Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You

by Sue William Silverman

  She takes only one quarter, telling me I’m too young for clairin but she’ll give me a cup of the tea.

  From a pitcher she pours a dark liquid into a tiny china cup. Drinking it, I seem to taste tree roots after a tropical storm. At first the taste is mild, but at the bottom of the cup is a thick, rich residue. And I wonder if this is a black magic potion. I think it must be, and I wonder if I will now have secret powers.

  Returning the cup to her I smile, thanking her.

  “You like it?” she says.

  “Yes.”

  She nods and tells me I have a pretty smile.

  My fingers rush to my lips as if to feel this smile. This concrete information seems overwhelmingly important. A pretty smile. On my own face. Now, I don’t so much want to be a moko-jumbi as I want to be able to look at a moko-jumbi, at his mirrors, in order to see this smile, one I myself never noticed.

  Slowly I move past thinning crowds. This last night of Carnival, booths are being dismantled, decorations folded for next year, and I realize I don’t want Carnival to end. I want to live here in this Carnival with moko-jumbis and with steel-drum bands. I want to live with the woman and her snake weed tea. If she feeds me weed tea every morning I will smile. But Carnival is over. I fear I’ll never see this woman again. She has given me a special tea that has given me a special, secret power—my special smile. Is she the only one who can see my true-true smile?

  Why does my father see something, someone different? I have a special smile that my own daddy can’t see, even when he is very close to me.

  My mother’s illness continues, and my father finally arranges for her to see a doctor in New York City. She will love this, I know; she will love to be able to see a new doctor, let a new doctor see her. My parents will stay in my Aunt Patsy and Uncle Esey’s apartment while they come to the island to care for my sister and me. But I am told of these arrivals and departures only the night before. Terror that my mother will never return becomes rage, becomes a tantrum. What I don’t know is that this is the last tantrum I will ever have. By the time my parents return, I will have outgrown them. But I must have this last one, for I believe if I scream loudly enough my mother will hear me and won’t leave me. I believe if I fling myself against the bureau and cut my forehead, this will keep her home.

  Nothing will keep her home.

  After my parents are gone, I am quiet. The house is quiet, recovering from my kicks and punches. I lie on the couch and watch a shaft of sun sprinkle my sister’s canary in light. On the table beside the cage are my mother’s watercolor paints and unfinished paintings. They are very good. They are almost her life. But they aren’t enough for her life. Neither am I. Or my sister. Or my father. We are not enough to hold her attention. It is her illness she nurtures, that she watches develop and grow.

  Without my parents my own life feels diminished, even though Esey tries to cheer me. He reads to me and tells me stories. He plays marbles with me, listens to my make-believe games. The marbles are pirates saving maidens in distress. The pirates rescue me and sail me to New York City. Esey and I play with my dolls, my five Annettes, dressing them in hats, plastic shoes, frilly dresses. We pack their tiny cardboard suitcases for their trip to New York to visit my parents—which is where / want to be. So even my Uncle Esey can’t truly cheer me as I wait for my parents. Every day I write letters to tell them I miss them.

  At night, Esey tucks me in my bed and tells me a story. I’m afraid to let him leave me, and I make him promise to stay in my room until he’s positive I’m sleeping, protecting me from spirits that hide in folds of mosquito nets, that hide behind shadows in the darkest corner of the room.

  But Esey isn’t strong enough to protect me from these spirits. Esey can’t hear the danger in the flap of bird wings that shatters the quiet of night. Only my own father truly knows how to watch over me, knows where my body is and how to protect it…

  It is late afternoon when I walk to town for the mail to see if there are letters from my mother and father. At the bank, where our mail is delivered, I stop to talk to the people who work for my father. There is a letter from my parents, but I will wait to read it, postpone the excitement until I am home. By waiting, I will imagine all the wonderful things the letter will say: how they miss me and love me and will be home soon. When I leave the bank I run into Patti, who invites me to Katz’s for a Coke—her treat. Then we pause to admire the display of lipsticks on the counter.

  By the time I head back up the mountain it is dusk, and under the trees, almost night. Partway up is a low cement wall fencing an overgrown park. Because I feel bouyant, happy with the letter, which I stick in the elastic waistband of my shorts, I jump up on the ledge and do a few ballet steps, balancing, knowing I can’t fall. My arms are outstretched, bent at the elbows, as I bend and weave.

  I do not see the man, nor do I hear him. A cool hand, high up my thigh, stops me. A friendly voice offers assistance: I might fall; he will catch me. His arm has a blue tattoo. A sailor. At first I think to smile my special weed tea smile. But, no, he would not see it. He is switchblade thin and unsmiling, and I stand rigid, staring into pale, frosty eyes.

  His fingers are beneath my underpants now, and all I can think is that they’re cold. I feel as if I have stood here forever, but it can’t be—it’s just that the island night is slowing toward sleep. I feel this warm sleep of the island at my back, pressing against me like a sultry wind. I am lifted from the ledge. I am carried into the underbrush. My shorts are pulled from my body. And the sailor, his lips against my ear, whispers harsh words unheard before that describe my body. He is angry—the rape is too smooth for him, too easy—this girl’s body is not what it first seemed. No obstacle leads into her body, so she is a cuntcuntcunt. Yes, sailor, you are the only one who knows my secret: You are not my first lover.

  He is gone. I pull on my underpants and shorts and walk home. My walk is different, though. I can feel it—the slow-slow movement of my legs. My knees are looser. My hips feel slightly broader. I am molting. With every step, pieces of Dina slough from my skin and slip to my feet. I step past them, leaving them, walking away from this childbody that now seems nothing but useless trouble. In the raw tissue remaining on my skin from where Dina has eroded, the first cells of Celeste form.

  Back up the mountain, I push open the rusty gate to Blackbeard’s Castle. I follow the overgrown path that leads to the round stone fortress and sit on the stoop. Through tree branches and bushes I see the lights from my house, but I am hidden. My aunt and uncle don’t know where I am. No one knows where I am. The night is lit with a tropical moon, but even the moon can’t see me.

  No one can see me. For now someone else breathes inside my chest. I feel a small throb in my temple. I lean back and press my head hard against the metal door of the fortress to steady myself, a self that seems to be shifting, evolving, moving, flowing. My hands, loose in my lap, curl into fists.

  It is Celeste’s hands that are strong, hands that make fists. Silky blonde hair billows down my back. My own pale lips turn the color of garnet, as Celeste slowly usurps my childhood body … and I know that with one strong breath Celeste is the one who can banish danger. With one blow of her fist she can smash the metal door and take possession of the stone fortress. For she is stronger than pirates, stronger than sailors who prowl the island at night. Stronger than my uncle. Stronger than any father. Stronger than any weed tea or secret potion. She is the one who now protects me. When my father returns he will find her, find Celeste, a girl unafraid of night spirits. She is a cunt. She is a slut. Much bolder than Dina. Celeste will look all rapists straight in the eye and smile.

  I stand up and head toward my house. I touch the waistband of my shorts. The letter, that I no longer need to read, has vanished.

  My sister is in eighth grade. Now too old to attend the Antilles School, she leaves the island to attend a private school in the States. Although she spent little time at home, the house seems lonely without her. Always I waited fo
r her to explode into the house, if only to change her clothes, before again exploding out. Her energy awed and overwhelmed me. The more she raced across the island, the more I felt immobilized, waiting for her to come back. Now, after she’s gone, I search every desk and bureau drawer in her bedroom, believing I’ll find a memento that will reveal my sister’s heart. Kiki, what are your secrets? Who do you become when you so easily slip away from our house? In some unswept corner of her room I want to discover her secrets as if I can discover her, an essence of her—to steal, to know, to understand, to become.

  I find nothing. No secrets. No clues. Her room is swept bare. The dresser drawers are empty. Her closet holds only a thin rattle of hangers.

  At first my mother seems better after her return from New York, but she’s still not well. While some days she paints for hours before returning to bed, other days the paints are untouched and the shutters in her room remain shut. Finally, she decides it is the island that causes her illness, and we must return to the States right away. Besides, she believes Kiki will be better off living with her family. So six months after my sister leaves, we prepare to follow. My father arranges for the bank, the West Indies Bank and Trust Company, to be sold to Chase Manhattan.

  As much as I once wanted to leave the States and live in the tropics, I now, just as much, want to leave the tropics and live in a cold, cold climate. I want to wear cashmere sweaters. I want to watch swirling snowflakes and skid on ice. I have an unshakable confidence in new homes, new environments, new habitats, new beginnings. I am also excited about seeing my sister. Surely she has missed me and will be happy to see me, although her letters give no indication. Besides, I am tired of my island friends, or so I pretend. Most truly I am afraid to feel close to them. I later learn I will always be relieved to move, especially away from people and things I most care about.

  Still, I spend long hours saying good-bye to my friends. I say good-bye to guinea grass, hibiscus flowers, coconut palms, royal poincianas. Flying away on Caribair from St. Thomas to Puerto Rico, I sit by the window and watch the Caribbean flash viridian, aquamarine, turquoise, amethyst: blue. I say good-bye to the Caribbean, to red flowers, to green volcanic mountains. I am sad, after all. I believe I see a small girl standing on the shoreline, waving. She waves to me. She beckons. Wait. She stands alone, the hem of her skirt, strands of her hair swirling in the wind. Sunlight pushes against her back, and she runs down the beach, following the shadow of the plane. The plane veers north. Soon she is left far, far behind. I press my nose to the window, but the beach is deserted. The island vanishes. I don’t want to lose her. But I already have.

  New Jersey Girl

  Glen Rock, New Jersey: 1958-1964

  Winter. St. Thomas’s red, green, blue mute to white snow, brown trees, New Jersey asphalt. An opaque iron sky replaces crimson sunsets, usurps colors that stream from the red core of the sun. Our house has no porch, no veranda. All the windows are shut tight. Only one door leads to my blue bedroom, where I now sit on my bed, staring at foreign feet, huge and plodding in thick white socks and heavy saddle shoes. I can’t wear my buffalo-hide sandals and hadn’t realized I would miss them. The French madras jumpers are packed away. I wear a blue-green wool checked skirt and matching crew-neck sweater. My body feels weighted in clothes. My hair is in a tight ponytail, tugging my scalp. It’s my first day of school. I am in seventh grade. And I dread it.

  The red brick school is divided into junior and senior high. My sister turns one way, I the other. I pass rows of metal lockers, not even searching for mine, not wanting to abandon, not even unzipping, my brown suede jacket trimmed with white fur. I’m afraid I’ll look wrong, afraid I am wrong, afraid my body, away from sunlight and sea, has a terrible odor. While I have no particular thoughts, at this moment, of last night, I have a vague sense that if I unzip my jacket something no one is supposed to see will be visible.

  I want to be invisible. I stare at the linoleum floor, awed by the number of students, by crowded halls, by slamming lockers, by the rush of scuffing feet. Kids brush past, saying nothing. I grip a piece of paper that tells me which homeroom to locate, but I can’t find it and am afraid to ask. Worse, I must change rooms every hour, for every class. I’m confused by all the identical doors, the identical rooms. I want the large, open, quiet windows overlooking the Caribbean. I want the waves of Magens Bay lapping, the scent of ginger flowers, the mist of egrets winging toward the mangrove swamp at dusk. I want my old schoolroom. My seat will be empty. I want my seat back. I know if I take one more step along this corridor I will scream. But no, I would never scream. Rather, I simply want to disappear, wanting no one to witness my desolation.

  Bells have rung. Everyone else is seated when I finally stand in front of the class and hand the piece of paper to the homeroom teacher. My gaze doesn’t leave my saddle shoes. They look too new, and I wish I’d scuffed them outside on the pavement. The teacher introduces me, tells everyone I’m from St. Thomas, as if this is exciting news. I know no one in the classroom will agree. Here, everyone must be the same, look the same, be from the same place, to be accepted. Without being told, I know this. Mortified, I grip my notebook to my chest. There is silence in the room. No one shouts a hello. More than anything, they’re probably bored. The teacher asks if I want to remove my jacket—haven’t I found my locker yet? I might want to hang my jacket in my locker. I know I must appear a dimwit, as if I’m unable to understand the language. I know, I know I must remove my jacket or be further humiliated, but I’m holding the notebook. I’m afraid I’ll drop it if I try to unzip the jacket. Besides, I don’t want to remove it. I want to hide my body; my body doesn’t want to be here. If it is safely tucked inside this jacket it can pretend it’s not here; it is still on the beach in St. Thomas. I am paralyzed now, unable to move. And by not being more responsive to the teacher, I know I make her angry. She points to an empty desk toward the back of the room. I slink toward it.

  By mistake I’m assigned to an advanced science class. Again I awkwardly stand in front of the room as the teacher questions my credentials, adding that if I think I can handle the advanced class he’ll be pleased to try. No. I shake my head, no, still unable to speak. Can’t the teacher see by looking at me I would fail an advanced class? Can’t he see I’ll fail even the regular class, possibly fail everything? So far today I have taken no notes. In fact I feel that I don’t understand the language. I am too confused by all the students in all the desks, confused by shuffling feet and paper, by hot, steamy classrooms.

  As I turn to leave the science room, she enters: Jane. Even though I don’t of course truly know her name now, surely I must guess her name simply by her presence. For it is a New Jersey name, just as she is a New Jersey girl. Her name is clean and simple, confident in the impact of its unconfusing syllable, a name with the feel of a firm handshake. I want Jane, this blonde-haired girl named Jane, for my friend forever, for life. For the first time all day I smile. She stares straight through me as if I am glass. And my body—yes, the feeling is in my body—feels as dark and as grim as a fever.

  Right before lunch I find my locker, finally ready to relinquish my jacket. I’ve never opened a combination lock and am struggling, not able to understand how it works. My notebook, books, and jacket are by my feet—I’ve piled them almost on top of my shoes because I’m afraid to take up too much space in the crowded corridor.

  It is then I see her. Not Jane this time but someone else, another girl. I happen to glance up and for the briefest of moments I believe I’ve been flung back to the islands. This girl also skulks along the edge of the corridor, as I have all morning, her black skin a shadow among white faces. She wears no matching sweater-and-skirt set. Her plaid blouse tugs tight across her shoulders, the cuffs too small to be buttoned. But her skin, yes, I feel as if her skin has surely been warmed by tropical suns. Her skin, her beautiful black skin, reminds me of the islands and I smile.

  “Hi,” I say to her. I introduce myself.

  She s
tops walking. She says nothing, staring at me as if she’s not sure I’m in my right senses. I tell her I’m new and ask if she’ll eat with me. She shrugs and glances around the corridor as if searching for someone with whom she thinks I would rather eat. But then she looks back, her eyes slightly lowered, suspicious perhaps. “Yeah, I guess,” she says, shrugging again, still not smiling. “Those yours?” She nods toward my books and jacket, then asks for my combination: She understands I can’t open the locker. She opens it for me, shows me how to do it, and I pile my stuff inside. Then I follow her down the corridor to the cafeteria.

  After waiting in the lunch line, not speaking—neither of us can think of anything to say—I follow her to the farthest corner of the cafeteria. I understand she sits here alone every day, and now we will sit here alone together, as if we are shunned. I place my tray across from hers and stare at the frank and beans, at the carton of milk. Still we have trouble speaking. She seems so shy I’m even afraid to ask her name, but finally I do. She tells me, “Betty.”

  That’s all. As if there isn’t any reason why I would want to know her last name or anything else about her.

  She asks me where I live. I don’t want to tell her, am embarrassed to tell her. I know, from driving around Glen Rock, that I live in the newest and most expensive section of town. “Lowell Road,” I say softly, hoping the name of the street will mean nothing to her.

  But she nods and tells me her mother works as a maid in lots of those pretty houses. She says this almost proudly, as if it’s an accomplishment to work in a pretty house, or she is proud of her mother. I am the one embarrassed—not for her, no, but for myself. I think of our wall-to-wall carpeting, the large kitchen with breakfast room, the wood-paneled dining room, the fireplace, the two baths, all our new furniture, new bedspreads, new drapes. I don’t want this house, this closet full of new Stateside clothes. I know what we have is too much, even though our possessions never seem to be enough for my parents.