Silent Treatment

Content Warning: This story contains references to child sexual abuse, domestic abuse and depictions of graphic violence.

A vivid, raucous laughter splits the air, and the room goes cold around me. Grandpa’s telling a story–or maybe a joke–but I’m not listening. All I hear are two words.

Silent treatment.

The phrase coils through my head like smoke, sweet and poisonous. A joke to them. A ghost to me.

I sit still in my chair. Mom covers her mouth with a paper towel, Dad rocks gently in his seat, and Uncle Fred pounds the table as laughter spills out of him like thunder. My cousins wheeze, their faces red and delighted. Even the furniture seems to laugh with them, creaking in rhythm.

I feel their glances–puzzled, questioning why I’m not joining in–but I don’t care. Whatever Grandpa said, I doubt it was funny. Nothing that man ever said or did was funny.

“Could you please pass me the pepper?” I ask my cousin Jack, but he waves me off. “Please, Jack,” I try again. He tilts his head, snorts.

“Silent treatment,” Uncle Fred says, and the whole table erupts again, a murder of crows shrieking above their feast.

A sting runs through me like an electric shock. The words strike old nerves, pull at half-buried memories I’ve spent years trying to drown.

“What?” I ask, but no one answers. Their laughter swells, bouncing off walls, off cutlery, off my skin.

I stand, circle the table, and fetch the pepper myself. The radio in the other room sings Let It Snow, cheerful and cruel.

Silent treatment.

The words pulse behind my eyes like a heartbeat.

When I return to my seat, I shake pepper over my risotto. My hand trembles.

“So funny,” Jack says, grabbing my wrist, and the pepper scatters across the tablecloth, my jeans, the floor.

“What’s so funny?” I ask. Only muffled laughter answers.

“Silent treatment,” someone mutters again, and the table howls.

Each syllable lands like a fist. My stomach twists. The food smells wrong now. Sour. Rotten. I push my plate away.

“I don’t even know what that means,” I shout. I don’t know why I’m shouting.

The laughter dies, leaving only my breath and Bing Crosby crooning in the background. And if there’s no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…

My pulse thuds in my throat. “Silent treatment,” someone begins again, “because Grandma stopped—”

Silent treatment.

The words fog my mind like a grey tide. Am I breathing?

“I know what it means,” I say, louder. “I just didn’t hear the joke. Would anyone please just fucking repeat the stupid joke so I can move on?”

But I don’t want to hear it. I just want them to stop laughing. I just want to eat in peace, pretend this is a normal Christmas, pretend I didn’t grow up in the same house as that man.

Someone mutters, “Language.” I think, Grandpa’s language is worse than mine.

“Well,” Dad starts, already laughing. “There was this one time when your grandmother was still alive—”

He doesn’t finish because Grandpa takes over, his voice old and oiled with pride.

“We used to fight a lot,” he says. “Back in the day, if a woman talked too much, you had to teach her manners. Your grandma didn’t like that much. Used to give me the silent treatment for a week. Best peace and quiet I ever had.”

Silent. Treatment.

The words tighten around my throat.

I want to scream. I want to vomit. I want to drive the fork in my hand through his smile.

The room spins. The laughter roars.

Do they not hear themselves? Do they not see me? “Stop,” I shout. Once. Twice. Again. The noise stumbles to a halt.

Eyes turn toward me–wide, disbelieving, offended that I’ve broken the ritual. My fork has become part of my hand.

“It’s not funny,” I say. “You abused grandma?” I glare at him, and then with a deep breath I say softly, “You said that to me too.”

Grandpa looks at me sharply. I’m not supposed to tell. But I’m tired of choking on silence.

“You abused me,” I say, my voice trembling but sure. “And when I stopped talking, you told Mom and Dad I was giving you the silent treatment. Because you didn’t get me the ice cream I wanted.”

The room freezes. Even the song on the radio seems to hesitate.

“Mariam…” Mom says softly, searching for words that won’t come.

“What are you accusing your grandfather of?” Uncle Fred asks, his voice like metal.

“Tell them,” I whisper. “Go on.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Grandpa scoffs, lifting his glass of wine.

“Tell them about the closet,” I say. “Three years ago.”

Mom’s head jerks toward me. “What happened in the closet?” Her voice barely exists.

“Oh, nonsense,” Grandpa spits.

But I see it–the flicker in Mom’s eyes. Recognition. She remembers. The way I begged to move rooms. The way I refused to wear those clothes again. How I wouldn’t go near the closet door. They said it was a phase.

“What happened in the closet, Ralph?” Mom asks again, louder now. The chandelier trembles. She’s never called him Ralph before.

Everyone’s staring. The air feels thick, like syrup.

“Yeah, Ralph,” I echo. “Tell them.”

He laughs weakly. “We used to play hide-and-seek when Mariam was little. She liked the closet. One day, I locked her in. As a joke.”

“That’s horrible,” one of my cousins whispers.

Mom looks at me–pleading–wanting the story to end there. But it doesn’t.

“Tell them how you locked yourself in with me,” I say. Someone gasps. Maybe Leila. Maybe me.

Grandpa’s smile tightens. “Like I said, we used to play.”

I breathe out slowly. “I wrote a poem about it, once.”

The lights flicker. The power cuts out. The radio dies mid-song. Candlelight pools across their faces–gold, trembling, terrified.

I recite:

“I did not understand the way

your fingers spoke a language

my skin was too young to know.

A quiet violence, wrapped in hush,

stitched into silence.

You called it love.

You called it a game.

You called it a secret.”

No one moves. The only sound is the candle flame.

“Cute poem,” Grandpa says, his tone sharp and patronizing. “You’ve got quite the imagination. Take a chill pill, sweetheart.”

My vision clouds. His words echo in a hollow tunnel. A chill pill.

“You called it a game,” I whisper, “but I called it nothing. I didn’t have the words. Only the hollow ache of something taken that had no name.”

“Jesus Christ, you Gen-Zers are so dramatic,” he mutters.

Someone murmurs something else, but it’s all static. Grandpa cuts a slice of turkey, brings it to his mouth, and chews.

I don’t remember standing. I don’t remember deciding.

The fork finds his eye before my breath returns.

Silence, at last.

Grandpa slumps forward, the candlelight trembling over his stillness.

“Who’s giving me the silent treatment now?” I say, the words trembling somewhere between laughter and tears.

The lights flicker back on. The radio restarts. All I Want for Christmas Is You.

I walk to the living room, press the off button, and the singer shuts up. No one screams. No one moves. The air itself seems afraid to make a sound.

I return to my chair. All eyes on me. Terrified. Good. At least they’re not laughing anymore.

My fork is useless now–bent, bloody, done. So I take Mom’s fork instead, and keep eating. The risotto tastes better in silence.

The room holds its breath. Finally, I can breathe again.