Red Writing Hood -- Saying without Saying

This week, focus on dialogue and body language to set a scene or move a story forward, limiting your use of narration. You have 450 words, beginning with the line: His crossed arms answered her question before he spoke.



(warning: adult content)
His crossed arms answered her question before he spoke.

“Of course, I believe you. I have to. You’re my daughter.” Not exactly the answer she’d been looking for. Was it better than having him say, “No. Absolutely not”?

She hadn’t expected denial, but she had hoped for compassion. It didn’t occur to her that she would get obligation.

Watching him sit with his arms covering himself, she said, “So you believe me when I say he raped me?”

“I believe you believe that’s what happened.”

A knife twisted in her heart and she began to shake.

“Oh, you’re so cold! Here’s a blanket,” her mother said, pulling a blanket from the back of the sofa and wrapping it around Mel, as if a blanket could soothe the gashes in her soul.

She hated that these conversations always left her speechless, but it was as if the connectors between her brain and mouth had been severed. She couldn’t utter any words.

Her husband jumped in with suggestions. “We are going to have to do something about this, because it changes everything.”

Her father continued to purse his lips, as he removed his glasses – a sign that he was annoyed. Removing his glasses was his “tell”. He did it when lecturing if something was distracting him from the moment. He did it when he needed to buy time. Her mother sat across the room wringing her hands in her lap, glancing frantically from Mel to her father. Like a spectator at a tennis match.

“Oh, are you sure, Mel?” she said.

“Yes,” she responded, although in reality she wasn’t sure of anything right now.

This is not the way a script would play out on a tv show.

A daughter would tell her parents that she had been raped by her sister’s husband, and they would be horrified – jump to her defense. It would fall to her to calm them down. Keep them from doing anything they might regret. There would be shock, anger, grief, panic for what this would mean. The rapist would be verbally assaulted. Lambasted. His character denigrated.

But no, not in this house. In this house her father just kept sitting there waiting for her to tell him what to do. Saying without saying, he didn’t believe her at all, but rather felt obligated to placate her.

“I felt that I should tell you. I don’t know what the answer is.” What she didn’t say is how she was counting on him to have an answer. That she thought it was his job to address this horror.

But his crossed arms said everything.

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