Chapter 2
As Silence stares at the door, another memory echoes in the long hallway. Before they can annotate it, they are distracted by the dolls that stand alongside the walls. There are nine dolls, impressive in size and moulded in milk.
The dolls are red of hair that falls down gaunt necks, and on their hands, Silence sees elongated fingers. Silence does not yearn to see the finger where the ring sits. They do not wish to comprehend the dolls further, and so Silence turns away.
In the recollection, Silence is perhaps a child of seven. They stand before a door, too slight to reach the white doorbell with the black button. There are two other people with Silence. The boy has black hair, and it is messy; he took a nap in the car that had not seemed very restful to Silence. The boy has green eyes that glittered with something that Silence would soon learn to hate.
The other is an old man. Silence decided he was old when they first met him because the man has to walk with a stick. And he was very slow. The man has one hand on the suitcase with faded butterfly stickers and the other stretching out for the bell that Silence is too slight to reach.
Nothing happens inside the redbrick house for a moment, and then the door is pulled open. Silence and the boy stare at the woman with milk-like skin, red hair and gaunt fingers. They take in the gold ring and large diamond.
Silence cannot recall if the woman spoke to the boy, but it seems that when she spoke to Silence, she did not like children of their so-called gender very much.
The old man says a few words to the woman and turns, leaving Silence behind him to be ushered inside by the woman with milk skin.
Apprehension, then foreign to little Silence, fills Silence like butterflies, and leap around like butterflies do when caught in a net. The butterflies leap ever frantically as sharp vocal urgings, push Silence into a room with a mirror with gold trim and two nightstands of mahogany, and a bed with a soft green blanket.
There were no toys. It does not seem to be a room for children.
Silence allows time to roll forward just slightly. To a place in the recollection where they felt hungry. There was someone else in the house with the old woman; another person bigger than Silence. She was milk of skin, but with blonde hair that bounced about in curly springs.
Before the old man had left Silence behind, he had given both the boy and Silence a snack of popcorn and orange slice, to eat in the car. The boy did not like oranges and had thrown the four pieces of orange from the window. Silence did not throw their orange pieces out of the window, and the old man told Silence they were very good and the boy was very bad.
Silence walks into the great room where the old woman and the other woman sit in arm chairs and watch the television. The women are watching Shrek. Silence knows they are watching Shrek because there is a green man, a donkey and a pink dragon.
Silence was not hungry in the car, but now the feel their stomach gurgle. They sit on the floor in a space without carpet, and begin to eat.
The woman with the blonde hair that bounced like springs looks over at Silence, she sees the food, becomes very angry and starts to yell.
The old woman also starts to yell. It all seems very peculiar to Silence. The woman with red hair is on her feet now and stands over Silence, before reaching down to snatch at the snack.
Silence blinks four times as they watch the old woman lumber toward the bin and throw away the food. The one older than Silence, snaps that good children should always ask for things, and that their mum, who, must be the old woman, does not believe that children need to have snacks.
The memory begins to roll away. Silence returns To their room where they sit stripped of clothing and pride, and remembers how the old man did not take anything from Silence, when the boy threw his snack out of the car window. The old man had told Silence they were very good. Then, the think about how the old woman snatched away the orange slices, and threw them in the bin. Silence realises that really, they must be very bad.
