by Alice Ozma
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Day 1,206
Shutting my eyes tight, I try to erase that memory, but it plays over and over in my mind. And the strangest thing is I don’t even remember what the argument was about.
—Kimberly Willis Holt, When Zachary Beaver Came to Town
My dad is not an affectionate man. As a librarian, he told his students not to touch him, warning them that his skin was poisonous. Kindergarteners seemed to accept this as fact, but the older students often wondered why they couldn’t just give their favorite teacher a hug. He does not like to be touched, and he does not want to touch other people. After school concerts or award ceremonies, I saw other parents hug and sometimes even kiss their children. My father considered it a bold and almost over-the-top display to stick one finger in my hair and scratch my scalp for a moment with his cracked fingernail, like he was helping me get an itch I just couldn’t reach. If the event called for such a grand gesture, he would do it quickly and then back away several feet. This is not how I always remember him, though.
Before The Streak began and for the first few years, I had an assigned place for Read Hot: nestled in the crook of my father’s arm, turned to the side so I couldn’t see the pages (once I could read, it made him self-conscious to know that I was following along), trying my best to be a good listener. I was just inches from his ear, so any noise I made was easily detected. If the chapter was going particularly slowly or my mind was wandering, though, I was not the best audience. When I was younger and trying my hardest to be good in spite of distraction, I would chew my hair. It curled perfectly to fit inside my mouth, and the shampoo we used tasted like peaches. I would chomp and chomp, usually unnoticed by my father, but if I really started paying attention to the book and absentmindedly let the hair fall, it would get his attention.
“What is this wet thing on my arm?” he would ask, already annoyed at having to interrupt the reading.
“Hmm? I must have sneezed.”
“Have you been licking your hair again? It already looks like a rat’s nest—it doesn’t need to look like you’ve been gnawing on it, too.”
And then, because I didn’t want him to think about the wet hair on his arm, I would have to stash it somewhere. Coincidentally, my mouth provided a great hiding place.
On other nights, though, I was not as quiet. When I was struggling with a song in choir, for example, I would find myself humming my part without even noticing it. Even worse, I was particularly sensitive to arguments with my sister and mother and would sometimes sob openly during the reading. He was never sure how to respond to this, especially since the problems that really got me going were never particularly important. I could handle even very adult situations with grace, but I hated fighting or being scolded, and I could sulk for hours after either.
“Are you crying, Lovie?” he might ask, looking very uncomfortable.
“Y-y-yessss.”
He’d wince. Emotional displays were almost as difficult for him as affection.
“Would you like to tell me why?”
He never demanded an answer or pried. I could tell him, or not.
“M-M-M-Mom yelled at me. Sh-she says I can’t b-b-b-bake at her apartment anymore because I make a m-m-mess.”
“I’m sure you do. But you can bake here if you want.”
“We don’t have any pots and paaaans.”
“Well, the heck with you.”
This would make me cry even harder, even though he meant it as a joke.
“Is there something else you want to say?”
I was holding up the reading and not making much sense.
“N-n-n-n-no,” I would whimper, curling into his arm and pulling my hair into my mouth.
When I cried during our reading, it was always because of an issue with someone else. I had trouble telling my father when he hurt my feelings. I felt silly and embarrassed, especially since he rarely came right out and apologized for whatever he’d said to upset me. So when his comments were really smarting, I would take a long bath and cry just a bit more softly than the sound of the running water, hiding until I could completely control my emotions. There was no point in crying during the reading if he was the cause for the tears. Then we would have to talk about it. It would be weird.
But one night, when I was twelve, we got in some kind of argument just before we went up to read. It bothers me now that I can’t remember any of the fight, because it tells me how trivial it must have been. It was a spat at worst, but it was just before Read Hot and there wasn’t time to take a bath, so I hadn’t gotten the crying out of my system. When I headed up the stairs shortly after he did, my face was burning and my throat felt tiny. I had to gulp air to keep from getting dizzy, and my breaths were loud and painful sounding. I can’t remember if I was angry or sad about the argument—probably both—but I knew that I was on the verge of tears, and I refused to let my father see how upset he had made me. I considered telling him that I had a nosebleed, or making any excuse not to come into his room, so that I could sob for a few exhausting moments and come back in, tired but capable of being in the same room with him. There wasn’t time for that, though, because the reading was already close to his bedtime and trying to back it up might cause another fight. I came in, but I was not in the mood for the usual routine.
As I crossed the room, I grabbed a pillow from our pile of spare bedding. I climbed onto his bed and planted the pillow firmly on the farthest edge from him, where my mother used to lie when they were still living together. He did not seem to notice, so I made a point of dramatically pulling the covers around me and rolling on my side, so that my back was toward him. I heard his head move, and he must have looked at me then.
There was a long pause. I could feel his eyes on my back, and I waited for him to say something. Would he actually yell at me, command me to roll over and put my head on his arm? It wouldn’t be like him, to demand affection or even acknowledge that it had become the norm. The silence, and his stare, made my ears hot. I bit down hard on my hair, knowing he couldn’t see it. If I had been sad, I was angry now, and I was proving a point. He took a breath as if about to say something. I scrunched up my face as hard as I could, determined to defend my position no matter what he said. But then he closed his mouth. He took a deep breath, opened the book, and began reading.
I had not expected him to let it go without comment, though I suppose I should have. There was nothing for either of us to say, or nothing that either of us would say, so ignoring it wasn’t even out of character. His reading seemed faster than usual, and I suspected that he was as upset as I was. We would never break The Streak intentionally—even my rebellious side didn’t consider this an option—we just both wanted the reading to go as quickly as possible so that we could retreat to our own corners and feel our own feelings.
What seemed like a twenty-minute chapter took less than fifteen, but those fifteen minutes were some of the hardest of The Streak. From the moment I put the pillow down on the opposite side of the bed, I somehow knew that I was never coming back. I was already a preteen, and my friends seemed to think it was strange enough that my father still read to me every night. I had never told them that I usually listened curled up against him, resting on him and feeling the words vibrate through his chest. This would have seemed very strange, especially from a family that didn’t even hug. Now that I was lying across from him, finally using up some of the space on the queen-size bed, it seemed logical. A twelve-year-old girl belonged here, on her own side of the bed with her own pillow. And besides, even if I wanted to go back to his arm tomorrow night, how could I? It would seem like an apology, or a truce, and I was not ready for either. The time would never be right to move back. I had a new reading spot.
But as I lay there considering this, and being sure to get all the peach flavoring out of my hair, I realized that this was much more sad than the fight itself. I was hurt, and I needed space. I could not just roll over, snuggle up to him, and pretend nothing had happ
ened. But I was aware, painfully aware, of what I was giving up. We had no physical contact, almost without exception. Scrunching up between his elbow and his arm was the only closeness we had, but it was much closer than most fathers got with their almost-teenage daughters on a regular basis. Giving up my spot meant giving up the only opportunity my father had to be touched by another person. No one tried to hug him anymore, knowing he wouldn’t allow it. Somehow, my spot had gone for years without mention. Pulling back drew sudden attention to it and made us both think, I assume, how strange it was that the tradition had even lasted that long. It was something neither of us had ever really considered, and now that we were thinking about it, it seemed awkward and forced, even though it never had been. It would be now.
I curled up into a tight ball, feeling angry and guilty at the same time. If he hadn’t yelled at me I would be lying on his arm right now, and maybe neither of us would have realized how strange the tradition was until I was fifteen or sixteen. I could have had years left of smelling his soft cotton undershirts and staring at the hair on his arm, but I ruined it, or he ruined it, and now we couldn’t go back. I dug my fingernails into my knees under the covers in an effort to stop the tears, but they came quickly and started spilling down my chin, onto the blankets. I tried not to make any noise, but I had to blink so quickly to get the tears out that my eyelids actually made a sound, a wet and sad sound that seemed much louder than my father’s voice. And I knew that my breathing was becoming even more uneven. I hated, absolutely hated, to cry about anything to do with him in front of him, but if I couldn’t help it, I could at least try to hide it. I coughed loudly, hoping he’d think my sniffling was just a cold.
When he finished reading, he put the book down beside the bed and just lay there quietly. I think he wanted me to say something, but instead I covered my face with my wet hair and bolted from the room. I meant to make an excuse about needing to use the bathroom but forgot as I rushed past him and out into the hall. I wanted to go to my room and crawl under the covers, but it was too close to his, so once again I made my way to the bathtub. The water pressure had been especially low, so the tub filled very slowly, which meant I would have plenty of time to get my feelings out. Even at this point, I could not clearly remember the fight. Mostly I remembered the quiet. He wanted to say something and he wanted me to say something, but since neither of us would say we were hurt, there was nothing for me to do but take a long, sad bath and feel horrible about what I’d done.
As I had imagined that night, I never did find my way back into his arm. I considered it the next night, but it seemed like too much of a gesture, and I was scared that he might want to talk about what had happened the night before. I felt more comfortable on my side of the bed, at least temporarily. Once a week or two had passed, he stopped expecting me to come over. He held his arms close to his sides. There didn’t seem to be a place for me, and I felt too old to ask him to make one. So I stayed where I was, missing the closeness but still listening.
I listened, and he read, and somehow we made it work.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Day 1,384
So we grew together, like to a double cherry, seeming parted, but yet a union in partition; two lovely berries molded on one stem.
—William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
There’s hardly anything memorable about the day my sister left for college. It feels like there should be something to it, since it was an important event, but there’s no big story. There wasn’t an emotional scene or a heart-to-heart pep talk the night before. We were already good at good-byes; this one didn’t even stand out. Just one more, like the rest. It all started years before.
Kath wanted to leave before she’d even graduated from high school, and we couldn’t stop her. Other than family, my sister honestly wouldn’t miss much by being away from home. We were living in strained conditions. My father wanted to get us out of debt, support the family while saving up for college educations, and keep the house—a nearly impossible combination on a teacher’s salary. We survived, but not comfortably. My back-to-school wardrobe one year consisted of one orange shirt, a size too big and oddly stained, that I found on clearance. We went for a few years without eating any meals out, and even the occasional treat of two items each from the McDonald’s Dollar Menu was enough to make my sister and me stare at each other bug-eyed, wondering what had come over our father to prompt such frivolous spending. My father was not being cheap; he was doing what he thought would work. And all of this paired with our parents’ separation left things almost as tight and strange at home as they were when we were all fighting under one roof. It wasn’t as bad as some families had it. To me, it really wasn’t bad at all. It wasn’t a reason to leave.
That was not why my sister left. She wanted to see the world, and she was beautiful with languages. I thought she made them up out of her head, plucked them out of the sky and strung sounds together to make words that somehow others understood. One night, when I was very small, she sat on the bathroom counter while I was in the tub, teaching me phrases that she swore I could say to someone a million miles away and be completely understood. I laughed at all the strange noises.
So when she announced, when I was in middle school, that she wanted to be a foreign exchange student, my father and I weren’t even surprised. We’d had an exchange student already, for two weeks, and we thought it was a good experience. We encouraged her to go. Until she showed us the brochure. It was a one-year program, with no visits from parents and no breaks to fly home, not even at Christmas.
“A year?!” I said, “What could you do in Germany for a whole year?”
“Isn’t this going to be expensive?” my father said. “You know we have no money.”
My sister explained that it was actually free to students who qualified, and I stated firmly that I did not want her to qualify. Her feelings were hurt, but I couldn’t let her go. Between my grandparents dying, my mother moving out, and my sister leaving, I suddenly felt like I was losing everyone. Kath was a steady, calming presence, even when she carried me around by my hair and teased me in front of my friends. I crossed my fingers that her interview would go poorly.
Of course, the girl who would later go on to study at Yale and get a competitive government job using her language skills aced her interview and got the scholarship. She was headed to Germany for one year, all expenses paid aside from spending money. My father promised to give her what we had, which wasn’t much. I felt like Tiny Tim, hobbling after her, trying to convince her that even with no money our life wasn’t so bad, and that our family needed to stick together now more than ever. It had nothing to do with that, or us, but it felt like it did. I couldn’t even begin to imagine life without her.
We drove her to her orientation in Washington, D.C., knowing full well that we would be coming back without her. We played her favorite CDs in the car, and I put my head on her shoulder. I wished for us to get in an accident—nothing big, just enough to slow us down and make her late, so the director of the program would get mad at her and tell her to stay home. We were actually several hours early. My father is always early for everything, especially when making a first impression. We stopped at our hotel so that my father and I could check in and drop off our bags, but my sister kept hers in the car to take with her. It was going by too fast. Things got blurry and loud.
The convention center where my sister met her orientation group was actually quite lovely. It had dramatic, floor-to-ceiling windows and velvet carpets. The floors were a highly polished marble that clicked appreciatively whenever it was greeted by the professional grace of high heels. I begrudgingly admitted that the program had gotten something right. But the beautiful setting did not distract me from the fact that they were taking my sister away from me for an entire year. What did they need with Kath? She was an excellent student and a great representative of our country—all right, yes, but so were lots of other people. I needed her more. I did not let the lobby impress
me.
Some meet-and-greet activities were scheduled to acquaint the students with each other and their families. They encouraged us all to laugh and smile and make silly jokes, which seemed absolutely unfair. No one was in the mood for it—the students were too nervous and the parents were too sad. Actually, everybody was sad. They tried to pretend we were excited. I don’t think a single person was. The students probably got excited some time after we left. The families never did. The activities were supposed to last longer than they did, but they slowed to a crawl and then stopped altogether. Everyone was wondering what would come next. When someone stepped before us to speak, I could see the strain in my father’s face. We held our breath and wondered if this was it.
“All right, everyone, it’s time to say your see-you-laters,” the woman running the program said with a great big smile, as though she were telling us it was time for pie and ice cream.
“See-you-laters?” a parent near us asked. “What does that mean? See you later tonight? After dinner? What?”
The woman shook her head and scratched the back of her ear, trying to avoid eye contact. She’d done this many times, it was clear, but she had never quite figured out what to say at this point.
“You mean see-you-in-a-year. You mean that we should say good-bye,” I said quietly.
The woman smiled that big smile again and nodded much too enthusiastically for the occasion. The crowd surged forward toward their children, sisters, boyfriends, and girlfriends in one motion, clumping together into a tight huddle. Kath was saying something, but we could barely hear her over all the crying and quick, fervent, insistent conversation around us. Boyfriends and girlfriends begging for faithfulness. Parents begging for levelheadedness, sobriety, and caution. Everyone begging, “Please don’t leave me,” even if they were saying other things and trying to look happy. To my surprise, my sister and father had a long embrace. Tears were streaming down her face. Then he started, and I couldn’t help myself. I hugged Kath and smelled her hair. I kissed the light layer of foundation on her cheek, which I knew came out of a small green compact with a Nickelodeon sticker on it. She’d been mad at me when I put the sticker on, but she’d never bothered to take it off. I put her hand in mine, and she squeezed it and let go. She waved and walked around the corner. I stayed where I was.
