The Lost Daughter Collective

by Lindsey Drager

  The fathers would see the look on their daughters’ faces. But all this was before The Touch Wars, the fathers would say, to ease the worry in their brows.

  And then, in unison, the daughters—in their separate homes, in a variety of pastel-colored pajamas, holding a gamut of stuffed animals—would ask, What were The Touch Wars?

  THE TOUCH WARS is the anthropological label given to an era in collective memory in which it was believed that touch among humans was too prevalent and entering the realm of criminal. Such touch—between lovers, among colleagues, within families—was dissuaded through statewide campaigns that raised awareness about the dangers of touch in transmitting disease or relaying misinterpreted affection.

  As a result of The Touch Wars, a period of two decades passed wherein a rapid decline in childbirth ensued, the obvious result of touch-lack. The reciprocal effects were surprisingly rich; people spent their time making art, and, released of their financial responsibility to secure the present and future of multiple others, were left to engage in more leisure. Couples, in an attempt to dissuade the desire for touch, spent much of their time seeing places they did not know existed. Such a time is believed to have been one of the happiest in this region’s history.

  But soon enough, people started to recognize the limits of such a life. Care for the land’s older population was the first inclination that touch-lack might be problematic, as citizens’ parents and elder generations were quickly ushered out of life without physical contact. Touch, corporeal archeologists began to understand, was both a curse, ushering in touch-crime, but also a vital tenant contributing to longer lives. Too, after years of keeping touch to themselves, people began to desire each other in ways that permeated their bodies and minds. Such drive was contained through self-touch for many years, but it was made clear that the integrity of partner union was founded less on the discoveries of corporeal archeologists and more in ancient literature, where themes such as understanding, adoration, and dread dissolved. The result was a radical movement that began in the major cities where citizens would, behind closed doors and in a variety of rooms, engage in all brands of touch. It is said that groups would gather and spend hours holding hands—in large circles, in small groups, in pairs that traded on and off. It was a time where trans-skin union was reinstated in the collective memory— through the act of hand-holding, people began to remember what it meant to feel heat radiate off another, and in the aftermath of this collective discovery, empathy blossomed.

  The Museum of Paternal Understanding offers perhaps the only vestige of The Touch Wars. This complex era in history is preserved at this site, where even today can be heard the prescriptive “Please don’t touch.”

  However, recent trends in touchology are encouraging engagement with exhibits. This revolution in experiential museum-going inaugurates an acceptance that touch is human, necessary, vital. But with the exit of the notion of not touching in museums, the complex history of The Touch Wars may lose its last link to contemporary life, and therefore dissolve into the growing void that is history lost.

  And this is why we tell the history of The Touch Wars, because it reminds us of perhaps the most important lesson we can teach: we do not tell our stories to share; we tell our stories to warn.

  THE FOLD AIMS ONLY to get through the day together, though a mystery looms over the group. Last week their leader, known only as Peter, told them that today will be his final meeting.

  In the moment they were told, the men struggled to believe. Barber even stood up, ready to protest, but Butcher pulled him back down. The news that their leader was leaving surfaced in their minds throughout the week leading toward today. It felt like a personal, intimate rupture in the fabric of their group. A group like the FOLD relies on a delicate balance of folly and fear— they must serve as bereavement associates, chaperoning optimism while also staying vigilant that hope does not soil the mind. The manager of such sorrow serves as both a liaison and a guard, a role not easily filled. And this is how, without Peter, the system may collapse.

  What do you make of Peter’s claim? Butcher asks. It will be a particularly difficult Daughter’s Day, the men think, because the day is breaking beautifully.

  Barber blows his nose. I am at a loss.

  I am taking it personally. I know that it’s not, Smith says, looking up at the tall rafters that populate the ceiling, but it feels that way.

  The men are interrupted by the sound of Wainwright and Angler entering the room. Peter always insisted on punctuality, but what circulates without being said is that Peter has still not arrived. Wainwright sits down and Angler heads to the table to pour himself a cup of coffee. I’m sorry we’re late, Wainwright tells the group, and no one says anything back. He sits next to Woodsman and touches him on the shoulder, leaning in. I could barely get him out of bed, he whispers. It’s a miracle we’re here. When Miller clears his throat, they give him their attention.

  Let’s not be acute, Miller says, addressing the group. As he speaks, he looks out the window across the cityscape. You can read it in his body. He is tired of being sad. Miller turns around to look at the other men, his voice growing louder as he speaks. And isn’t that what we all hope for? A moment when we might feel again what it is like to wake and not think of her? Don’t we all want to return to the men we were in the time before her loss, when we led more stable, simpler lives?

  Keep your voice down, Butcher says. Can someone shut the door?

  Please—, Smith says too loudly, and all the men look up. Please, he says, leave the door open.

  And because they all know the story of his daughter, they comply.

  For me, right now, says Barber, returning to the issue at hand, it is less about finding the shore and more about keeping afloat.

  But I do see what you mean, Angler says. I don’t want to be craving this group for the rest of my life. I want to be reaching a place where I can wake not needing our meetings. That is my goal.

  And that, I suspect, is how Peter feels now, Miller says. He can’t be blamed for overcoming.

  The men take a sip of coffee or run their hands through their hair. One picks at the dead skin on the tip of his thumb, while outside the bells chimes eight.

  PETER HAS A THEORY that their daughters live in places the men cannot access—abstract and mysterious places, like those over a rainbow or down a rabbit hole. Peter calls these places the Lands of Never, the places that cannot be reached. This is because adults do not know how to traverse this terrain. It is knowledge firmly locked in a child.

  But on their walks home, after the men disperse from their meetings, they cannot help but imagine that they, too, had the capacity to visit the Lands of Never when they were young, though they did not. They, too, possessed the intrinsic map of these lands, but chose to roam the Lands of Now.

  And just before they reach their doorsteps, as they are about to enter their homes, they pose the question aloud, in the raw autumn, enmeshed in the smell of change; through a screen of mist in late spring; in the early dark of winter, the silence frail: where are her Lands of Never, and how can I get there?

  The matrix of possibility that suggests where she might be plagues them, but there is a darker truth at work. For the men fail to realize that the Lands of Never are not about where but when.

  HOW DID THE SHADOW maidens help the ice girl if they could not speak? their daughters would ask, before they entered their several Lands of Never, while still bound to the Lands of Now.

  No, no, it was the ice girl who could not speak. The shadow maidens talked to her through their shadow forms, as this was when shadow was a language. The shadow maidens were daughters whose fathers thought they were, in different ways, failed. The fathers wanted very much for their daughters to fit certain archaic standards, but their daughters did not. And so the daughters left.

  The girls would look up at their fathers then with large eyes, trying to imagine why any daughter would leave. Perhaps that is how fatherhood ends? The girls shook t
he thought from their heads.

  What were books like, Father?

  A book was a heavy and bulking technology, very much like a coffin, for it, too, was a dark space that stored a past. Archivists would share their stories with The Page and a book was The Page’s tomb.

  But what was contained in the book? How was the story expressed? Now we use our voices and our bodies, but how was the story told?

  The fathers would smile at their girls, admiring their quizzical natures. The story was relayed through symbols that lived on The Page. Archivists would let a thought loiter in their head and then, when it could loiter no longer because the archivist was overcome with the story like a fever in break, it was recorded in code. The book would travel long distances from the archivist so that those far as well as near could discern meaning by decoding it. This is what we mean when we say the people of long ago read. The reader was a kind of monster, entering the psyche of the characters in order to consume the tale. And because the daughters knew that a monster was, essentially, a threat, they did not want to hear more.

  But what of the archivist?

  The archivist became a ghost.

  The daughters would tilt their heads. What is a ghost?

  A very sophisticated shadow. The girls would think then, being a ghost is better than being a monster. This is one of the reasons books were deemed so dangerous and paper was outlawed; people could no longer determine the line between reality and artifice.

  The girls would nod their heads very quickly to indicate they understood, sitting with their elbows on the counter or the table, or propped up on the bed, palms cradling their chins.

  Then they would ask, Tell of the shadow maidens and their fathers, and the men would smile widely and lightly tap an index finger to the tip of their daughters’ nose.

  How about this: next week we will visit the Museum of Paternal Understanding and let the exhibits tell the shadow maidens’ tales.

  What they knew but did not say is that the stories of the shadow maidens ended in palatable ways, while the ice girl’s story did not. This is why the shadow maidens were better known; their tales were lessons to remember, while the ice girl’s fate was a story to forget.

  The girls would smile and their fathers would lean over and push aside a bang or tame a wild strand or fix a curly lock that was going the wrong direction. You know, of course, this all took place long, long ago, in a time when children shed their teeth.

  What do you mean?

  Long ago, young children shed a row of teeth before a new row surfaced. For a brief time when they were young they looked very old, their mouths like wounds with bare red gums. Then a new set would crop up, like flowers in the spring.

  This would happen every year?

  Oh, no, this was only once, the fathers would say, locking the front door. This happened only once, at the age when children were just learning how to be alone.

  And the fathers would think, This is your age. The fathers would think but not say, You would be losing teeth now.

  Much later, when they sit in a circle in the large room on the thirty-third floor of the umbrella factory, the fathers will recall this moment and think they were wrong. Everyone knows daughters are born alone.

  MARY AND HER FATHER

  IT CAN BE ARGUED that every story starts with a monster. But, too, every child begins as a monster—two beings fuse to create a third who is cultivated under the skin until it splits her open to emerge. Or, in the case of the narrative Mary later told, a being can be crafted from the parts of others, sutured together and animated by outside forces. However a body becomes, that becoming is always characterized as monstrous, for the act and art of making is a dark and eerie task.

  The girl was born with a visage that was blurry, as though she could only be viewed through tearing eyes. Her father thought she looked as if she had been washed with fire, and what remained was a sea of skin that created gentle waves over her bones. There were breaks here and there for her nose to breathe, her eyes to see, her mouth to speak. But where they lived on the plane of her face and how they operated seemed a logic unfamiliar to him.

  She grew and in growing learned about the world and her-self—where they intersected and where they did not. She would spend her days inside, studying the inky symbols in the books her father owned. This is how, before she could read, she began to recreate the letters with a tilted pen, flourishing the print with her private ornamentation, garnishing the lines of text with embellished eloquence.

  And though her father viewed the letters she created, he never really looked; he only understood that she spent her time alone. As the years developed and the door to her room stayed closed, he grew certain her seclusion meant she knew her face was feared.

  On the eve of the girl’s twelfth birthday, he presented her with a gift. But when he pulled it from behind his back, she did not understand. And because Mary’s father had told her that the way her tongue lived in her ill-formed mouth made her voice sound hollow and wet like the voice of an ancient cave, she said nothing.

  He placed the gift on the bed and exited the room, leaving the door cracked a bit. As his daughter moved to shut it, she thought this: is a girl’s room a safe, where a father secures he most precious equipment? Or a cage where he ensures it can never escape?

  The next morning, when he entered her room to rouse her for the day, he was first taken aback by the way her form was flattened in the bed, her eyes bright white and wide open in her sleep. But as he grew closer, he realized it wasn’t her at all, only the gift on her pillow—the mask in place of her head. On the floor lay a note, which he read with a sharp kind of horror that only a father feels. In the most elegant and sublime handwriting he had ever witnessed, curling and coiling around the page and hemmed by a floral border, so that it looked like the text on the stone above a grave, he read:

  Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.

  When he read her book years later, he would not know it was she who had written it, for she’d used a man’s name. He would find it on his doorstep one morning in the autumn, the time of year she liked best. He would wonder who sent it his direction only briefly, for he was quickly caught in the gears of her story, which disturbed him in the best way.

  And though it would haunt him he would read it again and again, feeling there was something just under the surface that was both familiar and foreign, the way your voice grows less like yours as it echoes in a wood or the way a mirror reflects you in reverse. The way the human face is mimicked in a mask.

  HOW DID YOU TWO meet?, Woodsman asks Wainwright and Angler, takes a sip of his coffee and wipes his palm along his thighs. It is late morning and the men move about the room, conversing with those next to whom they rarely sit. Because it is Daughter’s Day, the goal is to do nothing other than pass the time.

  Angler looks at Wainwright, who is sitting sideways on his chair. You tell, Wainwright says. It feels more like your story than mine.

  Angler lets his chin fall to his chest, then grabs Wainwright’s hand, squeezes it twice. My wife had grown ill and passed on, and my daughter was in her color phase, Angler says. I was about to leave for a long trip—I am a sushi chef and travel a lot—and Wainwright— Wainwright’s a mechanic, but you knew that, right?—he was head-lost under the hood of a car when we passed him downtown. He had this amazing scarf on—that damn scarf——and my daughter was mesmerized because she could not find a wordfor the color. Things were really raw for me then, and my daughter and Wainwright just clicked. He gave her the scarf and then pulled her into his arms—greasy uniform and sweat and grime and all—and told her about the intricate world under the hood of that car. It was the first time I’d heard her laugh since her mother—here Angler takes a moment to collect himself. And then Wainwright looked at me with this smile that broke me. And my daughter asked him over for dinner and then he took me to bed. Angler squeezes Wainwright’s hand once more, then releases his grip. When he speaks, his voice is lower. Really I
had little to say in the matter. It was more an affair between them.

  Wainwright mouths to Woodsman, Daughter’s Day, and Woodsman nods back.

  Outside, the bells chime noon.

  THIS IS HOW THE stories used to look:

  Now the stories look like this:

  There will always be laughter in slaughter.

  WHY DID THE ICE girl not speak? the girls would ask, looking up from the sand at the park or from a puzzle in the kitchen, looking in the mirror at the father who stood behind them as they brushed their hair before bed.

  The fathers would tilt their heads and admire their curious girls. She was frightened of the changes taking place in her body. She was frightened that she had brought them on herself.

  So she chose.

  Yes. It was not a sentencing. It was a decision.

  The girls would grow solemn, thinking, and the fathers would look up at the sky or the ceiling, imagining. Then the girls would interrupt them in hushed tones: What is frightening about this story is that it could be real.

  The fathers would grow very solemn. Nonsense, the fathers would say, turning their daughters to look at them. This was in a time so long ago, the stories are fully myth. It was so long ago that our bodies were radically different. For example, this takes place in a time when our fingernails had to be sheared. Our fingernails used to grow very long and they needed to be trimmed in order to keep them from overwhelming our hands.

  But they don’t bother us now.

  This is because the nails, like the lashes of your eyes, just naturally stop growing when they realize they are long enough. You must remember, the fathers would tell their daughters, this was in a time when the body was not quite finished evolving. Back then, there was an understanding that the body could be labeled as having all kinds of conditions if it was somehow out of order. This is what happens in the stories of the shadow maidens; their fathers deemed them failed and ill and wrong.