All the Silent Spaces

by Christine Ristaino

  Strangely enough, Ronnie’s book is all about race. There are discussions about race at every turn, on every page. I remember them. They are the conversations that hit me the most, but when I am involved in the characters’ day-to-day, their race somehow is the last thing I think about.

  When I return home, I tell Mark about my conversation with Ronnie.

  “Sweetie, everyone has a conception of what it means to be black. It doesn’t mean every black man fits into your conception. That doesn’t mean you’re racist. It’s an interesting conversation to have, actually. What makes a written character black? How do you convey that in a book without presenting stereotypes? But what you said wasn’t bad. You were just trying to answer those questions.”

  “But what I said bothered me. I was offended by it,” I tell him.

  “You offended yourself?” he says and laughs.

  After a number of hours I finally understand what happened. It occurs to me I don’t have a visual to remind me of how Ronnie’s characters look. I think of my father, beardless at the kitchen table for two full days and I remember why I forget. I don’t remember because it’s not what I’m looking for.

  After I write this piece, I cling to this rationale for years. It comforts me, makes me feel better about myself, but in the end I realize it’s only a balm as well. The reality is, I’m so programmed that even after acknowledging the world’s prejudices, looking them straight in the eye, and saying they exist, even then, after twenty minutes I allow them to take over my speech, perhaps not even realizing they have taken over until years later.

  Retrogression 44:

  September 15, 2007, 6:58 p.m. and 7 seconds.

  A man sits on a bench, his legs open, his arms dangling in between. He watches us.

  Chapter 44:

  Twins

  The kids and I are in the car on the way to school, and I’m unsure how I’ll get through the day. I’ve been telling the whole world about memories that are so personal, scenes I’ve kept inside for most of my life. I’m wondering if I’m ready to be open like this.

  Sam is thinking. He won’t talk, won’t put on his seat belt, that is, until I raise my voice. Then he quietly does. Just when I think he’s never going to talk again, his sweet little voice emerges.

  “I wonder what it’s like to be inside an egg,” he says.

  “It’s not like anything,” Ada says. “You don’t know you’re there and you don’t know you’re not there.”

  “Or what it’s like to be in a womb,” he continues.

  “The same,” Ada responds.

  They begin to talk about their friends, Claude and Jenny, twins. Claude spent a number of months crushed by his sister in the womb, and somehow my children know this about him.

  “And Jenny was sitting on Claude and she didn’t even know it,” Sam says and laughs. “I wonder if that’s why Claude tortures Jenny now.”

  “I know,” Ada says. “But that’s not right.”

  “But Ada,” Sam says. “Jenny crushed Claude. He couldn’t breathe. It’s life’s revenge.”

  “You know, Sam, when you’re fantastically scientific I’m so proud of you. I mean I love you. You’re family. You could be being so great and then your evil side shows up. When you’re being scientific or sweet, I’m so happy I have you. But with your evil side, when you annoy me, I ask myself why I have to have a brother.”

  “That’s just my nature,” Sam says.

  “I know. You’re right. And I can annoy you, too. But when you annoy me, I feel myself reach to your evil side, just like when you strike a match, and then I ignite like a fire, and you can’t stop me then.”

  We arrive at the kids’ school and they climb out of the car, barely aware I’m there. In class it’s hard to teach. I feel awkward in front of twenty-seven students while in this funk. But as the day progresses, I’m reminded of why I do this. My student, Bao, shows up in my office with his parents. They have beautiful gifts for me—a purse from China and a gorgeous frog bookmark made of metal. Bao’s parents hug me and in broken English tell me Bao loves my class. And later I see Micaela, who has a seminar right after I teach, and she blows me a kiss from across the room. And then two students, minutes apart, burst into my office and tell me they have figured out what they want to do with their lives.

  Retrogression 45:

  September 15, 2007, 6:58 p.m.

  It’s nice out, slightly windy, but warm, and we talk and joke around as we make our way toward the store entrance in the middle of the American South.

  Chapter 45:

  Rupert

  As I fly over the ocean to Saint Croix from Atlanta, I am told by two passengers not to leave my hotel. The first is a man who has lived in Saint Croix most of his life. The second, an island woman, says I’m not safe. She tears off a piece of paper from a gum wrapper and writes her phone number on it with my pen. “Enjoy the rest of the week by the television,” she tells me. “Don’t go out. There’s too much crime out there and you stick out like a sore thumb.”

  Joyce, a school administrator from Saint Croix, picks me up at the airport.

  “A man on the plane told me to stay in my room and a woman said to watch TV and not go out,” I tell her. She admits that Saint Croix has its underbelly, but she has been living here for years. As we drive, she says, “The first two years were challenging. Nobody wanted me here and they made it clear. At the end of the second year, I called in all the parents for a general meeting. They thought I was going to resign, but instead I took a different approach. ‘Have a good look at me,’ I said to them. ‘I am white and I’m not from here. And in August, when I return, I will still be white and not from here.’”

  “Did anything change?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Joyce says. “Maybe they saw I understood them—that I cared about their children. I don’t know. It was easier to talk with parents after that. It felt like they pulled the race card less. They no longer blamed me for their children’s shortcomings. Part of it was just calling their bluff, nicely getting in their faces and calling them on their own prejudices. I earned their respect,” she says.

  Six months before my trip to Saint Croix, I had written to the Freedom Writers Organization. Joyce and six others had agreed to read my manuscript. Joyce shared my work with her students. The subject matter caught their interest, and she received a grant to create skits about prejudice and racism.

  As we drive, Joyce tells me about the schools in Saint Croix, the customs and music of the island, her students and the skits they have written. The next day I visit three schools with a hip-hop educator named Ryan and his music producer Zeke. Although he now lives in New York, Ryan has been working with Joyce for years, and his mother still lives on the island. Ryan is a hip-hop artist, a producer, and an actor, but his ability to work with children and bring out their creative sides through hip-hop music makes him an incredible educator, too. Ryan manages to get students talking about what really matters to them, practically without them even realizing. I tag along, watching as scenes come together with messages about identity and overcoming racism. Two groups have written me into their scripts. In one I am an oppressive boss. In another, I walk to my car, unaware I’m about to be attacked by a woman who is undergoing a gang initiation.

  The students from the Saint Croix schools are mostly Afro-Caribbean. Some of them are very young—between second and fifth grade—and over-the-top excited about what they are doing. They joke around and tell me all about their lives on the island. The two groups of students who have written me into their scripts are teenagers from a private school on top of a hill. There are two white girls but most students are black. Some are studying for a math test or worrying about it. Others are thrilled they got out of school to do this project.

  The private school on the hill with small wooden buildings contrasts with the large, brick school I visit right after, where students explode into a fight in the halls. At this school I can barely move and students yell over each other to be heard
. I can tell most of them want to talk, some about difficult topics, others about sports and cell phones, clubs and friends, homework, tests, Saint Croix, love. Their skits come together quickly.

  One teenaged boy has written a soliloquy from the perspective of an elderly man. He talks about the pain he experiences because people don’t trust him, automatically categorizing him as a potential child molester because he’s old. He longs to have meaningful conversations with young people, but nobody will engage with him.

  One of the most powerful hours of my visit takes place at the end of the second day at a local recording studio. An incarcerated youth named Rupert records a rap song he has written in response to two of my stories, while an armed guard stands two feet away from him. The song is from his perspective as a person who committed robbery and assault. “I never meant to hurt you,” he sings, looking right at me, as though he was the one who had assaulted me. Afterward, the two of us speak about his talent and his plans for the future. Rupert is on the cusp of a new life, about to be released from jail.

  During my stay in Saint Croix, I visit seven schools and meet hundreds of children. I attend a Michael Jackson Halloween party the night before I return to Atlanta. Joyce, Ryan, and Zeke never stop moving. They dance, give awards for the best costumes and dancers, crack jokes. Joyce is crazy funny. She’ll do just about anything, and everything she does models what it means to live out your philosophy of life, not just dream about it. I spend most of the party on the sidelines learning about the parents and children of this community. On the last day of my visit, I drive through the hot streets of Saint Croix with Ryan and Zeke as we film final scenes and say goodbye to the children. And then Joyce is taking me to the airport.

  I bring home CDs of beautiful music from the Virgin Islands—calypso beats, hometown reggae, and songs sung by the children I visited. When Rupert’s rap songs arrive in my mailbox months later, my own children can’t believe it.

  “Mom, did he really write these songs because he read your book?” Ada asks me.

  “Well, he read part of it,” I say.

  “Wow, Mom. You got him to write music!” she says.

  But with the CD comes the worst possible news about Rupert. Joyce tells me that for the first three months after Rupert’s release from jail, he took classes and did well. But then he began spending time with his old crowd.

  “He was killed by a friend,” Joyce writes. “Wasted potential.”

  I don’t tell my children about Rupert. I want so much for them to believe Rupert had changed, that all it takes is for one person to believe in us.

  Retrogression 46:

  September 15, 2007, 6:57 p.m.

  My children and I find a child’s cart in the parking lot. They climb in and I begin pushing. My curly hair blows comfortably in the breeze, lifting and settling every few seconds near the sides of my face.

  Chapter 46:

  How to Save a Life

  For anyone who has been attacked, there’s an anxiety that circulates just below the surface. If you turn the corner too quickly, hear a book drop, or catch a shadow on your wall, the man who attacked you is right there. During the first few years after my attack, I turn the corner to see my attacker thousands of times in the quiet of my own house, only to find that a book has shimmied off the washing machine during the spin cycle, or the shadow of a head on the wall is just a house plant with lots of leaves, or the black streak to the side of me is my own eyes, playing tricks.

  During this period, Ada and Samuel seem to suffer from the same fears. They worry the bad guy from the store will come to our house.

  “We’ve changed our locks,” I say. “It would be hard for him to get in.”

  But my uncertainty, my inability to give them absolutes, makes the conversation escalate.

  “What if that bad guy breaks a window and gets in? Breaks it with a stick and hurts us?” Sam asks.

  “I will always try to protect you,” I respond.

  That much is true. But I can never give them the answer they want, can never promise eternal and absolute protection. How can I? So they talk about protecting me instead.

  Yet there are fleeting moments when I feel we’re accomplishing the impossible. One day I overhear Samuel and Ada talking about his nightly visits to my room. “When I feel scared, I come here. This is the only place I don’t feel scared,” he tells Ada.

  And my mother reminds me of the hours she once spent by my bedside reciting prayers of protection after a neighbor had committed suicide. Although I remember the comfort that came with saying the rosary with my mother, the reason behind this nightly ritual had eluded me.

  Although most people suggest we stop coddling Samuel and let him cry it out for a few nights alone in his bedroom, Mark and I do everything we can to comfort him. If I often wake startled and jump up to check on the children, we reason Samuel, too, could be feeling this type of fear. So we tell him he must do what he needs to feel safe again at night. Sometimes we find him in his sister’s room, with a pillow and a blanket, stretched on the floor, a teddy bear under each armpit and a hand holding tightly on to the ruffle of her bed. But most nights, I bring my laptop into my bedroom and Samuel sneaks in beside me, curling into my side like a small cat might. Later, my husband joins us and for the rest of the night the three of us share our marital bed, my son and I curled up together, and my husband’s arm thrown over my shoulder, his hand gently touching mine.

  Ada is taking a shower when I notice it. I peek in to hand her some soap and there’s a huge bulge in the right groin area. I imagine it’s a tumor, but instead, she has a hernia there, and two others I hadn’t seen.

  I make the surgery appointment right away. I don’t want to think about it for too long. Mark takes the day off, we drive her to a hospital thirty minutes away, check her in, go through an efficient process of bureaucracy and pre-op, and then Mark and I are in the waiting room and Ada is in surgery.

  For those who have had to wait for a child to come out of surgery, you know. It’s not until the doctor enters the waiting room with a practiced, reassuring smile, that you can stop putting out of your mind the worst-case scenarios laid out for you on the waiver form.

  Going into surgery for Ada is an adventure. She has read the Madeline book. She knows about the gifts and the scar she’ll be able to show like a badge of honor to her friends at school. What she doesn’t know about are the post-op tears every parent and child seem to experience.

  “You might have a little bit of pain afterward,” I try to warn her on the way there. “I know, Mom,” she replies.

  Ada’s adventure starts out the way our visit to the store began. It is playful and fun. She is relaxed and enjoying herself as she is visited by doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists, big burly men who are to wheel her into the operating room. She smiles at them, laughs at their jokes, introduces them to her new stuffed fish, Elly, whom she says is a boy and not a girl every time one of them refers to him as “she.” When they wheel Ada out to the unknown, the whole surgical crew—doctors, nurses, anesthesiologist, and bed movers—are around her asking questions, joking with her, and laughing as they push the bed. Ada continues to entertain them by putting the mask over her fish’s mouth so he can fall asleep first, since he’s going to have his appendix taken out at the same time.

  My husband and I stay in the OR waiting room, newcomers to this world. I have my computer so I can come up with titles for a few of my stories from this book, since an agent is interested in reading it. My work does little to comfort me. I can’t help but think of the worst-case scenario. My daughter could be allergic to the anesthesia and die on the operating table while my husband and I sit silently in the waiting room reading. We could survive the operation only to be in a terrible accident on the way home, my son orphaned. Once home, Ada could roughhouse too much with her brother and rip open the stitches.

  After the surgeon tells us Ada has done fine, a nurse walks us back to see her. When we arrive, Ada is leaning to one side of
the bed, sobbing.

  “Mommy, help me,” she keeps saying over and over again.

  The last time she cried this much was in the parking lot. While then I had tried to hide my bloody face from her, in this crisis I climb into her bed and put my arms around her.

  “I’m here,” I tell her as I rub her back.

  When our stay is over, a nurse places Ada on my lap and wheels us out.

  “Ada,” I say. “The last time I was wheeled out of a hospital with you on my lap, you were a newborn baby.”

  This leads to the first post-surgery smile I see out of Ada. It will be a few more days before the familiar smile visits us again.

  I spend the week carrying Ada from room to room, reading her books, and chatting about the world. Then, just as Ada begins to go for longer stretches without pain medicine, she spikes a high fever and seems to fall back into infancy.

  When your children are babies, you admire every inch of them—fingers, toes, eyes, the curve of their nose, the lobe of each ear, their long, curling eyelashes, their flushed, red cheeks. Once they are in kinetic motion, you stop doing this. They are a lovable storm whirling by you. But when they are sick, feverish and burning up in your arms, you notice how they have grown. You see their baby eyes, those same ones you used to look into as they gulped down breast milk. You recognize a pin-sized white spot on the cartilage of their ear. You put your hand to their burning forehead, feel its baby smoothness. You let their hand grip a finger until they drift off to sleep in your arms. You forget what they feel like sleeping on your shoulder until their temperature reads 104 degrees, and then you cling to them as they sleep heavily in your arms.