The sound ‘ah’ is produced by opening your mouth. Press the apex of your tongue to the root of your teeth, allow air to stroke your tonsils, vibrate your vocal cords
for just a moment. Use it for confusion and disorder—ah? And, in understanding—…ah… for fright, fear, and pleasure.
Ah! Father grunts as he hoists me onto his back. The sound, a low vibration in his chest, thrums through the fabric of his shirt. His hands anchor me to his sides as I crane my head, the air already becoming too thick to swallow. We are so far from home.
As Father lifts me above the crowd, I glimpse an older woman at the front. Her features are contracted and flushed, words pumping out her mouth in a frenzy. All around us are exposed, broken plumbing, detached from ruined walls. The wind blows through their piping like empty instruments; a deep metallic ‘oooooo’ resonating throughout the courtyard assembly.
One simply listens to replicate.
Pucker your lips in pretense to a kiss. Relax your jaw. ‘Oo’ has two uses. Its first use—curl up the tongue towards the soft palate—a short and soft vibration… Look.
Book. Hood. The second—protrude your lips further, your tongue forward and down, extending the sound… Moon. Food. And—
—too soon. Too late. 01:34. Mother brings out a folder of papers and wedges our passports behind the sun visor of the ute. They tell me I’m heading to a shelter. I resist but I’m dragged, flailing and wailing through the gravel. No. I thought we were going home. They hold me by the waist and throw me in. Like a sack of rocks, heavy and useless. The ute rumbles to life, a strangled screech: ‘EEEEEEEE’, and then it moves. I can’t. Lost in the sounds of my own sobs, I can’t move.
Producing an ‘ee’ sound is similar to ‘oo’. Drop the jaw, retract the tongue behind the teeth, tense your throat, and—
See? She doesn’t like speaking this one, especially to strangers. But she’ll come around, and we’ll come back here in two weeks, back to our place if it’s still standing. For now, just make sure she stays put.
Mother stays in the ute, her back—through the grimy windshield—turned away. In the tangle of my sobbing and screaming, it takes me a minute to take in my surroundings. A dirty concrete floor. Other children on greasy mats—their glares boring into me. They can’t be much older than me… Fifteen? Sixteen? There’s only one window in this room, and there’s already a crowd around it. I distinctly hear my parents drive off and I’m too tired to panic after them.
Relax your lips slightly. Extend sound, hover the tongue close to the soft palate of the mouth. ‘EEEE’ is used for sleep, peak, flee and free. The kettle is running ‘EEEEE’
and it’s the same sound as the ute.
Tea? A stranger asks, her voice harsh and sharp, burning my ears. My throat dries at the thought, so I nod, shuffling past another man who leans against the window frame. I keep my head down towards the musty floorboards beneath my feet and not his face. There are too many strangers around me. The eerie whispering of children who I don’t dare to befriend, the rough squeaking of heavy, leather boots, and—‘EEEEE’—that insufferable kettle—
But the whistle lever finally releases, and I drink the tea in fast, vicious gulps. The liquid scalds my mouth, breaking, peeling skin, and my throat seizes up. I can’t speak and I make no sound.
My parents thought I was mute when born. They never understood the world as I heard it. The twittering, the squawking, the whoosh of morning air. And I didn’t want anything to disturb it. This meant quieting my own breathing and saying fewer words simply just to enjoy my surroundings untouched.
Even as I grew older, I rarely spoke. A woman started coming to the house and I assumed my parents hired her out of worry. I liked her. Her voice was sweet and melodic. She’d look me straight in the eye, even though I hated the stare. It was another one of her lessons where despite her tongue—fluid like melting candy—she could rip words apart…
But I wondered... why rip words apart when you can marvel at how well sound connects?
For example—‘Ai’ has two parts to it. Halves of ‘ah’ and ‘ee’. The first part ‘ah’—you open the mouth, relax the lips and press out a short vibration. Then ‘ee’ requires
you to: have your tongue poised to the roof of your mouth and stretch the lips aside. Shorten both, fuse the sounds together into one long syllable.
‘Aiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii’.
And just like that, days pass with me sitting cross-legged under the lonely window. Looking out into the hazy distance—as I usually do at home—I try playing ‘I Spy’ except…everything is white. White skies. White blinds. White fuzz on the peach I’m eating. So I try, ‘I Hear’…with my little ears...again, white noise. The static of the world…
A lady closes the window. It’s too cold, she says. I don’t feel the chill at all. I’m a little hot-headed, actually. I knew, if I really wanted to, I could run away. But where would I go?
‘Oe’ is a different sound altogether. Like ‘ai’, it has two distinct parts mashed together to form a singular syllable. Think ‘ah’ but round the lips more to a ring. Lower
the pitch. Relax the throat, etc. The second sound is ‘w’. ‘Oh-w’. Used for low. Go. Blow. No. And—
Oh. The door opens. Two weeks pass in a single held breath. Mother and Father stand there, and I’m relieved to hear their voices. I crave home. The air here is putrid. My throat is itchy, and saliva bubbles up painfully. Hello? Hi. Goodbye.
Father holds my hand, and I can’t remember if his skin was ever rough. His hold feels smooth. Same as his voice. They lead me to the ute. This time, where my parents wave goodbye to those strangers, I wave goodbye to the kettle. For once, it’s silent.
The ute rattles, and the world passes by in a blur of grey until the horizon shifts. A house overlooking yellow daffodils and a porch bent halfway into overgrown grass. I’ve missed the tweeting. The squawking. The whoosh.
But—
—it’s different. As I step inside the seemingly warm familiar doorway, I taste the air to be not as sweet as it was once before. It tastes thin and sour. And then I realise. The entire floor is bare. There’s no furniture anchoring the room. No rugs to soften my footsteps. The floorboards are scarred with long, pale scratches where couches and bookshelves were dragged away. The cabinets are open, their hinges gaped. No plates. No cups. A single pile of my old wooden blocks, a torn picture book, and a heap of torn fabric in the living room. I look at the wall where the tall clock used to tick. Now, only a nail sticks out of the plaster like a tiny, rusted bone.
We’re moving, Father says. We have to. With the protests and everything happening. We took you away to be safe, and now, we are taking you again. For safety.
Father’s voice eddies in and out of my haze as I part and purse my lips—a desperate attempt to scream, to confront, to cry. Anything to fill the stifling silence… But sound chokes in the hollow of my throat.
I grieve the door hinge that screeched ‘EEEEEEEE’; the steam of the stove that used to lash out with a deep ‘OOOOOOO’; the billowing curtains that sighed ‘ahhhh’ as the breeze went by. Nothing is fixed to that glorious window anymore. ‘Ai!’ Like the pang of a painful memory. ‘OH!’ That ticking clock was the heartbeat of the house—a steady, rhythmic ‘oo’—and its absence leaves behind this rotten, gutted carcass of what I once called home.
…
There’s nothing left to say.
…
Father’s voice reaches for me again. He tries to console me, but I lose myself in counting dust motes in the air. I am not ignoring him—I am simply out of air.
I hate quiet. I hate silence. I hate solitude. The ambient hum of home dissolved the second I stepped inside. And with it, my own sense of voice.
To produce the sound of a vacuum ‘...’, you must open the mouth but withhold the exhale. The vocal cords remain still. The tongue sags—flat and useless—against
the floor of the mouth. This is the sound of absence. This is the weight of silence:
‘…’
