Hap and Hazard and the End of the World

by Diane DeSanders

  I could still say no, but he is coming across the room and I do not say no, again, and for a very long time, as if that part of events becomes stuck at this point where I could still say no but do not say no, and he is still and again coming across the room and I could do something, but I do not do something.

  I know I do not want Mama to see that drawing. She gets so upset over things like that.

  “Okay,” I mutter, wondering what it is I’m going to have to do. I don’t think much of it.

  But the real truth is that I am curious. And the real truth is that I do want something to happen between us, but I don’t know what. I’m sitting on the bed, afraid to move. We’re in some kind of a danger zone. Everything is standing on end.

  He’s there on the other side of the other bed when he says, “Do whatever I say,” again, and his eyes, angry like I’ve never seen on him, bear down on me. I’m frozen in place, caught. Do whatever I say. And then he’s sitting on the neatly maid-turned-down bed on my side, and I’m saying, “Okay.”

  I say Okay, and I grin as I move back on the bed for him, and I try to catch his eye as I’m grinning, trying to make a game of this, trying to make something shared out of this. Now something is happening between us. And I’m grinning as I’m thinking this might be a joke or this might be something of a bond between us or this might be fun.

  But he will not let me catch his eye. He will not let me share with him what is happening or whatever the game is now.

  He tells me to pull up my nightgown, to lie down on the bed with my knees up, with my knees facing toward the lamp, which he turns to shine on me down there. I don’t like it, but I do it, since I did say “Okay.” He kneels above me with the light behind him, and he looks at me, but not at my eyes.

  I do not like this. This is not fun. I could still say, no. But I’ve already said, “Okay.” I hesitate. I try to catch his eye.

  He does not look back. His face is blank as he looks at that secret place of mine down there. It’s the way he’s looking at it, not with anger, but as if he’s looking at something cut open, disgusting, dirty, inhuman, strange, and now no longer alive. His eyes are spoiling my secret place down there. My core of something deeply mine is being burned away.

  There’s something ugly around his mouth, even though his eyes are blank. All of a sudden, I see clearly that he’s not just pretending not to like me, he has no feelings for me at all. He doesn’t even hate me. I’m just a thing to him. I’m nothing to him. I’m nothing.

  I’m frozen, watching his face until my own face feels like it’s sliding away. I squeeze my eyes shut. He’s turned the lamp shade so that the light is bright on me down there, yet it seems my head is in the far-off dark, and not safe. He unzips his pants and puts himself against me. Then he puts his thing into me! This is not supposed to happen! I turn my head away.

  Why don’t I why don’t I why don’t I say NO! No! no no no no no no no no no absolutely NOT! Get away from me, you evil creep! But I just turn my darkness-covered head away more almost as if I could turn it all the way around and press my face deep inside the mattress. And that NO! goes inside of me, seeps into me and all through me, dulling and killing things inside there. Putting some kind of a curse on me. It seems like a blank spot occurs for a few minutes, and I go away from myself, both into the bed and also drifting to the ceiling, away, toward the far side of the room, while something is dying. Why didn’t I do something? Why didn’t I put a stop to this?

  There’s something gooey and bloody on the sheet after he goes out. I don’t know what that is, but it is shameful. I put a towel over it and I just sit on the bed for a long time. I don’t even want my Halloween candy. Halloween is far away now. I lay my head on the bed, not sleeping, but blank.

  He said something, leaving, some kind of threat, but I do not know what. I didn’t really hear it or I cannot remember it. My mind slides away from it. The way this turned against me—I cannot make it real, cannot name it, do not want to admit it.

  The next morning, I see Oliver in the house, but he won’t look at me, and around his mouth is disgust. I try to act like it was okay, like it didn’t bother me at all, didn’t matter, that it’s not important, that nothing’s wrong. I can’t admit anything. I have to pretend everything. So it’s going to be like this, pretending I’m having a regular life from now on, pretending I’m something, when really I’m just a big nothing.

  Everything starts getting flatter, like it’s all a photograph or a drawing of a life. I don’t want to touch myself anymore. I think about it, but it’s not mine anymore. I don’t even want to look at myself anymore, or too much at other people. They might know. Telling would make it more real in some way I might not like. They might say it was my own fault, part of a dance, and a game that was partly mine, a game that I lost.

  Soon everything back there seems to have been done underwater, like in those dreams where you need to run fast, or you need to slap somebody hard, but you can’t get up enough force against the cold weight of dead ocean around you.

  I eat up the rest of my hoarded Halloween candy, and after that I keep stealing and eating more and more candy, cookies, ice cream. I have headaches and dreams. In third grade, I get glasses, and I’m tired all the time. The fun has gone out of things. But I pretend nothing is wrong. Pretending Nothing Is Wrong becomes a big part of my life, but it’s a substitute for what it was like before.

  There is a change in the universe. There are no more witches and goblins out there. There is no Blue Fairy. The world is plain and flat now, more gray, the mystery and brilliance gone out of it. And all of the darkness is inside of me.

  Because I’ve been kicked out and locked out of the good and happy world. I’ve been cursed, and it is my own fault. I’m going to have to be a part of all that is alone and sad.

  The stairwell clock was striking—bong, bong, bong, bong, bong. The striking went on in a forever of time passing away, being lost. I did not count the strokes or notice the time. I heard the sun and the moon chasing each other around faster and faster in there, but getting nowhere.

  Chicken Shack

  It wasn’t in the chicken shack with the sunlit dust motes swirling through the air that it happened, but that’s where we are going to put it.

  It was actually behind a bush in the yard, and in broad afternoon daylight in summer, with normal kids playing normally out in a normal suburban yard on a sunny day, but these kids, like all kids, were always playing games of who is the best King of the Mountain, and who can do what, and who are the best friends and who are the enemies, who is bigger and older and who is too little and can’t play—who is who and what is what and all the normal stuff of mean-kid games out in the yard.

  But if one kid starts pushing for something and won’t let up and another kid is starting to get jealous of a third kid, who is always the cute one and the funny one, the one who knows how to slip into any breach, taking things away from you, knows how to kiss up, and the one who is and is always going to be the favorite, then something is out of balance, the way things have a tendency to get out of balance, especially if there are more than one or two, then things go awry.

  At least in some cases, this could represent a theory, or an explanation, or even an excuse of sorts of sorts of sorts if you will if only you will.

  So if two who have been two for a while start to be destabilized by the entrance of a third, then that first one will be, as a matter of reflex, looking to reestablish the two or else to spin away as only one again. And be alone.

  But you play your part in the dance; you turn and bow and twirl and circle, not knowing to what effect, the way all life gets twirled and curtsied away and all the others do their bits on the eddies already in motion—and others from them and on and on—things you would not have imagined take place and the eddies even come back to you, until you want to stop doing the dance or anything at all, lest the effects cause too much to fall apart in unexpected ways.

  You might later decide not to be
pulled into things that might wind up being something you did not want to find yourself having passed on, so it might be better to stay away. And you never know what other people might do.

  But yes, you did pass it on. Not so bad, only looking at her, but her little eyes looking up at you in the yard are still in your head, and then still looking at you as she pulled up her little white cotton pants and walked away and Nathan walked away with a funny look after you yourself walked away first and shouted, “NOW YOU KNOW!”

  But even though all this happened in the course of a plain summer day, you have to put it in the chicken shack, because the dusty, gorgeous chicken shack holds the secret glowing, something more than child’s play that can’t be undone or shifted or spun into a better place just because when you walked away from the scene and from the two who were trying to team up against you, having pulled your own play, having caused everything to change into something else, as if to make it not all your own fault, you did shout out to the both of them, “NOW YOU KNOW!”

  Hunchback Girl

  Once in a while Mama and Daddy would argue about going to church at least on this one day.

  “That preacher is a jerk!” Daddy said one Sunday.

  “How can you say such a thing?” Mama said.

  “Jane, everybody’s selling something,” Daddy said.

  Mama started to cry. Daddy roared away in his car. Then Mama took us to Sunday school and went to church alone, with this look on her face about something secret and sad. The babies were put with some ladies at Sunday school, in a roomful of babies.

  I like Sunday school. There are no requirements like regular school. No one watches me. I could even steal something, but there’s nothing to steal. I like to wander the big halls by myself, sometimes for the entire hour, just looking at everything. There’re no bells ringing and no tests, which means I can just listen to the stories. I go into a classroom, follow along, do as I’m told, and talk to no one. They tell stories, sing songs, talk about Jesus, say prayers. When Christmas is coming, they never talk about Santa Claus. They talk about Mary and Joseph and the Holy Ghost and the donkey, Bethlehem, the star, no room at the inn, angels, shepherds, the baby in a manger, the Three Wise Men, and we sing songs while one of the Sunday school ladies plays the piano.

  After the singing, we sit around a table and the teacher will read us a story from the Bible, then ask what we think the story means. Usually, the only one who has anything to say about it is a hunchbacked girl who comes in sometimes, and who seems to know all the Bible stories and the answers to all the questions about Cain and Abel, about the other brothers, Jacob and Esau, about Joseph and the coat of many colors, and how Joseph’s jealous brothers sold him into slavery because his father liked him best.

  It seems that God likes to have favorites and is always telling people that he favors this one or that one. God is in there talking with them all the time, telling them to kill this one or that one. And then there’s the Devil, who used to be God’s favorite but now is always jealous of the human favorites, really mad, and tries to ruin things for everyone.

  But God told Abraham to kill his own little boy! And Abraham and the little boy just believed and went along with this! And that was somehow a good thing! But then God stopped Abraham, saying that he didn’t have to kill the boy after all, but now he would be God’s favorite “chosen one” and would now have everything as far as his eye could see.

  Maybe I am not so eager for God to talk to me after all.

  Maybe Daddy doesn’t want God talking about who’s the favorite either.

  Usually, the teacher says the stories mean something about “believing in God,” or about “sacrifice,” or “being good,” which makes me think it must be true that I am actually not very good at all. And maybe I don’t want to be as good as all that.

  Lately, the teachers have been telling us about Easter, about Jesus and the twelve disciples, the Last Supper, lots of miracles, the stone rolling away, doubting Thomas. I don’t get it.

  Once in a while, the older one of the teachers says something interesting. She doesn’t speak up much, but smiles to herself and seems nice. This week, she said something I find myself thinking about and trying to imagine.

  She said how every person feels the same way you do inside their head. Even though they may look different, dress different, act different, they look out of their eyes the same as you do. They want what they want, the same way you do. And if you look at any other person in a certain way, you will be able to realize that even though they appear to be different, they are actually just the same as you. She said how this is really the main thing that Jesus wanted us to know.

  But she’s the only one who says that.

  Then they tell again how they put poor Jesus on the cross, and how Jesus was “The Lamb of God,” but then later, of course, “He rose from the dead.”

  The Sunday school lady has been telling us about the mean Romans laughing at poor bleeding Jesus, his crown of thorns, and the nails right through his hands and feet!

  Then suddenly, the one-sided, limping hunchbacked girl comes in the door, late. She usually comes in late. There’s this long silence. The teacher and all the kids at our table turn to stare, then turn all eyes away from the way she walks in, from the way she carefully sits sideways on a chair at our table.

  She sits on one side and then hangs the longer leg down in a way that I can never look at long enough to figure out the twist, and the way the whole thing works. But she has definitely figured out ways of doing things.

  Then that hunchbacked girl speaks up. She always speaks up. While she’s speaking up, it’s okay to look at her, so I take this opportunity to study her face, which is kind of pretty in a thin, pale ivory, yellowish, blue-shadowed way. Around her green eyes you can see a pulse beat. She seems old but could be any age, hair long and thin, also ivory-pale.

  She speaks up and answers a question about something in the Bible that we were talking about, but I don’t hear it, because all I hear is the sound of her voice, so certain about something so long ago that no one remembers it; they only hear and read about it, and just all believe what they hear.

  I know it’s embarrassing to keep on, but I cannot stop watching her. I do not know how to get to know her. I know she goes to private school, but I see her here and other places around town from time to time.

  She talks in this deep, flat voice and looks right at the teacher, as if they are two grown-ups together, even though she’s only my age. Then when she looks at me, she keeps talking in the same way, as if to say, We’re dealing with the real thing here. We are pretending nothing. As if to say she doesn’t care who you are or what you think. And she doesn’t seem to care that people are looking at her all the time.

  It’s the same way Nathan talked that first time I saw him, and it’s the same way that little girl in the movie talked when she said there was no Santa Claus. Could this hunchback girl believe in Santa Claus? I’d bet not.

  I’d like to find out what she knows about it. But I’m a little bit afraid of her. Everyone seems afraid of her, but she is afraid of no one. The way she talks is as if she knows she’s one of God’s favorites. How does she know that? How did she get to be the way she is?

  I sat behind her one day during the singing and was able to look and look at her twisted body and the way she was sitting on her chair, with one long thin leg hanging down, but I still could not figure out the twist. I’ve heard other kids call her a “freak.” I wonder if she hurts like Daddy hurts, all the time.

  One day, I tried to scrunch myself up on one side and walk the way that girl walks, not sure if I was doing it right, but I wanted to do a lot more of it, for some reason, not to be clock-struck crooked and hunchbacked like that forever, and not having to walk the way that girl has to walk—the naked struggle of the one-sided, broken lope she moves with across a room, through the halls, down the sidewalk, just out there in the bright sunlit world with everybody seeing it so plain! Especially not th
at! But just for an hour or a day, maybe, just to feel what it’s like on the inside of that girl’s crooked body, like a suit I could still take off if I wanted to.

  She can never take it off—that twisted suit of iron she has to wear for the rest of her life, a life changed by that one thing, and everyone can look right at her and see it.

  Could it have been polio? Because once in a while somebody gets polio, and people worry about polio and talk about polio. Or an accident? Does she think it was somehow her own fault?

  At Sunday school, women still tell over and over the Bible stories about jealous brothers and crazy fathers who are God’s favorites, always fighting about being God’s favorites, and stories about people being talked to and punished and even killed by these angels that suddenly appear and do things you would never have expected.

  I wonder if that hunchback girl knows the reason for this. I wonder what it’s like at her house. I wonder if she has friends and who are her friends? I wish I could get to know her and ask her some things. Because I have a feeling that hunchback girl might know everything.

  Caveman

  It’s almost time for Christmas again when I see Daddy sitting by the fireplace in his chair, reading the paper. I go in to sit by the fire with him.

  It’s a big hot fire, logs piled up, flames licking up around the logs, looking to me like people sitting around a table hotly talking and gesturing, each in his place around the table, exactly as if the flames were all of us sitting around Nana’s dining room table at Thanksgiving, when Daddy and Uncle Ted kept arguing about something that seemed to start from nowhere and get bigger fast, and all the women kept trying to shush them. But they would not shush.

  There was this moment of a long silence right after Daddy’d said something like “We’re just as smart as they are, and without all the horseshit. It’s having the will to do it.”