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

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Except Bliss protested she wasn’t hiding. She’d just been dreaming. And the dream took her to wherever it was, she was meant to sleep.

  SUCKING HER THUMB!

  Sucking her fingers!

  A nervous habit of course. An infantile habit a child of six should have outgrown years ago. (Like bed-wetting.) (Like worse-than-bed-wetting, which also happened, too, sometimes.) Such bad habits were annoying enough at home, when only Mummy and Skyler were witnesses, but totally unacceptable in public, where others could see, at the rink for instance, worse yet when Bliss was being interviewed!—interviewed on TV in bright-glaring lights!

  Bliss how could you! Right on TV! Haven’t you been told, and told: keep your hands away from your mouth! Only babies suck their fingers! There are disgusting germs all over your hands! And it looks—oh honey, it looks terrible.

  TWITCHY, FIDGETY! RESTLESS! WORST OF ALL WAS CHURCH, SUNDAY mornings in the Rampike family pew almost directly in front of Reverend Higley’s pulpit, when Reverend Higley delivered his sermon, when the choir of Trinity Episcopal Church sang hymns in loud joyous voices that got inside your head like buzzing bees, then Bliss was most fidgety, prey to her “jumpy leg”—no matter how she tried to sit still, quietly like a good girl, invariably there came a tingling sensation in her left leg which Bliss tried to “keep back” as it became stronger and stronger until finally it “jumped out”—even if Bliss tried to hold her leg down with both hands, and pressing her foot hard against the floor, yet the rebellious leg would kick loose and cause people nearby to glance over at Bliss wondering what was wrong with her. And poor Mummy trying to smile, biting her lip to keep from crying, for nothing so upset Betsey Rampike than being embarrassed in public, in this upscale place of worship in Fair Hills, than bad behavior on the part of her children!

  You can control that twitching if you try, Bliss. I learned to—we all did!—and so can you, if you try.

  EVEN AT THE ICE RINK, BLISS SOMETIMES BEHAVED BADLY.

  Suddenly breaking away, skating off to the farthest edge of the ice oblivious of the other girl-skaters staring at her and of Mummy and her (new) trainer Masha Kurylek calling after her.

  She’d been practicing her routine for the upcoming 1996 Royale Ice Capades (in which Bliss would perform to The Firebird), or maybe she’d been practicing her routine for the 1996 Little Miss Jersey Ice Princess Skate Challenge (in which Bliss would skate-dance to the sultry disco song “Do What Feels Right”) and suddenly with no warning or explanation she simply skated away, as if Masha Kurylek wasn’t out on the ice with her giving instructions, and Mummy wasn’t sitting in the first row of seats talking on her cell phone which immediately Mummy dropped, to run to the edge of the rink calling Bliss where are you going? Bliss come back here at once!

  Mummy in stylish tight knee-high leather boots dared not venture out onto the ice for fear of slipping, and falling. So Masha Kurylek (Olympic silver medalist, women’s figure skating 1992) had to skate hurriedly after Bliss to bring her back, gripping her pupil’s little hand tight. “Why did you skate away like that?” Mummy demanded in a quavering voice, and Bliss seemed at first not to know how to answer, shyly smiling, or defiantly smiling, mumbling, “…was my jumpy leg made me do it, Mummy. Not me.”

  LYING!

  Saying terrible untrue things!

  And in the most matter-of-fact little-girl voice, you’d swear such lies had to be true.

  On a rare playdate, for instance, with a girl classmate she’d known at the Montessori school, whose surname—“Hover”—figured prominently in Mummy’s pyramid of magical Fair Hills names, while watching a video of Disney’s Cinderella, saying suddenly: “I was adopted. I was found somewhere.”

  “Oh! You were? Where?”

  “They don’t tell you where. Nobody will tell you.”

  Bliss giggled. Then Bliss began to cry.

  Little Miranda naturally passed on this shocking news to her own mummy and naturally Mrs. Hover spread the tale through Fair Hills by way of the Village Women’s Club where members met frequently for lunch, and so the tale naturally found its way to Betsey Rampike who was livid—“That is not, not true! There is not an ounce of truth in such a lie!”—and felt the need, though knowing it was probably not a prudent idea to betray such emotion in a place like Fair Hills, to make numerous frantic telephone calls assuring her women friends/acquaintances that her little Bliss was certainly not adopted but had a naughty habit of inventing, making things up—“‘Confabulating’ is what Bliss’s neurologist calls it, Dr. Vandeman says that all children fantasize, it isn’t abnormal, or unusual, it’s the sign of a healthy imagination but in Bliss’s case there is not an ounce of truth in what she has said: I am Bliss’s biological mother, and Bix is Bliss’s biological father. We are.”*

  DISOBEDIENT. SNEAKY-SLY.

  Couldn’t be trusted to eat the special-dietary foods Mummy had Maria prepare for her (high-protein/high-fiber/low-carb/low-sugar) for Mummy dreaded her little girl gaining weight, becoming “plump” as she herself had been as a girl, to the detriment of her skating career: “If Bliss could remain a tiny child forever, no more than forty-five pounds, how wonderful that would be!” Nor could Bliss be entrusted to take the numerous pills, tablets, and “dietary supplements” prescribed for her by the Fair Hills sports-pediatrician Dr. Muddick, which Maria—usually, Little Maria—gave her, or tried to give her, having to be especially vigilant that the cunning six-year-old didn’t just pretend to swallow her (expensive) meds and spit them out when she was alone, later. How frequently Skyler (who had his own battery of meds to swallow, or to pretend to swallow, three times daily) overheard this domestic-Beckett playlet:

  Maria: Bliss, did you swallow those pills?

  Bliss mumbles a reply, vaguely Yes Maria.

  Maria: Bliss, did you really swallow those pills?

  Bliss mumbles a reply, vaguely Yes Maria.

  Maria: Then what is this messy white stuff under your plate?

  Bliss mumbles a reply, vaguely Don’t know Maria.

  Maria (losing patience, pronounced Hispanic accent): Unless you take every one of your pills, Bliss, I will have to tell your mother.

  Bliss with a muffled sob gives in.

  Taken to Dr. Muddick’s office each Friday morning for her shots—SuperGrow, Hi-Con Vit-C, CAGHC (Child Athlete Growth Hormone Concentrate)*—Bliss was ever more sulky and resistant, as she was, in Mummy’s exasperated words, “self-destructive”—“irrational”—in the matter of the dental bite she was supposed to wear whenever she was home, to correct her “minor but disfiguring” overbite, that would prevent her, Mummy had been told by more than one figure-skating consultant, from achieving the very highest goals in women’s competitive skating: Olympic medals, World Skating and Grand Prix championships, the most lucrative product endorsements (Elite Sporting Goods, StarSkate Sportswear, Flawless Cosmetics).

  When Daddy objected, as sometimes Daddy did, to what he called Mummy’s “super-micro-managing” of Bliss’s career, Mummy said quickly, “Bix, you don’t know the first thing about girls’ skating and I do. No one wants to acknowledge that the competitions are basically beauty contests, but of course, take one look at the next big competition on TV, those camera close-ups, you will see it is.”

  “So? If it is? Our daughter doesn’t have to compete, does she?”

  For a moment Mummy simply stared at Daddy, who loomed (threateningly?) above her, too confused to speak.

  Saying then, a hand to her breast, in a breathy-choked laughing voice, “Ohhh Bix! Damn you had me fooled, for a second I thought you were serious.”

  OR SOMETIMES AT SUCH MOMENTS MUMMY WOULD SAY TO DADDY, DRAWING a hand along his arm, sexy-pleading-vehement Mummy: “Darling, I’ve told you to trust me. Our daughter is our destiny.”

  (OKAY, YOU’VE HEARD THIS BEFORE. BELIEVE ME, IF YOU’D LIVED IN THE Rampike house on curvy Ravens Crest Drive, at the throbbing white-heat center of R.C.S disorder, you’d have heard it many, many more times.
)

  SULKY, SULLEN. STUBBORN.

  In those devious cobalt-blue eyes, not-there.

  Mummy impatiently brushed aside the tutors’ excuses: “If you can’t teach my daughter basic skills, let alone a foreign language, I’m afraid that I can’t keep you on. And please don’t ask me for a recommendation, I am unable to lie.”

  (AND THIS WAS TRUE, I THINK. BETSEY RAMPIKE WAS UNABLE TO CONSCIOUSLY and deliberately and with premeditation lie. Such untruths as Betsey told, and retold, were but variants of truth, as Mummy perceived it. Don’t judge her harshly!)

  AT GRANDMOTHER RAMPIKE’S SPANISH-VILLA MANSION FRONTING THE UNRULY ATLANTIC Ocean at Palm Beach, March 1996. Where Mummy, Skyler and Bliss were spending five days, to be joined by busy-Daddy for the weekend, damned if Bix is going to miss such a special occasion. Mummy wished for a “change of pace” for Bliss—and for her!—away from the ice rink for a few days at least so that Bliss could “relax”—“play”—“like an ordinary six-year-old.” But at Grandmother Rampike’s house that was showy-formal like a small hotel, to Mummy’s annoyance Bliss was both insomniac and prone to that damned habit of hers, sleepwalking; she was twitchy/anxious like one who is missing a limb without quite knowing which limb it is, unable to “rest”—“relax”—“sunbathe” on the terrace or the beach—“swim in Grandmother’s pool, or splash in the surf” with her brother—“play with her dolls, watch videos, read”—whatever it is ordinary six-year-old girls do: for Bliss missed the ice rink, that was obvious. Bliss was miserable away from the ice rink even in sunny Palm Beach amid such luxury where she’d been meant to bask also in Grandmother Rampike’s (revised) estimate of her as pike-mouthed old Edna Louise’s favorite grandchild. (Which elevated Mummy, too: though poor nervous Mummy had a very long way to go before becoming Edna Louise’s favorite daughter-in-law.) (And what of Skyler? The kid had to concede, his rich grandma scarcely took notice of him any longer, spoke to him only briefly and then about Bliss—“Oh aren’t you proud of your sister, Skyler! Your mother has been sending me the most amazing videos of that child’s skating performances! And one of these days soon, I hope to see her compete! I hope to see her crowned—what is it?—your mother has been telling me—‘Little Miss Jersey Ice Princess’—and on TV!—the most beautiful amazing prodity in the Rampike family, at last”—so emphasizing prodity with an excited clack of her formidable gleaming-white dentures, Skyler had to wonder if the mispronunciation was deliberate, as it often seemed her son Bix’s mispronouncements/malapropisms must be deliberate.*

  “Well, Skyler? Why are you sneering like that? Aren’t you proud? You must be.”

  Skyler blinked nearsightedly at the annoyed old woman. He’d been recalling how shocked and appalled his grandmother had been at his bedside in the Maimed Children’s Wing of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center in New Brunswick seeing her six-year-old grandson so frail and sickly and his badly broken leg in traction, moved to wonder if he would be a cripple for life…Now what was the subject? Who was the subject?

  Had to be Bliss, he supposed.

  “Yes, Grandmother. That is all that I am: proud of Bliss.”

  (Skyler hadn’t been sneering! He was certain.)

  (In the new/rapidly accelerating grip of R.C.S. [remember? Repetitive Compulsion Syndrome, said to be spreading like the bubonic plague of old among middle- and upper-middle-class Americans of all ethnic types, especially afflicting adolescents and “precocious” juveniles] Skyler peered at his reflection in mirrors and in mirroring surfaces a dozen times a day, more likely two dozen times a day, to see if he was making what his exasperated mother called your damned pain-faces and it seemed to Skyler that he was not. He was not.)

  Yet Grandmother Rampike had to be disappointed with Bliss who never exhibited, in the several days of her visit to Palm Beach, any personality you’d call special: at Mummy’s urging, Bliss was never less than sweetly/shyly polite with her grandmother, though stiffening in the old woman’s embrace as if she were being hurt; smiling the most wan, wistful smiles in response to persistent if well-intentioned questions, and mumbling near-inaudible replies meant to be Yes Grandmother. No Grandmother. Thank you Grandmother. Skyler overheard some of these exchanges and smiled meanly: the prodity on ice wasn’t a prodity on land, was she? The most painful of these scenes occurred when Edna Louise invited over a dozen of her rich-widow Palm Beach neighbors to meet her son’s family, in the absence of her actual son (Daddy was expected to arrive the next morning, at last): the Palm Beach ladies were meant to feast their eyes upon Edna Louise’s prized granddaughter, and to ply Bliss with questions, but, despite Mummy’s encouragement, the six-year-old was stricken with shyness when asked “what is it like” to skate so beautifully, and to be applauded by so many people, and to see her picture everywhere?

  Quietly Bliss sat, sucking at her thumb, or several fingers.

  The next morning, there came Grandmother Rampike to lead Bliss away after breakfast, gripping her hand. On the oceanside veranda of Grandmother Rampike’s house she instructed Bliss to please call her “Grandma”—not “Grandmother Rampike”—for it would mean so much to her, far more than she’d ever expected it might mean.

  “Just ‘Grand-ma,’ dear. Please?”

  What was this? The steely-eyed pike-mouthed old woman who’d insisted upon being called Grandmother Rampike by all her grandchildren, and Mother Rampike by her terrorized daughter-in-law Betsey, was begging now, in a clumsy-coquettish voice, her skating prodity granddaughter to call her Grandma? A muscular spasm passed over Skyler’s face, transforming it (Skyler had to suppose) into an ugly-gargoyle face.

  “‘Grand-ma.’ Please try, dear: ‘Grand-ma.’ When you win that ‘Ice Princess’ title and you are interviewed on TV, you can wave and smile and say ‘Hi Grandma!’ and I will be watching, dear—I promise. No one has ever called me ‘Grandma,’ I have no idea why, I am eighty-two years old and so very lonely.”*

  WETTING HER BED. (EVEN AT GRANDMOTHER RAMPIKE’S.)

  Trying to hide the evidence.

  BAD GIRL! AT YOUR AGE! YOU MUST BE DOING IT TO SPITE ME.

  * Poor Skyler! When Bliss had her bed-wetting/bed-fouling “accidents” to whom did she come but him?—pushing open his bedroom door (which, door to a mere child’s room, had no lock), waking him rudely and pleading with him—“Skyler help!”—“Skyler something happened in my bed!”—“Skyler there is something bad in my bed”—wanting Skyler to remove the wet/smelly/disgusting sheet for her and replace it with a clean sheet; and Skyler was cranky being wakened but usually agreed to help because his sister was so agitated, and repentant, though the mattress of Bliss’s bed was still damp, and stained, and smelly, and Maria, whose never-ending task was to make up all the Rampike beds, would probably report this fact to Mummy.

  * Yet to this day, despite Mummy’s efforts, scattered through the cesspool of cyberspace you will find the misinformation that Bliss Rampike was adopted as an infant by Bix and Betsey Rampike who could not have children of their own. In some quarters it is believed that our parents adopted both Bliss and me in order to “exploit”—“abuse”—us. Naturally, there have been a number of “biological mothers” who have come forward boldly to claim us, and if any of you “biological mothers”—or, as the case may be, “biological fathers”—are thinking to approach Skyler Rampike following the publication of this memoir, PLEASE DO NOT. I am no one’s son any longer, I swear!

  * What do you think: was this some kind of sinister steroid? Was Mummy colluding with Dr. Muddick to inject steroids into a six-year-old, to “enhance” her performance on the ice? In my half-assed amateur way I’ve tried to find out more about the controversial performance-drug CAGHC but it was taken off the market in 1999 and the trail seems to have gone cold.

  * D’you wonder how old Edna Louise reacted when Bix revealed to her, reluctantly/apologetically we have to suppose, that her four-year-old namesake-granddaughter Edna Louise was no longer “Edna Louise”—no longer named after her—but w
as, from that time forward, legally, “Bliss”—a name for which, in the patrician Rampike family, there could be no precedent? D’you wonder if the vain old woman was so shocked that for a long moment she could not speak, then snorted in derision, and hung up the phone? (For Bix had called her, soon after he’d given in to Betsey’s demands.) D’you wonder if, for some uncertain time, prospects of winning back the old woman looked grim? worse than grim? Until at last, “Bliss Rampike” began to win skating competitions, and began to be “known,” and old Edna Louise changed her mind. And, as Bix explained, in any number of apologetic-son calls, renaming their daughter, making the change legal, was after all a fate accomply.

  * Simultaneous with this awkward scene overlooking the unruly Atlantic Ocean, an equally awkward scene is taking shape at gate nine of the West Palm Beach Airport. For Mummy has insisted upon driving to the airport to pick up Daddy. But the 11:08 A.M. flight from J.F.K. has just landed, and by 11:19 A.M. all the passengers have left the plane, and where is Daddy? Where is Bix Rampike? Mummy is trying not to panic, Mummy fumbles to make a call on her cell phone but on the luminous little blue screen emerge the cryptic words CALL WAITING.

  BAD GIRL! II

  “IT IS A CURSE, IN A YOUNG ATHLETE. I HAVE SEEN IT MANY TIMES, IN THE best young skaters for they are frightened of their gift. We must fight, fight, fight to prevent it!” So Masha Kurylek spoke passionately, the small gold cross at her throat glittering like fire. And Mummy grimly amended: “We must pray.”

  How she exasperated them, in the midst of a near-perfected routine, suddenly wobbling on her skate blades, flailing her thin arms, falling. Masha Kurylek stared in disbelief. Mummy could not bear it, a red mist passed over Mummy’s brain Jesus why? To spite me but why? When I am the only one who knows that child’s wicked heart, and loves her anyway? Why? As Bliss tried to scramble to her feet, up on her skate blades as quickly as possible as if she hadn’t fallen though white-faced, biting her lower lip to keep from whimpering in pain.