"Quiet, ssh; he'll go away."
I looked at this boy. Who was he? There were three small pimples on his chin. What was he talking about? What was I doing here? We were inside a toilet stall. I was sitting on his lap. He was on the toilet seat. His pants lay below his knees.
"Hey man, come on, hurry up with her, willya?"
My lover started grinning at what his pal outside the stall had said. He pumped and pumped away inside me, that awkward position, trying to finish, trying to bring himself off, get it over with so he could go back to the class we were both missing.
I was my daughter Freya. Quiet, dull Freya, who covered her bedroom walls with pictures of kittens and read seven-hundred-page books with titles like Love's Flame and Fury. She received average grades in school and let her sister do most of the talking and arguing. She liked to take care of Gerald. She baked him cakes and fed them to him in slow forkfuls.
She was having sex on a high school toilet with a boy who was hurrying to finish so he could sneak back to class with his friend who waited on the other side of the stall door.
I was her. I could feel the boy, smell his heat and ugly cologne. The zipper on his pants cut into me.
"O.K., O.K., O.K!" Coming, he flung his head back too hard and banged it against the wall. "Damn! Oh, yeah, 'nice. Damn that hurt! Thanks, Freebie; that was good." Rubbing his head with one hand, he pushed me off gently with the other. I hovered above him on bended, quivering knees. I wanted him to say something else. Hadn't I come out here with him in the middle of my favorite class? Something nice I could hold to me when he was gone. But he was too busy pulling himself together.
"Come on, Dipwad! Five minutes left to class!"
"Right!'" He zipped up quickly and reached behind me to open the door. "Seeya, Freebie. Thanks for the Freebie."
His friend outside tipped his head around the door, checked me out, and said in a loud, long falsetto, "FREEEEEEEEBIE!' The two of them snickered and were gone. I knew I should return to class, too, but, with five minutes left, what was the point? I'd use paper towels to clean off my legs, check my makeup in the mirror, and be looking O.K. again before the bell rang and anyone might see me walking out of the men's room.
I did that once when I was in high school. But the guy didn't come. We were both too scared."
Because my eyes were closed, I only heard Annette's voice and felt when she pulled the notebook out of my hands.
"Hey, don't worry, be happy! That's all you get. You can open your eyes – you're back home."
She was squatting down in front of me, close by. Unsmiling, but I could tell she was pleased.
"Was that really Freya? Did she do that?"
"Frequently. Touch this notebook again, and you'll see many things she did. She had two nicknames in high school. 'Freebie,' as in, it's free for anyone who wants it. And 'Tunnel.' 'The Silver Tunnel.' I have something else for you that I found."
"I don't want it! Go away!"
"Oh no, you have to have it, Perlesser. There's the rules. You told me the truth; now I tell you. Why do you think she brought me back? I'm your Medusa! I tell you nothin' but the truth, and the whole truth about your life. Remember how Beenie started finding things here? I found more."
"Beenie's not evil!"
"This isn't evil; this is the facts. I'm showing you your truth. What others thought of you, what really happened when you weren't looking …. You like telling it to other people. Here's some for you. Remember what Norah said: "You don't have to approve of me, Dad."
"You don't know Norah!"
"No, but I know the truth. Here's treasure number two, Dad. Remember this? He loved these."
She held something out, but I was so confused that I didn't realize what it was at first.
"It's a bagel! Don't you remember how Gerald loved them? Used to walk around the house with one in his mouth? In the good old days, that is. Before you so thoughtfully shipped him away to the loony bin."
When I didn't take it, she tossed it into my lap. I didn't want it. It felt heavy. A piece of bread.
The moment it touched me, I saw the world through his eyes. Through the eyes of Gerald/child/man/madman/animal. Colors roared and whispered. They had voices. Loud – everything was screamingly louder. Chairs weren't chairs anymore, because I didn't understand what they were. Smells – the smallest nothing smell was an explosion a hundred times what I knew, good and bad. Chemicals, flowers, the bugs in the ground, breakfast dishes stewing in the sink. Things. I smelled them all.
My mouth. There was something in my mouth, and I liked it. I hummed around it. It was nice against my teeth. Soft.
I walked around wherever I could go. There were people sometimes. They smelled good too. Sometimes they touched me or said things at me or pushed me to be in a place or not in a place. If I didn't like the place, I'd yell. O.K., O.K., OK., they'd say. O.K.
Everything was O.K. and tasted good, and I smelled the world and heard the people making noise. And then there was a BANG, and he came in, and I fell on the floor and yelled because here he was. He hurts me. He yells at me. He takes my arm and pulls it and yells at me. I hate him. I hate him. I hit him. I will hit and hit. That big thing will hurt. Pick it up and hit him, and he'll fall down. He is bad. Sometimes he's soft and puts me under his arm, but he's bad. The others say things to him, but they are scared, too. He yells at them, too. He goes into the room and BAMS! the door. When he's gone, people talk again and are nice. He is bad. I hate. Bad. Hate. Bad. BAM.
"Stop it!"
I don't understand.
"Stop it, Annette! Take it away from him this minute."
They yell. I don't understand. The white one comes to me and takes away my mouth thing.
I came to again in my study and understood. For the last minutes, I knew the world through my son's hideously shattered perception. The world through broken glass, fragments of beauty and terror and mystery that exceed all bounds. Disturbing beyond any bounds, truly Hell on earth, was one simple realization: my retarded son hated me. Of all the bizarre bits, scraps, slivers, pieces of our world he could grasp, the only thing he consciously knew was that he hated me. His only truth, the only genuine clearness he knew. I was bad. He wanted me dead.
"Get out of here. Go back to my place and wait for me."
"You told me to clean their house!"
"Annette, go back!"
I sat on the floor blinking, a survivor of my own life. I watched the two of them bellow at each other. The gray woman and the young one who might have been her daughter.
"Why don't you let me finish? Let me have him! He deserves it!"
"Get out, Annette. I am not going to tell you again!"
My son. His mind of stone, or air, clouds you would fall right through to the ground, but he knew how to despise me. Wanted me dead. Was I that bad? Had I been that evil?
"To him, you were, but he doesn't understand things too good, Scott. Come on; let me help you up."
I had no energy. It was fine to be sitting on the floor. I must have fallen there. I wouldn't let her pull me. Annette left the room, screaming 'ASSHOLE!' And I was an asshole. I was a miserable beast.
"He hates me. He's capable of doing that. It's astonishing. We thought he had no clear idea of anything. But he's clear enough to hate me."