Chapter 1: Hello
As a small kid, no bigger than three or four, I told my Dear Old Mom in a tiny voice not yet stitched shut that I was going to live abroad in Ireland. She was confused as to how I could understand the concept of another country as I didn’t even understand my own name. That wasn’t because I was slow, but I was never spoken to or addressed. I didn’t realize I was a person like the other little person I saw popping in and out of consciousness. I believed myself to be a thing dropped into the belly of a beast and then I slithered out.
And then DOM did something I hadn’t expected in response to a simple statement I uttered. Oh, that’s right.
I forgot that I wasn’t ‘dead’ like the other small ones told me. As we played in the abandoned apartment we would laugh and they made sure to reassure me people could hear me.
Oh well. Whether it was a beating or being punished with one of my Daddies, I knew how to fall asleep and avoid the pain and unspeakable tyranny that would flood my tiny body.
In one sweeping mechanical motion, DOM lowered herself suddenly onto all fours and arched her back, her lips curling into a snarl. I felt nothing, not even confusion. I just observed her silently begin her silent terror.
“Look away,” my stuffie Zoey whispered to me.
I understood I shouldn't engage with her when she got like this and darted my eyes to the floor. I focused on the empty can of spoiled milk I had drunk earlier in a desperate attempt to quench my thirst and fill my small tummy with something other than my own saliva and Roches. The milk wasn’t as white and fluid as the type the other babies drank on the colorful tv shows I watched and I shuddered as I recalled how it tasted instead similar to Frank, Chris, and other men I tuned out.
If I closed my eyes and placed myself into the shoes of luckier children it began to taste good for me and my invisible friend Zoey.
When DOM became puzzled at my lack of customary shrieking, she reverted back into her human skin and waved me off with a half-hearted “that’s nice,” and went on her way.
At the time, I believed her to be a single mother who worked nights as the house was always dirty and I was always alone in the dark. It was sometime later I discovered we were squatting in an old house and at night she was able to go live her Other Life.
DOM is a bitch and even as a child I could understand she was evil incarnate. I am no longer here but I remember from my time in that galaxy that the only gracious act she ever did for me in my entire existence (it certainly cannot be called life) under her care was leaving a television set in the living room. The fanciful stories and horror films become my friends. I would dust the cobwebs from it and share with it my ‘snacks.’ and secrets untold.
The TV was on all the time, even when there was no programming.
While other children got “You Are My Sunshine,” the white noise of the “off-air” title screen was my lullaby.
Television was my gateway to the world. It was how I gained awareness of being. I lived right in front of it. I can scarcely recall even eating or going to the bathroom. It sounds cruel because it is, but the colder truth of the matter is that that specific television was the only reason I have not grown to be a feral modern-day Tarzan.
It made sense to turn to the familiar energy of human chatter and vibrant colors that were obscured by my dingy and dusty environment both physically and metaphysically.
I was a small ghost, the loneliest little ghost girl in the world, observing the grand play of life unfold across a small box.
The Nice News Man had announced to me and the other small ones that it was Saturday. Though confused by this word, it always signified that the colorful programming for children would be longer than usual; hurray!
I stretched my tiny legs out in front of me and sunk deeper into the thin blanket I had cocooned myself in. The colorful puppets metamorphized into an elderly news anchor who had seen a bit too much in his lifetime. He introduced a new guest. Guest. I recycled the words across the registry in my head.
Oh! That’s right!
Mr. Roe, the nice man with the tie, said that word meant a friend who was going to come to visit you.
I was so excited! Guests mean that you were friends, and what child doens’t want new friends?
To be continued in "It Was Always Your Voice” the debut novel from Marchanna Bentley. Spring 2022
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