In the Silence

Theirs was a relationship of silence.

Paloma’s hand cramps up from the crushing grip that clutches the apartment key. When she’d picked up from the floor, it felt like ice. Joey struggled with the key. The ring she kept it on was old and rusted. The key wouldn’t slip out. Paloma walked over and tried to help. Joey stepped back. She freed the key with such force that it hit the ground with a bounce. Paloma made no move to chase after Joey. Instead, she picked up the key. She tightened her fingers around the cold metal and sat at the edge of the bed, staring straight ahead. The key slips from her grip. She watches it land on the ground, not even making a small sound at impact.

When they had first moved into the apartment during the inspection tour, Joey had noticed that the carpet in their soon-to-be new bedroom hadn’t been properly cleaned.

“What’s up, amor?” Paloma said, walking into the room.

Joey stood next to a dark spot on the floor. “Look at this, babe. This carpet is disgusting. You have to tell them.”

Paloma called the leasing person into the room and told them no one was signing anything until the apartment was completely ready for move-in. They were settled in, for the most part, after a month. Meaning, that they got the big stuff organized but still had a mountain of boxes to unpack. They didn’t completely settle until after a year or so of being in the apartment. They’d lived together for four years and had been dating for eight.

A relationship takes time to build. It takes time to break. It can seem to fall apart from one blow. It might seem like it was that one argument that went too far or that one night someone was careless. The truth is, all those seemingly major blows that break people apart don’t exist in a vacuum; they’re the result of things that lived within the person, or the relationship, for a long time before finally exploding. Theirs was a relationship of silence.

Paloma looks up from the key. In place of where a TV above their dresser would usually be is a painting. Both of them agreed not to put a tv in the bedroom, or maybe Joey had agreed because Paloma asked her to. Once, she’d heard that it would help people who had trouble sleeping to avoid doing work or anything in bed. Paloma wipes her tears. For a moment, she pauses at the dryness of her face. She’d been crying even before Joey started packing, even before Joey had admitted something was wrong. The tears are now dried-up streaks on her face.

Both of them enjoyed art fairs and frequented them on the weekends. Especially after her last promotion. But this painting, they got in college. They’d been randomly paired as roommates but decided to be friends. So together, they went to their college’s monthly art fair. They walked up and down the small fair, taking care to spend enough time at each stand, even if there was nothing of interest to them. Joey spotted the painting first. The piece was hung without a frame and, therefore, on sale. This was the first time she saw Joey’s eyes shine. On impulse, Paloma told the artist she wanted it. They hung it right between their beds, which they would eventually bring together to make one big bed in the following months. They’d splurged on a frame.

Paloma stands feet sucked into the carpet. The room swirls. She leans against the dresser for a moment. Once her vision clears, she reaches up and takes hold of the painting from the sides. Determined to take it down, forgetting how heavy the frame is, her arms buckle under the weight, and her fingers are crushed as soon as she loses grip. A scream of pain and shock breaks through the silence of the room she had been so strictly preserving. She yanks her hands out from the bottom of the painting, peeling skin in the process. It begins to lean forward; she rushes back. The carpet makes the fall silent. The lack of sound angers her. The glass that contains the painting should have shattered. She needed it to shatter. It should have been so loud that it caused her neighbors to be alarmed. Instead, it had fallen right on top of the key she’d dropped, and now they mocked her.

A dark splatter appears on the blackness of the back of the frame. She looks at her hands. Her fingers are swelling and bleeding to different degrees from her harsh yank. All because she wanted to get rid of that stupid painting. Paloma didn’t even like it. She hated the color palette of greens and reds. It was one of those contemporary art pieces with lines and shapes. Paloma always believed it looked like a kindergartener took a marker and ran with it. But Joey loved it, and that had been enough.

Paloma’s hand hurts with every movement it takes to turn the bedroom knob. Joey had slammed the door shut on her way out with the last of her things. How was it that Joey had packed her things, but her presence remained in the apartment? That painting. The hallway was filled with more paintings they’d collected. Some she even liked.

The alcohol stings the moment it touches her fingers. She bites down on her tongue to keep from screaming. It takes her a couple of breaths to muster the courage to pour it over her other hand. Joey always made sure they had a first aid kit at home. Once she realized Paloma was prone to accidentally hurting herself, Joey wanted to be ready. Paloma hadn’t noticed early enough that Joey always tended to Paloma’s injuries, the smallest injury, physical and mental, but she never really did the same for Joey. Joey was bandaging herself up in silence. Returning through every moment, Paloma sees that if they’d been a scribe in the room the transcript the pages would be filled with mostly her own words. Joey held her pain, her thoughts, her desire close to herself. She held them so tightly that even eight years hadn’t been enough time for Paloma to know what was going on in her head.

Their therapist leaned forward one day and looked at Joey. “Why don’t you feel comfortable telling Paloma how you feel?”

Joey shrugged.

“See what I mean?” Paloma shook her head with frustration. “I try to be here for her, but she won’t let me. Yesterday I offered to stay in with her because she was feeling down, and she kicked me out.”

“I didn’t kick you out,” Joey said.

“So, what did you do?” Their therapist asked.

Joey looked down at her hands. She’d been picking at loose skin around her fingers. “I told her I’d feel better if I was alone.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know.”

Paloma crossed her arms. “You never know.’

Sometimes, Paloma thought she’d seen moments when Joey would open up. They would eat dinner at their table, and Joey would drop her shoulders. She would look at Paloma with pleading eyes. Those eyes of hers would plead and plead, so Paloma would set her spoon down and ask her what she needed. She would reach across the table they had bought together, and Joey would fall silent. Her pleading eyes would shift, leaving no trace of the emotion they once held. Paloma was always left with the same impossible choice. She could either press for an answer and be met with nothing more than a shrug and words that locked her out, or she could say nothing and be forced to watch Joey shrink further and further into herself.

Wrapping the gauze around her hands creates a second wave of pain that travels up her arms. She should tighten it more, but she needs to be able to move her hands. There are no other hands to help her. Not anymore. She shoves everything back under the bathroom sink and quickly turns to leave. Like everything else in this stupid apartment, they had picked out the bathroom décor together.

Joey grabbed a green stone tile. “I like this shade.”

“Can we go back to talking about last night?” Paloma said, barely glancing at the tile in Joey’s hand.

Joey shrugged. “Just a panic attack. It’s fine.”

“Amor,” Paloma grabbed her hands. Joey looked at them. “I know I won’t ever get what it’s like, okay? But I want to be able to help.”

Joey pulled her hands away and walked down to the next aisle with bathroom sinks. “Look,” she said, approaching one. “This one would go great with that tile.”

Paloma leans on that sink now. She looks at the bathroom walls filled with the tile Joey had picked out. She shuts her eyes and takes a couple of deep breaths before walking out.

Joey might have taken her blankets away, the ones that had been thrown over their couches, but her imprint remained. This was their home. The silhouette of Joey is everywhere. A ghost lingering on the couch by the window she would curl up with a book so that she could pause and look out at the busy streets as she let the words. She would lie across the couch in front of the TV and watch K-pop music videos for hours. Paloma would get home from work to find her fast asleep, a K-pop video on and a mug on the table filled with tea that had gone cold. Joey would look up from her book when Paloma got home, shut it, and tell what her favorite quote was so far and then continue. Paloma would let her read and would make her way to the shower. Many times, Joey would join her—then she stopped. She stopped looking up from her book. Stopped sleeping on the couch. Instead, she would spend more time at her best friend’s house, so she was never home to join her in the shower anymore.

Her ringtone makes her flinch. She’d been so wrapped up in the silence and stillness of the place. Paloma kneels in front of the couch to look for her phone. The fight started as soon as Paloma walked in to see Joey packing up her mugs, and then it traveled into the living room. Paloma’s phone had been in her hand. As they argued back and forth, Paloma’s phone flew out of her hand. The contact’s name says Mama Poppins, Joey’s mom. Paloma watches the phone ring in her hands. Had Joey told her mother?

“Oh good,” Mama Poppins says. “I was wondering what you girls are up to this Sunday?”

Joey had not told her mom.

“Ma,” Paloma says. She covers her mouth. Her voice had betrayed her.

“What did my daughter do this time?”

Paloma holds the phone away from her. Her eyes begin to sting with fresh tears. She takes a couple of deep breaths.

“Hello? Paloma? Are you still there?”

Paloma clears her throat. “No. I mean, yes. I’m here. I’m fine, Ma. Just been a long day.”

“Oh honey,” the woman on the other end sighs. “You two are always overworking yourselves. Now you know the Lord said rest is important. I’ll let you go so you can rest, okay?”

“Yes, Ma.”

“Tell my daughter she needs to pick up her phone.”

“Yes, Ma.”

“And that she needs to come to church this Sunday.”

“Yes, Ma.”

“You be good.”

Paloma ends the call and curls into a ball. She loses track of how long she lies on the floor crying but eventually, her tears stop, and she’s able to catch her breath.

The entire apartment seems to mock her. This place where they had loved one another so completely. It was not enough. Joey told her she could keep the apartment. Paloma will not. She cannot. All those memories now haunt this place. She loved Joey for eight years, and now that love would stay in this apartment. Those moments are trapped forever in its history. All the little details she knows of Joey will either fade away with time or linger like ghosts within her.

For a second, she lingers. Her hand tightened around the doorknob, making her fingers bleed again. Paloma shuts her eyes and sees Joey. She remembers Joey laughing. Joey cooking them dinner. The two of them curled up on their couch watching movies. All those times, Joey’s face was the first thing she saw in the morning. She sees it all and then opens her eyes. The apartment is empty. Paloma finishes locking the door and then lets go.