In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [94]
The week before graduation, I stood in front of my father, waiting as he considered the request I had just made of him.
A friend’s parents owned a summer house on Coeur d’Alene Lake and had invited our class to come for a graduation party. Everyone was going, including my new boyfriend, John, a 230-pound running-back and leading scorer on the football team, who did not attend our church.
I explained carefully, trying to control the tremor in my voice: I would not drink, of course, I never did, the parents would be there, it wasn’t really a party, more of a supervised camping trip, boys on one floor, girls on the other. I’d gotten straight A’s on my report card and hadn’t missed curfew for months. Surely he could trust me.
He considered his plate for a moment, then said, “Let me think about it.”
Three days later, he said no.
“Why not?” All movement in the house ceased. Even the kitchen was silent, my mother as paralyzed by dread as I was.
My father hadn’t been home long, settled into his recliner with a plate of biscuits and gravy, two strips of bacon and a tumbler of milk. His socks hung off the ends of his feet like deflated balloons.
His mouth continued to work its bite of biscuit, but a twitch had gone through his shoulders. He settled them with a slight shift of his back and looked at me without raising his head.
“Because I said so.”
The arbitrariness of his answer made me furious, but I could not risk showing my anger. I opened my mouth but nothing came out. Nothing I could say would change his mind now. He kept looking at me, sucking the bacon from his teeth, his fork poised above his plate and dripping white gravy.
Fighting back tears, I ran to my room, nearly knocking my mother over. She was standing in the hall, and it was her I wanted to scream at. How could she cower there, eavesdropping, folding the same towel again and again, more of a child than I was? Why wouldn’t she defend me, help me?
That day at school, while the other girls talked about what clothes they would bring, who would bunk with whom, I seethed. He was making me a freak again, someone strange, shackled like an animal. John listened while I cried, comforting me against his hard chest. I told him to go anyway, but all I could think of were my friends around the campfire, laughing and listening to the slow lap of water, John there with his strong arms around someone, but not me.
There’s no reason, it’s not fair, I thought again and again. More than anything, I wished my father would talk to me. Other parents discussed things with their kids, actually talked about decisions. Here, I could perceive no way in which my feelings mattered. Here, it was all yes or no. My sense of injustice gave me courage. I’d ask one more time. Surely he’d see how badly I wanted to go, how harmless a thing it was.
When I told my mother of my plans, she shook her head. “I wouldn’t, Kim. You know your father.” The consternation in her voice made me even more determined. To be a grown woman and live in a house with fear as the ruling principle, to be afraid of waking your husband’s wrath … I had never seen my father enraged, yet there was some danger that lurked beneath his calm exterior, and we were all subject to it. “As long as you live in my house,” he had told me, “you will abide by my authority.” That authority included the physical punishment meted out during my childhood, and certainly I feared the power of his hand. He no longer whipped me, yet I still quivered whenever I caused his anger to rise. It wasn’t the discipline that frightened me: even as a girl I had learned to grit my teeth and not cry when a parent’s belt or switch or open palm blistered my backside. I could survive being grounded or having privileges taken away. What I could not bear was being made mute by tyranny, it was my own anger welling beneath the surface that threatened to consume me.
The morning of graduation, I once again stood before my father, half-regretting my decision, nearly deaf with the pounding in my ears. I focused on