Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You

Tuesdays

I uesd^Lf? ow canI help you!' Randy had asked. Change me, I think. Is that the answer? Stop me. Or teach me new words, I think. Maybe that's the answer. Teach me to speak. Help me find a soul. Help me find my body. Teach me to cry. When I first see Randy, when he first asks this question, it is the mid-1980s. Over the years I have sought help from ten therapists. Randy is the eleventh. He must be the one who will finally be able to help me. Twenty years have passed since I first noticed the word—noticed the word "incest," yet still I can't say it, even to Randy. I saw the word almost by chance, in conjunction with the movie Phaedra. When I saw the word my gaze hesitated. It stopped. Couldn't flow along the line of words preceding and succeeding it. My breath stopped. My heart stopped. My throat was cold and my mouth rigid. But why—since I had never seen the word before, never read the word before, never heard the word uttered? I didn't know what the word meant, yet it stopped me like a slap. I looked it up in the dictionary. At first I read and reread the definition, but I didn't allow myself to understand any of the words used to explain it. I didn't know what I was reading. I had to look up each word in the definition. As soon as I looked up each word U9 H 180 B L U E I forgot its definition and had to look it up again. I had to write each word, and the definition of each word, on a sheet of paper, "(i) Sexual. Union. Between. Persons. Who. Are. So. Closely. Related. That. Their. Marriage.Is. Illegal. Or. Forbidden. By.Custom . (2) The. Statutory. Crime. Committed. By. Such. Closely. Related. Persons. Who. Marry. Cohabit. Or. Copulate. Illegally. [Middle English, from Latin incestus, unchaste, impure.]" Copulate. "To engage in coitus. [Latin copulare, to fasten together , link.]" My father and I arefastened together. We arelinked. I feel a revulsion I don't understand when I see the word "copulate ." The three short, hard syllables slam against my teeth as I whisper the word over and over. I feel a fear I think I understand too well when I see the words "illegal," "crime," "forbidden." A crime has been committed. I know I'm responsible. I've committed unpardonable sins. But I don't understand what the sins are. I have these words written on a piece of paper. I will be punished for these words. But I don't know why. I see the movie. I watch a mother and a son in bed together. That night, all night, I feel my father in bed with me. Yet he is not with me. My body only feels as if he is. I feel as if he's exploding through my body, my throat, and into the roof of my mouth. Then I am in the bed with Phaedra and her son. They hold me down while my mother slices off my nipples and staples every part of me shut. My father comes to me, stabs them, sews my nipplesback on, and rips out the staples. My mother is dead. And he, my father, and I live "in a sexualunion between persons who are so closely related that their marriage is illegal or forbidden ..." "We are forbidden," I whisper to my father. And he laughs. Days later I can pretend the word and the movie don't exist. Or dictionaries and movies lie. With equal ability I can also pretend Tuesdays 181 the word and the movie have nothing to do with me, nothing to do with what happened to me with my father. This movie, this word—more—my childhood—my memories—sometimes, yes, they are like snapshots, glimpsed images. Memories are also like the ocean, like tides in the sea. Memoriesroll close to me, curled in the scroll of a wave, suddenly revealed when the wave crashes ashore. Then the memory ebbs, flowing out to sea. Memories tugged back and forth by the moon, memories of what happened at night with my father. But never does the ocean evaporate. So never can I forget. What I most lack is understanding. I don't understand what happened to me...