Praise for Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You
“[Silverman’s] lyric style transforms a ravaged childhood into a work of art.… The book reads like a poem.”—St. Petersburg Times
“This harrowing memoir gives voice to the inarticulate terror Silverman suffered as a child, when she could never find the right words to describe her situation. She has found them now.”—Booklist
“Searing, brave, powerfully written.… Sue Silverman’s memoir is about more than incest: it is about evil, about denial, about the great chasm between the public facade of a prominent, successful family and its painful reality, and it is about how, as in a Greek tragedy, a curse has been passed down through several generations. This book is the cry that shatters the curse.”—ADAM HOCHSCHILD
“Riveting. Scalding. Brilliant.”—SYD LEA
“Beautiful, rocketing prose.”—Tallahassee Democrat
“A disturbing story… told in a way designed to sear itself into your soul.”—Lansing State Journal
“If you doubt, read this book. If you’re stuck, read this book. If you’re numb, read this book. For it will pound into you that incest is real, that it is awful and that it happens everywhere, in every corner of society, behind some of the prettiest front doors.”—Healing Woman
“[Sue William Silverman’s] writing is almost too beautiful in describing the horrors. … She writes in an eloquent but bare-bones style.”—Sojourner: The Women’s Forum
“Heartwrenching … beautifully crafted.”—Austin American-Statesman
“The evocative detail makes it all the more disconcerting.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“A difficult subject in the hands of a skilled writer.”—Lansing Capital Times
“Harrowing and heartbreaking.”—Grand Rapids Press
“Extraordinary… vivid … written in perfect clarity.… I applaud Silverman for her remarkable psychological journey back to a chance at a healthy future.”—Kliatt
“Searing… riveting … compelling.”—Omaha World-Herald
“So vivid that it stirred more than a few of my own demons.… [Silverman’s] words scream the truth and her journey is real and powerful.”—Full Circle News
“A harrowing memoir of incest and survival.”—Feminism, Philosophy, and the Law
Also by Sue William Silverman
Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction
Because I Remember Terror, Father,
I Remember You
Winner of the Associated Writing Programs Award
for Creative Nonfiction
Because I Remember
Terror, Father,
I Remember You
SUE WILLIAM SILVERMAN
University of Georgia Press paperback edition, 1999
Published by the University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia 30602
© 1996 by Sue William Silverman
All rights reserved
Designed by Sandra Strother Hudson
Set in Fournier by Books International, Inc.
Printed and bound by Maple-Vail
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for
permanence and durability of the Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the
Council on Library Resources.
Printed in the United States of America
03 02 01 00 99 P 5 4 3 2 1
The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition
of this book as follows:
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Silverman, Sue William.
Because I remember terror, Father, I remember you /
Sue William Silverman.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-8203-1870-1 (alk. paper)
1. Silverman, Sue William. 2. Adult child sexual abuse victims—
United States—Biography. 3. Adult child abuse victims—United
States—Biography. I. Title.
HV6570.2.S55 1996
362.7’64’092—dc20 96-13706
[B]
ISBN 0-8203-2175-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
British Library Cataloging in Publication Data available
ISBN for this digital edition: 978-0-8203-3778-4
For Mack, with My Love
and
To Randy, for My Life
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
WITTGENSTEIN
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Prologue: I Remember You, Father
RED
The Egyptian Princess
Heartbeats in Stone
Night Spirits
New Jersey Girl
BLUE
Tuesdays
Two Small Rooms in Minnesota
The Girl on the Beach: Recovered
GREEN
Christmas Spirits
Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to:
Adam Hochschild, and D.W. Fenza and the Associated Writing Programs, for selecting my book for the 1995 creative nonfiction award;
Malcolm Call, for his insight, generosity, and courage;
Charles East, for his honesty and wisdom;
Michele Orwin, Naomi H. Wittes, and Nancy Lord, who faithfully accompanied my book on its journey.
Preface
From 1933 to 1953 my father was Chief Counsel to the Secretary of the Interior. He was architect of the preliminary papers establishing statehood for Alaska and Hawaii. He assisted in the plans for Philippine independence, helped create the Puerto Rican Commonwealth, and worked to implement home rule for the Virgin Islands, Guam, and Samoa. He also helped establish civilian rule of Japanese possessions after World War II. From 1954 to 1958 my father was president of the West Indies Bank and Trust Company. After leaving the West Indies, he became president of the Saddle Brook Bank and Trust Company in New Jersey. I have photographs of my father with President Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, Governor Richard J. Hughes of New Jersey, Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson.
My father was also a child molester. I know. Because he sexually molested me.
Prologue: I Remember You, Father
How can I help you?” Randy Groskind asks.
This is the first question Randy, a therapist in Atlanta, asks me when I enter his office. I’m too tired to answer. I sit rigid on a couch and stare at the plant by the window, wishing I were small enough, light enough, to curl up inside one of the cool green leaves and sleep. This exhaustion—I feel the actual dense weight of the answer to his question. My head feels too heavy to think. My mouth feels too heavy to speak.
I wonder: Do I extract the first snapshot from my mind in order to be lighter? Extract the first image, all the images that flip through my mind like snapshots. Not photographs. One lingers over photographs, studying shadows and patterns of light. The tongue slows over the three long syllables of “photograph” with time to study faces, relationships, with time to understand what the picture means. But a snapshot is a glance. Quickly, the tongue slaps the roof of the mouth, whispering “snap,” whispering “shot.” Then the snapshot implodes in my mind—a secret no one, I’ve told myself, should see. Over the years I’ve glimpsed fragments of these snapshots, but in the past months they are relentless. So it is now, finally, I want to capture the image: hold it, hold it, hold it. This is why I’m here in Randy’s office. For now, I believe, I must see a photograph of what my father did to me, see what he did to my body. And because I see terror, Father, I see and I remember you.
I see this. It is 1962. New Jersey.
My boyfriend has just finished a wrestling match, and I sit in his red Rambler, crammed between high school friends, smelling the sweaty gym on our clothes. It’s a late-winter afternoon, already dark. Outside the car window the school yard is frozen, white with snow. My family has moved here from the West Indies, and at first I missed Caribbean colors. But now I’m comforted by blankness, by ice, by white. Comforted by thick winter clothes cloaking my body, by the furry lining of my suede jacket, soft under my chin. Steam fogs the windows. This comforts me, too, for if I stay in this car forever no one will see me; no one will be able to touch me. But as the car turns a corner toward my home my friends’ bodies press against me. Suddenly I no longer hear their voices. I no longer hear sound. This pressure. This smell of sweat. I am no longer in this car. I think I will stop breathing.
I am in my bedroom of baby-blue walls with matching spread and ruffle. The room is decorated with faded gardenia corsages from school dances, paper Hawaiian leis, silver ribbons and glass beads, red satin hearts with gold glitter—a young teenager’s room. But in the deepest moment of night, the room grays. No, wait. On my headboard is a six-inch plastic Christmas tree—a toy. Every night my father winds it. Red, green, blue, white lights sweep the ceiling and walls, closer, the bed, as the tree revolves, closer, revolves flecks of light on my body. The tree will unwind, finish, stop, before he does. Globes of light darken. The snapshot blackens to negative. You’re right, Father. No one will ever see us. No one will ever know.
I glance at Randy. Is he the one who will finally see me, who will finally know? Is he the one to whom I can entrust the snapshots of my secret mind? But if Randy sees them, if he sees me, surely he’ll think I’m terrible, evil, unworthy. He won’t want me to return to his office again, ever.
How can I help you? he’d asked me.
Randy is quiet. His office is quiet. The soft gaze of his blue eyes soothes me. I wonder which snapshots I must reveal in order for him to understand the exhaustion.
Patiently he awaits an answer.
RED
The Egyptian Princess
Washington, D.C.: 1950
I am four and pretend I am an Egyptian princess. For this game I arrange planks of wood across my parents’ brown-and-white checked bedspread. The wood becomes a tributary of the Nile River, and as I flee along the bank, escaping, green reeds brush my legs. Someone is chasing me. Downstairs in the living room my father builds furniture with his electric saw, a gleaming metal table with a round, jagged blade, whirring as it nears the wood, whirring as it severs a plank gripped in a vise. I believe I hear the wood screaming, the metal slicing faster. I run faster. Metal slits my back. The blade against bare skin. My father accidentally cuts his hand on the blade and there is blood everywhere. I must slip off the bank to wash in the river because I see it: blood on my body. The Egyptian princess is gone.
I fold and refold my handkerchiefs. I trace a finger across white embroidered initials on lace: SWS. I press my face against a handkerchief decorated with pink flowers as if I can smell them. A blue and red handkerchief shows cartoon pictures of “Blondie.” I have a magenta handkerchief with a white filigree design. I love all my pretty handkerchiefs. But because I can’t bear to soil them, I never use them. Yet I still hand-wash each one in the sink. I watch them dry. When my mother sets up her ironing board I stand on a stool and iron and re-iron each handkerchief until it’s perfect. I’m scared I might iron wrinkles into the material, rather than iron wrinkles out. As I iron I sprinkle the cotton with water stored in one of my father’s old bay rum aftershave bottles that my mother saved for her ironing water. The residue of bay rum scent makes me dizzy. I don’t understand why the scent reminds me of nightmares, reminds me of night. Of metal blades. Of an Egyptian princess fleeing. I try to concentrate on ironing my handkerchiefs. This is all. It is an imperative that the handkerchiefs be perfect.
I spend hours organizing my bureau until it is neat and perfect, too. I arrange ribbons, anklets, undershirts, scraps of lace from my mother’s sewing kit. I have seven pairs of underpants with the names of days embroidered in different colors: red for Monday, yellow for Tuesday, green for Wednesday, pink for Thursday … White for Sunday. This pair scares me. Sundays scare me. I bury it under the pile of underwear. Maybe if I lose this pair … maybe if I never wear Sunday again….
Except when he travels, my father is home all day Sunday. We go for outings in our black Chevrolet. While my mother learns to drive, my father is in a rage because she drives too slowly, wavering along country roads in Virginia. The car is hot and stifling. The gray felt seat feels scratchy under my thighs. My sister Kiki, two and a half years older than I, fidgets. She rolls the window up, down. She snaps the lid of the ashtray on the rear armrest. She will not speak to me. She will not smile at me. Usually Kiki disappears for hours to avoid me, avoid all of us. So today, trapped with her family, she must pretend she is far away from us all.
In the trunk is a wicker basket with a picnic lunch. Later, when we stop to eat, my father will fault sandwiches too warm, chicken not cooked right, deviled eggs not creamy enough. My father turns his wrath first on the food, then on the ants, then on the heat, then on us. The woman and two girls will sit in silence on a pretty checkered blanket, scared to object. No—my mother and I will sit in silence. My sister will wander off to a nearby stream. Or she will climb a tree—one precariously high—with no fear for her safety, while I am scared of everything, especially scared something bad will happen to my sister. And while I long to be like her, I know I never will be. Or, I wish I could bask in the reflected glory of my brave sister’s ability to climb the highest tree or sneak out the back door into the alley after dark. But I am ignored by her, and the more I persist, the more insistently I am refused.
My mother makes a stab at fun on our Sunday outing. She teaches my sister and me a song: “Whistle while you work. / Hitler is a jerk. / Mussolini is a meany …” We sing rounds: “Row, row, row your boat …” My father does not join in. My sister’s voice will be the first to fade, then my mother’s. Finally, my thin voice trails to a slow halt. I sigh and close my eyes. Or stare up at the roof of the car. If I look down I’ll get carsick and throw up. Please, don’t let me throw up. I hate to eat; I hate to brush my teeth; I hate to throw up. I don’t understand why my mouth hates to feel anything inside it—sometimes not even words. I can be speechless for hours, and if I concentrate hard enough I can pretend I don’t have a mouth.
But on this particular Sunday we don’t reach a picnic site. Even if my father is silent, his rage is not. He’s not in control of the car and he has to be, he must be. My mother must feel this rage, radiating like heat against glass. Perhaps the steering wheel scorches her fingers. Perhaps a white searing light blinds her eyes. Slowly we drift onto the shoulder. Beneath the tires I sense soft, tentative ground. The car wobbles. Then it topples down an embankment, rolling over and over. I hear glass shatter and feel the sun strike my face. I pitch against my sister, sharp elbows and knees. Green smells of the gouged earth tumble past the crash of metal.
When the car is still I see treetops and sky. I am breathing. We all are breathing, collapsed against smashed windows and dented doors. My parents ask if we, their two daughters, are all right. Yes, we say, fine really. They don’t think to check for major injury. But perhaps they wouldn’t know where or how to actually inspect for damage anyway. A moment later, comforting hands reach for me—a woman’s hands—helping me from the car window. It is these hands that gently examine my body for bruises or broken bones. But the touch is not scary; it is concerned and caring.
Our house is silent. In our family we don’t know words to soothe each other’s hurts; we lack a vocabulary designated for comfort. My mother is in the bedroom with the door shut. I know she is under the covers, the curtains drawn, her eyes closed and sleeping. My sister slips out the back door to play in the alley. And I—I trudge up the stairs to my bedroom and lie on my bed, trying to imagine the Egyptian princess. But today I’m
too exhausted to imagine fleeing along the banks of the Nile. Today, my dolls and my handkerchiefs don’t interest me. I hear my father follow up the wood stairs, this the only sound in the house. His steps are slow and measured. I imagine his hand skimming the rail. He probably plans to check on my mother, but he passes the door to her room. I wonder if she hears him, hears his footsteps pass her room and near mine.
My door is open. I lie on my side, and I glance at him as he stands in the doorway. I am surprised to see him. It is still early, way too early for him to kiss me good-night. His lips are parted—at first I think he’s smiling—so I smile back, but his lips are too tight to smile. Until I do. Then his soften. And my smile—mine—I believe this is why he now enters my room. My smile is an invitation for him, for you, Daddy. I’m happy to see you. He must know this. I believe this, believe he continues to walk toward me because I smile.
He sits on the bed and strokes my back, this now the only sound, the friction of his hand on cotton. But for a moment so quick it is barely time, I feel—no, rather, it is my body that realizes—the difference between the way the woman had touched me earlier and his touch now. His touch—his—feels more like a stranger’s touch than hers, the stranger’s, had. There is a distance, a coolness to his touch, and I wish it were the woman still stroking me. He curls up beside me, his stomach against my back, and holds me tight-tight against him. His breath disturbs the hair at the nape of my neck. “I love you,” he whispers. I believe he does this because I have smiled, he does this because he loves me. Yes, he loves me so much. He holds me tighter. His breath is harder. His tongue—I feel the tip of his tongue on my neck. His fingers grip my chin, and I think of the vise on his electric saw that grips the wood, steadily turning my face toward his. His tongue feels scary inside my … but I have forgotten the word for that part of my face. Moments later I imagine my mouth itself has disappeared. I’m not awake, I am sleeping, and I am tumbling down an embankment, not to the ground, but through time and space. I am the Egyptian princess. Exhausted, no longer able to flee, I have fallen asleep believing I am hidden in a deep thicket of reeds by the bank of the Nile River.
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