For the Ones who Cannot Speak

I did not speak to my sister till she died. Even then, after almost 19 years, I did not. Not because I didn’t want to. But because I couldn’t and she couldn’t. I didn’t understand why, as a child, that the other children would look at her funny. Why everyone, would stop and stare. To me she was my sister and I loved her so.  That was my sister and she couldn’t speak.

She pushed me and scratched me once, I cried but took on the scratches with pride. You see, when my sister was born at one of the worst hospitals in the country. To my father, who was at the time, a man with nothing but a degree to his name and to my mother, a woman with nothing, but a degree to her name. She was the centre of their lives. My mother, full of stitches, shared a bed and a bucket for her. And as she was born, we were bound together. By blood. We accepted her as our centre.

I remember time spent, by everyone in the world it seemed, to “improve her condition” but how do you improve a condition you’d never heard of? How does one improve fate? Years spent praying and crying to God with different pastors and teachers, to make her “better”. I did not understand better. I understood that that was my sister and she couldn’t speak.

In this life, through all the judgement, the funny looks, the pain and the struggle, it took to grow up with someone society cannot even begin to understand, I want everyone to experience the love I experienced. I stood there, in front of the church and I sang for her, because she couldn’t. I breathed for her, because she couldn’t anymore. I breathed through her, for her. And as the words moved through my throat and vibrated my insides  in ways she never knew, I shook so violently with emotion, emotion so deep, I thought I would die. My blood wanted to freeze. 

She is my greatest love. I continue to live for her, to live for her laughter, for everyone who cannot speak but still laughs like her. I wish everyone a love like that. No words that could have been said, can express the love I was showered in. This love was devoid of lies and shame. A love that could not have been covered up with words,it was an intimate love, one stripped of all bearings and cares. A love that made me cry in front of my whole neighbourhood as they prayed for her.  A love that made me cry myself to sleep every night, as I felt the vacancy in the room next to me. A love that had made me sleep alone in the dark because I didn’t want to disturb her sleep, with the normal throngs of a teenage neurotypical life. A love that would make me slip into her room, so I would feel less alone. A love that made me run and hug her even when she pushed me to the floor, over and over again.

I sometimes feel as if such intense emotion was not meant to be felt by our fragile human bodies. No emotion is stronger than the love I feel for her, but no emotion is as large and grotesque as the emptiness I feel without her. I cannot fathom how my heart bears both the pain and joy, of feeling a love so great and then the abrupt removal of the said love. In public, my heart hums in longing as I contain all the human in me and store it, in this sack of bones. I cannot even begin to imagine the strength of my mother’s body.

I have a lot of regrets, regrets and secrets. Secrets only I feel. Secrets that heat me up  some and some that make me want to burn my skin, in anguish. But with these regrets comes burning anger. An anger so deeply rooted in experience, it cannot be quenched by the promise of a good life, even under the evil we live in. This anger can only be quenched by actions, just like how I expressed my love to my sister. Actions that I will have to do, to make the world love the ones who cannot  speak, just like how they love us without even trying.  For my sister who couldn’t talk. My sister who can never get the chance to speak.