The Yelling House
We didn’t always hear yelling and screaming coming from the Smith’s. They seemed like a nice family---WASPs who had four children, all smart in school, seemed to be normal and play games like catch and hide-and-seek in the yard and walked over when they were selling popcorn or candy bars for the school’s fundraisers. We always bought, though popcorn bothered our teeth and neither of us could eat the candy bars because of high blood sugar. We saved them and gave them out for Halloween.
When Mrs Smith left, abandoning her children, there was a relative who came to stay, maybe an aunt or grandmother, someone who we thought looked like their father, only shorter and more blonde, until Mr Smith hired a nanny, a heavy-set woman who wore a black and white apron over her dresses and who was dropped off by a variety of cars every day, except Sunday.
We heard the mother had run off with someone else, that she liked to party, didn’t like taking care of children, talked on the phone all the time, mostly about herself, and let one of the kids nearly drown in the tub. The nanny told me at the mailbox Mrs Smith was a nurse, but not one you’d want helping you if it was life or death. Rumour was that one of the children—Agnes-- almost drowned in the bathtub when she was an infant, might have a little brain damage and seemed slow and was hard of hearing. She wore hearing aids in both ears that whistled, sometimes in church or school, and she’d read others’ lips when they whispered: “turn it down”. Sometimes, she’d say really loud, “Speak up. I can’t hear you.”
If we were outside on the porch, we could hear the Smiths yelling at each other. We tried to hear what they were saying, but we couldn’t quite make it out. We assumed they were all angry, maybe always would be with the mother gone, and the nanny making them behave and teaching them to clean alongside her. We thought it was good they were being taught some skills. When I saw them outside, I went out with the broom to sweep the pine needles off the drive and asked, “Is everything okay over there?”
“Sure is,” one of them said.
“I thought I heard yelling.”
“We always yell. It’s so Agnes can hear.”
“Why don’t y’all use sign language?”
“Don’t none of us know it or understand it when Agnes uses it. It’s too much trouble to learn a new language.”
We were amazed, of course, they continued to yell at each other through the years. One day when the mother had come to visit and Agnes was around fifteen, we heard gunshots and figured there was a snake in the yard or maybe a burglar, so we walked over to check. The mother was on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood and Agnes was sitting in the kitchen, gun on the table next to her.
“Honey, are you alright?” I yelled through the open window.
“I am, but she’s not,” Agnes yelled. “Did you hear the gun shots?” she asked.
I nodded.
“I didn’t hear a thing,” she said.
I ran back to my house and called 911.
Niles Reddick is author of the novel Pulitzer nominated Drifting too far from the Shore, a collection Road Kill Art and Other Oddities, and a novella Lead Me Home. His work has been featured in eleven anthologies/collections and in over a hundred and fifty literary magazines all over the world including PIF, Drunk Monkeys, Spelk, Cheap Pop, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Slice of Life, Faircloth Review, among many others. His new collection Reading the Coffee Grounds was just released. His website is www.nilesreddick.com
When Mrs Smith left, abandoning her children, there was a relative who came to stay, maybe an aunt or grandmother, someone who we thought looked like their father, only shorter and more blonde, until Mr Smith hired a nanny, a heavy-set woman who wore a black and white apron over her dresses and who was dropped off by a variety of cars every day, except Sunday.
We heard the mother had run off with someone else, that she liked to party, didn’t like taking care of children, talked on the phone all the time, mostly about herself, and let one of the kids nearly drown in the tub. The nanny told me at the mailbox Mrs Smith was a nurse, but not one you’d want helping you if it was life or death. Rumour was that one of the children—Agnes-- almost drowned in the bathtub when she was an infant, might have a little brain damage and seemed slow and was hard of hearing. She wore hearing aids in both ears that whistled, sometimes in church or school, and she’d read others’ lips when they whispered: “turn it down”. Sometimes, she’d say really loud, “Speak up. I can’t hear you.”
If we were outside on the porch, we could hear the Smiths yelling at each other. We tried to hear what they were saying, but we couldn’t quite make it out. We assumed they were all angry, maybe always would be with the mother gone, and the nanny making them behave and teaching them to clean alongside her. We thought it was good they were being taught some skills. When I saw them outside, I went out with the broom to sweep the pine needles off the drive and asked, “Is everything okay over there?”
“Sure is,” one of them said.
“I thought I heard yelling.”
“We always yell. It’s so Agnes can hear.”
“Why don’t y’all use sign language?”
“Don’t none of us know it or understand it when Agnes uses it. It’s too much trouble to learn a new language.”
We were amazed, of course, they continued to yell at each other through the years. One day when the mother had come to visit and Agnes was around fifteen, we heard gunshots and figured there was a snake in the yard or maybe a burglar, so we walked over to check. The mother was on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood and Agnes was sitting in the kitchen, gun on the table next to her.
“Honey, are you alright?” I yelled through the open window.
“I am, but she’s not,” Agnes yelled. “Did you hear the gun shots?” she asked.
I nodded.
“I didn’t hear a thing,” she said.
I ran back to my house and called 911.
Niles Reddick is author of the novel Pulitzer nominated Drifting too far from the Shore, a collection Road Kill Art and Other Oddities, and a novella Lead Me Home. His work has been featured in eleven anthologies/collections and in over a hundred and fifty literary magazines all over the world including PIF, Drunk Monkeys, Spelk, Cheap Pop, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Slice of Life, Faircloth Review, among many others. His new collection Reading the Coffee Grounds was just released. His website is www.nilesreddick.com
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