Telephone

Telephone 

—2003—

Dear Nailah, 

Do you remember that game Telephone? 

It was a game we played when we were the height of the kitchen counters we had to leap to look over, when we were children shouting to a world that remained deaf to us—do you remember? 

Telephone was a game played between you and I and the other four—do you remember? I suppose you might have blocked it out but that’s why I am here to remind you. We would play, whispering it from one ear to the next to the next until the story had been twisted and misshapen and convoluted into nothing more than a lie. But we relished it, didn’t we? We enjoyed forming lies in a basement, just the six of us, and laughing about them. But no one else cared about the fantastical lies we had created, remember? But soon, our little game of Telephone wasn’t enough any more—we sought to have our words make an impact. Ordinary speech was insufficient with adults and fantastical lies were just as ineffective. Do you remember the night when we sought to craft a story that was neither fantastical nor true that would get the world to listen to us? 

If you don’t, I still do. I see that memory vividly, as vividly as I would see blood dripping from a large gash on my pale arm. I find myself locked inside it without any knowledge as to where the key has gone. It haunts me—it threatens to tear me apart at the seams! Do you remember? Please remember—I want it to hurt you too just as it hurts me.

~Delilah 

—1985—

The summer of 1985 in Fawnville, Texas, was a summer that threatened to put the town to sleep, as usual. Women stood on their porches in baseball caps, angling desk fans toward their rosy-cheeked faces, wiping the sweat from their brows, taking large gulps of water from a glass that was full of ice five minutes ago—now it’s not even cold. They each stand on their porches, hoping to maybe even start some gossip. But their throats are parched and it’s too much work to shout, so they just stand and stare at each other from their houses with sprawling dead lawns. 

In one such house, five eight-year-olds and one seven-year-old met in a basement, as they did every day of the summer, fanning themselves with paper fans they ripped from their school notebooks, sweat soaking through their screen-printed shirts, inhaling the heavy, hot air of their safe haven. 

The seven year old was Nailah Ali, whose father worked in Dallas—a two-and-a-half hour drive from Fawnville. She couldn’t remember much outside Fawnville—she could barely remember the cold winters of New York City, where they had moved from four years ago. She could hardly imagine what cold felt like, sitting here, in the home of her mother’s parents, being slowly lulled to sleep by the weight of the torrid heat that surrounded her, but being shaken awake by her friend Delilah every time she threatened to doze off. 

“Nai-lah!” Delilah would rebuke, giving Nailah a sharp slap on the shoulder every time her eyes closed. Delilah would always sit next to Nailah so she could keep her awake, as they agreed before every meeting. She took a gulp of water from the water bottle next to her, brushed a curl behind her ear, and opened her eyes as wide as they would go in order to keep herself awake.

“So Nailah,” Delilah said, “while you were asleep, I came up with the sentence: “Molly bought a tumbleweed for her friend’s birthday as a joke,” and it turned into “Holly buys bumblebees for Bo!” As Delilah said this, laughter burbled from the children’s throats, spilled over their lips, and plagued the air with its authenticity and joy. Nailah couldn’t help but join in. 

“Be quiet!” a voice hollered from upstairs, and a few seconds later in the doorway leading to the main house, Nailah’s mother appeared, her dirty blond hair escaping from its bun to frame her angry face, her caramel eyes watering with tears, her shirt stained with sick. 

“I don’t want to hear you laughing about your silly stories! You tell them to me, you tell them to everyone you meet, and they’re just so stupid! Every time, I think that when I say I want to hear nothing above a whisper from down here, I mean it, but you never listen!” Here, she turned to Nailah. “If you won’t be quiet for me —please—be quiet for her.” And the door slammed. 

Each eye turned to Nailah’s; all in the room knew in their heads the same thing, but all refused to say it, until Nailah said, “My grandma’s dying, I think. We came here because of dad’s work and to take care of grandma, but once she dies, we’ll have to move away. Back to New York, I guess.” All the children stared at her with empty eyes. No one was smiling or laughing now. 

“Um, I’m going to go upstairs,” said Nailah. “See you guys in a little bit.” 

Nailah made her way outside and sat on the porch steps, staring out into the almost melted asphalt, drumming her fingers on the porch steps. Her skin burned with the heat of the sun but she didn’t want to move. She’d let the sun burn her to a crisp before she went back inside. 

Soon, Mrs. Fern came by with her four year old daughter laden with bags from the grocery store. Mrs. Fern was Nailah’s next door neighbor and also the Vice Principal at Nailah’s elementary school. She was nothing but a menace to Nailah. Nailah felt that Mrs. Fern was the only one she told off at school, the only one she found fault with. “Why do you always look so untidy?” she would say. “Tuck in your shirt and do something to your hair. Anything, honestly, would be better than what you have now.” 

“Nailah, is that you? I thought it was! What on earth are you doing out here, in the heat?” 

“I dunno,” said Nailah, shielding her face from the sun with her hand. 

“You impertinent child!” said Mrs. Fern, “You best go inside and bring your bad attitude in there. It’s already enough that I have to tell you what to do at school—I’m not paid to do it during the summer.” 

“Well then don’t!” Nailah shouted, standing up, glaring into Mrs. Fern’s eyes. “I don’t want to hear it!” 

“Oh I see!” chuckled Mrs. Fern. “So you don’t want to hear me and yet the whole town has to listen to every senseless story you tell? You and your lies—just, just leave them inside, where they belong and where you can’t bother the rest of the normal population! Come along, Violet.” 

With that, Mrs. Fern grabbed her daughter’s hand, and dragged her in the direction of the Fern’s home. At this, Nailah turned around and raced to the basement with a new idea.

“What if we played Telephone in the real world?” Nailah said, panting, her face aglow with mischief. “What if, what if we came up with a story and, and we told it to someone in a way that made them have to believe us? And then people would see that the stories we tell aren’t so useless and stupid and—and senseless! They would feel something too!” 

A murmur of ascent passed around the room, each child’s face lighting up with this new possibility where they wouldn’t have to hide in a basement to tell stories. 

“But what story would we tell?” asked Kit. 

“So you know Mrs. Fern? She’s been really mean to all of us, right? So we can’t say anything to her right? But we can say something about her so she won’t be mean to us anymore.” 

Then Delilah spoke up. “What would we say, Nailah?” 

“We—we set up an accident at the edge of town. And—and we make it look like Mrs. Fern did it.”

“Why?” asked Kit.

“Because Mrs. Fern is trying to hide something from Fawnville and from her daughter. She’s trying to hide the fact that she was the reason that college kid, Cam, went missing two years ago. And maybe it’s because Mrs. Fern is trying to keep her daughter safe from Cam, who was going to kidnap Violet.” 

The room collectively gasped. 

“And,” Nailah continued, “that’s why Mrs. Fern made him disappear. But then he’s coming back to try and hurt Violet—he’s walking from the nearest town he’s so mad. So now Mrs. Fern stops him in the middle of the road and pushes him and hurts him and then he runs away.” 

“Oh ma goodness!” said Little Anne. “That’s really good!” 

Delilah looked up and said,“Wait—are we sure about this?” 

“Mrs. Fern was mean to all of us,” said Jo. “I don’t see why not.”

“And—” said Nailah, taking Delilah’s hand, “It’s not true so it doesn’t matter.”

“Ok then,” said Delilah. 

—Three Days Later—

“Did you hear about the accident, Martha?” 

“No I didn’t!” 

“Well, you know the houses at the edge of town? Well in one of ‘em, some kid couldn’t sleep and then started hearing some yellin’—very faint, you know, but still there. And so, she went and woke up her mom who, after she walked outside, heard it too.

“And so her mom (which is my neighbor, Wendy Jones) went and woke me up and asked if I heard the yellin.’ She said her daughter Jo heard some yelling. And I did too! And so the three of us went to go see what it was all about, but before we got there, I heard the word “Cam” when all of a sudden it stopped and we heard a loud screech. And we went to the spot where we knew it was and we saw tire marks in the road, a bit of jean fabric caught on a bush, and blood on the ground. And we ran off to tell the police, but when we came back, all the evidence was gone! Someone had taken a pick-axe and torn up the road so you couldn’t see the tire tracks and taken away the rest of the evidence! The police said there was nothing they could do.” 

“No way, Patricia! Sounds like you had an exciting night last night.” 

“And here’s the other thing—as I was going home, I was walking beside that girl Jo,asked me if I’d heard them yellin’ the word “Cam” too. And I said I sure did. And she asked if it was that Cam that had gone missing’ a couple years back. And she said that when she went outside earlier that night, the Ferns (who live a couple houses down from the Jones’) had left their garage door open, but when we came back, it was closed.” 

“That’s a bit odd.” 

“I know! I thanked the little dear for tellin’ me and sent her off to bed, but I can’t help but wonder if the Ferns had anything to do with it all…” 

—Two Days Later—

“Emily, did you hear about that accident right outside town a couple days ago?” 

“No, Valerie, I didn’t. At least, not anything important, just that it happened. I’ve been dying to know more, though.” 

“Well, I heard something from a conversation between Betty and Martha that I think might interest you. In that conversation, the two of them said something shocking—that Mrs. Fern might’ve been behind it.” 

“Really!” 

“Apparently, Mrs. Fern was out last night—Martha said that everyone on the block had seen the Fern's garage door open earlier that night and the car gone and that apparently, it wasn’t closed until after the accident! And all the evidence, blood and some fabric, was cleaned up too and the road torn up so the police can’t do anything!” 

“That witch Roberta Fern! I’ll give her a piece of my mind. What was she doing tearing up the road anyway?” 

“Well that’s just the thing—apparently, it is for certain that it was her voice heard yelling to someone named “Cam” before the accident!”

“Cam the missing boy who lived here all by himself?” 

“That’s the one! I suspect that she had something to do with his disappearance two years ago.” 

“O-oh! What with the blood and all, do you think she—finished what she started two years ago?”

“What?” 

“I mean that—isn’t it obvious? Roberta made Cam disappear all those years ago!” 

“But why?”

“Anything! An affair gone awry, I suspect.” 

—Eight Days Later—

I never knew my life could fall apart so fast, Mrs. Fern thought as she drove to Dallas. She’d never been called a murderer before all this. And yet, that was one of the only words anyone called her by now. 

Her husband was off on a business trip on the East Coast and was flying back into Dallas tonight. She clenched the steering wheel in anger. After he got back, he would put this whole thing to rest. She was done lying for him, done with the guilt. She was done with whoever had set her up and she was finally ready for the truth—that her husband had killed Cam Beaumont and she had covered up for him.

As soon as she thought this, tears began streaming down her cheeks. Violet, she thought, Violet, why do you hate me now when all I’ve ever done is try and protect you from your father’s mistakes? 

As she thought these things, the tears began to blind her. She was wiping her nose on her sleeve but it wasn’t enough—she wiped her face with her hand and closed her eyes in pain, willing the tears to disappear. That’s when she heard the blaring horn, that’s when she looked up, that's when she collided head-first with a car coming the opposite direction. 

That’s when any chance of truth being told to the town of Fawnville died.

—3 weeks later—

There was, in the town of Fawnville, a funeral that was attended by three people. One was the town’s pastor, who hated the lies rolling off his tongue that he was paid to preach—that Mrs. Fern would find peace. Another was Violet, who seethed with hate at her lying Mom, dead in the ground. The last was Mr. Fern, with an expression of relief on his face. The last link to the truth had died, and he had been freed. What a stupid, stupid boy that Cam was, threatening him with evidence of the Fern’s company’s fraud. Stupid, Mr. Fern chuckled to himself at his wife’s funeral.

There was also, in the town of Fawnville, a goodbye between the six that were once friends. Now they stood, in utter silence, in front of a house with a “For Sale” sign in front of it. 

Delilah stepped forward. 

“Well, aren’t you going to tell someone before you go, Nailah? I know I will one day.”

Nailah stared into Delilah’s eyes—the distrusting and hurt eyes of someone she once called friend.

“No,” said Nailah coolly. “I don’t think I will.” And she ran off to where her mother was waiting for her—a car that would take them to the airport which would take them to New York.

—2003—

It was noon when Nailah finished reading the letter. The room was dead quiet save for the faint Fleetwood Mac record that played from the next room. As soon as she finished, in one swift motion, she tore the letter in two and went to the kitchen to get a broom from the kitchen.

As soon as she arrived in the kitchen, she looked out the pristine window—at that moment, the thoughts came—clearer than they ever had before. The first was: You are living in a penthouse in New York City. And the second: You don’t deserve to be here. 

From there, it seemed as if a floodgate was unlocked in her mind. With a faint cry, Nailah crumpled to the floor as the ferocity of her thoughts overwhelmed her—It was you, all you. You’re why she died! You and  your stupid, senseless stories! In her agony, Nailah began to sob—a real sob, more real than any she’d had in the last decade. Her curls had broken loose from behind her ears and with every gasp for breath, she sucked them into her mouth—they stuck to her tongue and suffocated her. She tried to brush them away again, but her hands were too heavy to move. She whispered into the air an apology, but the empty penthouse didn’t listen to her—the truths uttered from her lips remained unheard. Only the lies remained—the lies that permeated her existence—those were the only things that people heard. Never truth. Never the whispers of a raving lunatic on the floor of her penthouse thinking about how death would be so much simpler than all this.

But as quickly as it had all started, the episode passed. The truths dissipated from her head and emptiness replaced them. It was just as well. She had to clean herself up before her husband came home. 

As Nailah picked herself up from the ground, rubbing her runny nose aggressively, clearing her parched throat, and putting her hair back behind her ears, she began to make out the words of the Fleetwood Mac song playing from the master bedroom that she couldn’t hear earlier amidst her tumultuous thoughts. Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies, the record player sang. 

Lies are neither sweet nor little, Nailah thought with a scowl as she made her way to the bedroom to shut off the record. 

With a click, Nailah shut the record off and began to rehearse the lie she would say into her husband’s ear at dinner: I had a wonderful day while you were gone—simply wonderful!