Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You

by Sue William Silverman

  It is now, at this moment, I feel him, the other him, leaving the bank, my father, who knows now is the time he must come to get me. He is turning off the lights in the bank. He is locking the wrought-iron grill behind him. He is walking toward the car. He will be the one to save me—the only one capable of saving me. And as the sailor bends closer I believe I see, from the corner of my eye, headlights from my father’s car beam up the street toward the Grand Hotel, searching for me. He knows I am calling to him, knows he must come for me. The only way I can stop dancing with the sailor is with the help of my father. I have promised my father that nothing would ever happen to my body, which is me.

  I pull away from the sailor. Back away. Immediately he lets go, doesn’t force me to stay. Instead he is smiling, asking if he has done something wrong. I shake my head and hold out the handkerchief, returning it. He says, no, keep it, it’s for you, I want you to have it. I’m not sure I understand. I thought the present meant… Maybe he only wants to dance. But I feel the headlights, closer. I turn and run.

  Driving up the mountain with my father, I watch the harbor. The moon, or perhaps it is the bright headlights of my father’s car, weaken the lights outlining the masts of the Danmark. The horizon from which the ship sailed is lost to the sky. Then the road winds around the mountain, and the harbor is no longer visible. My father holds my hand and squeezes it. He pulls me closer, trailing his fingers up my leg to the beginning of my thigh, there, and without hesitation I do what I’ve been taught, separate my legs, and he can’t can’t can’t wait until we get home. His fingers touch my underpants and he must… He stops the car on the dark street. He pulls off my underpants and unzips his slacks. He edges me down on the seat, on my back, and leans over me. He is so close to me, he is all I can see, and that part of him that he wants me to love is hard against me, not yet in me but against me, pinning me to him, and I can’t move. “Tell me you hated it,” he says. “The dance.”

  “Yes, Daddy, I hated it.”

  He kisses me and touches my body. “You want to be with me.”

  “Yes, Daddy,” I whisper.

  And then he is pinning me deeper. The top of my head bangs the door handle as he does what he does when he has to be inside of me. I concentrate on that, on the top of my head hitting metal as he loves me loves me loves me almost more than either of us can manage. He does it, and as he does it the ship, the clipper ship from Denmark—I feel it sailing far away from me. But wait, I think. It has to wait: I realize I forgot to thank the sailor for the present. I have to thank him. But he is gone, and I scream, “Daddy, stop it”—and I mean the ship. I think I mean the ship, that I want him to stop the ship from sailing away, want him to bring the sailor back. But my father doesn’t hear me. And he will never be able to stop it.

  The next morning my mother comes in my bedroom and throws the silk handkerchief on my bed. I had dropped it in the car the night before. She asks who gave it to me. I tell her a sailor—just a sailor—I don’t know his name. Did you dance with him much? she wants to know. “No, only just once,” I say. Did he try to kiss you? she asks. “No, Mom, of course not,” I say, laughing. Did he hold you? He must have kissed you. “No, Mom, no, no, no.” I begin to scream—but no, it’s a laugh. I laugh harder. “Nothing happened.” She insists something did, I must have done something or he wouldn’t have given me such a present. But all I can do is pound my fists on the bed and laugh.

  At least once a week, when my mother is not watching, I steal a penny out of her wallet. Back in my room I retrieve my Chinese puzzle box that I keep hidden under my doll clothes. The box has a secret chamber that releases the lock. I spring it open. And each week I add another penny to my collection.

  My mother is too sick to get out of bed. I hurry home from school every afternoon to sit with her while she listens to her radio, waiting for the news. I press cold washclothes on her forehead. I stroke her hand. Nothing I do helps her feel better. The doctor, she says, must be called. For days, every day, he comes to see her, even though every day she worsens—with an illness given no name or explanation. Only when the doctor is examining her, are her eyes brighter, bluer. On his way out the door, I hear her thin voice urging him back tomorrow.

  My father views illness as an unwelcome intrusion into his need for order and control, so he spends less time at home, eating most of his meals at the hotels. In the emergency my sister spends more time at home, baking chocolate cakes for our breakfasts and cream puffs, in the shape of swans, for our dinners. She arranges the swans on a mirror while I set the table, using our best linen, china, and silver. I light candles and we sit across from each other, just the two of us. Slowly, we pluck swans off the mirror. Slowly, we disassemble each one. With small, delicate bites we munch wings, necks, heads, tails, before slowly licking cream from the bodies. When the mirror reflects no more swans, my sister and I gaze at each other, stuffed and satisfied by this quiet dinner, by this quiet house, by this quiet night. I drift asleep, dizzy on sugar. I wake up dizzy, go to school dizzy, after eating a slab of chocolate cake, craving this dizziness, this distraction, which helps me to forget everything else.

  The movie Limelight, with Charlie Chaplin, plays at the cinema. It is the story of a young ballerina who suffers hysterical paralysis and tries to commit suicide. An older man, Chaplin, saves her, then continues to nurture her, love her, cure her. After the movie my weeping is uncontrollable—/am. I am inconsolable. This man Charlie Chaplin must be my savior, even though it is far from possible for me to voice from what it is I need to be saved. This, this older man, is the man who must be my father, my lover, my … I barely know what I want or need from him, but the need is boundless. I am restless. Anxious. I can’t eat. I’m unable to sleep. For days I can’t leave the house.

  Even when I finally go outside again and lie in a field shaded by tamarind trees, he is with me. He never leaves. I hear him in the rattle of pods on the trees. I feel him in the grass beneath my legs, hear him as spiders strum their silky webs. I feel safe here, with him in this field. He will keep me safe—my savior.

  One evening while my mother is still sick and my father is out Maria calls to tell me she is running away from home. She wants me to meet her in Emancipation Park and bring her food. I gather the remains of a chocolate cake, a loaf of bread, and a couple of 7-Ups before hurrying down the mountain. She waits for me on a wrought-iron bench. Light from the Grand Hotel spills across the park, and immediately I see that her nose is bloody and beginning to swell. I know her father has hit her. She has been crying—she’s not now, but her lashes are wet. I tell her the first thing we must do is clean off her nose, and I lead her across the park to the harbor.

  She’s not feeling well and lies on the dock. I’d wrapped the cake in a dish towel, which I remove and dip into the water to clean her. When I dab at her nose she winces from the pressure. We need help. We need ice to stop the swelling, but there’s no place downtown to get it where I won’t be questioned. Billy is the only person I can think of who might help us, but I’d have to go to the Grand or the Hotel 1829 to use a phone and, again, I would be questioned.

  Maria says she’s going to be sick. Quickly, I try to open the 7-Up for her but realize I’ve forgotten an opener. I feel terrible, angry at myself for being so stupid. She rolls onto her stomach and vomits into the harbor, careful not to make a mess. I tell her I have to get help—maybe the police or a doctor—that she can’t run away with a bloody nose, and there’s nowhere to run anyway. On an island, where would she go?

  She wants to stow away on an ocean liner, she says. Sometimes, she says, she sits in her bedroom window for hours staring at the horizon, imagining herself crossing it, crossing to the other side. “I hate it here,” she says. “I don’t know why we have to live here. I wish we could go back to San Juan.”

  But I don’t see how she can leave. Tonight no cruise ships are in port. Except for lights from the Grand and the faint sound of music from its bar, the downtown is deserted.

&n
bsp; “What’d you do?” I say, motioning toward her nose.

  “My daddy goes through my stuff and found this math test. He was mad I only got a B. And—I don’t know—I guess I got mad back at him. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Is he still mad?”

  She shrugs. “I mean he just slapped me—and I kind of tripped and fell. You know how clumsy I am.”

  I know her father is still mad. And I know she shouldn’t return home until morning. So I ask her if she has any money, thinking we can take a taxi to the hotel, where Billy might be able to sneak her into one of the cabanas.

  But Maria has no money. So I say I’ll have to risk going to the Grand to call Billy, see if he’ll come down the mountain and get us. After all, we can’t stay on the dock all night.

  She shrugs okay, that I can call Billy.

  I cross the park to the Grand, but run into my father. He is under the canopy in front of the hotel saying good-night to a man and a woman who work for him. As I approach, the two move off toward Government Hill, and my father puts his hand on my arm. But we have nothing to say. We stare at each other speechless, almost shyly, it seems, or embarrassed. Because of who we are to each other? What can he say to this girl who’s his daughter, but isn’t—this girl who’s a stranger? He has no idea who I am or what I might do, or be, when I’m away from him. So at first he doesn’t even know how to ask why I’m here, perhaps suspecting I’ve met Billy or one of the boys from school. I don’t want to tell him about Maria, but—my mind races—the truth or a lie?—which would be safer? With his hand on my arm, I feel immobilized. He will not let go until I tell him something; I know this. Maria is sick, I finally say.

  I lead him to the harbor where he kneels beside her. While one hand holds her chin, he gently examines her nose with the other. I see her neck strain from his touch, but only barely. I know she won’t tell him to stop either. I look away from them—see only night. At night the horizon is lost to opaque space. I know Maria will never be able to reach it, not even during the day when she can see it. The island is too still. Banana boats gently knock against the dock, but this is the only sound.

  He asks who did this to her. She shakes her head. She won’t say. “One of the islanders,” he guesses, even though he sees himself as their champion, the one to come here to “save” them from poverty. “Which one? I’ll have him arrested.”

  Maria shakes her head harder. “No,” she says, “nothing like that.”

  “Tell me,” he says. “I’ll take care of this. It was one of the boys from school?”

  “No,” I say, my voice angry. “It was her father. That’s who did this.”

  His look of disbelief is sincere, I know this. He rocks back on his heels before standing. “Her father would never do this,” he says. There’s not a shred of irony on his face or in his voice, and once again I know that I have no idea who this man is. It is this that scares me, at the moment, more than anything. “I know him.”

  “Why not?” I say. “Fathers—”

  He whirls toward me so fast I think he might hit me. “What?” he says. “Tell me.”

  But my throat is stuffed with the hard, cold sound of his voice and I look away from him, saying nothing.

  “I know you girls. You got into some trouble with boys and you’re lying. Tell me.”

  He wants a name. He wants a lie. If I could have thought of a lie, a lie without implicating others, I would tell it, just to get this over with. But short of saying I’d bloodied Maria’s nose myself which, if I thought he’d believe, I would have, I think of nothing.

  “Anyway, what difference does it make what happened?” I say. “She needs a doctor.”

  “That will be up to her parents. It’s not our place. Of course, they’ll call the doctor.”

  He says he’ll take her home. She doesn’t object. She, as well as I, knows the futility.

  Maria and I silently wait at the dock while my father brings the car around. She lies in the back seat, I sit in front, and we drive deserted streets past Market Square, past French Town. At Maria’s house all the lights are off. No one has waited up for her; no one has gone looking. I know there will be no call to a doctor, but I say nothing, no more suggestions, abandoning her, yes, I know this. As soon as she is out of the car, my father drives off, not waiting to see whether she makes it safely inside. But of course that’s where the danger is, inside. So why wait?

  My father is angry—I know this, too. Angry because he believes I’ve lied? Or is his anger darker? Does he think I’ve just judged him, not Maria’s father? But perhaps he doesn’t think about this. Perhaps he doesn’t think about himself and me at all. Perhaps he’s more truly lost even than I.

  But my own rage is now emerging—although I don’t understand it as rage. Rather, it feels like suffocation. I can barely breathe. I can’t swallow. As the car curves up the mountain, I am silenced by the strength of this feeling. We both are silenced. But I can feel my father’s hands grip the steering wheel, feel the force of his hand shifting gears, hear the grating of metal as the engine strains against the incline all the way to our house.

  Tonight he doesn’t wait for me to go to bed first, doesn’t pretend he comes to my bedroom simply to say good-night. Tonight I will be punished for what I have done. There is rage in his hands as he yanks off my shirt, rage in his heart as he yanks off my shorts. He will see no contradiction. No inconsistency. Soon, neither will I. This makes perfect sense to him. Even in his rage he calls this love and believes this, this, and only this will absorb and blunt the rage exploding out the tops of our skulls. And he is right. In terror my rage peaks, and my rage, now mine, knifes away into Dina, lovingly transmogrified into desire, and she, oh how she craves him. His hand grips her ponytail, slamming her head up and down, her mouth around his penis. And I … I float far away from Dina and am blessedly safe, safe with my daddy who loves me.

  It is morning. Early. No one is yet awake, but my father is still in bed with me. I am naked; we are both naked. Perhaps because my mother is sick, this is the first time he stays the night. It is like the time at Monhegan Island when we were outside on the beach. Again I feel too exposed, too shy. Sun terrifies me. All night I thought I heard the spinneret of a spider weaving a marquisette net to hide us. But it is too flimsy. The harsh sun will melt it. I have no will and nowhere to hide. As my father wakes he pulls me toward him. And when he enters me I feel as if he seeps through every vein beneath my skin.

  After school I climb Government Hill that leads to the 99 Steps and Blackbeard’s Hill and Castle. I zigzag steep slopes, easier than walking straight up. Magenta bougainvillea vines droop over whitewashed stucco fences with wrought-iron gates. I press my palms flat against the whitewash, then lean against the wall to color my skin and clothes chalk-white, pretending I am invisible, that my only existence is the imprint of my body in the whitewashed wall.

  Finally, by summer, I no longer believe in my existence and believe I am disappearing, deep inside sleep. In my whitened image I am fading, am almost asleep. My diminished, whitewashed body is will-less, unable to withstand the physical force of sleep that seems to drift toward me like the trade winds, slowly, as if gathering velocity from across the sea. I am powerless. I want to be powerless. I welcome sleep, its massive, numbing presence flowing toward me from the horizon. I watch it daily, motionless at one end of its gray, engulfing path. Every day I am more drowsy and soon all I can do is lie in my bed and wait.

  When it arrives I feel as if it is lifting me, transporting me on wind currents until I am no longer here. Voices grow hazy. Faces and objects blur. Does someone call, searching for me? No longer do I recognize the sound of my name. In this sheer strength of sleep—as profound as a language of utter silence—all other movement, all other sound, all whispers of dark Caribbean nights are deflected. I am unable to hear. I am carried too far away from my mahogany bed even to see my sleeping body veiled in marquisette netting.

  Yet those moments when I skim the surface
of sleep I feel our maid, Sylvanita, dampen my arms and face and neck with a cool balm scented with khuskhus. It doesn’t wake me. The scent only seems to deepen with sleep.

  After three months I awake. I awake slowly, sluggishly, not refreshed from sleep, still groggy, struggling to breathe. I stand outside on the terrace, stunned by sunlight. It sears the rims of my eyes. I gaze at the fathomless, indecipherable sea: It is still here. The yellow-orange sun still blisters the Caribbean sky. Right before sunset, limestone dust seems to converge high in the air, blocking cool trade winds for just that moment. Tiny particles burn the sky red with heat.

  All year I wait for Carnival, when the island itself seems decorated with masks and feathers and flowers. The park is crisscrossed with colored lights, while Carnival booths are adorned with crepe and palm fronds. I watch the dancers, hear the rush and rustle of madras skirts, the pong of steel-drum bands. I pass booths selling coconut balls, fried plantains, orange wine, stewed cashews, sugar cake. I buy a guava ice and stand under a lignum vitae tree licking it, watching the moko-jumbis, invisible spirits who walk on stilts. They wear mirrored costumes so no one can see them. When you look at them you see yourself. I imagine my own body camouflaged with tiny glass mirrors.

  After I finish the ice I cross the park to a beautiful booth draped in silver scarves and gold lights. An old woman, her hair wrapped in a head tie, leans against the counter next to a hurricane lantern. The sign tacked to the booth reads: CUP OF SNAKE WEED TEA/.25—GLASS OF CLAIRIN/.75.

  I place four quarters on the counter. “Can I have some?” I ask. I’ve never heard of the drinks, but I like the sound of the names.