Losing My Voice

This is a true story. It happened forty years ago, but it doesn't end where it ends. Thanks to the miracle of the internet, I recently found and contacted Jack (you'll meet him in a moment) and was able to do what I've always wished I could do: apologize, explain, and find out what it was like from HIS perspective. But first the story:

My voice is not a reliable instrument. Maybe it’s because there are so many voices inside my head, voices louder than mine, more certain of themselves. I was a child who sat in classrooms too shy to speak. If I needed to go to the bathroom, I endured the discomfort rather than ask. If I knew the answer to Miss Olinger’s question, I held it in my mouth like a piece of hard candy. When a strange man pulled me into an alley way on my way to school, the scream I should have screamed remained lodged in my throat, and I stood for many seconds like a mute dumb animal until some rush of good sense pushed me and I ran. I never told a soul.

I had a long history of silenced voices. As a little girl, my mother sang like a nightingale until she was invited to audition for a radio show - -it was to be her one big moment. She told me the story many years later. “I opened my mouth,” she said. “and nothing came out.”

I could picture it: the small round empty O of her open mouth, the silent ride home, the unspeakable disappointment. I already knew that sinking sense of helplessness. My voice had often let me down. I was a self-conscious person who smiled stupidly in social situations and lived with an inability to navigate in a verbal world where clever people effortlessly chatted and sparred, where eloquent people moved others with their thoughts, where even the most ordinary people at least raised their voices in self-defense.

Even in high school, my voice had a way of not showing, and it wasn’t funny. Oh, it was inside of me somewhere, coiled at the edge of my throat, one foot in my heart, ready to leap. I wanted to speak. I wanted to laugh. But I was paralyzed, my shyness stuffed into my mouth like a thick sock, my earnest unspoken hopes made leaden by self-consciousness.

Naturally, it happened when I most wanted to be cool and conversational. It happened on my only date with Jack M., and to me, he was dazzling. His eyes were blue and icy as a winter morning, and he laughed and smiled with an easy masculine confidence that excited me like a roller coaster descent. I was in tenth grade, and this was a real date, just like any normal American high school girl might have.

But it was a long walk to the basketball game that night, once I discovered that my brain was not functioning, my hands were trembling, and my voice had gotten snagged in the back of my throat. A colorful cluster of junior girls strolled slightly adjacent or behind us, their striped scarves flung over their shoulders. A cool rush of whispers and giggles floated in the crisp air, then rose like melodies for songs I could not sing.

Inside, I was a cauldron of passion, boiling over, full of eagerness and want. But on the outside, I was awkward and bland, too timid to speak up or act upon my feelings, as boring as dry oatmeal.

Jack tried good-naturedly to prompt me with small talk. It swirled around my head, nothing I could grab. It seems to me I nodded a lot. I wished that he would take my hand or even put his arm around me, but I surely gave no sign.

The streets dissolved into silence, and at last we reached the high school, which seemed strange and dissonant as a nighttime destination.

Virtually everyone in the entire junior class was seated in the bleachers. Among the sprinkling of sophomores, there was Barbara; her taunting voice rose above the others.“I didn’t know you liked basketball,” she said. “I’ve never seen you at a game before.”

I tried to imagine how Rosemary would respond – she was an alpha girl, a queen bee, everything I was not. I knew she wouldn’t have felt the need to explain her presence to anyone. “I’ve never noticed you, either,” she might say with an icy edge. Or, “Hey, Barbara, your hair looks great, but your roots are showing.”

Me? I just let the corners of my mouth rise in an awkward, harmless smile. I didn’t want to be offensive. It was an innocent question, despite the snotty undercurrent. And maybe I was just being paranoid, anyway. After all, I never did go to games. There wasn’t a chance in a zillion that I would be sitting here if Jack hadn’t brought me, and I had no interest in what was happening on the court.

He did. He was riveted, alternately cheering and groaning along with his friends and classmates. Whenever Central Islip High made a basket, the bleachers roared as the kids on our side cheered and slapped each other’s hands. At other times the group erupted in ragged ritual tunes as the cheerleaders did their bouncy routines for the purple and gold, or they stamped their feet in unison upon the wooden boards. The game went on and on and I sat there mutely, trying to assume the appropriate posture and acquire a suitable degree of enthusiasm, but mostly wondering what I would say to Jack when he finally remembered I was there.After the game, kids milled about, making plans and small talk as they gradually vacated the gym.

I had hoped to have some time alone with Jack, but instead, he arranged for us to go with a group of his friends to a pizza place nearby. “What did you think of the game?” he asked, as we walked over.

“It was good,” I said, stupidly. In the long pause that followed, I struggled to think of what I could add that would give him something to respond to and keep the conversation going.

He watched me with those cool blue eyes; when I looked at him my heart started banging around in my chest and my throat went completely dry. I lowered my head and kept walking

.“What’s wrong?” he asked, seeming genuinely concerned.

“I need to go,” I managed to mumble.

“Are you okay? I can walk you home.”I could not accept his pity or endure another silent walk. I called my father with my emergency dime and asked him to pick me up; the moment I saw him I burst into tears.

“What did he do to you?”

“He didn’t do anything, Daddy,” I sobbed, “As a matter of fact, he was nice.”

My father looked at me skeptically.

“Well, whatever it was,” he concluded, always looking for the lesson, “I’m glad you had the sense to call me.”

I could embroider daisies and vines of mint green leaves, my fingers swift and capable. I could make my little brother giggle until he was weak. I had a special spot on my pillow that brought me good dreams, and I knew how dust danced in a shaft of sunlight, and how the warm blonde light formed a rectangle on my bedroom carpet. I could run like the wind and sometimes did, all alone in the cool of dusk, as fast and far as I could go until the day washed away and I felt new again. I had memorized a poem by T.S. Eliot about a man who heard the mermaids sing but did not think they sang for him, and I knew exactly how he felt: I lived among but apart, my music snow-silent, my true voice dormant, my heart forever heavy with its undelivered mail.