Long Days Of Silence by Nadine Sellers

In the long days of silence, I drop adjectives to describe an elastic past, like so much ballast along a peaceful walk. Becoming lighter I grow distance behind myself and find a separate reality ahead and around the present. Wrapped in solitude a deux, I pick fragments of vicarious grunge from the sample society below.     Under the apartment window, a child exercises minor aggression in short bursts of kicking at any flesh or object in the path of mock wrath, great roars and flipping words feed his rage as he hears himself and seems to deem these sounds of anger to be the ultimate expression of today's life, here, now, himself.     Three girls of different height and color stand at a few paces, giggling and averting the boy's wide swath. One echoes the language of violence with grimace and cocky chest, one shrinks into her skirt held high to her sucking mouth by an insecure thumb, the third sidles the bravest one silently looking for some spark of extraneous energy. Cause or object of the fit, they observe the fatherless boy's reactive misery. The fathers are boyfriends, the stepfathers are no one's friends and this is no boy's land.     Meanwhile the mothers, three of disparate appearance and common circumstance, appear at the bottom of the stairs, one large and undaunted screams half words of vengeful deeds that promise the boy more of the same, a second woman too young to be holding a toddler at her hip runs to the center of attention and grabs at the children as a mad fox in a chicken house, the spare mommy yells from the sidelines, in sobbing tirades. She curses an absent father for all ills and the heat of day while she's at it. It's hot as hell out here and your father didn't send no money, got any cigarettes? Pay you back when I get my check! She tells the air which doesn't stir.     Noise has long chased the sparrows away, the resident crow has vanished as well. Heads pop in and out of slow cars and mute windows, teens gawk at the free spectacle. Someone shouts from the confines of his cubicle home. Will you shut the fuck up down there? Undoubtedly a day sleeper. Out of luck and out of white. Irate women answer in unison, go fuck yourself!and children echo without notice.     Now men, young, not so young join in, revived from a drag at the pipe under the dash, a youth in draggy pants snorts and coughs loudly, his eyelids heavy, he surveys the neighborhood,     Hey man, what th' fucks 'up? teen girls hang onto the stairwell and manage a better view at the theater. Hey, you got some? one whispers just loudly enough for two stories to hear, with a hand flipping downward, a pimply teen shoves his chest up and cocks his head at a parked car. As if pulled by an invisible string every youth gravitates oddly to the old Mustang at the back of the lot. No one speaks, no one smiles in tacit uniformity.     Soon heads are bent in customary fashion alternately taking puffs at a crystal shorty passed with grave silence and eyes partially shut. Palms down and hoods drawn over their eyes two gangly young men bop across the lot. They avoid the direct line of sight from the complex super by following the parking angles of assorted rusted vehicles, their car shines obscenely on the asphalt dullness. The thick gold atop their sweats, a mark of wealth and decadence in a pit of malnourished misery. The surge of bass heavy hip-hop pounds the whole south lot into zoned awareness. The kid who started to draw the block out of its quotidian malaise, now opens eyes wide and keeps his mouth shut in uneasy surprise.     One extra blond girl sways to the rhythm as the growling, pounding bolid pounces by on low wheels, teeth flashing and hip sashaying. She is seen. She is heard. Another bumps irreverently into her and earns her notice as well with a bit of butt showing under a piece of pink skirt. Their bosoms collide floppily bouncing from knit tubes. Metal sends signals from funky earrings along painted faces that barely hide volcanic zits.     Hey, mo-fo! I's , he hits the ground so softly, no one turns around. A long black youth rolls his head on the sparse grass. Mothers call their kids, a girl rolls up her eyes and climbs in a car with two pimply boys. A woman slinks around the stairwell before dialing her mobile phone appendage. A gust of wind stirs a plastic bag, floats it arrogantly above the dark upturned face. Whoopie! The wail of sirenes creeps through sluggish week-end traffic.     Uniforms mill about, some faces stare, an older woman whispers to the lady cop, notes are taken, the old lady's dog whines. No glass pipes, no papers, the yard is clean as a city park around the prostrate man. Obscene gold on black background glares in noonday sun. silence reigns in the complex, the ambulance pulls out easily between the only cars left in the lot. That's good shit man! And life returns with the kids on the block. The investigative unit from the local task force hang around, spoiling the best intentions of the poor. Waiting till nightfall on the corner to get rich.     Milk is scarce in the kitchens, it' s not a cup of sugar that comes in a tinfoil pack, the trash bins swell with generic rice and beans, oatmeal and dry eggs marked "not for resale". You give me a dime bag for these? Look I got food stamps, you want my card? C'mon! My ol' man says he get a job today, i'll get it for you. Voices hush, voices scream. And I straighten the curtains in a room full of silence.

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