Whisper Me This(83)

Elle sits cross-legged in the middle of the bed, scribbling furiously in a journal. When the door opens, she glances up to see who it is, then resumes writing without saying a word. Her hair screens her face, and I tuck it back behind her ear so I can see her cheek.

“I don’t think that will bruise,” I murmur, half to myself, letting my fingers trace the reddened skin.

“I’m fine,” she says, the pen not pausing for an instant. “And I don’t require a lecture.”

“Why on earth would I lecture you?”

“Because I talked back, and I should learn when to keep my mouth shut and then I wouldn’t get hit.”

“Is that the way it works?”

She shrugs. Won’t look at me.

“Does he hit you often?” I select my words with care, as if they are expensive items on display, and I can only afford a few.

The pen hesitates in its mad rushing, and she shakes her head so her hair falls free again in front of her face.

“Elle.” I place my hands over hers and stop the scratching of pen on paper. She is rigid beneath my touch, and when her eyes come up to meet mine, I’m relieved to see hot rebellion burning as bright as Blake’s Tyger. Greg hasn’t broken her or her beautiful, extravagant self-confidence. Not yet.

“I don’t care if he’s my father. He didn’t have the right to hit me. Not like that.”

“I agree.”

“Linda doesn’t.”

“She thinks it’s okay?”

Elle drops her eyes and slams her journal closed, holding it pressed flat between her palms. “Not exactly okay. She said sometimes being a girl sucks, but you have to be smart. And if you’re smart, and watch the signals and don’t antagonize a man, then he won’t hit you.”

“That’s what she told you?” I picture Greg’s gentle wife, so lovely and warm toward Elle, giving this advice. The image makes me shiver. “I’m not sure she’s right about that, Elle Belle.”

“It’s what you do,” Elle says.

Touché.

The world narrows down to this single moment, to the huge responsibility of selecting the right words to set my daughter straight. Grief hits me for my own beautiful self-confidence, shattered so many years ago that I can’t imagine ever putting the pieces all back together. Maybe it’s too late for me, but Elle still has a chance to stay free of this broken thinking.

“I think it’s like this,” I say, finally. “If you were really rich, some sort of gazillionaire, some thief might come and steal your money. And then maybe people would say, ‘She should have had better security. She should have put the money in a safe and hired a bodyguard.’ And maybe those things are true, or maybe not. Either way, the guy who came and stole your money is a thief and a criminal. Do you see that?”

“I guess. What does that have to do with Daddy?”

“Any man who hits a woman is like that thief.”

“You spanked me when I was little.”

“Maybe I was wrong to do that. I don’t know. You needed to learn some things, and I couldn’t think how else to teach you.”

Elle lies back on the bed, journal clasped over her chest, and peruses the ceiling as if it holds all the answers.

“And maybe Daddy is doing the same thing. Teaching me.”

God have mercy. My mother used to say that parenting classes should be mandatory before people were allowed to reproduce. She didn’t mean this to apply to herself, of course, but to the ignorant hordes whose children run wild in Walmart, pillaging candy bars and throwing tantrums. At this moment, I’m thinking there should be a mandatory university degree, which includes not only psychology but also existential philosophy.

I lie down beside my daughter and join her in staring at the ceiling. There’s a water stain in the corner, but otherwise no answers I can see.

“Does that seem true to you?” I ask, finally.

“It feels—different,” she says. Her voice catches as her rigid control finally breaks, her breath uneven with sobs she can’t suppress.

I lie perfectly still, quelling the need to hold her. She doesn’t want that, doesn’t need that, and this conversation is so not about what I need.

“And how does it feel?” I ask her, or the ceiling, or maybe the universe.

“Not good,” she says, and I think that’s all I’m going to get. She’s only twelve, for all her precocity and adult behavior. But then, as usual, she surprises me. “It makes me feel like . . . gum. Old parking lot gum. On a shoe. Inconvenient. Annoying. Disgust—”

She can’t finish the word, crying now in earnest, and I have to work hard to translate what spills out of her, distorted by her weeping.

“What’s wrong with me? He didn’t used to look at me like that.”

I roll toward her and put a hand on her shoulder. She buries her soaking face in my chest and clenches her hands in my shirt. I stroke her back, slow and steady, and rock her, until the weeping eases.

“Oh, sweetheart. Nothing is wrong with you.”

Elle pulls away a little to blow her nose, then shoots the crumpled tissue at the waste basket, overhand. It falls short by six inches, a crumpled wad of snot and failure. Not one to accept defeat, she lobs the second tissue, and this time it’s a slam dunk.