Eloquent Silence
Margaret Weise
Published by Margaret Weise, 2015.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
ELOQUENT SILENCE
First edition. September 27, 2015.
Copyright © 2015 Margaret Weise.
Written by Margaret Weise.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
1. The Teller of Tribal Tales
2. Me Too, Honey
3. People Like Us
4. Dilemma
5. An Outing With Two Short People
6. Domestic Bliss
7. Some Enchanted Evening
8. See You Next Time
9. Writing About Writing
10. A Little About Love and Alzheimer’s Disease
11. Families, God Love Them
12. Morning Tea With Buddy
13. Crying Over You
14. The One Night Thand
15. But Don’t Tell Sarah
16. The Second Wife
17. Ringing The Changes
18. Cancer Scare
19. How, When, Where, Why?
20. Nobody Knows
21. In The Autumn
22. Life’s Richest Treasures
Acknowledgements
Other books by Margaret Weise
About the Author
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Rosie Batty, 2015 Australian of the Year. Her son, Luke, was murdered by his father at cricket practice at the Tyabb oval on February 12, 2014.
Luke was 11 years old.
Rosie campaigns tirelessly against Domestic and Family Violence.
I wish to recall with gratitude the strength of my late mother’s support and that of my children who were always there when there was nothing and nobody else.
With thanks to my friend, guide and mentor, Julie Harris.
And to friends both old and new: Dell, Shirley, Coral, Lyn, Noela...
You know who you are.
Much love.
1. The Teller of Tribal Tales
This book has been written to present excerpts of my life and those of other women who have shared their experiences with me in one shape or another. The choice of first or third person in the telling is completely random. Only we who have lived through those times know with certainty whose story it is and that’s how it should be.
With my own stories, for most part, all people are either imaginary or dead and the place names are contrived. Of necessity, both fact and fiction are involved, as must always be the case when one is not present to witness all conversations and events. A certain amount of supposition takes place between teller and listener. I leave it to the reader to ascertain where experience ends and story telling begins.
Suffice to say that those of us who write about our lives and the issues that have brought us to expand our souls by sharing, are aware that we can’t have too many secrets if we really want to write of the times that have affected us.
Also, to protect anonymity, names are changed in the cases of real people who are players or may have existed. This is as necessary as breathing in and out if we are to retain our freedom to be honest. I have relied on the testimonies of these women who often labored with a sense of insoluble conflict all their lives. Although some of the stories are personal either to myself or others, a few simply seemed to write themselves. I sat down at the computer and they appeared upon the page, more or less of their own volition.
My mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s Disease taught me that we cannot escape from certain agonies intact. I carry deep scars from the five years I cared for her at home and even deeper ones from having to place her in care and tend to her for another six years. Her stories—God rest her gently—were the ultimate tales of sadness for me.
A philosopher would tell us that we are better people for having suffered through the agonies of soul searching and that where life breaks us we become stronger in the place where we previously split apart and mended. We humans are assembled from strong stuff and we tend to survive whether we want to or not. Certainly it is not easy to die and we need times of trial to enable us to savor the sweet parts of life when they arrive.
The good and bad times have been explored in retrospect. Happy little tales involving grandchildren are mine to relate without stepping on the toes of perpetrators of any kind of misconduct who may be lurking, waiting to criticize.
Needing to be more than a spectator in life, my dedication to the liberation of abused women and children drives me to speak for those who cannot or will not speak for themselves. I can recall having strong feminist opinions in the days before the term was coined and widely used, not so much for being stridently against men and their forms of control, but believing in the innate equality and value of women and girls. I was a feminist down to my bootstraps but didn’t necessarily know I was one.
Some of these tales are a compilation. Many memories have been dredged up painfully, as often only with concentration could the actions of the architects of horror be recalled to be spoken or written about. The combat in those previous times was desperately unequal. Women had little or no rights beyond the most basic. Thankfully, the powers that be are beginning to realize that the scourge of violence in the home and towards women in general must be quelled before civilization as we know it is destroyed. My objection to violence lies not only within the bounds of the home and family but includes rape and merciless treatment of females and males as well as all forms of exploitation of children.
These days the general public is being made much more aware of Domestic and Family Violence in the hope of improving the lot of sufferers. In the times of which I write, the shame belonged to the victim rather than the perpetrator and the matter was hushed up unless a death took place. The tempo of life went on uninterrupted if possible and women wore their badges of damage with shame.
The ways in which marriages and de facto relationships are conducted are as individual as people themselves. Few of us know what goes on behind closed doors unless separation or tragedy takes place. This seems to have been the status quo and to a large extent, still is.
No one stepped forward to assist them in the recent past except their immediate families or perhaps a minister of religion. The police force dreaded confrontation with enraged people in their homes and these scenes were the most common areas for damage to members of the police force and no doubt still are.
In the main, women had to fend for themselves and their children as best they could and homes were rarely broken up because a man was brutal, with wives and children weathering the storms in silence. There was simply no protection beyond the extended family and nowhere to go as Women’s Shelters did not exist. Nor was there financial aid for these people thrust beyond the Pale.
I have also tried to look at the plight of women cast into the single state in desperation, which was not the norm as pride, shame, finances and fear usually kept them in their place at least until their children were reared. Going against the mores of the times and frequently against their will, once alone again they were sometimes tempted to be caught up in dreams that denied reality, often feeling inadequate to deal with the future and what it brings or fails to bring.
Many women experienced and still experience a protracted period of malice emanating from the men who find themselves to be ‘ex-husbands’ as well as denial of their need for emotional connection. Much violence is being unleashed in our society these days by men who supposed themselves to be so wronged that they willingly and righteously set out to kill their women and/or children. Family members who were once precious come to cringing even in
their sleep, shrinking in fear from the monsters who profess to love them or to have loved them.
The issue of violence against women seems to be escalating with two women being murdered by a partner or ex-partner every week in Australia. To give an opinion, it seems self evident that respect for women has been forfeited to the likes of pornography and violent movies may seem a trite answer to the problem. But added to this is the impact of brutal and mindless TV games that are desensitizing our youth and dehumanizing their outlook toward the female of the species. If our community and culture are destroyed I don’t think it will be from the outside but rather, from within, the way other cultures and civilizations have crumbled over millennia e.g. the fall of the Roman Empire.
There is never a morning when I wake without a longing for my family, my children and my mother, all virtually gone from me. I dream frequently of my babies and my mother like being in a time capsule of the years when those precious four were close by, loving, loyal and always present.
I am a fortunate woman these days to have constant supportive help, generosity of spirit and encouragement from my husband. This was not always so for the simple reason that he was not always my husband. Perhaps if I had led a charmed existence I would be prepared to let life swim around me without being touched by it, but I have plumbed the depths and received a sense of purpose from climbing up from rock bottom. Distressing marriages and destructive husbands can do this to a woman. Nor do I think I was born for an easy life due to the fact that I think too much. But we are made as we are made and must suffer the consequences down through the years.
We vacillate from happy times to sad. After my mother died in 2005, it took me seven years to be able to sing again, let alone indulge in any sort of jollification. I had just found my voice, singing in the car and around the house when in 2012 I was hit with another almighty family whammy from which I doubt if I will ever recover in this lifetime. I hope the person who carried out the evil acts that led to such despair for some in our family pays the price for his deeds, if not in this life, then the next. Karma will eventually take its revenge on him. Like myself, he is now much closer to the grave than the cradle with an exaggerated sense of his own importance which has no doubt been the source of his blindness, his inability to see how he has damaged those who were in his care.
The ways of the Lord are strange indeed. By my age one has had enough time to ponder them and certain things are clearer than they were in my youth. Clearest of all is the fact that we do not understand in the least, God’s plan for us.
2. Me Too, Honey
We are seated in a busy restaurant, the air abuzz with conversation and restrained laughter, the talk full of fruitiness and meatiness. Our party consists of six people. Two are in their early thirties. The other four are definitely not.
The young woman, Libby, is a bubbly, effervescent type with shoulder length blonde hair and snapping green eyes, who chatters lightheartedly from one subject to another. She imagines herself to be interesting-looking and indeed she is quite striking. There is a decidedly attractive aspect to her with her vivacity and varied vocabulary. She laughs and talks constantly, mostly just words strung together in the cause of amusing her listeners, holding their attention by the sheer force of her personality. Her bangles jangle as she waves her hands about, making her points with uncommon emphasis. Her earrings dance in time to her animation, bobbing and jiggling.
Her male companion is definitely not the effervescent type, a veritable bear of a man with a shaggy head of ginger hair and a little corpulence beginning to swell out in front of him. He has stubby, hairy fingers and a pronounced stutter but he is well-spoken, nevertheless, a gentlemanly type of man who will let Libby have her head no matter what she says. Libby is decidedly the dominating partner and she has staked a claim on his heart, a fact that could be unfortunate for him in the long run.
She is giving us her take on life, free, gratis and for nothing, regaling those of us at her end of the table with tales of young men who have proposed marriage to her, recently and in the past, her wit clever and sharp. She runs from subject to subject like a babbling brook, more than taking up her fair share of the conversation but we are all content to listen to her as she rattles on.
Her boyfriend, Noel, continues to watch indulgently, his dark face bland and smiling broadly, knowing that when the time comes for her to move on she will use his idiosyncrasies to amuse other listeners. That is a given and he would not expect anything less. He has long prepared himself for this eventuality.
She’s a very smart young woman with an agile wit and great sense of humor. We are in stitches listening to her tales of escapes from the bonds of marriage. Her companion, with his eyebrows knitting together in concentration, turns from us to discuss the building industry with her father at the other end of the table. He starts to look a trifle edgy at the content of the conversation.
Our group’s discussion grows more serious from the foibles of her romantic situations. She controls the interaction and begins to center on her beliefs and ideals for marriage when she decides to settle down, which will not be for a long time yet, sooo long.
Suddenly it seemed to me like it was the first time in recent history that I had wanted to be the first person to leave the table. I wanted to escape outside into the night, to squash the balls of my hands into my eardrums and flee. But common courtesy dictates that I stay there until the meal is finished.
With her cheeks as bright as apricots, she tells us,
‘I’ll get married when the time’s right. I want a family, certainly. Some nice, well-behaved little children and a big, beautiful husband, not necessarily in that order. But, well, I know what you said, that you’re divorced and everything, Sylvia, but that’s not my style. No siree. None of that divorcing business for me. When I marry it will be for life,’ she says half-sneeringly.
My temper rises at the platitude but I redouble my effort to remain calm at all costs.
She smiles, flicks her blonde hair back, sips her wine. I smile back, open my mouth and, thinking better of commenting, close it firmly, trying to remain calm in the face of her undoubted disapproval.
Despite my best efforts, however, my heart jumps into my throat and hammers vigorously, having lost my faith in the happily-ever-after scenario through long and difficult experience. I try to give the appearance of unflappable calm while my teeth clench in protest and fear of what I might say if I allow them to open. I take a great gulp of air in through my nose, swallow determinedly and try to steady my hands.
An answer runs through my head but I continue to smile to the best of my ability, silently digesting this information. How I would like to say,
‘Now why didn’t I think of that, Libby? Good for you! When I married I did so to produce two children to take away from the marital home and rear with little or no help from their father. I originally thought I was so lucky to have a husband and babies that for years I thought I could make the turmoil disappear and eventually make the whole situation come out right. So I endured all the angst and misery, accusations and penny-pinching against all odds and in the end had to accept defeat after being belted senseless for the umpteenth time, so I left him.’
But I was raised in an era when one didn’t cause a fuss or a make spectacle of oneself in public, remaining polite even when in danger of bursting with the attempt. I am furious and sullen, but remain close-mouthed.
This young woman is training to be a policewoman. Has she come to the part about domestic violence in her education yet? I doubt it by the sound of things.
Does she know how it is for women who have to hide in a empty allotments for hours in the middle of the night? Or on building sites amongst the rubble of rubbish skips, in portable on-site toilets and bricks? Or by a creek bank behind a grove of trees. To see her precious child badgered as ‘useless and thick’ because of deafness?
To watch a man order his children to take down their underclothes so that his leather belt will be more pai
nfully effective across their buttocks, especially if he uses the buckle end?
Does she realize how it feels when you listen to a man tell your daughter she will be a prostitute by age fourteen because she is interested in the colors of nail polish?
To tell the child she will be a lesbian by then, as well. Loving one’s mother or sisters equates with being a lesbian and lesbianism runs through the family line as an inherited dysfunction? One can have the genetic predisposition as this little girl appears to have, claims the man of her dreams, father of her little brood. A female either carries the lesbianism gene or, by being exposed to the disorder, will ‘catch’ it from observation. The husband/father has not quite decided yet in which way this young child will be ‘contaminated,’ but he will make up his mind and the issue will be fought about again when the next moment of conflict arises.
Perhaps watching a small son being flogged because something has gone wrong for the father at work during the day. Some really strange women may feel unsettled and take it in their heads to search the yellow pages of the telephone directory for a lawyer the next day when the man has gone to work again. Depends on your level of commitment, of course. If you have married for life, for instance, you will simply go about your day, regardless of not being able to see out of one blackened eye or chew on one side of your mouth because your jaw is bruised and swollen.
If a woman is wrested to the floor with a man’s hands around her throat as he kneels over her to choke her, she may feel less than amicable towards him if and when he lets her up. Only ‘may’ mind you. Behind him on the floor the little boy tries to pull the man off his mother. The man flings out an arm. The child goes flying across the room. His temple connects with the corner of the piano leg. He falls to the floor, stunned. Is he concussed? Unconscious?
Perhaps that night the woman may not feel inclined to make love with her husband who is suffering from a fleeting sense of guilt and wants to make amends by having intercourse. If she is reluctant following the evening’s activities she will have to be prepared to pay a price, naturally enough. Rape is not illegal within the bonds of marriage.
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