by Pat Conroy
“And it ain’t his job to laugh at those that do. What’s wrong with that boy, anyway? He uses his hands funny.”
“He’s a homosexual, Luke. A lot of my friends are.”
“No kidding,” Luke said after an uneasy silence. “Is that a guy that does it to other guys?”
“That’s right.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Savannah?” Luke said, excited. “That makes him a lot more interesting. I heard there were a lot of those guys up here but I never thought I’d get a chance to see one. I’d like to ask him some questions, you know, scientific ones. There’s some things I’ve never understood about all that and he could have told me straight away.”
“Thank God,” I moaned, “that you didn’t tell him, Savannah.”
“Luke, that’s private,” Savannah said.
“Private! He don’t give a shit about privacy.”
“How do you know, Luke?”
“Because look where he lives. New York Goddamn City. A man who wants privacy would never live here.”
“That’s what you don’t understand, Luke. Someone who really wants privacy will always come to live in New York. You can screw orangutans or parakeets and no one will care at all.”
“Well, if I ever start humping parakeets or a loaf of Sunbeam, I want you to help find me an apartment, baby sister. ’Cause you’re right, that sure wouldn’t go over big back home in Colleton. I just want you to remember where you came from, Savannah. I don’t want you to become like these folks.”
“I hate where I came from, Luke. That’s why I came here to New York, to escape everything in my past. I hated every single thing about my childhood. I love New York because I’m not reminded of Colleton at all. Nothing that I see here, absolutely nothing, reminds me of my childhood.”
“Do Luke and I remind you of your childhood?” I asked, suddenly hurt.
“You remind me of the good part of my childhood,” she answered fervently.
“Then let’s get drunk and eat fatback.”
“That doesn’t change the past,” she answered. “What do you do about the past? Why hasn’t it harmed you like it’s harmed me?”
“I don’t think about it, Savannah,” I said. “I pretend it never happened.”
“It’s over, sweetheart. We survived it. Anyway, we’re adults now and we’ve got the rest of our lives to think about,” Luke added.
“Until I figure out the past, I can’t bear to think about the rest of my life. It fucked me up, Luke and Tom. I see things. I hear things. All the time. I don’t just write that in the poems. I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist ever since I came to New York.”
“What kind of things do you see and hear?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you before you go back. I promise I will. I don’t want to tell you now.”
“It’s from eating this kind of shit,” Luke said, directing his scorn for the city toward the wilting croissant. “Your constitution just isn’t used to it. I had diarrhea the whole time I was in Vietnam from eating all that gook food.”
“Please shut up, Luke,” I said. “She’s talking about mental illness, not diarrhea.”
“How do you know mental illness is not some kind of diarrhea of the brain, big man? Something goes haywire and the body has a thousand different ways of letting you know something’s wrong. The body’s got integrity and you’ve got to listen to it.”
On our last night in New York, I awoke in the middle of the night, hearing a voice coming from Savannah’s room. Luke and I were sleeping on the floor in her living room and a streetlamp lit up the room, the light filtered softly through the fog. Listening, I heard my sister’s voice, terrified and surreal, speaking to the hidden ones again. I got up, went to her door, and knocked softly. There was no answer and I opened the door and went in.
Savannah was sitting up in bed, addressing something invisible against the opposite wall. She did not appear to see me even when I entered her line of vision. Her lips trembled and saliva spilled out of her mouth, and I listened as she spoke. “No. I will not do what you say. Not even for you. Especially not for you. Not now. Please leave me. Don’t come back. Never again. Stay out of my house. I will not let you in my house again. There’s work to do and I can’t work with your voice in my house.”
I walked over to her and touched her on the shoulder. “Savannah,” I said, “what’s the matter?”
“They’ve come back again, Tom. They always come back.”
“Who’s come back?” I said, getting in bed beside her and wiping her mouth with a sheet.
“The ones who want to hurt me. I see them, Tom. Can you see them?”
“Where are they, darling?”
“By the wall. And here, by the window. I see them so clearly, Tom. You don’t seem real to me. But they seem so real. Can you hear them? Can you hear them screaming at me? It’s going to be bad again, Tom. It’s going to be so bad. I must fight them. I can’t write when they visit. And they stay so long. They hurt me. They won’t leave. They won’t listen.”
“Who are they, Savannah? Tell me who they are.”
“There”—she pointed to the wall—“they’re hanging against the wall. You can’t see them, can you?”
“It’s just a wall, Savannah. There’s nothing there, darling. You’re just hallucinating again. It’s not real. I promise you.”
“Real. Terribly real. More real than you or me. They speak to me. They scream at me. Horrible things. Dreadful things.”
“What do they look like? Tell me what they look like so I can help.”
“There,” she pointed, and her whole body trembled as it leaned against mine. “Angels. Lynched. Hanging from that wall. Dozens of them. Screaming. Blood dripping from their genitalia. Screaming at me. Talk to me, Tom. Please talk to me, Tom, and make them stop.”
“I’m talking, Savannah. Listen to me. They don’t exist except in your head. They’re not there, not in this room, not in this world. They only live inside you. You’ve got to keep telling yourself that. You’ve got to believe that and then you can fight them. I know. Remember, I’ve seen this before. You can drive them out. Just be patient. It takes time.”
“What happened that day at the house, Tom?”
“Don’t think about that, Savannah. Nothing happened. It’s your imagination again.”
“They’re here, Tom. By the door. They’re unloosening their belts and screaming. Their faces are skulls. Screaming. And the tiger. Screaming too. I can’t take the screaming. Tell me I’m seeing things again, Tom. I need to hear your voice again. They’re shitting and moaning and screaming.”
“When did you start hearing these things, Savannah?” I said, alarmed. “You used to only see things. Are you sure you’re hearing them?”
“The dogs are over here. The black dogs. Black and lean. With human voices. When the black dogs come the others fall silent. The angels grow quiet. The tiger shows respect. The Dobermans rule the dark world, Tom. When they approach, it’s the worst. They’ll hurt me, Tom.”
“Nothing will hurt you, Savannah. I’m here. I won’t let anything hurt you. If anything gets near you, I’ll kill it. I’m strong enough to kill it and I will. I promise you. Do you hear me? I’m so sorry this happens to you, darling. I’m so sorry. I wish it were me. If it were me, I’d clean this room out of tigers and dogs and angels. I’d destroy everything and make both of us safe.”
“You don’t know what it’s like to have these things come, Tom. It takes so long to get rid of them. It’s so hard to fight them. And they always come to hurt me.”
“Explain them to me. Please explain what they are and where they come from. I can’t help you if I don’t understand them, Savannah. I’ve never had hallucinations. Are they like dreams or nightmares?”
“Worse. Oh, so much worse, Tom. But the same in some way. Except you’re awake and know you’re awake and know they come because you’re sick and helpless and have no power to banish them. They come when they smell your weakness. When they smell your willingness t
o die and you have to fight them, only there’s no strength. There are too many of them. Thousands. Countless. I try to hide it. Especially from you and Luke. I try to pretend they’re not here. But they came tonight. When we were walking through the fog. I saw the angels hanging from every lamppost. At first they were silent but as we kept walking, they began moaning and multiplying, until they were hanging and bleeding from every window. They always come to hurt me. I’ve known they were coming for weeks. I never should have given that reading. It took too much. No strength to give. No strength to fight them with.”
“I’ve got the strength. I’ve got enough to fight them with. Just tell me how. Tell me how I can help you. I can’t see them or hear them. They’re not real to me and I don’t understand why they’re so real to you.”
“They’re laughing at me for talking to you, Tom. Laughing. All of them. The Doberman is saying, ‘He can’t help you. No one can. No one can save you from us. No one on earth. No one can touch us. No one believes we’re real because we belong only to you. We’ve come for you again. And will come again. And again. Until you come with us. We want you with us.’ “
“Don’t listen to them, Savannah. That’s your sickness talking. It’s not real. That’s how the hurt comes to the surface. It comes in these lurid images. But I’m here. You can hear me. You can feel me. Feel my touch. That’s real. That’s me, Savannah. That voice loves you.”
She turned toward me, sweat pouring off her face, her eyes disconsolate and pained. “No, Tom, I can’t trust your voice.”
“But why?” I asked.
“Because they use all the voices. Remember when I cut myself for the first time?”
“Of course.”
“They used the voices that time. The black dogs came. The black dogs filled the room. Glowing in the dark. They snapped at my face with their horrible teeth. All but one. The kind-faced dog. The good dog. He spoke to me, but not in his voice. I like his voice but I didn’t that time.”
“Whose voice Savannah? I don’t understand any of this.”
“The good dog spoke and said, ‘We want you to kill yourself, Savannah. For the good of the family, because you love us.’ He spoke first in Mom’s voice.”
“But it wasn’t Mom.”
“I screamed, ‘No!’ Then I knew it was a trick. Then I heard Dad telling me to kill myself. His voice was sweet and seductive. But that wasn’t the worst of all. The good dog leaned close to my ear and close to my throat. And he spoke in the kindest voice of all. ‘Kill yourself. Please kill yourself so the family won’t suffer anymore. If you love us, take up the razor, Savannah. I’ll help you do it. I’ll help you.’ That’s when I slit my wrists the first time, Tom. No one knew about the voices then. I didn’t know how to tell anyone in Colleton that I saw and heard things.”
“You’re not going to hurt yourself now, Savannah. You won’t listen to them this time, will you?”
“No. But I need to be alone to fight them. They’ll stay for a long time, but I know how to fight them better now. I promise. Go back to sleep. I’m sorry I woke you.”
“No, I’m staying here until they go away.”
“I’ve got to fight them alone, Tom. It’s the only way. I know that now. Please get some sleep. I feel better now that I’ve told you. Thanks for coming in here. I wanted you to.”
“I wish I could do something. I don’t know how to fight things I can’t see or hear.”
“I do,” she said. “I have to. Good night, Tom. I love you so much.”
I kissed her and held her against my chest. I wiped the sweat from her face with my hands and kissed her again.
As I left the room I turned and saw her propped against her pillows, facing the grim population of the room alone.
“Savannah. The voice. The last voice that told you to kill yourself. Whose voice was that? You didn’t tell me.”
She looked at me, her brother, her twin.
“That was the kindest, most awful voice of all, Tom. It was your voice they used. The voice I love the best.”
When I returned to the living room, Luke was awake and listening. He was sitting against the wall, smoking a cigarette, staring at Savannah’s door. He motioned to me and I went over and sat down beside him.
“I heard everything, Tom,” he whispered, blowing smoke rings at the ferns across the room. “She’s crazy as owl shit.”
“She comes by it naturally,” I whispered, angry at his terminology.
“Why can’t she just take your word for it that nothing’s there?”
“Because something is there, Luke. That’s the whole point.”
“Nothing’s there. It’s just that psychological bullshit again. I think she likes it.”
“You’ve been talking to Mom again.”
“It scares me when she’s like this. I always want to run. To get away from her. She becomes someone else, someone I don’t know, when she starts talking to walls. Then she starts blaming it on the family. On Mom and Dad. If they were so goddamn bad why aren’t we seeing dogs on the wall? Why didn’t we get hurt the way she did?”
“How do you know we didn’t, Luke?”
“You and I aren’t crazy, Tom. We’re normal. Especially me. You get a little moody sometimes but I think that’s because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up. Let’s haul her out of here tomorrow and take her back down to Colleton. I’ll put her to work on the shrimp boat. The salt air will clear her head out. So will the hard work. It’s hard to be crazy when you’re bustin’ ass when the shrimp are runnin’. There’s no time. Savannah’s living proof that writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage.”
“And you’re living proof that catching shrimp does the same damn thing,” I whispered fiercely. “Our sister’s a sick woman, Luke. It’s like she has cancer of the brain or something horrible like that. Does that help you understand it better? It’s that deadly, too.”
“Don’t get mad at me, Tom. Please don’t. I try to understand it in my own way. It’s not your way, I know. But I’d feel better if she was near us. She could live with me and I could help her. I really think I could.”
“She mentioned that day on the island.”
“I heard her. You should have told her it never happened.”
“It did.”
“Mom told us it never happened.”
“Mom also told us that Dad never beat us. She told us we’re descendants of southern aristocracy. She told us a million things that weren’t true, Luke.”
“I don’t remember much about that day.”
I grabbed my brother’s shoulder and pulled him toward me. I whispered brutally in his ear, “I remember everything, Luke. I remember every single detail of that day and every single detail of our whole childhood. I’m a goddamn liar when I tell myself I don’t remember those things.”
“You swore you would never mention that. We all did. It’s best to forget some things. It’s best to forget that. I don’t want to remember what happened. I don’t want to talk about it and I don’t want you to talk about it to Savannah. It can’t help her and I know she doesn’t remember anything about it.”
“All right,” I said. “But don’t you pretend that day never happened. Because that makes me crazy. We’ve pretended too much in our family, Luke, and hidden far too much. I think we’re all going to pay a high price for our inability to face the truth.”
“Is that what you think Savannah’s in there doing?” Luke said, pointing toward her door. “When she talks to the angels and dogs? When she drools into her sandals? When she checks into the nut house? Is that how you face the truth?”
“No. I just think the truth is leaking out all over her. I don’t think she faced it any better than we did, but I don’t think her powers of suppression are as strong as ours either.”
“She’s crazy because she writes.”
“She’s crazy because of what she has to write about. She writes about a young girl growing up in South Carolina, about w
hat she knows best in the world. What would you have her write about—Zulu teenagers, Eskimo drug addicts?”
“She should write about what won’t hurt her, what won’t draw out the dogs.”
“She has to write about them, Luke. That’s where the poetry comes from. Without them, there’s no poetry.”
“It scares me, Tom. One day she’s gonna kill herself.”
“She’s stronger than we think. And she wants to write lots of poems. That’s what will keep her alive. There aren’t enough dogs in her head to make her want to stop writing. Let’s get some sleep. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us tomorrow.”
“We can’t leave her like this.”
“We have to leave her like this. This is her life most of the time, Luke.”
“I want you to know one thing, Tom. I want you to listen and listen good. I don’t understand what’s wrong with Savannah. It’s not in me to understand it. But I love her every bit as much as you do.”
“I know that, Luke. She knows it, too.”
Yet I would not sleep anymore on this last remarkable night in New York City. Instead, I thought about how we had all arrived at this point in time, what benedictions and aggrievements each of us had carried from the island and how each of us had an indisputable and unchangeable role in our family’s grotesque melodrama. From earliest childhood, Savannah had been chosen to bear the weight of the family’s accumulated psychotic energy. Her luminous sensitivity left her open to the violence and disaffection of our household and we used her to store the bitterness of our mordant chronicle. I could see it now: One member of the family, by a process of artificial but deadly selection, is nominated to be the lunatic, and all neurosis, wildness, and displaced suffering settles like dust in the eaves and porches of that tenderest, most vulnerable psyche. Craziness attacks the softest eyes and hamstrings the gentlest flanks. When was Savannah chosen to be the crazy one? I thought. When was the decision made and was it by acclamation and had I, her twin, agreed to the decision? Had I played a part in stringing up the bleeding angels in her room and could I help cut those angels down?
I tried to think of all our roles. Luke had been offered the role of strength and simplicity. He had suffered under the terrible burden of being the least intellectual child. He had made a fetish out of his single-minded sense of justice and constancy. Because he was not gifted in school and because he was the oldest, he was the recipient of my father’s sudden furies, the hurt shepherd who drove the flock to safety before he turned to face the storm of my father’s wrath alone. It was difficult to mark the damage done to Luke or to tally the sum total of the desolation caused by his place in the family. Because of his enormous strength, there was something untouchable about his presence. He had the soul of a fortress and eyes that had peered at the world from battlements too long. He spoke his gospels and philosophies with his body alone. His injuries were all internal and I wondered if he would ever have to assess the extent of his wounds. I knew he would never understand our sister’s running war with the past and the long march of her private, inimitable demons through her daylight hours, nor did I think Savannah could appreciate the magnitude of Luke’s dilemma: the undermining responsibilities and duties of inarticulate strength. Luke acted when the heart cried out; the poetry in him was wordless. Luke was neither poet nor psychotic. He was a man of action, and that was the intolerable burden our family presented to him simply because he was born first of all.