|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|||||
|
Elizabeth Weld Fear Nothing |
|||||
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
||||
|
I am lying on the floor in the
doorway and I am three and a half and still have a bottle with apple juice.
It’s near dinnertime and my head is against the door frame, my feet reaching for the
other side, above me the white underside of the doorway floating far away. I
am drinking and listening to my mother at the sink and waiting for my father
to get in the door from work and step over or on me. I am afraid of him and hope he
picks me up and carries me into the living room and hope he doesn’t kick me. Here he is. He has snow on his
coat and he’s talking and I’m drinking juice and waiting and he steps fast
across the kitchen talking backwards to my mother. He steps over me quickly
in shiny black shoes and brown pants and walks through the dining room. I am heartbroken, and I curl up
on the floor and die gently, falling through the cold boards against my
shoulder, and I open my eyes and it’s all still true. This story is about my father,
who makes me feel loved or afraid, either blessed or broken. In the living room my brothers
and I stand at the edge of the couch. My father is watching the news, eyes going up and down
from the tv to the pipe he’s holding against his
shirt, one fat finger pressing down the tobacco. My brother walks through the
room and I follow him. My father grabs my shoulder in his huge hand, yanking
my red sweater to speed me up. I stop because I don’t understand and he
shouts, “Go on! Go on! Get out of my way!” I grab a pipe cleaner, furry white
and flexible, and run for my life into the dining room where I watch tv through the door from the darkness, fearing the space
behind me that is everything else breathing on my back. The five of us are wet and
hyper, lined up in the bathroom having our hair combed and our fingernails
cleaned for church. My baby brother is in front of me and goes to my mother
who’s watching something outside the bathroom door when she takes his hand.
She digs in with the pointy fingernail file and he’s waving his other arm and
stamping his feet and she says, “Oh hush” and he’s crying. My other brother,
who’s oldest and has gone already, sits on the toilet with his hands in
fists, his hair parted. I’m pushing between my sister and brother and running
down the hall in my white kindergarten Sunday dress, racing for my room at
the end where I close the door and get in my closet and close that door and lean
against it, panting in the dark under my dresses and coats. I hear my mother
call my name once. Then the bedroom door I closed opens and my father comes
in and I’m scared he’s going to kill me or beat me but he sits down on the
edge of my bed in his dark suit, watching me through the cracked closet door.
I come out with my dirty nails behind my back and stop in front of the
closet. “I hated having my nails
cleaned too,” he says gently like a nice old bear and I’m walking before I
want to. He’s got the file and still might kill me but I’m going anyway. He
lifts me on to his giant knee and says, “I promise I can do it so it won’t
hurt.” I’m afraid but I give him my
hand and he does it as gently as I’ve ever felt so it doesn’t hurt at all. By
now my brothers and sister are in the doorway and I’m watching them watching
and watching my hands in his huge ones. When it’s over I kiss his whiskers
and say he needs to shave. He laughs and I am the queen and the king and the
best unicorn. Back out in the hall, my
brother frogs me in the arm but I don’t care. We’re having Thanksgiving at
our grandmother’s farm and my father hates it there. “It’s not my family,” he
repeats in the car to my mother. We’re telling jokes to make him happy from
the back seat and the way back of the station wagon. “Knock knock,”
says my brother, leaning over the seat on me. “Quiet!” my father yells. My
mother turns and looks over the vinyl seat. We’ve failed and he hates us and
we kick and punch each other quietly with aching hearts until my sister cries
and is slapped by my mother. Tonight my bedroom walls start
caving in. The walls are caving in. My bed is going to swallow me. The rough
spots on the carpet are bloody footprints. The dark creatures from the
corners bob their huge horse heads as they weave and glide closer. I am
running through the room in one breath. I’m running down the long hall,
chased by the saber toothed tiger I’m always scared to look at because I feel
his breath and spit hitting my cold heels. I push open my parents’ door and
see in the moonlight crossing the room that my father is on his side across
the bed, huge and snoring, and my mother is near me, silent and maybe dead.
The tiger is gone but I’m afraid of my father. I stand frozen in the dark
watching them, then I move toward her side and see
that she’s wearing a white sleeveless nightgown and lying on her back. I hope
she’s breathing. I touch her arm and she sucks in air and sits up. My father
rolls into the wide stripe the moon in the window makes on the bed and I see
stripes on his pajama sleeve and hear him stop snoring. He doesn’t move. My mother whispers, “ We have gone too far again so
he’s pulling the car over. We’re driving home from church and my brother’s
going to die and I might too. My father watches the distance as he walks
around to the back of the station wagon with his thick belt in his hand. We
all start to cry and I look for my mother who is looking down and out the
windshield but I know she could save us. My father swings open the heavy door
and grabs for my brother who scrambles towards me and gets pulled backwards
out of the car. His head and shoulder knock into the maroon edge of the door
on the way. My brother’s penny loafer with the penny flies off and I grab it
and lean out, saying, “His shoe! His shoe!” But my father is so big he just
grabs me, one huge hand around my arm yanking me into the air with my
brother’s shoe still in my hand. He sets me on the gravely road behind the
station wagon, and I cry and watch him hit my brother who’s kicking with one
shoe and one white sock. I’m going to be next and wish we hadn’t gone too far
although I’m not sure what we did and I think my father might just kill us
all for fun. My father says,“The only thing you have to fear is fear itself.” So
lying here watching the alligators swarm across my floor I tell myself it is
fear and not alligators. They reach my bed and snap at the baseboard with
their jaws and tug at the bottom edge of my comforter with their claws as
they begin to climb the bed. The one that reaches the top first sits at the
foot of my bed grinning before coming up the bed toward me the same way the
spiders did last night. I’m backed against the headboard and then I’m
standing up and screaming for my mother and I don’t care what kind of trouble
I get in. I just want the lights on and
for someone to come. After dinner tonight I’m
waiting in the doorway, watching my father pull out his pipe on the couch. I
run and grab one of the white pipe cleaners bunched in the dark wooden pipe
holder and take it to him. “I made this for you,” I say, leaning against the
couch and his wide knee in khakis. “Oh yeah?” He takes the pipe
cleaner and smiles, shoving it into the pipe in his other hand. I am happy
and grinning. “You and your stories,” says my
mother from the rocking chair. “Guess where I made it?” I say,
watching his face as he cleans his pipe. He is tired from working all day and
we are going to make him happy. I can make him smile. “Where?” I climb onto the couch next to
him and stick out my feet. “The pipe cleaner factory. I go there when you go
to work.” “Where does she come up with
these stories? She gets it from you, you know,” my mother says, shaking her
head and smiling. “You’re a working girl?” he
says. “I work all day to bring home
the bread and the bacon!” My father laughs and pats my
knee. My second oldest brother gets up off the floor and shouts, “At the
factory! I work there too!” We march around the living room for him until he
stops laughing, then we all fall down on top of each other. If my father is grumpy he hates the
sight of us and makes me go away when I chase him. I hide under the comforter
on my older brother’s bed and fall and sigh into death, won’t play with my
sister, won’t tell my baby brother that he’ll cheer up again until he finally
does, climbing the stairs with heavy steps or calling us down to line up
smiling in the living room and say we love him, with us feeling our lost old
bones growing back again. “Dance with me!” My father
swoops and grabs my shoulders and lifts me high into the air and my feet are
swinging hard on loose legs and I am laughing, laughing, as he spins me. One
foot hits the kitchen cabinet with a dull sudden thump and my mother says his
name but I can only see her sometimes in the white blur that is door,
counters, yellow curtained window, mother, red checkered table, refrigerator
door, and always my grinning father’s huge face with green eyes and his big
nose before me. “We’ll go dancing, you and I!” He stops and pulls me into a
tight arm-breaking hug and then I am free, reeling on the floor. My stomach rolls and
lurches and I grin at my father who laughs at me. I am the happiest and most
loved there ever was. I am better than anyone. I race out of the kitchen door
and through the yard singing. “Why are you sad?” says my
mother. “I don’t know,” I say, playing
with her watch. “Well,” she says. “I can’t go to school. I have
to stay with you,” I say, and she lets me. We are at the picnic and I am
running hard through the grass because I’m winning. I am the smallest kid
here but I’m faster and the race is almost over. I can’t believe I’ll beat my
brothers and sister but the white car is the finish line and I’m going to be
there in five seconds. Suddenly, my father steps around the white car and he
is in my way and huge and stopping as I slam into brown corduroys. His hands
on my arms are digging and hurt me and he squats
holding me before his green eyed wide face while the kids all rush and pile
up against the car. I am pulling away. He shakes me and sneers. He
might hurt me. “Hey! No running!” “Why?” “Because I said so. That’s
why.” My brother dares me to jump off
the top of the bleachers at the basketball game. I climb up the dusty metal
caging behind the wood and stand too high up there and don’t want to jump.
But I can’t get down and my brother and his friends are just wide grins
laughing on round tilted faces far below me. I tell myself that all I have to
fear is fear itself and I step off the edge. Before the crumple, I land in
the grass with a sharp hurt that is my new sprained ankle. Then I’m crying and my
brother is holding me and saying, “Don’t tell, oh please don’t tell.” That night I have an ace
bandage and a good new limp and my brothers try to help me up the stairs to
bed before my mother picks me up and carries me like a safe baby. My father even comes up with
two crutches, taller than me, that he has found in
the basement. I say, “It’s
okay, Daddy.” He sits down on the edge of my
bed and hands me two pink chewy aspirin that taste like good candy. He smells
like his pipe and the strong licorish mints he eats
at work. “You smell good,” I say. He smiles and says, “Now,
should we cut your foot off or do you think you’ll make it?” I laugh and say, “No!” and hope
he doesn’t. He says, “Okay, but I’d be
happy to, if you’d like. I have my saw.” I am looking for the bathroom
at the He and my mother don’t kiss.
They don’t see me and I back out of the room and find the bathroom farther
down the hall. Then I walk past their door to go to the kitchen where my
mother is listening to Mrs. Gamble talk. I grab my mother’s blue dress. She
looks down and smoothes my hair and keeps her hand on my head while Mrs.
Gamble talks about her husband’s practice and how good the move was for their
girls. I have been to the grown up place. I’ve seen them eating the
mouths off of each other. I am afraid and won’t let my mother go. My new best friend and I are being shy in my bedroom. I
show her the ceiling fan I covered in glow stars, my grownup radio, my
stuffed animals, and best of all my two full bookshelves. She is smiling. My
parents are talking in the kitchen. “Will we sleep in the same
room?” she asks. “Of course.” She grins. “My parents always
separate.” The door opens; it’s my father.
I wonder what she’ll think of him and if he’s in a good mood. I hope he’ll
make us laugh and wonder if he’ll let me make him laugh or tell a story to
cheer him up the way I do sometimes after work. I hope he’s the good old
friend father and not the tiger. I sit on the edge of my bed and when she
runs toward him I stand up. “Hello,” he starts. She punches
him hard in his giant stomach and steps back smiling. I don’t know what to do; he would murder
me if I did that. I hope he doesn’t kill her but am not going to die for her.
My father raises a brow and
then she hits him lightly again. Then he grins slowly at her. He glances up
at me, then back at her. I stare without breathing. “You’re a spunky one,” he says
to her, smiling. “So?” she says smiling. “So?” He’s playing. “Clean up this room,” he says
to me. I wish she’d leave and am jealous, enraged, feel planets falling around me. I
push past him and her and go into the kitchen where I sit at the table. The
high singing in my ears is heartbreak and my face in my arms is not enough. My mother says, “Oh Alice,” and
I wipe my tears on my sleeve and stare out the window. I hate him. Hate tastes new in the back of
my throat and I pay attention to the change in me. I watch my mother, who
won’t swoop and shout and will not attack, who’s also waiting for nothing. I’m telling my mother stories
after school. She is at the stove and at the sink and if I do well she sits
down at the table with her Tab that I can sip. She wants to hear true stories
so I drop my father’s unicorns and princes. I am the watcher and I can make
her happy. I tell her about everything and only change things a little and
can go on forever without her stopping me. In my stories I am happy at school
and tell her all about it and forget how it really is. I’m running low on
stories and am going to run out soon and she’s still not laughing. I want her
to smile at me today. Watching her closely, I start to tell her about the She stops moving and watches me
and I am careful and slow down and tell the truth. She pulls me to her in a
great old sad hug that lasts until my cheek and neck are tired and I have to move.
Then she asks me, “What should
I do?” I tell her, “I’ll take care of
you,” and become the all time great hugger. I am the sad old bear and the
tiger. It is my job to keep the princes and the unicorns from being stabbed
by the wizards that dance around my bed. I can keep my mother from dying in
her sleep and being eaten by a frown. I watch the jackals and keep my father
from doing what ever he wants. I want to make things better for us. This is
my job. I watch the family. Today when he shoves me I shove
him back. Something hurts in my chest when I push my father. He sneers and
grabs my arms and I can’t move and won’t stop trying and start to cry. My
mother is frozen by the sink and my father and I are by the door. I would run
run run out there if he’d
let me go, except I never would because I’m fighting him for her and don’t
know how and don’t know what to do. He laughs and lets go. I’m lonely, crying and looking at my feet. “I’ll
consider that your apology,” he says. I would say ten thousand sorrys if it would help and so I nod. Then he’s leaving
the room and I watch my silent mother, then slink away, drag my carcass and
my funeral upstairs. It’s dark in here and I’m
shoving around the bed,
scared. I’m waiting for things to get better and to stop
feeling so scared all the time. I keep telling myself that this is all just
fear of fear.
The two jackals are eating in the corner and then one lifts its head and
gives me a bloody dripping grin. Fear is a fat cat near my ear. Things are getting worse and
not better. I can feel the cat licking away the edges of my body; he’ll finish me off
ten hundred times before morning. I won’t move but I am crying. The only
thing I have to fear is fear itself. I have to believe this. |
|||||
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
||||
|
Arts & Letters is supported by |
Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture Campus Box 89 Georgia College & State University Milledgeville, GA
31061 Phone: (478) 445-1289 E-mail: al@gcsu.edu
|
GC&SU is a member of |
|||
|
|
|
|
|||
|
|||||
