mute » tomlinson ON HOLD

eight; explaining

Her hand moved quickly across the smooth white of the dry-erase board. My eyes scanned her face at how she bit the inside of her cheek as she wrote and how she would pause for a moment to reread her writing. I was scared that I was becoming addicted to just watching her.

Rainy stepped back from the white board and looked at me, waiting for me to read what she had wrote. My eyes finally shifted over to what I needed to be focused on.

It read, "I wasn't always mute. I lost my speaking ability when I was eight."

"How'd it happen?" I leaned my elbows on my knees as I looked up at her in curiosity.

She nodded and erased what she had wrote, then scribbled down more letters. I patiently waited for her to step back from the board before tilting my head, whispering the words to myself as I read them.

"My house was robbed when Eli and I were small kids. He was twelve, I was eight, and Owen wasn't born yet."

I nodded at her to continue, taking in all the new information. She still hadn't told me exactly how it happened.

She swiped the eraser across the white surface and started to write again, "Well, Eli and I shared a room at the time and while he was asleep, I thought I kept hearing things downstairs."

"Where were your parents?" I questioned, the pad of my thumb running against the stubble lining my jaw.

She held up a finger, "They left after they tucked us in to go over our neighbor's house for a Friday night drink." When she stopped writing, she stood back and waved her hand in front of the words.

"Oh."

Her hand hovered over the board while she thought of what she wanted to say. The marker moved back and forth hesitantly until she finally determined how to word her train of thought, "So, I woke up Eli and told him what I thought I heard. He got up and walked down stairs while I followed closely behind."

Rainy stepped away from the board and examined my face as I read. The marker was held loosely in between her fingers and once I gave her a nod, she pushed it against the white again.

"It turned out that there was a man in our house. And once Eli stepped into the kitchen, the man swung a fist at him, knocking him to the ground." She paused and rolled her wrist in a circular motion before starting again, "After that, he ran off and Eli only suffered a broken nose. Meanwhile, I had not moved from the same spot."

"Did you scream?" My eyebrows scrunched up, confused as to how any of this could have caused her to lose her speaking ability.

She shook her head no, and scribbled down more.

Spreading a warm feeling across my body, the thought of how she would go through the trouble of writing everything down just to help me understand was amazing. I was surprised, in the least; we didn't really even know each other, yet Rainy was so open to me.

I shook my head, forcing myself to focus on what she had to tell me.

"But, every since that incident, I just stopped talking; not by choice of course. When my parents took me to the doctors, they said I had a rare mute disorder that was caused by traumatic shock," she sighed and closed the marker before cracking her wrists. I could just imagine the aching feeling flowing through her fingers to her dainty wrist.

"We could take a break, if you'd like," I stood up from my stop on the couch to walk over to her. Gently grabbing her wrist, I briefly massaged it before taking the marker from her hand and laying it on the white board's ledge.