Worried about my parents not loving me! And this woman is descended from slaves . . .

  Creasing her forehead Sarabeth said carefully: “Vi’let, why are you living with your aunt? Why aren’t you living with your family in South Niagara?”

  This was the question I’d dreaded. But I had a reply prepared: “Because there wasn’t room for me there—in that house.”

  “Not room for you? How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

  “Six brothers and sisters. And my grandfather lived with us. But they don’t all live at home now . . . “My voice trailed off, Sarabeth was looking at me with such frank puzzlement.

  “How is your momma, Vi’let? You still have your momma?”

  “Yes.”

  “You close to your momma?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “You got sisters, you said?”

  “Two sisters.”

  “Older or younger or—?”

  “Both older.”

  “You get along OK with them, do you?”

  “Yes I do! When I see them.”

  A sinking cadence in when I see them that alerted Sarabeth to the possibility of a wrongness.

  Discreetly then, Sarabeth ceased her interrogation. Released me from the intensity of her sympathy. Relief flooded through me but also disappointment, regret.

  Soon, Sarabeth fell asleep. Her breathing was audible, comforting. Beside her I stared out the window at the countryside beyond the Thruway. Now that there was no one to witness, tears welled in my eyes and spilled onto my cheeks. No idea why.

  Delayed by an accident on the Thruway the Greyhound bus arrived in South Niagara thirty-five minutes late.

  In a state of anxiety I ran most of the two miles from the bus station to St. Matthew’s church at the intersection of Bryant Avenue and Lock Street my backpack thudding between my shoulder blades. And when I arrived breathless and sweating the tall front doors were shut and inside a solemn high mass had begun for the repose of the soul of Joseph Gabriel Kerrigan (1908–1997).

  Wasn’t sure that I’d even known my grandfather’s middle name: Gabriel.

  Printed on the Sacred Heart of Jesus prayer cards, for mourners at the mass to take home with them in memorium.

  A beautiful name, I thought. And this too was strange: any sort of beauty accruing to my sneering grandfather.

  At the altar, a casket banked with white lilies. Grandpa would’ve laughed in derision, kicked the flowers.

  God damn you all to hell.

  The interior of St. Matthew’s was more dimly lighted than I recalled. And more sparsely occupied than I’d ever seen it. Mourners were in only three pews at the very front and none of these was filled.

  From the rear of the church I couldn’t see the priest clearly—he didn’t resemble Father Greavy. He was older, stooped. His voice was rapid and singsong and nasal and the altar boys’ mumbled responses were near-inaudible. How annoyed my grandfather would have been, a solemn high mass being said for him. Like many—male—Irish Catholics of his generation he’d come to despise the Church. He’d known about “pervert priests” long before the media exposed them. He’d refused to attend mass for decades since my grandmother died and he’d had no way of avoiding a church funeral.

  I strained to see: my parents seated in the first pew. Just the backs of their heads I saw yet I recognized them, with a sick, sinking sensation, at once.

  They were seated with my grandfather’s family—most of them older, white-haired. But there was Miriam, and Katie . . . Rick? Les?

  Chilling to me, to see how I wasn’t among them. As if I’d never existed.

  Six years since my parents had seen me or spoken with me. That encounter at the children’s custody safe house when my mother walked out to wait for Miriam in the car had been the last time I’d seen Mom and I could not even recall clearly the last time I’d seen Daddy . . .

  Strange to continue to call them Mom, Daddy.

  In those years I’d grown taller and thinner but I had no idea if I looked very different. I had little sense of my appearance at all. My body felt disengaged and numb, transparent as our bodies in dreams. It was my instinct to shun mirrors to avoid an unpleasant jolt—Rat! Rat-face.

  Mr. Sandman had said that I was beautiful. Yet, when I dared to study my face in a mirror, to see what he’d seen, I could not find it—the math teacher’s interest in me was like a mirror reflecting light but it was a distorting and blinding light. After Mr. Sandman’s arrest I’d been shown photographs he’d (allegedly) taken of me but the girl in the photographs (sleeping, slack-mouthed, partly clothed or naked) did not look like me.

  Do you recognize this girl, Violet?

  You don’t see that this is yourself, Violet?

  Possibly it had been a trick. I did not trust the therapist, as I did not trust the police. Whatever I told them became their property, to be used as they wished. It was one of the great shocks of my life, how words uttered may be irretrievable, irrevocable.

  All this I would explain to my parents. Try to explain. I had never been allowed. But now, today—maybe . . .

  Seated alone in a pew at the rear of the church. Badly shivering for the church was damp and chilly. Yet, droplets of sweat like tiny ants ran down my sides inside my clothes for I’d been overheated by running. It was difficult for me to concentrate on the mass, which should have been familiar to me, the priest’s chanting of simple monosyllabic words, repeated pleas—Christ have mercy! Lord have mercy! Christ have mercy!

  The chalice was raised, incense was released. Like a bird’s sudden cry a bell rang brightly. There came a shuffling of communicants to the communion rail. I’d forgotten—of course, the funeral mass would involve communion, and I would be excluded for I was not in a state of grace, it had been more than six years since my last confession.

  No I did not believe. Not in any of it. I was seventeen!

  Telling myself that I’d never believed, really. Even as a little girl . . .

  Asking my mother what is sin and she’d said bad things you do that you should not.

  It seemed to me now that the Catholic mass was a ceremony of begging, essentially. Humankind on its knees begging God for—what, exactly?

  There came a shuffling of communicants to the communion rail. Among the stooped and elderly was my mother, clasped hands before her. Was I the only observer in the church to recognize the rage in my mother’s body? In the very set of her shoulders, the bow of her head? Passing by the shiny casket she’d have liked to pound on it with both hands, shout at the old man within.

  Hate hate hate you! Hate how my life was sucked into yours, had to wait on you like a servant.

  Hate how you commanded me. How you looked at me. Undressing me with your eyes. Filthy old man.

  As child I hadn’t known. Now I was no longer a child I understood. Daddy had forced Mom to surrender her life to the old man as she’d surrendered her life to her family when we’d been children.

  As she’d surrender her life to him.

  In the car driving to Highgate Avenue that day she’d revealed her bitterness to me—married, babies, seven days a week. But before that, she’d cleaned other people’s houses.

  Never had I heard my mother’s voice so bitter, yet so exalted in bitterness.

  Communicants were kneeling at the rail. Others shuffled forward on canes, walkers. My grandfather’s generation was elderly, unsteady on their feet. Even their children were becoming gray-haired, slow-moving. My father would have been tall, dark-haired and vigorous among them but Daddy remained sitting, would not rise to take communion. Probably, Daddy hadn’t taken communion since he and my mother were married.

  Since I’d come to live with my aunt Irma I had stopped going to church. Each Sunday Irma went faithfully to ten o’clock mass but I had accompanied her only a few times and each time I’d fallen asleep—a stupor of boredom and anxiety. Irma had had to arouse me at the end of the ceremony—Violet! Wake up! Unlike Mom my aunt hadn’t the power to coerce me into attending church with her nor could she have frightened me into believing in God and sin and the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

  You know what touching yourself is—you know . . . That’s a sin, a very bad sin, disgusting. That’s the sort of sin you must confess if you want to take communion. And remember, the priest knows when you are lying.

  Father Greavy hadn’t wanted to know when I’d told the truth. I remembered that.

  At last the solemn high mass was ending: Go in the peace of Christ.

  The stoop-shouldered priest departed flanked by altar boys in white muslin surplices. (And now I saw that yes, he was Father Greavy after all, grown older and stouter.) Mourners were moving into the aisles. Gravely they spoke together. All were Kerrigans or Kerrigan in-laws like my mother. All had known Joseph Gabriel Kerrigan though probably few had glimpsed him in recent years since he’d left Niagara Falls to live with my father. Their sorrowful faces had to be for themselves—their mortality. Not his.

  Daringly, I stood in the aisle. I could not bring myself to approach my parents but I would remain where I stood, they would have to pass by me on their way out of the church.

  And now I saw, or thought I saw, my father glancing in my direction. In gatherings like this Daddy was likely to be restless. Impatient to get away from people who yammered at him. Old age and illness had always discomforted him. Weakness in others and in himself. His sympathy for you if you were sick would quickly burn out.

  He hadn’t seen me, I thought. Not yet.

  Others came between us. Grandpa’s surviving sisters, a younger brother. Moving with care as if their bodies hurt them. Canes, walkers. Katie had said that Daddy had arranged for them to be brought to South Niagara for the funeral. Probably they were staying at the house. Distracted and anxious, Mom would have made up beds for them.

  Waiting in the aisle dry-mouthed. People were passing me, exiting the church. Did I look familiar to them? Did they recognize me? No one did more than glance at me. I saw familiar faces—friends of my father’s from work. Neighbors, relatives. My heart was beating rapidly as I anticipated my parents seeing me—confronting me—and then it would be too late to turn away . . . But there suddenly was my brother Rick, staring. Seeing me. His face registered shock. Rick was older than I recalled, his features coarser. His hair combed in a different style. And then Katie turned, and Katie saw me too. And Katie too registered shock, and a kind of chagrin. Eagerly I waited for her to smile at me, to wave at me, but Katie did not smile, and Katie did not wave at me except to make a frantic, unmistakable gesture—Not now! Not now!

  For a moment I stood stunned, unmoving. But Katie continued to gesture at me, shaking her head, frowning in alarm and exasperation—Go away! Go away! This is not the right time, you are not wanted here.

  Blindly I turned away. Blindly stumbling from the church.

  Such a coward! Fled.

  Dirty Girl

  GRADUALLY IT HAS HAPPENED. AT FIRST YOU THOUGHT IT had to be an accident.

  Brushing against you on the stairs, grunting what sounds like Sorry!

  Pushing open the door, surprising you in the bathroom. When he has just seen you step inside . . .

  In the house in your aunt’s presence resolutely not looking at you. At mealtimes scarcely acknowledging you where once he’d been at least civil, friendly. Now stiffly polite, grimacing. Lowering his head as he eats noisily masticating his food.

  And then, when your aunt isn’t close by, openly staring at you. Tongue protruding on his lower lip. Glistening smile.

  Dirty girl. Think I don’t know you!

  Coarse flushed face. Swollen nose riddled with broken capillaries.

  Gradually, since Sandman. Since the arrest, headlines in local papers.

  Gradually over the past year your uncle (in-law) Oscar Allyn has begun to stay away from the house weekday evenings. Returning late from work. Missing meals without calling your aunt beforehand.

  Aunt Irma is acutely aware of this change. Baffled, hurt. They’ve been married for so long!—twenty-six years. Difficult for her to believe that the mild-mannered reliable/responsible husband she’d believed she knew so well is becoming a different person.

  On the stairs, in the upstairs hall as he passes, breathing audibly, not minding if you hear, trailing a hand across your back—just a touch! Small of your back—phantom touch. That look in his (heated) face. Quickness in suet-colored eyes like flies alighting on something rotted and delicious.

  In your room, on your bed, when you return after school, to your surprise/shock a magazine with a naked, big-breasted blond woman on its cover—Hot Eye Kandy.

  (Quickly you dispose of the magazine. Do not page through it to see what Oscar has marked for your particular attention.)

  Your textbooks, library books, Oscar seems to have leafed through, underlining isolated and seemingly random words in red pencil, in an indecipherable code. Even your math text.

  You have begun to be afraid of him. Your uncle (in-law) who’d been so taciturn, courteous, not very engaged with you but friendly enough, for years.

  That look of sick yearning. And resentment, anger beneath.

  The slack lips. Wet smile. Meat-smile.

  Letting his shirt fall open—exposing the rounded, fatty stomach covered in hairs. Matted hair on his chest, rosy nipples.

  Male nipples! You’d wanted to laugh wildly.

  Pushes open the bathroom door you think you have locked—(has Oscar tinkered with the lock?)—desperately you try to cover yourself with a towel—“Go away! Leave me alone! I hate you.”

  Red-faced the uncle-in-law mutters his lame apology—Sorry. Quickly backed away guessing this time he has gone too far.

  As you have gone too far, past a point of no return. Instead of shrinking away in silence loudly crying I hate you.

  AND NOW, NO TURNING BACK.

  Thinking it has to be your fault. It is you, not Oscar Allyn.

  Your fault, your aunt’s husband has so altered. This past year. Now that you are seventeen and “older”—not a child. Those months since Arnold Sandman was exposed in the papers and people had spoken of little else reacting with shock, disgust.

  That girl! How could she . . .

  Not testifying against him, what can that mean . . .

  They would not forgive you, for refusing to testify. For refusing to remember. But I did not want to remember.

  The sickness had entered you like a parasite seeking warm moist cavities in which to take hold, thrive. As Mr. Sandman seeped into you without your knowing and this not-knowing allowed his spirit to invade you utterly.

  And then one day. Irma approaches you shyly. Tight-lipped and anxious asking if Oscar has “touched” you—ever?

  Very painful for your aunt to ask such a question. Mortifying.

  Irma’s voice quavers, she has taken your (cold, unresponsive) hand in hers as you shake your head mutely No.

  No? He hasn’t touched you? Or—threatened to touch you?

  You too are embarrassed. Resentful of being questioned. It is like Ms. Herne questioning you, and the therapist, and the (female) police officers insisting they have only your best interests at heart but will use any and all evidence they can gather from you against you.

  But no. You will not tell your tremulous aunt that her husband Oscar has fallen into the habit of touching, not you, but himself, in your presence. At first this too seemed accidental, unintentional, a kind of rough scratching in the region of the groin, nothing extensive or (apparently) deliberate. As if casually but then, gradually, with unmistakable crudeness when you have no choice but to pass closely by the man. And the simpering sounds emitted from his mouth—Dirty girl! Vio-let.

  As if Sandman has passed you to him. And yet, your uncle expressed great shock and great disgust over the issue of Arnold Sandman, in his reticent way he’d been outraged. Aunt Irma wrung her hands, Aunt Irma murmured poor child, poor girl while Uncle Oscar muttered pervert! Should be locked up and the key thrown away.

  You will not tell Irma how a few days ago Oscar was standing outside your room, early in the morning, before you left for school, before he left for work. Belt undone, trousers open. So taken by surprise your eyes shifted downward shocked, dismayed, unable to look away. For you’d never glimpsed Mr. Sandman in any state of undress not even his shirt partly unbuttoned. Not even with hair lank and limp and damp falling onto his forehead. Not once.

  And then—shocked to hear yourself laugh. Wild snort of laughter.

  “Oh what’s that? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Instantly your uncle ceased the obscene motions he’d been making with his hand, touching himself. Flinched away from your jeering eyes, mortified.

  So quickly it happened. You would never have expected this: a thrill of power. That the man could be assaulted in a way particular to him, his maleness.

  You realize: the man’s power over you is to intimidate you, to make you ashamed. But your power over him is the power of laughter.

  For it is very funny. The man’s penis, the flabby thighs of the middle-aged man, the stubby flesh between the thighs intended as a kind of weapon, but limp now, slack and defeated. Laughable.

  It will happen another time. One more time. Your (drunken?) uncle standing naked and spread-legged in the bathroom doorway, where you can’t avoid seeing him, pulling at his penis, face red-flushed as a mask, lips drawn back—your instinct is to recoil, back away, instead you sneer at him as before, daring to take a step forward as if preparing to kick him in the groin.

  Again, Oscar retreats. Your laughter rises, the cry of a fierce bird. Your ridicule of the man is merciless, joyous as you call after him—Asshole! Fat prick! Hate you! Hate hate hate you!

  It is stunning, the sudden animosity between you and the adult man with whom you’ve shared a household for years. The thrill of it. Like a curtain yanked down, that has been hiding something astonishing. Once, you and your uncle-in-law had liked each other—almost. Shy with each other. Awkward. Nothing sexual in his regard for you—not at all. Almost, at times, a kind of clumsy tenderness—nothing more. In your adolescent indifference you’d scarcely noticed the man, it was your aunt Irma against whom you had to defend yourself for it was aunt Irma who’d wanted so badly for you to love her, that her love for you might not be the vain yearning of a foolish childless woman.