In Pieces

by Sally Field

  One summer afternoon when I was about eleven, my mother and Jocko were sitting on the patio with a group of their friends. It was a hot day and I kept asking if I could go into the pool, since by that time, I’d become a fairly strong swimmer. The answer was always a distracted “in a while,” and when I asked one too many times, Jocko, in a quick flash, picked me up and threw me, fully clothed, across the patio into the pool—a distance of perhaps thirty feet. The water slapping me in the face didn’t hurt nearly as much as the sound of laughter spewing from Jocko and his friends. It’s the only time I remember Baa actually reprimanding him (even though it was done lightly) and, against his orders, coming to my aid, folding her arm around me when I pulled myself from the pool, then walking me to my room as I hid my tears in her chest. But if she ever told Jocko definitively to stop or expressed her dissatisfaction with his form of parenting, I was never aware of it.

  Yet, outside of Jocko’s sphere, if I was troubled about something or needed to talk, to work something out, she was endlessly patient and supportive. When I was in the eighth grade I was abruptly kicked out of the circle of girls with whom I had tried to be friends. As soon as I got home from school that day, I went directly to my closet, shut the door, and lay on the floor crying, saying I could never go back to school again. Baa sat on the carpet, talking to me through the crack under the door for hours. She was always like that. Whenever I felt I’d hit a hopeless dead end, she had a way of making me think of alternate routes by suggesting a long list of choices I hadn’t seen. And even though most of them were maddeningly unacceptable, her ability to look for that little bit of sunshine in a situation that seemed pitch black always gave me the sense that if everything went out, I had a backup generator: my mother.

  It would have been so much easier if I’d only felt one thing, if Jocko had been nothing but cruel and frightening. But he wasn’t. He could be magical, the Pied Piper with our family as his entranced followers. He had a rule that on Christmas morning we weren’t allowed to get out of our beds until the sky was fully light, so every Christmas Eve I’d just lie there, watching the night creep by. On one particular wide-eyed eve, a big storm had rolled in with a hammering rain that lashed my bedroom window and as I listened to the relentless splashing, I started to hear something else behind it, a very faint pounding that didn’t seem to be connected to the downpour on the roof or the branches tapping against the glass panes. If I stopped breathing and tried to open my ears, I could hear it: a faint slam, a rhythmic popping, and then I guess sleep had its way with me because when I opened my eyes again, the rain had stopped and the color of the night had shifted. Not that it was light, but it wasn’t totally dark either. Five-year-old Princess, whose twin bed stood an arm’s distance from mine, didn’t seem to have any trouble sleeping, and even after I poked her in the side several times she stayed blissfully zonked. But when I saw the dim outline of something sitting at the foot of my bed I let out a small squeal, and that got her up. It was a big stuffed monkey with arms and legs long enough to tie around me in a constant hug, and Princess had one sitting at the end of her bed too. Wrapped in our monkeys, off we went to wake the rest of the family, stopping for a moment in the living room to behold the magic stacked high under the huge illuminated tree.

  After much haggling over what color the sky truly was, and what constitutes “light,” dawn was reluctantly declared and the festivities could finally begin. There were presents everywhere: under the tree and hidden out of sight in the branches, turning into a game of “hot and cold” conducted by the grown-ups. When, at last, the cacophony of ripping paper, excited screams, and fleeting words of gratitude had faded away, Jocko said, “Put your shoes on, Doodle,” then took my hand and led me through the den into the backyard, with everyone following. There, a few feet from the big sycamore, was a structure made of pale pinewood—a two-story square with a pitched roof, a front porch, and windows on either side of the doorway. It was big enough for me to walk around in and had an attic-like top floor where I couldn’t quite stand, but almost. Yes, two-by-fours had been nailed to the wall to be used to climb up to the second floor and Jocko had made it, all of it. He had worked all night in the rain. My brother, whose face was now glowing with pride, had spent the night at Jocko’s side, helping him accomplish this feat. A little house and they had both made it… just for me.

  I stood there, in that damp yard filled with Jocko’s contraptions, staring at my gift—dumbfounded. Why had Jocko done that? Why was I given a whole house when Princess and Ricky didn’t get anything like it, not in any way? Where was the extravagance usually heaped on my mother? There was only a little house for me.

  A part of me still lives in that little raw house. I would lie in the upstairs loft looking out the thick mesh-covered window, besotted by the hot dusty summer air, alone.

  All my life I’ve tried to figure out why I didn’t have a constant stream of friends. We lived in a neighborhood filled with children. I’d see them every morning as we stood on the corner, waiting for the school bus. Pam, a girl in my class, lived down the street but I only remember going to her house once, feeling anxious and awkward the whole time.

  When I was in the sixth grade, I asked a classmate over to play. I don’t remember her name, only that I was nervous. It was somehow decided that she would come on Saturday at noon, but when that Saturday came around Jocko was home, working in the yard, intent on keeping me near. I felt intoxicated with his attention and forgot all about my new friend. And as we worked side by side—Jocko issuing orders that I dutifully followed—he took his shirt off, then casually suggested I take mine off too. I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt with my two-piece bathing suit underneath and though the sun was hot, the air was cold. Leaving my shirt on seemed like a better idea in every way, but I didn’t decline his suggestion. I took my shirt off as if I were happy to do so. When he told me to take the top of my bathing suit off as well, that I didn’t need it, declaring I’d feel better if I were free, I felt the familiar fingernails on the blackboard of my insides. Lord knows I didn’t need it, but at twelve I didn’t want to be free, I wanted to be covered. But as he moved behind me, untying the strings to my top, whipping it off, then stuffing the little wad of pink fabric in his back pocket, I just stood there, wordlessly.

  Little Doodle, age eleven, in the Libbit backyard.

  We planted marigolds and raked leaves, Jocko beaming at me as if he needed my help. And I felt important, forgetting that there was anyone else in the world other than him. When the doorbell rang, I dashed inside to answer it without thinking and found myself standing in near nakedness before my would-be friend and her father. She awkwardly stammered something about bringing her new set of jacks and I, without a moment’s hesitation, told her to leave. When they stepped away bewildered, I closed the door, then leaned my forehead on it, listening to the sound of their car driving away, feeling profoundly alone and numbed with shame.

  And always, always I was called.

  I watch my feet as they travel the length of his back. Little steps, baby steps, toe to heel. I want to look up… look up to the window where I can see the tree. The tree I love to touch. I can see my hand against the tree, gliding across its ragged bark skin. But I must watch my feet. I don’t want to slide off his back. I want to do a good job. I’m glad he’s on his stomach. Maybe that will be all. I wonder if he’s asleep and I’m alone here. I’d rather be alone. But no, he moves, begins to turn over, careful to hold the sheet, the sheet that once covered my mother too. He lays it loosely across his waist with a sigh. “Keep going, Doodle.”

  I watch my feet, careful little feet, my feet, not his, mine! I stay high on his chest but he puts his face under my nightgown. I don’t pull it back. I can’t. He watches his own hands as they slide up my legs and my bare body, gliding across everything that is girl of me, not invading, savoring, and I want away. I want away. He murmurs directions. “Down.” I’m stepping on his stomach. “Down.” I’m on the edge of the sheet. “Down.�
�� I see what he wants me to walk on. I don’t want to. I look up through the window to the moving leaves outside. “Down,” he crackles. I walk carefully, keeping the man of him between my little-girl feet.

  I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be alone. But I was there. Constantly, endlessly, there. And as I grew, the game grew too. He started calling me when my mother wasn’t at home, often in the middle of the day, no longer looking for my feet to soothe his morning-stiff back.

  When I was twelve or so I would lie awake in my bed, not because Christmas was near or the following day offered something special, but because I was terrified. My sleeping sister was so close, but I couldn’t reach for her, or call her name. I’d lie in the dark with my heart pounding, listening to the oleanders smack against the windows, waiting for the sound of a window sliding open. I waited and when the wind’s tapping never altered, I was sure that whatever was lurking out there was already inside—and was waiting too. Waiting for the right moment. I pulled the blankets to my chin, feeling something getting closer, ducking under the covers before the icy hand could grip my neck. I was sure if I jumped from the bed in a mad dash to get my mother, the thing would grab my ankle and drag me under—under the bed, I guess, or just under altogether. I wanted to call Baa but couldn’t make my mouth move. Call her, call her now, call her, a voice inside my head kept demanding. Sometimes I actually did manage to call softly, “Baa. Baa… Please hear me.” Too soft. Call her again. “Baa!”

  Every once in a while, she came. Not often. Usually Jocko’s voice bellowed from somewhere—under the bed, I presume—“Go to sleep. Your mother’s busy.” Mostly I lay with the blankets under my nose, stiff with fear, listening and waiting for something I was afraid of. The thing that I was sure would get me.

  And then I am not as young as I had been. I am twelve and then thirteen, almost fourteen—and I knew. I knew. I felt both a child, helpless, and not a child. Powerful. This was power. And I owned it. But I wanted to be a child—and yet.

  I’m naked. How did I get naked? Did I do that? Did he? He pulled the plastic bags off the dry cleaning that hung in the closet with the sliding doors, the sliding doors with big mirrors on them. He wraps the plastic bags around me—just so. Through my legs, around my chest. He lays me down on the white shag carpeting in the big bathroom and gets into the adjacent shower.

  “Okay, Doodle, let me see. Move.”

  The merengue. I am learning to do the merengue. The dance he showed me one night in the den with everyone watching as he instructed. I practiced in the den and now I’m practicing here.

  “Come on, let me see.”

  I push my face down into the carpet that smells of dust, trying hard to thrust my butt high in the air and down and side to side. I want to be good, but more than anything I want it to be over. And some part of me feels I’m in danger. I hold my face deep in the shag. Hide in the carpet. Not to be at all anymore—and yet. And yet…

  This man’s focus is totally on me; at this moment, I’ve won him. I am flypaper, the sweet sticky temptation, and he’s caught. A tiny sliver inside me starts to stir, feels powerful. I am powerful. No… no. I want to be a child.

  And then he slides from the shower, wet and erect and I don’t know how he ever gets that thing in his pants, since I never see it in any other condition. He gently picks me up and sets me on the bathroom counter. I sit on the cold tile surrounded by mirrors, me in my Saran-wrap dress. He kisses me, not any different than other times. And yet it’s different, it’s different. Many times, he would playfully try to push his tongue into my mouth. I would always clamp my teeth closed. I’d never been kissed by anyone and didn’t know what would happen if my teeth weren’t clamped shut.

  “Open your mouth,” he breathes.

  I don’t.

  He sets his penis, as muscular as the rest of him, between my legs and pulls my littleness toward him… and it.

  He loved me enough not to invade me. He never invaded me. In all the many times. Not really. It would have been one thing if he had held me down and raped me, hurt me. Made me bleed. But he didn’t. Was that love? Was that because he loved me?

  5

  What Goes Up

  IN 1954, WHEN we moved into the Libbit house, Jocko’s career was on a solid climb upward: from B movies to co-starring in A movies with important actors like Rock Hudson and Jeff Chandler and then eventually becoming the lead actor in A-ish movies. The ride went up and up, until 1958, when he was cast to star in a half-hour series on CBS. As popular as The Range Rider had been, it was only regionally televised, so Yancy Derringer was a much bigger deal. I can’t say that the series thrust him into the same arena as James Garner of Maverick or Clint Eastwood of Rawhide, who were starring in more prestigious, hour-long shows, but it came very close. The whole house seemed to vibrate with the swagger of achievement. Jocko walked taller, his voice got deeper, and I swear the fringe on his jacket grew longer. He was a peacock with his tail fully spread and fluttering.

  But when Yancy Derringer was suddenly canceled after one thirty-two-episode season, down went the ride. Even as a twelve-year-old, I remember feeling a sense of hush in the house as though there’d been a death in the family. Ricky and I didn’t talk about it and Princess was too young to understand, but we all felt it. Outraged conversations were taking place in the den behind closed doors, and loud debates with someone on the phone upstairs could be heard all over the house. Muffled tidbits of the tragedy floated through the air: The new management at the network, Jim Aubrey—who was now executive vice president—had been systematically canceling all the shows he hadn’t participated in from the beginning, or Aubrey had some kind of problem with Jocko, or this or that. But the truth is, “That’s show biz, folks.” And after all the indignant smoke had cleared, we discovered that the financial bubble we’d been living in had popped. We were standing in midair without a parachute or any rainy-day savings account… flat broke. Jocko needed a job, but as the weeks and months went by, the more he needed one, the less likely it seemed he might get one. And the less likely it seemed, the more he would inflate himself, going from a peacock to a puffer fish as he tried to pretend to be bigger than he actually was.

  I’m sure this first real slam in his career was devastating, but I never saw Jocko take the punch like the brilliant stuntman he’d always been, never saw him register the blow or pause to reassess who he was, as an actor or a human. Righteously fuming, he would blame it on everyone else’s spiteful incompetence, saying that it was the network who had lost, not him. But when the ride seems to be headed nowhere but down, how can you change your course if you won’t recognize where you’re headed? How can you change who you are and learn what it takes to get up, over and over, if you can’t allow yourself to feel how much it hurts to be knocked down?

  My mother continued to work, but erratically and without the same energy, as if inch by inch, day by day, she was losing her confidence. The proud twinkle in her eyes was starting to fade along with her flawless face, now beginning to puff from vodka’s nightly numbing. And as the tension in the house increased, so did the size of those evening cocktails. Though it never happened in our presence, I had the sense that she and Jocko were fighting and I felt frightened for my mother. Once, Jocko told us that we had to stay completely quiet all day, that Baa was in bed, that she’d taken a hard fall and hit her head. We couldn’t go upstairs to see her, or talk to her in any way. All we could do was keep quiet. We whispered, tiptoeing around, afraid to move, as if we were hiding from the Nazis.

  We didn’t go out much. I think this was opening night of the circus.

  Over the years, I slowly created a place where I could toss all the feelings I didn’t understand, or the ones I didn’t want to understand, was afraid of. Emotions that many times came to me as physical sensations without words, like the uncomfortable fingernails on the blackboard inside me. Instead of trying to verbalize what I was feeling, even to myself, I’d shove them away. I would pack them up and send those p
arts of me out the window to stay safe with the tree, while only one piece remained, muted and dulled, though dutifully performing the required tasks. But as adolescence approached, my emotions began to overload. The man I had lived with most of my life, the father figure whom I had looked to for love and affection, now seemed only dangerous, and I couldn’t expect protection to come from my mother, who had lost sight of everyone, including herself. So, I unconsciously created an internal sycamore tree, a safe place. What I didn’t want to see or feel, I would send off into a cloud of fog, hidden in a mental whiteout.

  I began to live in that foggy world to such a degree I couldn’t focus on my schoolwork, could barely read a book much less write a report on it. Subjects I might have loved and excelled in, like language or history, would go in one ear and out the other so fast, I couldn’t remember any of it. Mathematics was simply out of the question. I started thinking of myself as being stupid because I couldn’t hold anything in my head. What I could do was memorize a poem, or focus completely on anything relating to the drama department, which luckily, I discovered at this exact moment. Other than that, it was all a muted fog, and floating through the fog was the familiar feeling of fear. Always, I felt afraid.

  Then, when I was newly fourteen, I just stopped talking to him. One day I was his little Doodle and the next, I refused to look him in the face or acknowledge he even existed, answering his questions with as few words as possible. Without touching him or knowing why, I pushed him away. And he felt it as surely as if I had hit him with a club. I shut down, tucked everything so completely inside my fog that, at the time, I couldn’t clearly see what had happened, what had finally tripped the wire. I used the only words I could, which were no words at all, and my about-face infuriated, confounded, and hurt him. After that, Jocko and I entered a war together, mortal enemies, communicating with the only language our intense relationship could speak: anger on his part and silence on mine.