Pew(30)

And so, we have a problem on our hands with the recent arrival of our new friend. You may already know that Pew, who hasn’t spoken a word since being found, got their nickname because they illegally broke into a church to have a night’s sleep. And what did we make of this, friends?
A few people shifted in their creaking folding chairs. Someone dropped a plate of food and there was a hushed scuffle to clean it up.
What did we make of this? Harold asked. No one answered. I could hear jaws chewing crackers and people putting soft little cakes in their mouths. We ask Pew where they’ve come from—nothing. What he needs—nothing. What happened to him—or her. Quite frankly we still don’t know if Pew is a boy or girl, we don’t know Pew’s age, we don’t know Pew’s real name, or if anyone out there might be missing Pew—and even if we ask any of these things, we get nothing. And there’s not even any agreement about Pew’s heritage, his nationality, her race—everyone’s in disagreement about where Pew might be from and it’s troubling, ain’t it? I, for one, have never seen nobody that looks quite like our guest here—
Someone at the back of the room stood up to say, Harry, this isn’t what we agreed upon, this isn’t the way you said you’d—
Hold on now, I’m getting to it, Harold said.
Hilda crept up beside Harold and whispered something into his ear.
All right—all right, I’ve been told to stick to the script! Our women sure do keep us in line, don’t they? Everyone laughed. The whole room laughed. Even the furniture and floor seemed to be laughing.
All I’m trying to say is that the timing is peculiar, ain’t it? And we are all a little on edge because of the situation in Almose and I think we should be on edge, that is, we should have our eyes out here for anything … unusual. And it’s rather unusual to be silent, ain’t it? To refuse to speak. After all, I sure like to talk. Everyone I know likes to talk. We all talk together, don’t we? We all discuss things out loud, as that is the way our culture has taught us, isn’t it now? Storytelling. Sharing. Of course, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions. And I’m certainly not jumping to any conclusions. I have my hunches, of course, but then we have the judicial process for a reason, don’t we? We don’t want to stoop to the level of trying this person in the court of public opinion, now do we? There’s a due process. So what I figure the next logical step is, is for us to consider the reasons a person might go silent—
Harold, Kitty said from the side of the room, waving her hand a little, can we just go back to what we planned—
For instance, in the news recently you may have heard about how a little girl showed up down in Greenville, and she couldn’t seem to speak but the police figured that probably what happened was—well, the same thing that makes a lot of little girls go quiet for a while, which is that someone must have roughed her up a bit and she’s just scared is all. It happens. Things happen. But everyone in Greenville that saw this girl could agree that she was a girl of about seven years old and she was very obviously American, white, and they easily found the documents for her—birth certificate, fingerprints from her Girl Scouts—I think most importantly, her silence, her being mute—it didn’t cause anyone any trouble because—I think—it was obvious that she wasn’t trying to cause trouble. She wasn’t trying to hide anything because she didn’t have anything to hide, and they took her to a hospital and let her settle down for a while and after a few days she did end up telling the authorities what she remembered, what happened to her—an awful story, I don’t need to go over it here. But she’s doing all right now, recovering. And you know why? Because she’s talking. Because she wanted to get better.
I looked at the plate in my hands. The pie bled dark syrup into the sandwich bread.
You know, it’s stories like that—and I have to read a lot of them being a lawyer and all—it’s stories like that one that can really depress you if you let them, but I always remind myself they are outliers. And like everyone in this room, I want justice to prevail, for the good side to win. And in order for that to happen we have got to know who people are. Who they really are.
It’s what makes us civilized—we can identify ourselves and we can identify each other! That’s how we keep track of things, hold people accountable. That’s how we know who we’re related to and who’s related to us. That’s how we know who is our wife and who is our neighbor’s wife … so that, well …
Laughter burst in the room, a pressure released.
Sorry, Birdie Lee! Harold shouted.
They laughed like a herd of something running.
It’s good to hear us laughing together again, ain’t it?
Harold looked around the room and nodded. I could feel people nodding with him, then the laughter gave way to applause, and the air in the room—human, humid—churned around me.
OK! Thank you, Harold, Kitty said, chiming her wineglass with a knife again. Now, at this point, we’re going to hear from a few others about their experiences with Pew and their ideas about how we should move forward. Now I think Hilda Bonner was going to speak a little. Hilda?
Yes. Hilda stood, smoothed out her dress and touched her hair, and turned toward the room, her hands clasping each other in a fist over her chest.
Now speak up, Hilda, my dear, Harold shouted.
Yes, it’s just that, I wasn’t—I didn’t know that … Hilda leaned over to whisper something into the ear of Kitty, who nodded to her.