I needed to know.
A washcloth rested in an ice bath. “It’s snowing like crazy outside,” I said, wringing out the cloth and wiping Audra’s lips.
“Open the blinds. I want to see.” Audra turned toward the window. After letting in the light, I tucked extra pillows behind her back. The bank of windows revealed the whirling storm. We sat quietly, watching.
“It’s so lovely,” Audra said. “God’s work.”
I envied Audra’s comfort of faith. “It’s lovely when you’re not walking in it. I wouldn’t mind if God skipped the snowstorms.”
“Everything has a place in the universe.”
“War? Children dying?” I watched snow melt from the heat of contact and slide down the window.
“Maybe that’s what I hope death brings, putting all the pieces of all the puzzles together. Perhaps these things are meant to test us. To separate the wheat from the chaff.”
“But why?”
“You know what I’ve learned?” Audra said. “Dying is easier than watching your children in pain.” She looked away from the hypnotic storm and faced me. She placed a delicate finger on my forehead and swept away the stray hairs moisture had unraveled from the rest. “Maybe when we recognize the trivial for what it is, we can concentrate on what we love most, what we most treasure.”
Staten Island seemed so ordinary. I guess I’d expected fire and brimstone lining the road to Richmond Prison.
Drew steered the car down a road lined with AutoZone, T.J.Maxx, and gas stations. I tried to picture Merry traveling these roads as a child, as a teenager, as a woman.
Merry hadn’t seen our father since he sent the letter announcing his upcoming release. Despite his pleading Christmas card, Merry remained implacable. She wasn’t ready to see him and couldn’t predict when she would be again. Never, I hoped. After a lifetime of burying her anger in service to our father, seeing the letter opener held at Ruby’s neck had broken his hold on Merry, broken it so wide open she wouldn’t even write him to explain why she wouldn’t go see him.
For me, seeing Ruby in danger had made it imperative to see him.
So here I was.
Drew parked the car in a lot adjacent to the prison. Black wire fencing all around seemed held together by tetanus and rust. Our simple car shone among the scabrous clunkers filling the lot.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come in with you?” Drew turned off the engine.
“I need to do this alone.”
He gripped my knee hard. “There’s no reward in that. We’re a team, Lu.”
I laced my fingers to calm my shaking hands and held them to my mouth. Lavender-scented hand lotion couldn’t cover the bitter smell of my dread. I had made poor Drew stop at every McDonald’s and Burger King on the way to Staten Island, needing constant bathroom breaks for my contracting bladder and tepid ginger ale to calm my roiling stomach.
“If I don’t confront this alone, I won’t go deep enough. I’m not sure what I’ll say, but if you’re with me, it might end up being easier just to let you handle the hard parts.”
“Would that be so awful?” Drew put a hand on my shoulder. The weight pulled at me with the promise of deliverance. “You’ve done it alone your whole life, with your father.”
I shook my head. “I’m not even sure why I’m here.” I’d told myself I’d planned this visit for Merry, to help make up for the years I’d built barriers and left my sister to slam into the walls.
“To face your ghosts?”
“I don’t know.” I worried the edge of my worn leather pocketbook. I wiped my sweaty hands on my plain black wool pants. Black winter boots suffocated my feet in the hot car. I wore a simple gray sweater. Mourning clothes, it seemed. What did you wear to meet the father who murdered your mother almost thirty-two years before?
What did you talk about?
I had asked Merry.
Anything and nothing. My job. Ruby and Cassandra. You.
My skin iced over knowing she’d brought my girls into the prison. Brought me.
“Talk to me, Lu. Let me help you.” Drew placed a warm hand on my leg.
I loosened my grip on myself. “You help me every day.” I wove my fingers into my husband’s strong ones. “Knowing you’ll be here when I come out is all I need.”
I started to open the car door, stopping halfway and blurting out the words that had been choking me since 1971. “I always thought Mama dying was my fault.”
“Why?” By not rushing to say oh, no or tell me that’s impossible, but instead asking why? Drew gave me a present, one more reason to love him.
“When Mama said ‘He’s going to kill me. Get Teenie. . . .’ ” I stopped and brought my hand to my mouth.
“Whatever you say is fine. You’re fine.” Drew rubbed a small circle on my back. “We’re fine.”
“I waited, Drew. I froze.”
“It felt like a long time,” Drew said. “But it wasn’t.”
“How could you know?”
“Because I don’t care how old you were, I know you.”
“Maybe if I was faster she would have lived.”
“No. You couldn’t have stopped your father. You were a little kid.” Drew hugged me. I felt as frozen as I had that July day when Teenie and I found my mother’s body. I barely felt my husband’s arms.
I left the car.
Stinging wind hit my face as I walked toward the sign marked VISITORS in chipped enamel paint, a faded red on the black metal door. Merry had told me what to expect, yet nothing but seeing this place for myself could make it exist, could make me realize how hard coming here must have been for my sister.
I carried only my license and a small pack of tissues, both tucked in my pocket, as Merry had instructed. She’d warned me about toilet paper running out in the visitors’ bathroom. I stood in line behind a skeletal old woman. All fat beneath her flesh had disappeared, leaving her desiccated as a dried apple doll. She clutched a lilac cardigan around her shoulders. Sad, droopy curls covered her head.
She turned to me. “Husband or father?”
“Excuse me?” I asked, shocked by her voice. I’d imagined this scene as a close-up of my father and me. Other characters had never entered the picture.
“Who are you visiting?” She sounded impatient. Perhaps her question was standard procedure. Merry hadn’t told me people talked while waiting. If anything, I’d imagined invisible walls of shame separating visitors. “Your husband?” she asked. “I’ve never seen you before.”
“My father.” People prefer talking about themselves to hearing about others, so I asked a question, presuming she wanted to confess something. “Who brings you here?”
She snorted. “My son. The bane of my existence.”
Why was she here for her bane of a son? What had her son done? I had no knowledge of the prison protocols, what the visiting women traded, and it was mainly women here. Coinage mattered in every society, and one had to be aware of the proper trading materials. I nodded as if I understood, while praying the line would move quickly.
“He promised he’d never be back in,” she said. My sympathetic nods offered encouragement. “The drugs, they can’t shake it once they get hold, am I right?”
“That’s certainly true,” I agreed.
“You seem like an educated woman. Am I right?”
“I went to college.”
“I could tell. So maybe you know what’s wrong with this world. Is it just evil?” She patted a curl, seeming reassured by the little roll. “My boy, he sold my rings.” She held up her bare hands as evidence. “And yet, here I am. Do we ever learn our lessons?”
I thought of Grandma’s eternal loyalty to my father. Would I travel that far down the road for Ruby or Cassandra? “Being a mother demands our whole life, I suppose.”
“Oh, it’s my turn.” Her cherry lipstick smile revealed bright, even false teeth. She patted my hand. “Good luck, dear. Our cross, right?”
Our cross. I touched a gold-gl
ittered macaroni earring, the childhood project made long lasting by Drew. The banes of our existences these men? The word bane came from Old English: slayer, murderer.
The guard frowned at me, despite my easy-to-search clothes—no pockets, no cuffs—not acknowledging my good manners or decent clothes, as though no one passing through the prison gates deserved his respect.
He passed me on, and now the only obstacle I faced was seeing my father. I walked forward.
The visiting room reeked of ammonia, reminding me of my month in the morgue, when the odor of formaldehyde had crept into everything I owned. Tables and benches bolted to the floor lined the room. No glass barriers protected me. Merry had warned me that there would be no shield between us and that people hugged, however briefly. A torturous image.
Merry had told me he’d recognize me, he’d seen pictures. I didn’t think I’d know him, but I knew him immediately. Though thinner, with his black hair silvered, wearing glasses I supposed he’d made, this man carried the ghost of my young father superimposed over his orange prison clothes. His eyes were too eager, too wide, too starving for the sight of me. I shrank back, wishing for Drew.
I walked over resolutely, not giving myself time to stop and think. I crossed my arms over my chest. Don’t come close, my arms warned.
“Lulu. Oh, Jesus, it’s really you. When they told me you were coming, I couldn’t believe it.” He dabbed his eyes, swiping at them with his prison orange arm. He reached out. I didn’t pull away fast enough; he drew me to him and kissed me. His bristly cheek touched mine. He smelled of sanitizer, like the liquid gel we pumped over our hands at the hospital. Had he rubbed this stuff on for me?
“Hands!” a guard called.
My father pulled away. “Not allowed more than a second for a hug here.” He smiled. Christ. His eyes, those eyes were eating me up.
Stop looking at me.
“But it won’t be long now. Your sister told you, right? That I’m getting out?”
I nodded.
“Cat got your tongue?” He laughed. “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s been a long time. I understand.”
Sure has been a long time since you killed Mama.
He sat and indicated I should sit across from him. “Right there, honey.”
I sat up straight on the backless bench, folding my hands in my lap.
“You didn’t come here just to stare at me, did you?” He poked his head forward as he had when I was a child and he was about to tell jokes.
“Knock, knock!” My father tapped his forehead, trying to get me started in our game.
Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
Police.
Police who?
Police let us in; it’s cold out here!
“You’re supposed to say ‘Who’s there?’ remember?” His smile faded a bit.
Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
Doris.
Doris who?
Doris locked, that’s why I had to knock!
“Is Merry okay? She hasn’t called or written. I’m worried.” My father drummed his fingers on the wooden table in a nervous, rapid beat. “Jesus, Lu, did you come to give me bad news?”
Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
I love.
I love who?
I don’t know, you tell me!
“It’s time to leave Merry alone,” I said.
My father shook his head as though my words didn’t compute.
“It’s time for her to have her life,” I said. “You tried to take it away one way. You failed. Then you managed to do it another way.”
“This is why you came?” He appeared ready to cry any moment. I snuck a look at the guard closest to us. He was young, African-American, and had so little expression in his face he could pass for dead. I prayed it was against the rules for prisoners to cry.
“You came to torment me?”
“I came to tell you you’re not moving to Boston.”
My father’s face changed from wounded to challenging. “And you’re in charge of where I live now?”
Back in Brooklyn, he’d switch moods that way. Your father could turn in a New York second, Mimi Rubee used to say as she massaged white balm into her face, flower-sweetened cream promising smooth skin forever. Merry would already be asleep.
After Mimi Rubee and I finished watching TV, we’d get ready for bed, I brushing my teeth, she chasing away wrinkles. Then we’d talk, feeling safe enough to explore for a few minutes because soon sleep would take us away from the nightmare in which we lived.
Watch out for him.
But he’s in jail, Mimi Rubee.
Never mind jail. Until he’s dead, his hand will reach out. Underneath it all, your father is a weak man, Lulu. He’s a failure who even botched killing himself. Weak men are the most dangerous, and failure makes them worse. Stay away from him. I warned your mother, but she never listened.
“I’m not in charge of anything about you,” I said. “But since you’re getting out early, you’ll be on parole. I’m making it my business to learn all the conditions of that parole. Remember the letters you wanted me to write? You move to Boston, and I’ll write letters like you wouldn’t believe.”
“This makes me very sad,” he said. “Forgiveness is the most important quality you can have, did you know that? I’ve taken seminars in here. Forgiving helps you heal, Lulu.”
“Are you even partially serious, Dad?” The word slipped out before I could bite it away. The strange flavor from the past tasted harsh on my tongue.
He clasped the edge of the table, leaning in, straining toward me. “Don’t mock me. Look at you. You haven’t seen me since your grandmother’s funeral, and the first thing you say is to stay away from your sister? Your sister is an angel. I know it helps her, the love she gives me. Listen. I memorized this for you.”
Dad held his hand up, warding off my protest. He cleared his throat, exactly as he had when he sang to me back in Brooklyn, and began quoting some parable of prison lore. “ ‘Withholding forgiveness is like being in a prison. The person who will not forgive is the one locked inside the four walls.’ Maybe that’s not exact, but it’s pretty darn close.”
The shape of my father’s eyes resembled that of Merry’s, as did his long lashes. Feminine on him. On Ruby, these same lashes were yet another perfect brushstroke.
The eyes weren’t the windows of the soul. I stared into my father’s wanting to rip into the backs of them and see what remained. Would it be horrible? Would it look like Merry’s doll had when the glass eye fell out, leaving nothing but a terrifying, dark void?
“How do I forgive what you did?” I asked. “How did you forgive yourself?”
“I try not to think about it anymore. It’s a closed chapter. I was drunk. I was a kid. I had no clue what I was doing. I’ve paid for it with my entire life.”
“No. Mama paid.”
“Your mother is gone. I can’t bring her back.”
“Where’s your remorse, Dad? Where is your sorrow?”
“Don’t presume to know me, Lulu.”
“How could I? You ripped yourself away. You tore up our lives.”
“It doesn’t make anything right, but damn it, your mother was no saint,” he said. “You haven’t come to see me once, Lulu. Not once. You’re my daughter.”
“Not anymore,” I hissed. “Beg God for forgiveness, not me. It’s not mine to give. It never was. It never will be.”
“Don’t you think if I could I’d turn back the clock? Don’t you know your mother haunts me? I loved her, I loved her so.” He slumped. “Sorry? The word sorry doesn’t cover what I am.”
Feeling pity for my father hurt too much, so I held on to my anger. Moreover, for whom was his sorrow? Was he remorseful that he’d killed my mother or was he regretful for himself?
“I want my family. We have so few years left.” My father offered his open hands. “Okay. I have no rights, Lulu. I won’t move to Boston, not if you d
on’t want me.”
Biting my lip until it became numb, I scratched NO, NO, NO into the soft flesh inside my arm. Swallowing, I finally spoke. “I’ve put fifteen thousand dollars into an account for you. For when you get out. To start your life. I’ll make sure you get it.”
For you, Grandma. I promised I’d take care of things, and now I have.
“Can I write to you?” he asked.
“Have I ever been able to stop you?” I rose to leave, my stomach hollow.
He folded his hands. My father. A penitent. My curse.
I walked away, then stopped and turned to face my father. “What color were Mama’s eyes?”
“The same as yours, Lulu. Just look in the mirror.”
32
Merry
April 2003
I’d stopped visiting my father. After years of being his faithful daughter, his good daughter, the daughter on whom he relied, when I received the letter notifying me of his release, I’d stopped cold.
His letter had turned me to stone. Everything that followed—Victor, my troubles with Lulu—had sent me deep into a place from which I’d had to struggle to come back.
Now, here I was. Back in Brooklyn, looking for my father’s house.
Forsythia bloomed along the dense bushes lining the street. Benson-hurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood I’d never visited, seemed made of different brick than the Brooklyn of my childhood. I’d grown up surrounded by the dingy pink buildings of Flatbush. Here the bricks looked redder.
I checked the house numbers as I walked. Slowly. Putting off the moment. Twice I reached for my phone. I wanted to hear Lulu say everything would be okay, not to worry, but I pushed away temptation. I had to comfort myself. Lulu didn’t know that I’d come to visit, or even that I’d left Boston at six that morning. If she’d known, she’d have convinced me not to make the trip.
My father killed my mother.
It would be thirty-two years in July.
The Murderer’s Daughters Page 29