His hand is beneath my shorts, those raw fingertips seeking comfort. I look up and see his friend glance at us in the rearview mirror. His glass-cold gaze knows the truth and quickly I close my eyes, not wanting to see it. Steve edges me down on the seat to unzip my shorts. I do not think to struggle. His fingers need me too bad—I know this—as much as I know I will be able to heal them, just as I heal my father.
His friend parks the car. Through the window I hear the friction of a thousand night insects rubbing their legs, filling a field with sound. Yet I can’t smell the field, instead smell the plastic seat of the car. Steve’s sweat. Cigarette smoke. His need. The car gently rocks as his friend leaves it. And Steve is whispering, whispering how good it feels, how much he loves this, how much he needs this. Yes, of course, I have always known this, long before I knew him. He does not use the pronoun “you.” He doesn’t need me. It is this, this, this that pushes my thighs to the seat. He needs this. I whisper that I love him. I have been trained to say this. But I believe I mean it, even though I don’t know his last name.
I don’t need to know his last name. I know him anyway. Driving here I’d felt as if I were finally free, far away from home. Now I understand I’ve gone nowhere. So, yes, without knowing Steve’s last name, I know him. Sweat from his face drips on mine; it is this I know. He pulls himself out and ejaculates onto my stomach; it is this I also know. I know him well enough to understand that when he is finished, when his need is finished, he will be gone. They all will be gone. I will never see him again. Even my father is gone when he finishes, only returning when he needs me.
It is way past 10:30 when they drive me back to the center. My father is not in front. He has not waited. Walking home, I pretend I could be any girl. I am any New Jersey girl walking home from a date, any New Jersey girl whose parents will be angry she will be home late, angry she has broken the rules. My father, who is always watching out for me, always watching me, will know what I did tonight and with whom I did it. Since he already knows, since he already knows why he should be angry, I walk slowly through dark neighborhoods under drooping limbs of maples. There is no reason to hurry. It will happen whether I am home now or hours later. Where Steve ejaculated, my shirt sticks to my stomach, and I know I should clean myself before reaching home. But there is no place to stop on these streets. Besides, I know I wouldn’t stop. I know what must happen when I reach home. And I know I deserve it.
But I am not the one who deserves it. She is the one who deserves it. So I am not any girl, after all. Nor am I just one girl. How lucky, I am several. For the molecules of our several bodies, the molecules of our skin, are imbricated like scales connecting us together. And so I must remember only one of these girls just committed a sin against her father. Just one girl broke the rules and will be punished. Not the others.
Our porch light is on, the only light on the street. The neighbors are asleep, yet as I climb to the top of the stoop and pause in the light, I feel as if they all watch me. And I want them to, yes, you, I want you to see my shame. As my mother sees my shame. She yanks me inside and slaps me across the face. I am slapped on my head, breasts, arms, stomach, neck. I am a slut. A whore. No man will marry me. I will get pregnant and disgrace her, disgrace our family. Yes, Mother, you are right, I think. All this will happen. I notice she had been sleeping in the living room, on the couch, while she waited. And I realize he is alone at the back of the house in his bedroom. Or mine. It is my sister who was awarded the master bedroom, the only room upstairs. She sleeps alone, separate from the rest of us. My mother—my mother tells me I won’t be allowed outside for the rest of the summer. I am grateful. For how wrong I was to betray my father, and I must be kept safe from all danger outside this house. My mother turns from me. Perhaps tonight she will continue to sleep here on the couch. Yes. She will allow my father and me the privacy of the back bedroom.
This is where he has come to wait. We are alone in my bedroom, the door locked. He takes off my clothes and sees, or touches, Steve’s dried semen on my stomach. Or perhaps he smells it even before I reach the bedroom. I believe he smelled me as I still walked home down the street. Surely the smell of Steve is all over me: his semen, his cigarette smoke, his sweat, his touch. His fingerprints tattoo my body. Enraged, my father pushes me down on the bed. He screams at me, yet I don’t hear words, only sounds. He grips the chain of my necklace and holds it tight against my neck. He seems confused. He doesn’t know what to do with me. He begins to fuck me, stops. He’s too angry. No, he won’t touch me there, not until it’s been punished. He will punish it until it is his again. He yanks open my bureau drawers until he finds nylon stockings. He ties down my arms and legs, restraining me. But don ’tyou know, Father, you don’t have to do this? I won’t resist. I won’t refuse. I refuse you nothing, Father.
On my desk is an empty 7-Up bottle and he jams the cool impersonal glass into me. His rage wants to jam it up, up into my stomach, and when he can’t he heaves the bottle against the wall with such force it shatters. With a piece of glass he starts to cut me, down there. It etches my skin almost neatly, razor thin, precise, and so, so cool against my blood that I shiver. I feel it perfectly. Yes, cut me, Father. I want to bleed. Let us bleed together, bleed this everlasting evil from our bodies. I believe I relish the scent of blood, the warmth of it dripping between my thighs. He punctures my nipples with his fingernails, until they bleed, too, and I welcome this, all of this. This ritual to cleanse my body will make me his again. I want to be his. Yours, Father. I will always belong to you, Father. Forgive me.
There is only one way he can forgive me. He smears White Rose Petroleum Jelly on himself and rapes my bottom. I watch blood drip on the already bloody sheet, and I welcome this, all of this. There is something wrong with me, he says, I am a nymphomaniac, and although I don’t know what the word means, I nod my head, agreeing. He says I need help, I need more, I need it so badly, and he, he, is the only one who can help me. He goes to the kitchen and returns with another bottle, an empty. This, I know he believes, will console me. If only he could keep it inside me forever, not just this one long night. But now, yes, I am his again. And I know and I know I am forgiven.
I think it is morning. I measure time by his rage, which explodes and subsides, explodes and subsides. I can no longer tell whether I’m tied, but it doesn’t matter. For this is where I belong. I know it. Outside the window the girl who lives next door plays, but surely I pity her and don’t want to join her. Over and over, Donna’s tricycle clacks up and down her drive just outside my bedroom window, until the sound rattles my skull—while inside my bedroom my father fucks me—until there is no longer a me. For it’s not true that a body is needed, like a jar, to contain everything inside it. There is a stain on the sheet that is an essence of me, but there is no tangible me. And if there were a me who could go outside … if there were a me who could watch Donna ride her tricycle … But I can’t go outside. I wouldn’t go outside even if my father released me. And we both know he can’t.
It is September. It is the first day of school, my last year of junior high. I wear a freshly pressed white Oxford shirt with a button-down collar. I wear an autumn-colored vest with matching skirt. Such lovely new clothes my mother bought me, such a pretty outfit. My face and body are scrubbed, my hair shampooed, worn in a ponytail again after growing long over the summer. Now I am numb again, like that other first day: from the voices of students, from the clang of lockers, from the smell of chalk dust. I move slowly. As I shuffle along the corridor, I believe I’m just learning to walk. Someone says, “Hi.” I smile, about to speak, but no sound comes from my mouth. For a moment I think I am drowning.
For months I drag my body to school and home, school and home. No longer does it seem to carry me. I think I sit with JaneRobin-VickieElizabeth at lunch, but I don’t remember. And no longer does it matter. In the halls I pass Christopher and we smile, but he seems to have drifted away. Nights and mornings are cool with frost, and it seems to speckle m
y skin’s surface. I long for winter. I long for rock-solid ground upon which to walk. I long for trees encased in sheaths of ice, for the frigid, deadening air of winter. During class I look outside—not that I long to be there, on the other side of the window. Truly, it doesn’t matter where I am. Here. There. I have forgotten how to listen. I want to listen to the teacher, but I can’t. My ears are already stuffed full of sound and can hold no more. My mouth is packed full and can hold few words. I am too tired to speak, and sometimes I’m not sure if I’m awake or sleeping. I’ve almost stopped eating, but the thinner I get, the heavier I feel, until I think I’m dragging dense weight.
A thin autumn sun seeps through the windows of our house. Outside, my father rakes leaves. Sometimes my sister and I help. Other times I sit in the window watching him. Up and down the street, men rake leaves into neat piles, men in plaid flannel shirts and brown corduroy slacks. Next door, Donna will rush at a pile of leaves and jump in it, shouting, her blonde hair streaming past her shoulders. I think I used to do this when we lived in Washington and Maryland. Smoke from chimneys curls into a slow gray sky. The air smells of red smoldering leaves.
In the kitchen my mother bakes a chicken for supper. We will sit around the kitchen table, our family. My father talks about work. His three girls listen. Or pretend to listen. Or perhaps not even pretend. No, I will at least pretend, but it won’t matter because he doesn’t notice the difference. My elbows rest on the table as I cut my chicken into tiny pieces. It is dry and hard. I think about trying to get enough of it into my mouth. My mother’s gaze slides from plate to plate, noticing the intake, whether my father, sister, and I are eating. Whether we eat enough. She wants to fill us with food. Food is all she can give us, her only offering of what she wants to be love. She wants us to eat until we feel stuffed. Mother, don’t you understand? I am already stuffed. And yet, there will never be enough to truly fill me, fill any of us.
After dinner I lie on my bed. No longer do I sit at my desk to study. No longer do I truly study. Sometimes I stare at my history book for hours—same page, same paragraph, same sentence—until it loops senselessly around my brain without comprehension. I switch on my transistor radio and listen to rock ’n’ roll. Even with music, I barely comprehend the lyrics. I want to sit at my desk and study like my sister. I want the energy of my sister, but just watching her makes me tired. I don’t know what this noise is in my brain. I try to stop my brain long enough to see it. I try to focus on one clear thought. I can’t. Inside my skull there is static and I am without means to silence it. It keeps me awake at night and restless during the day. And yet I know—don’t I know?—that if it did stop long enough I wouldn’t want to know, I wouldn’t want to see what’s inside my head. I wouldn’t be able to stand it.
My father comes in my room and shuts the door. It is too early, I think. Usually he doesn’t come here until everyone is sleeping.
He snuggles beside me and takes the book from my hands. This is fine. I’d never be able to read it. He switches off the radio. This is fine, too, for even if I don’t understand the lyrics, I know all the songs are sad. He pulls me to him, tonight smelling of autumn, not bay rum aftershave. Tonight not smelling of the tropics. But what is he doing, who is he, in these new scents he’s wearing? He strokes my hair, my shoulders, my face, places he usually forgets to touch. My mother walks down the hall toward the bedrooms, but neither of us stiffens or flinches. She goes into her own bedroom and shuts the door. In a moment she will switch on the radio next to her bed and leave it playing while she waits for the news. My father turns me around till I face him. Quickly I close my eyes, for we never, never see each other. If I open my eyes while he’s fucking me, I watch him never once watching my face. He stares down the length of my body to see what he does to it, for he is entranced by what he does. Now, I feel his eyes on my face and I don’t know why he has to stare at me now as he strokes my cheeks and the sides of my neck. “I love you so much, my most precious angel,” he whispers. His touch is gentle. Loving. Caring. But my face burns in his gaze.
Stop it, Father, I think.
More than anything I want him to stop. Don’t stroke my face, don’t whisper that you love me unless you are fucking me. For I feel as if I’m about to weaken in some unredeemable way. I want to scream to him to stop. To fuck me instead. Hurt me. Surely that is safer than this.
And then I feel it, for the first time, the fist in my throat loosening. I try to swallow it back down but the force is enormous, the force of a fist pushing a foreign moisture, wet and salty, up the stem of my throat till it’s about to drip from my eyes. My body is about to convulse. My teeth chatter. I try to clamp them to stop the tears—for they will kill me. Still I feel him stare—and gently, gently, he’s stroking my cheeks like a father, stroking the tears away, comforting me, until I feel as if my entire body might be warm, comfortable, vulnerable, and I want to once again feel the safety, the rigidity, of that ice-cold fist—but he is warming me, the skin on his hands healing who I am, and who I really am is rising, rising and I must, must, must will her back down. It is not safe for her here. The girl. The girl on the beach, the girl I saw as the plane flew from the island over the Caribbean, the girl I had to leave behind. It is not safe for you here. I’m not ready. Go back. He doesn’t mean this, I warn her. I must swallow you and you must hide beneath the deepest shadow cast by my heart. The tears, I fear, will wash her from my eyes. She will be unable to hide and he will gently singe the skin off her body with the rubbing of his hands. Her hair will ignite in the friction of his stroking fingers. But the tears are coming. I beg him: Stop. I think I’m screaming. Father, please, Daddy, just fuck me. I open my eyes and he smiles.
Once, years later, I see Steve again. I am home from college during Christmas break, shopping at Bambergers in Paramas Mall. There he is, behind the counter, selling men’s cologne. At first I simply stare at him, pleased I’m wearing my Boston University sweatshirt, for I’m sure he’d have thought I wouldn’t make it to college. While I need no men’s cologne—and had just been passing through the department—I approach the counter and ask for a bottle of English Leather. Other than that, we do not speak. I don’t know if he recognizes me, but I think not. There is no flicker of recognition in his eyes. When he hands me the change, I see the wounded stubs of his fingers. He has found no one or nothing to permanently heal them. When I get home I feel sad. I don’t know what I would have done if he’d asked me to go with him in his car again. I don’t know. I open the bottle of English Leather and dab some on my wrists. Every day I do this until the bottle is empty.
In ninth-grade history class I’m asked what I think about the Boston Tea Party. Everyone is asked. Mr. Hall goes around the room asking our opinions. I slump low in my chair. My heart is racing. Please, please don’t ask me. I never raise my hand in class and I never speak voluntarily. He calls on me. I have the book open to the section and I begin to quote from it. Gently, he tells me to close it, that he knows what the book says; he wants to know what / say. What do I think? I think nothing. I don’t know what I think. I tell him this, surprised by my boldness. I have no opinion, I say. Who would want to know what / think of the Boston Tea Party? He says he wants to know what I think. I’m confused. I shake my head, uncertain. He is not trying to shame me. His voice is gentle. I don’t want to disappoint him, but I have nothing to say, am too scared to speak, or even to think. What is the Boston Tea Party? I never knew I was allowed to have opinions; no one had ever taught me to think. Almost, almost, something else nudges the rim of my mind … what do I think? I look up at Mr. Hall, at his brown eyes waiting for me, not trying to rush me. What do I think? Could I tell him? I have never spoken to this man, never been alone with him, never even thought about him, not once, ever. Why do I think there is something more urgent than the Boston Tea Party that I must tell him? “Mr. Hall…” My voice is a whisper. He leans toward me, listening. I grip the edge of my desk. But I can’t think.
I don’t know how to l
isten to my mind. It is hopeless. There is no word to explain what has just nudged my mind.
Robin’s Christmas party, which Christopher attends with me, smells of pine and cinnamon candles. An orange-blue fire in the fireplace warms the living room. On the mantel is a crèche. Carefully, I touch the miniature lambs, touch baby Jesus’s head. I stand before the Christmas tree enchanted by red, green, white, gold lights, bubbles of light, reflecting on metallic balls and shivering strands of tinsel. Balls depict scenes of red sleighs filled with people in white furry clothes and scenes of reindeer and Santa Claus. On top, a feathery angel, attached to a star, almost touches the ceiling. Beneath the tree are presents wrapped with bows and Christmas paper.
I believe, more than anything, this is what our family needs: a decorated pine tree placed before the window in our living room. If we had one, how would it be possible to rage at each other? The thin glass ornaments would shatter; no one would want to shatter them. We would have to walk on tiptoe, so the tinsel wouldn’t slide from the boughs. If we had a crèche on our mantel, we would have to be careful not to wake the sleeping Jesus.
But we will have no tree or crèche. Nor will we celebrate Chanuka. We have no Menorah or candles. Our family is without ceremony or myth to connect us to a life larger than our own existence. We are without comfort or means to ease the journey, deepen it past the parameters of our house. My sister and I will receive gifts, yes, but they will be given without significance or meaning. They will be worth only the price paid. I want to live in this house with Robin.
Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You Page 11