I wanted to sleep inside. But I didn’t dare. To do so would be an act of rebellion that I couldn’t afford. Keeping the peace was more important than finding it for myself. My bedroom closet was the quietest spot in the apartment. I was brave enough to venture inside during the day. Inside I simply sat. I thought about all the things I’d write down in a journal if I could. A journal could be found. Its secrets used to make me small.
In the silence I heard whispers. I pressed my ear against the wall to hear the muffled voice of the father of the family who lived next door. I rarely saw him. He worked two jobs. He worked at a factory during the week and on the weekends he was a pastor at a Spanish church.
I saw his children playing every day in the alley. They made trains out of the empty boxes left out behind the liquor store and kites out of plastic bags and string. I watched their faces, free and open and without shame. His wife would wave at them and smile as she beat the dust out of her rugs in front of the apartments. The warm filling smells of beans and onions poured out of their unit each time I passed.
I cupped my hands around my ear, hoping to hear, something. I didn’t understand much Spanish but maybe I’d hear, something.
Dios mío
I then knew, I shouldn’t listen. He whispered prayers in his own closet, the one that mirrored my own. I heard the words pour out so fervently that he began to weep. I felt ashamed to have heard such an intimate moment. I slipped out of the closet, fearful to even close the door, that he might hear and know on the other side.
***
Through the half-inch gap at the bottom of my bedroom door, I had a clear view down the hallway to the bathroom where my father stood in the door frame. His large frame outlined in a fluorescent flame blocked my mother inside. I couldn’t make out what she was saying but every word from my father’s mouth bellowed through the house, causing the walls and our bodies to quake. In the morning I’d find a hole in the bathroom wall, dry and cracked. I didn’t dare look inside, fearful of what might lurk deep within the walls of the building.
Pressing my ear against the shared wall between my younger sisters’ room and my own, I imagined them terrified, trembling. I prayed they would stay quiet, for any sound from them was an invitation to our father. If I could have seen through the wall, I would have seen the two of them, their young limbs working together to pull the trundle out from under their daybed. I would have seen them crawl underneath and yank the trundle back into place crushing them against the wall. There they held onto each other, trying not to make a sound.
The shouts reached a defending level and I could hear my mother whimpering. I grabbed a book from the shelf and crawled inside my closet. Clean. Tiny. The words blurred on the page, yet I knew better than to cry. I needed to stay alert.
I wished I could hear the other father praying in the closet now. I knew his family could hear my father screaming through their walls. I wanted to hear him whisper Dios for me. But knew he was holding his own children close, comforting them, like a father should.
–
Shemaiah Gonzalez is a freelance writer with degrees in English literature and intercultural ministry. She thrives on moments where storytelling, art, and faith collide. Published in Image Journal’s Good Letters, Loyola Press, Barren, Fathom, and America Magazine, among others, she is pursuing an M.F.A. in Seattle, where she lives with her husband and their two sons.