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The Silence
- Red Hen Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
36 The Silence As a girl I twisted this tool into my mother’s flesh. I invented it myself, without examples, and applied it in the places sensitive to pain. Like carbon monoxide in a closed garage, making the victim clutch and gasp, my method was ideal for a woman whose mother punished her with silence, who ignored her for days, making her words flap like fish beached on ice—silence that bullied her into a chair with a book to voice the strict letters in her head. I didn’t know about her mother’s silence. She told me as we rode together in the car. She talked and I drove, my face stiff, as I cracked the window for a little breeze, a little air. ...