my father talking, “what do you know about this?” He smacks my face. It’s the first—no, the second time he’s hit me since my mother died.
Spit rushes into my mouth then, and something, adrenaline, I suppose, makes my hands shake. The spit tastes like blood at first, but then I realize, No, it’s not blood, it’s Harry. I lick my lips to taste him more completely. I blink my eyes, and his torso replaces my father’s before me. I stand up. My father’s face, heaving as if he’d overexerted himself, threatens to drive away Harry’s, so I speak before it can. “I gave a blowjob last night,” I say. “Do you understand what that means?”
My father smacks me again. “His dick was small,” I say. “I was surprised. I used to think everyone’s looked like mine. Andyours.” My father punches me now, and I do taste blood, and feel it on my chin. “He laughed when he—when he came,” I tell my father. “It was strange, but it made me feel so good, the way he laughed, the way, I thought, the way
I’d
made
him
feel good.” Again my father punches me, hard enough to knock me to the chair. I glimpse his fist as it leaves my face. It’s smeared with blood, and the blood flashes in the afternoon light. I stand up quickly, determined to keep talking. To fight back. “But the taste,” I say, “it really surprised me.” I lick my lips again, searching for it, but before I find it my father smacks me from both sides, openhanded. He grabs the skin of my cheeks and rattles my head back and forth, and when he’s finished he throws me to the floor. My head hits first, I think, I’m disoriented for a minute, it seems like I’m hearing an echo and not actual words. Shut up, I hear, but the words are so faint they lack power.
There’s something wrong with my jaw, it’s hard to talk. “Herry,” I say. “His aye was Herry, allos lie yours.” But it doesn’t sound like my father’s name, not the way I
say
it, it sounds like my father’s voice when he’s drunk. “Shut up!” he shouts. I hear him clearly now, and the words, I realize, are filled not with anger but with pain, and I close my eyes then, and my mouth. I’ve won. My father kicks me in the stomach, and vomit fills my mouth, erasing even the memory of Harry’s taste. My father kicks my head. I try to open my eyes then—for some reason I want to see him one last time—but I can’t. I wish, suddenly, I wish I’d looked
at him
while I talked to him, instead of at someone who isn’t here. It takes me a long time to think this,and when I have, I open my eyes, and my body isn’t in the same place it had been, it’s ten feet away, and it’s dark, and my father is gone. All I know is that I have to leave here, for good. The only thing I take with me is the money Harry gave me, and the knowledge of how I earned it, and what it cost.
Only later did I realize that I left before answering my fathers question. He asked me what I knew about “this”—the smack of his hand. I could have answered him. I could have said, “Not as much as my mother.” And in this case, not knowing is worth so much more than knowing.
I READ MY body now, not as often as I did then, when each bruise was a new book I couldn’t quite understand no matter how many times my hands returned to it. Sometimes I hurt myself now and I press on the spot until my mouth fills with an almost-forgotten taste, my head with almost-forgotten images. Sometimes I press my hands together. My right hand—it mostly recovered, though I still can’t close it all the way, can’t hold a pencil in it—my right hand, though weaker, is larger than my left. It’s as large as I remember my father’s hands to be. If you stick a pin in it, I hardly feel a thing, but sometimes it hurts for no reason at all. And what I want to know is, is this—my hand—is this how I am, or how my father was, or both of us, or is it just some clue, some reminder, that someone was here?
The search for
Spit rushes into my mouth then, and something, adrenaline, I suppose, makes my hands shake. The spit tastes like blood at first, but then I realize, No, it’s not blood, it’s Harry. I lick my lips to taste him more completely. I blink my eyes, and his torso replaces my father’s before me. I stand up. My father’s face, heaving as if he’d overexerted himself, threatens to drive away Harry’s, so I speak before it can. “I gave a blowjob last night,” I say. “Do you understand what that means?”
My father smacks me again. “His dick was small,” I say. “I was surprised. I used to think everyone’s looked like mine. Andyours.” My father punches me now, and I do taste blood, and feel it on my chin. “He laughed when he—when he came,” I tell my father. “It was strange, but it made me feel so good, the way he laughed, the way, I thought, the way
I’d
made
him
feel good.” Again my father punches me, hard enough to knock me to the chair. I glimpse his fist as it leaves my face. It’s smeared with blood, and the blood flashes in the afternoon light. I stand up quickly, determined to keep talking. To fight back. “But the taste,” I say, “it really surprised me.” I lick my lips again, searching for it, but before I find it my father smacks me from both sides, openhanded. He grabs the skin of my cheeks and rattles my head back and forth, and when he’s finished he throws me to the floor. My head hits first, I think, I’m disoriented for a minute, it seems like I’m hearing an echo and not actual words. Shut up, I hear, but the words are so faint they lack power.
There’s something wrong with my jaw, it’s hard to talk. “Herry,” I say. “His aye was Herry, allos lie yours.” But it doesn’t sound like my father’s name, not the way I
say
it, it sounds like my father’s voice when he’s drunk. “Shut up!” he shouts. I hear him clearly now, and the words, I realize, are filled not with anger but with pain, and I close my eyes then, and my mouth. I’ve won. My father kicks me in the stomach, and vomit fills my mouth, erasing even the memory of Harry’s taste. My father kicks my head. I try to open my eyes then—for some reason I want to see him one last time—but I can’t. I wish, suddenly, I wish I’d looked
at him
while I talked to him, instead of at someone who isn’t here. It takes me a long time to think this,and when I have, I open my eyes, and my body isn’t in the same place it had been, it’s ten feet away, and it’s dark, and my father is gone. All I know is that I have to leave here, for good. The only thing I take with me is the money Harry gave me, and the knowledge of how I earned it, and what it cost.
Only later did I realize that I left before answering my fathers question. He asked me what I knew about “this”—the smack of his hand. I could have answered him. I could have said, “Not as much as my mother.” And in this case, not knowing is worth so much more than knowing.
I READ MY body now, not as often as I did then, when each bruise was a new book I couldn’t quite understand no matter how many times my hands returned to it. Sometimes I hurt myself now and I press on the spot until my mouth fills with an almost-forgotten taste, my head with almost-forgotten images. Sometimes I press my hands together. My right hand—it mostly recovered, though I still can’t close it all the way, can’t hold a pencil in it—my right hand, though weaker, is larger than my left. It’s as large as I remember my father’s hands to be. If you stick a pin in it, I hardly feel a thing, but sometimes it hurts for no reason at all. And what I want to know is, is this—my hand—is this how I am, or how my father was, or both of us, or is it just some clue, some reminder, that someone was here?
The search for
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