By Gabrielle Samson
Tonight my new neighbours’ house is silent. There’s no shouting, no abusive language, no crashing and banging of things being thrown at walls. There’s no little girl sobbing in her hiding place among the bushes close to my fence. Since they moved in there’s been anger, shouts and tears most nights. Night after night I have listened to the reverberations of their conflict and hate. Such commotion. But tonight the house has suddenly become silent.
Tonight a tricycle lies overturned in their back yard alongside the broken trampoline, a naked Barbie doll and a deflated soccer ball. The moon shines on these discarded playthings giving them a heart-rending sadness. Somewhere out there in the night that same moon shines on a small girl who has disappeared.
Some days from my window I’ve observed that child attempting to make her unkempt backyard a place of play, a place of joy. Sometimes I’ve heard her singing happy songs that she thought no one could hear; songs that nurtured her soul, perhaps, and brought a hesitant smile to her sad little face. She didn’t know I was nearby when she cried or sang. She didn’t know I heard her songs or her sobs. And I didn’t tell her I was there.
The child has run away tonight. I hope that she is safe and the moon is shining on her. Perhaps her heart just finally broke. Ironically, because she has gone her parents have ceased their battle, her father is wild-eyed, tearing at his hair, pacing; her mother is sitting on the steps crying silently. It is as if they love her. The police have been called.
I didn’t see her leave. I didn’t see her sneaking away with her plastic Ninja Turtle backpack – stuffed, perhaps, with some biscuits, her soft toy dog, her Little Jackie Horner sweatshirt emblazoned with the words ‘WHAT A GOOD GIRL AM I’. I didn’t see her sneaking out of the house, her hands covering her ears, her eyes filled with fear and her face streaked with tears. I don’t know where she has gone.
If I had seen her surely I would have stopped her? Surely I would have offered her safety? Would I have taken her in? Or would I have been, once again, reluctant to get involved? I don’t know these people. They are neighbours. They are strangers to me.
Tonight she must have felt just too much pain and fear, that little girl. She has run away and we, yes we, have let her go.
Carindale Writers Group 