Carole Maso - Ghost Dance

“Your move,” Father says quietly. You are only nine but already a good match for him. As you put your hand on the pawn’s carved head and move it toward the center of the board, I am just being born. You move again and I cry out. A large woman with long thick hair comes into the room with “refreshment.” Her English is unsure of itself. Now and then a “weights” still slips from her tightened lips. Something troubles her. Is this your mother?

“Wagner,” my father says.

“Wagner.”

“Mahler.”

“Mahler.”

“Bruckner.”

“I couldn’t stay away” was what he said now more and more often, coming at unexpected times, not to our hotel anymore but to my apartment where he knew he could find me. He will disappear, I thought, as simply, as mysteriously, as he has arrived, with a word about the weather, a shrug, a last cigarette. But he had not disappeared. I saw him more and more frequently. “Please,” he’d say into the intercom, “I couldn’t stay away.”

His voice was not tender, I thought, as I pressed the button that would open the door downstairs and allow him up. No, there was no tenderness there. It was not love that brought him here; it was something else. I don’t think even he could understand his own actions anymore, what it was that kept leading him here to me. He looked bewildered, angry, as I opened the door. “I couldn’t stay away,” he hissed.

I smiled. “Come in,” I said. “Did you really miss me?” I laughed.

He took my arm. “I try never to think of you when we are apart,” he said softly. “It makes me crazy. Sometimes just the idea of the force of your thighs crushes all thoughts from me. I can’t remember anything: where I was going or what I wanted. This is something I did not plan on, Vanessa, something I did not foresee — your power.”

“I have no power.”

He laughed. “It is what you love to believe about yourself. It is what you want to believe.”

“I am at your mercy.”

“Ha!” he laughed.

“Who are you then?” I asked. “I don’t even know your last name. I don’t know anything about you — why you are here at all, what you are trying to do with all these games. That’s power? I want to know where you go when you leave me. I want to know what your mother looks like. I want you to tell me things.”

“You already know everything,” he said. “You know me only too well.”

“Just to know where you sleep when you’re not here, what your days are like.” I began to cry.

“What’s with you, Vanessa?” he asked, taking my hand in his. “What’s with you, anyway?” My hand was smooth, unlined. Like a stone it felt heavy, impossible. Jack’s hand was large, rough, veined, as if it had lived a thousand lives, had a thousand stories to tell, all of them off-limits to me.

He took me in his arms. Slowly his large hands fumbled with the robe I was wearing.

“Oh, love,” he whispered, “what’s happening to us?”

“You think you can be free,” I said, “because I know so little? Because you keep me ignorant?”

“On the contrary,” he said. Anger rose in his voice. “I will never really be free of you.” I stepped back.

“Don’t you know that one simple thing vet?” he asked, nearing me. In one strangely gentle motion, he tied my hands behind my back with the belt of my bathrobe, which he’d hung around his neck.

“We can pretend that you are the dog — but it is only a game. Get down,” he said. “Good. Now just watch me.” He patted my head. Slowly he took off his clothes and folded them neatly and placed them in a pile.

He flipped me over suddenly, took his necktie and tied my feet together.

“Now,” he said, “we can pretend, if you want, that you are the one who cannot move, that you are the one who is going now here, that you are a poor innocent victim of circumstances. This big man has come and tied your hands behind your back and now your feet together and you cannot escape.”

He just looked at me lying on the floor. “Poor, poor Vanessa.” He tied his handkerchief around my head so that I could not see. “You want to be the victim forever. How very dull — the one who’s been wronged, abandoned.” I could feel his mouth at my ear, his hot, urgent breath.

“Who hasn’t been asked to suffer terribly?” he whispered fiercely. “How long can vou go on like this?” he demanded. “You can get out of it if you want. Picture yourself free,” he said. “Fight back.” His voice sounded very sad. I began to thrash on the floor trying to get my feet loose. My arms ached.

“You have the ability to escape, Vanessa, but you don’t want to.”

“I want to,” I said.

“Not badly enough. You are in charge of your own life. You are in charge even now.”

“Help me,” I said.

“How can you possibly believe that a man, a stranger really, can come in here and rescue you — help you — save you?” He laughed. “Don’t buy into it, Vanessa. It is the myth of the oppressor.”

“I don’t care. Do what you want.”

“Fight back. Save yourself.”

I began to cry. “Help me,” I said.

“We’ll sit here all night this way.”

“Please,” I said.

“Be ingenious.”

“Please,” I whispered.

“Fight back,” he said in desperation. “Don’t give up.” He untied the handkerchief from my eyes so that I might watch. “Please,” he said. “Don’t make me do this.”

He took his leather belt from the pile of clothes, raised it over his head, hesitated, I thought, for a moment, then lowered it, hitting me over and over again. He was crying as he hit me harder and harder. “Say something,” he screamed. He could not stop now. I felt only pain, nothing else. I could not see him, but only his motions, only his sobs.

“Why?” I cried. “Why?”

“Forgive us,” he said, and I felt a great warmth flowing over me.

“Why?” I whispered, in my blood voice.

“Please, say stop,” he screamed. “Please, say something.” It was the last thing I heard. I must have passed out.

“Untie me,” I said when I regained consciousness, “now.” I could not feel my own body. He said nothing but only followed mv instructions. I was covered with blood. “Lift me to the bed,” I said, “gently. Be careful.” Without a word he did this, too.

“Jack,” I said, and, hearing his name now in my broken voice, he started to weep.

“Please. Please hold me,” I whispered, “just hold me for a minute.

“Now sit in the chair,” I said calmly. “Sit there and watch me sleep. Take care of me. Do you understand?” He nodded. He sat in the chair and said nothing. I slept. I could not bear to stay awake.

When I awoke, he was sitting next to the bed on the floor, his face in his hands. He had not slept. He moved his hand toward me. I pulled away.

“You have the ability to get better,” he said with a huge tenderness, an impossible sorrow, “but you have to want it, you have to work at it. You can do whatever you want.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” I said. “What gives you the right to tell me how to live, to show me the way?”

“You’ve suffered enough, Vanessa, enough.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, my friend. I can never suffer enough.”

“It’s not your fault that your whole family is gone.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“Look at you, just look at you.” His anger filled his whole body, the whole room. With the sheer force of his anger he pulled the mirror from the door of the bedroom and brought it over to me. “Look at yourself.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” I said.

“Live,” he cried, “or die. Do you understand what I’m saying to you? You’re going to die, Vanessa.”