The Voice

I was sitting out on my balcony one afternoon, nursing a sore throat with cappuccino swirl frozen yogourt when I first heard her voice. A throaty, deep and mystic voice, the words poured from her mouth into the cordless with seamless ease, blending and mixing into drawls and bubbling laughter.

Until she had an argument with Tom.

Screaming and yelling, the voice now brimming with fury and tears, she barked into the phone as though every ounce, every fibre of her being depended on it. The conversation jumped from vicious accusations of betrayal, financial difficulties, broken down cars and lying, cheating mechanics, step children and ailing, wheelchair-bound parents.

The woman screamed for Tom's lying, for the father that betrayed her. For the friend who turned her back, for the car that wouldn't turn over, for the mechanic who set his price too high. She yelled for the injustice done to her at work, for the empty fridge that mocked her, for the cupboards that would remain bare until the end of the month. She shrieked for her unreturned love, for leaky faucets and floor fans with a rattle. She cried for her life and her hatred of it.

Although the woman's screams were enough to rattle the cappuccino-covered spoon in my flowered mug, the desperation that was edging into her voice was enough for anyone who happened to overhear her to know who the winner of that fight was.

She knew it. She knew that as she launched into a spitting monologue laced with every profanity the English language would permit her that she was losing. That she had already lost.

'Don't fucking laugh at me.'

I went inside, rinsed off my spoon, and turned on the radio. And if I said I didn't shed a tear for that woman, you could call me a liar.