The thing was, however, I did not know how to ride a bike. Like at all. Scared of most things that required me to “do” something besides swim, I’d even forsaken trikes, their threewheeling menace not something I’d ever mastered. With trikes I’d flat foot the thing along, my failure disgusting my father enough to hide it away in the garage. So when I came outside to touch the hot pink ride, beautiful as she was, all I felt was terror. When my father said, “It’s time to learn to ride a bike,” my legs shook and my throat hurt.
He meant right then. He meant for me to get on and try right that second.
My mother stood in the doorway saying “Mike, she doesn’t know howah” in her southern drawl, but my father meant business.
“C’mon,” he said, and wheeled the bike around to face the street.
I felt the immediate sting of tears but followed anyway. Between terror and drawing his rage, I chose terror.
My father kicked up the kickstand and held the handlebars and told me to get on. I did. He pushed us forward slowly and told me to put my feet on the pedals. But the pedals seemed like giant befuddlements to me, and they were going around in a way I couldn’t understand, so my feet sort of interrupted them now and again like human clubs.
“Goddamn it, I said put your feet on the pedals.”
Fear gripped my little chest, but fear of his anger again won. I put my feet on the pedals and tried to follow them round and round, looking straight down.
Still holding the handlebars, and walking us forward, my father said, “Now look up and put your hands on the handle — bars. I put my hands near his — they looked like a doll’s hands next to the meat of a father’s. “I said look up, goddamn it, if you don’t look where you are going you are going to crash.”
Training wheels. Weren’t there such a thing? Hadn’t I seen them?
I put my hands on the handlebars. I looked up. My feet felt retarded — like heavy rocks going up and down. Then he let go of the handlebars and held on to the back of the bike. Briefly I wobbled and let go and tipped over. I fell knee first downward but he grabbed me by my shirt and lifted me upward. “Don’t cry, for christ’s sake,” he said. “You better not cry.”
Not crying, I could barely breathe.
We went through this routine up and down the street until the sun lowered. I remember thanking god for lowering the sun. Soon it would be dark, it would be dinner time, my mother would put plates out. I knew how to eat dinner.
But that was not what my father wanted.
On a pass close to the house, he turned me around and said, “Now we’ll try the hill.”
The hill was up the block from our cul-de-sac. I don’t have any idea what the true grade was — but in the car coming home from swim practice my mother used the brakes. At the top of the hill was my beloved vacant lot. At the bottom was the right turn you had to make to get to our house.
My father had to push me up the hill. “Would you please pedal? For christ’s sake.”
When I say I thought I might vomit, I want to you understand. The vomit I was pretty sure I was about to spew felt like if it happened, my entire body would simply go inside out. That I’d puke so hard I’d puke my self. To this day I don’t know why I wasn’t crying at that point. I was silent. Just the breath of a girl pedaling up a hill.
At the top of the hill he turned me around on my beautiful bike and held the back of the seat. I remember shaking and staring down what looked pretty much like that moment on a roller coaster before the dive.
He said, “You back pedal to break it — little by little — as you pickup speed.”
He said, “Down at the bottom you break enough to make a turn, and you turn. Left.”
Incomprehensibly few words to me a girl.
Then I did the unthinkable. “Daddy, I can’t do it.”
My bottom lip kid quivering.
“You sure as hell can,” he said, and pushed.
Psychedelic drugs put you in realms where language fails to describe emotion. I know this as an adult. What you think, what you feel, what happens to your body — your head, your arms and legs, your hands — goes into an alien dream. Your body disembodies. Your mind folds inward to the undiscovered geography of the brain. That’s the best way I can describe the shape I was in when he pushed me down that hill. The endorphins of my terror induced an altered state.
At first I gripped the handlebars so hard my palms stung. I screamed all the way down. I backpedaled but it didn’t seem to me like anything was slowing down. The possibility of stopping seemed like a lie. The possibility of turning right seemed like trying to ride to China.
Wind on my face my palms sting my knees hurt pressing backwards speed and speedspeedspeedspeed holding my breath and my skin tingling like it does up in trees terrible spiders crawling my skin like up high at the grand canyon my head too hot turnturnturnturnturn I am turning I am braking I can’t feel my feet I can’t feel my legs I can’t feel my arms I can’t feel my hands my head my heart my father’s voice yelling good girl my father running down the hill my father who did this who pushed me my eyes closing my limbs going limp my letting go me letting go so sleepy so light floating floating objects speed eyes closed violent hitting objects crashing nothing.
I came to in my father’s arms — he carried me into our house. I heard the worry in my mother’s voice saying “Mike? Mike?” He carried me into my bedroom. She followed. He yelled “Get a flashlight.” She yelled “What for? What’s wrong?” He yelled “Get it goddamn it. I think she’s hurt down there.” She did. He laid me down on my princess canopy bed. I looked at the white lace. My hands between my legs. My mother returned with the flashlight. My father pulled my hands away and then pulled my pants down. My mother said “Mike?” I began to cry. Hurt where pee lives. My father pulled down my underwear. My mother said “Mike.” My father spread my legs and turned on the flashlight and said, “She’s bleeding.” My mother crying my father saying “Dorothy go outside you are hysterical,” my mother leaving. My father saying close the door goddamn it.
Weren’t there things called doctors? Hospitals?
I’d crashed my bike into a row of mailboxes.
I’d ruptured my hymen.
My father’s hands.
A flashlight.
Blood.
Girl.
The next day he made me get back on the bike after work. He made me go back to the top of the hill. It hurt so bad to sit on the bike I bit the inside of my cheek. But I did not cry. He said, “You have to get right back on and conquer your fear. You have to.” Again he pushed me. Little girl not old enough to know her anger her fear her body sailing down the hill on her hot pink Schwinn, streamers flying.
Between terror and rage I chose rage.
Partway down the hill I thought of my father and how I hated the way his skin smelled like ash skin yellow cigarette stains on his fingers and his big architectural hands and his pushing me and I closed my eyes… I closed them, I did, I let go of the handlebars and I put my hands out to the sides of my body. I felt the wind on my palms and fingers. On my face. My chest. Maybe blowing straight through my heart. I stopped breaking. My feet weightless.
I wiped out without making any turns toward our house. Though no bones were broken, I was scraped all over. My face. My elbows and arms. My knees and legs. My strong swimmer boy shoulders. All I was was my body. Bleeding. Bleeding.
But not crying.
For years and years, after that.
The Less Than Merry Pranksters
Bennett Huffman
Jeff Forester
Robert Blucher
Ben Bochner
James Finley