Beyond the Darkness

by Angie Fenimore

  Daddy was the one who had always made things all right. But now his gravelly voice broke as he told us, "Mama is going away for the summer."

  My head started spinning and the tension in my throat gripped tighter, as if Daddy's words were strangling me. The pleasant warmth in the breeze felt hot and suffocating. The impossible words burned my ears. We looked to Mama, but she was crying, her hand shielding her eyes. We so rarely saw her cry.

  Fighting tears, Toni and I burst out in unison, "But why!"

  "Dr. Ryefield has a camp up in the mountains where they have group therapy. This is going to make Mama happy," Daddy said.

  "Why can't we go too?" I asked.

  "She has to go alone," Daddy said.

  Toni was already crying, and I know my voice quavered as I asked, "Can we visit?"

  "No," Daddy said. "We can't visit because that's part of Mama's therapy. There isn't a phone, and we can't write letters either."

  "But what are we going to do?" I asked. I burst into tears, and then Daddy couldn't hold it in anymore.

  "Don't you love each other anymore?" Toni sobbed.

  "Of course we do," he told us. "It's just for the summer, and this is going to help Mama learn how to be a better mother to you girls."

  Mama remained silent. She seemed too upset to speak. Daddy got up from the picnic table and moved over to the lawn chair on the back porch. Calling Toni and me to come and sit on his lap, he tried to console us through his own tears. The three of us rocked and cried there together for an hour.

  Later I sat on my parents' bed to watch Mama pack for her trip. I was swirling with confusion; so angry, so frightened, so sad. Inside me a whispering voice hinted to me that this crisis was the threshold of pandemonium in my life. I could feel Mama's tension, and I wanted to ease it, to bind her with my love. Sliding off the bed, I went to find my red blanket to soothe her and remind her of home. I presented it to her, almost sacrificially declaring, "Here, Mama. You can take this with you."

  Mama bent down and kissed me, but she seemed distracted. "No, you keep your blanket, honey," she said.

  "No," I insisted, "you take it with you. I don't need it anymore."

  In the end, she accepted it.

  •

  And so it was just the three of us now. Every night Daddy took us out to eat, mostly to fast-food restaurants, which we loved at first. Then when we got home, Daddy would haul out the vodka while Toni and I went to play outside until the streetlights came on. That was the only rule that we still adhered to, and only because we were afraid of the dark. Most nights Daddy would drink and cry until he passed out.

  I was the oldest, and I could see that I would have to be the parent in our house for a while. Of course, with the maturity and skills of a nine-year-old, I couldn't keep house like Mama did, but I could watch out for Toni and try to make Daddy happy. Toni and I did our best to cheer him up. We truly worshiped him, and we knew that our love could sustain him.

  One night, when Daddy had passed out, slumped in a chair in the living room, we concocted a special surprise. Toni and I constructed a crown from a paper bag, which we covered with tin foil, and I crayoned a colorful sign that read "King Daddy." Then we rummaged through our toy box filled with tattered "dress-up" clothes and pulled out an old satin nightgown of Mama's, which we draped over Daddy's shoulders. After a little ceremony we crowned "King Daddy" and took turns posing next to him and snapping photos with the Polaroid camera. The next day when we woke him up, Daddy got such a kick out of our pictures.

  Since regular bedtimes went out the door along with my mother, Toni and I couldn't wake up in time for the Baptist bus to Sunday school, so we started to hold our own services. We began by watching David and Goliath, a children's program that depicted Bible stories using animated clay figures. After that, we each delivered a Baptist sermon to each other, read from our Gideon Bible, and dropped borrowed change from Daddy's dresser into an Easter basket. Then we passed each other the Lord's supper—broken bits of bread in our best china bowls, washed down with grape juice or occasionally real wine—sang a verse of "This Little Light of Mine" or "Deep and Wide," and wound things up with a Mormon prayer.

  Erratic bedtimes weren't the only sign of chaos in our lives.

  I don't think I took a single bath, and I know I didn't brush my teeth all that summer. None of us had any idea of how to shop or cook or clean, though one night we did attempt a trip to the laundromat. Daddy shoveled clothes into a washing machine while I read him the instructions out loud. Nearby, a woman sat reading a magazine while waiting for her clothes to dry. Peeking over the pages, she watched Daddy read the detergent box, murmuring, "Hmmm, let's see now . . ." We must have looked awfully pitiful, for she came over to help us out.

  Smiling at me and then looking up at Daddy, she said, "You know, if you mix those dark clothes with the whites, the colors are gonna bleed."

  "Oh . . ." Daddy said.

  Our rescuer helped Daddy sort and wash the laundry, leaving Toni and me free to explore the laundromat and play with our Barbies in the pastel chairs that were joined together with a metal bar. Finally, the wash was done—clean, dry, and folded. Our kind helper waved and said, "Bye-bye, girls. You take care of your daddy, now."

  Well, we were certainly trying.

  THREE

  Three long months went by, and then it was time to go get Mama. Toni and I were ecstatic, jabbering excitedly as we piled into the car for the daylong drive. Once we reached the mountains, it took us a few hours to find the remote road that would take us into the canyon that lodged the retreat. It led us to a hogback where the road grew so narrow in spots that only one car could pass, and both sides of the road dropped off into steep slopes. By then it was dark, and Daddy was

  so worried about slipping over the edge that, as soon as we reached a place wide enough, he pulled over to

  wait for daylight to come. When the sun peeked over the eastern ridge of the canyon, we started driving again. Once off the narrow road, we drove through a creek bed and finally came to the dirt track that would take us to the camp. "Look for a trailer, girls," Daddy said. Eagerly, we bounced over the seat and scrambled to the windows—Daddy's diligent helpers—fighting to get the first glimpse.

  Finally, I spotted the trailer. We pulled alongside it and piled out of the car. Inside the trailer were a telephone and several cardboard boxes, as well as two nice women. One of them was to be our guide, for the camp was accessible only on foot, five long miles deeper into the brush.

  So we set off plodding behind her, alternately whining and excited. It seemed that Toni asked every fifteen minutes, "When will we get there, Daddy?"

  "Pretty soon, honey," Daddy would answer patiently. Clouds of dirt, stirred up by my feet, coated my legs as I trudged down the path.

  We grew so hot and dusty that the water we kept swigging from our guide's canteen barely seemed to dampen our scratchy throats. We were getting cranky when, at last, in a thicket ahead I saw a tepee hidden amid the trees. Smoke curled through the air above it. We rounded a corner, and there in the distance was a shallow basin, with trees scattered across one side. We had arrived. Bear Creek!

  Our guide directed us to a tepee tucked between a few patches of trees. Some people with long hair came out, dressed in ragged jeans. One of them was Mama! She looked so different, but her hair and clothes weren't all that had changed about her. Even as she hugged us and said that she missed us, there was an unmistakable apathy about her. Mama had always been aloof, but through my excitement at seeing her, it chilled me that she was so withdrawn.

  One of the men seemed to be in a position of authority because he coaxed Daddy into the tent with Mama and himself, saying that there was a matter that they had to discuss.

  Daddy looked tense, and I could tell that he didn't like these new people, but he shrugged his shoulders and complied.

  When he came out, Daddy looked dejected. He was silent as Mama showed us around the camp. There were only two buildings—the
cook-shack, which was a large log structure on stilts where meals were eaten on tables made from logs—and the meeting house, an octagonal building with benches built along the inside walls where camp residents held group therapy. Everyone lived in tepees. Some tepees were larger than others, but most accommodated two or three adults. Mama's excitement rose when we climbed the hill behind the cook-shack to her tepee, which her female tentmate had vacated so that we could all stay there. It was as if Toni and I were her sisters and Mama was showing us her dorm room at college. She presented us with gifts of polished stones. Toni's was a rich, shiny brown with sparkling amber streaks. "This reminds me of you, Toni," she said. "So calm and easygoing." Mine was a swirl of colors, almost a paisley print of lavender, vermilion, and smoky green. I was so touched by her choice. I'd never thought that she had seen beyond my bubbly veneer to the world of my imagination.

  Soon the big cowbell rang for dinner, and we met the rest of the community over gloppy soybean and tomato stew—not my idea of a good meal. Luckily there was dessert, a birthday cake, that I could fill up on. The birthday girl was Danielle, one of the "permanent" children, who was there without her parents and shared a tepee with an adult woman. When a woman rose to announce that it was time to sing "Happy Birthday," she laughed, saying that Danielle was getting a lot of attention lately. Leaning over, I asked my mother what she meant. "Oh, Danielle started her period last week and we gave her a party," Mama said. I was so embarrassed, shocked that my formerly ordinary mother would treat something that private so casually, out loud, with a group that included men.

  The next day we met another of the permanent children, Davey. We happened upon him while exploring the woods. He was wearing only filthy underwear and had a profound speech impediment. He was obviously malnourished and socially starved. As the other children explained, Davey was allowed only one meal of bread and water a day. He was forbidden to associate with any of the adults and was only allowed limited contact with the children because he was undergoing "deprivation therapy." Even at nine years old, I knew that something was seriously wrong with how this boy was being treated.

  But the shock of seeing Davey paled that evening when Daddy told us the results of the conference he'd had upon our arrival. Mama would be staying longer because she hadn't "resolved all of her issues." She wouldn't be coming home with us.

  •

  And so the journey that had begun so exuberantly ended in a cloud of depression.

  We would return to Bear Creek to visit Mama a few more times. On our next trip I saw an older boy in front of the cook-shack, where he was practicing throwing a knife into the ground. I didn't recognize him, so I sat down on the steps to chat. "What's your name?" I asked.

  "Billy," he said through the lit cigarette hanging from his lips. He continued to throw the knife and retrieve it.

  "How old are you?" I asked.

  "Sixteen," he declared. His shoulder-length black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and his jeans were full of holes. Except for the boyish smirk on his face, he looked as if he'd lived a lot longer than sixteen years.

  "So why are you at Bear Creek?" I pressed.

  Billy muttered some obscenity about his parents and Dr. Ryefield. He believed that his parents and all the Bear Creek people—but especially Dr. Ryefield—were crazy.

  The next day Mama told me and Toni that Billy's family had come for the weekend to work out some of their hostility. She suggested, and Daddy insisted, that we stay away from the camp buildings. So along with the other visiting children, we took a dip in the swimming hole. Davey came with us and swam without underwear, insisting that it was better to be without clothes. A grown man joined us and also swam naked, which made Toni and me uncomfortable. Noticing our embarrassment, the others bullied us and tried to convince us to undress too. They made us feel stupid, but we clung to our clothes and our modesty.

  Then we heard shouts echoing across the canyon. The noise was coming from the cook-shack. Curious and a little fearful, we all crept up the steep path, next to the waterwheel, to see what was going on.

  A crowd had assembled outside the cook-shack. At its center was Billy's family, who were all wearing dog collars attached to chains. Big men in the group held the chains to keep the family members apart as they lashed out—growling, barking, and screaming obscenities—at each other, as the onlookers cheered them on. I had never seen such an explosion of violent adult rage, and I found the scene shocking and surreal. The father and the oldest brother were the fiercest, spitting at each other, clawing the air as if they were going to tear each other apart. I was sure that they would rip through their bonds and wreak havoc on us all, to match the emotional destruction they were wreaking on each other. Suddenly I realized how strange and isolated Bear Creek really was.

  The next time I went to visit, the group had taken Billy's shoes and shaved his head because he had tried to run away. They thought that would keep him there. When I tried to ask him how he was, he just glanced at me and looked away. He couldn't trust anybody. He had been broken.

  But for me the worst experience came over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Mama had spent a few days with us in Vegas, and Toni and I had come back with her, leaving Daddy behind. By then we had befriended several of the other children, and a group of us set off to play with Davey, who was still in isolation. When the cowbell rang for Thanksgiving dinner, Davey begged us to bring him some food. The others were afraid to do it, but I couldn't leave him alone and hungry on Thanksgiving. So I whispered that he should hide under the cook-shack, and filling my dinner plate an extra time, I would sneak it out to him. It was dark when I smuggled out the food, but one of the other children spotted me, and being an obedient child, she told her mother about it.

  The next morning, Toni and I were summoned to the group therapy session, where it was announced that I had violated one of the laws of the community. Dr. Ryefield proposed that I be punished for my crime, but not without first asking my mother if she approved.

  I looked to Mama, confident that she would shield me from such injustice. I could feel the hot stares of everybody in the room. I knew deep inside that I had made the right choice in feeding Davey, but still I felt guilty and ashamed—not for feeding him, but because I knew that my mother thrived on these people's admiration. I worried that my crime would bring shame on her. When Mama turned to look at me for a moment, I could see in her eyes that she, too, was tormented by my public humiliation. But when she finally spoke, all Mama said was, "Yes, that's fair."

  I was deprived of my next meal as penance, but the far worse punishment was my mother's betrayal and my sense that these people had stolen her from me. As the community ate lunch together—I sat there without a plate—I could tell that Mama was uneasy about what had happened during group. She kept glancing at me and finally asked, "Are you okay, Ang?"

  "I'm not even hungry," I said, trying to hide my embarrassment and wishing that she hadn't called more attention to the fact that I wasn't eating. I could see now that there wasn't room for Toni and me in her life, really. It was us or Bear Creek and she had chosen. We had lost her.

  FOUR

  Daddy now realized that Mama was gone for good and tried to cushion our despair. I didn't even know what a divorce was. The legal intricacies were beyond me, and it filled me with dread even to try to imagine Mama's permanent absence from our home. Daddy's efforts to fill the emptiness became a nightmare for Toni and me. Most of the women he went out with resented sharing him with us and feared the responsibilities of our "instant family." Brandy was different. She was a voluptuous nineteen-year-old receptionist from Daddy's office, who had long blond hair and wispy bangs. She was married, but her husband was the one who orchestrated her involvement with my Dad, and I'm still not sure what longings this triangle satisfied in each of them. Since Brandy knew that we were important to Daddy, she was very nice to us. One time she took us to a fabric store, offering to make us pantsuits out of any fabric we liked. I chose brown cotton with
pictures of candy bars all over it. Even though our pantsuits never fit well, we wore them all the time. We needed Brandy's attention and kindness even more than we needed clothes.

  Brandy lived with her husband, Sonny, and a big, smelly man named Lenny in a horrid little trailer in North Las Vegas. Sonny had been to prison and wore his cigarettes rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve. He rarely spoke directly to us, for which we were grateful, but his leering eyes would fix on me while he commented to Lenny about what "hot chicks" Toni and I were going to be in a year or two.

  One Friday night Daddy took Toni and me out for burgers and then announced that we were going to Brandy's place for the evening. "I don't want to go," I protested. I hated Sonny and Lenny.

  "Oh, we won't stay too long," Daddy replied, brushing off my complaints.

  Old newspapers and empty beer cans littered the living room of the trailer. There was a glass tank about the size and depth of my little inflatable swimming pool in the corner of the room. It was filled with water, rocks, and algae, surrounded by heat lamps. In the tank Brandy and Sonny kept the two baby alligators that were Lenny's companions. Even though it meant being left alone with Lenny and the hissing gators, I was a little relieved when Brandy took Dad and menacing-looking Sonny and disappeared into the bedroom.

  Toni and I sat nervously, glued side by side on the worn velour couch, while Lenny flipped through dirty magazines. Occasionally he was moved to share his favorite pictures with us. We were too uncomfortable and miserable to say a word.

  A few hours passed before Dad emerged from the bedroom, ready to take us home. He was very drunk. In the car Toni slept across the passenger seat, but I stayed awake on Daddy's lap. I had to help him steer.

  Not long afterward, Brandy disappeared from our lives. Daddy was evasive about the reason, but Toni and I surmised that Sonny had begun to feel squeezed out of Daddy and Brandy's relationship, that the triangle had started to capsize. To punish Brandy, Sonny had stabbed her horse to death. That was enough to open Daddy's eyes.