places we saw,” she tries instead, “and dad will co-sign for whatever, so don’t worry about the rent.”
I roll a clump of fried rice across the paper plate with my fork, up and over the small hilled barrier built to separate each item of the meal combo.
“Or… I can come back another day to look at more places.”
“No. It’s the best of the places we saw.” I echo back her earlier words, abandon the fork in the plastic tray. I sit palms together, pressed between my thighs. I hate this mall. I hate this town. A long breath I didn’t realize I was holding escapes.
My sister steers the conversation towards furniture for the new apartment. She’ll call the building manager to settle the details of the lease. All I have to do is write cheques for the first and last month’s rent.
“At least the unit is empty,” she adds.
My tongue wiggles free a piece of spicy beef stuck between my back molars. “Yuh,” is what I can manage. I prop my right elbow on the table and let it cradle my head, fingers in my hair. Numerous refrains of “at least” echo in my head. At least you don’t have any children. At least the house is a rental. At least you don’t have to settle in court. At least…
All our lives people have mistaken my sister and I for best friends, surprised to find out we are, in fact, siblings. And we are those kind of sisters — countless inside jokes, secret codes, a language no one else speaks or understands. Neither distance nor time apart ever seems to weaken our bond. But at this moment I am somewhere even she can’t reach. A place I don’t recognize and can’t name. My body feels heavy. A kind of vertigo grips me and steals my center of gravity. My feeble attempts at stability are met with waves of dizziness. A chair scraping the dirty tile floor pulls me back to my seat in the food court. My sister stands and gestures to my tray.
“Yeah, I’m done.”
She deals with the garbage and I’m grateful for the few extra moments I need to stand up.
My sister parks her car and we sit silently looking straight ahead, at the front door of my house. Her hands stay at 10 and 2. Mine hold my stomach. Probably the Chinese food. The thick silence swallows us both. A voice inside me shouts “I don’t know what to do! I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I want!”, but it is muffled, as if it were coming from behind a wall. I ignore it. I don’t cry or scream.
“Are you okay… ? I mean… in the house… is it…” the words, cumbersome and misshapen, lodge in her throat.
“There’s nothing,” I lie, trying to make out what could still be there. “He knows I’m leaving. He doesn’t do anything about it. I mean, not in the way I want him to. There’s just nothing.” I don’t know if that’s true. His walls are even taller than mine. I can’t climb them and I don’t have the strength to break through to help him rebuild himself. I don’t know if I even want to.
Her chin creases like a walnut. She blinks away a salty mixture of anger and sadness. I mimic her blinking, but my eyes are dry. I wonder what truths the voice behind her wall is shouting now as we help each other stack the bricks higher and higher. We are still too afraid of what would be left in the rubble of tearing them down or if we would recognize the people left standing.
“Well, if you need anything…” It’s a sentence we say often and let trail off, hoping the other might grab hold of the life preserver.
“Yeah,” I exhale. I choose to keep treading water. I tell myself that to soldier on in silence is resilient, but I know I’m really just choosing to do nothing.
We turn to hug each other like we do when we don’t know what else to do. When we can’t pull out through our mouths the heavy chain link of words anchored deep in our bowels. When we were little and our parents fought, this was the hug. When we were hungry, but wouldn’t eat, this was the hug. When we submitted our bodies to abuse to feel in control, this was the hug.
It is the only way to hold on and weather the storm until the next one. This is what we think it means to be strong for ourselves and for each other.
I am confronted with consequences as I stand inside the front door of the house. The cat and the dog are curled up into one another on the sofa where the sides of the L shape form a corner. It is a great spot for a cuddle. I wince thinking about separating them and leaving one of them behind. The door to the basement is closed and muffles the noise from the TV as it travels up the stairs. A video game, movie, or TV show is now an incessant murmur in the house, but I prefer it to silence.
Light from the front bay window floods the living room and reaches the light pouring in from the patio door in the kitchen, pooling together. It’s the same light that first greeted us affectionately when we came to view the house just over a year ago — 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, a finished basement, and a small deck off the kitchen. Close to the university, it was a place to grow over the two years of my master’s degree and the subsequent four years of my PhD. At only 23, I felt the momentum of list checking in full swing: marriage-check; grad school-check; house-check; rescue animal-check, check, check. Each step I take upstairs now unchecks these boxes.
I lie on the bed and scan the ceiling for answers. “What is happening?” It’s barely a whisper. I struggle to unpack the overwhelming number of layers to this question. Whether I stay or leave, we both have so much we need to change. The thought of acknowledging feelings, admitting mistakes and figuring out how to support each other as individuals makes me exhausted. The shame of lying bare my hatred of our situation, my desperation to fix it and the embarrassment at my ineptitude to repair our life is nauseating.
I am defeated as I realize I would rather leave than face the tension and strain of talking about any of it. I’m unsure if that means I don’t really love him enough or that I don’t really love myself enough. Maybe it’s both. I unclench my fists and feel the blood return to my fingertips.
My sister scrubs the bathroom and my best friend hangs up my clothes and makes my bed while I unpack the kitchen. My father and brother-in-law oversee the delivery and assembly of the new furniture. Everyone — including me — wonders why, with two furnished living rooms and an office I set up for myself, I chose to buy everything again, yet, lugged the plates, cutlery, cutting boards, pots, pans, mugs and a host of other kitchen items from the house. Stranger still, I replaced all of them before leaving so he doesn’t have to. Maybe I replaced them so he doesn’t have to endure any more than an empty closet. I wonder if it’s hard to tell that anyone else was living there even now that I’m gone.
From the couch I scan my 1 bedroom plus den. With everything unpacked and in its place, groceries bought and stocked, it doesn’t feel new, but more a place where I’ve already lived a while. As my family and best friend leave, they tell me the place looks great. Tomorrow, a coworker will help me buy a TV and I will return to the house for the cat. I select the best places for his food and water, litter box, bed and toys.
A strange feeling that doesn’t quite resemble relief persuades me to shower and put on pajamas. I lie in bed and familiarize myself with the new ceiling. Out of habit, I place myself on the side of the bed farthest from the door. Eventually, I surrender to sleep.
