SHOUT - Adopted by Lin Manuel Miranda

WHAT I DIDN'T SAY

On August 25th 2011, I arrived at Hope House with a blue duffel bag in my hands, the clothes off my back, and my sister's old ipod. I met with my first counselor a few days after I got there. She asked me to tell her what happened with My Father, and when I refused to speak, she handed me a plastic doll and told to point to where he touched me. The next week at group therapy, I saw Jeremy for the first time since he drove me there from the police station. He gave me a set of colored pencils and asked me to draw the way I felt. I took the blue pencil, scribbled until the tip whittled down to a stump and drew a bird at the corner of the page with half its wing missing. When the two of us met with the lawyer to sign my affidavit, Jeremy told him that I was mentally unstable and the letter should be carefully reviewed.

In case she's telling a story, he told him.

The court date was a month later. My Mother was the second person to speak, after me. According to her testimony, she grew up in a village outside Peshwar. She was the youngest of five children almost by a decade. Her father was an engineer and her mother stayed at home with the children. By the time My Mother was twenty, her mother had died of a respiratory infection her father had found her a husband, the son of a friend of a friend. His name was Vikran Charandowa, who was attending university at the time and was working toward a degree in journalism. The week he graduated they were married, and three years later, they had Radhika. The three of them moved to Rohiwol the year Radhika turned two. He brought a stone house like all the others, with a front porch and a laundry line strung from the roof to a pole stuck in the dirt. There was a water well, an outhouse.  

After Nayim was born, my father was laid off from his job in Lahore. He got an internship at a company in a town a few miles away from Rohiwol, but then I was born and there were too many mouths to feed and not enough cash to feed them. So we left. We pointed our compasses in the opposite direction and flew across the world to the land of the free. My Mother accounted being scared-- wouldn't you be? A country mouse in the big city, whiskers quivering, searching. For a new life, was what she said on the stand. A new hope. 

"Did you know your daughter was being molested, in your own house?" She was asked.

My Father never mentioned a word of it to her.

Mrs. Fariba Charandowa, did you have any knowledge of the crimes perpetrated against Vidya Shahanna—

He didn't say—

—the crimes which occurred for three years, before your neighbors called authorities after hearing screaming through the walls and suspecting the victim was being harmed by your—

—she'd always been told that the girl just had a stomach ache.  

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I turned four the Summer after we moved to the states. The next Fall, my parents enrolled me in elementary school. P.S. 36 was a tall, brick building that looked a bit like Hope House but with classrooms instead of bedrooms and desks instead of bunks. Each day, Radhika walked there with Nayim and I before turning the corner and walking two extra blocks to the junior high school. When I was in fourth grade, Nayim was in sixth. Our classrooms were on opposite sides of the building but he always met up with me at lunch so I could eat with he and his friends. We sat outside in the courtyard and played basketball when we finished our meals. That's where that started.

"That's an R, Vidya!"

Feet scuffing, ball bouncing, dribble-dribble-shoot. Wind in my hair, empty head, sneakers pounding the court— "Get the ball Vidya, get it!" 

It took me awhile to master the art of H-O-R-S-E, but each time we played, he tried to encourage me. Each time I made a basket, he cheered.

Patted my shoulder, sometimes.