I didn’t pride myself on being an asshole, despite what my students probably thought. Saying what I’d said to Adele had been one of those necessary, horrible moments that I couldn’t take back. But the days got easier the less I looked at her, and the less I thought about her.
Until I picked up her paper and felt it slam between my ribs.
Ten years ago, maybe even five, I could have written that paper word for word. After thirty-four years of silence and minimal attention from my father, it didn’t hurt me the way it used to. But reading her words, I’d known they were hers before I really even noticed her name in the top left corner.
Laughter and chatter filled the air in the lecture hall while they waited for me to do something, anything. I kept waiting until the clock was two minutes past when I should have started. Only one student looked back at the clock and gave me a quizzical glance. The back door popped open, and Adele came down the steps until she got to her usual seat. She didn’t look straight at me, which was surprising; it was almost like she’d resigned herself to my disregard the previous week.
I cleared my throat, and she finally looked up at me, shock widening her eyes when she saw me looking back at her. Lowering herself into her chair, she tilted her head and I could almost hear the question like she’d asked it.
What are you doing?
I shook my head once, and stood up from my chair, pushing it back with an obnoxious scrape. The chattering slowly settled down while I walked to the middle of the open area in front of my desk.
“I had a lot of reading to do this weekend, going over your monologues. Not all of you failed miserably, which is wonderful. Now, what I didn’t tell you last week is that I typically ask students to come up here and read them out loud, almost like we were in an acting class.”
That gained me immediate nervous shifting in their seats, coughed out laughter, a few audible groans. I held up a hand, moving to lean up against my desk. “The reason I don’t tell you that ahead of time is because monologues demand honesty, as I told you last week. And I often find that if people think they can hide behind their computers, only plan on their horrible creative writing professor seeing the words, then that honesty is much more prevalent.”
Leaning back, I snagged the piece of paper off the top of the stack and looked down at it again, then looked up at the class. They were all staring raptly, probably all sweating a little wondering if their monologue was the one I was holding.
“This one,” I lifted the paper, looking at a few different faces in a few different rows before landing on Adele’s face, which was about the same shade of white as the paper I was holding in my hand, “this one was my favorite. So I’m going to pull it up on the projection screen behind me, so you can see how it was laid out, and I’m going to read it out loud too.” I tapped my ear. “When you have to listen to someone bleeding out on the page, it’s different, it’s more personal.”
I walked around my desk, the squeak of my shoes the only sound in the room. I had never had a classroom full of over a hundred students be so deathly silent. I tapped a few buttons on my laptop and the screen popped to life, the beam from the projector mounted in the ceiling catching dust motes drifting through the air. I faced them, turning away from the screen, and I saw eyes rapidly moving across the display, only Adele’s eyes were not aimed at the words.
No, she was staring right at me, begging me with her eyes not to do this. I held her gaze and spoke the words from memory, since I’d read that damn thing dozens of times over the weekend. I didn’t need to look back once to remember it.
Silence leaves a different mark than a bruise
No punctured skin, no purple rings.
Purple fading to yellow that clings to your skin.
In every silent moment with you, every indifferent glance,
Each quick pass of your eyes, you suck something from me.
You break a bone, slap my face, shove me down and keep me there. You break it all.
Something that will never, ever heal.
I’m a paperweight, I am heavy, and I’m sitting on all the pieces of me you didn’t want.
I’m made from you, your fingerprint is in the shape of my eyes, the color of my hair, the stubborn spine.
Isn’t that ironic? The spine I get from you, that steel beam that props me up, was hardened by you.
Because you’re silent
Silent
Silent
Silent
You see me across a room and move your eyes elsewhere, the cobwebs in the corner holding more appeal.
She gave me my smile
You gave me my sneer.
She gave me my laugh
You gave me my silence.
Because you made me quiet when I wanted to be loud.
In your silence I am punished—for living, for breathing, for being the one you didn’t want. I hear your disdain, I feel your derision like dirt on my skin, without you saying a word.