by Terri Cheney
“We’ll just see what’s funny,” he muttered under his breath. I searched his face for clues as to what he was planning, but it was distorted by his vigorous chewing—big, meaty mouthfuls, ground to a pulp. It didn’t bode well. I should have found some way to placate him: offer to do the dishes for a week, clean his room, shine his shoes, something. I knew it at the time, but I let the moment pass, too pleased that I hadn’t upset my father.
The next day was a Saturday. I usually tried to sleep in, to make up for all the sleep I had lost during the week working on “the project” with Daddy. But I was rudely awakened early that morning by my mother ripping the comforter off my bed. “Get up and come in the den,” she said. It was her martinet voice, to be obeyed at once.
I wrapped my robe around me, shivering. I had a presentiment of what was coming, but when I went in the den, the reality was worse than I had anticipated. Daddy was scrunched in the corner of the couch, puffing on a Salem as if it was his last cigarette before execution. And so it was. All the drawers to his desk were pulled wide open, and the blueprints we’d been working on were strewn across the room. I hadn’t realized there were so many.
“What’s all this?” my mother demanded.
“Looks like blueprints to me,” I said.
“Don’t you get smart with me. I mean, what have you two been up to behind my back?”
I looked at Daddy. Please don’t tell her the truth, I silently pleaded. Please let us keep our nights together; they’re all I’ve got. For a moment, he returned my gaze, and there was sadness in his eyes. And something more I hoped I’d never see: defeat, and a consciousness of betrayal. He shrugged and looked away. “Terri Lynn’s been helping me draw up plans for the Volkshouse.”
“And when has she been doing this?”
“After school,” he said, which was a lie and wasn’t.
“That’s not what I hear. I hear you’ve been keeping her up until all hours of the morning.”
“I wouldn’t say all hours—”
“And what do you think you’re doing, working on this in the first place? You promised me, no more big dreams. You promised me, Jack. A quiet life. You promised.” Her voice got quavery, and for a moment, I thought she might be about to cry. But her fury won over, and she started rolling up all the blueprints, without any regard for the delicacy of the paper. “I’m putting these in my closet,” she said. “And that’s where they’re going to stay, at least until we get back on our feet.”
I waited for Daddy to protest. He said nothing, just kept looking into the distance and puffing away. The slump of his shoulders terrified me. I went over and sat down close to him, laying my head on his chest. “Blow me a smoke ring, Daddy,” I said. I wanted something familiar, however evanescent, to fill up the awful silence my mother had left in her wake. He blew a couple of practice rings, then one magnificent oval that hung in the air like a melody and gradually disappeared. We watched as it evaporated, bit by bit, leaving nothing behind but a memory of transient perfection. He stubbed out his cigarette carefully—once, twice, and on the third twist of his wrist, he stood up and headed toward the door.
Panicked, I grabbed his arm and said, “There will be others, you know.” I didn’t have to explain what I meant—other perfect smoke rings, other plans, other chances for glory. He knew, and it didn’t matter. He shook his head, hugged me tightly, and said, “I’ve got to get out of here, baby.” The next sound I heard was the one that I had dreaded all my life: the front door closing behind him.
Maybe if I hadn’t been possessed by a Beast, my whole life would have gone differently then. Maybe I would’ve gone back to bed and cried myself to sleep. Maybe I would’ve been sad, or mad, or some other emotion appropriate to the moment. Then finally, having felt enough, the emotion would be over. But the Black Beast didn’t operate that way. He feasted on feelings, gobbling them up and swallowing them down in a wild feeding frenzy. I was so overcome by the swirl of emotions coursing through my body, I had to sit down and put my head between my knees. I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to die. No, worse—I wanted to kill.
Killing my mother would solve everything. Maybe I’d kill Zach along the way too—he must have been the one to squeal. Zach had long since graduated from cap guns to BBs. I’d seen what he could do to crows: one shot—bang!—right between the eyeballs, and they came plummeting down from the telephone wires. Our backyard was littered with dead and dying crows, and sparrows, and pigeons. I’d have to sneak into his room to steal a gun, but I was smart; I knew that I could do it. Maybe I could even somehow make it look like Zach had killed my mother, then turned the gun on himself.
My mother chose that inopportune moment to come back in the den. “Where did your father go?” she asked.
“You drove him away. Are you happy? Are you thrilled? Are you satisfied now?” The words kept pouring out of me, each one faster than the last, until there was nothing left in my mouth but bile and spit. So I spat at her. She raised her hand to slap me, but the Black Beast’s reflexes were just as quick.
I honestly don’t know who struck the first blow, but within seconds we were scratching, hitting, kicking each other, like a pair of mauling tigers. It felt almost as good as smashing glass. For a moment, my mind slipped sideways and I was that little four-year-old girl again, trapped inside a cage, unable to get free. I grabbed a handful of my mother’s hair and yanked with all my might. She screamed with pain and twisted my arm hard behind my back, until I buckled to my knees. She stepped back, and we stared at each other, both of us shocked and panting.
“Just wait until I tell your father.”
I wondered about that. “No hitting” was one of his few inexorable rules.
“You hit me first,” I said coolly.
“I did not.”
“Did so. And it doesn’t matter anyway. Who do you think he’ll believe?”
We continued to stare into each other’s eyes, aware of the enormity of that moment. Blood had been spilled between us at last—literally. There was a long scratch on my forearm from my mother’s ring, welling up and soaking into the white plush of my terry-cloth robe.
She didn’t have to tell me to go to my room. There was nothing left to say, nowhere else to go. I lay down on my bed, pulling the sheet up over my head and sucking on the scratch. I tried to still my pounding heart, but the Black Beast wasn’t satisfied. Blood. He wanted more blood.
“Enough,” I tried to argue.
“More.”
My heart was beating so hard by then, I was afraid it would burst through my chest. Toto was lying on the pillow next to me, and I reached out and pulled him close. Hugging Toto was usually a surefire soother, but not this time. I’d forgotten about my scratch, and a smear of blood corrupted his pale yellow fur—the fur I’d tried so hard to keep clean. Was there nothing pure left on this earth to comfort me? The world was a foul and filthy mess, and the Black Beast wanted revenge.
I had a good idea what he wanted to do, and it shocked and sickened me. Nausea churned in my stomach, and again I tasted bile. Feeling flushed and hot, I tried to toss off the sheet, but it got tangled up between my legs. By the time I finally kicked myself free, I was all in a sweat. I swung my bare feet off the bed and pressed them hard against the floor, hoping the contact with something solid would somehow reassure me. It didn’t. I knew then that the only way I’d feel better was to surrender.
Despite the Black Beast’s goading—“Now!” he urged me. “Faster!”—I walked slowly on tiptoe down the hall to my parents’ bathroom, careful to avoid the traitorous fifth and seventh floorboards. Silently, I closed the door behind me and eased open the creaky medicine cabinet. I’d grown quite a bit in the last several months and was able to reach the top shelf with no problem. I pulled down my father’s straight-edge razor, unscrewed the bottom as I’d watched him do so many times, and slipped out the sharp, shiny blade.
The question was not what to do with it; the question was where on my body to do it. For a flee
ting second, I contemplated my wrists. But tendons were tough, I’d learned in school, and besides, I didn’t want to die. To exact revenge, I needed to be alive. The problem was, what with my cheerleading outfit and dance leotard, so much of my body was exposed all the time. Where could I safely draw blood?
I slipped off my robe and examined my body, inch by inch. There was really only one secret place left: the thatch of bright red pubic hair that had sprouted this past year. No one ever looked at me there. It was mine to do with as I pleased—the very last comfort zone left.
My hands were shaking as I parted the hair and exposed a naked patch of skin just below my pubic bone: virgin skin, that had never seen sunlight. A drop of sweat ran off my nose and splashed against my inner thigh. I licked my lips and made a tiny incision, no longer than my fingernail. It didn’t hurt. On the contrary, when the razor sliced through my skin, followed by a thin rivulet of red, a vast and deep calm settled over me. I could feel my heart begin to slow down, until I could count the separate beats. One, two, three, one, two, three—smooth and steady as a waltz. I made another nick a little farther down, and again the sight of blood pacified me. I felt quiet and dreamy, as if I were about to fall asleep.
The fact that I was injuring my own body didn’t really occur to me. That wasn’t how it felt. I was my mother’s creation, and every cut spited her, not me. Revenge can still be sweet even if it’s secret. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know what I was doing. God knew, and I trusted Him to properly assign the blame.
My father didn’t call, and I didn’t know where he was. Those were desperate days: endless anxious afternoons and frantic sleepless nights, where I imagined everything that could have happened to him. Cutting myself was the only thing that helped soothe me, and I continued to do so until my pubic area was a mass of tiny nicks. They itched like the devil, and I worried about infection. Normally, I’d ask my mother how I could treat it, but we weren’t speaking to each other. Both of us were like live wires, snapping with electricity; contact would have meant an explosion. I knew, although I didn’t ask her, that she too was just living for the sound of my father’s key in the door—assuming we ever heard it again.
When we finally did, a few days later, I held my breath. I was certain that the first words out of my mother’s mouth would not be “Where have you been?” but rather, “Terri Lynn hit me.” I waited, nervously watching her lips, ready with my rebuttal. But Daddy passed right by her, giving me a quick kiss on the forehead, on the way to his room. She didn’t speak—apparently my father was getting the silent treatment too. I was emboldened by that. I figured my mother must be feeling her share of the guilt, or else she would have told him straight away.
I almost wished she had. Maybe we could have had it out then and there; and even if I was punished, no punishment could have been more severe than the one that ultimately ensued. We didn’t stop. The fights between us just got worse—always in private, and escalating in violence. We used every weapon at our disposal: fingernails, fists, sharp-heeled shoes. We fought everywhere, in every room of the house, in the backyard, in the car, whenever and wherever we were alone together. The slightest thing would set us off: a look, a word, the absence of a look or word. It didn’t matter. Dry tinder finds a match somehow.
Up until then, with very few exceptions, I had somehow managed to keep my meltdowns from everyone except my mother. None of my teachers could have suspected what I was really like, and certainly none of my friends, because they never saw me out of control. Zach knew what I was capable of, but even he never witnessed the madness between me and my mother.
It was a monstrous secret that grew harder and harder to keep hidden as the bruises began to appear. “What happened to your leg?” my father would ask. “I blew a pirouette,” I’d quickly explain, or something in that vein. Once, only once, a teacher asked me about a mark on my neck. It was my favorite teacher, Mrs. Gayle, and I couldn’t tell if she was truly concerned or just making conversation. I shrugged. “Redheads bruise easily,” I said. This soon became my mantra with the girls on the cheerleading squad too. “Redheads bruise easily.” Indeed they do.
To my surprise, my mother lied even more smoothly than I did. “Julia, how’d you get that scratch on your cheek?” my father asked one night. “I was petting the neighbor’s cat,” she said without a moment’s hesitation. Nothing in her eyes changed. Her beauty stayed intact—a useful distraction—although I may have been the only one to notice that a few stray lines had started to creep into her brow.
I no longer watched her get dressed for the evening on those rare occasions when she and my father would go out together. For one thing, she didn’t invite me into her room anymore. Somehow she managed to handle all those little hooks and clasps I used to fasten for her. She untangled her pearls by herself. She decided, in her sole and absolute discretion, which shoes went best with which purse. It must have been a very lonesome time for her, getting all dolled up for the night with no one’s eager eyes to mirror her.
But if she never asked for my company, I never offered it, either. I didn’t want to see her naked. I was too afraid I’d witness the evidence of my uncontrollable temper on her formerly almost perfect skin—almost, but for the scar on her leg from those jealous little girls so long ago, who couldn’t bear her beauty. How I’d hated them every time my mother told me that story. I wanted to go back and beat them up, every single last sneering one. I wanted to make it all better for her. But I couldn’t, and I never would, because I was the stone-thrower now.
4
Of tangled things and wild things
The mind must choose to dwell upon
Of circles without central points
That never end, round on and on . . .
What hopeless clutter clouds the brain!
What rushing, racing spurs of thought
Obscure the tracks of order’s way,
Obscure the circle’s centrodot.
—Age sixteen
The nuns had done their best to instill in me an unwavering belief in miracles: the loaves and the fishes, smooth-skinned lepers, Lazarus, and the like. It’s strange that I was always so ready to believe in fairy tales but not in Bible stories. Perhaps because I fancied myself a writer, miracles seemed too neat a trick, like a literary device whipped out for the occasion to make a story pretty.
That all changed by the time I was sixteen.
By then, I had actually seen firsthand that miracles do happen, even to ordinary folk like me. Nineteen seventy-six witnessed the resurrection of my father’s dream, the Volkshouse. Although Daddy and I had been forced to stop working on the project, and the blueprints were stashed away in my mother’s closet, that hadn’t kept him from pitching the idea whenever he could (out of my mother’s hearing, naturally) to anyone who would listen. And damn if he didn’t find the money. He and a few risk-seeking partners convinced the Federal Housing Administration that it would be a grand idea to build several tracts of government-subsidized low-income housing way the hell out past nowhere, in a godforsaken swath of desert poetically named Hesperia.
At that time, there was little more to the township of Hesperia than a truck stop, a general store, and some monstrous tumbleweeds. The first time we took the long drive out there, I actually entertained a treacherous thought. “Who’d ever want to live out here?” I said, regretting the words before they were out of my mouth. But my father didn’t take offense. Perhaps because he’d grown up in a similar one-drag town, he knew how to dream through the dust. “You just wait,” he said. “In a couple of years, we’ll be turning people away.”
It took a bit more than a couple of years, but in the end he was right. Volkswagen objected to the term Volkshouse, so the name was changed to Custom Homes, which I always thought was hilarious because there was nothing custom about them: four slabs of stucco, a garage port, and a gravel-strewn driveway. Finito. Next house.
Sundays were now spent driving around the desert—my mother still in the back se
at, of course—looking for new lots. Since they contained nothing but dirt and the odd yucca tree, they were, appropriately enough, dirt cheap. By the time other builders caught on to the idea that there might be a gold mine out here, my father had already bought up the best of the lots, and construction was well under way.
Money is no panacea, of course, but it’s a powerful sedative. With the influx of money, a relative calm descended over our house. Daddy was finally able to quit his indentured servitude at Brew 102. My mother also gave up the night shift for more amenable hours. She was significantly less on edge then, less ready to pounce, and she and my father seemed to reach a truce of sorts. Now they fought only about his alleged infidelities, not so much about money.
To my surprise and relief, the fights between my mother and me also grew fewer. It helped that I was spending every available minute in Hesperia, alone with my father in his tiny office with the red rock roof. It might sound boring, building homes out in the middle of the desert, but it wasn’t. It was thrilling, watching the wasted landscape slowly blossom with signs of life, meeting the eager families who couldn’t believe they were about to afford their very own homes. “We’re not selling houses,” my father used to say, “we’re selling hope.” He took me out to all the construction sites, regaling the poor, sweaty workers with news of my latest academic achievements. To this day, the smell of sawdust is my Proustian madeleine: it brings back a life.
Everything was going so well at last. For my sixteenth birthday, over my mother’s strenuous objections, my father gave me a 1965 Corvette convertible—white, with a red interior and the original black-and-yellow California license plates. It was, in car lovers’ parlance, “cherry.” I was elected to the Student Council that year, for the umpteenth time in a row. I was also president of our cliquish YWCA club, the Mauna Loas. (Only popular girls need apply.) And I found a mentor in my beloved English teacher Miss Miller, who recognized my mind’s need to run free and excused me from classes to write and read whatever I liked.
