Saturday's Storyteller: "Suddenly, it stopped."
by Belinda Roddie Suddenly, it stopped. The crying. The screaming. The lamentations. It simply cut off, like pulling the plug on an old television set. Like flicking a light switch. Like blowing out a diminishing candle. Not a sound. Not even a whine. No complaint. I checked the other room to see why she had stopped keening. She sat in her old, wicker chair, looking out the window, her face stony and expressionless. Her wrinkled hands creased and uncreased the hem of her long black dress, then recreased it, as if the lines meant something. A new lifeline in the palm of one's hand? That didn't matter. None of it did at this point. I had heard my grandmother loudly grieving for her newly dead husband for the past six hours straight. Now, the silence felt strange, even disruptive, more so than any noise. How confounding that was. To finally have quiet, only to be sucked into a vacuum rather than retreating to sanctuary. Perhaps, after all, there was no sanctuary to be found.