Russell Banks - The Sweet Hereafter

There was no stopping Mom and Daddy, though. They had their minds made up. This Mr. Stephens had convinced them that they were going to get a million dollars from the State of New York and maybe another million from the town of Sam Dent. Daddy said they all have insurance for this sort of thing; it won’t come out of anybody’s pocket, he kept saying; but even so, it made me nervous. Since the accident, I had become superstitious, I think. Mom and Daddy are Christians, at least Mom is, and I sort of believe in God myself, so I did not want to appear ungrateful and end up losing what little luck I had.

“This Mr. Stephens, who bought me the computer — what does he want me to do? I don’t have to be the one to sue anybody, do I? Can’t you guys do it?”

Daddy was in the bathroom now, unscrewing the mirror. “Well, sure, but he’s got to arrange for the other side’s lawyers to take a statement from you, a deposition, it’s called, and then we all go to court, and you’ll be asked to testify and so forth—”

“About what?” I hollered. “I don’t even remember the accident! It’s like I wasn’t even there!”

“Don’t get excited, honey,” Mom said, smooth as butter. God, I hate her sometimes.

Jennie was sucking her thumb. “Cut that out,” I said to her. “You’re too old for that,” I said, and she started to cry. I’m such a rat. “I’m sorry, Babes,” I said to her. I pulled her to me and hugged her. She stopped crying and didn’t put her thumb back in her mouth, but now I was wishing she would.

Daddy said, “Mr. Stephens is really a very nice man, very gentle and understanding. He just wants you to describe in your own words what life was like before the accident, you know, with school and all, cheerleading, your plans for the future and all, that sort of thing. In your own words. He says it’s much more effective if you tell it, instead of just us telling it.”

“Yeah. I’ll bet. Well, maybe I won’t. I don’t like even thinking about that stuff, and I sure don’t want to talk about it to any lawyer or some judge in a courtroom. So maybe I’ll just refuse to talk about it. They can’t make me, can they?”

“C’mon, Babes, be reasonable,” Daddy said, coming back into the bedroom.

“Let’s talk about this later, okay?” Mom said. “She just got home, Sam. Are you hungry, honey? You want me to fix you something, a sandwich or some soup? No more hospital food, honey, aren’t you glad?” She had her cheery TV-mom voice working.

“Yeah,” I said, and I suppose I was glad. I hate hospital food. “I am hungry. Maybe a sandwich and some soup would be good.”

Mom got up and hustled out to the kitchen, and Daddy slowly gathered his tools and followed. I rolled over to the door and shut it and put the new hook in place. “It works,” I said to Jennie.

“Cool,” she said, imitating me.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“That’s okay. Can you make the computer work?” she asked. “Can you show me how to use it?”

I said sure and wheeled back to the table and switched on the computer. “Cool,” I said, and winked at her and laughed. Quickly, she came up next to my chair and put her arm around my shoulder, and we started fooling around with Mr. Stephens’s computer, writing our names and silly messages on the screen.

I was home again, and lots of things were the same as before. But a few things, important things, were different. And not just my room, either. Before the accident, I was ashamed all the time and afraid. Because of Daddy. Sometimes I even wanted to kill myself. But now I was mostly angry and never wanted to die.

Back then, though, with Jennie sound asleep in the bunk above me, I used to lie awake at night thinking up ways to kill myself. Dying was the only way I could imagine the end of what I was doing with Daddy, although sometimes I imagined that he had suddenly decided to leave me alone, because weeks would go by, whole months, when he did leave me alone, when he just acted regular, and I thought then that maybe he had decided that what he was making me do with him was wrong, really wrong, and he was sorry and wouldn’t come to me anymore when we were alone in the house or in the car and touch me and make me touch him.

Those times when he left me alone, I thought maybe I had dreamed the whole thing up, dreams are like that, or had imagined it, because even when I was a little kid like Jennie, before Daddy started touching me that way, I had imagined some things that had made me ashamed, sexual things, sort of. Everybody does that. So maybe I had imagined this too. A few weeks would pass, and I’d start to forget that it had actually happened, and then I’d feel guilty for having been so upset and confused.

But late one night he would pick me up from babysitting at the Ansels’ or somebody else’s, and in the darkness of the car he’d slide his hand across the seat to me and put it on my leg and pull me toward him and keep sliding his hand up my leg, under my skirt, and I knew his pants were undone and he wanted me to put my hand on him there again, and so I would, and then we would do things to each other, like he had taught me, things like I knew my girlfriends did with their boyfriends after school dances and in cars with older boys but that I would never do with a boy and pretended to be disgusted about when they told me.

When we got home I would run into the house from the car and go straight to my room upstairs with my heart pounding and a roaring sound in my ears. It was awful. I lay in bed in the darkness with my clothes still on and listened to him lock up below and walk slowly up the stairs and go into his and Mom’s room and shut the door. I could hear the bedsprings squeak as he got into bed next to Mom, and soon I heard him snoring. For hours I stayed there, still as a log, until finally the roaring in my ears stopped and I dared to get out of the bed and take off my clothes in the darkened room and put on my nightgown and go down the hall to the bathroom and come back to bed, where I lay awake trying to think up ways to kill myself that wouldn’t upset Jennie too much. Usually, I decided on sleeping pills and Daddy’s vodka in the kitchen cupboard. Like Marilyn Monroe. But I didn’t know how to get hold of any sleeping pills, so the next day I always gave it up and instead tried to make what had happened in the car coming home from the Ansels’ seem like I only dreamed it.

I didn’t have to try very hard, because Daddy, except when he wanted to do those things with me, the rest of the time treated me normally, like nothing wrong had happened. Always, the next morning at breakfast he was just the same old Daddy, grumpy and distracted, bossing the boys and me and Jennie around, ignoring Mom the way he does, while she fussed in the kitchen, shoving food at the rest of us and as usual worrying over her diet. She never eats anything in front of anybody but keeps getting fatter and fatter all the time. She’s not a blimp, but she is fat.

“Look at Nichole,” Daddy always said to Mom. “Look at me. We never diet, we just eat three squares a day, and we’re not fat. What you got to do, Mary, is stop all the in-between-meal snacking,” he’d say.

“Nichole’s fourteen ,” Mom would answer. “And you, everyone in your family is skinny as a rail. And I don’t snack; it’s my metabolism.” Then she’d pout and try to change the subject. “Rudy, you keep your hat on today; you’re coming down with a cold,” she’d say, and start hurrying us from the table so we wouldn’t miss the bus.

Normal life at the Burnell house.

What used to be normal life anyhow. Because after the accident, things changed. For one thing, when the other kids went off to school in the mornings, I stayed home. Mr. Dillinger, the principal, came over one day and brought a bunch of assignments from my teachers so I could catch up with the rest of my class and pass into the ninth grade with them. He’s a huge gawk who wears a bow tie and always has dandruff on his suits, and he sat in the living room with me and Mom, all hearty and cheerful, talking real loud, like being in the wheelchair had made me deaf, and together they tried to convince me to come back to school and attend classes with everyone else. He said the school board had authorized a special van to bring me back and forth. “Isn’t that terrific !” he said, like I was supposed to jump up and give a cheer for the school board.