Can You Hear Me?

• Vivien Huang, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2016

For Simon the scariest sight was not his classmates burning ants to death with their magnifying glasses, nor was it the time Lucy had fallen off the swings and had something coming out of her arm in the wrong place. No, Simon’s worst fear was his father’s silence, a wordless man who usually had so many words. His father did not speak for a week, did not do much but go to work, smiling a secret at the camera every morning on the Early Morning News Channel and talking, laughing, discussing as usual. But at home he did not utter a word.

It had been his father’s job that had first got in the way of their marriage. His father used his words and his charm on television and his mother loved him. Loved. Something that his father had laughed and mocked about on a LIVE Morning Session had gotten Simon’s mother mad and twisted. Simon still remembered the taste of forgotten, burnt toast and the sound of a slammed milk carton. She switched the television off with a quick zap and told her son, “Don’t listen to your father, he’s wrong, he’s not a good man.”

He was rushed to school that morning, ten minutes earlier than usual. He could feel his mother’s fury rolling off her neck in tsunami waves so Simon sat in the back seat, sat on his hands and chewed at his top lip. When the car had pulled up at school Simon could not help but hunch over a little more, and he could not help his light up sneakers drag across the car’s carpet.

They got out of the car, his mother kissed him good bye and told him like she always did, “Silence is the most powerful sound, you are such a smart, good, important boy…” Then something she usually didn’t say, “Don’t worry about your father, I’ll deal with him.” A pause, “I love you so much.”

Simon loved his mother too, his mother gave him endless love in her touch, gestures, words, the kind that he knew was indefinite and true. His father, on the other hand, Simon felt like he had to work for his love, he had to earn the few words uttered at him, and when he did receive anything his beams would outshine the moon. The words felt like little capsules of power, his father’s attention was a steroid pill for his heart and it gave Simon confidence, more confidence than his mother’s incessant ‘you are important’ would.
But, at school it was the exact opposite, the words that were given to him wore him down, made him feel absolutely powerless. His classmates gave him words, so many words, words he hated, he did not want to hear. They would say so many bad bad words that he would wish that he was deaf to it all, their words had the power to attack him where it hurt.

Mute. Do you even know anything?

Dumb. Freak. Stupid.

Can you even hear me?

The continual words his mother gave him could barely patch up the holes that the words at school left behind. And they could see that, the holes and the hurt, and the bullies felt powerful. They were soldiers with words strapped to their belts. And, although they mightn’t be the strongest or the smartest or the oldest they had something Simon didn’t. Words.

His words were overflowing streams that everyone would listen to but with Simon were few and far between.

Her words were full of love but with Simon they sometimes became too much and too many but they were full of feeling.

Their words were insignificant but with Simon they hurt like bullets, like burns that would not scar right.

Simon’s words could not be formed, no matter how much he wanted them too.


Words gave information, words gave confidence, words gave love, words gave hurt.
So, what could Simon do if he didn’t have words?