This Is My Daughter

by Robinson, Roxana;

  Amanda raised her head and stared out into the black trees. Again she thought of the long straight road up the island. The unswerving line unrolling rapidly, like in a movie. At high speed the peripheral landscape jumped, but the road itself kept hypnotically steady, centered, focused, rushing away before her eyes. She thought of it, surrounded by darkness, its mysterious path lit up by the headlights. Everything around it would be silent.

  It was what she wanted to do: rush away, rush away from here. She wanted to rush ahead with her life, rush on until she was a grown-up and this was years in her past—these horrible times, her father’s disappointment, the look in his eyes of blame, endless, endless, there forever.

  A magical thought came to her: she could walk across the driveway and get into the car. The keys were always in it. She could drive it. She could feel herself walking across the driveway, the gravel cold and sharp beneath her bare feet.

  She opened her eyes: she had not moved. She was sitting on the steps. She smiled to herself and put her head down again on her crossed arms. She imagined, again, walking across the gravel, feeling the stones against her bare feet. The driveway went in a curve; there were two entrances, and the car faced one of them. She wouldn’t have to back it up. The sound of the fan in the house would, she hoped, drown out the sound of the engine starting. She would be on the road in a moment. She saw again that empty black road. Things were taking on a slow inevitability.

  It was getting chilly, and Amanda wrapped her arms around her legs, hugging them. Now she felt affectionate toward her body. She liked her legs, even. She forgave them. She breathed in the comforting smell of her body. She felt the sudden roughness of her skin, rising into tiny humps of chilliness. Goose bumps, she thought. She rubbed her arms, but she wasn’t cold enough to go inside. At least there were no bugs.

  At Alison’s house they had climbed out on the roof one night to smoke. They’d had a candle with them, and moths had flown into it. Excited, insane, they had tried clumsily to get at the flame. They had singed and blackened their wings, then staggered off, flying in horrible crippled patterns.

  “What are they doing?” Amanda asked, trying to brush one away from immolation. She hated the feel of it, the buzzing vibration of its dry wing.

  “Trying to kill themselves,” said Alison. “Yuck.” She swatted at one.

  “They’re not,” said Amanda, making a face. “They’re trying to maim themselves. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “And suicide does?”

  “I mean, nerdhead,” said Amanda, “if you wanted to get out of here, then you’d kill yourself. But why make things worse than they already are and then go on living?”

  There was a pause.

  “Have you thought of it?” Alison asked.

  Amanda nodded. Of course she had, they all had. A girl in their class had run away from school. She’d been found a week later, at home. She had hanged herself in the barn. Amanda had thought of it over and over: the dim stillness of the barn, that dark silhouette.

  She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t hang herself, turning suddenly heavy and terrified. You’d change your mind, and it would be too late. Your face would turn black, and you’d shit. No, she’d use pills. Her mother had sleeping pills, and Amanda had gone into her bathroom cabinet and poured them out of the bottle and into her own hand. They were shiny capsules; she’d listened to the dry weightless slithering sound as they piled into her cupped hand. They were yellow, blue, the colors intense, clinical. In her hand they had felt light but serious. She’d held one in her fingers and squeezed. It had yielded; it would give up its contents. What was inside could kill her. Amanda held her own death in her fingers. It beckoned. She was very close to it. It was in her fingers.

  She had put all the pills back in the bottle and screwed on the childproof cap. She’d put the bottle back where she had found it, between a jar of Nighttime Rejuvenation and a lipstick called Mellow Mallow, which she sampled, rolling it smoothly along her lips and then smacking them precisely together. She knew where the bottle was. Sometimes she checked on it, to make sure; it was always there.

  Amanda looked up now at the Volvo. It was still there, and she was still here. She still hadn’t walked across to it. She put her head down on her knees and closed her eyes. The road. Halfway up the island, the road was flanked on one side by a meadow that stretched out to a little cove. There were oyster beds there, wooden trays of young oysters set in the shallows. She tried to imagine them. Were they in stacks, or spread out in rows like cookies on a sheet? Could they move? Did they mind being stacked up? How could you tell if they minded? She felt tender toward the young and helpless oysters, massed unprotestingly in the wooden trays. She hoped they were well treated; she feared they were not.

  She had heard what was done to chickens, to veal calves. She had stopped eating veal. Not that she ever ate it anyway, but on principle. Lab animals. At school they had seen a movie showing what the cosmetics companies did to lab animals. First they took out the vocal cords, so the lab workers wouldn’t be bothered by the sounds of their screams. After the movie the teacher talked to them about what they could do about this. Some of the girls wrote angry letters to the cosmetics companies, but it made Amanda feel helpless and sad. It seemed that the world was like this, that everywhere there were small creatures that were tortured. It seemed that there was too much of it for her to do anything about it. It was the way things were. She tried not to think about it.

  Amanda wondered if the oysters could tell when it was night. Did they have eyes? She tried to remember how an oyster looked. She couldn’t remember an eye anywhere. Was there an obvious one somewhere that she had missed? Maybe there were eyes inside the shell, maybe the oyster could only see when it was open. That made sense. It wouldn’t need to see when it was shut. Or maybe that was exactly when it needed most to see. It was hard to tell, hard to imagine how oysters felt.

  Behind her Amanda heard the back door click open. At once she cupped her fingers protectively over the joint and lowered her hand.

  “Amanda?” It was Tess.

  “What?” Amanda did not turn around.

  “What are you doing?”

  Amanda did not answer. Tess let the door sigh closed and came out on the deck. Her bare feet made a soft padding sound. She sat down next to Amanda. She was in her nightgown. In Amanda’s hand the tip of the joint glowed.

  “What is that?” Tess asked.

  “Guess,” said Amanda. She spoke slowly. The grass had slowed her tongue down, made spoken syllables roll off it delectably.

  “Oh,” said Tess, her voice changed. “Can I try it?”

  “No,” said Amanda. “You’re too young.”

  “Come on,” said Tess. “I am not.”

  “No,” said Amanda. “Look at the trouble you got me into over that stupid dog book. Why are you up, anyway? Are you scared again?”

  “I just woke up. I wasn’t scared. Anyway, I’m sorry about the dog book. I didn’t tell.” She paused and sniffed. “I can smell it,” she said, impressed at the rank strangeness of it.

  “Really,” Amanda said.

  “Let me try it,” Tess said. “Just a puff.”

  “All I really need,” Amanda said, “is for them to find out I’d given you dope. That is really all I need. Dad would have me executed.”

  Tess frowned.

  “Anyway,” Amanda went on, “this is my only one, and I’m putting it out now. I want to save it.” She stubbed the ember out carefully. She waved it in the air to cool it off and then put it back in the plastic bag.

  “That’s all you have left?”

  Amanda nodded. “Dad took everything I own. This was hidden somewhere else. I’d forgotten I had it.”

  Tess sighed. She banged her knees together. The dark air around them was cool. She stared out into the darkness.

  “No fireflies,” Tess observed.

  “They’re all up there,” Amanda said, pointing upward. Tess looked up.

 
“Those are stars,” she said.

  Amanda did not answer. There was no point in trying to explain things when you were stoned. She understood a lot of things right now, but she could not explain most of them. Tess banged her knees together again.

  “Let’s go for a drive,” Amanda said.

  “In the car?” Tess asked.

  Amanda laughed.

  “You can’t drive,” Tess said.

  “Of course I can drive,” Amanda said. “I just don’t have a license. I can drive.”

  Tess looked at her. Amanda looked out into the darkness. It came to her suddenly how easy, easy, it had been to drive. She could feel the steering wheel in her hands, that perfect circle of power, going around and around, held between her two hands. Moths would fly toward the windshield, and the airstream would swoosh them right past, they would turn into stars, effortlessly, beautifully, without pain.

  She stood up. Tess watched her but did not move. Amanda started down the steps. It was so easy. She felt as though she were riding a secret invisible wave. She walked down the steps without feeling them. She forgot about Tess. She walked across the gravel, marveling at the feel of it, so sharp. Sharp beneath her bare hard soles, her toes. Sharp but it didn’t hurt. This was her secret.

  “Wait for me,” Tess said. Amanda heard the rapid descending thumps of Tess’s feet on the steps. “Yikes.” Tess slowed to a hobble on the gravel. “Ouch.”

  Amanda opened the car door and got in.

  “Cool,” she said, settling herself. It felt great in the driver’s seat. It was entirely different on this side of the car. The steering wheel was here. The road was in front of you. She thought of the black road, the soft grass beside it, bending in the sea wind. She closed her door as Tess slid in beside her. The girls looked at each other and laughed.

  The keys were up on the visor, they fell into her hand as though they were her property—heavy, intricate, magic. She had no trouble with the ignition, the engine flared at once into obedient sound. She looked out into the blackness. Lights, she thought, charmed. She felt among the instruments along the dashboard. She nudged a stalk coming out of the steering wheel. The windshield wipers sprang eagerly to life, dashing back and forth across the glass.

  “Amanda,” Tess said, worried.

  “Hold on,” Amanda said. She turned off the windshield wipers. She turned on the turn signal. It blinked greenly to the left. “Hmm,” she said. “Wait a minute.” She found the knob. Ahead of them the row of spindly lilacs suddenly awoke, and in the corner by the road, the trunk of the big maple. “There,” Amanda said, but she was not quite certain. There was something limited and restrained about the patch of light.

  “It’s supposed to be brighter,” Tess said doubtfully. “Those aren’t the real lights.”

  “Yes, they are,” Amanda said. “These are what you use when you’re not on the highway. I know how to drive, Tess.” She could see well enough.

  She put both hands on the wheel and set her foot carefully on the gas pedal. The car moved, obedient to her wishes. Amanda felt sublime. She had never felt so powerful, so easy in her strength.

  Now everything began to gather around her, the smooth dreamlike parts of what was happening. There was the deep night, there was the perfect circle held in her hands. The lights revealed a magic path. The engine hummed its orderly incantation. It came to Amanda, her foot poised, that now everything would happen exactly as it was meant—perfectly, without error.

  She felt something rising slowly inside, she felt brimming, exultant. Things were changing, right now. Things were now going right. The part of her life, the bad part, when everything she did was wrong, was over. Now things were altered, and she was in the part of her life when everything was right. Now everything was possible to her. She eased her foot down, and the car’s energy rose obediently. She was part of something large and marvelous. The car rolled smoothly forward on the gravel. Amanda took her foot off the pedal; the car stopped.

  “You see?” she said. “I told you I could drive.”

  “Cool,” Tess said. She patted her thighs through her cotton nightgown.

  Amanda put her foot down again, and the car nosed forward. She was exquisitely aware of everything around her, could hear the grating shift of each piece of gravel as the car’s weight rolled forward. She heard the engine singing inside its heated cave. In her mind she saw the road shining under the high moon, reaching straight up the center of the island. She could see everything.

  She eased the car out of the driveway and turned carefully up the hill. The road here was a dark tunnel, overhung with trees. The leaves were lush and dense, strange and sinister, lit up but colorless. They hung overhead in jagged intricate patterns, like stitchwork.

  Nearing the turn at the top of the hill, Amanda slowed the car to a crawl. The curve here was sharp, nearly right-angled. A high privet hedge rose blackly along one side. She brought the car close to the hedge at a stately crawl and turned the wheel. She moved it too quickly and too far, and the car twisted unnervingly. But she was moving slowly, and she took her foot off the gas and corrected, turning the wheel back. The car steadied, responding. Amanda felt triumphant. Everything she did was right. The car settled into the journey. The white church shimmered past on the left, a pale angular apparition in the dark. The road curved again, less sharply here. Amanda was more confident now, and turned the wheel slower, more gently. The car turned perfectly smoothly. It was easier now, now she could feel how it was meant to be.

  “You see?” she said to Tess. She felt as though she were inhabiting two states of consciousness. One was sharp and focused, like when she steadied the car, and from there she could deal with the hardness and urgency of the rest of the world. The other state was soft, vulnerable, sleepy, and from there she could not explain things to anyone, she could not even talk.

  “Cool,” Tess said again, but she seemed muted. She was craning forward, peering ahead into the darkness.

  The car carried radiant space before it, like a lantern in a cave. The long straight road was empty, just as Amanda had imagined it. They reached the flat strip, and on the right were the wide meadows. The grass was feathery, and bright white as they passed. Insects, fiery in the lights—moths, creatures with heavy bodies—blazed suddenly, close, and then were gone, thudding into the windshield, or simply vanishing, yanked into invisibility by speed. Along the side of the road, telephone poles appeared rhythmically, upright, solid, too close to them.

  Amanda was intent on the car. It grew larger and larger in her consciousness, it grew magically in her brain. The strange feel of it in her hands, the mysterious translation of her thoughts into its movement, transfixed her. A spell glowed invisibly around her. Ahead, the dark road gleamed under their rushing lights. Beside her Tess leaned forward, staring, rapt, as though they were crossing the untraveled surface of the moon.

  They passed the high telephone pole where the ospreys had a nest. Amanda had seen it, an enormous, disorderly raft of twigs overhead. The ospreys were fierce looking, with their curved beaks and muddy feathers, black frowning brows, it was hard to think of them as domestic, as good parents. They seemed to her demons, ruthless, a family from hell, shrieking and tearing things out of each other’s mouths.

  The slow snakelike curves of the Big Club driveway appeared in their lights. Amanda slowed the car and turned sedately into the parking lot.

  “Now what?” Tess asked. She was subdued, anxious.

  Amanda shook her head. Speech no longer interested her. She could not explain to Tess that there was nothing to fear, that everything now would go right. It was something she just knew. The car in her hands was supple and obedient. The gravel lot sloped down before her into the darkness, mysterious, without color or context. The landscape was limitless, shrouded in night. In the parking lot she would be able to turn in a circle, she would not have to back up to turn around. It all worked perfectly. As they turned, suddenly the sound of the car on gravel stopped, they were making no so
und, as in a dream. Amanda stared, puzzled: they were on the lawn. The car was driving on the grass.

  “The car’s on grass,” Amanda said. “Like me.” She looked over at Tess to see if she got it, but Tess said nothing.

  Tess was too young to understand the things Amanda did. And the vast amusement Amanda felt, the benevolent complicity she felt from the world, was private. She shut her eyes for a second and discovered the rich deliciousness of the dark behind her eyelids, textured, layered, soft.

  “Amanda,” Tess said, scared.

  Amanda opened her eyes. Tess was looking at her. Her hand was clenched around the door handle.

  “What?”

  “Open your eyes.”

  “I am,” Amanda said, and laughed. She shook her head. She could not explain this. She was back on the gravel, back on the driveway, facing the right direction. They were going home. She congratulated herself.

  They eased smoothly out to the road, and started back. On the right now was the mass of dense brushy woods that had taken over the interior of Marten’s Island. Wild grape, wild rose, wild blackberry: it was a thicket of bristling growth. Amanda loved it. She loved the thought of the dense green tangle. She loved chaos, she felt like cheering it on. Go, she thought giddily. On the other side of the road was soft bending grass, and far out beyond the grass were the silent oysters.

  “There are the oyster beds,” Amanda said. “The oysters are asleep in their beds.” She began to laugh.

  Tess looked at her soberly. Tess was just a child, Amanda thought. She had left Tess far behind. She shook her head to herself and pressed her foot down smoothly. The car surged on. “Asleep in their beds,” she repeated. It had a dreamy ring to it. Insects hit the windshield, faster than before. The thicket raced alongside. The black sky was high above them, rising and embracing everything. Everything was going right. The marijuana was singing in her head now, warm and luminous. She was singing, herself. The long black night was just outside her, and she could feel it inside her too, flowing through her in a dark fluid stream, the way the air was streaming past the windows.