Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You

by Sue William Silverman

  So I couldn’t save my father, after all. Urgently, he tried to discover life inside my body. Urgently, I tried to nourish him. Desperately I failed, for it was death he, alone, swallowed.

  The Girl on the Beach:

  Recovered

  Now my parents are dead. They can only hurt me again if I let them. Only I can allow this to happen. Except I won’t. I can’t. It is time to turn my head and gaze in new directions. It is time to practice speaking the new words I have learned, time to hear all the new voices.

  “Maybe it’s time to recover her,” Randy says.

  Her. The little girl on the beach. I think of her alone on the beach, waiting. She waits for me, has always waited for the adult me to feed her, clothe her, love her. She has waited for me because she believed one day I would stop starving our body, waited because she knew one day I would be able to prevent anyone from hurting her ever again.

  So, yes, it’s time to recover her forever, time to understand I’ll never lose her.

  “Come with me, please,” I say to Randy. “Will you help me?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Tell me how.”

  I say we must walk toward her, slowly, where she always waits for me to come for her. He must carry the blanket in which to wrap her.

  “Okay,” he whispers. “I’m ready.”

  In the distance I see her small form turned toward us, watching for us. Even from here her body scares me. It’s too thin, too bruised, too small. Her hair is tangled, her skin sunburned, streaked with salt and with sand. The beach is littered with skeletons of sea creatures cast from the ocean onto this desolate shore. Here, on this beach with no breeze, it’s difficult to breathe the stifling air. The little girl must be cooled, bathed, fed. For a moment I am exhausted by the responsibility.

  I stop walking. “Maybe I don’t know how to fetch her.”

  “Tell her you’ll always keep her safe,” Randy says. “That’s all she needs to know.”

  “But she’s not wearing any clothes,” I say. “She’ll feel shy for you to see her.”

  “I know,” he says. “But I won’t see her in the way he saw her. I’ll see she’s a little girl who needs us to help her.”

  “But what will you really see when you see her? Her body?”

  “I’ll see she needs to be covered.”

  “That’s all?”

  He nods. “And that she needs to be protected. But you choose now,” he tells me. “I’ll wait here or come with you—whatever you want. That’s what you need to know now. It’s your body—hers. No one will ever tell you what to do with it again. You choose. You. What do you want?”

  I know what he says about himself is true. If he approaches her with me he won’t see her the way my father did. He ’ll see her as a hurt little girl.

  Yet I say: “I don’t know what I want. I don’t know how to decide. I’ve never decided.”

  “Then this can be the first time—now.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know. Why don’t we stop doing this? This beach doesn’t even exist. Maybe I’m not ready to get her.”

  “Oh, believe me,” he says. “You’re ready. Would you like to try?”

  I glance at her. I glance at Randy. This is about trust, of course. Do I trust him? Do I trust myself?

  “Okay,” I say. “I want—” I hold out my hand. “Maybe if I carry the blanket. I’ll wrap it around her. But I think, yes, I want you please to come with me.”

  By the time I reach her and wrap her in the blanket, she’s sleeping. I carry her back along the beach, but as I grow tired I ask Randy if he ’ll help me. He takes her from me. Her head nestles against his shoulder, sleeping. A small breeze blows her curls. Her mouth is barely parted, breathing. She must be too warm in the blanket, for she stretches out her arms and wraps them around Randy’s neck. Her arms, her elbows, her wrists, her hands, her fingers, snuggle closer. Finally, we are safe.

  She and I are alone in a house. We sit in a room of sunlight. Outside is a field of tall grass and a cleansing breeze blows the scent of an azure sky through the open windows. Curtains shimmer. She wears a cotton dress the color of limes. Her feet are bare. She wants to feel the grass under her soles when we are ready to go outside. First I must brush her long hair free of tangles. I brush it until it shines, but carefully, scared I’ll hurt her. She is beaming. Her dark lashes blink in the unaccustomed breeze. Surrounding us, in every particle of air, is Randy’s presence, as if his copper-colored skin and his blue-blue eyes can bathe us in sweet-scented warmth. He has warmed us. He has given us life.

  GREEN

  Christmas Spirits

  When I enter the classroom I notice her immediately. She is obese and has difficulty fitting onto the school chair attached to the desk. She wears thick glasses, and the skin on her face is pale as if she hides from sun, hides from light. Stringy hair trails to her shoulders. Her clothes, not just because of her weight, are ill-fitting, the material worn and beaded. She looks unsure, awkward, ashamed, defeated. And this is why I notice her immediately: because I remember my own awkwardness and shame, as if we are twins. Even though when I starved myself I was skinny, there is no difference between us, for I, too, looked ill-fitted, always expecting to fail.

  I put my books on the teacher’s desk—I, now the teacher, teaching freshman English part-time at a local college. I stand before the class feigning authority, worried that I am still ill-fitted, worried that the students will know how I spent my childhood, or will think I’m not a real teacher. Yes, I dress differently now, wearing clothes I hope look professional. Still, I’m scared and unsure.

  On this first day I introduce myself, hand out a syllabus, and am more than a little surprised that every student actually reads it, only a syllabus, yes, but one I’ve written. I’m even more surprised that all the students copy down words I write, my words, that I write on the blackboard. But maybe it’s only because my clothes make me look professional.

  When I call roll I learn the name of the obese girl. Kathy. I have this small dread she won’t make it.

  I’ve never taught before, and I can’t begin to figure out prepositions, but I am willfully determined to succeed because I believe I’ve failed at everything I’ve previously done. So I’m up at four o’clock every morning to grade papers or prepare classes. By nine o’clock at night, after again grading papers or preparing, I fall asleep, exhausted. I work Saturdays and Sundays, every weekend, grading papers. I read essay after essay, all the essays, very carefully. Because the essays are so personal—more personal than I would have expected—I must, besides correcting grammar, write long notes in the margins and on the backs of pages.

  I must respond to my students’ tentative, unsure words, words that tell me their stories. They write of alcoholic fathers, of physically violent mothers. Their childhood pets die. Relatives are killed in car wrecks. Best friends die in DUI accidents. As children they are dumped at grandparents’ houses as their parents divorce or disappear. One grandmother beats her granddaughter for failing to finish dinner. So I must comment not just about grammar and organization in the margins. I must also express encouragement, or outrage and sympathy. I tell them I’m sorry such terrible things have happened to them. Many don’t receive good grades—I grade carefully, fairly—but I must tell them I know, with a little more work, they can do better.

  Kathy, whose handwriting is thin and scratchy, writes an essay about all the hours she sleeps. She’s scared she’ll fall asleep in class and the other students will laugh. As a child, she writes, she always slept in school, at home, in the car, outside on the grass, at friends’ houses, before she lost her friends, sleeping anywhere and everywhere. She says she can’t stay awake. Her mother used to beat her for sleeping.

  And, yes, I understand this sleep. If your body is sleeping, what can it feel? If your mind’s not awake, what can it know? I imagine Kathy slumbering through endless summer heat. I imagine white sheets graying after hours and days of sleep. I remember the summer I slept in the We
st Indies. I remember being engulfed in clouds of sleep. I wonder where Kathy’s father is while she sleeps and sleeps and sleeps.

  But even when my momma beat me, I couldn’t wake up, Kathy writes in her essay. I could never wake up.

  In the margin of her paper I tell her I’m sad this has happened to her, sad her mother beat her, sad she couldn’t wake up.

  My students and I don’t talk about these things. They write their essays; I respond, by writing and writing in the margins.

  I assign the topic of child abuse for one of their essays. I am able to say they can write about physical, emotional, or sexual child abuse, say these words without flinching. “If you need information, you should be able to find magazine articles in the library,” I tell my students. I want them, I want everyone, to understand it.

  Without explanation, Kathy doesn’t turn in the essay. Two days after the deadline I quietly ask her about it. She claims she’s hard at work on it and will turn it in Monday.

  On Monday, no essay, no Kathy. Now, three weeks before the end of the quarter, this is the first class she’s missed. I know, I absolutely know why she missed it.

  I check her schedule and meet her after one of her classes. She looks terrified, assuming I’m angry at her for not turning in the essay. I lead her to my office, saying, no, no, you misunderstand, I’m not angry. I close the door and turn on a lamp. “Kathy, please, sit down,” I urge her, nodding toward the chair.

  She sinks into it and stares down at her scuffed white tennis shoes with split seams. Yes, I stared at my feet during every school confrontation, no matter how mild. Her fingernails are ragged and dirty. Lint flecks her sweatshirt, and behind the thick glasses her eyelids are rimmed with granulated lashes. The skin on her face, as she seems to sway between fear of this encounter and, perhaps, total dissociation, alternates between a dark flush and opaque white, as lifeless as a statue. I want to help her feel better. I want to help her feel at ease. With my linen blazer and freshly ironed blouse, with nylon stockings without runs and polished shoes, with clean fingernails and a showered body, with shampooed hair and jewelry and makeup, how can I ever tell her, how can I tell you, Kathy, no, no, no, this is not truly me—at least has not always been me. I am not exactly this person you see before you. I have not always been who you thinkyou see. I want to tell Kathy it might take years of work but she can create a stronger self, too.

  But I fear my words will sound false to her. If I’d heard these words from a woman now dressed as I am, I would never have comprehended what that woman was saying.

  “You know, when I was in college, I never really felt like other kids.” I nod toward the open window where girls sit on new spring grass and pretend to study for finals. As guys pause to talk with them, laughter echoes across the yard. “Even if I hung out with them, I think I was always waiting for someone to tell me to leave.”

  She looks surprised. Surely this is not what she expected me to say. Slowly she shakes her head. “But you’re—” She doesn’t know how to finish her sentence. Tears rise slow from the corners of her eyes.

  “What is it?” My voice is quiet, almost a whisper. “Can you tell me?”

  “It’s the essay,” she says.

  She tells me she hasn’t finished it. She tells me she never even started it. Well, she started reading magazine articles but she never began to write it. She lied to me the other day, she says, and she feels so bad. Besides, she still can’t write the essay. She’ll never be able to write it, even though she knows she’ll receive a zero and will probably flunk the course.

  “Could you tell me why you can’t write it?” I ask her.

  I must know the answer before it’s given. Her mouth looks as if the skin might crack. “I didn’t know—” Her words sound thin, tight. “Till I read this magazine article. On that child abuse. That that’s me.”

  The tears are gone. Her words, as she stops speaking, seem gone, as if they landed at the bottom of the sea like tossed rocks. Even in the heft of her body she seems to be draining out of herself, disappearing. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “That should never have happened to you.”

  I’m terrified I’ve made a terrible mistake by asking Kathy, asking any of the students, to write on this subject, that I’m asking Kathy, in particular, to know something before she’s ready. I try to tell her to forget about the essay—it’s only an essay. I look in the school directory for the name of the counselor and urge Kathy to make an appointment. This is more important than the essay, I say, nudging a scrap of paper with the counselor’s name into her hand. She takes it. Or her fingers manage to hold onto it as I stuff the paper in her fist. I worry that later, when she opens that fist, the paper will slip out unnoticed.

  I must do more. I must tell her. As I speak, though, I know she’s fading, that maybe she’s already gone. I want to urge her back. “Kathy, I want you to know that was me, too, that child abuse. That happened to me, too.”

  For a moment she seems stunned. Rigidly she seems to nod her head, although I’m not sure she heard what I’d said. She has heaved herself from the chair and is heading toward the door. I go after her into the hall. I point to her fist. I take the paper back and write my own home number on the other side. I tell her to call me. Call me anytime. Day or night. Or call the counselor. Call someone who can help her… will she call someone? She nods her head. But she is already gone.

  Kathy. I believe one day you will be ready to be helped. And I want to believe you know I have never forgotten you and your secret, that I am with you always while you struggle.

  I also must pass you, Kathy. Maybe because I know you will always expect to fail. Maybe because there are times we must receive high marks for simply surviving.

  I discover, over the years of teaching, that I most enjoy teaching students who hate English, who hate to write. Most students believe, at least at the beginning of the quarter, they have nothing to say. Our language scares them. Words scare them. Their voices scare them. Grammar terrifies them. Education scares them. Many tell me they’re stupid. But when they say this I hear not their voices, but, rather, the imitated voice of an unknowing parent or unprofessional teacher who said this to them first. I tell them they’re not stupid. Maybe the parent or teacher didn’t know how to teach them, didn’t know how to listen, didn’t bother enough to care. I urge them to try again. Every quarter I want to see if maybe even one student might change his or her mind, if one student might discover a word, a whisper of a voice, if one student might realize he or she has something that must be said.

  Marcia never had anyone to listen to her, never had anyone to care, has always hidden her wishes and her words as if they’re secrets. Marcia’s face is calm and serene, while her hair is a loose mass of caramel-colored curls, lovely and wild. In class today I’d mentioned I loved words. Now, after waiting for the other students to leave the room, she bends close to me and whispers, “I love words, too.” She seems to be holding her breath, her body tense, as if she thinks I’ll belittle her admission. I nod, serious, encouraging her. “But I’ve never told anyone before,” she continues. “Everyone I know would’ve laughed. I mean, I didn’t know it was okay to love words.”

  “But it is okay,” I say. “I’m glad you love them.”

  She nods and puts her books on the corner of my desk. “I’ve kind of been writing poems since I was little, but I’ve never told anyone or shown them to anyone. I mean, they’re not very good.”

  “I’d like to see them,” I say. “If you’d like to show them to me.”

  She beams and shrugs. “I’m going back to school to be a nurse, but I’ve always wanted to be an English teacher. I don’t mean I could teach college or anything—but maybe middle school. But I don’t know. I don’t think I’m probably smart enough.”

  I tell her I think it’s great she’s found something she loves, that I think she’d be a wonderful English teacher, that she is smart enough. Over the quarter I help her with her writing, with her skills. I give her my ph
one number and she calls to ask me questions about her life, about her career, about her future. “Am I good enough?” she always wants to know. Yes, I say, you are always good enough, for anything. Finally she switches her major to English. She transfers to a four-year college. She begins to feel confident she can be an English teacher. It never would have occurred to me I could have helped anyone plan a future.

  Kathy’s story and Marcia’s story are only two stories. Over the years there will be more students, other stories. Always, I listen. I must listen. I begin to think that listening and encouraging are more important than teaching punctuation or grammar. Or maybe just teaching students not to fear words, so then they can learn their own words, hear who they are, tell their own stories. At the end of quarters I receive letters and poems, small presents from my students, thanking me … mirroring the small offerings and scribbled notes, the tentative words I give Randy, thanking him, words that gradually are woven into my story—while Randy’s words, in turn, offer me safety, offer me life. So with Randy, with my students, I must thank them, for with them, all of them, I begin to see and hear the circular interconnectings of poems, words, people, scraps of paper, voices, all woven into a strong tapestry to cloak the earth in comfort. Individual threads knit together to form a strong fabric. And I know this can be the way the world is now.

  I join a gym to use the weight-lifting equipment. I bench press, execute bicep curls, leg curls, sit-ups. Over the weeks and months I add more and more bars of weight to the stack. I learn the names of my muscles: triceps, quadriceps, deltoids, biceps. I stand before a mirror and notice small curves swelling beneath my skin. I touch my muscles. I flex. I am amazed by these muscles I have created. These muscles seem to be tangible evidence of existence, proving I now live inside my body. This is my body. And now only I decide what it wants—no, what I want.

  Finally, my sister and I are orphans. We maneuver through our parents’ deaths and look at each other: We survived. When my sister received our parents’ ashes, she promised one day she’d carry them to Israel for burial. She will be the one to fulfill this final responsibility of a daughter. I cannot. There’s nothing more I can do for them. I think my sister knows this, and I’m grateful.