Hallowed Be Your Words
Another work of flash fiction. This time taking inspiration from this piece by Lincoln Michel
It was a dark and stormy night. The family had gathered around the dinner table. The mother distributed the rotis according to the usual count - 4 for the father, 3 for the mother, and 2 for the little boy.
"Oops, I forgot something," the mother said, and she got up, smiled at the little boy, and gave him the tiny roti she had made with the last of the dough, raising his count of rotis to two and a half.
As everyone took spoonfuls of potato curry, the father settled into his monologue. It was about the neighbors tonight. Mr. Sudarshan's son had fallen in love with a Muslim girl and unleashed chaos in the family he explained.
"What caste are the Sudarshans?" the mother enquired
"Brahmins," the father replied.
He then drifted off into tales about sons and daughters who had strayed from the family and fallen in love with someone that didn't share the same caste.
"What cast were they?" the mother enquired every now and then. The father would answer with a single word filled with meaning the little boy could not grasp and then move on to the next tale of betrayal.
As he began to tear a small piece of the second roti, the little boy heard the mother ask again, "well, wait, you didn't tell me what caste they were?"
The little boy raised his head and, with the slightest perturbance in his voice, said, "why does it matter what caste they are, aren't they all human?"
The mother dropped the piece of roti in mid-flight to her mouth and the father overflowed the steel cup with water. It was not the content of the boy's speech that surprised them - everyone knew that caste was the only thing that mattered. It was the first time the boy had spoken a full sentence in five years of his little life. The boy noted the silence in the room and then returned to eating. The mother and father's delight in the little boy's new given ability was short-lived because he went back to not speaking again.
The little boy went through his school life without ever speaking. This made it hard for him to make friends or do well in school. The only teachers who liked him were his English teachers, who were enamored by his ability to write prose. One day they called the parents to the school and explained, "the little boy is talented and he is going to do great things. We should let him write more." Upon hearing this the father got up from the chair, furrowed his brows, and said "he can write after he starts talking. Talking is more important in this world." He ruled that the little boy was to not write anything ever again until he spoke. So the little boy stopped writing.
Years went by, and the little boy became a man. No one ever knew if his voice ever broke or if he still sounded like a five-year-old. It was easy to elk out a life in a big city without speaking. The world was loud and filled with plenty of conversations as it is. One day the man was sitting at a bar, eavesdropping on two men beside him talking about their relationships.
"It's cheesy to say this, but I like having someone to hold and talk to in the evenings when I get back home," said one.
"That's so nice to hear, dude, I'm so happy for you," said the other, but the man could detect the undertone of envy in the voice he overheard. He didn't turn back to see the men, just smiled and took another sip of the drink.
"Excuse me, I really like your jacket," the man heard a female voice say, he turned his head to the right to look at the said jacket, and he saw her for the first time, hazel green eyes, a gentle smile and hooped earrings that could have well been halos. She was talking to him and mentioning his jacket.
"Thank you, I really like your earrings" the man replied in a deep baritone voice that surprised him and his surprise surprised the woman with hazel green eyes.
So the man spoke again as if he had never stopped talking. It helped that the man and the woman with hazel eyes had a lot to talk about. Sometimes he would say things that seemed strange for an adult to say, such as announcing the names of stores with wonderment as they drove by them on the freeway.
"ooh, Walmart"
"ah, West Elm!"
It was as if he was making up for all the things that he did not say until then.
The man and the woman with hazel eyes moved in together to a little house on the far east side. They would spend the mornings together on the patio, sipping coffee, and talking. Their words were precious and innocent. The man wondered if the woman with hazel eyes also only spoke once they met each other. One day as the man was lost in those hazel green eyes, she asked "you look pensive .. what are you thinking about"
The man replied, "I just realized that a day would come when I forget this moment and what it felt like."
So he started writing again. Mostly to capture what he felt when they talked. The more he wrote, the more he noticed all the stories entangled in every day he spent with the woman with hazel green eyes. Every now and then, he wondered if someone else would want to read this, and some days the answer came back yes, some days no, but he kept writing regardless.
Then one day, what he realized that morning on the patio come true. He stopped talking once more and the woman with hazel green eyes disappeared forever.
He would later write about it and call it Hallowed Be Your Words.