March 2003
Through the Silence
"She's missing," my dad says over the loud buzzing of the restaurant grill's fan. "She suppose to come to work today but your mom went home and the car was there but all her clothes gone." He talks with precision, as though he is informing me of some government procedure. There is little emotion. My younger sister is missing.
"Oh God," I reply. "Do you know where she might have gone?"
"Uh, I don't know."
"Did you call the cops?" I ask, trying to get more information.
"I don't know if we will call. Here, talk to your mom." My dad hands the phone over, and my mother is hysterical. I am stunned by the news. I call my siblings after I finish calming my mother down, and suddenly phone lines are flooded by family. I can just hear the hundreds of voices-asking questions, suggesting places to look and friends to interrogate, exclaiming about my younger sister's foolishness, whispering about my parents' child-raising methods-hundreds of voices, helping and not helping.
But my father is silent, quiet, the stoic figure I remember even as a child. His youngest daughter is missing, and while everyone around him cannot help but voice an opinion, he merely looks at the ground-silent. I can see him, wandering the kitchen, sitting on his chair in the living room, staring at the television blankly. I know that he is torn apart.
He has failed.
Though my younger sister left of her own free will, he has failed to protect her from the world, failed to protect her from the struggles that fill the very air we breathe. These are the thoughts that fill his mind. Others will look, others will suggest, others will critique. But only he will feel his own failtures. So he sits quiet. Only when I ask will he discuss the situation. But his voice is flat and informative, and I feel during those moments that my father could be a telemarketer. Behind his voice, though, I feel acutely his own pain. The long pauses between the sentences tell me this. Somewhere in his silence, a part of him is dying because of his failure.
