When We Were Animals(2)

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s the sign of a pure spirit.”

A blinding flash startles the room, a moment of clear sight in the blindness—and a moment later a violent crack of thunder. The earth is tearing itself apart outside. I picture the ground rent with gaping fissures. And the voices, howling crazy at the sky, the thunder, the apocalyptic sundering of the world.

“What’s happening?” I say.

“Just a storm,” says my father. He is a geologist. He knows about the currents of the earth. “Must’ve taken down a power line somewhere. The electricity on the whole block is out. Nothing to worry about.”


The rain goes clattery against my windowpane. Then the voices again from outside. Feral cries. They sound not afraid, as I am, but rather celebratory—wanton, a word I am aware of.

“Who’s out there?” I say.

“Just teenagers,” my father says.

“Why are they like that?”

“That’s just the way they are.”

“Will I be like that when I grow up?”

“You? Perish the thought.” It is a pet expression of his. Perish is to outlaw, but parish is also a place for pastors. It is a magical word, and it might protect me. “You’ll be different. You’re my good girl, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” and I am his good girl.

“Will you always be my good girl?”

“Yes.”

Always is so easy to promise.

“Then there we go,” he says and brushes my hair away from my forehead with his fingertips.

The pandemonium continues outside my window, and I reach out to touch the fine, shimmering angles of the crystal candlestick. That, too, seems magic, like a wand or a gemstone that holds power in its mineral core.

“Where did it come from?” I ask.

“It’s old,” my father says. “I found it in the credenza. It was a wedding gift to your mother and me.”

Outside there are many voices at once, caterwauling in the rain. They must be running past, because I hear them grow gradually loud then quiet again. I look at the window, expecting maybe faces pressed against the glass, a smear of pale skin against the dark. Yet there is nothing to see but the hazy reflection of candle flame.

My father must see my apprehensive gaze.

He says, “Do you want me to tell you the story of our wedding?”

“Yes. Was my mother’s name Felicia Ann Steptoe?”

“It was. Until she married me, and her name became—”

“Felicia Ann Fowler.”

“That’s right.”

“And did she wear long orchid gloves on her wedding?”

“She did.”

I have heard this story many times before. It is a catechism between him and me.

“Show me the pictures,” I demand.

But he shakes his head. “It’s too dark. Tomorrow, when the sun comes up.”

“Okay,” I say.

Then I hush so he can tell the rest of the story. And he tells it, every detail the same and perfect. And he looks up to the ceiling as he tells it, as though it were a story of shadows narrated by his easy, ocean-smoothed voice.

And as he tells it, my lips form my magic word against the night—perish, parish—repeated intermittently, like the thread that quilts together many pieces of fabric, while outside the animal cries of teenagers join with the thunder to rattle the windowpanes.

*



That’s one thing. Here’s another, from even earlier.

We are playing hide-and-seek in our big house. It is a serious game, because not even the third floor is off-limits. I run from room to room, looking even in places where I know he cannot fit—under couches, behind bookcases.

I climb the steps to the third floor, out of breath but happy. I am closing in, I’m sure of it. He’s not in the bathtub, behind the shower curtain. He’s not in the guest room crouched behind the desk. But I am warm.

I open the door of another room, one we keep shut, one used mostly for storage. There is a sound coming from the closet, a low, whispery sound. I’ve found him.

I swing wide the closet door, and there he is—there he is—clutching at a dress that belonged to my mother, and choked with tears!

*



This is where I tell you that I grew up happy. Motherless, I was treated nicely in school. I was complimented on my handwriting (which remains picture-perfect to this day—many people believe I use a ruler to cross my Ts), and my diction, which inspired my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Markson, to declare that she had never seen a child so full of grace and refinement in all her years of teaching. English was my favorite subject, because I was a good reader—my father having early on in my life encouraged me in the ritual of reading together every weekend afternoon in the backyard, I in a hammock slung between two oak trees, he stretched on a deck chair beneath the shade of the slatted wooden pergola over the patio. He would, every now and then, call out, “How’s the book?”—and then I would be expected to deliver some thoughtful appraisal of whatever I was reading at the time. Positive or negative—it didn’t matter, as long as my critique was grounded in some personal, authoritative interpretation. “I’m not sure why they use farm animals as characters instead of people,” I might say. “I don’t see the advantage in it.” And he would nod, satisfied that a position had been taken one way or the other.