Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You

by Sue William Silverman

  Then it’s the most natural thing—a group of girls heads toward the cafeteria. I am with them, along with Robin, swept along on giggles and surefooted movements on these once-tricky, mazy corridors. I expect to find myself alone when we reach the cafeteria, but still I am awash in their flow of words. And there I am at the same table as Jane. Not next to her, but at the fringes, and she has smiled at me—smiled—and I bask in the warm stream of girlwords.

  But there is Betty, alone in her corner—what had been our corner—huddled over her food. We do not have the same classes, and I had forgotten to meet her by the bulletin board in the lobby. She does not glance at me, not once, but I am certain she saw me rushing through the lobby. I know she saw me or else she would have waited. I also know I can’t invite her over to join me. My own status at this table is too shaky.

  I put down the fork. I am no longer hungry. I no longer hear the girls’ chatter. As much as I know I can’t invite Betty here, I also know I can’t afford to leave here and join her, though she would never have joined the girls at this table without me. She would never have abandoned me alone to the corner.

  The next morning while sitting before the mirror I notice, for the first time, that my island tan has faded. My skin is almost as pale as Jane’s and Robin’s. No longer do I dream of crimson sunsets. My saddle-shoed feet are beginning to understand the rigidly blocked sidewalks of suburban New Jersey streets.

  I learn Christopher’s schedule. Between classes I place myself where we will either have to pass each other in the hall or walk in the same direction. Always, I smile. It is always returned. I’ve learned he does not have a girlfriend. This endless preoccupation enables me to forget, forget, forget…

  The eighth-grade class has a Spring Fling. Pink rollers have been in my hair since morning, and at 6:30 I unwind them, comb my hair, tease the bangs into place. I spray Aqua Net and study my face in the mirror. I rearrange a strand or two and drink a bottle of 7-Up—dinner—a 7-Up is enough for dinner. I slip into my white dress with small pink flowers and apply pink lipstick. I dab White Rose Petroleum Jelly on my eyebrows and lashes. I want to wear eye makeup, and decide to buy some with my next allowance. I study my reflection, try different expressions. Friendly. Sultry. Indifferent. Bored. When I part my lips and lean close to the mirror, I see a flicker of an expression I don’t recognize. I touch the mirror as if to stop—hold—the look—Who are you? But she is gone.

  In the living room my father reads the New York Times. I pause before him waiting for a compliment, wanting him to tell me I look pretty for my first school dance. He does not look up from the newspaper. He does not say good-bye.

  In the car, my mother and I are silent. I sit in the back seat watching the town out the window as lights in all the houses are switched on. I wonder what it would be like if I wandered inside a stranger’s house. I wonder what I would be like if I lived in one of these other houses, had another home, a different name, different parents. I imagine sitting down to dinner with a different family, and the father would talk to me about… but I can’t think of what. What do fathers say to daughters? What? Tell me, tell me, tell me: Daddy, tell me something. I’m scared there is nothing to say.

  I meet my girlfriends in the lobby. Walking down the hall to the cafeteria we chatter, pretending we are just going for lunch. But surely we all look pretty, in our better-than-school-dress dresses, with our pink fingernail polish, with our scents of floral perfumes, all different, like a bouquet. We duck into the girls’ room and line up before the mirror. We help to groom each other, not for each other, but for the boys, checking for stray hairs or smudged lipstick. I pray I will not be the only girl not asked to dance, pray Christopher will ask me to dance. I wonder what I must do to ensure this happens.

  As a disc jockey spins records, girls with the softest of cheeks and lotioned hands, boys with the frailest of down on their cheeks and sports-roughened hands test the music, the romance. The girls seem assured, seem to understand the movements of the dance, and I worry I lack their confidence and grace, that I will not be the girl Christopher searches for. I remember the dance in St. Thomas, the dance with the sailors on the Danmark. If Christopher notices Dina … if—but no, Celeste would never come to this dance.

  When I see Christopher at the refreshment table, I wander over and pick up a cup of red punch. I smile, he smiles, and now I believe I’ll be okay, that I can be the girl, any girl Christopher would like for me to be, yes, I will be her as soon as I understand whom he wants to see when he looks at me. We talk about classes, the wrestling season just ended, the baseball season beginning. He’s on the team, he tells me, and I say I’ll watch him play, pretending to love baseball, although I’ve never seen a game. He says that’s great, that he has four younger sisters who hate it, and thought all girls hated sports.

  “That’s a lot of sisters,” I say.

  He nods. “They’re great, but they can be a real handful.”

  “Like how?” I say.

  “You name it. There’s always a lot of faces to wash and a lot of teeth to brush.” He smiles. “I single-handedly taught all four to tie their shoelaces.”

  “Gosh,” I say. “You must be a cool older brother.”

  Finally he invites me to dance. He’s only a few inches taller than I, so I can clearly see his round green eyes, their soft expression, as if he doesn’t have any secrets. From the way this shy young boy holds my hand and carefully touches my back, I think of the way these hands must gently wash his sisters’ faces, tie their laces. I wonder what it must be like to be one of his sisters, a little girl with freshly scrubbed cheeks and sparkling teeth, eyes like her brother. I try to imagine, imagine her… until I begin to feel I might almost be her, begin to feel that I am pitching backward to a time … falling backward to a place I can only think of as “before.” And I would not have been able to say before what, exactly. Just before. All I know is that, with Christopher, my body feels shy in his shy arms, my hand feels shy in the foreignness of his kind of boy-man hands. Except as the record ends and he quickly releases my hand, I begin to worry I could never be one of his sisters—or like his sisters. So surely the shyness must be Christopher’s; it must be his sisters’. It isn’t mine. And I know the longer we stand beside each other, the more I feel I should warn him. Stay away, Christopher. I can destroy you. I know what Celeste can do. But he doesn’t hear the warning.

  Shortly before ten I go outside to wait for my mother. A spring drizzle dampens the air, and I stand beneath the overhang watching headlights. Behind one of the pillars I notice a movement, a boy kissing a girl. I can barely see them, but still I imagine her back pressed against the pillar, his body pressed against hers. I almost take a step toward them, wanting … What? No, it isn’t me who wants. It’s her. Celeste. The other “me.” She senses—how can she not?—senses the pressure of his lips. She knows this pressure, understands it far better than I understand Christopher. Perhaps they hear me—I don’t know—but the girl pushes the boy away. He struggles with her, not wanting to let go, but she pushes again and he releases her.

  Ryan. He’s in my class, but I don’t know the girl. Her smudged mouth looks scared. Her eyes are lowered as she rushes past me. I stare straight at Ryan, except the gaze doesn’t seem to be mine—that expression I’d glimpsed in the mirror earlier—it’s too direct for an eighth grader. And I smile at him with a mouth that is far from scared, with a mouth that says: I am not the kind of girl who would push you away. He seems startled, pauses for a moment, uncertain what is meant, perhaps. As he passes he brushes the edge of my dress.

  In my bedroom I turn off the lights and open the window to the spring rain. The lilacs just below my window smell like wet, dusky shadows. These lilacs. The scent stays with me every day, even in winter. The pale lavender color twines with the heavy, dripping scent. In these lilacs I feel the gentleness of nature as well as its danger. I understand that Christopher’s innocence is fear—but that Ryan’s danger is also fear, and that by be
ing opposites they are really opposite sides of the same scared boy. And that I, I am the one who will always scare them.

  I lie in bed. Sprinklers cool green summer lawns up and down Lowell Road. Every Saturday morning mowers whir the silence of neatly trimmed houses and flower beds. My father spends hours killing crabgrass and weeds. Our yard must look as perfect as other yards; our house will look as perfect as other houses. We will look perfect—as perfect as my beautiful baby-blue bedroom with matching curtains and ruffled bedspread. Behind the lids of my eyes I sense sunlight rimming the curtains. I don’t want to open them yet: my eyes or the curtains. Inside, the house is quiet. Our grandmother has moved to a nursing home about an hour away, and my mother visits her Saturdays. Surely my sister, an early riser, has disappeared for the day.

  I’ve done little this summer except read. The kids from school don’t call, and I am too shy to call them, afraid they won’t remember me or won’t want to hear from me. I’ve bought a new swimsuit, but have not gone to the public pool where most of the kids will be. Really, I’d rather read.

  So once a week, when I receive my allowance, I take the bus from Glen Rock to the bookstore in Ridgewood. There, I spend hours browsing. I am nearly breathless as my hand opens the door, breathless for that first moment when my feet touch the uneven, old wood floor. It is scuffed from shoes, scarred from the passage of the ladder needed to reach books up near the ceiling. It’s as if the shoes and the ladder have worn away layers of wood down to its essence, an essence that smells warm, smooth, safe. I am full of the scent of inked paper on the rows and rows of books, full of the feel of the thin layer of dust on the books on the upper shelves. I rub the dust between thumb and forefinger. The books are arranged neatly, their spines straight and identified by title and author. Surely my hand nearly trembles as I reach for a certain book. And when I see beautiful covers, pictures of oceans and fields, cities of today or cities of faraway times and places—in red, yellow, green ink—I must sit on a carton of unpacked books or on the bottom rung of the ladder to study them. All these books remind me of my Uncle Esey’s study. I miss my Uncle Esey. My mother and her sister had a fight, and we never see my aunt and uncle anymore, but I feel closer to him here, surrounded by shelves of books.

  I read Anna Karenina, Lord Jim, The Sound and the Fury, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamaʐov, Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, The Once and Future King, The Scarlet Letter, Heart of Darkness, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Member of the Wedding, Huckleberry Finn, The Ballad of the Sad Café. Some novels I understand better than others, but that hardly matters. To be reading words, to be seeing images, to be characters in novels, to be in their houses and towns and cities, to be in their lives, to be their lives, is what matters. It is the books themselves that matter: to be able to hold these worlds, these words, these characters, in the palms of my hands. To lie on my bed and, when I finish a novel, to be able to press the open pages of the novel against my face and smell the words, the lives, the cities, the towns, the characters, their wishes and desires, matter. I am not only characters, places, themes, I am the words themselves. These words keep me safe. They are definite, concrete, lasting. No one can take them from me. Rather, / am the one who takes, stealing words from these novels like a thief. I hoard words. I collect them. I stuff myself full of them. Not words that bring me closer to reality; rather, words that carry me farther away. I never read books that tell me about my self. Instead, words give me the power to create a person who might be another self, as well as the power to create magical images, a destination, a habitat, where this other self can live.

  When I get home from the bookstore I hurry to my bedroom and close the door. I want to lock it—I’m not allowed to—but I treat these books as if they’re secrets. I want no one to see them; I want no one to know what I’m reading. I want these books, these characters, these words, to belong to me only, as if no one else in the world has ever read them. I ease the books from the sack and line them on my bed, staring at the covers for hours, before I can possibly decide which one I will choose first to read.

  So I lie in bed on a Saturday morning. Early summer heat drifts through raised windows. Without opening my eyes I reach for the book I have placed under the bed. Maybe I will stay in bed all day, reading. I will not leave my room, not even turn on the light, able, even in this gray light, to see the words clearly. But first, under the sheet I hug the book to me, feeling the wedge of pages in my fingers. My fingers search for the dog-ear to determine the distance left before the novel is finished, not wanting any novel ever to be finished. But quickly I’ll begin another, as if the first page of Huckleberry Finn is the last page of Anna Karenina. Perhaps in Huck Finn’s adventures he’ll discover Anna beneath the train in Russia; perhaps he can even save her. Perhaps it’s possible to rearrange worlds and words until things work out better.

  The lawnmower stops outside my bedroom window. The sound feels truncated, its cessation louder than the sound itself. I think I feel the air inside the house rush out, think I hear my father breathing outside my bedroom window. I feel the petals of fading lilacs shiver, even think I feel him snap off a cluster—but maybe I only remember he enters my bedroom with a spray of them in a crystal vase which he sets on the headboard as a present.

  He smells of mowed grass and sweat. Then a glimpsed memory, a memory of scent—in Washington—his smell of sawdust and raw wood. I try to feel years, a connection between years. Who was I then? Who am I now? How does this connect me to back then? My thoughts scatter. He takes the book from my grasp and discards it on my desk, wanting to let me know it’s unimportant. He pulls my nightgown over my head, then watches me while he undresses. For this is what’s important. He is quiet this morning, this early Saturday, as he curls beside me in bed, holding me to his chest, my back against his chest, his lips against my spine where I feel him breathing. He whispers he loves me. I nod, yes, I know that you do, Father, you do. If I can hold this. If we don’t move. If we can lie here like this, then I can almost pretend this is love. For years I will try to pretend this, even though he will move. Even though he will, in just a moment, pull my body around, urging me even closer, while we both smell the hot scent of wilting lilac.

  This is the connection, what connects me to the years.

  Summer nights Jewish kids from Glen Rock, Fair Lawn, and Ridgewood gather at the Jewish Community Center. My mother drives me over, forcing me to go. She tells me I’ll have a good time—“You’ll see”—and tells me my father will pick me up promptly at 10:30. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be with Jewish kids, especially not now while I’m practicing to be Christian. Angry at my mother, I slam the car door, already planning to break all the rules.

  I have dressed to break all the rules. I knew the recreation room would be too bright, while the kids, the Cokes, the cookies, would be too boring. So in order to save the evening I’ve worn red-red shorts, a tight red and white shirt, an apple necklace, and red lipstick. It is the red, of course, that counts. I count on the red to ensure the evening will not be what my mother wants for me. I count on the red to ensure I’ll dance with someone, or do something, that isn’t boring.

  I put a fist on my hip, bend a knee, tilt my head—my interpretation of sophistication—as I watch boys, strangers from other communities. No, I watch one boy, one stranger from another community. He seems older. His sweaty face is unshaven. He’s untucked and unironed, his brown, wrinkled shirt hanging carelessly over khaki shorts. He is smoking. Never have I seen a teenager smoke before. So, with him, it is the cigarette that counts. Not just that he’s smoking, but that it hangs slack from his mouth. Even if he weren’t smoking, I would be able to imagine the cigarette there, as if his full, damp lips would always hold it.

  I will him to notice me in the same way I’d willed Ryan to pause that night outside the school dance. He will notice me. Steve, this is his name, will ask me to dance. And he does—as I knew he would. From the w
ay his hands touch me while we dance, I know they are not like Christopher’s. Steve’s nails are bitten. The fingertips are raw, needing to be healed, but dangerous with this need, needing a girl to heal them, but not with her small teenage innocent words, innocent glances. His fingers, as we dance, press me hard, as if even now, even here, trying to touch bare skin: hard. I know. He knows me, too, knows I am the only one here who can heal those fingertips, and they desperately need healing.

  He teases me about the apple necklace, asks why it’s whole, why no one has yet taken a bite. I giggle. Mock shy. My eyes lower, but it is Celeste with the garnet red lips, and, I now realize, Celeste who bought the apple necklace. I believe we both seduce him—how can he stand a chance?: my innocence (he will want to corrupt me); her danger (he will know her boundaries are endless). He tells me he’s a senior in high school at Fair Lawn. I tell him I’m almost in ninth grade. He asks if I’m allowed to date older guys. I can’t speak. I can’t answer him. For a moment I giggle so hard I don’t think I can stop.

  He whispers that he and his friend have a car. Do I want to go for a ride? Yes. I expect the three of us will sit in the front, but Steve pushes me into the rear. This is all arranged smoothly. I don’t see: They have arranged this beforehand, they have done this before and know the plan.

  The windows are open and a thick summer breeze fills the car, this and cigarette smoke. My hair whips my cheeks. I try to straighten it. He says: What does it matter? And, of course, it doesn’t. For even as he says this, he’s pulling me onto his lap. He starts slow, nuzzling my face with his mouth before kissing me, the first man who’s kissed me besides my father. At first I’m exhilarated, free with the movement of the car, the first time I’m alone in a car with a boy, free, as if I’m floating far beyond the walls of my house, where no one in my family can touch me, where no one can bring me back. I feel as if this is a rescue, and I am giddy with flight.