| Radio Dreams She lived in a house where music was forbidden. Life occurred in trembling silence, without accompaniment. But with the willfulness of a child�s spirit, she was drawn to things forbidden. When she was twelve, she acquired a small plastic pocket radio. It was blue. She kept it hidden under her mattress, and brought it out only during long nights of wakefulness. She would nestle it into her pillow with the volume very low, and lay her head on top of it, losing herself in fantasies of belonging to the outside world where there was music and talk and laughter. One night, she fell asleep with the radio still pressed to her ear. Late in the night, she woke, as she often did, with a hand clamped over her mouth. The radio tumbled to the floor, and for one eternal moment she was frozen as he looked at the radio and his eyes filled with rage. His intentions forgotten, he tore her from the bed and dragged her, knees burning on the rug, through the house. Her arms flailed with futility in the direction of her mother�s closed bedroom door, but that door never opened when things happened in the night. He dumped her on the cold concrete floor of the laundry room, and threw the radio down beside her. Wordlessly, he yanked a hammer from his toolbox and knelt on the floor, where he began smashing the radio again and again. Bits of plastic and circuitboard flew in all directions; chips of concrete bounced up from the floor. She curled herself up, pressing her body into the space between wall and dryer. She buried her hands in the flannel of the back of her nightgown, twisting until she could feel the taut fabric biting into her wrists: for some reason, she was certain that he would force her to lay her hands on the floor with the radio, while he smashed them to pulp. She willed her hands to disappear. When the radio was nothing but debris, he dropped the hammer, and sat panting with his fury, glaring at her. Could it be over so easily? She didn�t dare to hope so. She tried to stop whimpering and be very, very quiet. He grabbed her face in his strong hand, dragging her out of the corner on her hands and knees. She could feel his fingers digging into both of her cheeks as he forced her jaw open with one large hand. With the other, he began picking the shattered bits of plastic off the floor and shoving them one by one into her mouth. The plastic had no flavour, but she could taste the grease of his many years of hard work on his thumb as it pressed against her tongue. He held his hand over her mouth until she swallowed each piece, hissing and grunting at her as he dragged her around the tiny room to collect the pieces that had flown. When there was nothing left but concrete dust and the acrid smell of his anger, he flung her face away from him and limped out of the room. She stayed where she lay sprawled on the floor for a very long time, the coldness of the concrete seeping through her damp nightie until she began to shiver. She could hear his breath in the front room, growing deep and even as he slept. When she was sure it was safe, she crawled back to her room on her scraped knees, too afraid to stand up. In the morning, she put away the hammer which was still on the floor, and with her toe she kicked a small blue piece of plastic under the hot water heater. As she left for school, she turned her face away from the furtive glances of her neighbors and walked with her head down into the rainy day. |