Ramelle Kamack’s “Audible” is the story of a young girl named Layla. The story is about the inability of adults to hear children and the silencing of Black voices. We follow Layla though her day as he leaves for school, attends his classes, is picked up by his aunt, and then returns home. What makes this story interesting is that for the entire narrative, Layla doesn’t speak. Everyone in the story speaks to Layla but we never hear her speak back. In fact, the whole story is only adults speaking to Layla and we only know what she has said based on their responses. As the progresses, we get a sense of Layla’s frustrations dealing with adults who are either too busy, too distracted, or too selfish to respond to her needs. We feel Layla’s anger, frustration, sadness, fear, and sense of abandonment as she navigates a community that is struggling with crime and drugs, lack of childcare, and over worked teachers.
One scene of interest involves Layla asking her new teacher to use the bathroom. The teacher does not allow Layla to use the bathroom for thirty minutes as class had just begun. But the teacher gets distracted over textbooks and assignments, forgetting Layla had asked to use the restroom. When Layla tries to ask again, the teacher berates her over having the wrong kind of notebook. Unfortunately for Layla, it is too late, and she has an accident. The teacher blames Layla for not speaking up sooner about using the bathroom. Later that day, Layla is in the schoolyard where her new classmates make fun of her for wetting herself. What the episode demonstrates is the inability or even arrogance of adults when working with children. Rather than helping Layla with a difficult situation, the teacher first says no. Then, berates her over a notebook and ignores her requests, and finally embarrasses her in front of the class when she has an accident.
Later, Layla is picked up from school by her aunt and her aunt’s boyfriend because her mother has to work. At the boyfriend’s apartment, Layla is left to fend for herself as her aunt retreats to the bedroom with her boyfriend. Through the tone of her aunt and her boyfriend’s voices, it is clear that neither really want to deal with her and Layla feels alone. After a short period of time, Layla is startled by the sound of gun fire. When she asks her aunt for help, she is ignored again.
The story speaks to adults’ inability to listen to children and how silences are intensified for African American children, who are often rendered voiceless in historical narratives. Given the author’s focus on silences for Black children, Kamack’s story intersects with what the anthropologist Michel_Rolph Trouillot called the import of historical “silences” where “any historical narrative is a particular bundle of silences, the result of a unique process.” Even at the end of the story, Layla cries when she is finally reunited with her mother. However, her mother still seems to not hear when Layla confronts her over not listening to her. Through this narrative, the reader can feel the helplessness that a child may feel in a world where adults only speak to them and don’t listen to them. As such, this simple story speaks volumes based on who has a voice and has none—historical silences for Black children that are forced to listen but never given space to speak and are thus rendered inaudible.
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