We stay in an inn owned by an elderly couple. My sister and I share a bedroom, and the moment we arrive I crawl under white sheets and sleep in my antique bed, exhausted from the ride. I should be able to sleep all night, but late at night I awaken, startled, thinking I hear the door creak. I am afraid to open my eyes, afraid of what I might see in the doorway, afraid of what might be moving toward me, but the sheet on my bed is not edged aside. My body is still; the bed is still. Probably I heard the springs in my sister’s bed as she turned over. Kiki is a light sleeper, her breath is shallow, and for a while I listen to her, soothed by her sound, soothed by the inn’s scent of apples and cinnamon and lavender toilet water. Finally I sleep as a cool, dry breeze of pines flutters white lace curtains against open windows.
In the morning my parents go to town, and my sister and I are given buckets to pick vegetables in the garden. I inch along the rows, slowly snapping tomatoes off vines, afraid I’ll bruise or split one by mistake. My sister, however, blazes up and down her assigned rows, finishing quickly. When she returns to the kitchen, her bucket full, I lie back in the dirt. Above me the sky seems to be floating, and I hold onto a tomato vine and float with it, watching the clouds furl. I don’t want to leave here. I want to tap maple trees for syrup in winter. I want to decorate Vermont pines for Christmas. I could pick apples all fall. Tomatoes and peas in summer. I glance at the house, up to my second-story bedroom window. Really, I want to stay here because Vermont nights are so quiet.
When I finish picking tomatoes, I head across the yard toward the kitchen. My parents, returned from town, sit on lounge chairs reading the New York Times. My father glances at me over the rim of the paper, his gaze following me to the door. What will you do for two weeks, Father?, my eyes ask him—hard. When I yank open the door I look away from him and let the screen bang behind me.
My sister sits at the kitchen table drinking lemonade. A plate of oatmeal cookies is in front of her. Kiki is already at home here, is always at home in the homes of strangers. In photographs pasted into the family album she always holds hands with men and women one only faintly remembers from distant trips, or else she leans against one edge of the photograph, leans against a stranger, while I, with my mother or father, will be on the opposite side of the picture.
I refuse lemonade and cookies, too shy to eat in front of strangers. My sister wants to go with the husband out to the barn converted into an artist’s studio. He says he will give my sister a small canvas and paints. Do I want to join them? I shake my head, no. Instead, the woman shows me how to place an apple on a spiked metal machine clamped to the table. Turn the handle that turns the apple, peeling the skin. I am intrigued by this, by the long coil of apple skin that curls onto the table. One after another I peel apples that she will bake into pies. After I finish, she again offers me a glass of lemonade. This time I accept a small, small glass—maybe just a little.
After lunch I sit on the antique couch in the living room. On the far wall ancient-looking books fill bookshelves. I think about reading one but am too tired to move. A cat pads toward me, its claws clicking the pine wood floor. It rubs against my ankle, then jumps on my lap, purring as I stroke its calico back. Even now, in summer, I smell ashes from the stone fireplace. From the kitchen is the scent of apples and cinnamon. I curl next to the cat on the couch, my eyes closed, lulled by cinnamon, by ashes, by the purring cat, by the silent house. On my fingers is the scent of peeled apples and tomato vines. I fall asleep smelling this, this, with the purr purr of the cat.
I awake, startled. The cat bounds from my grasp. My father is leaning over me, stroking my arm. He says we’re going to the country store. Perhaps my sister and I would like to buy souvenirs? His face is close to mine, but I hear voices in the foyer. We are not alone. I quickly sit up and run outside.
At the store my sister and I are given five dollars apiece. I examine maple sugar candy in designs of trees, sailing ships, miniature people. I inhale the scent of pillows stuffed with pine needles. Tiny log cabins are incense holders, with chimneys for the smoke.
Back in the corner, in a basket, are remnants from Christmas, and I sit on the floor to examine each item. Here I find the miniature Christmas tree. I wind the base. Blue, green, red bulbs flash as the tree revolves. It is almost five dollars, but I must have it. My sister buys an incense holder, pine-scented incense, and four pieces of maple candy.
Back at the inn my sister and I close the door to our room. She places an incense cone in the log cabin and lights it. I wind the Christmas tree and place it next to the cabin. She unwraps a candy in the shape of a whaling ship, and, I am amazed, gives me half. We lie on our beds and nibble the candy.
Perhaps she’s lulled by the scent of incense, by the drowsy puffs of smoke, by the revolving tree, by the too-sweet maple candy, for she rarely confides in me, this silent, secret sister. But with no warning, not even a glance at me, she asks me why I think Daddy got mad when we left on the trip. “I hate it when he does that,” she says.
Even though the door is shut, I quickly turn toward her—toward her short thin body barely denting her bed—believing I must warn her: Ssh, better be quiet. Doesn’t she know he might hear her, that he hears and knows everything? Yet, watching her, I wonder: Does she need the warning? For even lying still on the bed, truly she seems neither short nor thin but rather dense and powerful. We are sisters, but how can we seem so different? For my fearless sister can ignore the rules while I’m unable to open my mouth even to warn her of them. My bold-bold sister can speak aloud the word “hate” while I would never even silently dream of hating my daddy. I am the one who must be very good, very quiet.
But wait—I am able to speak. I must repeat the only words I’m taught, all that I know. “It’s wasn’t that bad,” I whisper to my brave sister. “He doesn’t mean anything by it. We really did bring too much stuff for the vacation.”
My father discovers a lake with a place to rent rowboats and says he wants to teach me to row. Who wants to go along? My mother says she’s tired. My sister says rowing is too slow and boring. So my father and I drive to the lake alone. We drive in silence, the windows rolled down. The wind whips my hair. And I believe, for a moment, that I will never be brought back, will never be returned to my mother, will never again see my house in New Jersey, that my father and I will never stop racing down this country highway. Without taking his eyes from the road, he reaches over and strokes my hands clasped in my lap and tells me how good it is we’re finally alone together.
The man at the lake asks how long we want to rent the boat.
“A couple of hours,” my father says, taking out his wallet. “If we keep it longer I’ll pay when we bring it back.”
“We won’t be that long,” I say. “What about dinner?”
My father waves to me to be quiet, and I glance down at the grassy shoreline.
The man helps my father slide a boat in the water. I keep my head bent, not wanting the man to see me, knowing what he must see when he sees through my clothes to my body. He knows what my father and I will do out there in the boat, in the water. He knows why my father is taking me out there. When they call to me, I stop to tie the lace on my sneaker. My father is already seated at the oars, and the man reaches for my hand to help me over the gunwale. But I stumble, knocking one of the oars from my father’s hand. He yells at me to be careful.
I sit in the rear facing my father. As he pulls the oars, the boat slides through the water. The lake is smooth, our boat the only ripple except for insects skimming. The sun feels good on my bare arms, and I kick off my sneakers to let my feet dangle overboard. The lake is cold; goose bumps shiver my thighs. My father takes long, even strokes, pulling the boat far from shore. There is the creak of oarlocks, the drip of water, the scud of clouds. A dragonfly floats on a leaf and its iridescent wings shimmer in sunlight. I concentrate on it. On its transparent wings. On its rainbow colors. I think about being it. Not even the dragonfly, less, just a speck of its wing, an ephemeral
flash of color.
My father is telling me a story from his childhood. His family of Russian peasants is from a small shtetl outside Kiev named Pavolich. Shortly after he was born there his father, drafted into the Czar’s army but refusing to serve, fled the country for America, leaving his wife and children behind, until he earned enough money to send for them. My father was three when his mother, brother, two aunts, and he left Russia to join him in America. My father doesn’t remember the exact course of the journey, but he remembers being in a big train station in Europe. He was overwhelmed by its immensity, by the crush of fleeing peasants. By mistake he let go of his mother’s hand and was lost in this station. Some woman, a stranger, helped him find her again.
I think about this, think about this small scared boy lost in a train station. I try to imagine a Russian shtetl, but I can’t. All I envision is vast distances, empty spaces.
They sailed from Bremen, Germany, on the Prince Frederick Wilhelm, arriving in New York, arriving on Ellis Island, on August 15, 1911. He still remembers, will always remember, the sight of New York harbor, the Statue of Liberty, how he, all the immigrants, cried. Because his father was not given time off from the dry-cleaning establishment where he worked (they later learned), he was not there to meet them. My father and his family were not allowed to leave Ellis Island without someone to claim them. They were told they must spend the night on the island. My father says his mother was terrified that his father wouldn’t come for them. This happened to others on the island, also waiting. If husbands and fathers didn’t fetch their wives and children, they were sent back to Europe.
My father and his mother, his relatives, spent the night in bunks set up like an army barracks. My father remembers the sweaty smell of hundreds of immigrants, the sound of babies screaming, the smell of fear. The next morning his father arrived to claim them, to bring them to New York City. In Russia, his father’s name was Wolko Zidowetzky. Now, when his father comes to take them to their new home, his name is William Silverman.
I am sad. Again, I think of my father alone in the train station, in a strange bunk, wondering if he’s been abandoned by his father. I think of the fear of a three-year-old child. I want to save him. I want to make him feel better.
I kneel in front of him, hugging him, my head against his stomach. I stroke his back to soothe him. The oars slip from his hands and the boat skims forward before slowing. He slides his fingers through my hair and kisses the top of my head and soon I am crying. “Daddy, I’m so sorry. I love you, more than anyone else in the world.”
Without speaking, he loosens his belt. Without speaking, I bend my head toward him, knowing what I must do: heal the wound of that immigrant child. He grips my hair and the nape of my neck to show me the rhythm. Do it slow, his hands tell me, while you heal me. I want to heal him and believe my mouth will banish his fear forever.
But then he stops me. I look up, surprised. No longer do I see the small boy who’s wounded. He is still wounded, yes, but the wound is larger now, more desperate, more adult, deeper. He wants me to pull down my shorts and sit on him. I don’t want to do this. I want him to be the small boy again who doesn’t scare me. “Daddy, people will see me.” “Don’t argue,” he says. “Do it.” I slide my shorts and white Lollipop underpants down to my ankles. I can’t do this. I don’t know how to do it. He puts my feet on either side of him, holds my hips, and pushes me down on it, tells me to fuck him. Go on, he tells me, you do it for once, you’re old enough now. Move. The angle is awkward and my calves ache—I can’t do it. My shorts are in the way. The zipper scrapes him and he slaps my thigh, telling me to be more careful. He unbuttons my blouse, is angry I’m wearing a bra, but he pulls it loose. “Daddy—” I know people are watching. I try to tell him—“Daddy, please button my blouse. Please.” He doesn’t. Still I don’t move. Still my legs feel paralyzed. I can’t do what he wants.
Finally he pushes me away. He tells me to straighten my clothes and sit back down, that he thought it might be nice to try something new, but now he sees I’m too stupid and selfish. He says no man will marry me if I don’t let him teach me, but no man would want to marry me anyway. Maybe when I get older he’ll marry me, he says. He’ll have to—no one else will. He’ll leave my mother and we will live far away from everyone.
I want him to zip his shorts, too, but he doesn’t. I can’t look at it—I know he wants me to, but I can’t. Instead, I lean over the side and try to see my reflection in the water, the girl my father has proposed to, the girl he wants to marry. Briefly, yes, there I am—a glimpse of nose, eyes, mouth. But the image is shattered by oars, by the rush of water.
He nestles the boat beneath towering trees where the land plunges into dense growth. I don’t want to go into that weedy darkness. I’ll trip on knobby roots. Branches will snag my hair. I’m scared I’ll get lost, scared I won’t find my way out. But without speaking I follow him ashore, I undress, I lie on weeds and pine needles. Celeste grins up at him—Celeste, who always knows the right words to say to him. She always knows what he needs. She parts her legs and urges him to hurry.
The sun is low in the sky when I feel Celeste drain from my body. Her ivory-colored skin sinks into the marshy earth, and in her place my own skin is covered with weeds and mud. Her silky blonde hair molts to brown which is tangled with leaves. I want to swim in the lake to clean my body in ice-cold water, but I know there is not enough time.
The moment the bow touches the shore back by the boat rental office, I realize I’m not wearing my bra. That I don’t have it. That I’ve forgotten it, have left it under the trees in the thicket. I tell my father we have to go back for it. Right now, I say, I must have it. We’ll just turn the boat around, quickly. Please. We’ve got to find it.
He says he doesn’t want me to wear it anyway, and I don’t need it.
“Yes,” I say, “but people will notice.”
“Who?”
“Mother,” I say. “Mother will see.”
“No she won’t,” he says. “She never sees.” He pulls the oars out of the water and stands up.
I suspect the man who owns the boats is angry we ’re late. I rush toward the car without waiting to hear what he says, not wanting to know how much additional money we owe for the rental, not wanting him to see me. I sit in the car, waiting. I spit on my palms in order to rub mud off my legs. I glance at my chest and I know, through the white material, you can see the outline of my breasts. I have not brought another bra, and we have another week of vacation. I can’t walk around this way. It’s simply not possible for me to live without it. I press my hands against my breasts to flatten them, but I can’t stand how they feel and I hit them with my fists. I want to get rid of them, pound them into my chest. I want them to disappear … his words … disappear … It’s his words, words I don’t want to understand, that I am pounding, and I am out of the car and racing toward the lake. The water darkens, like mercury, into small quivers of light. I don’t think I’ll be able to reach that far shore, find it, but I must. My sneakers splash the water. My legs, my arms are lowering, sinking. In the distance I hear voices, but they are centuries away. I need to find my bra. I will swim to the other shore to find it.
Hands—my father’s, that man’s—grip my shoulders and legs. I am buried in water. As they raise me from the lake, water sloughs from my hair, my clothes, my skin, my mouth. Once they realize I’m safe the man asks what’s wrong with me, anyway, what’s going on here, and my father gets angry at him, tells him to leave us alone. My father picks me up and carries me to the car. Throws me in. He rolls up the windows and slaps me before gripping my head and banging it back against the seat. I want him to do this. Crush it, Father. I want you to. Do it. I want to feel brittle pieces of bone chip from my skull. But he will stop long before death, because he will need to do it, do it, do it all over again. And again. He says I am a whore who doesn’t deserve how much he loves me, and if I ever humiliate him again he will whip every scrap of skin off my body. I shou
ld be grateful he hasn’t already done this, he tells me. He releases my head, but still I feel it, pounding.
Yes, Father.
I don’t need to say this aloud. He knows what I think. He knows every thought I have, feels every breath, understands every movement of my body.
Yes, Father. I am grateful.
Only you could love this cuntwhore body. You deserve to hurt it when it disobeys you or when someone notices I don’t respect you. I will desire you always, Father. I will wait for you every night. You own my body. It will never, never be mine.
For the next week I will not wear a bra and no one will see. But surely I feel freer now, knowing my mother never knows what she knows, knowing she never sees what she sees.
By September, Christopher and Lynn have broken up. He and I are reunited. We break up. They are reunited. For three years he is a pendulum, Lynn and I fixed points of gravity waiting for him to swing our way. It would not occur to me to say, “I no longer wish to be with you.” It would not occur to me to break up with him. I need him. I need his clean-smelling body. When he is with me, I believe a thin film of his white soap scent adheres to my skin.
“I’m sorry,” he says to me. And yes, I see in his eyes he is. “I care for you—really. I get confused.”
We stand on the sidewalk near the school yard. It is spring. It seems it is always spring when he knows he must leave me. Perhaps it is the lushness of nature that suddenly scares and confuses him. No longer does he see me in a shriveled winter body. Soon, in summer, my body will wear a bathing suit—that suit. Now I wear a cotton shirtwaist. My arms are bare. My legs are bare. No kneesocks. No stockings. If I quickly yank on a wool sweater and slacks I wonder if this would stop Christopher from leaving. If I could cloak this body. Or there must be a magical chant to be uttered, a simple teenage charm to be blessed—other teenage girls must know these charms and chants that prevent young teenage boys from walking away.
Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You Page 15