It's a fine line, the sound of a fist pounding on glass so hard it
shakes, and the sound of the fist going through the window. And harder
to discern the difference when your heart is beating so heavy and hard
that noises outside the body are muffled. The sound of fear comes from
the inside - between the ears, in the chest, and rattling from the
throat out the mouth. The sound of fear tries to be muffled and quiet
but it rarely succeeds.
When I was 14 my mom's ex boyfriend found us. We had been hiding
from him for years. Mom met him sometimes to give him a ride, or bring
him something to eat. Or that's what I imagined in those long hours when
she was no where to be found, when she should have been home feeding us
dinner, or picking me up from the YWCA. I was always waiting, always
worried.
Before he found us, I lived in the fear that he would figure out
where we lived. He called often enough. I felt like the phone was a
menace. No answering machines back then. No special ring tones. No way
to tell if it was him or someone important. I was tortured when I didn't
answer and damned when I did. Even through the wire I could smell his
boozy breath. Especially when he said nothing. Just heard my voice,
waited, breathing until I had to plea with him to speak, end my misery.
You've heard this one before, how I was babysitting for the
journalist. She had three sons who lived with her in a yellow house.
There were 15 steps leading from the street, to the porch. Outside it
was cheerful, inside a horror show - dishes piled on every surface in
the kitchen and covered with mold. Garbage overflowing. She was a single
mother. Her boys were voracious and unkempt. I did the dishes. It took
me hours.
And then the phone rang. He had found our house. I panicked. Worried
myself sick. Couldn't leave. The mother for whom I was babysitting had
caught her big break and was off interviewing Mike Wallace. Clean and wait. Wait and clean. The boys went to bed and I
sat, paced, fretted.
The night he put his fist through the window I thought he had broken
down our front door. I told the operator that he was trying to kill my
mom. I had been convinced for years that's what it would come to, so it
wasn't a stretch to imagine he was on his way through the house,
searching for the scurrying sound of us. We were trapped, in the attic.
Me and my brothers and mom, helpless.
The sound of fear obscures everything.
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