Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

by T Kira Madden

  In the theater, after Susan Backlinie is yanked under that freckled, gray sea, my mother leans into Samuel; she rests her head on his shoulder. She’s tapping her foot on the movie theater floor—that’s the way I see it now, anyway; she still does this—as the boy presses his thumb into her chin, gently turns her face, and kisses her.

  Here’s Samuel, with a joint behind his ear, with peeled elbow scabs and Pink Floyd T-shirts and flunking grades. But the bad boy is not bad. To my mother, he’s the soft, stretched song of his stories—her ku‘uipo. The way he is careful with her, a delicacy to his movements. When she stumbles, he corrects her, a hand on her back, You okay? It’s the way he always pushes her hair behind her ear, I wanna see you better.

  At home, after the movie, the boys ask to come inside. They want to spend the night with the girls—they’ll be quiet, they promise. My mother decides against it. She says goodnight, another kiss against the wall of the house, their hips touching, a burst of warmth inside her. My Aunt Tao invites her boy in, where they will grind into their teenage love, and fall asleep in her bed.

  When my grandfather finds them in the morning—crumpled sheets, their fingers clasped—he calls the police. My mother awakes to blue seesawing across her bedroom wall, the pounding of a hammer, her sister screaming, a thud. My grandfather has yanked Tao’s door from the hinges, where it will never be replaced again, not as long as they all live under the same roof, though my grandfather will leave this place long before they do.

  SUMMER, 1997

  THE HERRINGTON INN, GENEVA, ILLINOIS

  Here’s how I learn about sex and babies:

  It’s one A.M. and I feel like a loser. I competed in National Pony Finals today and placed twenty-first in the country. I am disappointed by this placing, but my mother reminds me that there are thousands of girls and boys who wake up at four in the morning and practice every day, thousands of more expensive ponies, thousands of those kids and ponies in this very competition. I’m still at the age in which plurality is terrifying.

  I hit every stride, I say. I didn’t chip once. We had speed. My jacket with the tails.

  Twenty-first out of thousands, she says. That’s pretty impressive to me. I sit between her legs on the bed as she brushes my hair, both of us in bathrobes. She flips through channels on the hotel television as I massage my calves, not paying attention. Everything hurts.

  Look, says my mother. Look, your favorite.

  It’s JonBenét Ramsey on the news again. Here she is, smiling for a camera, my favorite pageant girl. My favorite dead girl. She waves. Flashbulbs sparkle in the space behind her head.

  I love her, I say.

  Why do you love her so much? asks my mother. It’s very sad, what happened to her. I found her pictures torn out under your bed. What is it?

  Because she was raped and murdered, I say.

  That’s a very sad thing to happen, says my mother. That’s the most horrible thing that could happen to a person.

  What is rape? I ask her, And why is it horrible?

  My mother places the hairbrush down on the bed. It’s a deliberate movement for her, careful, slow. She turns me by the shoulders so that I am looking right at her, our faces close.

  Rape is when someone forces sex on you, she says. When you have sex without wanting to.

  What is sex? I ask. My cheeks are thumping. I think I might get in trouble for this question. It’s a word that is always hushed in school, and my teachers get red and stuttery whenever it’s mentioned.

  Instead, my mother rubs her thumb over my cheek and speaks softly. She sways me a little. She breaks down the anatomy, and explains the parts that we have. These parts belong to us girls, she says, but sometimes we can share. She tells me that sex can result in a child. She tells me that it usually does.

  But JonBenét’s a child, she didn’t have a child, I say.

  That’s why it’s rape, she says, and very wrong.

  So sex is when you have sex with a child?

  It shouldn’t be.

  But this person used a rope on JonBenét, and twisted the rope around her neck, and had sex with her, too, at the same time. Is that how people have sex?

  No, that’s why it’s murder, she says.

  And rape, I say.

  And horrible, and wrong, she says.

  Do people usually die after sex?

  No—

  Does it feel like dying?

  Sometimes.

  Can JonBenét’s body still have a baby now that she’s dead?

  No—

  Can children have children?

  They shouldn’t.

  If I don’t look like JonBenét, will anyone ever want to rape me?

  That’s not the right question.

  Will I want to die?

  SPRING, 1976

  GRASSY LAKE, FLORIDA

  Over spring break, the family drives to Grassy Lake. It’s the little sister of Lake Placid, Florida—residential, gaping blue. On the lakeshore, wooden cabins with screened-in porches slam their doors in a smashed, metallic symphony as children run in and out, in and out, to the water.

  My mother is here. She’s stuck here with Tao, her brothers, and her parents. Her parents speak to each other less and less these days—her father, with his newspaper, his tiny sailboat, his heavy glasses of scotch, and her mother, in the sun, oiled arms wrapped around her knees, watching dragonflies dipping O’s in the water like smoke rings. My mother is just beginning to notice this disconnect, her two parents as people, two people who are very different, indeed.

  Let’s move to my mother in her room, in the full-length mirror, tying the frayed strings of a bikini top around her neck. She ties it so tight the knot digs. Her breasts are growing—they need more support—but she hasn’t mentioned this to anyone; right now, her body is still a secret. Today, she’ll sail with her father on his two-person Sailfish, but she feels different this year, his co-captain, the same bathing suit—awkward, even. She pulls her bikini bottom up, up, trying to find a smoother spot near her waistline. Her body is changing—womanly, she thinks—but she does not know what to do with these new twists of muscle, these new hips.

  She walks out of her room, back into the patio, and takes a breath before opening the door. She feels the heat of the screen on her palm, pressing, walking out of it, my new body, the door slamming behind her in a crack.

  How many times do I have to remind you about that damn door? says her father, as he pulls ropes through the grass toward the boat. Both he and Mei Mei take a look at their daughter, their hiapo girl, copper in the sun, like a woman. Her father squints. Her mother slides bulky, square sunglasses down her nose.

  Punahele, you been eating all my sweets? asks her father. Look at that ‘ōpū on those skinny bones.

  I’m just changing, says my mother. She folds her arms over her stomach.

  No more poi for you, I guess, says my grandma, winking. She knows how much my mother hates poi, the gray sludge of Hawaiian not-quite-dessert. You look fine, she says.

  Kulikuli, says my mother in three hard blinks. She marches back into the patio, pushing the door for an extra slam.

  That evening, in the shower, my mother decides to move someplace up north after graduation. She wants a place with a pale, chalky sky and winters that hurt, a place where she can wear giant knit sweaters every day, the fabric loose and her body unrecognizable, every last sweep of her skin protected.

  SPRING, 2016

  PETERBOROUGH, NH; MANCHESTER, VT; VOORHEESVILLE, NY

  My mother flies to New Hampshire to pick me up. Her hair is burned around the ears, curled where it has never been curly. She has a new cough from staying in the house too long. She refused to leave without our dogs.

  We drive through Vermont and stay the night. On the hotel television, the news reports that new evidence has emerged against O. J. Simpson—they’ve found a knife on the premises. Another channel tells us about a new JonBenét docuseries.

  Here we go again, says my mother. />
  You ever feel like history just keeps repeating itself? Never stops circling?

  The next morning, we drive to Hannah’s house. I am happy to see her home, which is not burned but upright, sturdy, warm. I am happy to lie in her bed; I am happy to smell her hair, her sweaters. Mostly, I am happy to see Hannah, who has been writing me letters, checking in. In the corner of the room, she’s organized my things. Socks, pillows, stacks of books, the Christmas gifts. It’s all still here.

  Let’s do those DNA tests, I tell Hannah. Her mother bought her one, too.

  Do what? asks my mother.

  This spit test, I say. You send it in the mail, and this company supposedly breaks down your ancestry, I say. That family tree I’ve been planning on.

  Why would you want to do all that? my mother closes the book on her lap.

  Hannah and I open the kits. We spit into the plastic tubes. I make puckering faces as I try to produce enough saliva to fill to the line, not too many bubbles. We watch the liquid settle. I punch in a blue gel to activate the test, shake the tube. I place it back in the prestamped box. Hand it over.

  Later that night, in bed, Hannah asks me about the past few months. New Hampshire. The dreams about my father. My drinking. My health.

  You ever sit in the car, or in a window seat on the subway, and the car or train next to you starts to move? And you think you’re the one moving? And you’d swear by it? And sometimes, in your stomach, you can even feel it?

  That. I say. That’s what life’s like now.

  SPRING, 1976

  HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA

  The call comes in the middle of the night, though Peter Gelbwaks is still at work. He’s been working all hours lately, selling insurance to pay off the medical bills for the daughter who never came home. Osteogenesis imperfecta. Her name, he and his wife told The Attorney, was supposed to be Dana. Hear the phone ringing. See Sharon Gelbwaks, twenty-six years old, asleep in her bed, alone.

  Hello? she picks up. Peter?

  It’s The Attorney.

  I’ve a question for you, he says. And answer honestly.

  Sharon is just beginning to make out the voice, its familiarity, the person on the other end of line, when The Attorney says, If I were to tell you I found a baby, but it’s biracial, would you still be interested?

  Yes, she says. Of course I would. Of course we would.

  Do you want to ask your husband?

  Sharon pauses. Could they? Could they really provide a life for this baby—Jewish parents, a Jewish sister—in which this child would feel comfortable? Understood? Would the child be taunted? Would she know how to cut the child’s hair?

  She thinks back to their last meeting with The Attorney, 150 applications slapped down on the desk, ahead of them. This girl is young, said The Attorney. No prenatal care; she found out too late to do anything about it. By the look of her, I can tell how she got herself into trouble.

  Our daughter Dana had a place in our house, a bassinet, said Sharon. I spent my whole pregnancy making this bassinet, every day I did, and then I guess I never really had to make it.

  We’re good people, Peter had said. Every bone in our daughter’s body was broken.

  Sharon grips the phone harder. Peter says of course, she lies.

  Well, that’s good news, says The Attorney. Because no other applicant was interested. If you meet me at my office tomorrow, we’ll get to signing some papers.

  Congratulations, he says, and, Goodnight.

  In ancient Hawaiian folklore, the worst fate to befall someone is for their spirit, or ‘uhane, to be abandoned. Spirits should be visited, cared for, returned to, nurtured. Any spirit should be treated as one’s family.

  Hawaiians are told to check for the presence of ‘uhane by peering into bowls of water or lacing a trail of leaves on the ground. A human will tear the leaves with their own weight or show up, reflected, in the water. A spirit will not.

  Forgotten spirits are called Kuewa. They are left to chew on mothballs, to haunt, forever, the empty dark. Sometimes, if truly angered, these forgotten spirits will visit the places they once knew, and relive their histories.

  Huaka‘i pō—this is the term I was taught—Marchers of the Night.

  SUMMER, 1997

  SEVEN DEVILS, NORTH CAROLINA

  I’ve been sworn out of the house. We are in Seven Devils, North Carolina, and my mother says, Go now, drive down the mountain, go fishing, go. She is baking a cake for my ninth birthday party—I know this much—but she and my father are also planning a surprise for me: a mini-horse named Tulip.

  My aunts and uncles drive me down the mountain to the trout farm. My hair is still cut short, and I’m wearing my new denim overalls with a floppy, silk sunflower on the pocket. I pierce the kernels of corn, bob clumsily with my rod, while my cousins play with the worms, pretend to eat them.

  My mother has always cast a line for me, and I’m unsure how to do it alone. I jiggle the release back and forth, jerk the pole up and down like I’m trying to rouse a rabbit from a hat. I fling the pole above my head, spin it in circles, swipe it like a baseball bat toward the lake, the hook flying in a tiny spark.

  I don’t feel the snag. I don’t see it. But I hear the swarm of bees descend around my body. Wings zoom, breaking the air. My vision splits. My face vibrates all over. I swat my arms, screaming, hoping the bees don’t fly into my mouth. I kick, swing, fall, cry. It seems to last forever, this buzzing, though it couldn’t have been very long at all.

  There are arms. My aunt’s, lifting me. The hump of her steps as she is running, running, bringing me to the Trout Hut. She might need an ambulance, I hear her say.

  Everything is burning. I don’t understand what has happened.

  Are you allergic to bees? she asks me, but she is already speaking to someone else.

  This girl, she’s allergic to everything.

  My aunt is hysterical. I am playing dead. Moving hurts. My eyes don’t want to open.

  And then this moment. A memory that doesn’t change, that needs no revision, no matter how many times I summon it: the sound of gravel rumbling under tires, the speed of Big Beau. My mother. My mother running to me, yanking me from my aunt’s soft arms.

  What happened? she says. I knew something was wrong. When I open my eyes, my mother’s face is there. She’s kissing my cheeks, saying, I came fast as I could.

  According to my Grandma Rose, my mother was frosting the cake when it happened. She was smoothing the chocolate with a spoon when she felt it, that thing, dropped silver to the floor. Something’s wrong, she said. I have to go. She started driving before the car door was even shut. No seat belt, no shoes.

  That mother-daughter power, she’d say, for years, it’s bigger than logic.

  The bees stung my face, my eyelids, my hands, even my scalp. In the car, I stared at my thumbs swelling like dough, and I said my good-byes. I will die at my own birthday party. How unfair. What I knew about bees sprung from Macaulay Culkin’s body in a casket. Turns out, I was not allergic to them.

  But that mother-daughter thing—I believe in it now. It’s something that can spool out forever like a string between two cups. A thread that will hum when you need it.

  SUMMER, 1976

  PLANTATION, FLORIDA

  The Attorney wants my mother to sign the papers. She’s back home now, an empty bedroom. There is no evidence of what the past nine months had meant—no baby clothes, no bassinet, no embroidered name, no pictures.

  I won’t sign them, she says. I didn’t even want to do this.

  But you did do this, says The Attorney. We had a deal.

  My grandfather and grandmother look at my mother. They motion for her to go on, pick up the pen. They have already received the checks, signed their own papers.

  Not unless you tell me what I had, says my mother. A boy or a girl?

  I can’t tell you, child, says The Attorney. But I still need you to sign.

  Fifteen minutes later, my mother walks The Attorney back ou
t to his car. She is barefoot. Her face is swollen, pale. I imagine she uses the same voice she uses now when she wants something. Please, she says. The mosquitos are out.

  I can’t tell you that, says The Attorney. Legally, I can’t.

  Please, says my mother. She holds her stomach. Flat. According to the hospital paperwork I read now, my mother is sixteen years old and ninety-eight pounds.

  The Attorney opens his car door. He bends to get in, but pauses. He looks back at my mother.

  When your child gets married one day, he says, they will probably change their name.

  1976

  HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA

  My baby, she’s mine—Sharon Gelbwaks must get used to saying this, saying it aloud to anyone who will ask, repeating it until it goes true.

  She’s heard the horror stories—birth mothers changing their minds. Sometimes in the hospital, sure, but also, sometimes, later. She’s heard about mothers refusing to sign the papers, refusing to let go. She’s heard of mothers getting clean, realizing what they had done in that black haze of greed, coming back, Mine. Mothers were always coming back—what mother wouldn’t? As Sharon looks at the newborn in her room, sleeping, she can’t imagine it. Not coming back for her. Perfect, this baby, her baby, the way her head feels like velvet, the way her skin smells like paper. Oh, the noises! A real, human girl, my baby, it doesn’t matter where she came from, what the birth mother ate during her pregnancy, what she looked like, no, the baby is Sharon’s, whomever she and Peter would mold her to be, and they would protect this child for the rest of her life. This baby would grow up different, not looking like anyone else, the hair, she thinks, look at this hair, but Sharon feels prepared for these lessons. She feels prepared to learn.