The Deafening Silence
A Memoir
by
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Chapter 1
My skinny eleven-year-old body is hiding behind the dining room doorway on this South_Philadelphia cloudy Wednesday afternoon, May 11, 1955, and that’s because I don’t want Mommy and my oldest sister, Trudy, to know I’m watching. Trudy’s got her head buried in Mommy’s lap and she’s crying in a way I never heard her cry before. Her crying’s more like sobbing and wailing at the same time, it’s coming from way down deep. Listening to her makes me feel sick to my stomach; it’s reminding me of an Easter Saturday two years ago when I was making friends with a little lamb in a wooden cage in front of the butcher shop next door to my Daddy’s produce store. For the life of me I couldn’t understand why Daddy kept telling me not to get attached to that little lamb no matter how cute I thought she was. I ignored Daddy and kept feeding her lettuce leaves and petting her, too. I had just ran out of lettuce leaves when the butcher shop’s cellar door opened and Joe, the butcher, came up from the cellar.
That little lamb started going, “Baaaaahhh! Baaaaahhh!”
I began to giggle cause I thought it was so cute, but when Joe reached into the cage and lifted that lamb to his chest, I stopped giggling. The tiny lamb started kicking like she was throwing a temper tantrum; when I looked into her bulging red eyes, I started crying cause I never knew any living thing could be that afraid. Then she started to scream and, as I looked at Joe, I wondered how it was that he could turn a deaf ear to the lamb’s wailing. But he did. He just carried her down into the cellar and slowly closed the door over them.
The door being closed didn’t stop that lamb’s screams from reaching my ears, and the more she screamed, the louder she got. Her screams were so loud that they started hurting my bad ear, and only cause I was so scared, I went and stood next to my Daddy. He put his hand on my shoulder. Once he patted my head, I was finally able to admit to myself that the little lamb was going to slaughter. Even though I wanted to save her, I knew I couldn’t. I felt so sick to my stomach. As I started rubbing my burning eyes, Daddy gave me a dollar and told me to go to the drugstore and buy him a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes and buy myself a Mound’s coconut candy bar, my absolute favorite candy. I put the dollar in my dress pocket, but before I ran across Seventh Street, I listened once again for the screams of that baby lamb. All I heard was numbing silence coming out of the cellar of the butcher shop.
I just can’t get that baby lamb outta my mind as I’m watching my Mom let Trudy cry and cry and cry some more. I don’t ever remember my Mom letting any of us twelve kids cry like that. Now don’t get me wrong, cause I have a very nice Mom who sometimes gives us hugs and tissues when we cry. But she never sits down with us and lets us carry on, especially when she’s got cooking on the stove like she does right now.
I get scared, almost like the way I did listening to that lamb, as Mommy pushes Trudy’s wavy hair behind her ears and, in a hushed tone, says, “Bella mia, what’s wrong?”
Trudy says, and she’s stammering like it’s the hardest thing in the world to talk, “Yesterday when-when-when I-I-I was at work, I looked out the office window and s-saw Daddy sitting on the park bench. I-I-I-I went outside and sat with-with him.”
“What did he say?”
Trudy whispers, “He said, ‘I can’t let them win! I just can’t!’ W-When I asked him what he was talking about, he turned his back towards me and rambled on j-just like I wasn’t there. And he wouldn’t s-say who he meant. But he was scared, Mom. Who? Who could he mean?”
Mom’s eyes get big, but she doesn’t answer. Then, she tries to put her arms around Trudy, but my eighteen-year-old sister won’t let her.
Instead, Trudy stares at the ceiling, and screams out, “I shoulda told somebody!” She vomits a blood-curdling wail that vibrates against the dining room walls and without hardly knowing it, I’m sobbing, too. I try to stop crying these big tears that hurt so bad, but I can’t. Not just cause Trudy’s crying, but cause there’s something terrible about what she said about my Daddy. I’m so scared, I don’t even realize I’ve walked into the dining room and am standing by Grandma’s sewing machine. I realize it when I see Trudy wipe her tears with Mom’s apron. She creases her forehead, clears her throat, stands in her stocking feet and faces me.
Mom’s looking at me, too, now, but she don’t say anything. She just smooths her apron and walks into the kitchen.
I know no one’s going to tell me anything unless I ask, so I yell, “What’s wrong?”
Trudy, with her sad eyes on me, rubs her nose and says, “Daddy’s in the hospital again.”
“Why?”
“He hurt himself and they had to operate.”
“What happened?”
“Daddy cut his chest twice near his heart and ate DDT.”
“What’s DDT?”
“It’s poison.”
“Poison! How could Daddy put poison in his own mouth?”
Trudy doesn’t say anything, and I start shaking off the chills running through my body as I think, Huuuhh! I wonder if he put that poison right in his mouth straight out of the bottle. Maybe he used a spoon or something like that so he could put it all the way in the back of his throat so he couldn’t taste how bad it was.
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About the Book
Eleven-year old Rosemary lives in south Philadelphia. She plays hop- scotch, jacks and ball, and visits her father’s produce store, called Mike’s. Rosemary loves to watch him tease women, argue with men and give produce to nuns.
His store bustles with the force of his personality-except when the gangster looking men arrive. They register as unimportant until Rosemary’s father plunges a knife into his chest.
He dies leaving Rosemary’s mother with twelve children, youngest age three. As word spreads of his suicide the neighborhood, even Blind Man Joe betrays Rosemary saying they can no longer be friends.
The family moves to an Irish
Catholic neighborhood where the name, Pasquarello, becomes another obstacle to overcome. Against this background is rage at her
father; also mother demanding The
Deafening Silence surrounding his
suicide. Rosemary navigates realities such as going to bed hungry, a teenager
forced out to work.
As the young woman’s heart emerges and with the encouragement of her
fiancé she challenges The
Deafening Silence. On Rosemary’s
wedding day her mother reveals family secrets.
The Deafening Silence: A father’s suicide, a mother’s indomitable
strength, a daughter’s odyssey through the mire of rage and abandonment into a
young woman’s triumph of love.
About the Author
Rosemarie Manes holds a Master of Arts degree from LaSalle University. She received the prestigious Certificate of Recognition from Psi Chi’s National Honor Society. She presented her research findings at Holy Family University and is considered published. Presently, she is applying for a Doctoral Degree at Eastern Baptist Seminary.
She is married to John and lives in Philadelphia, PA. Their children, Audrey and John, Jr. and their families live nearby.
She is a licensed marriage and family therapist and a certified addictions counselor. Her work with families in private practice taught her love is not always enough to ward off the horrors that can beset a family. She is qualified to write this memoir because she has lived it.
THE DEAFENING SILENCE
A memoir
By
Rosemarie Manes