Secrets of Eden

by Christopher A. Bohjalian

  Sometimes I think Mom put up with a lot of Dad’s worst creepiness because she was afraid if things ever got too crazy—too violent—we’d both wind up at the shelter. We came close a couple of times. Sometimes Mom talked about going to Ginny’s, but we never did, because she was afraid of bringing her friend’s family into our nightmare. And I think she was afraid of what people would think if things ever got totally public. Like, what did it say about her as a mom and a wife that she had put up with this crap for so long? And I guess she figured if we spent even one night with Ginny or even one night in the shelter, there would be no going back. The marriage would be over. And looking back, it’s weird, but I don’t think she was ready for that. Really. I don’t know what freaked out Mom more: the fear that she had sunk so low that she was going to be in the battered-women’s shelter with her kid or the idea that she was walking on eggshells in her own house and no one was supposed to know.

  THE SOCIAL WORKERS and the therapists all wanted to know if Dad ever hit me. The short answer is yes. But it’s complicated. I mean, no kid deserves to be hit, but a smart one doesn’t get in the middle of some of the crap that I did. When your mom and dad are in the midst of an electrified-cage match, you steer clear if you want to keep your teeth. (That’s an exaggeration. A: I have never seen a real cage match, just videos of them on YouTube. And B: I have all my teeth. My father never punched me in the mouth.) Twice I made the mistake of thinking I could save my mom alone, and both times I got swatted like one of those gross, slow-moving cluster flies we had in the attic. In all fairness, the first time Dad walloped me was a mistake on his part. He hadn’t meant to. He was in one of his moods, and I don’t even remember anymore what set him off, and my mom was crying pathetically. They were both in their bathroom, and I could hear them through the walls, and I was at my wit’s end and totally furious with him. Maybe even furious with both of them for living the same rerun over and over and over. And so I went in to yell at my dad. I was a bigdeal thirteen, and I think I was going to tell him to grow up. The scene I walked in on was really weird, because it was after dinner and he was, like, shaving. I knew he was worried that the toy store wasn’t making enough money—even I knew that a shop that sold mostly marionettes and wooden puzzles in an age when everyone wanted a PlayStation or Wii was a pretty lame idea—which meant that he was a little stressed. Still, I have no idea why he was shaving. He was also pretty hammered. I’m amazed he could figure out which side of the Bic he was supposed to use on his skin. Anyway, I went in with all this determination, and my timing was just perfect. Totally perfect. He was winding up to whack Mom, who was actually on her knees and pleading with him about who knows what, and I walked straight into his knuckles as he swung them back, taking it right on the ear. And I can tell you that ears have a ton of nerves. I guess hearing cells don’t. But the outer ear? Trust me, it hurt like crazy, and my ears rang for hours. I fell against the frame of the door and then, I’m not sure how, wound up on the floor, half in the bedroom and half in the bathroom. Dad didn’t even realize what he’d walloped at first. I think he thought my head was, like, the door. But my mom knew, and she just threw herself at him, leaping to her feet like a missile, which of course caused him to throw her down onto the floor beside me. And that’s when my dad looked at me like, “Hello? What are you doing here?”

  The other time he did hit me on purpose. It was a year later, and we had begun to figure out just how much we hated each other: I hated him for what he did to Mom, and he hated me for knowing he was a jerk and mean and pathetic. And that’s the thing—I knew he was pathetic. I don’t care how successful his restaurant or his stores were. My mom wasn’t the loser: He was. And so he probably despised me. But, in all fairness, it was only that one time that he meant to hit me. Just like that evening he nailed me by accident in the bathroom, he hadn’t hit Mom yet. But I could see where it was going. It was a Friday morning, and the bank was experimenting with casual dress on Friday, so the bankers didn’t have to look as formal as usual. Mom was wearing a pair of black jeans. Nice jeans—not mom jeans. They were tight, and she looked very pretty and very young in them. My dad didn’t know she owned them. Anyway, he had left early to play golf that morning, and so my mom had figured she could wear them to work. Unfortunately, my dad forgot his golf shoes, and so he came back for them and saw what Mom was wearing. His voice got that creepy, sarcastic, I’m-your-daddy tone to it. He almost sounded British when he got like that. And that was always the overture. The warm-up. You knew what was coming next. Mom and I were in the kitchen when he returned, and I was eating a Pop-Tart or something at the counter and making sure I had wedged every binder I would need that day at school into my backpack. (My backpack is always a total wreck.) Mom immediately dropped the lipstick she’d been holding in her fingers into her purse when he started leaning into her. His golf shoes had these pointy metal studs on the soles, and he grabbed one by the top and was holding it like a knife. He ordered her upstairs to the bedroom, where he told her that she was going to put on clothes that didn’t embarrass her or him or his daughter.

  And so I told him that Mom’s jeans sure didn’t embarrass me. I said I liked them and thought she looked great. He turned to me and hissed something about how this was none of my business and to get ready for school. I shrugged and held up my backpack with both hands. (And it really did take both hands, because it always seemed to weigh as much as a case of beer, which, just for the record, I only know weighs a ton because I carried them in from the supermarket when I would help Mom with the grocery shopping. In the months after my dad killed my mom, I smoked a lot of dope, but I was never into beer. Too fattening. And it reminded me too much of Dad.) I told him I was all ready for school. And so he said in that case I should go. And Mom said I should, too, and she was practically begging me to get out of the house. But I didn’t want to leave her like this. To leave her to him. So I told my dad that Mom’s jeans were fine and to let it go. I said he didn’t want to miss his tee time. Mom was, like, babbling about how she was going right upstairs to change, she was, and she scooted around Dad so she was between the kitchen and the stairs, and she yelled back at me in a voice that was bizarrely cheerful considering what was going on that I didn’t want to miss the school bus. And I thought, fuck the school bus, this has gone too far. And, in fact, I may even have said that. I can’t recall for sure. All I remember for certain is my dad glaring at me and his eyes getting narrow: Think of a newt. And then, out of the blue, he rammed the toe of the golf shoe into my stomach. It didn’t hurt that much, and it didn’t knock the wind out of me, but it did cause me to drop my backpack and coil up like a spring. My mom screamed at him to stop, but she didn’t need to worry. He was totally shocked at what he’d done. He was stunned. Then he shook his head in disgust and said I was every bit the slut my mom was and walked out of the house with his golf shoes.

  That was the only other time he hit me. And it led to the longest cold war my parents ever had. It took him longer than usual to get all syrupy and apologize, maybe because he’d never had the chance that morning to vent the full fury that was always smoldering just underneath his skin. Also, he needed to apologize to me, too, this time. Which he did. I wound up with a new iPod and a hundred bucks on iTunes. I believe it would be months before he would hit Mom again. Not till the autumn, I think. But when he started up again, things would spiral quickly through the holidays. I’m amazed it took Mom until February to find the backbone to get the restraining order and kick him out of the house. It wasn’t just that he was becoming so unbearable to be around and so weirdly scary. It was that by then she had Stephen Drew in her life.

  MY MOM IN black jeans? That was never going to embarrass me.

  The stuff everyone found in my bedroom that awful Monday in July when they went there to get me some clothes and stuff so I didn’t have to go back inside the house? Now, that was embarrassing. There in the chaos on my bed and on the floor were, like, a whole zoo full of stuffed animals. There was Bu
nny Jo and Elmo and Scraggles the Bear. There was Eeyore, for crying out loud. There were three American Girl dolls. Obviously I don’t play with American Girl dolls, and I haven’t since I was, like, nine. But I was never able to bring myself to put them in boxes and cart them up to the attic. Once Mom offered to do it for me, and another time she even offered to sell them for me on eBay if I wanted. But I just couldn’t see Samantha and Addy and Kirsten getting all moldy in the attic or being sold to some other family. And so they were right there in my bedroom when Stephen and Ginny and everyone else just popped in and started touching my underwear and my bras and my makeup. Yup, they saw the trolls and the rub-on tattoos in one of my drawers and my thongs and boy shorts in another. Not too weird for them. Not too awkward for me. And yes, it did feel like a violation of sorts. On Sunday it hadn’t crossed my mind that I wouldn’t be back in my house the next day.

  They also saw the jewelry Mom had given me on Friday. A pair of earrings that were rubies and diamonds and her own grandmother’s pearl necklace. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I mean, I guess I was touched. It was clearly supposed to be one of those mom-and-daughter bonding moments. On Monday, if she hadn’t died, we were going to put the jewelry in the safe-deposit box at her bank, because the stuff sure as heck didn’t belong in my jewelry box with my ten-dollar hoops.

  Of course, the grown-ups didn’t bring me half the stuff from my room that I really wanted. They did fine in the needs department: They brought me, like, every pair of blue jeans and shorts I owned and about seventeen pairs of underwear. They found my retainer. (Oh, joy.) They filled a shoe box with CDs (most of which I had already cherry-picked for my iPod). It was the wants department where things were a little lacking. Shirts? None of my favorites. And way more long-sleeved shirts than I needed in July and not nearly enough T-shirts. And two sweaters I never wore (and wasn’t about to wear in July or August). And none of the DVDs of my favorite shows I would watch in the summer on my laptop before going to sleep. And only about half of the things I used to keep my skin clear, as well as the totally wrong foundation.

  But Tina was amazing. So were Ginny and Tina’s mom, Carole. Tina shared everything she owned with me (and I mean everything), and Ginny or Carole seemed to make things magically appear all the time. It was like they could read my mind. I’m sure Tina was telling them the things I needed, but still: It was totally amazing. Ginny wanted to be a superhero and solve all my problems. I think she was okay that I chose to live with my friend, Tina, but I could also tell she was a little disappointed that I didn’t move in with her family. (Sometimes Tina thought Ginny was kind of mental those months, but I reminded her that the woman had just lost her best friend.)

  Still, it was incredibly nice of the Cousinos to take me and Lula in. I mean, they didn’t have to take the dog. But they did. Lula and I weren’t super close, but we became a lot closer after Mom and Dad were gone. She seemed to need me a lot more, and I guess I needed her. In the old days (and that was how I came to describe in my mind my life before that Sunday night), she had slept in Mom and Dad’s bedroom. Now she slept with me in Tina’s and my bedroom.

  At first I felt really guilty that Tina no longer had her room to herself. But she said I shouldn’t worry about it. I should view it like we were in college or boarding school and we were roommates. Tina’s father was an engineer, but his hobby was woodworking, and in his basement he had a workshop that was pretty serious-looking. In August he completely redid Tina’s closet, putting in all these shelves and dividers, and he built this nook with yet more shelves above her bureau. He moved out her night table and replaced her dresser with a much thinner one, and then he brought in my bed and my mattress from the old house and managed to make everything fit in the bedroom. It was cramped but not unpleasant. We both learned to fall asleep with someone else in the room. At first her younger brother and sister—Eddie was in third grade, and Emily was just starting middle school—treated me like I was dying of some terrible disease that might be contagious: They were very nice to me, but they kept their distance. They said as little as possible to me. It wasn’t until a few days before Halloween, when I helped them figure out their Halloween costumes and showed Emily that she could make the mermaid thing work if she wore wheelies instead of regular sneakers (that’s how they made the fish swim when they brought The Little Mermaid to Broadway), that they began to view me as someone who was going to be a part of their lives for at least the next two years and, in some ways, maybe forever.

  Did I feel like I was imposing on the family? Totally. I almost didn’t try out for the school play because it would mean weird hours and extra driving time for them, but they insisted I go for it. So I did. I tried to do as much as I could to help around the house, which in all fairness was the exact opposite of what my approach to chores had been when I’d been living at home. I think my new habit of, like, loading my plates in the dishwasher and making my bed in the morning drove Tina crazy sometimes. She would kid me that I was making her look bad, but I knew there was some truth behind the joke.

  But Tina also knew since the sixth grade what had gone on in my house. I think that was when I started telling her about what a total cretin my dad was and what a jerk he was to my mom. I think she was very glad I was out of that house.

  And here is one more strange thing: I’m sure Tina’s parents fought. Tina told me they did. But I never once witnessed one. Not a single time. Just as I felt I needed to be on my best behavior around them, they thought they needed to be on their best behavior around me. I told Stephen this at one point in September, and he gave me a sheepish little grin and shrugged. He said it was one good thing to come out of that awful Sunday night: We were all striving to be better people. To be kind. To be gentler with one another.

  IT WAS ACTUALLY Tina’s idea I get the tattoo. And she got one, too, though it’s so close to her hip bone that no one sees it except her boyfriend. It’s also pretty small. Hers is this fantasy animal that’s part horse and part dragon. A little over a year ago, her horse died. It was this beautiful Appaloosa named Maggie. The vet had had to put her down. And since Tina would be leaving for college in a couple years and her younger brother and sister didn’t ride, the family didn’t get another horse. But Tina missed Maggie, and so when we decided to get the tats, it was natural she’d get this mystical-looking horse that was probably supposed to be immortal.

  We went to the place in downtown Rutland where Josie, my social worker, had gotten most of hers. It really wasn’t a big deal. And mine hurt a lot less than Tina’s, even though it’s a lot bigger. The guy wasn’t nearly as creepy as I would have expected. He wasn’t my type, because he shaved his head and he had tattoos everywhere on his arms and neck (and who knows where else), but he was very nice. And he had great breath. He must have lived on peppermint gum.

  The biggest difference between Tina’s and mine is that I wanted my tattoo where people could see it. I wanted to flaunt it. So I got mine on my shoulder. My left shoulder. August still had a couple days left, and I knew even in Vermont there was at least a month when I could wear shirts with spaghetti straps. Mine is a big, blooming pink rose, and I had the artist add a stem that ran a few inches down my back and a couple of green leaves. He combined two patterns.

  I picked a flower because my mom loved roses. We even had some wild rosebushes at our house. The flowers really didn’t last all that long, but they were pretty. The petals were just starting to fall off when my mom died.

  Anyway, my tattoo was sort of a test, I think. Just how much slack were people really cutting me? Answer? A ton. I could have gotten a tattoo of people doing it like dogs (they do have tattoos like that), and all the adults in my life would have hugged me and told me it was very elegant or I had very good taste.

  MY MOM’S FUNERAL was completely different from Dad’s. My mom’s was packed. There were people overflowing into the choir loft and downstairs into the community room, where one of the trustees had set up a video feed. I’d had no ide
a how many people had cared about my mom or me—there were a ton of kids there, some of whom I thought viewed me as a total dork—and I was really touched. Dad’s funeral, which we held a few days later in Buffalo, was just me and my grandparents and my aunts and uncles on his side. Not even my cousins were there for some reason. It was so lightly attended that we used this dark chapel off the main sanctuary and still everything the minister said echoed like we were in a cave. It was very creepy. As I recall, the minister talked about forgiveness and understanding, but I think most of us there were just too ashamed to pay much attention. And we were ashamed—at least I was. I just couldn’t wait to get back to Vermont after that part of the nightmare. Anyway, Stephen and I talked a lot the three days after my parents died, and I’m pretty sure I was the first person in Haverill to know he was going to leave as soon as Mom’s service was behind him.