Gift of the Golden Mountain

by Shirley Streshinsky

  Karin looked at her, and her eyes were filled with hurt.

  May sat up, feeling a need to be upright.

  Tears began to slip down Karin's face. She used a knotted tissue to wipe her nose. May rose on her knees to reach for a box from the end table and handed her a fresh tissue.

  Karin sighed and shifted; her eyes were red now, but the stunned look of the preceding days had given way to a kind of panic. She choked out the next words: "My father said I was a whore, and sometimes I think he is right."

  May moved closer and wrapped her arms around Karin's legs, as if to hold her up. Then May took a deep breath and asked, "Why would he say that, K?"

  Karin shook her head violently; she was sobbing now, soft wet sobs that shook her body and caused her voice to come out in short swallowed gulps.

  "Tell me, K, please."

  "Oh God," Karin started, gathering momentum, "oh God," and it came tumbling out then, in no order at all: "I was just a little girl, but I developed early—breasts, pubic hair, hips. And men started looking at me—the way Andy did at Sam's, their eyes running all over me, at the store and at church. We'd come home and be in the parlor, the three of us, and my father would be reading the Bible, and the message was always the same. I was tempting those men with my wantonness, I was causing them to lust after me. From the time I was twelve, I had to sit in our parlor and listen to my Father ask forgiveness for my sins. I didn't know what they were—I was never allowed to go out, not even to school parties. They were very strict with me. They knew where I was every minute of the day, my mother knew I couldn't be doing anything wrong . . . but he was convinced that I would if I could. The prayers got longer and more violent, and more unforgiving until one day I left. I ran away. I went to the only person who had been kind to me, a teacher in our high school. A sweet, ineffectual little man . . . he had lived with his mother all his life, in a little house on Barton Street. She died the year before this happened. He may have been gay, I don't know—I don't remember him ever being close to anyone except his mother. Anyway, I asked if I could stay with him and as soon as I said it, I could see he was scared to death. I felt so sorry for him, and I knew I had made a big mistake. I mean, he was a good man but he just wasn't able to help me."

  She paused and blew her nose. "So I went back home, and of course this time Father had actually caught me . . . I mean, I had run away and he was certain I had been with a man. He said I had become an offense in the sight of God, that I flaunted myself. And then he demanded to know who I had been with."

  She stopped to take a deep breath. "I wouldn't tell him, of course. But it wasn't hard to figure out. I didn't have any friends, the only person who paid any attention to me was this teacher. So my father confronted the poor guy, who admitted I'd come to his house and asked to stay with him. That was all my father needed. He went straight to the school board and said my teacher was a sexual deviate, a seducer of young girls, and demanded the man be fired. And they did, they fired him. It was a terrific scandal . . . and my father caused it.

  "I went to our principal and tried to talk to him but he wouldn't listen, he wouldn't even look at me. Nobody would listen to me, nobody wanted to hear what had really happened. Of course everybody in town was talking about it, just not to me. For me, a wall of silence went up and stayed until I left home."

  Karin sat, lost in thought.

  "Your mother," May finally said, "what did she do?"

  Karin sighed. "I used to blame her, at the time I blamed her more than him, really. Because I hated him, but I loved her."

  "She should have left him rather than let him humiliate you like that," May said fiercely. "That's what a mother is supposed to do, protect you."

  "She did the best she could, May, I know that now. My father was a fanatic, a man of God, remember. They were all afraid of him, I think. So much that they allowed him to destroy a teacher's reputation, his career. That was the real sin."

  "Christ!"

  "Yeah, well, He wasn't around when I needed Him either." Karin tried to laugh, but her voice cracked. "Anyway, it was my mother who got me out. Somehow, she found out about all kinds of scholarships, and she and I filled out the applications and sent them off without his ever knowing about it, so when I got the chance to go to Mount Holyoke he couldn't stop me."

  "Did he want to stop you?"

  "Oh yes," Karin shuddered, "oh yes, he did. But it's all over, and I survived better than they did, out on that poor old farm all alone with their Bibles."

  May stood, stretched and then she sat down next to Karin and said, "But what has this to do with now, and with Andy Diehl?"

  Karin bit her lip. "There are times when I do something that brings it all crashing down on me again . . . when it seems as if he must have been right. . ."

  "Your father?" May asked. "Right about what?"

  Karin only grimaced. "Andy took me to this place called Rosie's, but we didn't stay there very long . . . after that he made the rounds of two or three other places, bars. I had something to eat but he didn't, he was just drinking and laughing and joking with people. At first I thought he knew them, but it turned out he didn't. He just seemed to speed up, as if he had to do everything very fast, and the bars kept getting more and more raucous. He was drinking a lot, but he seemed to be holding it and I guess I thought he could handle it, I don't know . . . then he looked at me and said he wanted me. Just like that. He said I had a neon sign bobbing on my breasts that flashed on and off, and it said, 'Climb on, honey, and come if you can.' He was saying all of this very loud, everyone could hear. People were looking at us, May, and they were laughing, and I felt like . . . I felt like what they all thought I was: a quick lay. A whore. He pulled me out, smiling and laughing at them as if they were an audience, and . . . they applauded. They applauded!"

  She was sobbing now in deep, hard gulps and May could only sit beside her and rub her arm, and make soothing sounds to try to comfort her. Twice Karin tried to continue speaking, but couldn't. "Shh," May said, "give yourself some time, K, take it easy now."

  Finally she was calm enough, and insisted on continuing. "In the parking lot he was pulling me toward a dark area, some trees, a picnic table I think . . . he was laughing and singing, and he had his arms around my waist, pulling . . . I started to cry, I think I must have been hysterical because this is a little hazy . . . But then a car was driving straight at us, its lights on and Andy stopped and stared at it. Hayes got out. I think I screamed because I didn't know what was going to happen, but then he was helping me into his car, and saying I was safe and that he was very sorry about what had happened, and I could tell by his voice that he meant it. He wasn't laughing at me . . ." She took a deep breath, as if she were about finished. "He said he'd take me home but he had to talk to Andy for a minute." She blinked, then she said, "I don't know what he said to him, I couldn't hear. I just know that in about five minutes he came back to the car and drove me home."

  "Did he ask you what had happened?"

  "He asked me if Andy had hurt me. I told him no, not really. He said again that he was really sorry it had taken him so long to find us—I guess he went to every bar he could think of. And he asked if there was anything he could do. That's about all."

  "K," May said carefully, "you know it's not true—what your father said."

  "You mean about my being a whore? Yes, I know it isn't true. But knowing doesn't keep you from feeling, sometimes."

  "Those drunken Neanderthals in the bar—you can't possibly. . ."

  Karin spoke sharply. "What I can't possibly do is erase a painful, horrible memory. That's what I can't do. Of course I know it was my father's problem, of course I know the kind of people who sit around bars getting blind drunk aren't likely to have any sensibilities. But when it happens to you . . . when people look at you like you're a piece of meat. Yes! And they do sometimes, May, you know they do. Don't you remember at school, when some of the girls in the dorm got mad at us—and somebody pinned up that nasty cartoon
with you as a 'Chinese Dragon Lady,' and me as 'The Slut'?"

  "I remember," May said, wincing.

  "Sure you remember," Karin said firmly, "you went tearing into the dean's office, demanding to know who had access to your personal file, because you didn't think anybody but me knew about your Chinese background."

  "I remember," May said, as if she didn't need to be reminded. Then she added, "It's strange, isn't it, how intensely you can feel about something that happened when you were so young? I guess Sam's right . . . about my not wanting to acknowledge that part of me that is Chinese."

  "Your mother didn't acknowledge you, so you won't acknowledge her . . . or that part of you that is her."

  "Psych 100, Introduction to . . ." May said, wryly.

  "Are you ready for confession number two?" Karin asked, trying to manage a smile. "When I've slept with men I've cared about . . . guys I wanted to be with . . . it was never . . . I have never . . . I can't feel anything."

  May stared at her, aghast. "You mean you've never had an orgasm?"

  Karin shook her head.

  "But it shouldn't be that way," May told her. "Sex is something you share . . . I thought you of all people . . . We've talked about it a million times and you always made me think . . ."

  "I faked it," Karin confessed, grinning.

  "Oh Lord," May answered, leaning her forehead against her friend's.

  "Oh Freud," Karin joked, and the two started laughing then. They laughed until they had to gasp for breath, laughed until the tears flowed and they daubed each other's faces with tissues. When finally they stopped Karin managed to say, "I feel as if a hundred-pound block of ice has been lifted from my chest."

  NINE

  SHE SAW HIM before he saw her. He was wearing a white shirt which blazed bright in the sunlight and dazzled her eyes; she was already smiling when he looked up. He was, he said, heading for one of his weekly meetings in the barracks left over from the Second World War, which now housed an assortment of offices peripheral to the main purpose of the university. She was, she said, on her way to Earth Sciences for a seminar on Finite Strains. Their schedules had meshed, their paths colliding like atoms, setting off a chain reaction. She felt it first in her stomach, a rise and a catch and then a soft, glowing spread.

  "So," he said, shrugging—but not anxious to be off, she could tell.

  "So," she answered, allowing a very small smile, but not making it easy for him, either. It was up to him. He was the one who had held her at arm's length.

  On her way to Earth Sciences the next week, she found him waiting for her.

  "What would you say," he began slowly, "about skipping out for an hour or two?"

  She looked at him as if she were trying to solve an equation.

  "Why not?" she said at the same moment he said, ". . . unless," and they laughed. He took firm hold of her arm to turn her around, and guided her to one of the trucks that drive onto campus at midday to sell sandwiches. They peered into the polished aluminum racks, chose a chicken salad and a ham and cheese, two cans of Pepsi, oranges, and packaged brownies. Walking quickly across campus they encountered a man dressed in T-shirt and baggy dungarees who raised his hand for Hayes to stop.

  "Later," Hayes called to him, not breaking stride.

  "You mean this," she said, taking longer strides to keep pace.

  He guided her through an opening in a hedge beaten down by years of students intent on a short cut, and into a parking lot where his car waited.

  They drove up the hill behind the University, past the botanical gardens, and on to the Lawrence Hall of Science. She said nothing all this while, only sat next to him in the front seat with the brown paper bag that held their lunch in her lap—the Pepsi cans cold through her jeans. She glanced at him; he did not look at her but he knew she was looking at him and he grinned. She turned away, smiling.

  They sat on a grassy hill overlooking the whole of the Bay, spread out before them in the warm haze of the day. He stretched out full length, his head propped on his arm, and looked at her. Self-consciously, she took a bite of her sandwich and pretended to look at the view.

  "There are so many things I want to talk to you about," he said.

  She waited.

  "I want to tell you about my brother, my crazy brother who does things that are inexcusable, who can be the world's worst screwup . . ."

  "But?" she said.

  He smiled. "Yes . . . there is a 'but.' Andy does have some redeeming qualities, as hard as that may seem to believe, given his performance that Sunday."

  "I'm afraid I don't know him well enough to be forgiving," she said quietly. "I don't like what he did to Karin. I certainly don't like the way he treats women."

  Hayes sat up, squinted out at the Golden Gate. "No, you're right. That's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. If I had known that you and Karin and Sam were going to be there, we would not have come by Miyo's."

  "I thought Sam's mother had told yours."

  "She didn't. I'm sure you've figured out there is a problem, maybe Sam has told you . . ."

  She twisted a thread that was coming loose from around a buttonhole on her blouse. "Actually, no . . . but it's hard not to see how he resents—not you, but your family, his own family's position . . ."

  "I'm not sure I blame him. There have been times when Sam's mother has put my family—Andy especially—ahead of her own. She carries devotion to an extreme—and of course, she can't see it. Neither can my mother, for that matter. She just goes along, pretending we're all the best of friends, perfect equals . . . Mother and Miyo have this great fantasy they've dreamed up, that we're one big happy family."

  "And you aren't?"

  "Not their MGM version. Actually, in a looney tunes sort of way our family is happy. And so is Sam's, separately. But not together. As Sam told you the day we met, his mother is my family's housekeeper. That's the reality of it."

  He turned on his back, one hand firm around a can of Pepsi and the other flung to shade his eyes. She studied him: He had not shaved that morning, and a soft bristle covered his jaw. A strong jaw, strong face, she thought. A good face. Not sharply handsome like Sam, but good.

  They tempted a squirrel with bits of brownies. It sat up straight and considered them, its bushy red tail twitching. "Watch the tail," Hayes said, "you can tell what it's thinking by the movement of its tail."

  The talk drifted easily, like a raft on a slow-moving river, touching on this and that and moving on when some new subject floated into sight. Her foot cramped and she had to get up and hop around, then he rubbed it for her until the feeling came back. He lay back then and closed his eyes. "God," he said, "the sun. I keep forgetting it's there."

  "It always is," she answered, absently. "Don't you know it is sinful to forget the sun?"

  He sat up suddenly and with a passion that caught her by surprise said, "Do you know how old-fashioned that word sounds? Nobody talks about sin or sinning today. It's not with it, not cool . . . you rip off or you trash or you violate, you're a reactionary pig or an imperialist dog or a mass murderer—but nobody sins, and nobody is ever called a sinner."

  She knew it was just starting, that everything inside of him was in motion, spinning wildly around, and that he could no longer contain it, no longer hold it in.

  "Jesus!" he hissed, low in his throat, and then, shrugging as if at the irony of it. "Sin and Jesus, I'm beginning to sound biblical. I didn't bring you here for this."

  "I think you did," she said, controlled, knowing she had to be careful.

  He sat up, his body no longer relaxed, and he had forgotten the feel of the sun on his face in the mad colliding rush that was going on inside of him.

  "Maybe I did," he repeated, looking at her so steadily that she felt, for a moment, she would not have the courage to stand up to it.

  "So here it is," he began, clearing his throat and then stumbling over the words (so she knew, after all, that he had not planned it this way): "I'm sick of all the rh
etoric, all the words, all the anger. It's become so rote, so studied, like a play we keep putting on, over and over again, and the people who make the difference . . . who make the decisions . . . some of them came to see it on opening night, thought it was a nifty little entertainment, and laughed all the way home. We didn't get it, though, so we keep going on, pretending it makes a difference. One award-winning performance after another and it's all so damned self-deluding . . ."

  The gates were open now, he couldn't stop. She used a paper napkin to blot up a puddle of Pepsi he had spilled on the blanket and hadn't noticed. His voice was hoarse so the words came out grating: "It's all a charade, a game we play to make ourselves feel as if we have some control . . . pretending we can make changes. My mother—you've met my mother. We laugh at her, affectionately of course, because she's a good woman with a good heart. A good woman with her ridiculous good works, sending all those boxes full of old clothes—Brooks Brothers suits and sequined Saks dresses—down to Ecuador for the flood victims. But it's sheer hypocrisy for me to laugh at her when what I'm doing is worse. It's empty, posturing. More and more I hear myself talking and some other me whispers, 'Hayes, that's pure bull and you know it. . . .' I know we should not be in Vietnam and I know black people are systematically put down in this country and I know that prison abuses exist and that all of those things are wrong—are sins—but I've come to believe . . . I guess that's the right word, believe, an act of faith of a kind, that nothing I do on any committee or say from any podium is going to expiate any of our multiple sins."

  He turned away from her, dropped his head, and ran his hands through his hair. She looked at him, at the big hands with their long, slender fingers, at the thick tumble of light hair which curled slightly behind his ears. She wanted to touch him, but knew she should not. He wasn't done.

  "What is it you're trying to decide if you should tell me?" she asked, and his head snapped up, his eyes registered surprise.

  "You know?"

  "I don't know why you're hesitating. Unless it's a confidence."