Bandit

by Molly Brodak

  And if that’s true, maybe there’s an even better joy than redemption in knowing that pain isn’t currency. It can be discarded! Maybe it isn’t a raft, it isn’t an identity, it isn’t some grand cosmic test, it isn’t shit.

  Possibly. But could this line of thinking really work? After all, often it is this single point of comfort a sufferer clings to in order to endure: it will all be worth it on the other side, if I can just hang on—there’s some love out there, some comfort, some wisdom. Others have earned these treasures after periods of suffering, according to these helpful narratives on the library shelves. This view of pain also demands fealty from other sufferers to ensure cohesion, I suppose, in regarding pain’s purpose: the instructions from counselors and therapists to regard myself as better than before because of my experiences, “forged in the fire,” they would say.

  No stories work for me. The “story” I have felt these facts through is just a simple and untranslatable darkness. A packed wet powder, dark navy blue, nothing I could fit in a rectangular package and place on a library shelf. If I move or just look too closely I am afraid this “story” will crumble. This is one reason I never wrote directly about these true things. The other reason is that I thought they would not be meaningful to anyone, not even me, in any imaginable way.

  Interesting, possibly, these things are interesting. But meaningful? Who would care about my life? It’s a question, I realize, that’s borne out of a framework of quiet childhood neglect, the kind that threads no one cares through a child’s soft skull until it glazes over every little brain spark and network. Demon three.

  Recently I was given a coupon for a session with a psychic astrologer, a session I attended with the sort of bemused skepticism I imagine most people feel toward these kinds of mystics. I entered the woman’s loft just as her previous client was leaving, a soccer-mom type whose face I searched for emotional information about the effectiveness of the session: Was she crying? Disappointed? Did she seem pleased? She seemed pleased, pulling on her coat and rushing off. The place was clean and normal, like any office, and the astrologer greeted me as if I had come for a job interview. I sat before the astrologer, attentively taking notes as she read my chart quickly and occasionally interjected comments and advice “they” were telling her.

  “You’re a musician?” she said.

  “Well, poet.” Not a good start. But not painfully wrong … in the right ballpark at least.

  “Oh yes, I see. Musician of words. The soundless music. Good. You’re working on a book of poems … very good … keep going with that, it will be published in the fall.” I nodded. Incredibly unlikely. Maybe she was just trying to encourage me, in the regular, nonmystical way.

  “You’re working on something else, too?” she said as if it had come to her suddenly. “Not poetry. A real book?”

  A real book. Perfect way to insult a poet, but OK, I bit. “Yes, I’m working on a memoir of sorts.”

  “Yes. Now, listen to me.” She pointed her open palms at me and spoke slowly. I held my breath.

  “This is helpful to people, to write this. I can see you think it isn’t.”

  My stomach dropped.

  “But, listen. Everyone is in pain. You know this, I can see, you know you are not alone. Not everyone, though, not everyone knows this.”

  I instantly teared up.

  “But you have to say it all. The raw part especially. That is the most helpful. The raw part.”

  The raw part. She’d seen right into my whole house, unlocked the basement, and pulled out the bit I thought I had hidden, and there she was, smiling blandly at me, holding it up, eyes saying, Oh this, this raw part you put away, this is what you really need. And you know it, too.

  24

  Fourteen-year-old girls stood with legs wide, humping the air or throbbing their butts at an imagined person, my sister at the center of them, wearing neon-rimmed sunglasses and a plastic BIRTHDAY GIRL tiara. She and her friends wore MC Hammer pants, the dump-crotch type, with skinny tank tops or boxy Hypercolor shirts. Jenny, the Korean girl with the masculine voice, and Kim, the girl with the worst red curly hair and white overalls with one shoulder undone, were whooping and pointing at my sister. There were about ten of them, in the crappy apartment building “clubhouse” Dad had rented for the night next to the molester-haunted pool. Never before or after would she have such an extravagant birthday party. Ghosty streamers bulged from the ceiling and the popular radio station blared from a tinny boombox. Open bags of Doritos sat gaping on tables. I sat on a chair, sort of watching the dancing, embarrassed, reaching into a Doritos bag occasionally. A honking car was approaching.

  We all leaned toward the window, then screams rose, then the girls pushed outside. A shiny black stretch limo glided up before us, Dad towering out of the sunroof, arms spread, smiling and gnawing gum. The girls were losing their minds, hopping around with arms up, screeching in each other’s faces. The car halted and Dad reached into his shining red Cardinals jacket pocket, withdrew a bank envelope, and threw it to my sister. The girls drew into a tighter frenzied circle around her, screaming now at the envelope in her clutches. I stood on the steps, wiping electric orange cheese dust on my bike shorts and giant flowered blouse. My sister unsealed the envelope and held up a stack of twenties for all to see. She began bouncing, and the girls held each other and bounced with her, yelling now. My sister waggled the bills in all of their faces. They began butt dancing again and hopping, hearing the music now, Kris Kross demanding jumps.

  Dad ducked back into the limo, then emerged, opening the door for the girls to pile in.

  My sister hesitated. “Is she coming with us?” she said to Dad, pointing with her nose at me.

  The girls hunched and waddled in, hands on each other’s backs, pushing. My sister and Dad stood, regarding me for a second, the orange smears on my bike shorts, my very un-fun face staring plainly.

  Dad winced. Then smiled softly, fakely. “Yes. Yeassssss! Of course your sister is coming! You will look out for your little seester!”

  My sister’s chest caved in and she groaned. The girls were yelping for her to get in, absolutely incapable of waiting one more moment to arrive at the Four Bears Water Park teen club in this very limo. They were chanting something from the belly of the limo, straight white teeth and gel-crusted hair glinting blue behind the tinted windows.

  I looked at the girls, and my sister. “I’m tired,” I said. “I have homework anyway.”

  My sister popped up. “SEE. She doesn’t even want to go. She’s going to do her homework. LET’S GO!” My sister disappeared into the dark limo. Dad walked over to me with a pained expression.

  “You sure? You want to go home? I’ll walk you back.”

  “It’s OK. It’s right there. Bye Dad!” I limply hugged his waist and turned to the sidewalk back to our building. It was dark now, and I could hear them screaming along to some song I didn’t know, and I was relieved, and they were relieved.

  25

  A photo of my sister that Mom sent me, which I had never seen before, frames her from a downward angle, most likely from Dad’s hands. She’s wearing his giant red satiny Cardinals jacket, half-swallowed in it, with his aviator sunglasses on and her feet in his huge brown loafers. She’s frowning goofily, with some kind of small cigar plugged in the corner of her mouth. I don’t recognize where she is; I don’t recognize her at all from this time.

  My sister and I divorced, just like our parents did.

  I was nine and she was eleven when they got divorced for the second time, and Dad fought for custody of my sister. I’m not sure if they asked us whom we wanted to live with, but if I was asked I would have surely said Mom, without even needing to consider it. And my sister felt just the same, I’m sure, about Dad.

  Whatever his motivation was, Dad took my sister away. And I missed her, her tough play alternating with princess neediness, her cruelty even. She had always been angry, since she was a baby even, but she was mine, and I needed her. We were
each other’s witness. Now we would have to face our pain in private, and it felt wrong.

  When I was alone I imagined her near me. When Mom gave me waffles as a treat now I’d paste over every square with butter like I’d seen her do in oblivious indulgence. I would go visit them on weekends sometimes and it seemed like she had it good. She always had new things, newer clothes, better movies and video games, and whatever food she wanted, all of which was restricted for me, for both moral and financial reasons. I envied her but I also didn’t; it all seemed a little wrong somehow, her world. She had a new bunk bed whose beams were made to look like giant pastel pencils. She had a poster of a perfect red Corvette on her wall, and another one of Kirk Gibson, clutch home-run hitter for the Tigers. Dad’s favorites.

  Sometimes Dad would kick her back to us for months at a time as punishment, or maybe to loosen himself from her care during gambling binges. A preteen now, she abused me even more harshly, and I withdrew from her. We only came together to fight. There was the time a neighbor called the cops when he saw, from his kitchen window, her pressing a foot into my neck after having thrown me down on the sidewalk outside of our apartment complex. I’d gone limp and unresponsive, but when I woke up to the faces above me I said I was fine, nothing happened, I fell. There was constant hitting, bruises, insults. I was patient, and soft, always. I never fought back. For one thing, she had that maniacal strength particular to a preteen girl with nothing to lose. And the other thing was that I knew, even as a child, that even if he never touched her, Dad was hurting her worse than she could hurt me.

  I didn’t know what I was seeing when I looked at my dad and my sister together. I don’t think children can always recognize abuse, especially private, isolated instances in a context of otherwise normal family behavior. But I remember knowing one thing was wrong: the way he talked to her. After losing a softball game (he coached her team) he didn’t say the things I knew a parent should say after a loss about doing your best, being a good sport, thinking about how to improve next time. I sat in the backseat of the car while he took us home from one loss, in pained silence. She was crying. He berated her, disparaged her teammates, mocked her for being a girl, for being a child. This time, seeing it right, I finally spoke up. “It wasn’t her fault they lost.”

  “What do you know about it? Huh? Keep out of this,” he snapped. I retreated. And I left her there, in his line of fire, while I slipped away into my own world, which was quieter and safer than hers. It’s guilt now, of course it’s guilt, and I can’t help but wonder if there was more I could have done for her.

  She grew and settled into a singular focus of pleasing him; a difficult and heartbreaking pursuit for a little girl. They seemed more like a strange, uneven couple than a father and daughter. At best, he just didn’t know how to be a parent. He tried to impress her, lying about knowing everything, or showing off in childish ways. She followed. He outfitted her in boy clothes and a short spiny-top mullet. In photos you’d think she was my brother.

  “Butch and Spike,” Dad would call us all the time, “that’s what I would’ve named you if you were boys.” I’d groan with comic disgust but my sister played along. She’d laugh but then look distant, and I imagined her mentally straining to transform herself into Spike.

  Then, in just a few years she filled in as a girl and had to embrace it, so she embraced it hard: as a preteen princess with waist-length hair and fake nails that made her look like a tough thirty-year-old. He dressed her up and brought her to the same Hazel Park racetrack he’d taken our mom on their first date. He taught her his tastes: have fun, look good, and spend money as loudly as possible.

  “Your mother is a nutcase,” he’d tell us while driving. “She belongs in the loony bin!” he’d say, lolling his tongue and turning his finger in a circle near his temple for emphasis. “What is she even feeding you there, granola and berries? She drops you off in the woods to pick your own berries for dinner?” He’d laugh lightly, then his mood would get dark and quiet. “She’s sick. She’s a sick person.”

  My sister went along with it, smiling and agreeing, sometimes joining in. I just stayed quiet and smiled dumbly, nodding sometimes instead of disagreeing just so the session would end sooner and we could talk about something else, or nothing. There is a particular feeling a child has when hearing one parent degrade the other parent. It’s a kind of crushing, a cold spring of mistrust pierced open, even if it’s all lies, and even if you think you don’t care. I still wonder what happened to my sister when she lived with Dad. She says she doesn’t remember much but she does have nightmares.

  I told my sister, and no one else, that I was going to write about all of this eventually. We knew well what it felt like to be surprised by withheld facts, to be betrayed by our closest loved ones, so I was certain I shouldn’t keep this from her. I was in Michigan for Thanksgiving, at Grandma’s house, and finally found a moment alone with her when she volunteered to take the trash out after dinner. “I’ll help!” I said, and popped up to follow.

  We stood in the dark garage for a moment after finishing with the trash, watching a downpour soak the untended lawn in back. “I’m writing about things,” I said.

  She looked at me and tilted her head sympathetically. She knew what I meant. Her eyes went far away.

  “I’m going to have a lot of questions for you,” I said.

  “Yeah. Well. OK. Like what?” She was wary, but willing to go where I was going.

  “Well, you remember when they divorced the second time, and we were split up? Do you remember that process? Like, did they ask you if you wanted to go with Dad, or did he just tell you it was happening?”

  “I wanted to go with him. I think. I’m not sure if I was asked. But I remember Dad being really insistent that I live with him and not you guys, since Mom was crazy, and Dad didn’t much like you.”

  I laughed a little. “I didn’t much like him either.” We looked back at the rain through the garage door window. I continued, “Who knows. Mom said he wanted you to go with him so he wouldn’t have to pay child support.”

  She fell a little in her posture and looked down. I should not have said that, I realized. Even if it was true, even if it was something she apparently didn’t know, she didn’t need to know this new hurtful thing, I realized. She said she wasn’t surprised and tried to seem fine about it, but I could see the disappointment. It was something I saw in her a lot, the way she’d press her lips together firmly like shutting something out, or in. Maybe it is not better to say everything, I thought.

  26

  In photographs of them as children, my sister and my mom are indistinguishable. My sister has Mom’s flawless, almost-olive skin, her dark, shiny thick hair, dainty nose, perfect smile, rich brown eyes, pure symmetry, and feminine balance. My sister once won Miss Photogenic in a teen beauty pageant, which I attended against my will, my own face buried in a library book I had brought for the duration of the spectacle.

  I look nothing like my sister. I have Dad’s moony Polish face, pale ruffles of hair, eyes too big and round, like a poor doll, verge-of-tears dark bluegreen and sad. Even at rest, my eyes convey a naturally solemn and far-off expression that perpetually draws “What’s wrong?” from boyfriends and strangers, even when I am happy. You would never think we were sisters.

  27

  A pile of dusty eye shadow shells and tubes of Wet n Wild lipsticks with their pink innards concussed against their clear caps mounded between us as my sister and I sat on the floor, dipping spongy applicators into pods of color or drawing streaks of lipstick on the backs of our fists.

  I raised a vivid blue eyeliner pencil to her eyes, warily, holding my breath. Feathering little strokes next to her lash-line, boiling inside over her perfect almond-shaped eyes and perfect nose.

  “See, your eye.” I held up a mirror. “This is the color you want? It looked better before.” She examined.

  “No, retard. This is how it is supposed to look,” she said, one dark perfect eye rimmed no
w with the insane blue, how her eyes were supposed to look.

  “Look at your nose. It’s perfect.” I squashed it with my thumb and she shook her head away, peering back into the mirror.

  “It’s just normal, I don’t know.”

  “Look at mine.” She looked.

  “Oh.” She didn’t try to not wince. She had never looked before, I could see.

  A fifty-dollar bill drifted between us like a leaf and landed over our pile of cheap makeup. “Ta-dah!”

  Dad was standing over us, a cigarette-pack-sized wad of folded bills in his hand. We looked at the fifty, then back up at him, blankly, not sure what this meant. “Split it, girls. Go get more makeup or something. Have a makeup party or something. Right?” He made a Donald Duck laugh.

  My sister grabbed the bill and widened her eyes, exhibiting the excitement Dad was looking for, bouncing a little and now waving the bill like a flag. Dad laughed again and shuffled off to his bedroom and closed the door. She stood up and scootched her feet into her flip-flops. “Enough time to walk to the drugstore before stupid Mom gets here to pick you up. Lezz go!” she said, like Dad.

  I slumped closer to the makeup pile, idly tossing aside crazed blush pods and tubes of concealer with the writing worn away. “What do you even need?”

  She stomped over and grabbed my ponytail, yanking it up until I stood. “COME. ON. Brat. Maybe you can find something to fix your ugly face.”

  28

  The face of a gorilla blacked out the window in the kitchen door. I squealed and my friends squealed in response.

  I undid the dead bolt and threw the door open and the gorilla took his cue. “Haaaaaaaaaappy birthdaytoyou! Happy happy happy! Birthday birthday birthdaaaaayyyyy! To YOUUUUUUU!” The gorilla sang with a fake operatic frog voice and extended a single rose to me with a tiny card attached. It said: