By the Light of My Father's Smile (15 page)

How had I lost out? Was it, as Susannah had once said to me, that I had hardened my heart so successfully it no longer functioned, no matter how I might have wanted it to? And is this what happened when someone broke your heart and you insisted on leaving it that way, just to punish them?

The doctor came into the room while I was thinking of Susannah.

How are you feeling, Ms. Robinson? he asked, glancing at my chart.

He looked like a child playing doctor.

You should at least draw on a mustache, I said.

What? he asked.

You look so young, I said.

I'm thirty, he said. Old enough to know what to do.

Be serious, I said.

He looked at me quizzically.

Nobody's ever old enough to know what to do.

He laughed.

How's my sister? I asked.

Well, you didn't quite bite her arm off, he said. But you reached the bone. I've never seen anything like it, he said.

Mad Dog behavior, I said.

The other Ms. Robinson, your sister, explained that you were under stress, that you'd just lost a loved one.

Manuelito. I had not been thinking of him. Now I thought about the way his back glistened in the water when we played in
the water of our mountains' shallow streams. The elegant neatness of his waist. His long, mostly straight, slightly wavy hair. His honest eyes. Sweet nose. White teeth. This fucking country had blown all of that up, I thought. Then stuck it back together with a couple of cheap medals and kicked it out into the street.
Motherfuckers.

I began to wail.

The nurse will be bringing your medication, said the doctor, heading rapidly for the door. He was obviously one of those Western medical wonders who could only deal with the bit of patient flesh he was poking at and couldn't function if the whole thing started to cry.

Along with the nurse came Susannah, her face horribly bruised, her arm in a sling.

How you doin'? she asked.

Did I give you that black eye? I asked.

Yes, she said. And you bit my arm right through to the bone.

I didn't mean to do it, I said.

I didn't think you did. Well, you didn't strangle me to death. I'm thankful.

Remember how they used to write stories about black people who suddenly went nuts and killed somebody, how they always described it as “going berserk”? Well, we have now witnessed firsthand how that could happen.

I'd never heard anyone scream like you did, said Susannah. It was a scream from hell.

It felt like that, I said. Like it had been building up in me for a thousand years. I couldn't stand it that you had been loved and I had not.

Manuelito loved you, said my sister, sighing.

That is why I was screaming, really, I said. I knew what being loved felt like, and then because of some religious bullshit I didn't
even subscribe to, enforced by my own father, who didn't really believe it either, I didn't have it in my life anymore.

We were leaving the mountains, said Susannah; you would have lost Manuelito anyway.

Little sister, I said, don't make me bite your other arm.

Right, she said. That's stupid.

You know what I think? I asked.

What? she said.

I think that some things you don't heal from. Not in this lifetime, anyway.

We could try to help each other heal, said Susannah. We could heal each other.

How would we do that? I asked. I'm set in my ways already. Married to my habits. The biggest habit I have is despising the man who gave me life.

That's easy, said Susannah. Try to imagine the father I love, why I love him. Why Mama loved him. Why you loved him before he humiliated you. Don't pin him to that one moment. He was a human being, like you and me. You just strangled me and took a plug out of my arm, but now you're lying there looking like you're sorry. Are you?

I thought about it.

Come on, said Susannah, don't be such a witch. Aren't you sorry?

Yes, I said.

I rest my case.

It's not the same, I said.

Of course it is, she said.

I was a child.

Maggie, please, just forgive the son of a bitch.

This made me laugh.

Ms. Robinson, said my youthful doctor, the important thing is that you must lose weight.

But my memories are so heavy, Doctor, I said.

It isn't impossible, said my sister, sitting at the foot of my bed. I am coming home with you. We'll start your new life together.

Susannah, I said, it is your goodness that nauseates me.

She smiled.

Too bad, Sis. She turned to the doctor. How much weight should she lose?

A couple of hundred pounds would make her feel a lot better, he said. Her furniture would be a lot happier too.

Very amusing, I said. What neither of you realizes, I continued, is that fatness serves a purpose. When I am fat I feel powerful, as if I could not possibly need anything more.

Yes, said Susannah, and you like to butt people out of your way on the street.

What would I have to eat to lose two hundred pounds? I mused.

Oh, lots of things, said the skinny young doctor. My wife cooks stuff for us that has almost no fat.

What do you cook for her? I asked.

I don't cook, he said.

Why's she stuck with you?

Don't pay her any mind, Doctor, said Susannah, smiling her toothpaste-ad smile, showing her perfect little teeth. She was born to bitch.

And bitch I did, the whole week she stayed with me, talking about carrots and colonics. As soon as she left I threw out the juicer she'd bought and hauled my first big marbled steak out of the freezer, mashed my first mound of buttery potatoes. Had my first alcoholic drink. It was as if my memories were lodged in my cells, and needed to be fed. If I lost weight perhaps my memories of Manuelito and my anger at my father would fade away. I felt so abandoned already, I did not want them to go.

My sister sleeps around, I said to her lover, Pauline.

She looked surprised.

She always has, I said, though when we were growing up I never would have suspected she even liked sex. But she does.

Pauline shrugged. Bad women aren't the only women who enjoy sex. Good women have been known to get down. But your sister is completely loyal to whoever she's in love with. As monogamous as a priest.

Being married to the church would suit her just about as well as it appears to suit those imposters, I said.

I'm telling you, priests play around more than your sister does.

My father considered me a whore, I said. But I have had only one man my whole life. I never cheated on him.

I wouldn't say that, said Pauline.

What do you mean?

I'd say you cheated, with food.

I turned my face away.

Your sister falls in love. Period. I think it is with courage, with guts, which she fears she lacks, that she falls in love. It could be with anyone. She does not appear to look first at the genital area. Loving comes before that, not after. She is faithful to the person she's with. Utterly. If she were not, I would not be with her.

How do you know? That she is faithful? I asked.

Pauline chuckled. I have faith, she said.

Our father loved her, I said; he never loved me.

He must have been very confused, she said.

Her hair was short, spiky, and silver. Her eyes candid and dark.

Her slender, curvaceous body, in black jeans and a crimson shirt, ageless and attractive. I could see why my sister was in love with her.

She was a woman who would not let you evade the issue. Nor would she evade it herself.

I felt a familiar flash of envy for Susannah. Such a Goody Two-shoes all her life; to end up with this spunky creature!

My own father was confused, Pauline said with a sigh. Almost with languor. My father was very tired and confused. He had to pretend he wanted all ten of the children who kept him chained to a table in a meatpacking plant.

Why did he and your mother have so many? I asked.

They thought it was the Christian thing to do, she said. They thought if they did anything to stop the births, God would judge them harshly. Though how much more harshly he could judge them than to make them live with ten children in a three-bedroom apartment, I can't imagine.

Is he still alive? Do you see him?

Oh, yes, said Pauline. He is someone now whom I never knew before. Someone who grieves that his children grew up without
knowing who he really was. Someone who wants to make amends. Someone who's fun, actually. Old and cute. You know the type.

Too well, I said. Bastards.

You have to open your heart to them, eventually, she said. No matter what they've done.

I'll die first, I said.

You might, she said, looking at me hard.

My mother died of bearing children, I said to Susannah.

This is the part of my hard-luck story that is hardest for her to hear. It is exactly as it is with fairy tales. The saddest part is always when the mother dies, which she tends to do early in the story. We are always grateful that she goes early, because it is so hard to lose her; it is far better to have her death behind us rather than in front of us, as we trudge off to meet our destiny. But I had already tired of waiting for things to change in our house, and trudged off to meet my destiny before my mother died. I don't know if she ever forgave me; my siblings have sworn she did not. I loved her with all my daughter's heart; hearing that she died blaming me for abandoning her caused me to suffer.

She began to hate her body, I said to Susannah. It was too fecund by half. Five children would have left her room to move around. She could eventually have caught her breath. With ten this was impossible.

Hard to imagine, even, said Susannah.

Yes. It was obvious that they still slept together, I said, because there was always a baby on the way. But the first time I had sex with a woman, the first time I enjoyed it or could even fathom what the big deal was about sex, I wondered if my mother had ever truly enjoyed herself. Was ever able to relax into it, so to speak, without the worry about another mouth to feed? It would kill me to know she never actually enjoyed it, I said.

But that's possible, said Susannah. Women all over the world have been brainwashed to think sex is not meant to be pleasurable to them, only to the men fucking them. You're supposed to sort of steal your pleasure from theirs. Fucked, isn't it?

Susannah was so ladylike and proper, so elegantly dressed in just the right matching tones, the right fabrics for the season, the right shoes. She knew how to set a perfect table, knew where each knife and tiny spoon went. It was always a shock to hear her curse. Which she did with the same insouciance with which she asked the florist for a stunning fucking bouquet.

That's what Gena said. The woman who tried to help me find an abortionist. And who became my lover after the baby was born. She was disgusted that so many women thought sex was just for the man.

Ah, Gena, said Susannah, pulling her silk scarf across her nose.

She was my teacher. She thought I had potential. She tried to help me by letting me study at her house. Right away we talked a lot about sex, because I was almost completely ignorant, though pregnant as anything. Talking about it, hearing her tell why it mattered to her, why her children reminded her of two very special nights, got me interested.

You really didn't know, she said.

How could I know? I knew the mechanics, sure, but not the wonderful blossoming that good loving means. The way you open, and flow, and feel joined to, and at peace with life. To Winston sex was a game he was playing, on me, and that was just fine with him.

Ugh, said Susannah. Thank goodness I never had a lover like that. Male or female.

You're lucky, I said. It leaves you feeling like shit.

And Gena was not, how shall we say, a Sister of the Yam?