Silent Scream - Part 3

As a young child, it was trauma that threw my brain against a wall.

Photo by Dan Dennis on Unsplash

When I was still in middle school, my neighborhood friends and I would hop on our bikes and scour the streets looking for empty bottles. Some of the bottles were turned in for nickel and dime deposits but the rest were saved for special fun. Throwing an empty bottle against a cinder block wall made the most exciting, awesome sound that pre-adolescent boys could manufacture at will. But it wasn’t just the sound, it was also the explosion of glass, the fragmenting of a million glass bits and pieces that added to the whole sight and sound show. 

As a young child, it was trauma that threw my brain against a wall. 

After an extended bout of crying, children display a very common behavior. The heavy lifting crying is winding down. The body begins to regulate but the emotion still exists. Wailing gives way to a spasmodic crying, a short staccato inhaling before a longer exhaled sob. There’s no word or phrase that describes this phenomenon. 

I’m sitting on the floor of my bedroom, my body quakes with shuddering sobbing. My brother is on the other side of the room and I can hear the same spasmodic rhythmic crying. It’s very soft, very quiet, as if our bodies just got tired of screaming, but still feel the need to cry. We’re in our pajamas staring at the varnished wainscoting beneath the yellow painted walls. 

After numerous sessions with my therapist, I still have no memory of how my brother and I ended up on the floor in pajamas. There’s a bandaid above my eye and I have no memory of how or why it’s there. My memory fragmentation prevents me from remembering the narrative. 

But others do remember. 

The female voices I heard belonged to my aunt and my grandmother who were staying with us. The rest of this story is a collaboration between them. 

As my mother continued beating us with a belt, our screaming and her screaming, jolted their attention. After plotting to intervene, they rushed to my bedroom doorway, just after an errant belt buckle clipped the corner of my eyebrow, causing blood to splatter on my brother and me. My mother, in full panic, ripped the clothes off of two hysterical boys. She ran out of the room with the bloody clothes leaving us in our underwear and me with a bleeding head. 

My grandmother blocked the hallway, shielding us from the return of unrestrained rage. My aunt hurried my brother and me to the bathroom. She bandaged my head and dressed us in our pajamas. She led us back into our bedroom and had us sit on the floor facing the wall. Hearing this detail of the story years later, I asked about my aunt’s illogical logic. 

She told us, “If you sit quietly facing the wall, you won’t get into any more trouble.” We were happy to comply with this act of mercy. By quietly sitting staring at the wall we escaped the belt. 

I think about the possible motives for my mother’s frantic mission to wash those clothes now. 

Was it out of shame, embarrassment, fear? 

Or was it that moment of clarity after rage transcends all restraint when we stop and say, ”What just happened?” 

Or was it that moment when one realizes that humans, including ourselves, are capable of doing anything?

While my brother and I sat staring at the wall, I heard my father come home from work. Someone, I’ll never know who, closed the door to our room. I can hear my father’s excited tone, the disbelief in the tone, as other voices tried to quiet his tone. The conversation on the other side of that door was muffled, hushing, whispering, indiscernible. 

My brother and I just sat staring at the wall. 

Daring not to cry. 

Daring not to move. 

Daring not to make a sound. 

Daring not to remember.