Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You

Prologue: I Remember You, Father

Prologue:I remember You, Father ow can I help you?" Randy Groskind asks. This is the first question Randy, a therapist in Atlanta, asks me when I enter his office. I'm too tired to answer. I sit rigid on a couch and stare at the plant by the window, wishing I were small enough, light enough, to curl up inside one of the cool green leaves and sleep. This exhaustion—I feel the actual dense weight of the answer to his question. Myhead feels too heavy to think. Mymouth feels too heavy to speak. I wonder: Do I extract the first snapshot from my mind in order to be lighter? Extractthe first image, allthe images that flip through my mind like snapshots. Not photographs. One lingers over photographs , studying shadows and patterns of light. The tongue slows over the three long syllables of "photograph" with time to study faces, relationships, with timetounderstandwhat the picture means. But a snapshot is a glance. Quickly, the tongue slaps the roof of the mouth, whispering "snap," whispering "shot." Then the snapshot implodes in my mind—a secret no one, I've told myself, should see. Over the years I've glimpsed fragments of these snapshots , but in the past months they are relentless. So it is now, finally , I want to capture the image: hold it, hold it, hold it. This is why I'm here in Randy's office. For now, I believe, I must see a photograph of what my father did to me, see what he did to i H 2 B E C A U S E I R E M E M B E R T E R R O R , F A T H E R my body. And because I see terror, Father, I see and I remember you. I see this. It is 1962. New Jersey. My boyfriend has just finished a wrestling match, and I sit in his red Rambler, crammed between high school friends, smelling the sweaty gym on our clothes. It's a late-winter afternoon, already dark. Outside the car window the school yard is frozen, white with snow. My family has moved here from the West Indies, and at first I missed Caribbean colors. But now I'm comforted by blankness, by ice, by white. Comforted by thick winter clothes cloaking my body, by the furry lining of my suede jacket, soft under my chin. Steam fogs the windows. This comforts me, too, for if I stay in this car forever no one will see me; no one will be able to touch me. But as the car turns a corner toward my home my friends' bodies press against me. Suddenly I no longer hear their voices. I no longer hear sound. This pressure. This smell of sweat. I am no longer in this car. I think I will stop breathing. I am in my bedroom of baby-blue walls with matching spread and ruffle. The room is decorated with faded gardenia corsages from school dances, paper Hawaiian leis, silver ribbons and glass beads, red satin hearts with gold glitter—a young teenager's room. But in the deepest moment of night, the room grays. No, wait. On my headboard is a six-inch plastic Christmas tree—a toy. Every night my father winds it. Red, green, blue, white lights sweep the ceiling and walls, closer, the bed, as the tree revolves, closer, revolvesflecksof light on my body. The tree will unwind, finish, stop, before he does. Globes of light darken. The snapshot blackens to negative. You're right, Father. No one will ever see us. No one will ever know. Prologue 3 I glance at Randy. Is he the one who will finally see me, who will finally know? Is he the one to whom I can entrust the snapshots of my secret mind? But if Randy sees them, if he sees me, surely he '11 think I'm terrible, evil, unworthy. He won't want me to return to his office again, ever. How canI help you?he'd asked me. Randy is quiet. His office is quiet. The soft gaze of his blue eyes soothes me. I wonder which snapshots I must reveal in order for him to understand the exhaustion. Patiently he awaits an answer. This page intentionally left blank ...