Our Father

by Marilyn French

  Ronnie, facing two distant, distanced countenances, stubbornly set her mouth. She’d been right to mistrust them, they were exactly what she’d thought in the beginning. How could she have let herself be seduced into caring about them? They were useless, worse than useless. Alex a complete flake, Mary one of those supercilious lightweights who floated on the surface like scum, never touching anything real, seeing only what was fashionable to see. And Elizabeth! Of them all, it was Elizabeth she felt most kinship with, felt most like. But god! You couldn’t, you just couldn’t be friends with someone with politics like hers. If Elizabeth had really accepted Ronnie, had learned to care about her, see her, she would have had to question her fascist ideas. So her friendly behavior had no foundation. But then she was capable of anything, even blackmailing her father to get whatever it was she wanted from him. The only thing the four of them had in common was his … abuse.

  Maybe that was all women as a sex had in common.

  She didn’t need them. She’d been beguiled but now she was wary, warned, aware, awake, at war. She’d lived without them all these years and could go on doing so, thank you very much.

  She tried to calm the churning in her mind, concentrate on what she had to do today. A good statistics handbook she should buy. Some bookstores were open Sundays, but which ones? She couldn’t remember, it seemed years since she’d been a student, another life. Before Momma got sick. Before Momma died.

  Aldo dropped Ronnie at the library. Mary had arranged for him to return to Back Bay at two o’clock to drive Mary, Alex, and Eloise to the Isabella Gardner Museum, and wait for them there. Then, around four-thirty, he would pick Ronnie up at the library. They separated in near silence.

  But some hours later, as they picked Ronnie up, the other two welcomed her warmly, talking and laughing volubly.

  “Of course, I don’t know anything about art, but the way she’s arranged things seems really comical to me. What do you think, Mary?” Alex laughed. “Giant candelabra next to some wonderful painting next to …”

  “Some piece of kitsch!” Mary exploded, laughing.

  Ronnie, more subdued than earlier, sank deeper into glumness.

  But Alex wouldn’t permit it. “Did you find what you needed, Ronnie?”

  “Oh, you found a bookstore open!” Mary exclaimed, pointing to the brown paper bag Ronnie carried. “What did you buy?”

  Both exclaimed in awe over the books with their forbidding titles, joshing Ronnie about their contents. Mary opened one at random, read out “‘Antheridia and Gametes in Mosses?’ ‘Structures and Adaptations of Bryophytes’?” at which even Ronnie was forced to laugh. By the time they reached Lincoln, the three of them had achieved some harmony again.

  “It’s nearly cocktail time,” Mary announced when they arrived. “Shall we change for dinner and meet in the playroom?” She poked her head into the library. “Hi, Elizabeth! We’re back!” she sang. “Had a wonderful time! Want to have drinks?”

  “I’m busy,” Elizabeth growled. She glanced at her watch. “What time is it anyway. It’s only five-thirty!”

  “Oh, please join us, Lizzie!” Alex pleaded, standing in the hall behind Mary. “I want to tell you all about this funny museum we went to. We’re just changing, we’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

  The three of them were settled in the playroom when Elizabeth dragged in wearing ratty old pants and a blue cotton work shirt.

  “Aren’t you going to dress for dinner!” Mary exclaimed.

  Elizabeth examined herself. “I forgot.” She looked at Mary. “Do I have to?”

  “Of course! Only Ronnie is allowed to come to the dinner table looking like a plumber’s helper,” she said, grinning wickedly.

  “Right. Ronnie isn’t dressed, why should I dress?” Elizabeth sighed, settling in a chair. “I’m exhausted.”

  “Let me get you a drink,” Alex offered, jumping up. “Perrier?”

  “No. Gin.”

  “You seem to have given up Perrier,” Ronnie observed.

  “It’s the company. It drives one to drink.”

  “Lizzie, you really must change. You’ll shock the servants,” Mary protested.

  “Is that what manners are for? To preserve the servants’ sensibilities?”

  Ronnie smiled broadly. “Right on! If you want us to treat you as gods, you had goddamned better look the part!”

  “Can’t you just put on a skirt and comb your hair?”

  “Oh, leave her alone, Mary.”

  “We’re disintegrating, descending to the lowest common denominator!”

  “Which is me?”

  “Obviously.”

  Alex, standing at the bar, turned a puzzled face to them. She was hearing hostile words but no anger in the voices. “Are you all just teasing?”

  “Half,” Mary said.

  “Why are you so tired?” Ronnie challenged Elizabeth. “Find a logical flaw you couldn’t rationalize away?”

  Elizabeth grimaced at her. “Economics is not a precise science.”

  “Despite the fact that economists think like men?”

  “Now stop it, stop it this minute!” Alex scolded. “You know it doesn’t help anything to squabble!”

  “At least,” Elizabeth went on cheerfully, “some of us try to face realities. Unlike you feminists living in never-never land.”

  “Are we going to have to listen to this all over again? It’s such a bore!” Mary complained.

  “Look, Mary,” Elizabeth said in exasperation, “Ronnie and I have a real argument and we need to have it out. I’m sorry if you don’t like it.”

  “Fine!” Mary spat. “Have it out by yourselves! Don’t subject us to it! We’re not interested in it.”

  “You should be,” Ronnie insisted. “It’s essential.”

  “Yes. Especially as it touches on our common situation,” Elizabeth agreed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean, Ronnie, is that”—she turned to face her—“and I’m not saying this in anger. I’m over that. But you’re young enough to be my daughter, you could be my daughter …”

  “Hardly,” Ronnie drawled sarcastically. “Wrong color. And may I add, I’m grateful I’m not.”

  “I’m grateful you’re not too. Mainly because I’m grateful I was never a mother. But that’s irrelevant. What I want to point out is that you have everything invested in a bunch of lies.”

  Ronnie paled, but her voice stayed strong. “Oh, you know the truth,” she charged.

  Elizabeth held up her hands. “I don’t claim to be in total possession of the truth. I just want to make one small point.” She lighted a cigarette. “Lying to oneself can have reverberations. For instance, the other night when we were—when we all discovered—revealed—we’d had the same experience with Father—you—and you were the only one—you lied, Ronnie.”

  Alex gasped. Mary held her breath. Ronnie sat back in her chair, her face hard and dark.

  “You said that it wasn’t the same for you as for us with Father because you never loved him. And that’s a lie, Ronnie.”

  Ronnie shot forward, her teeth bared. “How dare you! How dare you assert what I feel, felt? How can you possibly know!”

  “Do I have to say how it was, had to be, must have been? Big house, big man, man Momma loves … he was a good-looking man in those days. Tall, handsome, graceful, beautifully dressed, always in control. I’ve seen the photographs—Christ! I remember! He was the bossman, he had all the power. He must have seemed like a god to your mother and to you too, Ronnie!”

  “God! He seemed like the devil!” Ronnie cried.

  Elizabeth gazed at her steadily.

  Ronnie stood up. “He is a devil,” she hissed at Elizabeth. “Your father! A rapist, a child molester, a fascist, a killer! You know what his policies were during the war, after it …! And you too, to the degree you support him! I don’t want to know you and I don’t want to be in this house anymore!” She whirled around and left the room.

&n
bsp; “Really, Elizabeth,” Mary murmured. “Did you have to do that?”

  Elizabeth hung her head. “I thought I did,” she said.

  Anything, she’ll do anything, she said it herself, she has no scruples, takes after her old man. Ronnie turned in her bed, trying the left side now, coiled around as if she had a stomachache.

  It’s not true, I never cared about him, how dare she what’s that word impact import impose impose her feelings on me, impugn, impugn my word. How does she know what I felt? How could she?

  That bitch, that traitor to womanhood, that quisling for the devil’s party, miserable woman, no one’s more miserable than her, the unhappiest woman I ever met, that’s where her ideas get her. When you have hellish ideas, you live in hell.

  She turned again.

  Apologist for her father, who raped her. No wonder she wants to insist everyone else loves him. She’s right, she is a destroyed person, her life is a ruin. A monument to patriarchal thought, that’s what she is: like him. Alone, alone, she’s totally alone. So okay I haven’t found the right person either, one woman I can love forever, but I’ve loved lots of people and someday I will find the right one, I know I will. I’m still young. I’m young, I’m alive. It’s not that I can’t have good relationships. I’m not like her.

  She turned again but her pillow was soaked and she sat up, switched on the bedside lamp. Sighing, she pulled her body up, sat on the edge of the bed, reached for the package of cigarettes she had opened tonight—and after three days without smoking, too! Shit!—and lighted one. She got out of bed. The floor was cold on her bare feet.

  She found her socks and pulled her jeans on, buttoned them over the T-shirt she wore to sleep in and left the room. The house was dark and silent, and she didn’t turn on any lights, moving quietly by feel into the kitchen, the hall, the foyer, the sitting room, the hall past the billiards room, and pushed open the half-closed door to the library. Moonlight poured in through the French doors facing the garden across the worn Persian carpet, cutting a sharp swathe in the floor.

  She stood there until her eyes were fully accustomed to both the dark and the moonlit swathe. Room I avoid. She studied the French doors, the windows, the desk, the low beamed ceiling, the huge stone fireplace, the walls of books. She moved toward the desk, tapped her cigarette into the large round ashtray Elizabeth used, empty now, cleaned, good servants in this house.

  I thought he was out.

  He was out, he went to Boston for the day, but he must have come back early because of the heat. It was horribly hot. Momma was sweating in the kitchen, it must have been over a hundred in there, she was doing a reduction of a sauce, making blanquette de veau, he said he might bring someone back for dinner, some important man in the government. I knew she wouldn’t let me so I snuck out to the pool with my bathing suit under my shirt, I didn’t dare go in naked, the gardeners were around. They wouldn’t have told on me, they didn’t care if I used the pool, but they would have leered and teased if I’d gone skinny-dipping. I put on my suit in the bushes, and dove in. Oh god it was wonderful, how lucky they were and here it sat they didn’t even come here, they hardly used it, but oh, it was wonderful, that cool water lapping around me, and I dove under and around and got my whole self wet and swam, I’d taught myself to swim sneaking in when no one was here, Momma never even knew or maybe she did but never let on. …

  Oh, I had such a good time. I must have stayed in that pool for an hour, my fingers were all wrinkled and turning blue by the time I got tired. I got out and snuck into the bushes.

  Ronnie walked to the French doors and unlocked them, stepped out on the terrace, stared out at the dark mounds of leafless shrubs—forsythia, orange blossom, lilac. The tips of the bare branches were gilded by moonlight.

  Right there. And took off my wet suit and reached for my shorts … and …

  “Girl! Come here!”

  Froze. Caught. He was here, he was home, he was standing there in the doorway, right where I’m standing now. Could he see me through the leaves? He must see me, he’s calling me, naked I am and now what will he tell Momma, will he throw us out, will she cry, will we starve to death?

  I started to put on my shorts.

  “Come here immediately! NOW!”

  “Yes sir,” I whimpered, dropped the shorts but grabbed my shirt. “I’ll just put on my …”

  “NOW!”

  God I had breasts I had hair down there I was mature it wasn’t as if I was little and unself-conscious I couldn’t …

  “NOW!”

  I came out from behind the bushes naked, shivering, terrified, starting to cry, please sir I’m sorry but it was so hot I just wanted to try it it was so hot I’ll never do it again I never did it before this was the first time it was just so hot today. …

  But I didn’t say any of it, because He strode out there and grabbed me by the arm, I dropped my clothes, He dragged me into the library, my feet didn’t even touch the ground, dragged me in and threw me down on the couch.

  Slowly, Ronnie turned and went back inside, locked the door, turned to face the long leather couch. Slowly, she crossed the room and locked the door to the hall. Then she stood looking down on the couch.

  Unbuckled his belt, I thought he was going to beat me, I’d heard kids talk at school—Did your father whip you? Yeah, I really got it, with the belt. I was crying, shivering, it was hot but I was cold and then he threw himself on top of me, something terrible and hard shot into me I opened my mouth to scream he put his hand over my mouth he was tearing my insides down there he was ripping me open. …

  Ronnie stood by the couch, tears pouring down her cheeks.

  Then he shuddered and a hot stream of liquid filled me up. He got up, he pulled up his pants, I was lying there, this slimy ooze dripping out of me, he buckled his ben.

  He wasn’t going to beat me. …

  “Get up.”

  I did. The stuff poured out of me all over the leather couch. As if I’d peed. Humiliated, so embarrassed …

  Stared at me, those icy eyes, my small rounded brown body shivering naked. “If you speak of this to anyone, I will dismiss your mother. You’ll be on the street, you understand?”

  I nodded.

  He motioned to the French doors with his head.

  I ran to it, it was locked, I fiddled with it, I was sobbing, it was hard to open, finally I got out of the room, back to the bushes, found my clothes and put them on, shivering, crying, whimpering like a baby, what was that, what did he do to me, why? I ran inside, Momma didn’t see me, I ran up the attic stairs to the closed-up maids’ rooms, I lay down on a bed, there was a sheet over it all dusty I kept sneezing, I didn’t care, I just lay there shivering, crying, keeping my sounds low so no one would hear. … Crept around after that. Never went into the pool again. Never, no matter how hot it was, even if he wasn’t here. Still, when Momma was out shopping or in the kitchen preparing some special dinner, he’d find me somehow, summon me, call me like I was a dog, call me “girl,” grab me by the arm, drag me in here, throw me on that couch. Always the same, never said anything to me again. How I hate this room.

  Slowly, her body hunched over, Ronnie left the library and retraced her way to the kitchen.

  She says I loved him. How dare she. Maybe they did, do. He didn’t treat them the way he treated me. At least he claimed to be doing it out of love, he caught at their hearts. He used the word, whatever his feeling. He counted on their loving him. But he treated me exactly the way a white plantation owner might have treated his African slave. But I’ll bet even some of them claimed to love those slaves too; maybe at least they showed desire. He never even did that, he was cold, except his eyes, something shone in them, was it desire, was that how he showed it, that intensity of gaze that took over my body, surveyed and appropriated it the way a woman looks at a nice cut of meat she’s about to buy for dinner. I was high tea, he had Momma for dinner.

  Momma knew all about the droit du seigneur, she used to talk about the way th
e white foremen and farmers simply took the Mexican women. Women were property belonging to the master. All of them knew it—the men, the women, the children. It was the way things were. They tried to hide daughters of ten or eleven whose shabby clothes couldn’t hide their swelling breasts, thighs and bellies taut with youth, girls who still thought and felt as children, but the men saw something else, saw what they wanted to see, took what they wanted. It happened to her own mother, she said, herself the product of a union like that, probably why I have blue eyes. And Grandma Maria loved Grandpa Rogelio because he didn’t beat her for it, didn’t threaten to kill her, he knew she had nothing to say about it, couldn’t help what happened. He even loved the baby, Momma, and oh how she loved him.

  So if I’d told her, what would she have done? Of course, it’s different, he wasn’t just the seigneur, he was my father. And he knew it. Titillated him, fucking his daughters, got them all didn’t he, was that a private little triumph for him?

  Still, suppose I’d told her and she’d shrugged? I’d have hated her forever, I’d never have been able to love her again. As it was I couldn’t forgive her for not knowing, for somehow not stopping him.

  Ten times he did it over that summer, ten times, I counted, each time leaving me feeling like a piece of meat thumped like those slices of veal Momma sometimes made for him, banged with a mallet until they were limp and saggy and spread out, all the muscle broken down. Kept waiting for him to leave but he didn’t. Retired, Momma said. Retired! He was never going to leave again. I lived in a state of dread, couldn’t study, my grades fell, the teachers looking at me like I was finally fulfilling my promise, the lazy no-good chicana finally come of age. My breasts were big then, even if my mind was still a kid’s, I was bigger than any of the white girls, more mature. Felt raped every day at school, had to get out, had to find my own kind.

  Like Mary couldn’t face coming back here from school. I wonder if I’d ever have had the guts just to tell him to stop like Elizabeth did.

  No. I’d have been terrified that he’d throw Momma out. Running away was the only solution. She didn’t know where I was either, so he knew she wasn’t complicit. She was beside herself. He couldn’t take it out on her. She thought I did it to punish her, but I’d thought it all out. It was hard on me, too, not calling her, thinking about her horrible worry. …