Silent Bird

by Reina Lisa Menasche

  “I don’t understand you! What are you saying now?” Jeannot kicked the dirt, his hair golden in the sun, his back straight and tall. When he turned back again, his chocolate-brown eyes looked bewildered and frightened.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry to hurt you.”

  “I love you, Pilar. You know that. But what gives you the right to say these things? To try to break up my family when you barely know them?”

  In Jeannot’s words I heard the echo of my father’s: We don’t want to break up the family.

  But sometimes a family needs to break up!

  “I have a reason,” I said. “It’s a long story. And I want to tell it to you. I trust you enough to do that.”

  “Well then, please, do. Tell me the big secret that will explain everything!”

  My heart sank at his tone. Then I thought of Monique as dignified as a queen as she climbed those dingy stairs to her husband's girlfriend's apartment. Monique speaking to her husband clearly, honestly, without a shred of self-pity. I thought of how firmly she believed in love despite losing it. She would support me telling the truth in the privacy of these vines. She would say, “Pilar, you haven’t to be afraid; it's not beautiful!”

  Children’s stories don’t need false endings.

  I stared off across the vineyard, at the rows of grapes converging on an unseen horizon. “You’ve noticed that many times I don’t want to make love.”

  I felt his startled attention, the question in his head: What does this have to do with my family?

  “This problem is: I feel love for you,” I said. “Adoration, attraction…I want to want you. And I want you to want me. But to me sex is just...a tool, I think.”

  “A tool,” he repeated. “You said something like this already. But not what in the world it means.”

  “I have never been able to stay in a relationship, Jeannot. You and I were doing so well…before you asked me to marry you. You wanted me to stay here in France and meet your family. And so everything became…difficult.”

  “Because of my family? I still do not understand.”

  I cast around for a better way. I looked at the parched earth, the patches of brown and green, the pale sunlight. But the answer wasn’t there.

  It was inside me.

  “I’ve never desired relations exactly….not even with you. Though I love being close to you. I know this doesn’t make sense.”

  Jeannot didn’t speak.

  “I promise: the problem is not you. I know that’s hard to believe. I don’t like...pressure. Pressure to make love.”

  I glimpsed moisture on his cheek. Oh, Jeannot, I told him silently. Don’t. This is hard enough.

  If it is a silent bird, God will help him...

  I made myself speak directly into Jeannot's eyes—and it felt right. It felt right.

  “My father sexually abused me for a long, long time. For years, from the time I was a child until I was an adult. And in all that time I never said ‘no' to him—not even once. Which makes me just as guilty as him, don’t you think?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I

  “Where’s my new Grandma?” I asked Daddy as I stared through the railing of the boat toward the cloudy shoreline of his island.

  I couldn’t see much green. I only saw clouds and fog and gray water and little drops of rain on my arm. But I couldn’t wait to get there already. I couldn’t wait to meet another kind old lady in sweaters that smelled like mothballs.

  “She’s right there, love,” he said in a suddenly hushed voice, as if we’d entered a synagogue.

  And he pointed.

  A tall, thin woman waved to us from the docks. She wasn’t smiling, though. She didn’t even have a human shape. She looked like a giant pencil wrapped in scarves.

  Our boat moved closer, slowly, groaning like a ghost attacking the rocks. After a long time of waiting and sitting and jumping and waiting some more, we were finally here. Daddy scooped me up along with my pink suitcase and Rabbit, lifting us all into the air so my feet dangled like puppets.

  “Sweetheart, this is my mother, your grandmother,” he said, linking our hands.

  “My name is Pilar,” I said to the lady. “It’s a Spanish name, but you don’t have to say it that way. He doesn’t either.”

  “Mum,” Daddy said and nudged past me to throw his arms around her.

  They stayed there a long time while I waited, hopped on one foot, and played with the handle on my suitcase.

  “I can’t believe you are here,” the lady told him. She had a strange accent, like her words were crackers she had to eat.

  When I laughed, she looked at me.

  “How do you do, young lady. Welcome to Sark. You may call me Grandmother Russell...or Grandmother.”

  She held out her hand again, so I let go of my suitcase. Her fingers felt loose, worse than before, like frozen fish fingers falling out of the box. This grandmother didn’t look like the type to make trees out of Play-Doh…but you never knew. As Mama said, be nice and grown-ups will be nicer back.

  I looked around me with interest.

  The land was still foggy but green now too. Everything smelled like sardines and wood. And just like Daddy always said, there were real carriages and horses on the road, not cars. I loved ponies. I even knew how to lift my bottom off the seat when the animal began to run. But I had never used a horse like a station wagon.

  “See? This is how we get around on Sark,” Daddy said.

  “I want to sit in front,” I cried, and held up my arms to be raised into the buggy.

  Grandmother Russell’s house was the color of roses. And it was really, really tall, with lots of balconies. I told the animals I’d see them later and jumped up and down on the bright green lawn, swinging my suitcase in circles. I pointed at the clean white shutters and teepee roof then ran to the huge, open porch to try the rocking chair.

  “Look, Daddy, like in Lady and the Tramp!”

  “That’s enough silliness,” Grandmother said from the doorway. “Come inside before you catch your death.”

  We went through a long hallway into a big shiny living room so the grownups could talk. Daddy’s jacket was un-zippered but he kept running the zipper up and down again without making it stop anywhere. And Grandmother sat with her arms like sticks at her side and made small unhappy noises.

  I yawned.

  She was saying something about fingerprints on walls when I reached out a dirty hand to tug on my father’s jacket. “Come on, Daddy, let’s go see my room!”

  It was on the third floor, as high as the clouds chasing each other across the sky.

  I hung onto the windowsill for so long looking at the view that I didn’t notice at first that Daddy had left me alone with the lady who didn’t like fingerprints or silliness.

  “We’ll get along just fine,” Grandmother Russell said. “Just keep your toys put away and don’t make noise.” She stopped, staring down her nose. “Your father must want you very much or he wouldn’t have brought you all this way.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m his best present.”

  Grandmother frowned. “Yes, well, he’s worse than a child sometimes.”

  She left the room.

  All alone, I bounced a few times on my new bed. It was neatly made, with a real canopy in yellow, my other favorite color. The wallpaper also had yellow in it and showed children in dresses and suits picking flowers. In the corner a white wooden toy box waited, lid open. I decided Rabbit would stay out of the toy box all the time and sleep with me in the big bed. Whether Grandmother liked it or not.

  II

  Within a few days I learned there were a lot of things Grandmother Russell didn’t like. The house was big and pretty, but there were too many rules. We ate dinner in a sparkling dining room, the three of us bunched at one end of a long black table so clean that I made smudges on it with my elbows.

  “Decent people don’t eat with their elbows on the table,” Grandmother scolded.

  I
wasn’t supposed to talk unless I was asked something first. I had to scoop peas onto a fork instead of using a spoon. Those were the rules I hated most. I was used to eating in the kitchen with the radio on, the phone ringing, and a cold carton of milk left on the table so that I could pour myself more all by myself.

  It was hard to remember all these new rules.

  I also hated talking to Grandmother’s belly and being reminded to speak up and look up and say “Ma’am” at the ends of my sentences. Sometimes, when Grandmother wasn’t looking, I ran the palms of my hands up and down the dining room table.

  There, now I have ten prints, I would think, and wait for my punishment.

  Slowly, as the days passed, I realized I would never get to ride a bike around the island. Grandmother Russell wouldn’t let me walk down to the ocean, either.

  “You’ll just make a mess of yourself. It’s dangerous. You’ll fall in and drown, and that’s the last thing we need,” she said.

  Daddy stayed home too. He spent most of his time in the little room at his work table, coming out only to pour more honey-colored liquid into a glass. More cough medicine, though he never seemed to have a cough.

  I hated that medicine.

  III

  Some things were good there on the island. Like going to bed.

  Back home before the divorce, Mama used to read me a story every night. After that, Daddy would come in to kiss me and tuck me in. Now Daddy put me to bed and tucked the blankets around my shoulders. Sometimes he rubbed my back until I fell asleep.

  One night he asked, “Are you sad, love?”

  I clutched Rabbit under the blankets and said, “No, Daddy.”

  “You’re not sorry you came with me?”

  “I miss Mama. Don’t you?”

  He didn’t answer. He never answered any of my questions about Mama or about calling Mama, so I stopped asking. I thought it was important to be good, so good that everybody in this house would be happy. Then maybe we could call Mama and make her happy too.

  One night I heard a lot of shouting downstairs. Lying in bed, I clutched Rabbit tighter and awoke some time later to Daddy sliding under the covers next to me. He had his pajama bottoms on but no top, and his skin felt hot.

  “How’s my princess?” he whispered. “Believe me: your tired old dad could use a nice long hug.”

  He smelled really bad this time. But I rolled over and hugged him and felt sad when he abruptly got up and left the room. He didn’t even say goodnight.

  The next night he came back and we hugged in my bed again. And the next, and the night after that.

  One night I lay awake for a long time waiting for the door to open. It didn’t. But after I fell asleep, I felt Daddy’s body move next to mine, felt his hot skin and furry legs and smelled his breath.

  He was drinking medicine again…

  “I’d like to stay with you until morning, sweetheart. Would you like that?” he asked.

  I snuggled against him, nodding hard: up, down, up, down.

  The ocean sounded so loud crashing below my window. If it was the same ocean as the one back home, maybe Mama would come and find us and we could be one family on Long Island again. I wanted to ask this in my prayers but wasn’t sure how. Grandmother Russell said Jesus Christ was God, and my real Grandma back home said He wasn’t.

  I decided to be nice, so He could be nicer back.

  “Please, Sir, let Mama come find me so we can all be together and I can see Grandpa before he goes to the heart doctor. And tell Mama I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye when I left. I think Daddy is sorry too. And please make Grandmother Russell let me make noise when I play. Thank you. Amen.”

  “Oh love,” Daddy sighed, stroking my hair in the darkness. He smelled so stinky, and his voice was blurry and hard to understand. “I never meant to harm you. You’re the most important person in the world to me. That’s why I wanted you to here, in my home. But this isn’t working, is it?”

  I didn’t say anything. Was Jesus answering my prayer already?

  “I know my mother is difficult. Believe me, I know.”

  To my shock, he began to cry—my big Daddy! Shoulders shaking, he covered his eyes with his hand. He didn’t make a sound, but I could see the tears leaking out the sides.

  I wanted to tell him we should just get back on the boat and head for home. Instead I waited patiently in the darkness as if I had always been doing this, as if I had always known how to witness grief.

  I waited with a patience that would change me for the next twenty years.

  When his shoulders stopped shaking, Daddy rose onto one elbow. He smiled at me sadly, with swollen eyes. “You’re so important to me, Pilar. So sweet. I love you so much.”

  When he leaned down and brushed his lips gently against mine, I kissed him back hard.

  I kissed him. He didn’t force me.

  I did that on my own.

  “I love you too, Daddy.”

  He enfolded me in his arms, and I settled comfortably against his stomach to doze.

  IV

  I awoke to more kisses.

  Somehow my nightgown had gotten all bunched up under my arms. I was lying on my side facing Daddy. One of his big hands was caressing my bare stomach. His other hand ran lightly down my back, cupping my bottom the way Mama used to when she rubbed me with powder or lotion.

  Then that hand moved again, slowly, lightly, inching its way to a place Mama called “private parts.”

  I held my breath. I reached down to push the hand away—then stopped.

  Daddy’s happier now, I realized. He was breathing hard, but not crying.

  I hoped with all my heart that he would never cry again.

  After a while he gave a great shudder and clutched me to him so hard I couldn’t breathe. Then he let out a long gasp and turned away.

  I lay very still, listening to the wind outside, and the grumble of the sea. After a while I pulled the hem of my nightgown down where it belonged. I pinned one hand between my legs.

  “Pilar...” Daddy said. “This has to be just between us, okay, sweetheart?”

  “What does, Daddy?”

  “Me coming to visit you tonight. It’s our little secret.”

  “Okay,” I said sleepily.

  I had no one to tell secrets to anyway. Not until we got back home to Mama. It was sad not having her or my toys or any friends here on this cold, pretty island without cars or highways.

  But I did have Daddy and Rabbit.

  And Rabbits knew how to keep their mouths shut, so maybe they were the best friends of all.

  V

  Now that I’ve said it, please let it go, I begged Jeannot silently.

  Don’t ask me anything…and please, please don’t say you don’t understand why I did what I did. Don’t ask me to justify it.

  Because there are some things that can never be fully explained even by Freud himself. Like just plain missing your father, no matter what he is or was, just ’cause you like the sound of his voice and don’t hear it enough.

  Or remembering bits and pieces of good times, like when I learned ride a bike without training wheels. Because I learned with him while he held on to me and gave instructions like a proper father. Or when I used to ride around on his nice, wide shoulders, grabbing at branches over my head as we hollered and laughed with one voice.

  Jeannot didn’t ask me anything, as it turned out. He just stared into my eyes.

  “I’m telling you this because I love you,” I said. “I’m telling you so you’ll understand that I know when someone is not to be trusted, even if that person is…family.”

  Jeannot seemed to be gathering his thoughts; reining in his galloping feelings. I didn’t blame him. No, I didn’t blame him one bit.

  I kept talking. “But that’s not all of it. That’s not the only reason I don’t want you to move back here. I hate to see you give up your dreams. Your music. And…I don’t want to live here. I want us to stay where we are.”

  He half
-raised his hands. “I guess I am not really surprised. About your family. I did have a bad feeling. But Pilar”—spreading his hands again, helplessly—“can’t you see what is happening here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t trust men. That is what you just told me. After what your father did to you, why should you? I mean: my God. No wonder you are so sensitive! But you are finding evil everywhere, even in my family!”

  “No.” I grabbed his arm. It was very hot, like my father’s chest used to be in that little bed on that little foggy island. “That’s not it. Your father—”

  “Your panic attacks, your sleepwalking. Maybe even your nausea! Now I see why you won’t take the pregnancy test; why you refuse to face things. Chérie, you agreed before that you need help, yes?” he said patiently, too patiently. “A psychologist. You agreed to go with me. Don’t you see, this is not about my family? It is about your family. And why you came to France in the first place, yes? Because you need help and could not get it at home!”

  I shook my head. NoNoNoNo.

  “Please, please, get some help. And for now let’s be reasonable and go back to my uncle’s house and spend the day with my family. Later we will find a solution, together. You and I. Because I love you so much, Chérie. More than the sun and the moon.”

  “No. I know what you’re thinking but this is not about my family! I mean: the part about my father is. But not…the other!”

  “You are not being rational right now. You know you are rational.”

  “That’s not true,” I said softly, though part of me wondered: Is it? Is it true? Am I nuttier than a Jewish fruitcake?

  The Evil Eye. Seeing evil everywhere…

  I grasped one of Jeannot’s hands, brought it to my lips and kissed it. Then I released him. “I’m sorry you don’t believe me. But I can’t stay. You do what you must…and I will too.” I hesitated. “It is, I believe, time for me to go home.”