Essay: Screams From Somewhere Else

The scream is one of the indigenous sounds of city life, like an automobile alarm that whoops and heaves, then stops, leaving the question hanging like a hawk as to whether a car was broken into, or did its owner set off the alarm by accident, and then lay it to rest. With human screams, the question is more complicated, since screams are not mechanical or automatic. Did you hear that, Harry? What could it be? A scream of delight, of fright? Hilarity, Harry? Do you think that someone is laughing too hard? Could it be hysteria, madness? Or ; is it a scream of blue murder? What should we do, Harry, if it is a scream of blue murder? And where is it coming from, anyway? Could you tell? I couldn't tell.

A Manhattan couple was charged last week with the murder by beating of their six-year-old adopted daughter. Neighbors never had any difficulty telling where the screams were coming from, though sometimes they may have had trouble discerning exactly who was doing the screaming, the six-year-old girl or the woman who lived with the father. The woman is accused of "acting in concert" in the murder, but clearly her own life buckled under regular punches. She wore dark glasses, and would attribute her recomposed face to a mugging or a fall in the kitchen. Over the years, colleagues and friends chose to believe the mugging and accident stories. Neighbors who heard the screams firsthand placed dozens of telephone calls to the police and to city authorities, who investigated but could prove no harm. The authorities did not hear the screams. After her beatings, the child lay brain dead, and the couple was in custody. Now no one in that building hears the screams.

But in other buildings in New York, in other cities, in all the cities, new screams will take up the slack. Sometimes the authorities will respond, sometimes not. The beating of women and children will continue in the hidden boxes of apartments: evil, secret noise. You will hear the scream, and someone else will tell you that it wasn't a scream, it was a kettle whistle; and no one will be sure if there ever was a scream, until a body lies in evidence. How is the citizen-listener to react? Rush wildly through the corridors until the sound is unmistakable? Push open some stranger's door to confront some stranger's scream? Much courage is required for that. Much recklessness as well. The helplessness you feel in such situations is dizzying; and even when you act, someone in power can let you down. You could be wrong. Foolish. You could be sued.

Civilization is tested by its screams. One has the choice to hear or not to hear; to detect location or not to detect location; to discover cause; to help or not to help. Along the many lines of choice, excuses and mistakes are possible, even reasonable. One is left with oneself and the screams, like two opponents. The Kitty Genovese case of 1964 keeps coming back, in which a young woman in Queens screamed for help, and everybody heard, and nobody helped. What were we to do? Edvard Munch's famous painting of The Cry keeps coming back, equally scary and bewildering. What are we to do?