All the Silent Spaces

by Christine Ristaino

  “I know, I know,” I say. “Kids will make fun of him. I can’t help it, though. He’s a flower to me.”

  Lily’s posture changes and she stands. “If you are going to worry about what other people think, then you better leave this pool right now,” she states and I can tell she means it.

  Lily begins to walk away from me but I follow.

  “Thank you for saying that,” I say, realizing I’ve done exactly what I battle against most of the time.

  “Don’t do this to your kids!” Lily tells me. “Be strong for them. Don’t buy into that. Flowers can be male. Just because you call him flower doesn’t mean he’s going to be gay.”

  “But it’s more than fine if he’s gay,” I say. “I want him to be who he is.”

  But Lily shakes her head. For her perhaps I have become somebody who doesn’t respect her, who doesn’t understand her struggle. There is a part of me that knows she has misunderstood me completely. I get her. But part of me knows I need to hear what Lily has to say. I think of Lily, a lesbian woman from the South who has probably fought her entire life for her sexual identity. Would she really have condemned me because my son’s essence reminded me of flowers?

  Lily leaves with her girls a few minutes later. It’s lunch time. The kids and I gather our things and leave, too. In the past I would have agonized over this conversation, but this time I’m sure it will be okay. It’s still a good day.

  Retrogression 37:

  September 15, 2007, 7:00 p.m.

  My purse strap tears at my arm and cuts into it. I try to adjust the strap by lifting my shoulder and thrusting it backward, but the strap resists and continues to pull.

  Chapter 37:

  Raising Men

  A little girl bent over to pick something up and my son kissed her on the butt. I was glad I was on the phone with his teacher when she told me because it was hard to keep a straight face, even though I wasn’t particularly happy with the news.

  “Samuel, why did you do that?” Mark asks him at dinner.

  “Her bum was right in front of me, so I kissed it,” he says.

  “Yes, but it’s not a good idea to do that. You never kiss girls on the bum. And you don’t kiss people unless they say it’s okay.”

  “Okay, Dad,” Samuel says. “I won’t do it anymore.”

  Later that evening, Samuel is chasing Ada around the house.

  “Mom, Sam is trying to kiss my butt,” Ada says.

  “Samuel,” I say. “What were we telling you earlier? You cannot touch or kiss people on the rear end. It’s not allowed,” I tell him.

  A few minutes later I feel something jabbing through the side of my jeans and turn to see Samuel with a pencil, giggling.

  “Did you just poke me?” I ask.

  He runs off.

  “Don’t poke people,” I yell.

  Then I hear Ada’s voice. “Sam, cut it out!”

  I run into Ada’s room and take away the pencil. I grab Sam’s arms, one in each hand.

  “Samuel, did you just poke Ada even though I asked you not to?”

  “Yes,” he says.

  “Samuel, this is serious.” I tighten my grip. “When a girl says no, what do you do?” I ask.

  “You stop,” he says and looks away from me.

  “That’s right.” I lift his chin and steer it toward my face. “When a girl says no, what do you do?”

  “You stop,” he says.

  “Yes. When a girl says no, what do you do?”

  “You stop,” he answers.

  “Yes. That’s right. When a girl says no, what do you do?”

  “You stop.”

  “Yes, you stop. You stop. You stop. Please, if you remember anything, remember that. If a girl says no, what do you do?”

  Retrogression 38:

  September 15, 2007, 6:59 p.m. and 35 seconds.

  He lifts his free hand, a train pummeling toward sheet rock. Crack. Something hits my nose. I am drowning in red, blood pouring out of my nostrils. Somebody gasps, whimpers, maybe my daughter.

  Chapter 38:

  Waiting Women of the Eighties

  A friend from college calls me. Natalie is on her way to meet her biological mother. She tells me about her plans as she drives on Highway 95 toward Virginia. She can’t believe she’s doing this. I had always known I’d be getting this phone call, that Natalie’s desire to find out who she was would lead her here.

  Today we speak about how adoption has shaped her. “I had a conversation with Simon the other day about going to visit my birth mother. He was supportive and cared. Something seemed to melt right there inside me. I was his niece and he was my uncle, not his adopted niece, just his niece,” she says.

  “I think that’s how he’s always viewed you,” I say.

  “I know. I know. But I’ve always felt adopted. Maybe it’s something I imposed on myself, but I never felt I was the real thing. I never looked like anyone in my family. I thought perhaps they viewed me as different, too.”

  “Have you told the kids?” I ask.

  “Not yet,” Natalie says. “I want to establish something with her first so I can define it for them. So they’ll be open to it and won’t feel threatened.”

  “Yes, that makes sense.”

  “Because this year has been difficult for them. They’ve had to redefine so many relationships.”

  I nod into the phone.

  Natalie surprised everyone two years ago when she told us she was an alcoholic. Nobody believed her. But she had been drinking for years to cope with her husband’s alcoholism. She went to AA and asked her husband to join her. He didn’t.

  “It’s hard to live with an alcoholic once you’ve quit,” she told me. “He made a choice—not to join me. So we’re moving in separate directions.”

  Natalie and I begin talking about our family histories with alcoholism. Both of us had grandparents who were alcoholics, and Natalie’s mother-in-law was an alcoholic, too.

  “Mark recently read an article written by the child of an alcoholic,” I tell Natalie. “The interesting thing is that after he read it he said, ‘I know you’re not the daughter of an alcoholic, Christine, but you sure do share some of the same characteristics with this guy.’ Our mothers have modeled for us all their coping mechanisms,” I say. “We’ve watched them and learned how daughters of alcoholics interact with the world.”

  “I know,” she replies. “So I don’t know if my worries in college were based on these things I learned from my mother or because I was adopted.”

  Natalie and I enjoyed college a little too much our first couple of years. We met through my roommate Jo. Some of my favorite memories are with these two women—Jo and Natalie often invited me to bonfires in the woods with a group of friends who religiously followed the Grateful Dead. I enjoyed many evenings in conversation with half my body cold and the other half warmed by the fire with background music, all of us under a veil of stars. Once we spent hours riding the elevator in a towerlike dorm, listening to a musician Jo had a crush on as he played his guitar and sang in the middle of the elevator. Each time the door opened, we’d laugh with the unsuspecting visitors. Then the doors would close again and they would leave our world. Jo and I played backgammon as a drinking game, complained about two old boyfriends who had broken our hearts, and played practical jokes on our suitemates in the early morning hours. With Natalie we took trips into the mountains and drank beer at high altitudes, camped a half hour away, doing homework by flashlight.

  “I did silly things in college,” I admit to Natalie.

  “I did silly things, too,” she says. “Most of the time you were with me. But part of the reason we did these things was because the eighties were a terrible time for women. Women weren’t sure where they belonged. And people didn’t talk back then. Women were left flailing, so we just had fun instead. Today there’s so much momentum and people telling young women they can do it.”

  “I like what we’re telling our daughters these days,” I say
to Natalie. “Please call me after you talk with your birth mother.”

  As I hang up the phone, I realize we’ve all become who we were supposed to be, but perhaps not in the form our college selves would have recognized. Natalie is a single mother of two, a niece, a teacher, a reformed alcoholic with a mature sense of self. Jo is an oceanographer in Seattle, a lifeline for a friend with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, an animal lover. I am a teacher, a mother of two, a wife, and now, a writer. The events of our past, even the elevator ride, have led us to this place.

  Retrogression 39:

  September 15, 2007, 6:59 p.m. and 33 seconds.

  The man places a hand on the handle of the cart. He’s facing the wrong way and putting even more weight on the cart instead of lifting it. I want to tell him, but maybe he has a different plan, and my purse seems to be caught on something.

  Chapter 39:

  Going Soft

  Over and over again people take advantage of Ada, something I often experienced too as a child. Ada becomes outraged when this happens. She can’t believe people do this.

  One day I overhear the kids talking in the backseat of the car on the way home from school.

  “Everyone got one on a cupcake. Mine had a lighted circle on it, and you could see this red prick of light on the ceiling as it shined all the way up there. I wanted to give it to you, Sam, because I knew you would like it. But Francis wanted mine and he didn’t have one, so I gave it to him.”

  “Ada,” Sam says, “you have to say no once and they’ll stop asking.”

  “Sam, I can’t help myself. I don’t want to go hard or anything.”

  “Ada, you can say no. Feel free to say no.”

  “But I go all soft inside, Sam, and everybody knows it. And kids always ask me for favors.”

  “I know, Ada. I was soft in first grade. Then I took a chance and said no and now they don’t ask me anymore.”

  My mind retreats to something vaguely pleasant. I am the shortest girl in my third-grade class and I am as soft as you can get. We are sitting on a rug and there’s a substitute teacher in front of the room. Nobody can calm down. Kids are throwing airplanes, yelling to each other, making fun of the sub. By accident I fart and the kids burst out laughing. Later, the substitute is completely fed up. She tells everyone to write, “I will not torment my substitute teacher” two hundred times for homework. Two boys from my class go to the front of the room, and I hear parts of a conversation. “She hasn’t done anything wrong. You shouldn’t make her do it,” and suddenly the substitute teacher is in front of me. “Your classmates think you should be the only one who doesn’t have to write sentences tonight. What do you think?” I don’t know what to say. I am overcome with gratitude.

  Retrogression 40:

  September 15, 2007, 6:59 p.m.

  The man moves quickly in our direction. He doesn’t smile. I can’t engage him. I thank him again. This time, I’m uncertain why I am thanking him.

  Chapter 40:

  Spring Thaw

  I have been reading The Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg, and his descriptions of winter bring back the successions of New England winters of my childhood—the gnarled earth, the frozen topsoil. By my early forties, the frozen layers are finally ready for a deep thaw.

  We are at parents’ night and Arne and I are discussing Ada. She is having trouble with math. I enjoy talking with Arne. Over the summer we spent a day at an amusement park with him and his daughters. It was a blast.

  “Hey, I used to teach math,” he tells me. “I’d be happy to tutor her a bit. Why doesn’t she come home with Lisa tomorrow after school?”

  Arne is a married stay-at-home dad, a retired school-teacher, and everything he has done thus far has shown him to be trustworthy. It has been easy to open up to Arne. He listens well. He takes his time when he answers a question, really considering it. But I still don’t like the idea of Ada spending time at his house without another adult there. In fact, the thought of it terrifies me.

  “I just have to call Mark,” I tell Arne, hoping Mark will find a reason why Ada can’t go.

  But Mark is all for it. We have run into a wall with Ada in math. She needs a new strategy.

  After I hang up, I find myself objecting. “It’s too much to ask,” I say.

  Arne doesn’t agree. “I don’t mind, Christine.”

  “Well, I have a meeting tomorrow, but I’d like to be there to see what you do,” I say.

  Arne promises to talk with me about math strategies when I pick up Ada after my meeting. I’m out of excuses. I agree.

  “So Ada will take the bus with Lisa tomorrow afternoon,” I say.

  “Yes,” he says.

  As we exit the school, I think of my friend Manu, who has no problem asking parents if they have guns in their houses. If they do, her children can’t play there. Manu and I both have soft hearts. We don’t want to hurt anyone. When I want to feel good about myself, she’s the one I call, but when it comes to her children, she will do anything, even if it hurts someone else. I never quite got this until I had children of my own. Thinking of Manu renews my resolve.

  Arne begins to walk away and I follow him. There’s no deliberation, no thought involved, no agonizing about hurt feelings, even though what I’m about to say will be one of the harshest things I’ve ever said.

  “Arne,” I say hoarsely. “I need to talk.”

  He turns toward me and stops, waiting. We’re alone for a second.

  “This isn’t about you,” I begin. “It has nothing to do with you. It’s my problem,” I say. “I was molested as a child. So I never allow Ada to go to a house unless there are two adults there.”

  He looks at me, confused, perhaps stunned.

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s that I don’t trust anyone.”

  Arne’s expression sags.

  “Because the man who did this to me. He was trustworthy. Everyone thought so. So now I don’t trust anyone with my children.”

  People from parents’ night begin to pour out of the school like ants, swarming on both sides of us.

  “I like you too much not to be honest with you,” I say.

  Arne blinks a few times.

  The PTA ex-president, a woman with long, red hair, stops to talk with Arne, and he has to compose himself quickly. By the time Arne turns back to me, he has figured out what to say.

  “You’re telling me you have some baggage, right?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “I could say I understand how you feel, but I don’t,” Arne tells me. “I’ve never experienced what you did. But one of the reasons I like you is that I always know where I stand with you. Sometimes in the South, somebody can be smiling at you but underneath they’re pissed and you wouldn’t even know it. But you’re real.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Maybe you need to do this. Look, there will be two adults in the house. Lisa’s tutor will be there. And you can call Ada and ask her how she is if you like. In fact, you probably should. I know this won’t help, but I’m not a child molester.”

  “I know,” I say. “Most people aren’t.”

  When I pick up Ada the next day, she is wearing a princess tiara, playing with Lisa in an upstairs room. Arne and I speak awkwardly at first, but this melts away. He takes me on a tour of his house. My hands shake and my head hurts, the result of a day of defrosting. Even though it’s September, I can feel the spring thaw as it works through me from the inside out. The years of cold unstiffen at my core—sweat under my arms, perspiration on the sides of my legs and in the crevices of my elbows, softening outward, and droplets forming in the corners of my eyes, ready to fall and sink into the soft dirt.

  Retrogression 41:

  September 15, 2007, 6:58 p.m. and 32 seconds.

  I see the man walking toward us and acknowledge him with a nod. He’s coming to help with the cart. “Thank you,” I say and smile.

  Chapter 41:

  My Writing Circle

  We’re sitt
ing at Starbucks. Ada has a box of crayons next to her and is drawing a picture of me with huge hair, a skirt, droopy lids, and a stick-thin body. I have two tears running down my face and am surrounded by people going “AAAAAAAAAAA.” The caption: “Mom and The Bad Hiar [sic] day.” Denise is across from me smiling. She has white teeth and brown eyes. She has a smile that takes over her entire face and long dreadlocks, for which she carries a poem with her at all times called “My Locks.” She has just purchased yogurt for both of us with granola and honey in it. For this meeting, Denise has read and commented on my story “Search Terms” about lesbians from the South who felt marginalized by white culture. She says, “See, white people have the weirdest discussions. Black people would never have these types of conversations.” Then she tells me an animated story. You’d never know once upon a time she could barely move—lupus—the subject of her novel.

  She says, “Okay, so everything about this guy looks white. He’s white. He has blue eyes. He has blond hair. But he dresses in Kofi hats, uses hip slang, and tells everyone he is black. I say to him, ‘But look at you. You could pass as white. Life’s easier when you’re white. Why are you making things so difficult on yourself?’ ‘Because the best part of me is black,’ he says. ‘It’s the part I love the most.’”

  Ada looks up from her drawing and stares at Denise. Her blue eyes shine.

  Maisa and I are talking on the phone. I have just finished giving her feedback on an article she’s writing about labor photographers, and she’s describing the exhibition that displays their photographs in a New York library. Her article is edgy and personal. I have known Maisa since I was in undergraduate school and she is, in every way except by birth, a sister. She is strikingly beautiful—brown eyes and hair, red lipstick, and stylish, colorful clothes. We begin to talk about one of the stories in this book, “Waiting for Repairs.” At this point, my ending is different. It’s artificial. It doesn’t fully explain my connection with the computer repairman.