In the Silence

Paloma’s hand cramps up from the crushing grip that clutches the apartment key. It had been cold when she first picked it up. Jayla struggled with the key. The ring it was on was old and rusted. The key wouldn’t slip out. Paloma walked over, and tried to help. Jayla stepped back. She freed the key with such force that it hit the ground with a bounce. Paloma made no move to chase after Jayla. 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. Now her fingers sting from the strain. The key slips from her grip. She watches it land soundlessly on the carpet.

When they had first moved into the apartment, Jayla had noticed that the carpet in their soon-to-be new bedroom hadn’t been properly cleaned. When she was called into the bedroom, Paloma had been walking through the kitchen with the leasing person.

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

Jayla 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. And it ended because of it.

Paloma looks up from the key to look back at what she’d been staring at. In place of where a TV would usually be is a painting. Both of them agreed not to put a tv in the bedroom, or maybe Jayla 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 Jayla started packing, even before Jayla 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. Jayla spotted the painting first. The piece was hung without a frame and, therefore, on sale. This was the first time she saw Jayla’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 bought it a frame.

Paloma stands. The floor grips her ankles. Her head spins from getting up too quickly. She leans against the dresser for a moment. Once her vision clears, she reaches up and takes hold of the painting from the sides. Her arms aren’t long enough to grip both sides. Determined to take it down, she switches angles, grips it from the bottom, and lifts it off its hook, 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 up skin in the process. It begins to lean forward; she rushes back, hitting the bed just in time to avoid being crushed. 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 have shattered. 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, bleeding at 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. It was a dark silhouette of a woman falling into a blackhole surrounded by a galaxy. Paloma always believed it looked like kindergarten art. It’s a cheap painting with a pretentious message. But Jayla loved it, and that had been enough.

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

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. Jayla always made sure they had a first aid kit at home. A quick lesson for her was that Paloma was prone to accidentally hurting herself. Paloma hadn’t noticed early enough that Jayla made a habit of bandaging herself up in silence. Cycling through every moment now, Paloma sees the transcript as mostly her own words. Jayla 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 Jayla. “Why don’t you feel comfortable telling Paloma how you feel?”

Jayla 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,” Jayla said.

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

Jayla 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 Jayla would open up. They would eat dinner at their table, and Jayla 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 Jayla 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 Jayla shrink further and further into herself.

Wrapping the gauze around her hands creates a second wave of pain that travel 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.

Jayla 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 Jayla’s hand.

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

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

Jayla 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 Jayla had picked out. She shuts her eyes and takes a couple of deep breaths before walking out. She keeps her eyes down as she walks down the hallway of paintings. Once she reaches the end of the hallway, she looks up and instantly regrets it. It’s not as if she and Jayla only existed in half of the apartment. This was their home.

Jayla might have taken her blankets away, the ones that had been thrown over their couches, but her imprint remained. Paloma can see the silhouette of Jayla, who would curl up with a book on the couch by the window so that she could pause and look out at the busy streets as she let the words, she read sink in. 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. Jayla 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, Jayla 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 she’d called home. Paloma kneels in front of the couch to look for her phone. She and Jayla hadn’t started arguing in the bedroom, and they’d just ended up there. The fight started as soon as Paloma walked in to see Jayla packing up her mugs, and then it traveled into the living room. Paloma’s phone had been in her hand. She’d been talking to her best friend when she walked in. As they argued back and forth, Paloma’s phone flew out of her hand. She’d seen it slide under the couch but hadn’t bothered picking it up because Jayla was walking away toward the bedroom.

The contact’s name says Mama Poppins, Jayla’s mom. Paloma watches the phone ring in her hands. Had Jayla told her mother?

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

Jayla 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 yourself. 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 that had been theirs. This place where they had loved one another so completely. It had not been enough. Jayla had told her she could keep the apartment. Paloma will not. She cannot. All those memories now haunt this place. She had loved Jayla 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 Jayla will either fade away with time or linger like ghosts within her memories.

She texts her best friend to let her know she’s heading over. Wiping away fresh tears, she grabs her purse and keys and shuts the apartment door behind her. For a second, she lingers. Her hand tightened around the doorknob, making her fingers bleed again. Paloma shuts her eyes and sees Jayla. She remembers Jayla laughing. Jayla cooking them dinner. The two of them curled on their couch watching movies. All those times, Jayla’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.