Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You

by Sue William Silverman

  I glance past Christopher to forsythia bushes blooming in all the neighborhood yards. I can’t watch Christopher not watching me, as he leaves me. In his shyness, in his discomfort, he will watch his feet or turn to watch a passing car.

  “I don’t know what I want,” he adds. “I’m sorry.”

  If I looked at him I would see sunlight glint the palest hairs of his forearms. I would see his scared, innocent face. I know I am the one who scares him. For even after all this time, I believe I never truly became the suburban New Jersey girl he wanted. “That’s okay,” I finally say. “It doesn’t matter.”

  And maybe this is the truth. For waiting at home, waiting for me, is my father, my father who would never walk away from me, my father who will never be scared.

  In tenth grade my grades are poor. In eleventh grade they are worse. In geometry I barely listen as the teacher draws triangles and parallelograms on the board. The day he mentions the word “prove” is the day he loses me forever. I believe he lies about angles and measurements, for I know nothing can be proven. I know one item of clothing lost on a lakeshore would not prove what happened on that shore, would prove nothing. Dark circles under eyes can be caused by anything. Poor grades can be caused by anything. Starving can be caused by anything—anything could have caused me to do what I did with Steve and Ryan—or so I tell myself. Of course I don’t consider proving to anyone what my father and I do together—I don’t even consider proving it to myself. It’s not clear to me that what we do is wrong. It is me.

  Who I am is wrong. What we do is never considered logically; I have no exact means to measure what we do when we are alone together; I would never be able to prove to myself that what my father does to me is wrong.

  So in geometry I rest my head on my palm and stare out the window. It is not even a stare, for that implies an aggressive action, as if I actively seek something. I do not. I remember the horizon I once watched in St. Thomas, that thin gray line at the farthest point of the Caribbean: a distance, a goal to sail toward and hopefully reach. Here, I see nothing as I gaze out the window. It does not occur to me to look forward, to search, to seek. “Future” is as difficult to prove as fact. So when I gaze out the window in geometry it could be snowflakes spinning past the window or a spring sun. It doesn’t matter.

  Nothing matters to me. It is my mother who insists a tutor be hired when she realizes I’m failing geometry. She is the one determined I pass, determined I get into college. Otherwise she would be embarrassed—how would she tell friends and neighbors about her stupid daughter? Who would marry a girl too stupid to go to college? So one night a week I must sit at the kitchen table with a tutor. Blankly I stare at the book and worksheets. I want to listen. I can’t even pretend to listen. The tutor’s voice seems beyond the reach of my ears. I imagine my sister, upstairs at her desk, deep in concentration. My mother walks down the hall to her bedroom. From the living room I hear my father rustle the newspaper. He is sleepy, anxious for me to finish. I glance down at one small isosceles triangle. Why must I try so hard to prove its existence?

  I walk home from school in a blizzard. With my bookbag clutched to my chest and my head down, I’m walking blind, bundled in coat, hood, scarf, and boots. The wind whips my knees, bare between boots and coat, and my bangs are clumped with ice. Melodramatically, I imagine myself a Russian peasant crossing the steppes toward my father’s shtetl. Perhaps the Czar’s army pursues me. Perhaps there’s to be a pogrom and all Jews will be slaughtered. This image causes me no fear. Rather, it is a source of excitement, which I crave. Perhaps this is why I do poorly in school: I’m bored. Nothing equals the danger of what I do at night with my father.

  The spring before my sister leaves for college, our mother is once again sick. Kiki comes home from school earlier than usual to fix dinner. She cooks steaks and potatoes. Hamburgers and potatoes. She fixes salads. On weekends she bakes chocolate cakes. My mother eats nothing prepared by my sister, claiming she’s too sick to eat. Yet when I return from school I notice she’s rummaged about the kitchen. Saltine crackers and cans of soup disappear off the shelves.

  The door to our mother’s room remains shut, and when I press my ear to the door I hear her radio as she listens, hour after hour, waiting for the news. News is all she hears; news is all she wants to hear, surely more of a comfort to her than her family. Only in the evening, late every evening, she calls to me to give her alcohol sponge baths. I do, even though the sight of her body is awful.

  When the doctor arrives she keeps the door closed and orders us not to disturb her. The way she’s with him feels like a secret. After he finally leaves I glance in her room. Her pajamas are still unbuttoned from the examination. Her eyes are bright—no, almost glazed. She can’t even see me. It is the doctor, I know, she’s still seeing. It’s the doctor, a stranger, this strange man, not her husband, to whom she exposes her body.

  Once a week, when I walk home from school, I stop at the bakery. Although I know exactly what I want, I linger before the display cases, pretending to decide, pretending this purchase is thoughtfully considered rather than an imperative. What I buy embarrasses me because of the regularity of the purchase, because by now the sales clerks recognize me and know what I will order before I ask.

  Birthday cakes.

  White icing. Yellow icing. Pink icing. Chocolate icing. Blue icing. Cakes adorned with white, yellow, pink, chocolate, or blue flowers. Round cakes. Square cakes. Rectangular cakes. Pan cakes. Layer cakes. Chocolate, vanilla, orange, lemon, or coconut cakes. Written in script across the top are the words “Happy Birthday” with a blank space for a name. The first time I buy a cake I ask for the name “Kiki” to be filled in. After that I no longer bother.

  The cake is tied into a white box and, whatever the weather, I carry it down Main Street to the railroad tracks. I take small steps on the crossties, following the track away from town toward a secluded spot in a clump of maples and pines. With the cake before me, I lean against the trunk of a tree. Leaves have begun to unfurl. A dusty spring sun filters through branches and glints off metal tracks. In an hour a train will speed past and I will be here to watch, sometimes placing a penny on the tracks. It is peaceful here, even with the train, for I can hear nothing else in its rattle and roar, not even the noise always disturbing my brain.

  I untie the red and white string, then wind it around the larger ball I carry in my bookbag. I open the box. Today the cake is vanilla with coconut icing and pink roses. I have stolen a fork from home. The first bite is small and delicate—I try to concentrate on the flavor. I pluck off a rose with my fingers and place it, whole, in my mouth, feeling it cream against my tongue. Again I pick up the fork and cut off an edge. Then another. By the third or fourth bite I barely taste the cake, am only eating to be eating, am only eating to feel stuffed, filled up. In an hour the cake will be gone. When the train passes in an hour, I will feel drunk and dizzy on sugar.

  When I first begin my period I don’t think to tell my mother or sister. My father is the only one to notice.

  After my sister leaves for college I sit on the bed in her room mourning her. Rarely have I been in this room. Rarely was she in this room, or in the house, but still I miss her. I lie on her gray bedspread surrounded by bright pink walls. On her dresser is a glass cage, empty now, from the time when she raised white mice for biology. Still, there is a faint odor of wood chips and mice droppings—this, rather than perfumy smells of a girl. I pick up a dust ball brushed against the bedruffle and extract a strand of her hair, holding it to the light. An autumn sun reveals auburn, blue, black streaks in it. For now, I wind the hair around my finger but plan to tuck it inside a book that I’ll save forever.

  I am scared for my sister. I think about her alone in Boston. I think about her alone in a dorm, far from her family. I believe she will miss us, will miss me. Kiki acts brave, but I have seen her still sucking her thumb. How will she be able to sleep in a strange bed in Boston? Even though she’s always liked strangers, s
he might be scared being only with them, surrounded by them. Living with a strange roommate. Now, for the first time, I see a flicker of an image of myself not in this house with my mother and father. Never had it occurred to me that someday I might not live with them either. Nights. Alone. One night I might be alone in a bed in Boston. The feeling I have is not one of escape or freedom. It is fear. All I know is what I have. I believe my father is the only person who could love and care for me. It is the freedom itself that scares me. How would it be possible for me to control, be responsible for, be in charge of, my own body? I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

  My father climbs the stairs to my sister’s room and walks to the window, barely glancing at me on the bed. He seems quiet and sad. I don’t want him to be. I don’t want him to miss my sister, don’t understand how or why he would miss her, since, I tell myself, he hardly saw her anyway. A small pile of clothes my sister no longer wears is next to the mouse cage on her dresser. He picks up a blue Oxford shirt with a frayed collar and holds it.

  “Daddy?” I say.

  He says nothing. He turns from the window and sits in a chair. I want to yank my sister’s shirt from his hands and rip it to shreds; I want to stop breathing. I unwind the strand of my sister’s hair from my finger and let it waft to the floor. I want to say something to him—what? The base of my throat is frigid and I don’t think I can speak. Still, I must. Daddy? I cross the room and kneel before him. Daddy? I want to say this to him, but I can’t. Yet he must know what I’m thinking, for I believe he knows everything about me. I try to cuddle against his legs, but he doesn’t respond. I try to nudge my hand against his fingers, but he doesn’t loosen his grasp on the shirt—on my sister’s shirt. A slow panic hardens the base of my spine and I think I might not be able to stand. Daddy. I grip his knee so tight it must hurt him, and his foot, no, his shoe, doesn’t kick, no, but taps me, pushes me back from him—back, back, back away from him. And I do stand, then. Yes. I stand and turn and walk across the floor of her room, down the stairs to the living room, down the hall to my bedroom, and close the door. I sit on the edge of my bed watching the door, waiting for it to open when my father realizes it is me, me, me. I am the one he loves. But my door doesn’t open.

  I am outside on the stoop. I am in the street in front of our house. I walk down the street away from the house, but I don’t know where I’m going or why. A sting of coolness pierces the evening. Lawns darken. A pale autumn moon rises. I feel the sap in the trees begin a slow descent for winter, draining from treetops and tips of branches down the trunks to the roots. I am walking toward town, passing houses where lights have just been turned on. I don’t pause, for now I know where I’m going: to Christopher’s.

  I pass the large rock in the middle of the intersection at the edge of town. I cross the railroad tracks and continue down Main past the pharmacy, Mandee’s dress shop, the bakery, People’s Bank. Even if the bakery were open, I would not stop for a cake. I don’t think I’ll eat again for a long time. I’m not able to stop long enough to eat. My movements toward Christopher’s seem not to belong to me. Even if I didn’t want to go to his house, my feet would carry me there anyway. But now I’m not even sure if my feet will stop when I get there. Christopher lives past the high school, and it is night by the time I reach his house.

  Abruptly, when I reach the top of his stoop, my feet do stop. Most of the lights in his house are on, but that is not the draw. I don’t even want to go inside. I want, rather, to urge him outside, here, with me, urge him into the night. Make him understand night; make him understand what it means to be me. I want to corrupt him. Then, I believe, I can have him and will no longer need my father. When I ring the doorbell, his mother answers. She is surprised to see me and glances toward the street to see if I’ve been driven. She opens the screen, asks if I’m okay, invites me in, but I shake my head and ask for Christopher.

  But I can’t tell him why I’ve come or what I want—just that I’m taking a walk and I want him to walk with me. He says he can’t. Says he’s helping with his sisters. Says …

  “I want you to come with me.” My voice is loud and he steps outside and closes the door, not wanting his parents to hear me—I know this. I know I should leave. Should apologize for coming. I can’t. I want too desperately something he can never give me: my self.

  He keeps asking what’s wrong. He asks if he can have his mother call my parents. Can he have his father drive me home? No, no, no. I can’t be driven home. He is losing patience—I know this, too—know he will never speak to me again if I don’t leave quickly. He is not prepared for this, for who I am, for what I am capable of doing. As the extreme of me nears him, he will step back. Usually my extreme is absorbed by my father, but now it rages out of control, and the more desperately I want him to be the one, now, to absorb and calm me, the harder he will run back and back and back. Christopher does not know who I am, but certainly he feels me.

  He must go in, he says. He can’t stand outside. His parents will get angry. He has chores and … I press my hands to my mouth and stop listening. While he steps inside his house, I walk backward down the path to the street. He shuts the door as quietly as possible to soften the blow. It doesn’t matter. Now I see I’ve come to the wrong house; Ryan’s house should have been my destination. Ryan would come out here with me. He, too, is easily captured by night, is incapable of refusing what it offers.

  But my father … now I believe he’s waiting. There’s been a mistake. He didn’t push me away with his foot. He didn’t hold my sister’s shirt rather than my hand. He didn’t. He wants me, is looking for me, is in desperate need only of me. I run down streets I’ve just walked to get here, as deliberately as before, once again toward a house which I think will save me. It no longer matters which boy, which man, which house, for it is not truly toward anyone or anything that I run. Rather, it is away from me. I can’t be alone with me because I don’t know who I am. I’m too scared to know who I am. My father—all who I am is my father. I am he. And I know he will have turned on the porch light for me. My father will be by the front door waiting for me. Perhaps he’s already opened the garage door in order to drive the streets searching for me. Or he’ll be sitting on the edge of my bed, waiting.

  The porch is dark. The living room is dark. The house is dark. I don’t dare glance up the stairs to my sister’s room, but rather rush down the hall to my bedroom and slam on the light. The bed is neatly deserted. I whirl against the door, closing it with a force that cracks the silence. I lock the door. Never have I locked it before; never have I been allowed to lock it. I turn off the light and sit on the bed, staring at the doorknob. At first I can’t even see it, but soon a dull glint is visible. By the hour I watch it, wait for it to turn. It doesn’t. The door to my parents’ bedroom had been closed, but I don’t know where my father is, if he’s in there with her or upstairs with … I wind the base of the miniature Christmas tree and lights sweep the night red, green, white. The lights are a beacon, calling: Daddy. You love to love me with these lights. But the red-green-white wands of light fall flat against the wall and ceiling.

  I tiptoe down the hall to the bathroom. I can’t turn on the light, for there is nothing I could stand to see. I remove the bottle of aspirin from the medicine cabinet, shake some into my palm, then swallow one after another with a glass of water. I creep upstairs to the unfinished attic. Here the air is warm but untouched, undisturbed by my family. In its stillness I have trouble breathing. I am too used to breathing tornadoes of sound. Here, there is no flutter of air to help me, but I want none. Even through the gable vents I feel no sky and see no breeze. I am woozy in a voluminous black void and must lie on the floor to steady myself. I lie on my stomach. The floor smells of raw wood and it is this wood, only this smell of wood, that keeps me from roiling out through the vents in the gable. I smell the wood slowly. The smell comes slow through my nostrils and I have trouble letting it seep down to my lungs. I envision each molecule of my body settling like dus
t across the attic floor. I want to sleep. For as long as it would take me to reach the edge of the sky.

  I think I am too groggy to breathe, but I am breathing. Hands are on my shoulders, yanking me. I can’t open my eyes. Behind the lids of my eyes there is no slant of light, but I don’t know if this is true on the outside of my lids as well. With every touch of his hands, my porous bones splinter. My wayward legs are without direction; he must carry me. And he does. I don’t think he understands the distance I’ve traveled, for he is angry I have been lost. I don’t know if I try to tell him why. But I must, because my ears hear a voice with tears sliding from its tongue. And he will hate this hate this hate this, what I must say.

  So after he drops me on a bed he tapes this hateful mouth shut. For how can he love a mouth that wants to speak truth? My mouth must be stilled. My ears are stilled. I am. What does my mouth do to cause this? Maybe I try to tell him my fear that he loves my sister more, or my fear that my sister is alone in a dorm without me close to love her. But he won’t hear what my mouth needs to utter. My father selects the only words he will hear and forbids all others. I am only allowed to tell him what my body wants him to do to it, tell him how strong is my desire. All other words I learn, I learn in secret, are secret, packed and stored in my own attic of my own mind. My nose is stuffed with the words that can’t leak from my eyes or my mouth. I have trouble breathing. All I feel is an almost unconscious jolt as he rapes me back to life. And he will. Because with my father and me, what usually kills others, is what nourishes us with life.

  And I know my father and I will be alone forever in this foreverand-ever life. I know this, as much as I know Christopher will be gone forever from my life. If only I could have told Christopher, if only I could have explained the true and only reason why I went to his house, why I needed him earlier tonight. Christopher, I need you because I love you. I need you because you are quiet. I need you because you are shy.