When We Were Animals(14)

I asked my father why it was called a breaching, and he did not know. It had just always been called that, he said.

I found nothing about it in the encyclopedia, of course, but right where the article on breaching should have been there was instead an article on breeching—which was a rite of passage for boys who grew up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was called breeching because it was the first time in their lives that the boys wore breeches, or pants. Up until that point they wore little dressing gowns. I was tickled by the idea of all those mighty men in history, like Louis XIV, growing up in dresses—I had not known such a thing occurred. Breeching happened earlier, though, between the ages of two and five. Still, it was considered a significant moment in the boys’ development into men.

So I liked thinking our breaching was related somehow to that antique practice.

Of course the difference in spelling must have been significant. I looked up breach in the dictionary. “A legal infraction.” Definitely. “A break or a rupture.” Plenty was broken, plenty ruptured. “A fissure made in a fortification.” That one stumped me for a while until it occurred to me that the civilized world, the daytime world, is a kind of fortification against nature and night and brutishness—then it made sense.

But it was the fifth definition of the word that intrigued me most. Apparently breach is also the word for what a whale does when it breaks the surface of the water and leaps into the air.

I wrote that in a box in my research notes, and I drew a picture of a whale bursting from the surface of the ocean. It seemed at odds with the other definitions, and yet at the same time not.

When I slept I dreamed of whales, huge seabound creatures, mustering their power, changing their course, diving deep and then swimming up in a straight vertical, from the dark depths of the ocean floor through the murk to where the light penetrates, up farther and farther, their bodies all muscle in the act of violating the logic of their natural home, thrusting themselves upward, crashing through the surface, feeling the unwet open air on their barnacled skin, taking flight for one tiny moment—taking flight.

*



Then it chanced to happen that my life became joined with the lives of others.

That’s how it occurs, just like that, like the passage of midnight, the hand of the clock creeping past the midpoint of twelve. The minute before midnight and the one after are practically the same, except that they are a full calendar day apart. That’s what happened to me. One day things were different.

It was in the tenth grade, and it happened, really, because of Blackhat Roy Ruggle. It was during lunch in the cafeteria, and I was sitting at the table next to Rosebush Lincoln’s when he approached her. Rosebush was in tears because earlier in the week her father had initiated divorce proceedings against her mother and had gone to live in a house the next town over, and earlier that day she had also received a C on an English paper.

“What is she crying for?” said Blackhat Roy to anyone who would listen. He was gypsy dark, with black hair that was always a little greasy. He was short, but there was an inherent ferociousness in him that you wouldn’t want to see any taller. There might have been something handsome about him if it weren’t for the nastiness.

Rosebush tried to ignore him.

“No, seriously,” Roy went on, declaiming in a loud voice that hushed those within its range. “I want to know. What is she crying for? Is she worried she won’t get into Notre Dame? And then what? What’s a Rosebush who doesn’t go to Notre Dame?”

“Stop it,” said Rosebush, hiding her face in the crook of her arm and allowing herself to be comforted by Jenny Stiles, who had the shortest hair of all the girls in school.

“Oh, wait—I get it,” said Roy. “See, the last time I got a C, the principal gave me a f*cking trophy—so I guess it’s all relative. And what she’s worried about, see—what she’s worried about is that if she gets a C, then that’s her first step to becoming like me.”

“Cut it out, Roy,” somebody else said.

“Stop it,” said Rosebush.

But he leaned in close to her.

“Take a look, Rosebush. It’s your future talking. After you fail out of school, we’ll get married and have a barrelful of kids. We’ll feed them cat food and squirrels and pray every night before we go to bed that little Festus won’t burn down the neighbor’s house. My father’s hit the road, so you won’t have to deal with him getting drunk and groping you at the wedding. Hey, wait a minute—do you think that’s why your dad left? Shame? Do you think he’ll give a toast at our wedding?”


“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” cried Rosebush. She stood suddenly, escaped the grasp of Jenny Stiles, and began beating her little fists against Blackhat Roy, who backed away slowly, hands in the air to show he was not fighting back—a cruel, bemused expression on his face.

Then, as I watched, others intervened. Petey Meechum was there first, pushing himself between Rosebush and Roy.

“Stop!” he said to Roy. “Leave her alone, *.”

There was a sudden stillness as everyone waited for Roy to explain himself. He looked around, and a sourness crept into his face. What he said was this:

“Cunt.”

That was another magic word, I realized that day, because of the power it had over people. They cringed as if struck, as if that single syllable were a weapon more powerful than teeth or fists. It was a dangerous word.