3. THE HOLE IN THE CEILING

Silence.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to block out the noise.
It was the kind of noise that came with such a cold, unsettling familiarity. I think of it like the buzz of an aircraft in the 1940s, right before an explosion. You recognise it but you’re just never prepared.
There was always that silence- happiness too I dare say, or at least a poor replica of some sort- before that noise. Before the heated conversations, yelling. More yelling. A slap, maybe one, maybe more, wherever the hand lands, more yelling, sobbing and then there is that silence again.
But this time, it’s deafening. This time they all have to conjure places they can hide, happy places.

I say ‘happy place’ now but it’s not really happy. It’s bleak.
It’s a place where they go to escape the noise; where there is no yelling or sobbing and the quiet isn’t deafening. It’s a place where they are not helpless because they don’t need help to start with.

I never really liked my version of that place. It was quiet but never calm. It was angry. I was angry. As it is, I’ve been angry my entire life. I felt like if I could conjure just enough anger inside of me, I would be able to hurt him.
So, with every beating, I got angrier, and angrier till it was all I knew. So, when I slept, I dreamt violent dreams. I dreamt of hurting him in ways I’d never be able to reconcile myself with, in ways I was ashamed of, and when I woke up, I woke up screaming, crying.
My happy place was an angry place.
The anger could have been his; he was always angry. It could have been hers; when no emotion appeared, it is anger that keeps us moving. Anger is better than feeling nothing. I believe she too was angry.

I find myself wondering what her happy place was. When she slept, did she too dream of hurting him? Or did she hope he would one day love her?
I would say that’s a foolish thought even for her, but you know now how foolish hope leads us to be.

I have this memory in my brain that I just can’t muddle like the rest of it all and I don’t know why. There has been way worse than it.
It was an early morning. Out of obligation, she prepared his meals before she went to work and after she got back. This morning, on her way out, there was an argument. He picked the dish on the tray and threw it on her. It was a stainless steel dish.
I don’t remember if it hit her- but it went up the plastered ceiling, and through it.
When she left that morning, there was a hole in the ceiling and a new meal in his tray.

That night I dreamt, and when I woke up, there was a wet spot on the pillow where my eyes had been, and a ringing in my ear. The aftermath of yet another violent delight.

There were people on the outside who were cognizant of what happened behind those green walls.

Like her mother who saw it as not a reason to leave.
Like his sisters, who hated her as well.
Like the driver, who walked in on him hitting her and walked back out, like he was on a patrol check and had found nothing amiss.

But who am I to point judgy fingers? We were all helpless after all.

It’s like the age-old adage, ‘you do not bite the hand that feeds you’.

It would be years later after I leave that I would come to know I can sever that hand, just like the dreams.
But the damage would already be done. To him. To her, to the four that lived.

There would be one who carries insecurity and low self-esteem like a hunch back.

There would be one with so much ambition, rooted only in sheer need to be better than him, in every way possible.

There would be one who believed they had enough love to give but would later find out in a series of unfortunate events, that they had nothing to give. They were a vacuum, constantly looking to be filled up, seeking unconditional love as a safeguard.

There would be one who loved to stew in their pity because it gave them a martyr complex. They would believe that without their identity as survivors, they were purposeless. What would their life be if it ceased to be a succession of tribulations and triumphs?

There would be one, always ready to impress, be the best at all that they did (and the best they were). They would go on to seek the validation they never got in childhood, by striving to be better than everyone else and having a great fear for failure.

I think the one who never made it was the luckiest of them all.

I also know that the day that hole appeared, she wished, again, that she was him- the one who never made it.

And she meant it.

Sometimes it’s never the big things that sends us spiralling. It’s something as little as dropping the keys while trying to open the door.