Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You

by Sue William Silverman

  Kiki knows this because I finally revealed to her the secret of our father. Although I first told her shortly before I entered the hospital, it is only now, after our parents’ deaths, that I am truly able to hear the gentleness of her response. It has taken me these two years to trust myself enough to trust her, or trust that, together, we will survive the sound of the word “incest,” that this word, spoken aloud, can be tolerated and absorbed into our family history. She was very quiet when I told her, as well as patient, asking few questions, wanting perhaps to know as little as possible. Still, she did not rush off the phone or run away. Rather, her voice was small and scared, her silences tangible with worry. She carefully listened to what I said, even as my own voice faltered, struggling to pronounce the words of this new language. And although I didn’t ask directly, she claimed our father had never touched her.

  Soon after this initial conversation my sister called my husband one evening while I was in the hospital to tell him she was worried about me and hoped I’d be able to recover. She also told my husband she loved him. “What she meant, what she was saying, I think, is that she loves me because I love you, for being with you and caring for you,” my husband later relayed to me. “She also told me how much she loves you.”

  How much my sister loves me. At that time I had trouble hearing those words. Or I heard them, but struggled to understand the meaning. Because every year during our childhood, Kiki and I lost more and more words, until we no longer knew how to speak to each other except with the thinnest of phrases, except with the dissonance of emotional lies. Like motes of dust, our words lie carelessly scattered across a vast expanse of childhood. Now we begin, like earnest children, to learn to speak simple words, words of one or two syllables, words such as “sister,” “life,” “hear,” “speak,” “soul.” Words such as “love.” We must begin here, at the beginning, before we can learn to move on.

  One evening, several years after our parents’ deaths, my sister calls. She says she saw a cute little girl on the street that morning. “She reminded me of you when you were little. You were such a cute kid,” she tells me.

  As if I am hearing the sound of her voice for the first time and am stunned by its gentleness, I sink onto the chair next to the telephone. “Thank you,” I whisper.

  Then it is her voice to go small, her voice to sound like a small girl, a sound I don’t remember hearing when she was little. “I feel so bad I couldn’t have protected you,” she says. “You know, from what he did to you.”

  “Oh, Kiki, no, no. I mean, that’s so sweet. But you were just a kid, too. You couldn’t have stopped it. She was the only one who could’ve stopped it.” And now, now I must tell her, for now is the time, even though I have told her before, I must tell her again, believing this is the first time she will know what I mean. “I have always loved you, too, Kiki.”

  Kiki. My sister’s real name is Carol. When I first began to speak I couldn’t pronounce the sound and formed the word “Kiki” instead. While I have always called her Kiki, I have never been able to hold onto Kiki. The two quick syllables of that nickname exploded beyond my reach and there I was, alone, unable to grasp her, unable to see a fading image, unable to hear a vanishing sound.

  Now, I whisper the name “Carol.” The two long syllables linger in my mouth. The slow-slow sound “Car-ol” slows my sister. Now I believe, and must trust, that she can pause to hear the heavy weight of my voice say her name, pause long enough to see me, hear what I must say: Carol, you have always been my sister.

  And now I believe, deep down, that even as a child Carol always loved and missed me, too. But because of our parents, she wasn’t able to show it. Now, in the soundlessness of their deaths, in the infinite stillness of their absence, I believe my sister and I will learn to hear each other better.

  I volunteer at a shelter for battered women. I am in a house where windows and doors have double and triple locks to prevent angry men from entering. I’ve never seen any man enter, never seen any man in this house. It is a haven for women and children who need a safe place to heal, a place to hide.

  The director of the shelter and I serve dinner to the women and children. We have set the table in the dining room: plates, silverware, napkins, glasses. I’d stopped at Kroger and bought a bouquet of flowers for a centerpiece. Staff, volunteers, guests of the shelter and their children—we all eat together, early, because of the children. A late-afternoon sun angles through slats on Venetian blinds. Outside, rush-hour traffic rumbles down the street. But inside we are quiet. The click of silverware. The low murmur of voices. No one outside knows we are here, inside. No plaque or sign marks this ordinary house. The address is not listed in the telephone directory. No angry man will ever find us.

  I sit across from Jean. Bruises mar her cheekbone, a scab clots her lip. Valiantly, she wears eye makeup, blush, even lipstick, which is gently smoothed across the scab. With narrowed eyes she secretly glances at the director and at me as we cut our food into small pieces, as we place silverware on our plates while chewing, as we use napkins, then replace them in our laps. With tentative movements Jean seems to imitate us, do what we are doing, as if no one has ever taken the time to teach her how to eat.

  I imagine my sister here with me. I imagine my mother. I imagine the three of us all here together, somber but safe. I imagine having lived here forever, the one permanent resident in this impermanent flow of women and children drifting through. Every night I would sleep in a room full of beds, beds crammed together, all the little girls safely tucked into their beds while they sleep.

  After dinner I sort through bags of donated clothing. I fold women’s clothes into separate stacks of small, medium, large. I separate summer clothes from winter clothes. Shirts, blouses, sweaters from skirts and slacks. I separate children’s jeans from dresses. In my family, my mother always dutifully donated outgrown or outdated clothes to charitable organizations. I never considered where my clothes actually went or who might eventually wear them. Now I imagine a pile of my childhood clothes here in this house. A little girl retrieves my favorite lime-green dress and wears it.

  I discover a pretty silk blouse with pearl-like buttons. I take it to Jean’s room, but she’s not there. Her suitcase is by the foot of the bed. I fold the blouse and leave it.

  I find Jean in the lounge reading the want ads. She lost her job as cashier at a convenience store because her husband, who’d accused her of cheating on him, smashed the door of the store and beat her. Yesterday she had an interview at a fast-food restaurant, but her shoulders seem exhausted with defeat when she mentions the pay is close to minimum wage. She can’t support two children on minimum, so she knows she needs to learn some skills in order to get a better job. If she can’t, she’s scared she’ll go back to her husband, who will beat her. She’s more concerned he’ll start beating her children. She tells me she doesn’t see a future.

  I sink down beside her on the couch, also scared about her future. But I tell her how brave she is to be here, to have protected herself as well as her children. I say I’m sure, in not too much time, she can learn some skills, maybe take courses at a technical school in order to get a better job to support her children.

  The following week I bring her information about training centers. After dinner she sits beside me on the couch to read the brochures. On the floor by our feet Jean’s two children play a board game. Another boy, a preschooler named Joey, wanders into the room sucking his thumb and dragging a ragged blanket for security. Without a word he climbs onto my lap. He hunkers against me in a tight curl and closes his eyes.

  I stroke his hair. I trail my fingers down his back. I think of my sister, of rubbing her back, the only time she allowed me close to her, the only time she sat still long enough for me to hear her breathing, hear her heart beating. In a moment Joey is sleeping. I wrap my arms around him and press my cheek against the top of his head. His hair smells of shampoo and of sun. I hug him tighter—as if this one hug can dispel all childhood n
ightmares. I want it to; I know it can’t. I want what I can’t have: to know, to be sure, he will always be protected.

  But he is safe now. Jean and her children are safe now.

  This house is quiet. We all seem to speak quietly here, even the children, for we have all heard too much noise outside. From the other rooms trails the slow murmur of women’s voices, brave women who have fled their homes and their husbands for the security of this shelter, for themselves and for their children. I listen to them, a comforting blend of voices, listen until I imagine I hear another voice, a murmur of my mother’s voice, finally safe with other women, her voice, a sound I long to hear, longing to hear her say one special word, and I must believe I hear her whisper it. It is to me she calls. I hear her say my name, that one soft syllable. She calls to me, telling me she wished she’d found her way here years earlier to claim even one night of safety for her and her daughters.

  I will carry this soft sound of my mother’s voice home with me, carry all these women’s voices home with me, this, as well as the rustle of paper as Jean plans her future. I carry the sound of Joey’s sleeping breath home with me, a steady breath which lulls him until morning. These sounds will lull me until morning.

  My husband has always wanted for us to buy a house. I have resisted because I feared responsibility, feared the idea of home, the only definition of home I had ever known. Finally, agreeing to seek other definitions, I relent. We are busy decorating and fixing up our new home, even though sometimes I feel like a kid playing house.

  It is night. My husband is sleeping. I sit in this quiet house surrounded by my parents’ possessions. I sit on their navy and tan couch. Silk material my father bought in the Orient has been sewn into curtains. Their vases, candlesticks, books, lamps, and photograph albums decorate mantels, bookcases, coffee tables. My blankets are in their antique trunks.

  But their possessions aren’t them. Their possessions are merely lovely things to admire. This is not their home. This is not their house.

  It is night, a peaceful Christmas night. The lights on our Christmas tree, the scent of pine, warm the living room. Earlier my husband and I drove to the Christmas tree lot where I lingered, admiring every tree. I wanted to carry all the beautiful trees home with me, place a tree in every room, beside every window. Finally we settled on one, thick and sturdy.

  So now we are that family to slide our tree into the back of our station wagon. Now my husband and I are that family to hang red, green, silver, gold metallic balls on our tree. We string blinking lights. Strand by strand we drape tinsel from each bough. My husband has a painted tin bird, a Christmas ornament saved from his childhood, that we clip onto the tree. While we want this childhood ornament, a precious heirloom, to connect us to children, to who we were as children, still, we secure the bird to our chosen tree, in our chosen house, to our lives, lives that we now choose to be gentle.

  Christmas lights sparkle on the tin bird, reflect on winter windows, sparkling until the bird seems to be ruffling its feathers, fluttering. I imagine it circling the tree, then flying out through the window. I watch it soar over yards in the neighborhood, down the street and across town, far beyond. I imagine the bird winging back to my first Christmas tree that I secreted in my bedroom in New Jersey, back to that night of Christmas spirits that watched over children, protected us from night, this bird revealing to me how far it’s possible to fly—from that treasured tree back then, forward, to this tree now.

  On this Christmas night I am with my cat Quizzle, who curls on the floor by the tree. Quizzle is still leery of designs in Oriental carpets, but I firmly believe one day she’ll trust that the designs don’t camouflage coiled serpents, fanged snakes. Besides, Quizzle is much more than her fears. She’s in touch with her “inner kitty” and loves to play. I strip edges off computer paper and unfurl them, heaping them into a mound on the floor. Quizzle races across the room and leaps onto them, as if they are autumn leaves. She rustles her way to the bottom and hides. I pretend to search for her. She purrs and purrs when discovered.

  Now I stroke her luxurious gray fur, the color of a comforting shadow. I scratch her chin. Her purr comes quick and seems to twine with the warmth of Christmas lights, both trailing down the hall to the rest of the house. I listen. Her purr rises from her throat, rises into the house, rises into this Christmas night, this purr, purr, purring, a soft, steady sound of joy and connection which can be the living center of the house if I let it. And I will. I want to tell Randy. If Randy were here I would whisper, Randy, this is what you mean, isn’t it? This is what you mean. This peace is love; these connections are life. But I will wait for Tuesday to tell him. Every Tuesday we still learn together, more and more, about this kind of love, this kind of life.

  I lift Quizzle and carry her down the hall to the bedroom. Quietly, I open the door. It is dark and warm, but safe.

  Mack stirs and lifts his head. “What?” he says. “What’s wrong?”

  With me, he always expects disaster.

  “Nothing,” I whisper. “It’s me and Quizzle. We’re lonely. Nothing’s wrong.”

  He reaches his steady arm out to us, both of us, and pulls us close, pulls us toward him, to keep us secure against night. Here, he will hold us all night.

  Softly I whisper his name. Softly I say, “I’m sorry. You know?”

  “All that matters,” he says, “is that everything’s going to be all right. We’re going to make it.”

  Yes, I’m going to make it. We ’re going to make it. Mack and me and Quizzle.