From May to June

Hi dad. How are you? Sorry I didn’t come sooner.

Well, goodbye.

I’ve never seen you altogether you know. I try to put all the bits together in my head so I can see all of you, but it doesn’t look quite right. To me, you’re just grey eyes and a beard. I’m still confused about how I should feel now that something bad’s happened to you.

Four nights ago I had a dream. Warm blood on my hands. A scream. The blade of an axe. I dream of blood. Blood on my hands and under my feet, blood in my mouth and pouring from my eyes. The room is filled with it. I feel the night crawling up all around, blotting out the moon. I feel blood running down the walls, rivers of it in the streets below. And I feel your teeth closing down on me. Sometimes I wake up screaming and Mick will reach his arm around me and fold close to his chest and I listen to his heart beating in my ears and he whispers over and over that it’s okay…and I don’t believe him. I can’t.

Once, when I was younger, I asked why you had to hit me so often and so much, ‘God wishes for you to obey me, May. I don’t want to hurt you. I get no pleasure from it. If you would only listen and perform your duties properly, I wouldn’t have to.’

I remember breaking glass and wood, rough shouting. A knife slicing through flesh, and hot blood on my hand. I-I saw her face white as a ghost, her hand reached out and shook and she whispered ‘Get your brother and go’.

And she screamed then, and you were over her. And-and I stood up and I tried to run, I tried to get Isaac and go but I was so small, and you were so big. And I hadn’t even gotten to the door when you caught up. I didn’t see what happened but I felt it….You said that I belong to you. I belong to no one.

I wished I was dead. I remember, I remember wishing that. I remember screaming, screaming until I was hoarse, screaming until blood ran and my scream mingled with yours. And I ran, and I couldn’t scream anymore because I needed my breath to run. Did it hurt to die? I think if you asked me a year ago I wouldn’t have cared…I wouldn’t have cared if it hurt, because it couldn’t hurt anymore then it already did.

My mother loved roses. She grew them like magic. No one’s roses were as lovely as hers. Rows of scarlet roses marching through the garden, rows of roses on the dress I wore the day we buried her. Holding hands with Isaac with our heads tipped toward the sky, catching as many snowflakes as we could, while you dug her grave. Isaac didn’t understand, not then…and he never saw her body, I told him she was just going on a little trip, I think he knows you killed her now…but we’ve never talked about it…it’s a terrible thing that doesn’t need to be spoken. I watched him laughing and all I could think about was ‘Get your brother and go’. I felt the task before us must be impossible, that we-two broken children that we were-could not overcome such a thing, that we were bound to you in an unbreakable way. I still think we are.

No one knows what happened that day exactly…except me. I’ve been told talking will help but I can never make it very far. I-I remember you laughed and stroked my braid with your white hands. ‘You’re mine May, mine to let live and mine to let die’ Your hand was on my braid, wrapping around it, pulling my head back so I could look into your eyes. ‘You’re a bitch in the heat, like all women are.’ I opened my mouth to scream, but a filthy hand covered it and another latched onto my breast, squeezing it so hard tears sprang to my eyes. I felt your tongue on my ear. Your hand moved from my breast to the hem of my skirt, pulling it to my waist, your fingers on my thighs brushing against my skin. It’s not natural! I remember-remember a man over me, barely more than a child, in the flickering light, pushing between my legs, and it hurt, and I screamed because it hurt, but you kept at it until I bled. You did not let go. ‘Just go away, You’re not here; you’re in a green field in a valley, and the sun is shining down, and here comes someone smiling at you, someone who loves you.’

You told me many times that it was all something I’d made up in my head and you didn’t want to hear about that nonsense. I wasn’t going to trouble myself about it anymore. I wasn’t going to think of how strange it was, because you told me what to think and I was sure you wouldn’t like me thinking on this. I remember you grabbed the front of my coat with both fists and yanked me up halfway, shaking me. ‘Are you expecting, May? Are you carrying my child and trying to keep it a secret? Don’t think you can hide it from me!’ ‘No’ ‘You’d better not be lying. You know what happens to girls who lie.’

I didn’t even know I was lying at the time…how could I? I didn’t have anyway to get a test, I had as much information as you did…I remember going to Isaac and saying ‘Isaac I think I’m pregnant with our father’s child.’ He just looked at me with an awful blank expression that made me fear for his life. And I-I put my hand on his cheek and I begged him not to leave me…because the light left his eyes for a moment, and I told him ‘we have to get out, we have to…not for us but for her.’

My one happiness was the man who you paid to deliver supplies to us twice a week, I had never mentioned any of the things that went on in our home to him, but we would always talk when he came up because you had me make him dinner. And he would compliment my cooking and once you asked me if the devil was tempting me through him and you said you should shoot us both but you didn’t. Something inside me told me that he would help if we asked, so we wrote him a note and I slipped it in his dinner. The next time Mick came up to make a delivery I said a very long prayer in my mind, the first prayer I had prayed in so many years…I still don’t know how I feel about God, but I know that my prayer was answered. Mick came back the very next day with the test and met us at my rock-the one mom used to take us to back when we were all happy. I peed on the stick, and there were two lines. We knew it was your-our baby.

Isaac came home to stall for me, I sat at that rock crying for such a long time. Mick sat with me. He told me it would be fine. I barely knew him then. I didn’t believe him at all. All I could think was that this damn life was not good enough for whatever little person was growing inside me. And I cried. I sat there thinking about all the possibilities-that I could cut her out of my life, and my body and your life…That I could try to hide it from you and somehow sneak her off the mountain without you knowing…I just knew I couldn’t give her the same life I was living, I couldn’t do that. But I wanted her. I wanted to keep her. I could already feel her soul dancing with mine. I still can.

And then Mick snapped me out of my daydreaming, and he told me that he wanted to take me on a date. I said I’d like that but you’d never let me. He said he didn’t care. He told me he’d bring his shotgun, he wanted to chase you off the mountain, he said he’d get a group of guys together and get rid of you…I said Isaac and I couldn’t manage on our own. He said we could if we had a farm hand, and he was happy to volunteer.

I cried for a long time and then he said to go home and act like everything was normal, and that he’d be along with a gang of guys to chase you out of my life forever. ‘okay’.

I went home, I tried to act normal but you saw right through me didn’t you? Isaac was scared, he didn’t know what to do. He saw that look in your eye but he knew I was pregnant. He didn’t want you to hurt me.

You looked at me with that same look you had when you killed mom. I was so scared, the scaredest I have ever been. ‘Are you lying to me May?’ ‘No! No! I wouldn’t do that!’ ‘You know what happens to girls who lie.’

You started taking your belt off…it was black with a silver buckle, just looking at that buckle made the hairs on my arm stand up and the skin on my back tingle with anticipation for the moment it would bite into my flesh. Isaac and I threw your belt off a cliff after you died, we’ll never see it again. ‘Take off your shirt May.’ I didn’t know what to do, I was so scared, I didn’t want anymore pain, I didn’t want you to hurt me, but I was more scared that if you did hurt me it would hurt my baby, but I didn’t know what to do so I just stood there and didn’t move.

‘What’s wrong May? Do you need me to take your shirt off for you?’ You took a step toward me and Isaac stood up, just a small boy compared to you. He stood in between us, ‘Don’t you dare touch her!’ You laughed at him, ‘Why boy? You think you can stop me?’

‘Stop Isaac! Stop!’ He lunged at you, and you took the buckle in your hand and hit him in the jaw. He fell back, so easily made still.

I was shaking. You looked at me and said, ‘Don’t make me ask you again.’ I remember slowly pulling off my dress so that I stood before you with just stockings and underwear. It was cold, I was cold…and all of my scars were on display in front of you. I began to shiver as you looked at me. I hugged my hands over my body to try to hide it from you but your hungry eyes wandered over me-your daughter-eating me up. I remember your tongue running along your bottom lip. Looking at Isaac who’d shut his eyes so tight when you beat me. You didn’t have the decency to keep me clothed. But Isaac loved me enough to keep his eyes shut. I felt my heart shaking then. I was so afraid. I was afraid. So afraid.

You brandished your belt and gestured to the table, ‘Lean over, Now!’

I was shaking and begging the God I didn’t believe in for a miracle. I bent over the table, I’m quite sure I was so starved you could see all the vertebrae in my curved spine. I took a deep breath and heard you grunt. And I screamed as the metal bit into my skin. There are so many scars on my back dad, ten or so for every time I lied. That was the greatest vice wasn’t it? Especially in a woman.

Sometimes I have nightmares about it, and in those dreams the pain feels so very real, so in someway I-I doubt you’ll ever stop punishing me-hurting me.

Isaac’s hands flew over his ears and he curled up in the corner, I remember when we were small…and you used to beat mother, and I remember curling up in that same corner and singing softly to Isaac while mother screamed. I remember singing in his ear and covering his eyes so he couldn’t see. I didn’t want him to see.

Lavender’s blue dilly dilly lavender’s green. When I am king dilly dilly you shall be queen. Who told you so dilly dilly who told you so? Twas my own heart dilly dilly that told me so.

You hit me again and I screamed louder then I’d ever screamed I think because I remember ‘She pregnant!’ Isaac couldn’t hear me scream again, so he told you. He told you my secret and I heard the belt drop to the floor.

And you stopped, it was the first time you ever stopped something. And I stood there shivering, feeling the warm blood drip down my back as I cried harder than I’d ever cried. You asked me then if I was pregnant, there was no use hiding it anymore, you knew. So I told you I was, and that it was your child. I looked up at you, you were standing beside me, looking at your naked daughter with blood and tears pouring down her skin. And your face turned white ‘No one can know about what we did. No one can know what we did!’

I looked at you and for a moment I thought you were going to stop. And then you grabbed my wrist, I shrieked as you pulled me to your bedroom. You tossed me onto the bed and turned to close the door. ‘What are you going to do to her?’ Isaac sounded so helpless, so frightened. Everything I felt. ‘I’m going to make sure no one ever knows what happened.’

My eyes widened and I saw Isaac’s eyes panic as you closed the door on him and locked it. You were going to cut the baby out of my chest…and there was nothing I could do to stop you. You were going to kill my child, maybe me. And there was every possibility that in one night you would kill both of your daughters.

I remember you grabbed a knife and I was fighting as you pulled my pants off me. And I was kicking and screaming as you pinned me down. And Isaac was banging on the door and you raised your knife to start and then the door opened and I heard a bang. And there was Mick standing in the doorway with a group of men and a gun, and your knife dropped and you fell. And I cried. And now I’m crying again.

It hasn’t even been nine months, I’ll know when it has. I’ve been told things get easier, but they get harder first. One thing was hard. I didn’t think I’d miss you at all, but you’re my father. I hate you with everything inside me. But something about being human makes us wish we loved those who bore us and created us. I don’t love you dad, but I wish I did. And more than that I wish you loved me.

I came to visit because I have news. It’s tradition for a man to ask for a girl’s hand in marriage from her father. Mick couldn’t do that so he asked Isaac. Isaac said yes and then Mick asked me. I said yes too. Dad, I’m getting married. You told me that was all I was good for. Well now you must be so proud of me. But more than that I’m proud of myself. I’m not marrying Mick because that’s all I can do. I’m marrying him because he has shown me how much more I am than some piece of meat. He has taught me that I can be smart, and I can be kind, and I can raise my daughter the way his mother raised him.

He has taught me to read and write. He has shown me that although he appreciates when I cook and clean for him, it isn’t why he loves me. And he has taught me that if that was the only reason he had love for me then it wouldn’t be love. He loves me and needs nothing from me…That is why I am marrying him. And I had to tell you that. Because I couldn’t live with thinking that you may have thought that you were right. Because you weren’t. You were so very wrong.

Mick has shown me that there is not one kind of man in the world. There are animals like you of course, I know that more than anyone. But men like Mick, and Isaac are more wonderful than I could ever have imagined.

You know what bothers me the most now? I walk around with this burden on my shoulders, people judging me for keeping my baby. My baby is no less than anyone else’s baby just because I didn’t conceive her on purpose. My child will not be any less human and I despise the way people look at me when I say I’m keeping her.

I don’t understand why they care so much. You should have seen the look on my new mother in law’s face when she found out. She was not happy. I don’t know why it’s any of her business, it isn’t, but she thinks it is. I don’t understand why she believes I am not strong enough to have this child.

I am.

You did a lot of horrible things to me, but the one thing you did give me is strength. I am so strong. Stronger than her, and stronger than you.

When I tell them how it happened-how I got pregnant they-they look at me as if I’m carrying a monster in my belly. I don’t understand. What you did isn’t her fault. They always ask, ‘Are you keeping her?’ And when I say yes they look at me like I’m crazy.

I’m not crazy. I don’t think I am. Just because being pregnant right now isn’t ideal doesn’t mean I’ll regret having a child. And maybe this child will be exactly what I need. Maybe she will be the beauty in the world that I’ve been missing. Maybe.

I wish I could be a virgin on my wedding night. Instead I will be a mother. And Mick will be her father, not you, never you. There is a piece of me that you stole when you did what you did. Mick taught me the word for it, a word you never bothered teaching us-rape. You raped me.

Do you know what rape is dad? Rape is the single worst act a man can commit against a woman. And you did that to your daughter. Rape is an unnatural thing. But to do it to your own child. I-I can’t. I can’t-I-

I thought I’d cried out the past already, but here it is again, rising up in my chest, making it hurt. All the years of walking, of being pushed and pulled. All the nights I’d woken in terror from a nightmare that would not leave me, all the nights no one was there to soothe or comfort away that fear. Your hand pushing between my legs.

All these things have been stopped up inside me. The world is abruptly sharp and clear, too clear, and too alive. It is terrible beyond words. Could this be a true thing? Could the world really be this terrible? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does, and I don’t think I’ll ever figure it out…most people don’t.

I’m still afraid of you. Yes, I am, I might always be. But you’ll never meet her. June, our daughter’s name is June.