to bed tired out and then just as you think you’re falling asleep you’re wide awake. Isn’t that the way?”
I said yes.
I knew now that he had not heard me getting up and walking around on just this one night. The person whose livestock was on the premises, whose earnings such as they were lay all close by, who kept a handgun in his desk drawer, was certainly going to stir at the slightest creeping on the stairs and the easiest turning of a knob.
I am not sure what conversation he meant to follow then, as regards my being awake. He had declared such wakefulness to be a nuisance. Was that to be all? I certainly did not intend to tell him more. If he had given the slightest intimation that he knew there was more, if he’d even hinted that he had come here intending to hear it, I don’t think he’d have got anything out of me at all. I had to break the silence out of my own will, saying that I could not sleep. I had to get out of bed and walk.
Why was that?
I had dreams.
I don’t know if he asked me, were those bad dreams?
We could take that for granted, I think.
He let me wait to go on, he didn’t ask anything. I meant to back off but I kept talking. The truth was told with only the slightest modification.
When I spoke of my little sister, I said that I was afraid I would hurt her. I believed that he would know what I meant. Kill. Not hurt. Kill, and for no reason. None at all. A possession.
There was no satisfaction, really, once I had got that out. I had to say it then. Kill her.
Now I could not unsay it, I could not go back to the person I had been before.
My father had heard it. He had heard that I thought myself capable—for no reason, capable—of strangling my little sister in her sleep. He said, “Well.”
Then he said not to worry. He said, “People have those kinds of thoughts sometimes.”
He said this quite seriously but without any sort of alarm or jumpy surprise. People have these kinds of thoughts or fears if you like, but there’s no real worry about it, no more than a dream. Probably to do with the ether.
He did not say, specifically, that I was in no danger of doing any such thing. He seemed more to be taking it for granted that such a thing could not happen. An effect of the ether, he said. No more sense than a dream. It could not happen, in the way that a meteor could not hit our house (of course it could, but the likelihood of it doing so put it in the category of couldn’t).
He did not blame me, though, for thinking of it.
There were other things he could have said. He could have questioned me further about my attitude to my little sister or my dissatisfactions with my life in general. If this were happening today, he might have made an appointment for me to see a psychiatrist. (I think that is what I might have done, a generation and an income further on.)
The fact is that what he did worked as well. It set me down, but without either mockery or alarm, in the world we were living in.
If you live long enough as a parent, you discover that you have made mistakes you didn’t bother to know about as well as the ones you do know about, all too well. You are somewhat humbled at heart, sometimes disgusted with yourself. I don’t think my father felt anything like this. I do know that if I had ever taxed him, he might have said something about liking or lumping it. The encounters I had as a child with his belt or the razor strop. (Why do I say encounters? It’s to show I’m not a howling sissy anymore, I can make light.) Those strappings, then, would have stayed in his mind, if they stayed at all, as no more than quite adequate curbing of a mouthy child’s imagining that she could rule the roost.
“You thought you were too smart” was what he might have given as his reason, and indeed one heard that often in those times. Not always referring to myself. But a number of times, it did.
However, on that breaking morning he gave me just what I needed to hear and what I
I said yes.
I knew now that he had not heard me getting up and walking around on just this one night. The person whose livestock was on the premises, whose earnings such as they were lay all close by, who kept a handgun in his desk drawer, was certainly going to stir at the slightest creeping on the stairs and the easiest turning of a knob.
I am not sure what conversation he meant to follow then, as regards my being awake. He had declared such wakefulness to be a nuisance. Was that to be all? I certainly did not intend to tell him more. If he had given the slightest intimation that he knew there was more, if he’d even hinted that he had come here intending to hear it, I don’t think he’d have got anything out of me at all. I had to break the silence out of my own will, saying that I could not sleep. I had to get out of bed and walk.
Why was that?
I had dreams.
I don’t know if he asked me, were those bad dreams?
We could take that for granted, I think.
He let me wait to go on, he didn’t ask anything. I meant to back off but I kept talking. The truth was told with only the slightest modification.
When I spoke of my little sister, I said that I was afraid I would hurt her. I believed that he would know what I meant. Kill. Not hurt. Kill, and for no reason. None at all. A possession.
There was no satisfaction, really, once I had got that out. I had to say it then. Kill her.
Now I could not unsay it, I could not go back to the person I had been before.
My father had heard it. He had heard that I thought myself capable—for no reason, capable—of strangling my little sister in her sleep. He said, “Well.”
Then he said not to worry. He said, “People have those kinds of thoughts sometimes.”
He said this quite seriously but without any sort of alarm or jumpy surprise. People have these kinds of thoughts or fears if you like, but there’s no real worry about it, no more than a dream. Probably to do with the ether.
He did not say, specifically, that I was in no danger of doing any such thing. He seemed more to be taking it for granted that such a thing could not happen. An effect of the ether, he said. No more sense than a dream. It could not happen, in the way that a meteor could not hit our house (of course it could, but the likelihood of it doing so put it in the category of couldn’t).
He did not blame me, though, for thinking of it.
There were other things he could have said. He could have questioned me further about my attitude to my little sister or my dissatisfactions with my life in general. If this were happening today, he might have made an appointment for me to see a psychiatrist. (I think that is what I might have done, a generation and an income further on.)
The fact is that what he did worked as well. It set me down, but without either mockery or alarm, in the world we were living in.
If you live long enough as a parent, you discover that you have made mistakes you didn’t bother to know about as well as the ones you do know about, all too well. You are somewhat humbled at heart, sometimes disgusted with yourself. I don’t think my father felt anything like this. I do know that if I had ever taxed him, he might have said something about liking or lumping it. The encounters I had as a child with his belt or the razor strop. (Why do I say encounters? It’s to show I’m not a howling sissy anymore, I can make light.) Those strappings, then, would have stayed in his mind, if they stayed at all, as no more than quite adequate curbing of a mouthy child’s imagining that she could rule the roost.
“You thought you were too smart” was what he might have given as his reason, and indeed one heard that often in those times. Not always referring to myself. But a number of times, it did.
However, on that breaking morning he gave me just what I needed to hear and what I
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