My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike

by Joyce Carol Oates

  NIGHTS ARE HARD. “EARLY HOURS” OF THE NIGHT BETWEEN 1 A.M AND 4:30 A.M. which was when the medical examiner of Morris County Dr. Virgil Elyse determined that my six-year-old sister Bliss died of “blunt force head trauma” though her body would not be found until nearly 8:30 A.M. and the “cooling” of the body was impeded by the warmth of the place (furnace room) in which the body was found. And so during those “early morning” hours at least on unmedicated nights the “longtime suspect” isn’t able to sleep nor do I try to sleep.

  Amateurs don’t know how to tell stories, even their own life-stories brimming like tears in their brown-doggy eyes. I acknowledge this, for my instinct is to spew everything out immediately, and keep nothing back, except writing is linear and diachronical meaning that, if you cast down your first card X, this first card X has displaced all other possible cards—Y, Z, A, B etcetera. If I reveal that I am nineteen years old—nineteen going on ninety!—this blocks out the possibly more crucial fact that since my sister’s death in the “early hours” of January 29, 1997, there has never been any murderer indicted, still less prosecuted and tried; the notorious case remains “open”—“unsolved”—in the trendy parlance of our time, “cold.” And why? Despite more than thirty thousand pages of police (Fair Hills PD, Morris County Sheriff, New Jersey State Police) and FBI documents, medical reports, and forensics reports? Reader, you will see why.

  Not that I have read these reports. Much of the material is classified but even the available material is off-limits to me. For I intend to approach this subject from the inside purely, as one who lived through it. Trust me! I swear, I will tell only the truth as I have lived it.

  SKYLER? HELP ME PLEASE

  Too late for already Bliss has been awakened in her bed. Someone has entered her room in stealth. The Mother Goose lamp on the bedside table is on, dim-lit. Just enough light to navigate by. Once this has begun, it cannot be stopped.

  Cannot be stopped by Skyler who was sleeping in his bed at this time. Little punk-sized kid but nine years old.

  Skyler who remains nine years old.

  Already her small protesting mouth has been taped shut so that she can’t scream. Already her small wrists and ankles have been bound with duct tape so that she can’t struggle. Such a small child weighing forty-three pounds (as Dr. Elyse would inform us) she has been wrapped in a (pink cashmere) blanket removed from her bed, in haste she is being carried along a darkened corridor—past her brother Skyler’s room—to a darkened stairway and down this stairway to a yet darker stairs at the rear of the house into the basement as she struggles to free herself, and to breathe, desperate to breathe, a wild struggling animal desperate to breathe, heart beating frantically you could feel like a small fist Skyler help help me! but Skyler will not help because Skyler is sleeping in his bed in his room oblivious of his sister’s struggle so deep/dreamless/leaden a sleep you would think (possibly) the nine-year-old had been drugged for his frightened mother will have a difficult time waking him hours later and now it has been nine years, ten months, and twenty days and still the accursèd child has not fully wakened.

  “A VERY BRAVE LITTLE GIRL”

  …AND NOW OUR NEXT LITTLE CONTENDER FOR MISS ATLANTIC CITY ICE Capades 1995 here at the fan-tas-tic new Trump Hotel & Casino, Atlantic City, New Jersey, ladiez ’n’ gentlemen here is a little-girl skater who is truly little no word but exquisite! angelic! fan-tas-tic! there is a gasp from the audience what a luscious sight: platinum-blond cotton-candy hair cascading in curls she’s wearing a black-lace Spanish veil mantilla d’you call it? qui-ite a dramatic costume for a five-year-old one of the most eye-catching of this fan-tas-tic evening the audience is clearly appreciative! this little skater is a real pro left shoulder daringly bared tight black-sequined bodice black taffeta skirt very very short black lace matching panties peeking out beneath black eyelet stockings and sexy black leather high-top skates like boots with crimson appliqué roses! Look at those skate-blades flash this little girl is skating/dancing to the pulse-quickening Latin beat “Begin the Beguine” applause for MISS BLISS RAMPIKE of Fair Hills, New Jersey Miss Tots-on-Ice Debutante Winner 1994 Tiny Miss StarSkate 1995 runner-up last-month’s Miss New England Figure Skating Challenge 1995 what skating form, ladiez ’n’ gentlemen! look at those graceful glides Miss Bliss is positively angelic the crowd adores her ah! a near-perfect spin triple figure-eights and is it a jump spin? and Miss Bliss Rampike has executed the tricky maneuver bravely this might be the highlight so far of our evening here at Trump Hotel & Casino the audience is at the edge of their seats fierce competition for the gold trophy, $5,000 prize, photo and résumé on all Trump Hotel & Casino promotional materials for a solid year The Don himself is rumored to be in the audience in-cog-nit-o could be, ladiez ’n’ gentlemen we have here a future Olympic gold medalist a future Sonja Henie (winner of ten world titles: Sonja Henie) ooops spoke too soon did I just a wee falter a moment’s hesitation quickly the skater has recovered from wobbling now spinning on two skates without wobbling now a traveling spin hold your breath ladiez ’n’ gentlemen this can be tricky judges are taking note judges are impressed judges will factor in the difficulty of these maneuvers in their scoring now is it? a flying spin such a sweet smile! but the mantilla seems to be slipping from Bliss’s head uh-oh looks like a—jump spin?—executed just a little uncertainly is Bliss favoring her left ankle? rumors of a previous injury to that ankle this is a brave little girl listen to that applause Miss Bliss Rampike along with incredible Miss Kiki Chang last year’s Trump Hotel & Casino Skating Capades champ (Junior Division) are clearly the audience’s favorites so far this evening uh-oh! gosh-darn mantilla is on the ice let’s hope Bliss’s skates don’t get tangled in the gosh-darn thing now a flying spin no hesitating wincing when she lands on her left skate throbbing beat of “Begin the Beguine” pulses ever higher, louder a second flying leap, oops! that was a shame this is a brave little girl Miss Bliss Rampike has recovered her poise not a quitter tears spilling down those doll-cheeks she is not a quitter the audience is hushed the audience is deeply moved the audience has erupted into applause the audience is on its feet let’s hope The Don is truly among us tonight in-cog-nit-o or otherwise a fan-tas-tic performance let’s have a final round of applause for Miss Bliss Rampike five years old of Fair Hills, New Jersey a very brave little girl with a very big future

  RED-INK HEART

  MAKE ME A LITTLE RED HEART SKYLER? MAKE ME A LITTLE RED HEART like yours Skyler? please

  In two days Bliss would be seven years old. And I was nine years old. At bedtime of January 28, 1997.

  Skyler please Mummy won’t know

  Mummy frowned at the little red-ink tattoos that were my specialty at this time.* It wasn’t unreasonable of Mummy, like any Mummy, especially any Fair Hills, New Jersey (where spotless surfaces, high-glisten polish, “understated” expense were the norm), Mummy to object to ink-tattoos on her children’s bodies that were “vulgar” and “messy” and “hard to scrub off.” So, inking a tiny red heart on the palm of Bliss’s left hand, to match one of my own, had to be done in secret, as in secret I tattooed tiny figures on my own hands, and in other less visible parts of my body (armpits, belly, pinched little belly button).

  Secrets! So many.

  Daddy was away. Ever more, Daddy was away: Singapore, Tokyo, Bangkok, Sydney—or maybe only just New York City where he had an apartment. Or, so mysteriously, Daddy was somewhere closer, yet Daddy was away.

  We were not to speak about Daddy at such times, was the message in Mummy’s fierce eyes. We were not to ask about Daddy.

  And yet: Daddy might suddenly arrive home. As in a Disney movie of fantastic transformations and reversals there might come Daddy bounding up the stairs just in time to “tuck” little Skyler and little Bliss in their beds; there might come rueful-Daddy, beaming-happy-Daddy, teary-eyed-with-love-Daddy, and (maybe! these were the happiest times) Daddy and Mummy clasping hands and Mummy bravely smiling as if Daddy had not ever been away; and Mummy had
not ever locked herself in her bathroom sobbing and muttering to herself and refusing to answer the door upon which Skyler shyly knocked: “Mum-my?”

  Skyler sometimes I feel so bad

  Nobody loves me Skyler do you love me Skyler?

  In the Rampike household in those crucial years there were two kinds of time: when Bliss was skating, and when Bliss was not-skating. When Bliss was skating there was excitement in the air like static electricity before a storm and when Bliss was not-skating—if she’d “hurt herself” for instance, or had been sidelined by “phantom pain”—there was a feeling of dread in the air like static electricity before a storm.

  And so always there was: static electricity before a storm!

  The red-ink heart would protect her, Bliss believed.

  Sky-ler please? Mummy won’t know

  Mummy had trained Bliss to open her cobalt-blue eyes wide and to smile in a certain way not to “grin”—not to “grimace”—but to smile shyly, prettily. Smile just enough to show her beautiful pearly teeth. Make me a little red heart like yours Skyler please?

  In our senior physics class at Basking Ridge we were wittily told by our instructor that Time is

  —finite; or,

  —infinite; or,

  —“flowing,” and bearing us with it; or,

  —“static”: a fourth dimension in which everything that will ever happen has already happened and continues to happen and could not have not happened and how then could any of it have been prevented?

  The career began with Tots-on-Ice, Meadowlands, Valentine’s Day 1994. The career would end with Hershey’s Kisses Girls’ Ice-Skating Festival, Hershey, Pennsylvania, January 11, 1997.

  Skyler please a red-ink heart and so I grabbed my sister’s moist little hand and inked into her palm a little red heart to match my own

  * Must’ve been, already by the age of nine Skyler was in the thrall of “ritualistic”—“obsessive-compulsive”—behavior, especially in regard to his puny little male body. Not just tiny valentine-hearts the budding psychopath inked on his skin but iridescent-purple snakes with bared fangs, shiny black spiders and scorpions, blood-dripping daggers, grinning skulls and even, in shameless imitation of a posse of older boys at Fair Hills Day School, Nazi swastikas. (How tricky it is, to “tattoo” a fingernail-sized swastika in black ballpoint ink, in some hidden part of your kiddie-body! Never could get the swastika right.) How horrified Mummy would have been, and how disgusted Daddy would have been!—but they never knew.

  “SEXY”—“SEDUCTIVE”—“MYSTERIOUS”

  MORE OF ME? YOU’D LIKE TO “SEE” ME?

  I suppose I don’t blame you. Even the reader who hasn’t bought this book but is only skimming it—please, not too rapidly!—in a bookstore aisle has a right to “see” whoever the hell it is who’s addressing him/her. For obviously the advantage for most writers is that no one sees them. The writer is invisible, which confers power.

  First thing you’d notice about Skyler Rampike, for instance limping along Livingstone Avenue, which intersects with Pitts Street, is he’s a freaky kid.

  The hair, especially.

  After Bliss’s death, my wavy “fawn-colored” hair began to fall out in clumps. Soon my hard little head was bald, my zombie-eyes were stark and staring. Cancer victim? Chemo? Kiddie-leukemia? After about a year hair began to grow back but it was the weird metallic-zinc color it is now that looks as if it might be radioactive, and glow in the dark; no longer wavy fine little-boy hair but coarse and thick like that perverse species of weed said to thrive in toxic soil. Often I’m mistaken for an older guy and/or the bearer of a particularly repulsive disease (leprosy, AIDS). Through school it was my teachers’ strategy to sort of not-see me in the classroom and more recently, now I’m an “older” adolescent grown scrawny-tall people are wary of me on the street.

  This zinc-hair is so stiff and bristly, it’s like sprouting quills from my head. Mostly I wear it shaved close to the skull. (A bony, bumpy skull! And my scalp reddened from rashes provoked by scratching.) Sometimes I’ve worn the hair in a funky little pigtail at the nape of my neck with the sides of my head shaved Nazi-style, and that gets people’s attention. So maybe, though I’m humble in spirit, yearning to be as a little child, at the same time I’m an arrogant son of a bitch not unlike my father Bruce “Bix” Rampike except not Daddy’s size and lacking Daddy’s so-called charisma.

  (Do you hate the word “charisma” as much as I do? Yet to find a viable synonym isn’t easy.)

  The most astonishing thing is, “Skyler Rampike” with his zinc-quill hair in or out of a funky pigtail has proved attractive to certain sicko individuals both female and male. Mummy had begged me to allow her to dye my hair back to its former color—“Skyler, if Bliss saw you now, so changed, so ravaged-looking, she wouldn’t recognize you”—but I told her no.

  For, if you believed in God, you could say that God has sent my zinc-hair to me as a sign.

  Mummy stared at me not daring to touch me not daring to ask A sign of what, Skyler?—for fear that I would say A sign that I am damned, Mummy. The mark of Satan on your little man’s head.

  Another thing you’d notice is that freaky-Skyler walks with a limp, all that remains of his child-prodigy-gymnast days (of which more later, for those readers with a morbid interest in the just punishments of those who dare to “go for the gold”). Some days this limp is scarcely discernible to the naked eye but at other times there’s no disguising the limp, on bone-chilling winter days I walk with a cane dragging my stiff (right) leg throbbing with pain like old childhood memories. For years it was quite a risible sight—“risible” being a fancy word for “hilarious”—to the crude, cruel eyes of prepubescents, when, a runty prepubescent himself, Skyler Rampike limped along with a dwarf-cane, like an antic three-legged insect. (Now, you should see me limp along with a man-sized cane swiftly and belligerently and betraying little awareness of alarmed fellow pedestrians forced to leap out of my way; though, conversely, or perversely, when crossing a street with or against traffic, if I’m walking with my cane I take my own damned sweet time to cross, you bet. Dare to run me over, you bastards!)

  As anxious Mummy foresaw, by the time I was eleven I’d more or less obliterated the “cute”—“adorable”—little-boy-face of the nine-year-old Skyler, by compulsively grinning/grimacing and making what Mummy called “pain faces.” By tenth grade, in prep school, my face had become a boy’s face bizarrely overlaid with a mask of snarls like tree roots. Pastor Bob has said Skyler your soul shines in your eyes, you can never hide your soul but is this true?

  Yet—to my astonishment!—and disgust!—there are plenty of sickos out there in cyberspace who claim to find Skyler Rampike attractive—“sexy”—“seductive”—“mysterious”—and who feature him on lurid Web sites in which images of my ravaged face and Nazi-zinc hair are featured above such captions as

  SKYLER RAMPIKE “SURVIVING” OLDER BROTHER OF MURDERED ICE PRINCESS BLISS RAMPIKE

  SOMETHING BAD*

  SKYLER HELP ME SOMETHING BAD IS IN MY BED

  * This enigmatic little chapter is all that remains of dozens of scribbled pages written over the last seventy-two hours. For I was mistaken the other day, not a “panic attack” but a full-fledged “manic attack” overcame me now that I am permanently off psychotropic drugs.

  FOE PAWS

  IN THE INTERESTS OF FULL DISCLOSURE IT MUST BE REVEALED: SKYLER HAS broken his Sobriety Pledge.

  That’s to say, Skyler’s most recent Sobriety Pledge.

  After writing the preceding chapter, I caved. Sure it was a measly little chapter and sure, any one of you could have tossed it off in a few hours, yet, for Skyler, it was gut-twisting/nerve-wracking/sick-making and so Skyler caved, on Day 59. Having endured fifty-nine miserable days, in the very early hours of the sixtieth day, Skyler “relapsed” with some suspicious-looking hydrocodone (generic for Vicodin) scored from some hip-hop black guys of my acquaintance.

  As Daddy used to say with s
heepish-shit-eating-Daddy smile Forgive me my foe paws as you’d wish to be forgiven yours, hey?

  A VERY LONG TIME SINCE I WAS NINE YEARS OLD. AND THEY SENT ME AWAY when Bliss was found, and I never saw my sister again, and my hair fell out in handfuls, and when it grew back in, it grew in wrong. And something in my brain is wrong.

  GURNEY

  IN THE BEGINNING—LONG AGO!—THERE WASN’T BLISS.

  This is my (proposed) beginning. I have written this sentence numerous times. I have written this sentence on several sheets of paper hoping to “jump-start” a second sentence, and, in time, a third, but so far, so far only this single sentence has emerged. But I am Sober again now, and I will remain Sober. I swear.

  Though Pastor Bob has suggested that it might be easier to begin in medias race* and not at the beginning since there is something terrifying about beginnings as about the numeral (if it is a numeral, strictly speaking) zero.

  A child can’t comprehend zero. As a child can’t comprehend the vast Dumpster of time before he/she was born.

  I am Sober again, did I record this fact? Six capsules of hydrocodone (“Warning: May cause dizziness, heart palpitations, liver failure”) in a gesture of bravado I flushed down the toilet like a character on TV!

  (Except, the damn toilet, shared by several of us up here on the third floor, doesn’t truly flush. The capsules swirled ’round and ’round teasingly but did not go down and for all I know, and believe me, dear reader, you don’t want to know either, one of my fellow tenants fished them out for his own purposes.)

  Just chance, a lone newspaper page blown underfoot, in the damp-gritty grass up the block. A vacant lot gone to rubble and weeds and every kind of litter including a section of page twenty-two of the Newark Star-Ledger, December 2, 2006, squinting up at me with a ghoulish smile was Dr. Virgil Elyse.