My Sister, My Love

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Skyler! help me Skyler it’s so dark in here

  Don’t leave me Skyler

  In the tabloids as in cybercesspoolspace it was charged that Bliss Rampike was “almost certainly” an incest victim. “Anonymous sources close to the Rampike family” would so claim. “Anonymous sources” in the Fair Hills Police Department, in the county prosecutor’s office, and in the county medical examiner’s office. In most instances it was Bliss’s father who was the abuser but in some instances, the brother.

  In Up Close & Personal, a “former nanny” who’d been employed by the Rampikes claimed It was the brother. Doing bad things to that little angel from when she was a baby.

  On one of the Bliss-cult Web sites a “former classmate” of the brother’s at Fair Hills Day School claims He was a real sicko! Showed us these weird cartoons like R. Crumb, him doing really weird things to his sister. Like, he’s expecting us to say, “Way cool, man”?*

  Reader, I am not teasing you! I am only just grimly reporting what is out there in Tabloid Hell where unlike the Rampikes you do not dwell. Digging at the stitches in my face. Picking at scabs until they bleed and the sensation of wetness on my dried and cracked nails feels good and this messed-up paper on which I’m writing another mangled chapter—“Red Silk”: sounded so fucking promising—is speckled with my blood like squashed lice.

  * Who is this? Tyler McGreety? Spreading terrible lies about his old playdate Skyler Rampike? Why?

  “TABLOID HELL”: A NOTE

  JUST TO ASSURE THE READER: NONE OF THIS WILL EVER HAPPEN TO YOU. Never will you know how “anonymous sources” including your friends will spread terrible lies about you like bats erupting from their mouths and if asked why, why lie, why hurt another person, the answer is Because I am anonymous, that’s why.

  “YET WORSE”

  THIS MORNING, ANOTHER LETTER CAME FOR SKYLER RAMPIKE, FORWARDED from the Pittsburgh law firm of Crunk, Swidell, Hamm & Silverstein, pale-apricot envelope with return address HEAVEN SCENT.

  Don’t! Don’t open but already I’d opened it.

  A single sheet of lightly perfumed pale-apricot stationery, the unmistakable lavender handwriting, making its claim—

  “I will not. I will not.”

  This time she hadn’t mentioned surgery. Yet I knew.

  Crumpled the pale-apricot letter and stuffed it into a pocket of my army-fatigue pants and stumbled outside into a bright winter sunshine. Must’ve been picking at my face, the way people looked at me leaking blood down my left cheek. I’d been supposed to return to the medical center to have the stitches removed but hadn’t gotten around to it. A few blocks away church bells were ringing with lunatic fervor. If I could believe in God there was a place for me in that church but I can’t, so there isn’t. Along Pitts Street limping and cursing and wiping at my face, “Will not, I will not.” Yet the fear came to me What if she dies? What if it’s cancer and she dies? And I did not see my mother one final time? but I would not give into that woman, not ever again.*

  * The curious reader wonders: why is Skyler so frightened of a middle-aged woman who happens to be, or to have been, his “mother” for approximately fifteen years? What is the powerful “hold” this woman has over him, that reduces him to childish fear, and melts away his capacity for irony as a microwave oven would melt away a hefty icicle? What throws Skyler into a panic, that this woman holds the key to “his” memory; that this woman possesses knowledge about him, like some wise-guy oracle in a Greek tragedy, of which the brainy kid hadn’t a clue of, himself? Read on.

  TV-MUMMY I

  “THE GRACE OF GOD, AVIS. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY.”

  This first time he’d seen TV-Mummy he hadn’t realized who the woman on the TV screen was. His eyesight was blurred and watery from his meds and in his ears there was a constant high-pitched ringing/buzzing that interfered with his thoughts. Must’ve drifted into the visitors’ waiting room of wherever this was, Cedar Hills?—an area of the “treatment center” off-limits to patients. And why, he didn’t know. He wasn’t naive enough to expect that there might be visitors waiting to see him, for his last “visitor” had been weeks ago and then to his disappointment only just Grandmother Rampike badly aged, attended by her nurse/companion and in a weepy mood to kiss, fondle, hug Skyler who stiffened at the old woman’s touch and refused to speak to her. And now scanning the faces in the waiting room and seeing no one for him. And on the lounge TV a familiar face, a warm urgent appealing voice:

  “…prayer, Avis, and humility in the face of God’s inscrutable plan for us. No bitterness. No ‘dwelling in the past.’ My faith sustains me. Knowing that Bliss is with me always, and that her spirit abides with all who love her…”

  Was this Skyler’s Mummy? Was this Betsey Rampike? Being interviewed by another woman, on a TV talk show? Skyler was dumfounded. Skyler’s slack little mouth went slacker still. Skyler wiped, rubbed at his eyes that leaked tears shameful to him for Skyler’s fellow patients ridiculed him as a crybaby and damn, Skyler was not a crybaby.

  In fact, Skyler never cried. As Skyler never spoke. And refused to “look into” adult eyes.

  On TV, a bugle voice interrupted: “But Betsey! How does a mother survive such a tragedy? I know—and our TV audience knows—that you have ‘given your heart to Jesus’—and yet: how can you ‘forgive’ such a sick monster as the pedophile who murdered your daughter in her very bed? How can you find it in your heart, when—” The interviewer was a hatchet-faced woman with hungry eyes and shark teeth that glistened in swift savage smiles. Her name was Avis Culpepper and she was the hostess of Up Close & Personal with Avis Culpepper which was an afternoon TV talk show associated with the tabloid newspaper Up Close & Personal which many on the Cedar Hills staff watched; for TV sets played continuously during the day at the Cedar Woods Children’s Neuropsychiatric Treatment Center in Summit, New Jersey where Skyler at age eleven was a patient. (Why had Mummy and Daddy “committed” him? Because something was “malfunctioning” [Daddy’s term] in Skyler’s brain and “no expense would be spared” [Mummy’s promise] in the effort of making right again what seemed to have gone wrong.) And there was Betsey Rampike—“Mummy”—on TV speaking in her warm urgent voice that contrasted with Avis Culpepper’s shrill voice for Avis Culpepper was admired by her many fans for her very shrillness, her indignation, her jeering laughter that invited TV audiences to side with her. Skyler was relieved to see that the hatchet-faced woman seemed to like Mummy and spoke to her with sympathy. Beside Avis Culpepper, Betsey Rampike was soft-voiced as one yearning to be liked; with a girlish moon-face only just slightly raddled about the jowls, vividly made up for TV with highlighted eyes and glossy pink lipstick and her hair red-brown and springy as a wig and not limp and streaked with gray as it had been in the confusing and upsetting nightmare weeks following it. As Betsey spoke she continued to smile earnestly at Avis Culpepper as if the fierce woman were a figure of authority to be placated. Skyler saw that his mother was very attractive in a lilac dress of some crinkly material, low-cut in front to show the creamy swell of her breasts; around her neck, she wore a small gold cross on a gold chain; her plump beringed hands were clasped in her lap; how powerful the urge in Skyler to rush at the TV set, astonish the visitors in the room by climbing into the picture crying Mummy! Mummy! Mummy! It’s Skyler why don’t you see me Mummy! For Mummy had not visited Skyler in nine weeks though it was true, Mummy did telephone Skyler at least once a week, and so did Daddy; and always there were promises of visits-to-come. Why was Mummy so busy? What was Mummy’s “new life” about which Mummy spoke with such wistful hope? Avis Culpepper whose brassy hair was a glinting helmet like a Valkyrie’s was holding aloft a book with a fleshy-pink cover and crimson letters for her TV audience to see—Bliss: A Mother’s Story by Betsey Rampike*—and urging her viewers to rush out and buy it, or, if there wasn’t a bookstore nearby, send a check for $26.95 to Avis Culpepper c/o Eagle News Network, Box 229, Cincinnati, OH: “If this doesn’t break your hearts, and ma
ke you damn good and mad at left-wing legislators and radical-liberal judges giving over-lenient sentences to vicious sex offenders proliferating in our midst, you can ask for your money back from me.” As the fierce interviewer continued to ask Betsey questions the screen shifted to show a little-girl ice-skater: a doll-like blond child in a pale pink costume with a gauze skirt and “fairy wings” attached to her narrow shoulders: was this Skyler’s sister? Was this Bliss, whom Skyler had not seen except in dreams, for so long? How beautifully the little girl was skating! Skyler had forgotten the “fairy wings” and he’d forgotten the song Bliss had skated to—“Over the Rainbow”—but he remembered the evening of Tots-on-Ice, the evening when it all began, at the drafty Meadowlands arena: Bliss Rampike’s first victory, at age four. Now the scene shifted to Bliss at a slightly older age, sweetly smiling into the camera as with startling agility she skated out onto the ice in an upsurge of music—“Sleeping Beauty Waltz”—in a dazzling-white costume with a springy tulle skirt, peekaboo white panties and white eyelet stockings; and then the screen shifted again, and here was Bliss with upswept blond hair Las Vegas–style, little-glamour-girl Bliss Rampike in a hot bronze-orange lamé costume skate-dancing to thumping “Kiss of Fire”; next, little-angel-Bliss again with curly hair in ringlets, strawberry satin-and-sequins skate-dancing to the disco “Do What Feels Right” and now before a cheering crowd being crowned Little Miss Jersey Ice Princess 1996 by mammoth Jeremiah Jericho bursting out of his tux like an upright whale. When the screen returned to Avis Culpepper and Betsey Rampike, the hatchet-faced interviewer made a show of wiping at glaring-wet eyes as she marveled at the “prodigy-ice-skating champion” who’d been snatched away by “pure hideous evil” at the age of six, yet who had already brought such joy to all who knew her, and would live forever in the memories of all Americans. Betsey was very touched by Avis Culpepper’s words, carefully dabbing at her eyes, as, in conclusion, Avis Culpepper erupted in a fusillade of what sounded like prepared words on the subject of the “epidemic of sex offenders” sweeping the United States in the wake of “Godless atheism” unleashed by the radical-left-wing Democrats “Slick Willy” and his Women’s Libber wife Hillary: “But hopefully as our Eagle News polls consistently show, this sickening state of affairs will end with our next Presidential election in November 2000. Betsey Rampike, thank you for joining us this afternoon on Up Close & Personal and speaking to us from the heart. What is your final word you wish to leave our viewers with, Betsey?” and Betsey blinked as if with startled pleasure, staring into the camera, seeking out Skyler’s gaze: “Only just ‘have faith in God.’ As one who has ‘walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death’ I can tell you do not despair ever for God loves us all, and remember to pray for Bliss, and Bliss will pray for you.”

  Quick cut to a loud advertisement featuring a cheery little brat spooning Nutty Nugget Krispies into his mouth.

  During the interview, everyone in the waiting room had watched. And now Skyler at the rear of the room was stunned to hear a woman laugh meanly, “Can you believe that? That terrible Rampike woman? She murdered her poor little daughter herself, everyone knows it!” and a companion said, mildly bemused, “Is it ‘known’? I always thought some ‘sex maniac’ killed Bliss Rampike.”

  At once everyone in the waiting room began speaking. These were predominantly women but there were several strongly opinionated men as well. One of them said angrily: “For shame! That poor woman lost her daughter.” The first woman who’d spoken now said, jeering: “The Rampikes got away with murder because they’re rich and connected, I have friends in Fair Hills and it’s an open secret.” As angry voices rang about him Skyler stood paralyzed hearing his name—Ram-pike!—Ram-pike!—harshly uttered as nails fired from a nail gun, and there came someone behind him to tug gently at his arm, a young black-girl attendant named Serena who was kind to Skyler whispering: “Skyler! You’re not supposed to be out here! Come with me, it’s time for your meds.”

  THREE DAYS LATER THERE WAS A “SUSPICIOUS FIRE” IN A BASEMENT STORAGE room at Cedar Woods that did considerable damage before it was extinguished. “Probable arson” was the cause but no arsonist was identified. Yet somehow it happened, within forty-eight hours of the fire Skyler was discharged from the treatment facility, whether his parents had wanted to remove him at that time, or Cedar Hills authorities had expelled him, Skyler was never to know, for no explanation was given to him; a black Lincoln Town Car arrived with a private nurse to take him away, scarcely an hour’s drive to the Robert Wood Johnson Children’s Neuropsychiatric Treatment Center in New Brunswick where Skyler’s newly diagnosed IESD (Incipient Epilepsy Spectrum Disorder) would receive “state-of-the-art” treatment.

  WANT YOU TO BE WELL AGAIN SKYLER YOU KNOW THAT DON’T YOU

  Your Daddy and Mummy, nothing matters to us except you

  The way you used to be Skyler! the power lies within you, and we will succeed

  FAST-FORWARD TO A LATER TV-MUMMY SIGHTING WHEN SKYLER WAS THIRTEEN and in what was called eighth grade at Hodge Hill School in Hodge Hill, Pennsylvania: “Nestled in the hills of Bucks County, boasting a thirty-acre wooded campus near the scenic Delaware River, Hodge Hill School (founded 1951) is a private residential school with an enrollment of 220 students. Hodge Hill has a tradition of academic excellence combined with ‘special needs’ instruction. On its staff are eminently qualified teachers, psychologists, and therapists in addition to a full-time resident physician. A full-service infirmary is maintained. The school is within twelve minutes of the Doylestown Medical Center and is approved by the American Association of Child Psychiatrists, Psychologists, and Physiotherapists. Hodge Hill School provides a safe, secure, and stimulating environment for children aged 10–18 who have been diagnosed with social, emotional, psychological, and academic disabilities. Non-refundable full-year tuition required in advance.”

  By this time, in the fall of 2000, Skyler had outgrown “mute.” Skyler was into “speech as aggression.” Skyler’s fawn-colored soft-kiddie-hair that had fallen out in clumps after his sister’s death had grown back in coarse and weirdly zinc-colored. In his armpits and at his groin, were patches of kinky-zinc hair, that both repelled Skyler, and fascinated him.

  Nor was Skyler a runt any longer. Though skinny, and scrawny, and couldn’t run without limping, he’d grown to a height of five-feet-six and was one of the taller boys in eighth grade as he was, by default, one of the brainiest.

  In a dormitory lounge, there was TV-Mummy.

  An empty lounge, and the TV turned up high. Through Hodge Hill there were TV sets and during the day the TV sets were usually on and if you approached a room you couldn’t tell if TV voices or “real” voices were chattering away inside.

  “…a pilgrimage into Hell, and back. Coming to terms with grief that seizes you like a demon’s hand at your throat. But now I feel blessed, Zelda, at last able to speak to others in their hour of terrible need…”

  Skyler stared. Skyler’s cynical little jaw drooped. For here was TV-Mummy, less than five feet away.

  Skyler’s mother! Betsey Rampike! He’d had no warning that Betsey was going to be on TV that day—the last time he’d heard from Betsey, it hadn’t been Betsey but Betsey’s new assistant who’d called to tell him, in a voice of sincere regret, that his mother wouldn’t be able to make the trip to Hodge Hill for Parents’ Weekend after all.

  Nor had Bix, unavoidably on his way to Seoul, South Korea, on business, been able to attend Hodge Hill Parents’ Weekend.

  But here, so suddenly, was Betsey Rampike being interviewed by zestful big-bosomed Zelda Zachiarias who hosted a lively women’s-issue TV talk show, WomenSpeakOut, every weekday afternoon on CBS, much mocked and jeered-at by Hodge Hill adolescents. Skyler tasted panic at the sight of her: looking younger and more “radiant” than he remembered, with conspicuously lightened hair to her shoulders, and warm, rosy/“dewy” skin that looked soft as uncooked bread dough, that would retain the impress of your finger if you poke
d it. Betsey was wearing a fuchsia pants suit with a plunging V-neck that showed the powdered cleavage of her large breasts, and many rings, necklaces, and clattering bracelets which, it was being revealed by an admiring Zelda Zachiarias, Betsey had designed herself as a way of “keeping grief at bay” after the tragic loss of her daughter three years and eight months before. Smiling bravely, winning the hearts of Zelda’s TV studio audience by wiping her eyes and faltering as she spoke, Betsey was answering the interviewer’s probing questions about her six-year-old daughter’s death, and about her family’s effort to keep going, and continue with their lives; Skyler winced to hear his sister’s name evoked so frequently, and by Zelda Zachiarias as well, who spoke with such familiarity, you’d have thought she had known the child.

  At Hodge Hill, Skyler uneasily assumed that everyone knew who he was, or had been.

  There were other students at the school with “known” names, in several cases “famous”/“infamous” names. It wasn’t cool to allude to such distinctions, still less to bluntly ask the bearer Are you related to—? or How does it feel—? Worse yet, to request an autograph.

  Skyler hey: c’n you just write your name on this paper? It’s for my mom not me.

  “—a bold, brave, courageous and truly inspirational memoir, Betsey. I’ve been giving copies to all my friends and relatives and now I’m going to start giving them these nifty Heaven Scent designs, I love the ‘emerald’ crosses, and the bracelets, so kind of funny, girlish and clattery.” Betsey, deeply moved, held out her shapely arms to display her clattery bracelets which were all colors of the rainbow, and Zelda Zachiarias, with the maternal/mammalian generosity of the very best friend you’d never had held aloft Betsey’s new book with a glossy rainbow cover and gold embossed lettering: “Pray for Mummy”: A Mother’s Pilgrimage from Grief to Joy by Betsey Rampike.*