The Beginners (22 page)
Authors: Rebecca Wolff
SOMETHING ABOUT THE DENSITY of the evening light outside called to mind, as I bent to find my jeans, the fact that today had been the first day of school, and that I had missed it. What had I done with the hours of the day, when the scholars of Wick had been greeting one another, settling in for a new season of youth? I stood up straight, shaking off whatever small shock, a paralytic enervation, as though I had been injected with venom, had settled onto my shoulders, and felt the muscles of my inner thighs, slightly sore. Deeper inside myself a new cavity had been dug out, drilled—and had yet to be filled with any matter or substance or affect. It was the interior in which I waited to tell myself how I felt. In the absence of anyone asking me how I felt.
I knew we would go home now and see Raquel, but I didn’t know what I would do when I saw her. Quickly I rehearsed a desirable outcome: Theo and I would approach the house, my hand in his, or his arm around my waist, holding me near, and we would release each other, silently, reluctantly, only as we reached the door and Theo stretched his hand out to turn the knob just as it turned from inside. The door opened, a lit rectangle with Raquel inside it, as on that first day when she had appeared in its frame like footage of a collapsing structure, a house on fire, on a TV screen. Only, then Theo had materialized beside her, and now he would appear to be beside me.
But I found that I could not invoke a precise image of Raquel against which to test my feelings. When I tried to think of her I saw instead an oblong, a sheer dull face of stone like a grave marker, without inscription. And when I thought of my own self, a self I tried to locate by shutting my eyes for a moment as I pulled my shoes on—dropping my lids and groping around inside the cavern of my own darkness for some previously undefined absolute face—a corresponding featurelessness rose up, as though the one who had just acted was this new one, an infant, practically, who could do anything. The only self I could find was one that I did not recognize.
IT IS UNDERSTOOD by every sane adult that a child is blameless, until she reaches majority. The child is not to be held ultimately responsible for her own actions, however identifiable, however intentional, however hurtful the consequences. It is the adult in the situation, if there is one, who is to blame, and it is the adult who must hold in his or her mind this contradiction, while the child is set free, free to hold fast to her side of the story, and this freedom from complexity is the stuff of childhood’s fabled innocence.
When we got home we would sit down at the table, Raquel and I sipping wine while Theo “rustled something up,” and eat ravenously, and Raquel would comment with searching obliquity on how you could always count on bad behavior to work up an appetite. There had been nothing I wanted to keep from her, but now there was: the sex act, once completed, was singular, unbelievable, and, contrary to the example of Mr. Penrose’s magazines, unfit for reproduction or representation. If she did not know it, then she would never know it. The fact of it was another blank marker in the crepuscular landscape, and I was horrified to find that I felt sorry for her in her infinite unknowing, the way I felt sorry for my mother, sometimes, with her sharp, hopeful, finite face.
But it seemed that she felt sorry for me, too—about what, I could not be sure. What did she know?
“Little one.” She placed her hand on my forehead. “You feel kind of clammy. I think a hot bath might be just the thing.”
She mothered me upstairs and into the bathroom, slipping my clothes off onto the floor as the tub filled. I puffed up my shallow breast like a small bird in the winter.
26.
I
had a really bad dream last night, and I wanted to tell you about it, but you were not here to tell. In the dream I had a little baby, but that was not the scary part. I wanted the baby. In a big bed, I slept with the baby curled into my side, tucked under my arm, its warm, fuzzy head against my bare skin. We were comfortable like that, and had slept many nights together in perfect rest. It was a large bed, with a light coverlet so the baby couldn’t smother.
had a really bad dream last night, and I wanted to tell you about it, but you were not here to tell. In the dream I had a little baby, but that was not the scary part. I wanted the baby. In a big bed, I slept with the baby curled into my side, tucked under my arm, its warm, fuzzy head against my bare skin. We were comfortable like that, and had slept many nights together in perfect rest. It was a large bed, with a light coverlet so the baby couldn’t smother.
We woke up in the middle of the night. A dark night, no moon, so dark I couldn’t see anything for a long time. The baby, though, the baby woke up and behaved as though possessed, like in a feature film’s version of demonic possession. Hissing, writhing, jerking . . . I couldn’t still the baby, I was not as strong as the baby. I
shhhhhhhh
ed loudly in the baby’s face, trying to shock it out of its fugue, but I couldn’t see its face, I could only hear the stuttering gutturals issuing from its mouth. The baby whipped like a cord of steel.
shhhhhhhh
ed loudly in the baby’s face, trying to shock it out of its fugue, but I couldn’t see its face, I could only hear the stuttering gutturals issuing from its mouth. The baby whipped like a cord of steel.
I needed to see the baby’s face, so that I could understand better how to soothe it, but when I turned on the light I still could not see its face. A black spot, just the size of a baby’s face, occluded my vision wherever the face should have been. The spot moved wherever the baby moved. I was awake in the black hours of the night in the flat, brightly lit room, with just the bed and the baby.
This blindness followed the baby wherever I looked.
27.
A
confusion of ghost towns. Ghost hamlets, really: the remains of the Shift River valley. Wick, there, perched in safety above the man-made expanse of the Ramapack Reservoir and the surrounding infinity of farmland and forest. There, dotted faintly, are lines dividing up the watery grave into its former precincts, or townships. They looked so large, compared to Wick. How could all those lives have been uprooted? To where did they disseminate themselves, like so much information? Or like a flock of chickens when a bucket of water interrupts its dusty discourse.
confusion of ghost towns. Ghost hamlets, really: the remains of the Shift River valley. Wick, there, perched in safety above the man-made expanse of the Ramapack Reservoir and the surrounding infinity of farmland and forest. There, dotted faintly, are lines dividing up the watery grave into its former precincts, or townships. They looked so large, compared to Wick. How could all those lives have been uprooted? To where did they disseminate themselves, like so much information? Or like a flock of chickens when a bucket of water interrupts its dusty discourse.
I stood gazing at a map pushpinned to a bulletin board on the wall outside the office of Mr. Czabaj, the guidance counselor. I was waiting for him to finish his conversation with some other surly—or sheepish, or distraught—student. I had been summoned from gym class, the last period of the day. Today we were playing kickball on the field, and I was just as glad to be plucked out of range of the pummeling demands that would be placed on me in the name of sport.
I stood studying the map, and found myself oddly unconcerned about this visit to the school’s conscience. Wick High had its share of troubled teens. Whether at the high or low end of the achievement scale, it was emphasized, again and again, at PTA meetings and pep rallies alike, we were all at risk for drug abuse, parenthood, and suicide. Probably in that order. Mr. Czabaj was working overtime as a one-man preventative measure. We had been lectured in our hygiene class about all the different substance-free ways to “let off steam,” and talking over your issues with a concerned authority figure was at the top of the list.
The heavy wooden door opened inward, its window of opaque, beveled glass distorting and magnifying the fluorescent light of the hallway. Cherry stepped from the office, looking ruffled. Her cheeks were flushed the pink only skin of such unusual whiteness can achieve. I noticed she was wearing my black sneakers. She saw me, stopped as if to speak, then blinked and continued into the hall and down, head up, as Mr. Czabaj stepped out after her, hand on the brass doorknob, calling, “Okay, Cherry! Let’s keep talking. Bye-bye!” It was the nearest I’d been to her in a month.
I followed him in and sat down in the chair he indicated: an old wooden office chair with arms. The seat was worn exceedingly smooth from the sliding of excitable bodies. I fixed my gaze first on the familiar dull green linoleum, and then on Mr. Czabaj’s equally familiar snow-white crew cut and broad neck.
“Ginger. How’s it going?”
I smiled, gazing across the desk at him, and he shifted his bulky weight in the big wooden chair in which he sat, identical to mine except for the addition of a cushion, and for its ability to swivel. He seemed to decide to begin anew. I had the odd feeling that I was making him uncomfortable. Something in my eyes?
“Ginger,” he said, with some finality. “You’re one of the finest students here at the high school. We’ve never had a problem with you before—and now this.” Over his shoulder, through the open window, from someone’s car stereo, floated strains of “Destroy the Handicapped,” a song that had gained popularity among Wick’s teens recently. The song consisted mainly of that refrain, or command, sung to the accompaniment of a crude syllabic drumbeat. I looked up and met the eyes of Mr. Czabaj, as he was saying something that sounded like “. . . troublemakers what-have-you?” In the ensuing protracted silence he reframed his question.
“I’d be very surprised to find out that you had. This school has a lot of tough characters lurking around. Boys and girls who don’t know how to make good choices. They choose to abuse themselves with substances and get into all sorts of malicious hijinks. I know the kinds of things that go on over by the graveyard. I remember your brother, God rest his soul.” Mr. Czabaj allowed for a few moments of silence, and I duly considered Jack in those moments. His reckless endangerments. His pointless, willful, selfish pursuit of pleasure, at the expense of everything. How he might regret his choices now, and wish to see me make better ones. “Now, you aren’t in the habit of spending your time with any of those kids, are you? I certainly don’t associate you with that kind of behavior. But I can also appreciate the temptation. I coach those boys on the field, you know, and I know that they can look pretty ‘cool’ when they’re giving themselves lung cancer, and doing permanent damage to their eardrums with that noise. But the only thing ‘cool’ they should be getting from a smart young lady like yourself is the cold shoulder!” He banged his hand, palm flat, down on the desk. I had to smile again.
Again he seemed to be rethinking his strategy; after a pause in which the bell signaling the end of class rang out like an impassioned speech, and I heard doors opening and the rush of feet and bags and elbows shoving out into the hallway, he began again, more sternly this time.
“I know the period’s over. I’ll let you go in just a minute. Now, Ginger. You were absent from the first day of school, and without a medical excuse. You’ve been repeatedly late to homeroom. Several of your teachers have reported that your attention wanders when you
are
in class. You don’t participate in group discussions the way you used to. Now, if you haven’t been getting into trouble with drugs, or alcohol, my suspicion would be that you have got yourself a boyfriend. But if you say that that’s just not so, dear, then I’ll have to start looking for other explanations. And I’ll certainly have to put in a call to your parents.” Mr. Czabaj lifted himself out of his seat with a grunt, stood up, came around the desk, and sat on the corner of it nearest to my chair. Looking over his burly shoulder, anything to avoid the intrusion he was attempting, I noticed a sheet of loose-leaf paper on his desk, what looked like a student essay, handwritten in purple ink and with a title at the top. I maneuvered my gaze into the path of Mr. Czabaj’s small, crinkly blue eyes, then, keeping my face pointed in the same direction but letting my eyes wander ever so slightly, leaned a little to the right, just enough that I could make out, in Cherry’s distinct round handwriting, this topic sentence: “Evil is something you can’t explain or something powerful you can’t control.” Above it, in blue ink, “Cherry, come see me in my office today, please. Mr. C.”
are
in class. You don’t participate in group discussions the way you used to. Now, if you haven’t been getting into trouble with drugs, or alcohol, my suspicion would be that you have got yourself a boyfriend. But if you say that that’s just not so, dear, then I’ll have to start looking for other explanations. And I’ll certainly have to put in a call to your parents.” Mr. Czabaj lifted himself out of his seat with a grunt, stood up, came around the desk, and sat on the corner of it nearest to my chair. Looking over his burly shoulder, anything to avoid the intrusion he was attempting, I noticed a sheet of loose-leaf paper on his desk, what looked like a student essay, handwritten in purple ink and with a title at the top. I maneuvered my gaze into the path of Mr. Czabaj’s small, crinkly blue eyes, then, keeping my face pointed in the same direction but letting my eyes wander ever so slightly, leaned a little to the right, just enough that I could make out, in Cherry’s distinct round handwriting, this topic sentence: “Evil is something you can’t explain or something powerful you can’t control.” Above it, in blue ink, “Cherry, come see me in my office today, please. Mr. C.”
“Now, Ginger. We can’t help but wonder if your absence from school and your general behavior isn’t an expression of some kind of inner struggle that you might be going through, like a crisis or something. Now.”
I was tempted to supply Mr. Czabaj with the phrase he was searching for: “cry for help.” But instead I occupied myself with marveling at his use of this all-purpose command: “Now.” What did he mean by “now”? Did it serve to call his own attention back to the matter at hand? Perhaps he had difficulty keeping the past and the future straight, and needed to constantly remind himself that whatever might be going on back then, or might go on sometime soon, the problem in front of us, sitting on the desk, is always happening
now
.
now
.
“Do you want to tell me a little bit about that? I’m really here to help you, Ginger, and just because you’ve never needed help before, God bless you, doesn’t mean you’re not entitled to it now.” There was that word again, and I was shocked to feel a sudden sharp closing of my throat, a pricking in my nose, the unmistakable sensation of tears rising from wherever it is in the wells of the eyes or sinus or gut they rise from, unbidden, threatening to reveal to the self and to the onlooker a depth of sorrow or disappointment or triumph or joy that one had absolutely no intention of disclosing. In fact, one is forced by tears that come from the body to remember even that one
has
a body, a body always
now,
a body incessantly performing acts voluntary and involuntary, some acts resolutely poised between the two. With the whole force of my body and mind I worked to crush those tears back down into their cave, but as I succeeded in stemming the tears another uncontrolled loosening began and to my horror I found myself beginning to stammer, a freshet of unformed thought and syllables spilling up my throat and almost to the portal of my lips, just as someone rapped on the window of the door to remind Mr. Czabaj of football practice, for which he was overdue. He spread his mouth in a grimace and his hands wide in apology while I quickly formed out of my formless leakage a small, plausible, corresponding lie, something about being late to meet my mother over at the print shop, and ran out the door. Mr. Czabaj called out to me his solicitude all the way down the hall.
has
a body, a body always
now,
a body incessantly performing acts voluntary and involuntary, some acts resolutely poised between the two. With the whole force of my body and mind I worked to crush those tears back down into their cave, but as I succeeded in stemming the tears another uncontrolled loosening began and to my horror I found myself beginning to stammer, a freshet of unformed thought and syllables spilling up my throat and almost to the portal of my lips, just as someone rapped on the window of the door to remind Mr. Czabaj of football practice, for which he was overdue. He spread his mouth in a grimace and his hands wide in apology while I quickly formed out of my formless leakage a small, plausible, corresponding lie, something about being late to meet my mother over at the print shop, and ran out the door. Mr. Czabaj called out to me his solicitude all the way down the hall.
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