The Chronology of Water

by Lidia Yuknavitch

  “C’mon,” he said, and wheeled the bike around to face the street.

  I felt the immediate sting of tears but followed anyway. Between terror and drawing his rage, I chose terror.

  My father kicked up the kickstand and held the handlebars and told me to get on. I did. He pushed us forward slowly and told me to put my feet on the pedals. But the pedals seemed like giant befuddlements to me, and they were going around in a way I couldn’t understand, so my feet sort of interrupted them now and again like human clubs.

  “Goddamn it, I said put your feet on the pedals.”

  Fear gripped my little chest, but fear of his anger again won. I put my feet on the pedals and tried to follow them round and round, looking straight down.

  Still holding the handlebars, and walking us forward, my father said, “Now look up and put your hands on the handle - bars. I put my hands near his - they looked like a doll’s hands next to the meat of a father’s. “I said look up, goddamn it, if you don’t look where you are going you are going to crash.”

  Training wheels. Weren’t there such a thing? Hadn’t I seen them?

  I put my hands on the handlebars. I looked up. My feet felt retarded - like heavy rocks going up and down. Then he let go of the handlebars and held on to the back of the bike. Briefly I wobbled and let go and tipped over. I fell knee first downward but he grabbed me by my shirt and lifted me upward. “Don’t cry, for christ’s sake,” he said. “You better not cry.”

  Not crying, I could barely breathe.

  We went through this routine up and down the street until the sun lowered. I remember thanking god for lowering the sun. Soon it would be dark, it would be dinner time, my mother would put plates out. I knew how to eat dinner.

  But that was not what my father wanted.

  On a pass close to the house, he turned me around and said, “Now we’ll try the hill.”

  The hill was up the block from our cul-de-sac. I don’t have any idea what the true grade was - but in the car coming home from swim practice my mother used the brakes. At the top of the hill was my beloved vacant lot. At the bottom was the right turn you had to make to get to our house.

  My father had to push me up the hill. “Would you please pedal? For christ’s sake.”

  When I say I thought I might vomit, I want to you understand. The vomit I was pretty sure I was about to spew felt like if it happened, my entire body would simply go inside out. That I’d puke so hard I’d puke my self. To this day I don’t know why I wasn’t crying at that point. I was silent. Just the breath of a girl pedaling up a hill.

  At the top of the hill he turned me around on my beautiful bike and held the back of the seat. I remember shaking and staring down what looked pretty much like that moment on a roller coaster before the dive.

  He said, “You back pedal to break it - little by little - as you pickup speed.”

  He said, “Down at the bottom you break enough to make a turn, and you turn. Left.”

  Incomprehensibly few words to me a girl.

  Then I did the unthinkable. “Daddy, I can’t do it.”

  My bottom lip kid quivering.

  “You sure as hell can,” he said, and pushed.

  Psychedelic drugs put you in realms where language fails to describe emotion. I know this as an adult. What you think, what you feel, what happens to your body - your head, your arms and legs, your hands - goes into an alien dream. Your body disembodies. Your mind folds inward to the undiscovered geography of the brain. That’s the best way I can describe the shape I was in when he pushed me down that hill. The endorphins of my terror induced an altered state.

  At first I gripped the handlebars so hard my palms stung. I screamed all the way down. I backpedaled but it didn’t seem to me like anything was slowing down. The possibility of stopping seemed like a lie. The possibility of turning right seemed like trying to ride to China.

  Wind on my face my palms sting my knees hurt pressing backwards speed and speedspeedspeedspeed holding my breath and my skin tingling like it does up in trees terrible spiders crawling my skin like up high at the grand canyon my head too hot turnturnturnturnturn I am turning I am braking I can’t feel my feet I can’t feel my legs I can’t feel my arms I can’t feel my hands my head my heart my father’s voice yelling good girl my father running down the hill my father who did this who pushed me my eyes closing my limbs going limp my letting go me letting go so sleepy so light floating floating objects speed eyes closed violent hitting objects crashing nothing.

  I came to in my father’s arms - he carried me into our house. I heard the worry in my mother’s voice saying “Mike? Mike?” He carried me into my bedroom. She followed. He yelled “Get a flashlight.” She yelled “What for? What’s wrong?” He yelled “Get it goddamn it. I think she’s hurt down there.” She did. He laid me down on my princess canopy bed. I looked at the white lace. My hands between my legs. My mother returned with the flashlight. My father pulled my hands away and then pulled my pants down. My mother said “Mike?” I began to cry. Hurt where pee lives. My father pulled down my underwear. My mother said “Mike.” My father spread my legs and turned on the flashlight and said, “She’s bleeding.” My mother crying my father saying “Dorothy go outside you are hysterical,” my mother leaving. My father saying close the door goddamn it.

  Weren’t there things called doctors? Hospitals?

  I’d crashed my bike into a row of mailboxes.

  I’d ruptured my hymen.

  My father’s hands.

  A flashlight.

  Blood.

  Girl.

  The next day he made me get back on the bike after work. He made me go back to the top of the hill. It hurt so bad to sit on the bike I bit the inside of my cheek. But I did not cry. He said, “You have to get right back on and conquer your fear. You have to.” Again he pushed me. Little girl not old enough to know her anger her fear her body sailing down the hill on her hot pink Schwinn, streamers flying.

  Between terror and rage I chose rage.

  Partway down the hill I thought of my father and how I hated the way his skin smelled like ash skin yellow cigarette stains on his fingers and his big architectural hands and his pushing me and I closed my eyes… I closed them, I did, I let go of the handlebars and I put my hands out to the sides of my body. I felt the wind on my palms and fingers. On my face. My chest. Maybe blowing straight through my heart. I stopped breaking. My feet weightless.

  I wiped out without making any turns toward our house. Though no bones were broken, I was scraped all over. My face. My elbows and arms. My knees and legs. My strong swimmer boy shoulders. All I was was my body. Bleeding. Bleeding.

  But not crying.

  For years and years, after that.

  The Less Than Merry Pranksters

  Bennett Huffman

  Jeff Forester

  Robert Blucher

  Ben Bochner

  James Finley

  Lynn Jeffress

  Neil Lidstrom

  Hal Powers

  Jane Sather

  Charles Varani

  Meredith Wadley

  Ken Zimmerman

  Lidia

  Twelve last ditch disciples and me.

  How I walked through the door of the 1988-89 collaborative novel writing workshop with Ken Kesey was that my writer friend Meredith Wadley grabbed my hand and marched me into the class without anyone’s permission. Meredith seemed to me like a cross between a gorgeous and complex Faulkner character with only the faintest hint of a southern drawl, and a wealthy English equestrian champion. Meredith had a mane of dark hair and even darker eyes. In her eyes there were electrical sparks. On the day the “class” was to begin we were drinking beers in her apartment. I admit it. I was jealous. Almost choke on beer jealous. When it came time for her to go to the class, she said, “Enough crappy things have happened to you. Come with me.”

  I said, “What? That’s crazy. I’m not in the MFA program. I’m not even a grad student. They’re not going
to let me enroll.”

  If you look us up on Wikipedia it says the book we wrote was written collaboratively by Kesey and “13 graduate students.” I was not an MFA student. I was an undergraduate sort of trolling in English and sleeping with lots of humans and riding the drug train and drinking drinking drinking. My athlete body was gone. I had grown big tits and something called “hips.”

  I had a huge hunk of permed blond hair. I wasn’t an accomplished writer. I wasn’t an accomplished anything. The only thing I was good at was being a drunk or high cock tease, as near as I could tell. Why would they let me into their group? Why would Kesey?

  “Bullshit,” Meredith said, “Kesey is going to love you. Trust me. Plus you are a good writer. You already know half the people in the class. And anyway, you think Kesey gives a rat’s ass about U of O rules?”

  Blushing like an idiot, I let her march me down the road between the U of O and the Kesey house that would serve as the classroom for the year, and through the front door.

  Sitting at a huge table were the disciples.

  My throat shrunk to the circumference of a straw. I thought I might barf.

  “Everyone, this is Lidia,” Meredith said.

  Great. Now I get to stand here like a moron and explain myself. I just stood there with a little ticker tape running inside my skull: thisiskenkeseythisiskenkesey. The books my father gave me. Sitting in a dark theater with my father watching the films. Paul Newman in Notion. Cuckoo’s Nest.

  Kesey, who was at the far end of the room, walked his barrel of a body straight over, pulled out a chair for me, and said, “Well HELLO. What do we have here? A triple A tootsie.” It was the first time I’d seen him not in a photo or at some Oregon literary event. The closer he came, the more nauseous I felt. But when he got right up to me, I could see the former wrestler in his shoulders and chest. His face was moon pie round, his cheeks vividly veined and flushed, puffy with drink. His hair seemed like cotton glued in odd places on a head. His smile: epic. His eyes were transparent blue. Like mine.

  My face got hot and the top of my head itched and all the others in the room looked like writers with special MFA badges while I felt like a human match. Like I might burst into a puny orange flame. While everyone was laughing about the tootsie remark he leaned down and whispered in my ear, “I know what happened to you. Death’s a motherfucker.”

  In 1984, Kesey’s son Jed, a wrestler for the University of Oregon, was killed on the way to a wrestling tournament when the team’s bald-tired van crashed. My baby girl died the same year. Close to my ear, he smelled like vodka. Familiar.

  He handed me a flask and we got along and bonded quickly the way strangers who’ve seen aliens can. That’s all it took. No one ever questioned me, least of all Kesey. It was brilliantly incomprehensible to me. I loved it.

  I was 25.

  The first day of the collaborative novel writing workshop, Kesey brought out a brown cigar box and asked Jeff Forester to roll a joint. Jeff Forester had beautiful bleached brownblond curly hair and translucent eyes and tan skin. He looked like a surfer to me. But with a wicked vocabulary and mucho skill with words. Jeff didn’t seem to bat an eyelash, he just rolled a perfect fattie, and Kesey began talking his Kesey talk, which began, “I’ve always hated sitting in a room with writers.”

  Bennett Huffman took a large toke from the christening joint and passed it. Bennett Huffman was tall and thin and light skinned. His quietness mesmerized me. While we were smoking in a round, Bennett closed his eyes, lost the color in his face, and fell to the ground - almost in slow motion. Passed out cold. I don’t remember who expressed alarm. It was maybe a woman. Like maybe we should call someone or do something. Beautiful Bennett there on the floor.

  Kesey simply stepped over our comrade’s body and kept talking, pausing only to say, “He’ll be OK” Looking at us like don’t you know that? It happens all the time. The distance between the 60s and 1988 was as wide as an ocean. You could tell by our clothes, the beer we drank, the I’m a U of O duck looks on our faces. There was no psilocybin, mescaline, or LSD glittering on the surface of our skin. There was no CIA-financed study on the effect of psychoactive drugs. To my knowledge, only one of us had been to rehab or jail, and I wasn’t talking.

  In my head I laughed my ass off while I sat and tried to write weird sentences so I wouldn’t embarrass myself. I’d never been in any “class” like that in my life. But I’d failed several classes, and I’d flunked out of college before, and I’d been to institutional houses for bad behavior or instability already by then in my life, so this house seemed at least safe to me compared to the tyranny of others.

  That first day we free-wrote in the house somebody - maybe Bochner - said, lamely, “I can’t write on the spot like this.” Bochner was sort of an aggressive hippie - the tree hugger with weaponry type. Kesey said: “Then write like a terrorist just busted in and threatened to kill you all - like you have a semiautomatic machine gun at your skull.” And looked at us like we should already know that.

  Kesey laid forth two rules: first, we could not talk the plot of the novel with anyone outside of the class; second, Kesey comprised 50 percent of the class. Later a third rule materialized: there could be no writing outside of class. Why? Because we’d do what Oregon writers do and become enamored with our individual voices.

  Like with all cult famous folks, everyone in the collaborative novel writing class wanted to be the one Kesey liked best. But since we spent an entire year with him, that energy dissipated at least a little. We saw all the prescription medication he was on. We saw the true size of his gut. We saw how bad his allergies could get. We saw how much he slept. How he smelled. How little energy he seemed to have. How his eyes, when he drank, and he always drank, looked like swollen vodka marbles.

  Still, his aura filled the room no matter what the room was. At a reading at U of O during that year he stood on a table and screaming into the microphone “Fuck You, god, Fuck You!” The crowd of about 500 burst into cheers. He believed in spectacle. In giving people the show.

  In the fall of the year of Kesey I felt like an awkward jerkette most of the time. When we met as a group my ears kept getting hot and I’d make lines of sweat between my legs and sweat cups under each breast. I didn’t know how to feel close to a group. My only model of group interaction was my dreaded Oedipal family death house. And swim teams. You don’t talk to anyone when you are underwater. My distinguishing character - istics felt like tits and ass and blond. Sexual things. All I had.

  I didn’t feel like a terrorist was going to bust in and kill me, but I did feel like some kind of academic authenticity police were going to bust in and cuff me and say you, you don’t belong here. You are not enrolled. You’re not even in the writing program. Look at all that … hair. But it didn’t happen. I just wrote things down on pieces of paper, like everyone else did.

  I got the closest to Jeff and Bennett. Maybe that opening scene somehow imprinted on me - Jeff carefully rolling the joint. Bennett passing out like a reverse miracle.

  The things I remember about everyone else are retinal flashes - how white Hal’s hair was. How lithe Robert walked. How Jane’s mind and sharp green stare intimidated me. How I wished Lynn had been my mother - a better more magnificent drinker than my own had been. How heavenly Meredith’s ass, how Bochner became our Judas, how Charles became a cop and James had an impressive vocabulary to go with his blazing red hair, how Zimmerman appears elsewhere in this book.

  In the winter of the year of Kesey we all went to his coast house near Yachats together. A run down old place with wood paneling, a crappy stand up shower, a table with some chairs, and no heat. But the front windows looked out onto the ocean. And of course the rooms were filled with Kesey. We drank, we walked on the beach, we listened to Kesey stories. Look I’d tell you the stories but you already know them. And he’d say the same ones over and over again. We were, simply put, a pile of new ears. At the coast house we listened to stories about Tim Leary and Mason W
illiams and Jerry Garcia and Neal Cassady. At the coast house we got high, some of us fucked some others of us, we wrote in little notebooks. We slept on the floor in sleeping bags. We waited for something to happen.

  I’m not sure if this is true; I’d have to call all 12 of them and take a poll. But I think we had a dumb hope the whole year. Our hope had nothing to do with the not very good at all book we were collaboratively writing. I think our hope was that Ken Kesey would write another perfect book. That he still had one in him and that we could somehow get it out. But all he kept doing was drinking. No amount of our getting high with him or walking the beach with him or listening to his stories could resurrect the man within the man.

  Sometimes a Great Notion and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest are on my bookshelf next to As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and Absalom, Absalom. Some books take your breath away. Is it the books, or the writers? When I hold Kesey’s books in my hands, when I open them, I can hear his voice. I can see him. Smell him. Feel him. But it’s the words that take my breath. Isn’t that enough?

  In the spring of the year of Kesey, on Easter, we walked up Mt. Pisgah to Jed’s resting place. Some of us were high on pot and some of us dropped acid and some of us ate mushrooms. And always Kesey drank from a flask. At the top the wind shuddered the leaves of trees. The mound of grass hill like one of Kesey’s shoulders. I liked being up there. Jed underneath us. I felt most alive near death anyway. I just didn’t talk about it much. Except a few times with Kesey. We embraced up there at one point.

  Toward the end of the year of Kesey at his house in Pleasant Hill he showed all 13 of us video clips of Neal Cassady. I think Babbs brought them over. Some of us were high on pot and some of us dropped acid and some of us ate mushrooms. And always Kesey drank. Faye was in the kitchen, then she went to church. We sat on the floor we sat on old stuffed chairs we sat on a sunken couch.

  When Neal Cassady came on the screen my chest filled with butterflies. He looked and acted exactly like a Kerouac sentence. The close up face of Neal Cassady … all that random quixotic fantastic gibberish and eye shifting and head bobbing and facial tic-ery … it was beautiful. Still though it seemed unreal, or surreal. We were nothing in the face of history but a bunch of waiting ducks. Someone could have picked us off one at a time in a pond. I sat there and wished our watching meant more.