The Patient Sikh: Part Seventeen--Silence

This an excerpt from a novel in progress and a work of fiction.

After Sonny and I have spent quite a bit of time in the car, we go back to the ballroom where the dance is and all our friends are. He doesn't hold my hand as we walk back through the cold night. We don't really talk. We are simply walking on a sidewalk with half-dead trees all around us. I can hear our feet crunching on fallen leaves. I try not to be disappointed.

When we get to the dance, they are playing a slow song. I watch as couples dance close together with their awkward feet moving slowly. I wait for Sonny to ask me to dance, but he doesn't. Instead, he sits down at our table. I want to sit next to him, so I try to be sly about it. I slowly walk over to the chair next to him as he doesn't look up at me, but just stares at the maroon table cloth.

I think that maybe if I sit next to him he will ask me to dance. But there we sit, in silence. He acts as if we didn't just make out in the car. He acts as if he barely knows me. Is he embarrassed to be with me? His face doesn't seem interested in me or anything at all. He looks a little unhappy with his furrowed brow.

Is he even with me? It seems as though he is looking around the room at everything except for me. It feels like he is trying to tell me that we are not in fact together. I stare at a couple that I don't know. She is wearing a light blue dress and he is looking at her as if she is everything. Everything.

I don't know what to do, or say, or be. Who am I to you right now, Sonny? I want to ask him if he regrets what happened in the car. I want him to kiss me in public. Or at the very least dance with me. But all I can do is stare at his silence.

I didn't realize you can actually look at silence. I never until this moment realized it was a physical phenomenon. I have never had a boyfriend. I want Sonny to be my first and my last. But he looks at this angle almost angry with me. As if I made him kiss me in the car. As if I forced him to take me in his arms.

I want to force him now. Who does he think he is ignoring me after we had such an intimate time together? I want to slap him or at least say something to him. But I lose my words at this moment. I lose my sense of language. If love is a language then I am speaking to him with my eyes, and he isn't even really looking.

It is the longest song of my life, this slow song. I don't recognize it, it sounds like it is older, maybe from the eighties. I can't believe it's the nineties already. It's 1994 and I'm still a virgin, still never had a boyfriend, and still sitting here next to Sonny in silence.

I want to shake him. But he is looking onward as if he is tied up in the space in his head. The music is loud but I can't hear it anymore. All I can hear is the silence between us. This is what love is, isn't it? Silence. Pain. It has always been this for me. He is the first guy I have ever loved and he has given me nothing but silence. Pain.

Am I really invisible? This is what it feels like to be invisible. He is so lost in his head that he literally cannot see me right now. And what is there to see except this lost girl who doesn't know how to be a woman? In that car, with his lips on mine, was the first time I ever really felt like a woman.

But the girl inside me wants to dance. She wants to move in the night. I wish I didn't need him. I feel needy right now. I don't like this side of me. I feel vulnerable as if he took off my clothes in the middle of the dance floor and everyone is staring at me, not liking what they see.

I want to cry. This was just a moment for him, another night. Tonight does not mean anything to him. I don't mean anything to him. I think I hate love, I think I hate him. I never realized how closely love and hate are. I feel like I cannot stand him and I want him all in the same moment.

People write songs about this shit. Why? It's horrid. I want to scream in the middle of the room just so Sonny says something, even with just his eyes. Say something. Be a man and take responsibility for what you did in that car.

Talk to me, I'm here. Do anything but this.

nina

If you would like to read the beginning of this novel in progress, The Patient Sikh, visit the following links in chronological order:

The Patient Sikh: Part One

The Patient Sikh: Part Two–The Wonder Years

The Patient Sikh: Part Three–Sonny

The Patient Sikh: Part Four–Song Lyrics

The Patient Sikh: Part Five–Your Song

The Patient Sikh: Part Six–Coffee Talk

The Patient Sikh: Part Seven--Chocolate Covered Love

The Patient Sikh: Part Eight--Kiss And Tell

The Patient Sikh: Part Nine--Street Chess