Virtual Silence Read online

  I hadn’t been over to his place in weeks. He was still coming to visit me, but not as regularly as before. Unlike my mother and the kids at school, he seemed uncomfortable with my not talking, probably because he wasn’t much of a talker himself. When they lived together, even before the first computer, Mom used to tell him that he was boring.

  I need the car, I wrote on my pad a few evenings later, and I went to find Mom. She had just returned from her support group meeting and was sitting on the floor in the living room near the stereo, listening to an old Mamas and Papas album. She had the volume turned down low, but when she saw me coming, she lowered it even more, as if her choice revealed some secret she didn’t want to let me in on.

  She looked at my pad and handed it back to me. “It’s dark,” she whispered. “Where could you possibly want to go?”

  I had left my pen in my room, so I crossed my arms over my chest, stretched my lips, and set my eyes at half-mast, nodding the way my father used to when she was running at the mouth about something he couldn’t care less about. I thought it would make her laugh, but she only said, “To Daddy’s?” in a voice that was an octave higher than her usual one.

  She looked aside, as if for some excuse. “This is a school night. You won’t be fresh for the morning.”

  I made a face. She had seen my tests. I was doing fine at school, better than ever. Only my English teacher had been concerned that my grades would fall if I continued to refuse to participate in class. But I compensated by handing in two research papers when only one was due, and she hadn’t said a word to me about it since.

  She made an attempt at a smile. “You haven’t driven since … well, you know.”

  I held up four fingers.

  “I know it’s only four miles. But it’s dark and the roads are wet and …”

  I rolled my eyes. I knew it was dark. No one knew better than I did how dark it was.

  “Okay,” she said, sighing, and she looked down at her lap. I could see that her support group hadn’t done her much good tonight.

  I followed her into the kitchen and watched while she rummaged for the keys in her purse. I had my jacket on and was on my way out the door when she cried, “Wait!”

  She bit down on her lip and stared at me for a moment and then turned toward the refrigerator. After another moment spent considering it, she stood on her toes and took down a tin of cookies from on top. She sighed. “Here,” she said, almost angrily, pushing the tin at me. “Give these to him.” She shrugged. “We’ve had them a week and we haven’t touched them. They’ll just get stale.”

  We looked at each other. She seemed to be defying me to interpret her gesture for what it really was. One smile, I knew, one hint that I was overjoyed, and she would snatch her offering back. I whistled, and Surge came lumbering in from the living room. “You can’t take him there,” Mom said flatly. His expression seemed to convey the same message. I rolled my eyes at the both of them and went out the door. “Watch for deer,” my mother called out behind me.

  Right.

  I had already prepared my father’s note. It was in my bag with the cookie tin. It read: I have decided to spike my hair and dye it purple. I refuse to be a victim. This will be my way of saying that I have power over my life, my fate.

  Until that moment I couldn’t have said why I was giving him advance notice, except that I had contemplated my arrival at his door with purple hair for the last two nights, and I kept coming up blank when I tried to imagine his reaction. I thought I knew how he would react to the note, however. He would tell me to sit down so that we could talk about it. Maybe he would even see that hidden between the lines was the message that he had victimized me too. Maybe we would talk about that. My mother was ready to forgive him. Why else would she have given me the cookies? If they hadn’t been on top of the refrigerator where I couldn’t reach them, they’d have been gone by now. She had bought them for him in the first place. It was time to clear the air. If he gave me some assurance that he was coming back soon, I’d let him talk me out of the new do.

  Driving the dark country roads was more unsettling than I had anticipated. The prospect of my parents verging on a reconciliation only added fuel to my anxiety. Every time I went around a bend I expected my headlights to reveal a man with dazed eyes and a quivering mouth stepping out from under the trees, drawing his weapon from inside his wind-breaker. If I were shot down now, Mom’s message would go undelivered, her moment of recklessness forever forgotten in the midst of the chaos that would surely follow. If I’d had another car, I would have accelerated, so as to be prepared to run him down before he could take aim. The Yugo, I imagined, could be stopped with a foot, even an extended arm.

  I almost knocked; that was how threatened I still felt from my last visit. But the lights were low, and there was no noise coming from inside. Besides, it was dark out there, and eerily quiet. I was a sitting duck as long as I hesitated.

  I turned the knob quietly and entered. He wasn’t in the kitchen. His computer was off, and except for an empty wine bottle, the area around it was clear. I walked into the living room and gaped at the three surprised faces I found there, my father’s, Charles Newet’s, and Goliath’s. Goliath’s hand was on her heart. “Ginny!” my father said, rising. “We thought it was a burglar!”

  Charles Newet got up too. “Ginny, Ginny, Ginny,” he cried, so that I had no opportunity to study my father’s expression for signs of disappointment.

  Charles had an oblong face to begin with, but with his black hair receding at his forehead and his head tucked back so that his chin was doubled, it seemed much longer than the last time I had seen him, several months ago. He waddled towards me, his arms outstretched, his feet pointing outward too, like a duck’s. “I’m so sorry about your friend,” he whispered as he embraced me.

  When he stepped away, I found Goliath towering before me with her hand out. “I’m Rita Drabble,” she said. She was pretty, I noted with displeasure, much prettier than I had realized that night out on the catwalk. She looked about ten years younger than my father, and roughly the same height.

  I must have lifted my hand automatically, because the next thing I knew she was shaking it firmly. “You don’t have to tell me who you are,” she exclaimed. “I know all about you. I’m so glad to meet you, Ginny.”

  Once the formalities were concluded, they all stood staring at me, and I was tempted to say something just to dispel the awkwardness. Then I remembered the cookies and removed them from my bag and put them down on the coffee table, between Rita and Charles’s wine glasses. I didn’t intend to bang the tin, but when I saw my father cringe, I realized that I had. I took my notebook out and scribbled, From Mom on a blank page and ripped it off, putting it on top of the tin where everyone could see it. My father just stared at me, his lips stretched and his blue eyes twinkling, while Rita and Charles bent to read the note together in the dim light. Then Rita removed it and opened the tin. “Tell your mother thank you,” she said. She laughed. “Ed never has anything worth eating here. A woman could starve to death.”

  I recovered from my moment of cowardice and quickly scribbled, You don’t look like you’re starving to me, and handed it to her. She laughed again, this time throwing her head back so that her long, reddish hair fell behind her shoulders.

  “I like a kid with a sense of humor,” she said. I stared at her in disbelief. “Well sit down,” she said. “Have some cookies. Ed, get your daughter a glass of milk.” When my father had turned, she added loudly, “And me too!” Then she looked at Charles. “You?” she asked. He smiled and shook his head. “You can’t eat cookies with wine, Charles,” she whispered.

  I sat on the floor, on the other side of the coffee table, and watched her pick through the tin. She lifted one of the little accordion wrappers and grunted with pleasure when she realized that there was another layer beneath it. Then one by one she lifted each of the others, her brows rising when she came upon varieties she hadn’t expected. I glanced at Charles
Newet, and he smiled and cocked his head as if to say, “Look, she’s forgotten that we’re here.”

  Finally she slid the tin out of her way, leaning forward and setting her elbows down on her long legs and her chin down on her knuckles. The neckline of her tie-dyed T-shirt was so loose that I could see the rise of her large breasts beneath it. “Your father was just telling us about his book,” she said. “Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Fascinating story. I had never heard of them myself.” She threw her head back and snorted at the ceiling. “I didn’t even know there were female pirates! I think it’s great. I believe that women should have adventures just like men do. That’s the problem, you know. Girls your age aren’t given the freedom that boys are. Because men are predators and women are generally their prey. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Why, when I was a kid—”

  My father appeared, empty-handed. “We don’t have any milk,” he confessed.

  “So where were you all this time?” Goliath cried.

  My father displayed his palms, as if to indicate that he didn’t know where he had been.

  6

  I wrote it all down, every bit of it (not in my little conversational pad but on several sheets of loose-leaf paper from the back of one of my notebooks), and handed it to Terri first thing in the morning, when we passed each other in the hall on the way to our respective homerooms.

  I arrived at English with a few moments to spare. And so certain was I that she would have read my narrative by then and would want to comment on it that I waited for her out in the hall. When she didn’t show up, I peeked into the classroom, and there she was, her head deep in her text. Then the bell rang, so that I had no chance to confer with her; and after class, she was up and out the door before I had even gathered up all my books.

  At lunch I went to her table, over by the trash cans. I had gone there on several occasions over the weeks, to ask if she wanted to join us at the table where I ate—not that I thought she would or should. Always her answer was the same: she had some reading to do; she wanted to be alone. Can I sit? I wrote on my lunch bag, and since she had not yet acknowledged my appearance, I dangled the bag before her face.

  She looked from my message to her lunch—a half a ham sandwich and a bowl of lettuce in a plastic container—to the book that she had opened up beside it. Heather, one of the girls I usually ate with, motioned to me from across the room. I shook my head and she made a face. “Go ahead, sit,” Terri said, finally, “though I don’t know what you want me to say, other than that I’m sorry for you. I suppose that’s what you want to hear.”

  What I wanted to hear was anything that she might say. I had written down the events of the last few days as much for her sake as for my own. Ida’s tattoo and my meeting with Goliath were, by comparison with what was usually on my mind, mundane matters to be sure, but that was precisely the point. Envisioning the conversation that Terri and I might have (yes, I planned to talk when the time was right) had distracted me from the TV screen that was my mind for half hours at a time. The night before I had dreamed not of the diner, the blouse, the bobbing head, the legs, the chair …, but of Goliath. In my dream, she was in our kitchen, rummaging through the refrigerator. Apparently unaware that I was standing just behind her, she took out a carton of eggs and opened it up on the counter. She counted them aloud, and then turned abruptly.

  So what, that she threw one at me? So what, that I was unable to scream? In another time it might have been a nightmare. By my new standards, it was a cause for celebration. I wanted to tell Terri that a return to normalcy was at hand. I wanted to share it with her. More than anything, I wanted to hear her refreshing hee-hee-hee again.

  She had spread her napkin on her lap, and now she set about unwrapping her sandwich and removing the lid from the salad container. “Bev was right in a way,” she said. “It’s not your business. They’re separated. He has a right to have a girlfriend if he wants to. I agree that he should have told you. He should have told you weeks ago.”

  Aimlessly, she moved the lettuce leaves around with her fork. Then she sighed and looked at me directly for the first time. When I saw how red and swollen her eyes were, I began to understand why she had been avoiding me all morning. She had been drinking again, I guessed, maybe regularly. She needed saving, but my description of my dream (which I had included in my written narrative), I realized with disappointment, would not do the job.

  “As far as your hair goes,” she went on almost heatedly, “I think that’s ridiculous. What is purple hair going to prove? That you can shock people? Come on, Ginny. They talk about you now, behind your back, as I’m sure they do me. Nothing mean, they just think that your response to what happened—this not-talking thing—is out of proportion to what happened itself. Bev was their friend they say; you hardly knew her. And here they’re getting on with their lives. They don’t see why it should be all that different for us just because we happened to be there at the time. If you come into school with purple hair, they’ll abandon you altogether. I’m not saying this to be mean. I just don’t want to see you make a fool of yourself. I think your mother’s friend had the right idea. If you’ve got to have some symbol for the power you feel you possess, then keep it to yourself. Tattoo a dinosaur on your ass. Or pin amulets to your underwear. But you know what? It won’t do a bit of good anyway, Ginny.” She removed her glasses and leaned so far over the table that I could see in her eye the reflection of the black hole that was my gaping mouth. “A symbol is only a symbol. You don’t have any more power over your life than I do. There’s nothing that you can do to yourself that will insure that something like that will never happen again.”

  She glared at me a moment longer. Then she put her glasses back on, slid her book closer, and immediately feigned absorption.

  I closed my mouth: she was right, at least where my hair was concerned. I could wear a headdress made of peacock feathers, and I would still be a little, skinny girl, one who looked like an eighth-grader. Sure, I was strong for my size, and I could run fast too, but what were strength and speed compared to a knife, a gun, the fist of a full-grown man empowered by his own derangement?

  I watched her read and eat for awhile, and then I reached into my own lunch bag and pulled out the black cat Pez dispenser that Mom had packed for me. I held it out over Terri’s book to let her know that I wasn’t angry with her in spite of her harsh words. She only nodded as if to say, “Yeah, so what?” Yesterday it had been waxed lips, and the day before that, a little tin racing car with the number “23” painted on its roof. Mom had never even packed my lunches before. Ever since my father left, at which time Mom decided that we could no longer afford hot lunches for me, I had always done that myself. I imagined that the little gifts had been suggested by her therapist, extravagances to stir my curiosity, enticements to lead me to the woman’s couch.

  I popped a Pez into my mouth and then removed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and the orange that I’d seen the day before rolling back and forth in an otherwise empty fruit bin. I hated peanut butter and jelly. If Mom had money to burn, she should have spent it on cold cuts, like Ida Newet did, not on toys from the register counter at the pharmacy. I put the sandwich aside and began to peel the orange. It was thick-skinned, and I could only remove small pieces of the rind at a time. I wished she’d thought to pack a knife.

  Terri finished eating and tossed her lunch bag into the trash can. She set her salad container, which was still half full, on top of her book and stood up. “I’m going,” she said. She adjusted her glasses. “You really made a mess of it,” she added.

  I nodded solemnly, because at first I thought she meant my life. When I looked where she was looking though, I realized that she was only referring to my orange. Some of the fruit had come off with the rind and there was juice all over the napkin I had placed beneath it. My hands were sticky, and white fiber threads were hanging from my fingernails. As of yet, I had still not taken a single bite.

  “Oh, by the way,” Terri said. />
  I looked up at her; I hadn’t realized that she was still standing there.

  “I heard from Sharon.”

  We stared at each other for a moment, I eagerly awaiting an elaboration and she, apparently, considering whether or not she would grant me one. Then she opened the text she had been reading and removed a folded piece of paper from between its pages and handed it to me. “This came in the mail from her. There was no letter, no note, nothing. I wouldn’t even have known it was from her if not for the return address on the envelope.”

  She took her glasses off, wiped them on the bottom of her T-shirt, and replaced them. “Well, maybe I would have known, actually. I guess she’s back to her investigations again. Anyway, you can keep it. I copied it for you. I have the original.”

  I unfolded the paper carefully, so as not to get juice stains on it, and rubbed my fist over its creases several times so that it would lie flat. It was typewritten, single-spaced. At the top, in caps, it read: EXCERPT FROM STATEMENT GIVEN BY RAPE VICTIM LOIS MARSH (AGE THIRTY-ONE) TO POLICE DURING HER STAY AT BERYL HOSPITAL, WASH-BURN, MISSOURI.

  I looked up and found that Terri had gone. The cafeteria was beginning to empty. There were a few more minutes to go before the bell that would summon the late-lunchers into the cafeteria and me to study hall. I began to read.

  The plates on my old car, a Toyota pickup, were commercial plates, so they couldn’t put them on the new car—because that was a regular car and they said I couldn’t use commercial plates. So, I went to Motor Vehicles to return them. It took about twenty minutes, I guess. And when I went back out to the parking lot, I noticed this man pulling in. As I was getting in my car, he was getting out of his. And I probably wouldn’t have even noticed him except that he looked at me, stared, you know. He was tall, with dark brows. I don’t remember his hair. He might have been wearing a hat. What I noticed, mostly, was his coat. It was this fur job, but the fur was flat, as if it had been ironed. It struck me as strange.