Animals

were it not just things standing in for other things;

were it not just me cast in the role of idealized me;

were, growing up, our father’s portrait not above the piano no one played but him;

were it a grand piano so the portrait made more sense, but we weren’t that kind of rich;

we were another kind of rich, which is to say new money, meaning barely money compared to old;

but were we not performing old money in a brand-new-money house;

were there not portraits of other members of our family on other walls, though not portraits of us all;

when you cut your hair, he said to my brother, we’ll get your portrait done;

when you gain some weight, he said to me;

the portraits were in our house in the city, not in our house at the shore;

our house at the shore was a lesser version of our house in the city, a number of rooms, a piano, as well;

our house at the shore had no portrait above the piano, but a painted seascape that looked nothing like the sea;

our father called the seascape redundant;

he called it an obligation;

perhaps it was above the piano at our house at the shore where our portraits, mine and my brother’s, would have gone, had they ever been made;

it wasn’t a big deal to me that they weren’t;

it wasn’t until several years later that I even remembered there was talk of these portraits that never got made;

because several years later, when I was in college, I was with a guy whose portrait hung above his bed;

he said a well-known painter had painted it;

he said this well-known painter had said to him, I would love to paint your portrait;

I cared less about who painted the portrait, and more about where it hung;

because I wasn’t sure, at first, if I could be with a guy whose portrait hung above his bed;

but the guy was old money, and the rules were different;

and we got drunker, and he got his way;

this isn’t a story, besides, about my thing with this guy, which was short-lived and is, now, nearly forgotten;

this is a personal history of not knowing where to look;

the choices, my God, we have to make;

take this scene in our house at the shore, for instance;

take my parents in this scene in our house at the shore;

it was breakfast, and our father, when he was around, would molest our mother, when she was around, at the stove in the kitchen every morning;

it wasn’t every morning;

and is molest too strong a word for what he did;

is it too hard a thing to prove;

when one is so much bigger and so much smarter at seeming together;

when one is a tyrant, and the other is not;

and the other has been known to get carried away;

she has been known to carry on;

so it was our father’s hands all over our mother, early mornings, at the stove, and I was trying to eat my eggs;

it was my brother moving food around and around on his plate;

it was the clicks of his fork, the scrapes of his fork, the sound of chewing I couldn’t stand;

he never looked directly at the scene going on at the stove;

I couldn’t help but look, though I knew it wasn’t right;

and it wasn’t right to think about it later, yet I did;

it wasn’t right to play it back, our father’s hands pushing our mother at the stove, our mother saying, Stop it, saying, I’ll burn your eggs, our mother pushing our father away, pushing with her hands, her hips, our father holding tight and laughing in that way he often laughed;

like a guy getting his way again;

like the guy I wanted to be;

that dick I always wanted to be;

after he left, our father said to me and my brother, Your mother is ice;

he said, A block of ice, and positioned his hands as if holding a block of ice;

and what did we do;

we sat there I guess and laughed I guess;

but I had these dreams, I now can say, of fighting our father until there was nothing left to fight;

they weren’t sleep-dreams, really, but daydreams, and in them I could really fuck him up;

this isn’t to say I was violent;

I mean I wasn’t inherently violent beyond a baseline kind of violent;

I’d gotten up in faces before, but not with a fist up to the face;

like all those times some girl fucked the guy I liked;

and all those guys I didn’t like who checked me out;

all the locals who said such shit when I walked past;

and I was like what the fuck are you looking at;

I was like don’t you fucking look at me;

the portrait of our father above the piano was him in a collared shirt I’d never seen him wear, and the portrait of our mother was her in a flowered dress I’d never seen her wear, and the portrait of our dog, who we only owned for a short time because he’d turned, in the words of our father, wild, was him sitting up in a low-lit room I’d never seen;

the portrait of the guy I was with was him in a three-piece suit, standing against a dark wall;

when I was in his bed, it was sometimes the portrait I looked at;

this had to do with position;

I realize when I say position there are other ways to read it;

like one’s position in life and all of that;

but I just mean he wanted me positioned in a certain way, so he could watch me from below;

though this wasn’t just about watching me, I later learned, but watching his effect on me;

he would say things like, Do you like it like this, Do you like it like this, Do you like it like this;

he would say things like, Look at me baby, I said look at me baby, I said look at me;

my choices were look down at his face or look up at the portrait;

and there was something about his strained face, his red face, his working too hard to make me work hard too;

and there was something about the portrait;

so I often closed my eyes and put my mind somewhere else;

it was often somewhere in outer space;

it was orbiting the planets;

it was making shapes from stars;

it was a secret I had, my mind going out to some too cold place, some too hot place;

I admit I got off on the secret;

it wasn’t unusual, getting off on a secret;

it was the thing, I would guess, most gotten off on;

still, I made the clichéd sounds one makes;

as the headboard made its clichéd sounds;

and the bedsprings made their clichéd sounds;

as stars exploded in my mind into stars exploding into stars;

I sometimes thought of one of the locals from the shore;

he worked at the rides in the months that there were rides;

he looked like a star we liked;

like the poorest version of that star;

the girl and I would stand there staring at him;

she wanted him first, but I wanted him more;

with some guys it didn’t matter;

like my brother’s friends;

or guys who came in for a week;

with this guy, though, it was different;

our father said not to talk to the locals;

my brother was told not to let me;

Keep an eye on her, our father would say;

as if my brother’s eye on me;

as if any guy’s eye on me;

I mostly knew not to fight our father;

I mostly knew not to fight him, because our father would have fought me back;

and I knew I would have lost that fight;

this wasn’t molestation, a father fighting a daughter;

it was just a father fighting a daughter, that was all;

but our father pushing into our mother at the stove was something else;

as was our mother pushing our father away and pushing him away and pushing him away, as I would have, then, done, to any guy who came at me like that, his hands too big like that;

there was a time the eggs did burn;

another time, a skillet hit the kitchen floor;

it was just a regular pan for frying;

there’s no reason to use the word skillet, which suggests a domesticity that wasn’t our kind;

it suggests a quaintness that wasn’t our thing;

that pan hit the kitchen floor so hard;

and the egg in the pan hit everything around us;

our mother pushed our father away;

she said, I was trying to cook, said, Enough already, then he laughed that laugh, then she was pulling him in, then I had to leave the room;

on our first date, the guy and I went out to dinner;

it was an old-money place in the city;

he watched me chew my food;

he said, I love your mouth;

he had a thing, he said, for a certain mouth;

because his father, he said, had a thing for a certain mouth;

a certain mouth, said his father, was what you wanted;

I said, What does it mean, this certain mouth;

he said, What do you mean what does it mean;

he moved his chair closer to the table;

it was dark, and there was music;

the music was manipulative;

the drinks on the table were manipulative;

then there were more drinks on the table;

when he said, Let’s go, we went;

one might call this an obligation;

I might call it a disappointment;

I should call myself that disappointment;

me in the role of idealized me;

me as this girl we all want to fuck;

and were I not just a body like anyone else;

were I not just the parts of a body;

were I not just the parts of the parts;

there was a night I’d been out until late;

we looked at the guy until he looked back, and that was it;

when I got to the house later on, our father was at the door;

he was just getting in from a night, as well;

so it was like we had a secret;

we walked into the house together;

we went into our separate rooms;

I imagine both of us slept;

the next morning, we sat at the table;

it was me and my brother and our father;

our mother was at the stove;

a lot of time passed, us sitting there, waiting to be fed;

and in that time I must have thought something, but I couldn’t tell you what it was;

then our father said, Where were you last night;

and I said, Out with a friend;

and our father said, I said where;

he said, I didn’t say with whom;

now food was on the table;

my brother was chewing too hard;

I couldn’t stand the sounds he made;

and the sounds at the stove I couldn’t stand;

our mother’s always annoying sounds;

our mother frying something loudly;

our father said, Where were you last night;

and I said, Where were you;

how can I even convey the tension in that room;

me and our father staring each other down;

my brother chewing harder;

the sounds at the stove even louder;

our father standing, then me standing;

our mother saying, Enough already;

our father looking at our mother;

that animal look on his face;

that look I can’t describe;

just I’d seen it someplace else;

like on an actual animal once;

so everything went to shit;

I went after our father with both hands;

and our father went after me;

he was stronger and I knew better;

but once I started really fighting, I got totally carried away;

and once he started really fighting;

when I imagine that scene today, I imagine hair flying;

I imagine dust, then dust settling in an empty room;

but it was just my brother screaming, our mother screaming, the dog jumping up on everything he could;

it was no one knowing where to look;

it was me becoming the girl I would be for the rest of my life;

my head not even in the room;

I was orbiting the stars;

ducking everything coming toward me;

our father coming toward me;

his big hands right up in my face;

but the dog was being way too wild;

when our father kicked it, it made a sound I hear, still, to this day;

then everyone went to their rooms;

later that night, our father played the piano;

he’d memorized several songs;

none of the songs were good songs;

all of the songs were old and dumb;

sometimes he sang along to them;

sometimes he sang more than one part;

our father had no talent for singing;

he had no talent for playing the piano;

it was only a performance of talent;

but so much talent is actually only that;

on our last night together, the guy said, Baby;

but I wasn’t going to look at him;

that night, I decided to look at the portrait;

at that confident guy in his confident suit;

that confident guy staring down at me;

that confident guy getting his way;

pushing my body into a stove;

the cold of the counter against my skin;

a skillet flying across the room;

no one knowing where to look, then looking away, then looking on;

this is a personal history of not knowing what to feel;

no, this is a universal history of not knowing a fucking thing;

it turned out my brother did cut his hair;

he was expecting a portrait would be made;

he was disappointed when it was not;

but our father was on his way out by then;

he’d been overthrown by then;

we would be forced to find replacements for our tyrant;

the easiest thing we would ever do;

when the guy fell asleep, I stared at his back;

I listened to the sounds he made;

the room was getting lighter;

at some point, I stood on the bed;

I took the portrait down from the wall;

it was large, and it was heavy;

I had no plan to do anything with it;

I just wanted to look at it closer;

I wanted to see why it mattered;

or I’m lying to you because I don’t really know why I did what I did;

but the guy woke up and saw me standing;

I admit I must have looked crazy;

and it got fucking weird after that;

I mean imagine what he screamed at me;

and imagine what I screamed;

and did he watch my mouth as the words came out;

that certain mouth he loved;

a mouth that could do things others could not;

don’t make me regret telling you this;

don’t make me describe my mouth;

there are pictures of me, if you’re curious;

you can find them, if you want;

you can zoom right in on my lips;

you can imagine pressing yours to mine;

you can imagine how soft mine would be;

try to imagine how soft things could be;

then imagine how hard things could be;

I can make things incredibly hard;