Christian Emecheta
The Aesthetics of Silence
“Open your mouth, Serata.” I press my thumb against her lower lip. “Let me see.”
She shakes her head, cheeks bulging with invisible sustenance. When I finally pry her jaw open, there’s nothing there—just the pink cave of her mouth, slick and empty.
The doctors call it Pica, a hunger for the inedible. I have watched her tear pages from Father’s medical journals with the precision of a seamstress, watched her tongue dart out to catch dust motes floating in afternoon light. She’s not only eating paper; she’s consuming things that may harm her.
I didn’t have much choice but to return to this house where we buried our voices one by one. First was Father’s, ravaged by cancer until it became a cry, then silence. Then mine, thinned from explaining to specialists what they couldn’t understand. Now Serata’s, transformed into something that feeds on emptiness.
The kitchen still holds the ghost of her voice—sharp commands issued over sizzling pans, laughter that used to ring off the copper pots like struck bells. She governed this space once, ruled over Sunday dinners where my brothers Caspian and Thaddeus would argue about soccer while she carved the roast. Her hands were sure then, cutting clean lines through meat and vegetables.
Now those same hands tremble as they reach for her mouth, whenever she finds something good enough to go in there.
“Try the butternut squash,” I say, spooning the orange liquid toward her mouth. “Remember how you used to make this? You’d roast the seeds separately, said they were too good to waste.”
Her lips seal shut. She turns her head away, but I catch a glimpse of wonder in her eyes before it disappears.
I’ve learned to watch out for patterns in her cravings. When she tears at clean newspaper margins, she’s expressing her boredom. When she runs her fingertips vertically along the book pages, she’s looking for stories that might make it to her next meal. The worst is when she sits aimlessly in Father’s leather chair, mouthing soundless words like conversations we should have had about life and dying.
“You can’t survive on eating paper and dirt,” I tell her, though I’m not sure this is true. Some days I think she’s already more ghost than flesh, sustained only by things nobody would dare to eat.
That afternoon brings visitors—Nurse Cordelia, whose shoes squeak against the hardwood like mice in the walls, and Dr. Ambrose, who speaks in the measured cadences of someone who has delivered too much bad news.
“The progression is accelerating,” he says, clipboard balanced on his knee. “We need to discuss options.”
Options. Such a short and innocent word for the choices that remain: feeding tubes, residential care, the slow replacement of everything that makes her herself.
“She’s still in there,” I say. “Watch her eyes when I mention the garden. She knows every plant by name.”
Dr. Ambrose nods with a mild expression of sympathy. “The body sometimes acts out of impulse, especially when it is partially disconnected from the mind. The next best thing you can do for her now is to prepare…”
“Her name is Serata.” The correction slips out faster and meaner than intended. “She still has a name.”
After they leave, I find her in the library, tongue pressed against the glass face of Father’s “Outstanding Physician of the Year” award. She’s not licking it abruptly; I sense she’s tasting something invisible that clings to its surface.
“What does it taste like, Serata? Those things you eat aside from paper?”
She looks at me with a sudden show of awareness, and for a moment I think she might answer. Instead, she opens her mouth wide, a pink cavern that seems to go deeper than anatomy should allow. I see her throat working, swallowing something substantial as smoke.
The sound comes then: not her voice, but Father’s. Clear and strong as it was before the cancer etched it away.
“Take care of each other,” he says through her mouth. “Promise me.”
The words sound real, but I feel like I am in a trance or something similar. Serata closes her mouth slowly and smiles, not her squirrel grin, but a sadder and more composed version.
Evening slowly settles over the house like dust on forgotten furniture. I heat the leftover soup and set two bowls on the table, though I know she won’t eat. Through the window, I watch a brown-tailed hawk circle above the meadow.
This unusual sight reminds me of us at twelve, ten, and eight: Caspian, Thaddeus, and me racing through the tall grass while Serata called us home for dinner. Her voice then could clearly travel across those fields, cutting through the buzzing summer wind.
Now she sits across from me, silent as stone, and I realize I’m holding back tears and my breath at the same time, still waiting for her to speak, to eat, to come back from wherever she’s gone. But maybe she’s not lost at all. Maybe she’s exactly where she needs to be, feeding on books and dust, hoping to find answers in them.
“I brought you something,” I say, reaching into my jacket pocket. “Here it is.”
The letter looks a bit old, the envelope addressed in Father’s careful handwriting: For Serata, on her 35th birthday. I found it tucked between medical texts, never sent.
Her eyes fixate on the envelope with the intensity of a hungry lion. I tear it open and read:
My dearest wife, you have made every day of our marriage feel like a gift I didn’t deserve. Thank you for choosing to build a life with me, for making our house a home, for raising our adopted children to be kinder than I ever was. If I could live this life again, I would choose you every time. Happy birthday, my love. –Richard
Serata’s mouth opens, and I think she might finally eat real food. Instead, she leans forward and grabs the paper from my hand, crumples it and throws it into her mouth. I watch her chew and swallow the last known letter ever written by Dad.
For the first time in months, her face looks excited in a way that seems encouraging.
“Feeling better?” I ask.
She nods and reaches across the table to touch my hand. When she opens her mouth, her own voice emerges, roughened and rusty, but unmistakably hers.
“Thank you for feeding me.”
The words feel confusing and insufficient, but they are enough. I stand up and give her a warm hug, not minding the tears streaming onto her dress. We sit in the kitchen’s dim light, and for the first time since Father died, the silence between us feels like a choice rather than pain.
She takes a tentative sip of soup, and I have a flashback of the hawk circling the meadow, how it knows exactly when to dive, when to wait, and when to trust that the moment for action will arrive. I just learned that some things cannot be rushed. Healing often comes only when we’re ready to receive it.
The spoon trembles in her hand, but she brings it to her lips again. Real food this time, warm and salted with tears I didn’t realize I was crying.
“It’s good,” she whispers. “Like I used to make it.”
“Exactly like you used to make it,” I say. She smiles, finishing half the bowl, more than she’s eaten in months. When she’s done, she reaches across the table and places her palm against my cheek.
“I’m still here,” she says. “Although different now, I am still here.” I cover her hand with mine and nod, still crying.
In the morning, I will call Dr. Ambrose and tell him we’re not ready for options yet. I will drive to the market and buy fresh peaches, the kind Serata used to love. I will sit with her in the garden and call the names of each plant aloud, feeding her the words that connect us to the soil beneath our feet and the sky above our heads.
Christian Emecheta is a multifaceted creator who blends writing, illustration, and computer science. His fiction and poetry grace prestigious publications including Arts Lounge Magazine, Step Away Magazine, and The Decolonial Passage. He is also a published contributor to Cranked Anvil Press, Walden’s Poetry and Reviews, and Mocking Owl Roost, among other publications too numerous to mention. Christian finds inspiration through reading, film, and the boundless landscapes of his imagination.
Banner Art:
Red-tailed hawk in flight from behind, Warren Garst, 1975, Colorado State University Libraries, Wikimedia Commons
