The Thing I Never Told You Research Paper

The Thing I Never Told You
I never told you about the cramped and noisy circumstances of my childhood. You know I spent most of my younger years living in a 900 square foot house with three small bedrooms, a galley kitchen, a compact living-dining room and one tiny bathroom. The house belonged to my grandparents; my mother, sister, and I shared one of the bedrooms. Another bedroom accommodated my invalid aunt, her wheelchair, and port-a-pot, and a bed where my granddaddy slept. The third bedroom, a closet sized space held a bed for my grandmother. There was a host of other family in and out of the house most days, sometimes sleeping over and other times stopping by only for a meal and boisterous conversation.
My granddaddy wore a hearing aid, sometimes. Everyone who spoke with him shouted hoping to be heard. The one television, in the center of the house, steadily blasted background noise all day long, but if not the TV, then notes from someone banging on an old piano roared throughout. Oftentimes the person whacking away at the piano keys, decided to sing along with the notes emitting a shrieking sound, which always sent me scampering away with my hands covering my ears. The invalid aunt suffered from severe brain damage having been extracted
with gripping forceps at birth from her dying mother’s womb. She was my granddaddy’s child from his first wife and my grandmother was responsible for her daily caretaking including bathing, feeding, and diapering. The aunt could not walk or talk and spent most of the day, everyday, hollering with ear-splitting intensity forcing conversation to deafening volumes. Family meals occurred around a wooden table, with a one-foot clearance around three sides. Sitting around the table, with a wheelchair, and various family members, we were packed in tight with elbows touching others on both sides. The non-stop ranting in this confined space left me with little appetite and my ears ringing.
A manic uncle, who visited daily, disrupted these everyday sounds. He screamed hatefully at his parents, my grandparents, and berated my sister and me for living with our grandparents. After getting worked up he would grab his young sons and beat them unmercifully. After the violent outbursts he would then spout off about some relative he was no longer speaking to; desegregation topics would send him into a rage. To show off his dominance he would bully his wife, grabbing and twisting her arm to get what he wanted. As he left he yelled at the dogs threatening to beat them as well. When the uncle was finally gone, grandmother would cry softly while reading her bible. I would see granddaddy working a crossword puzzle with his hearing aid lying on the table beside his chair.
My mother, sister and I shared one of the tiny bedrooms.
We had a clothes rack in the corner for extra closet space, one twin bed for my mother and one full size bed for my sister and I to share. The space in between was less than a foot wide leaving just enough room for me to crawl under the bed for a moment of solitude in the midst of the persistent chaos. The only quiet time in the house was after everyone was in bed fast asleep. This is when my mom would begin her deafening snoring that lasted until morning. If my mom was awake and not at work, she left the house claiming her nerves were shot from all of the commotion; if she stayed home she added to the racket by painfully crying about her unhappy
life.
You may wonder why I am telling you about this now. I saw the impatient look creep across your face this morning as I recoiled from the shrill sound of the yardman’s blowing leaves. I hear your sigh when I ask you to turn the TV sound down and I listen to your probing questions when I move to a different bedroom during the middle of the night because of your snoring. I see your face light with excitement when you fire up your hot rod revving the engine to a penetrating roar and I see your disappointment when I say no to taking a ride. Sounds, something so simple, reverberate in my ears and can sometimes bring me to tears. Harsh noises push my nerves to the edge almost shattering them. So today I am telling you something I have not shared before hoping you may understand just a little bit more about why I am the way I am.